Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.

Ex Input:
From Ferguson to immigration: Obama's divide and conquer political strategy has failed our nation. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows support for illegal immigrants at 48 percent, a historic low . This is what the president's cynical manipulation of the Hispanic community has delivered: a hardening of American attitudes . The same distancing will likely occur between blacks and whites as the demonstrations over the grand jury decisions in Ferguson and Staten Island roll on . Whereas only recently a sizable majority of blacks and whites declared themselves comfortable with the state of race relations in the country , pictures of looting and the inflammatory rhetoric of self-interested activists like Al Sharpton will inevitably sharpen racial divides . The insistent proclamations from Attorney General Eric Holder that our justice system is biased, and the president's agreement that the law "feels like it's being applied in a discriminatory fashion," do not help . Today, Obama's well-honed political tactics of dividing and conquering-- so essential to electing a virtual nobody to the Oval Office-- have come asunder . The interest groups wooed by the president have begun to turn against him . Some feel betrayed ; others understand that their demands have isolated them from their fellow countrymen . The only group still giving the president more than a 50 percent approval rating is voters under 3 . For the rest of the poor boobs not caught up in the Obama splinter sweep-- they are eager to elect a successor who might look out for them . Turns out, those forgotten folks are actually in the majority, and just voted in a Republican Senate . According to the Quinnipiac poll, 48 percent of voters think immigrants living in the U.S  illegally should be allowed to stay . That's down from 57 percent last year, and lower than ever . Moreover ,  some 35 percent of the voting public thinks undocumented aliens should be deported -- a record high, and up from 26 percent last year . That's in spite of insistent hectoring from the White House about the moral imperative of providing a legal path for those who are here illegally . Congratulations, Mr  Obama, for ramping up opposition to immigration reform . How to deal with illegal immigrants is not the only issue on which the nation's attitudes are hardening . Last August, after the shooting of Michael Brown (but before the grand jury decision in the case), a New York Times/CBS poll surveyed voters on their attitudes about race . Asked whether race relations had improved or soured during President Obama's time in office, 35 percent of respondents said they had gotten worse , while 52 percent said they had stayed the same . Only 10 percent thought the president had had a positive impact on relations - 8 percent of whites and 17 percent of blacks . That is an impressive underachievement from our first African-American president . Overall ,  78 percent of respondents, when asked about "race relations in your community," said they were "generally good." That included 82 percent of whites and 73 percent of blacks -- a strong vote of confidence, especially from a group that was much less positive about the country as a whole, with only 47 percent saying U.S  race relations were "generally good." This split suggests that people have absorbed the narrative that our country has a race problem not from their personal experience in their own communities, but from the media or our political leaders . The most compelling aspect of that story line entails racial bias in law enforcement . Many initiatives, from decriminalizing marijuana possession to de-emphasizing tactics like "stop and frisk," have been promulgated based on the fact that more blacks than whites end up on the wrong side of the law . Holder has even dumbed down school discipline measures, arguing they constitute an example of racial bias . The Manhattan Institute's Steve Malanga sheds some welcome light on this issue . According to surveys conducted by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics over the past 20 years, the number of confrontations between Americans and the police has declined, as has the use of force by law enforcement officials . Most important, perhaps, is that the declines were recorded not just for whites, but for all races . In 2002, 173,000 African-Americans reported a "use of force"; in 2011, that was down to 130,000 . Nearly 83 percent of blacks who were involved in traffic stops(the most numerous encounters) agreed with the statement,"When I was stopped by the police, the officers acted properly." That figure was up from 78 percent in 2002 . As for so-called "street stops," the Bureau reports,"In 2011, less than 1% of the 241.4 million U.S  residents age 16 or older were involved in a street stop" ; further ,  "no differences were observed in the percentage of non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, and Hispanic populations age 16 or older involved in a street stop." So much for unfair profiling . Under 3 percent of police encounters involve "street stops" of an involuntary nature ; of those stopped (likely not a happy crew), two-thirds said the cops behaved "properly and respectfully." This review does not suggest a law enforcement community reviled by the African-American community, or the country . President Obama has tried to curry favor with blacks, Hispanics, women, the young and the poor by convincing them that they suffer from injustices, that they are victimized by the one percent, by law enforcement, by corporations or insurers -- or by Republicans . Americans aren't buying it . Increasingly, they see a country victimized by an incompetent president .

Ex Output:
Today, Obama's well-honed political tactics of dividing and conquering-- so essential to electing a virtual nobody to the Oval Office-- have come asunder This is what the president's cynical manipulation of the Hispanic community has delivered: a hardening of American attitudes


Ex Input:
NATO's nuclear relapse. Moscow's latest tests of intercontinental missiles and its parading of nuclear capable strategic bombers have rightly prompted international concern . In December 2014, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov implied that Russia might be moving nuclear weapons to Crimea . From violations of airspace to near mid-air collisions, the number of incidents between Russia and NATO has soared dramatically , increasing the danger of an unintended escalation . Yet ,  it is rarely mentioned that NATO, too, is back in the game of nuclear deterrence . Washington has recently sent its nuclear capable B-2 and B-52 to Europe for training missions with its NATO partners . It also continues to test intercontinental ballistic missiles . Most problematically, the western military alliance is currently modernising the air-launched nuclear gravity bombs that fall under NATO's nuclear sharing initiative . It is a warm afternoon and thick clouds hang over the houses and farmyards of Buchel, a small village in western Germany and home to 20 of NATO's remaining thermonuclear bombs on European soil . Or so we can only speculate, for the exact location of these approximately 180 air-launched B61 weapons is of course secret . The local baker smiles uneasily when I ask her about the base and is quick to assure me that there is nothing to see . After a 20-minute walk through muddy fields, I can glimpse a large barbed wire fence on the horizon and what seems to be a succession of bunkeresque fortifications . A biting smell of kerosene creeps up my nose . A sign warns me that soldiers may make use of their weapons if I enter . As I walk back across the fields, I frighten a herd of deer that scramble into the bushes . Suddenly, a jet plane soars into the sky with a deafening thunder . In the event of a nuclear war, it would most likely be heading East from here . Designed in the 1960s for use by high-speed aircraft, the thermonuclear B61 is a versatile weapon that comes both as an intermediate range strategic and a short-range tactical weapon with a wide variety of yields . A relic of the early Cold War, it is not just a US but a "NATO weapon" in that its stationing and delivery also involves non-nuclear member states, such as Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey . Tactical nukes are particularly problematic because their short range provides the missing link between a localised conventional war and a highly improbable global exchange of strategic nuclear missiles between Moscow and Washington . Tactical nuclear weapons are no status quo weapons . Their battlefield purpose increases the chance of a nuclear escalation , which is why the superpowers removed most of them from Central Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s . If everything goes to plan , the controversial B61 weapons will be modernised by around 2020 . This "life extension programme" is not simply an initiative to replace rusty old nukes with shiny new ones, but an attempt to increase their accuracy, to replace free fall with precision guided bombs . Ultimately, this will transform the B61 into a new kind of weapon and undermine any pretence that the West is still in the game of denuclearisation . Interestingly, plans to modernise the B61 were initiated in April 2010, only shortly after NATO decided to scrap its nuclear missile shield in Eastern Europe and in the same month that the two largest nuclear powers signed a new Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty . How does NATO explain this nuclear relapse precisely at a time when the alliance had just "reset" its relations with Russia? And what role does the B61 play in the Ukrainian proxy war? Jamie Shea is famous in Brussels for his rhetorical skill, expressive body language and London twang . "He could sell you a landmine if he wanted to", an activist once told me about the man who spun NATO's war against Serbia to a lethargic European public 15 years ago . The alliance's Deputy Assistant Secretary General has come to University College London to talk to students about the Ukrainian crisis and Europe's new security architecture . Charming his audience with jokes and anecdotes , Shea tells the story of an underfunded alliance that urgently needs to up its military game if it wants to stand up to Putin's Russia . He is excited about NATO's new "very high readiness joint task force" and about new and larger planned NATO manoeuvrrs in Eastern Europe . One topic he has precious little to say about is the alliance's nuclear policy . When I prompt him , Shea explains that while the life extension programme was originally meant to provide NATO with a bargaining chip for future nuclear disarmament talks with the Kremlin, Russia's involvement in Eastern Ukraine fundamentally altered the strategic context, rendering the B61 "once again a part of NATO's deterrence posture" . "I'm not nostalgic for the Cold War", he laughs,"but you have to prepare for Cold War mark two even if you don't want it" . In this, Shea is on the same page as US Secretary of State John Kerry who recently claimed that the crisis in Ukraine was calling NATO"back to the role that this alliance was originally created to perform" . Why this relapse to what Shea calls"the nuclear game"? The first part of the answer lies in NATO's recent failures . Clearly, the stand off with Russia is a welcome distraction from its fiasco in Afghanistan and the alliance's lack of a purpose in the absence of Milosevic or Gaddafi . Yet ,  there is more to this than just an identity crisis . NATO, as Trine Flockhardt so aptly puts it, is something of a "nuclear addict" - it hangs on to its nuclear weapons despite frequently declaring its desire to abandon them . Both US President Obama and NATO's new General Secretary Stoltenberg are known advocates of nuclear disarmament - but in 2014 their alliance is stepping up its nuclear deterrence and the US administration is pouring $1trn into the future of its nuclear weapons systems . There are obvious pressures behind this nuclear habit, from the nuclear arms industry via hawkish politicians and generals to certain Eastern European NATO members - but the real issue is a lack of public scrutiny . In the UK, the debate about nuclear weapons tends to concentrate on Britain's nuclear submarines and what would happen to them if Scotland declared independence . The US is currently preoccupied with the safety of its nuclear silos . These issues are of course important , but they should not cause us to overlook NATO's nuclear relapse . People like Shea publicly admit their relief that the public has kept so quiet about nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War . Indeed ,  governments remember all too well their predecessors' struggles with the peace and anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s . This is why today's NATO does"not want to wake up a sleeping dog", he explains . In 2014, the spotlight briefly returned to that one-time symbol of division in Europe, the Berlin wall . Even Mikhail Gorbachev attended the festivities on November 9, a spectacle of lights, balloons and emotions . Twenty-five years after its fall, the Berlin wall is one of the world's most heavily memorialised sites, a tourist attraction like few other 20th century structures . But while the wall remains the symbol of the Cold War in schoolbooks, op-eds and emotive speeches , it is also a highly problematic one . Rather than representing the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation, it always stood for a much simpler lesson - that of the West's moral victory over the "prison" of real existing socialism . If we want to understand the Cold War in all its self-destructiveness , we need to look elsewhere . A visitor to villages that lie near nuclear weapons storage sites in Europe might be surprised to be greeted by American flags in shop windows and front gardens . This form of identification with US nuclear weapons is puzzling given that these sites would be primary targets in the event of a nuclear war with Moscow . The West is currently too preoccupied with Russia's new nuclear militarism to notice the way that its own military alliance functions as an agent of regional insecurity . Lest we forget , NATO never abandoned its "first use" doctrine . It does not rule out the possibility of being first to go nuclear in an armed conflict with another nuclear power . Some will argue that "now is not the time" to start a public debate on NATO's tactical nukes , but even these critics would have to concede that the modernisation of the B61 further compromises the West's position in the 2015 revision of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty . If a new arms race is to be prevented in its infancy , the sleeping dog might have to learn to bark and bite again .

Ex Output:
Moscow's latest tests of intercontinental missiles and its parading of nuclear capable strategic bombers have rightly prompted international concern


Ex Input:
Putin and Ukraine: Expect more brutal aggression from Russia's desperate leader. The renewal of fighting this week over the Donetsk airport in Eastern Ukraine- an important symbolic target for Russian proxy fighters-- should come as no surprise . The U.S  and Western Europe should expect even more extensive Russia-directed attacks . Why? Because of the choice Vladimir Putin made five years ago, confirmed on his reelection in 2012 - and is continuing to make . After Russia's GDP plunged by almost 8 percent during the 2008-9 world financial crisis , there was a virtual consensus among Russian economists that Putin's economic model, which depended on the redistribution of revenues from ever-increasing oil prices, along with growing state control over the economy and rampant corruption, was nearly exhausted . Russia needed to "modernize and diversify," as the catch words among such thinkers went . But to do so, the country first and foremost had to "improve the investment climate." That was a euphemism for tapering off the state's grip on the economy; getting rid of bureaucratic shakedowns of private businesses; ensuring that courts were no longer for sale or open to "instructions" from authorities; strengthening private property rights; and eventually decentralizing and liberalizing the political system . In short ,  deep institutional reforms . These were advocated by, among others, Alexei Kudrin, Putin's personal friend and confidant, former finance minister and former first deputy prime minister . Kudrin was to be a disappointed man . While paying lip service to "modernization," the Kremlin did nothing to advance that agenda . Two years later, Russia was shaken by pro-democracy, anti-Putin demonstrations in all of Russia's largest cities . Putin got the same message that almost every authoritarian leader gets sooner or later : reform and democratize to improve the economy or tighten the screws of repression to deal with discontent . We all know what Putin did . Upon his presidential reelection in 2012, he issued a slew of laws constraining already limited freedoms of public protest and speech . The consequences came quickly: even with oil prices over $100 per bbl, growth dwindled to a crawl and capital flight reached record levels . By the end of 2013, Putin's popularity was at lowest point in 13 years . Around half of Russians did not want to see him as president again in 2018 . Yet Putin doubled down once more, using another tried-and-true authoritarian tool: manufactured nationalist patriotic frenzy mixed with paranoia and served up by deafening propaganda . The anti-corruption, pro-European revolution in Ukraine was presented as an American plot against Russia . Following the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, those who opposed the regime were labelled the "fifth column" and "national traitors." Then came war in Ukraine -- aggression by proxy or, last fall, by uniformed Russian troops . The daily poisoning of Russian hearts and minds on state-controlled national television is now beginning to surpass even Soviet totalitarianism . Western democracies are portrayed as Russia's mortal enemies , who seek to undermine Moscow's sovereignty and enslave its people . This Stalinist-style propaganda is designed to justify the Kremlin's aggression against Ukraine, excuse increasing domestic repression, explain away mounting economic hardships and-- most troubling-- perhaps prepare the country for possible aggression against other neighbors . Both in his end-of-year press-conference and in his New Year's message to the nation, Putin fixed the propaganda pitch to the highest point :. "We are defending our independence, our sovereignty and our right to exist," he declared . "We need to accomplish, to realize all that we planned- for ourselves, for the sake of our children, and for the sake of Russia." After this, can anyone expect the Russian commander-in-chief to go wobbly on foreign enemies or to abandon ethnic "brethren" fighting against an allegedly genocidal "Nazi junta"-- known to the rest of the world as the elected government in Kiev? U.S  and European diplomats keep talking about providing Russia with an "off ramp." Judging by Putin's rhetoric, there is no ramp high enough for the task . So long as Putin sticks with the anti-reform choice , escalation appears to be his only tactic for staying in and consolidating power . This choice preceded the drop in oil prices and Western sanctions - and it will outlive them as well . The West should expect no magic turn-around and prepare to confront but also engage with this Russia over the long haul .

Ex Output:

The U.S  and Western Europe should expect even more extensive Russia-directed attacks