Israel’s defense failures may change strategy toward Hamas and Gaza. | Opinion | China and the U.S. Need to Hear the Music in Each Other | American cities ramp up security around places of worship following Israel attacks, and assure residents there are no credible threats | CNN | Poland’s Election Is Neither Free nor Fair

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� � � � � � You Might Like � � � � � � � � � Israel's defense failures may change strategy toward Hamas and Gaza. - The New York Times -     The broad attack by Palestinian militants, which Hamas viewed as mostly successful, revealed some significant failures. Hamas’s attack on Saturday took Israeli intelligence officials by surprise, particularly the methods the militants used to enter and leave Israel, according to a senior defense official familiar with the information collected about the group. The broad attack, mostly successful from Hamas’s point of view, revealed some significant failures by the Israeli defense establishment. It also may change Israel’s overall strategic approach to Hamas and the Gaza Strip, said the official, who asked not to identified when discussing security matters. Continued here Opinion | China and the U.S. Need to Hear the Music in Each Other - The New York Times -     There is a phrase in China, “zhiyin” (知音), used to describe the person who knows you best. The first character means to “know” or “understand” and the second means “music.” It is connected to the ancient story of Boya, a revered master of the guqin, a Chinese plucked string instrument. Boya longed to find someone who could truly appreciate his music. One day as he played, he was heard by a woodcutter named Ziqi. Moved, Ziqi likened his playing to the majesty of a mountain or the power of a river. When Ziqi died, Boya played his guqin one last time, then destroyed it because he had lost his zhiyin, the only one who could understand the music in him. I’m an opera singer and teacher and a practitioner of cultural diplomacy, which uses the arts, sports, literature and other forms of expression to foster mutual understanding. This works best not when we merely perform for one another but when we truly listen and learn from one another. Continued here Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium American cities ramp up security around places of worship following Israel attacks, and assure residents there are no credible threats | CNN -     While assuring Americans there are no credible threats locally, cities throughout the United States are ramping up security around houses of worship after the large-scale attack by Gaza militants on Israel on Saturday. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued “public safety concern” bulletins Saturday to state and local law enforcement and said they are monitoring for any impact on the US domestic threat environment, a law enforcement official said. So far, the agencies said there was no “current specific intelligence indicating a threat to the United States.” The increased vigilance in the US comes after Gaza militants launched a surprise attack on Israel Saturday morning, firing thousands of rockets and entering Israel by land, sea and air. Israel then launched airstrikes on Gaza while its forces clashed on the ground with Hamas fighters. Continued here Poland's Election Is Neither Free nor Fair - The Atlantic    State capture is a clean, formal phrase that describes a messy, ugly process. A political party or clique typically consolidates control over a state’s institutions only after years of bad legislation, concentrated propaganda, and many different forms of corruption. In some cases, constitutions have to be broken. Occasionally violence is required. Whole swaths of the public have to be persuaded, bribed, or frightened into going along. In Poland, this process has been under way for eight years. After the nationalist-conservative Law and Justice party, known as PiS, legitimately won a parliamentary election in 2015, it began with an assault on the highest courts. Then it set out to dominate everything else: the national and local civil administration, regulators of all kinds, even seemingly apolitical institutions such as the forestry service. Now Poland is just days away from another parliamentary election, on October 15—an election that feels as if it were taking place in a completely different country. Some of the candidates are the same as in 2015. But the rules are different, the rhetoric is different, and the stakes are different. Inflation, migration, and women’s rights are under discussion. But in truth, only one issue is really on the ballot: Do you want PiS to complete its capture of state institutions, or do you want those institutions to belong once again to the entire country? Before I continue, here is a very emphatic declaration of personal interest. I am married to a Polish politician, Radek Sikorski, a former foreign minister who is a member of Civic Platform, the largest opposition party. He is not a candidate in this election, but he is a member of the European Parliament, and he is campaigning on behalf of others. If that bothers you, then stop reading here. But do remember that some stories are clearer from the inside. As soon as this article is published, both my husband and I could once again be the focus of orchestrated online attacks from PiS trolling operations, more slander on state-run and state-controlled media, and maybe even more antagonism from the state institutions that use the security services to harass political opponents, including us, by orchestrating bogus financial or criminal investigations. Those same institutions have put spyware on the phones of our colleagues and friends. As in the Communist era, people in Polish politics now sometimes go outside or leave their phone in a different room when they want to speak. That’s just the price, nowadays, of being in the democratic opposition. Continued here

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