Week in Review: Bernie Sanders’s Socialist Revolution, China’s Land Grab in Australia, America Insolvent, and More

Mark Wilson/DON EMMERT/WILLIAM WEST/VASILY MAXIMOV/AFP/Getty Images

Week in Review: Bernie Sanders’s Socialist Revolution, China’s Land Grab in Australia, America Insolvent, and More

All you need to know about everything in the news this week

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Highlights:

Bernie Sanders’s victorious socialist revolution

  • Whether or not he becomes the Democratic Party nominee for president of the United States, Bernie Sanders has already won his much-touted revolution on the streets.
  • Approximately half of American voters under age 30 now think socialism is a good idea for the country.
  • As Sally Kohn mused in a Time magazine article titled “Bernie Sanders Has Already Won His Revolution”: “[O]ne of the lasting impacts the Sanders campaign will have on American politics and activism is the increasing willingness of political leaders and ordinary Americans to more proudly claim bold left positions.”
  • China’s land grab

  • China is waging a vicious war in the South Pacific that’s akin to the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. One major difference: Instead of grizzly kill zones, the front lines are the quiet rolling slopes of New Zealand and the plains of central Australia.
  • In 2013, China bought a record 622,000 tons of milk from New Zealand. The dairy industry makes up 25 percent of New Zealand’s economy. China stockpiled the milk, created an artificially high demand, then pulled out of the market.
  • The same scenario is playing out in Australia, where, for example, a Chinese company is seeking to buy the nation’s largest dairy farm. Geographically, China could own 1 percent of Australia—a chunk of property roughly as big as Kentucky.
  • The sleeping giant of China is awakening in Southeast Asia and Australasia. As Napoleon Bonaparte said, “When she wakes, she will shake the world.”
  • Resurrecting the Soviet Union

  • A quarter century after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the majority of Russians want it resurrected.
  • The Moscow-based Levada Center’s survey of 1,600 Russian adults found that 58 percent would welcome the revival of a system that killed at least 60 million people—“the other holocaust of the 20th century,” as some historians called it.
  • President Vladimir Putin has said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.” He’s oiling a media machine that’s persuading the masses to think the same way he does.
  • Iran vows ‘never again’

  • Iran’s push to build up its defenses was clarified in an op-ed in the Washington Post by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
  • In his piece, Zarif condemned the West for not doing enough to combat terrorism—a true statement, if he was also including his nation.
  • He also condemned the fact that “Saudi Arabia has become the world’s third-biggest military spender.” Yet, it is Iran’s belligerence and U.S. incompetence that triggered the arms race in the Middle East.
  • Zarif then referenced the Iran-Iraq War and how his country bore the brunt of Saddam Hussein’s Western-supplied “sophisticated weapons.” He added, “The words ‘never again’ resonate with Iranians, too. It is against this backdrop that we develop and test our indigenous defensive capabilities. We have no other choice ….”
  • Other news:

  • The bomber who carried out Jerusalem’s first suicide attack in a decade was a young operative from the Hamas terrorist group.
  • The United States is nearing insolvency, according to a Time magazine article by James Grant. This may not be apparent because the government no longer views money as a scale or yardstick but as a magic wand—something that creates value out of thin air.
  • Libya’s newly formed National Unity government, led by Fayez al-Sarraj, needs help, and Europe is willing to assist. In a joint statement on Monday, European Union foreign ministers offered to help with “counterterrorism, border management, countering irregular migration and smuggling of migrants, and trafficking of human beings.”
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