by Robert Whitcomb | Jul 1, 2016 | News
Satellite imagery suggests that China might be punishing its ally North Korea for its nuclear-weapons tests by sharply restricting trade between the two dictatorships.
“It is apparent that shortly after North Korea did the fourth nuclear test in January, China took unilateral measures to drastically curtail trade interaction along their border,” Victor Cha, director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration, told The Washington Post.
To read The Post’s article on this, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jul 1, 2016 | News
In a redomination of its currency, Belarus is cutting four zeroes off the face value of the ruble as the country, which is virtually a satellite of Russia, struggles with recession.
It’s the third redomination in the nation of 10 million since it became independent after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. The Belarusian ruble, which had traded at 20,000 to the dollar before the move, now stands at 2 rubles a dollar.
Belarus’s economy, which depends on neighboring Russia for cheap energy and subsidies, shrank 4 percent last year and is seen falling another 3 percent this year.
President Alexander Lukashenko’s authoritarian government has sought a $3 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund.
To read a Japan Times article on this, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jul 1, 2016 | News
Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized the importance of ideological orthodoxy to ensure the power and legitimacy of Communist Party rule.
“The wavering of idealistic faith is the most dangerous form of wavering,” Mr. Xi told an assembly of party officials and members at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on July 1. “A political party’s decline often starts with the loss or lack of idealistic faith.”
“Turning our backs or abandoning Marxism means that our party would lose its soul and direction,” he said.
Mr. Xi has tried to energize the Communist Party with iron discipline and an appeal to nationalism meant to curb corruption and bureaucratic sluggishness — all with the aim of perpetuating the party’s power.
China’s economic slowdown has intensified the pressure to reinforce the party, including by appealing to national pride as expressed by China’s aggressive expansionism. But that, of course has met with increasing pushback from China’s neighbors.
“Xi’s speech was a celebration and a warning,” said Jude Blanchette, a Beijing-based researcher who is writing a book on Mao Zedong’s legacy, told The Wall Street Journal. It is “a reminder that Xi’s vision for China cannot be divorced from a strong, organized and highly disciplined Communist Party.”
To read a Wall Street Journal article on this news, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jul 1, 2016 | Initiative
The Twitter account of Brendan Iribe, who runs Facebook’s virtual-reality headset maker, Oculus, has been hacked, making him the latest in a long line of celebrity and tech bosses to have had their social-media accounts compromised in recent weeks.
This doesn’t exactly expand the public’s confidence in the tech industry.
To read The Guardian’s story on this, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 30, 2016 | News
The European Union may not seem democratic but it is, mostly.
Amanda Taub writes in The New York Times:
“{W}hile defenders of the European Union have evidence to show that the bloc is democratic, this misses the point. Democracy, after all, is about more than elections. It’s also about accountability: whether the government is responsive to the citizenry.
“Yes, the European Union has elections (and, yes, like the United States, participation has been less than 50 percent for many cycles). But, in a functioning democracy, popular will is also expressed through mechanisms other than marking ballots.
“The European Union, perhaps in part because it was designed by technocrats rather than developing organically, does not account for or often even allow those mechanisms. And this is why, for many Europeans, the body does not feel {editor’s emphasis} democratic.”
To read the whole New York Times story, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 30, 2016 | News
Mountains in northern Yemen.
Many Yemenis find themselves trapped on Yemen’s long and complicated civil war.
The Washington Post reports that the “conflict holds enormous stakes for Washington and its allies. Yemen, the Middle East’s poorest nation, straddles vital oil shipping lanes in the Red Sea and has long been a key battleground between militant Islam and the West. ”
For an update on the conflict and its significance, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 30, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
As Chinese expansionism fuels fears all over East Asia, Japan plans to buy new fighter jets worth a total as much as $40 billion. Japan is increasingly worried about Chinese aggression in the East China Sea, where there are a number of islands whose ownership the two nations dispute. It’s also worried about Chinese militarization of the South China Sea, which could threaten freedom of navigation in some of the world’s most important shipping lanes.
The Japan Times reported: “The program will dwarf most recent fighter jet deals in value, likely attracting global contractor interest. But analysts say Japan’s preference for an aircraft that can operate closely with the U.S. military, given close Washington-Tokyo ties, makes a non-U.S. option a long shot.”
Japan seeks a kind of warplane that will let it maintain air superiority over China. China’s warplanes still lag behind those used by the U.S. and its allies, but Beijing has been building its capability, fueling a more muscular security agenda under Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
To read The Japan Times’s story on this, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 30, 2016 | News
Facebook has overturned a decision that blocked the social network from using its “datr” cookies to track the Internet activity of logged-out users in Belgium.
This is the latest in the long-running case that started with the Belgian Privacy Commission (BPC) ordering that Facebook stop using some cookies that let it track users outside of Facebook.
The Guardian reported that Facebook appealed on the grounds that “Belgium does not have the authority to regulate the social network because its European base of operations is in Dublin, Ireland, and won. The Belgian appeals court also threw out the BPC’s claim that the case was urgent and required expedited procedure.”
To read The Guardian’s report on this case, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 29, 2016 | Initiative
Many Chinese journalists are giving up on that profession as the Communist dictatorship tightens media control and a technology boom opens new opportunities for being paid much more than most journalists could earn.
The Wall Street Journal notes that: {T}he trend is especially worrying in a huge country with such limited public power to scrutinize the government and big companies. Many journalists believe serious journalism is a lost cause in China. While online content appears to be flourishing, there is less coverage of hot-button issues. Online media outlets don’t have the leeway to cover news so they focus on ‘safer’ content such as sports, entertainment, lifestyle and occasionally business news.”
The decline in rigorous journalism almost certainly means more government and business corruption, which will slow China’s economic growth. But the government of President Xi Jinping is focused on doing everything possible to maintain the Communist Party dictatorship. Thus the huge nation, at least for the foreseeable future, will continue to be a strange mix of police state and frantic business activity.
To read The Wall Street Journal’s article in this, please hit this link.
