Comments by "Stella Maris" (@SuperGreatSphinx) on "CNN"
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Xi Jinping (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician currently serving as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, President of the People's Republic of China, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission.
As Xi holds the top offices of the party, the state, and the military, he is sometimes referred to as China's "paramount leader"; in 2016, the party officially gave him the title of "core" leader.
As General Secretary, Xi holds an ex-officio seat on the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, China's top decision-making body.
Xi Jinping is the first General Secretary to have been born after the Second World War.
The son of Chinese Communist veteran Xi Zhongxun, Xi rose through the ranks politically in China's coastal provinces.
Xi was governor of Fujian from 1999 to 2002, and governor, then party secretary of neighboring Zhejiang province from 2002 to 2007.
Following the dismissal of Chen Liangyu, Xi was transferred to Shanghai as party secretary for a brief period in 2007.
Xi joined the Politburo Standing Committee and central secretariat in October 2007, spending the next five years as Hu Jintao's presumed successor.
Xi was vice president from 2008 to 2013 and Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission from 2010 to 2012.
Since assuming power, Xi has introduced far-ranging measures to enforce party discipline and to ensure internal unity.
His signature anti-corruption campaign led to the downfall of prominent incumbent and retired officials.
Xi has tightened restrictions over civil society and ideological discourse, advocating internet censorship in China as the concept of "internet sovereignty".
Xi has called for further market economic reforms, for governing according to the law and for strengthening legal institutions, with an emphasis on individual and national aspirations under the slogan "Chinese Dream".
Xi has also championed a more assertive foreign policy, particularly with regard to China–Japan relations, China's claims in the South China Sea, and its role as a leading advocate of free trade and globalization.
He has also sought to expand China's Eurasian influence through the One Belt One Road Initiative.
Considered the central figure of the People's Republic's fifth generation of leadership, Xi has significantly centralized institutional power by taking on a wide range of leadership positions, including chairing the newly formed National Security Commission, as well as new steering committees on economic and social reforms, military restructuring, and the Internet.
Xi’s political thoughts have been written into the party constitution, and the state constitution was amended to abolish term limits for the presidency.
Xi has had a cult of personality constructed around himself "with books, cartoons, pop songs and even dance routines".
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North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (abbreviated as DPRK or DPR Korea), is a sovereign state in East Asia constituting the northern part of the Korean Peninsula.
Officially, its territory consists of the whole Korean Peninsula and its adjacent islands.
Pyongyang is the nation's capital and largest city.
To the north and northwest, the country is bordered by China and by Russia along the Amnok (known as the Yalu in China) and Tumen rivers; it is bordered to the south by South Korea, with the heavily fortified Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two.
Nevertheless, North Korea, like its southern counterpart, claims to be the legitimate government of the entire peninsula.
In 1910, Korea was annexed by Japan.
After the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II in 1945, Korea was divided into two zones, with the north occupied by the Soviets and the south occupied by the Americans.
Negotiations on reunification failed, and in 1948, separate governments were formed: the socialist Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north, and the capitalist Republic of Korea in the south.
An invasion initiated by North Korea led to the Korean War (1950–1953).
The Korean Armistice Agreement brought about a ceasefire, but no peace treaty was signed.
North Korea officially describes itself as a self-reliant, socialist state and formally holds elections.
Various media outlets have called it Stalinist, particularly noting the elaborate cult of personality around Kim Il-sung and his family.
The Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), led by a member of the ruling family, holds power in the state and leads the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland of which all political officers are required to be members.
Juche, an ideology of national self-reliance, was introduced into the constitution in 1972.
The means of production are owned by the state through state-run enterprises and collectivized farms.
Most services such as healthcare, education, housing and food production are subsidized or state-funded.
From 1994 to 1998, North Korea suffered a famine that resulted in the deaths of between 240,000 and 420,000 people, and the country continues to struggle with food production.
A sizeable amount of the population is thought to suffer from malnutrition, parasite infestations and food and waterborne diseases.
North Korea follows Songun, or "military-first" policy.
It is the country with the highest number of military and paramilitary personnel, with a total of 9,495,000 active, reserve and paramilitary personnel.
Its active duty army of 1.21 million is the fourth largest in the world, after China, the United States and India.
It possesses nuclear weapons.
North Korea is an atheist state with no official religion, and public religion is discouraged or persecuted.
Both North Korea and South Korea became members of the United Nations in 1991.
International organizations have assessed that human rights violations in North Korea have no parallel in the contemporary world.
North Korea operates re-education and prison camps, akin to the gulag prisons of the Soviet Union.
The concentration camps are used to segregate those seen as enemies of the state and punish them for alleged political misdemeanours, or alleged misdemeanours of relatives as part of the "3 generations of punishment" policy instigated by state founder Kim Il-sung.
Prisoners are frequently subject to slave labour, malnutrition, torture, human experimentation, rape, and arbitrary executions.
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George Soros, Hon FBA (born Schwartz György; August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist.
As of February 2018, he had a net worth of $8 billion, having donated more than $32 billion to his philanthropic agency, Open Society Foundations.
Born in Budapest, Soros survived Nazi Germany-occupied Hungary and emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1947.
He attended the London School of Economics, graduating with a bachelor's and eventually a master's degree in philosophy.
Soros began his business career by taking various jobs at merchant banks in the United Kingdom and then the United States, before starting his first hedge fund, Double Eagle, in 1969.
Profits from his first fund furnished the seed money to start Soros Fund Management, his second hedge fund, in 1970.
Double Eagle was renamed to Quantum Fund and was the principal firm Soros advised.
At its founding, Quantum Fund had $12 million in assets under management, and as of 2011 it had $25 billion, the majority of Soros's overall net worth.
Soros is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" because of his short sale of US$10 billion worth of pounds sterling, which made him a profit of $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis.
Based on his early studies of philosophy, Soros formulated an application of Karl Popper's General Theory of Reflexivity to capital markets, which he claims renders him a clear picture of asset bubbles and fundamental/market value of securities, as well as value discrepancies used for shorting and swapping stocks.
Soros is a well-known supporter of progressive and liberal political causes, to which he dispenses donations through his foundation, the Open Society Foundations.
Between 1979 and 2011, he donated more than $11 billion to various philanthropic causes; by 2017, his donations "on civil initiatives to reduce poverty and increase transparency, and on scholarships and universities around the world" totaled $12 billion.
He influenced the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and provided one of Europe's largest higher education endowments to the Central European University in his Hungarian hometown.
His extensive funding of political causes has made him a "bugaboo of European nationalists".
Numerous American conservatives have promoted false claims that characterize Soros as a singularly dangerous "puppetmaster" behind a variety of alleged global plots, with The New York Times reporting that by 2018 these claims had "moved from the fringes to the mainstream" of Republican politics.
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The Cabinet of the United States is part of the executive branch of the U.S. government that normally acts as an advisory body to the President of the United States.
It is composed of the most senior appointed officers of the executive branch of the U.S. government serving under the President.
Among those are the Vice President and the heads of the federal executive departments, all of whom are by federal law (3 U.S.C. § 19) in the line of succession to the President and have duties under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.
Members of the Cabinet (except for the Vice President) serve at the pleasure of the President, who can dismiss them at will for no cause.
All federal public officials, including Cabinet members, are also subject to impeachment by the House of Representatives and trial in the Senate for "treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors".
The President can also unilaterally designate senior White House staffers, heads of other federal agencies and the Ambassador to the United Nations as members of the Cabinet, although this is a symbolic status marker and does not, apart from attending Cabinet meetings, confer any additional powers.
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Christianity is a universalising Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life, teachings, and miracles of Jesus of Nazareth, known by Christians as the Christ, or "Messiah", who is the focal point of the Christian faiths.
It is the world's largest religion, with over 2.4 billion followers, or 33% of the global population, known as Christians.
Christians make up a majority of the population in 158 countries and territories.
They believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of humanity whose coming as the Messiah (the Christ) was prophesied in the Old Testament.
Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization.
Christianity grew out of Judaism and began as a Second Temple Judaic sect in the mid-1st century.
Originating in the Roman province of Judea, it quickly spread to Europe, Syria, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Transcaucasia, Egypt, Ethiopia and the Indian subcontinent, and by the end of the 4th century had become the official state church of the Roman Empire.
Following the Age of Discovery, Christianity spread to the Americas, Oceania, sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world through missionary work and colonization.
Christian theology is summarized in creeds such as the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed.
These professions of faith state that Jesus suffered, died, was buried, descended into hell, and rose from the dead, in order to grant eternal life to those who believe in him and trust in him for the remission of their sins.
The creeds further maintain that Jesus physically ascended into heaven, where he reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, and that he will return to judge the living and the dead and grant eternal life to his followers.
His incarnation, earthly ministry, crucifixion and resurrection are often referred to as "the gospel", meaning "good news".
The term gospel also refers to written accounts of Jesus' life and teaching, four of which—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—are considered canonical and included in the Christian Bible, as established by the 5th century for the ancient undivided Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions before the East–West Schism.
Throughout its history, Christianity has weathered schisms and theological disputes that have resulted in many distinct churches and denominations.
Worldwide, the three largest branches of Christianity are the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the various denominations of Protestantism.
The Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches broke communion with each other in the East–West Schism of 1054.
Protestantism came into existence in the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, splitting from the Catholic Church.
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