A spate of unusual reports in Hong Kong and overseas Chinese-language media lend credence to the idea that, while Xi Jinping remains China’s undisputed paramount, his authority seems diminished.

A moratorium of sorts appears to have been called on the relentless personality cult constructed around Xi, while signs have emerged that China’s economic policymaking apparatus has been hamstrung by disagreements between Xi and his top economic policymaker over how to handle a deepening trade war with the United States.

Stories about political troubles befalling Xi could be exaggerated. Xi recently completed a 10-day trip to Africa and the Middle East; it is unlikely he would have left the country for so long if his position were in imminent danger.

Further,  the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is unlikely to move against Xi after a massive reshuffle of its command-and-control apparatus in late 2015 and early 2016 that saw Xi install protégés in most of the PLA’s senior roles. (China Brief, October 20, 2017).

Nonetheless, while Xi’s status as top leader likely remains unchallenged, his authority—including his ability to make decisions on major political, economic and foreign-policy issues—seems impaired in recent weeks.   The primary cause of this impairment is US President Donald Trump.

[The Soviet Colonial Empire was the 20^th century worldwide expansion of the 19^th century Russian Colonial Empire. My friend of many years Paul Goble here shows how the murder of three Russian investigative journalists spotlights Putin’s attempt to create Russian colonies in Africa –JW.]

The Kremlin has seemingly taken another step to cover up the murders of three Russian journalists who were killed at the end of July in the Central African Republic (CAR), while investigating Moscow’s dispatch of weapons there.

Moscow has far more to hide in the CAR and is prepared to act quickly and harshly to make sure those secrets stay hidden. All along, the Russian government has vociferously denied any involvement in the widely publicized murders of the three journalists, Orkhan Dzhemal, Aleksandr Rastorguev and Kirill Radchenko.

Russia has announced it had opened its own “investigation” into the deadly incident. At the same time, however, officials and Russian analysts have gone out of their way to deny that Russians in the CAR were in any way responsible for the reporters’ deaths or that Moscow was acting covertly to undermine what stability there is in that country or anywhere else in sub-Saharan Africa (see EDM, September 4).

The truth seems to be the opposite.

The showdown between the fabulist Chrissy Ford and the righteous Brett Kavanaugh couldn't have come at a better time.

As we approach the crucial midterms -- which will decide whether the president has two more years in which to fulfill his restoration of the Republic, or be subjected to the likes of Spartacus Booker and Stolen Valor Blumenthal -- it laid bare the stark divisions in a country that seems to be coming apart.

On the one side, Mrs. Ford, a practitioner of "psychology," of a lesser form of Viennese Voodoo that masquerades as a social "science" and seems to channel folks in need of its services into the ranks of its purveyors.

The little-girl voice, the upturned question at the end of each reply, the absolute certainty about absolutely nothing -- this is the couch-riding Left at its most repellent.

On the other: Judge Kavanaugh, a man defending his life, his career, his reputation, his family, his faith, his future, and that of the country.

President Trump’s speech at the United Nations on Tuesday (9/25) is one of the greatest political speeches ever delivered in peacetime.

Barack Obama is reputed to be an impressive orator. But he never gave a speech that, in substance, could hold a candle to President Trump’s speeches at Warsaw, at Riyadh, before the joint session of Congress last year, or indeed his “rocket man” speech at the United Nations.

And this topped them all for forcefulness, clarity, and wisdom.  What, in the end, was this speech about? It was an elaboration of Trump’s chief foreign policy idea, “principled realism.”

“Realism” connotes an accurate and unsentimental appreciation of the metabolism of power. The “principles” in question involve an affirmation of who we are as a people, which turns on our affirmation of national sovereignty.

The President’s articulation of this simple, yet deep, idea is what lifted his speech out of the realm of pedestrian blather and marked it for the history books.  For now, however, we should pay attention to these key phrases in the President’s speech:

Today (9/25), President Trump is in New York, meeting world leaders attending the latest UNGA (United Nations General Assembly) gathering.  Tomorrow (9/26), he chairs the 15-member UN Security Council’s meeting on Iran.  Should be fun to watch.

The present continuance of institutions such as the EU, NATO, UN, and others suggests that the world goes on exactly as before.

In fact, these alphabet organizations are becoming shadows of their former selves, more trouble to end than to allow to grow irrelevant. The conditions that created them after the end of World War II, and subsequently sustained them even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, no longer really exist.

By 2016 Americans saw the postwar order as a sort of a naked global emperor, about whom all were ordered to lie that he was splendidly clothed.  Then came along the abrasive Donald Trump, who screamed that it was all pretense.  And he was right.

It’s been nearly a year since Ronan Farrow torpedoed the career of Harvey Weinstein, printing in The New Yorker a series of credible accusations that the Hollywood producer had sexually abused several women.

His piece touched off a firestorm that led to purges of incredibly powerful men in a variety of industries, finally forcing them to face consequences for their sexual misconduct.

Yesterday (9.24), though, Farrow and his colleague Jane Mayer did a huge disservice to the Me Too movement by publishing an incredibly thin sexual-abuse allegation against Brett Kavanaugh.  Critics by the boatload have condemned it, “Lazy at Best, Slimy at Worst.”

That story, a prime example of how some media outlets and left-wing voices have mishandled the accusations against the judge, will likely create a climate in which fewer victims are believed, more innocent men suffer for crimes they didn’t commit, and neutral observers are more inclined to doubt claims of sexual assault.

The political circus overwhelming the Kavanaugh confirmation will almost certainly weaken the Me Too movement in the long run by undermining its promise that the truth matters and that it will enable us to obtain justice.  It may already suffered a mortal wound.