This is GPS, the global public square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and

around the world. I'm Farid Zakaria, coming to you from New York.

Today on the program, the Knesset votes to take away a key power of Israel's Supreme Court.

And as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Oji is calm, the nation's political center

and left Iraq in anger. I'll talk to the New York Times's Tom Friedman about the politics involved

and with his colleague Emily Baselon about the legal issues. Then the Secretary of Homeland

Security Alejandro Mayorkas on the good news and the bad news from America's southern border.

Finally, we did President Putin lose or gain power after precautions failed with me.

I last Russian journalist in exile, Mikhail Zigan.

But first, here's my take. The mysterious disappearance of China's foreign minister,

Qin Gang, is a timely reminder that the future of US-China relations will be determined

not just by American policy and what's happening domestically in the United States,

such as the presidential election campaign. It will also be shaped by developments in China,

which at this point are opaque but troubling. From what outsiders can tell, China is reverting

to a Mao-era style of politics that we have not seen for decades. More significant than

Qin Gang's mysterious removal from power after the authorities attributed his absence to health

is the doctrine of websites and press releases to expunge his participation and achievements

from the past, who controls the past, controls the future. George Orwell wrote in his novel

1984, and that ominous dictum seems to be the guide to China's elite politics these days.

This is a far cry from the technocratic government that dung-joping Ashredin as he reformed China

in the 1980s. In those days, the Chinese political system seemed a contradiction in terms,

a dictatorship that had age gaps or term limits for high offices. Where else did one see this kind

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