by Robert Whitcomb | Jul 21, 2016 | News
Contrary to the long-accepted assertions of officials who served in the Nixon administration, President Nixon’s “secret” diplomacy to establish ties with Mao Zedong’s China was well known to Taiwanese officials as the diplomacy, mostly conducted from the U.S. side by Henry Kissinger, progressed. This bombshell comes from Jay Taylor, an author and former U.S. diplomat, and University of Pennsylvania historian Arthur Waldron.
Please hit this link to read this stunning news.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jul 20, 2016 | News
This Bloomberg story looks at how a man trains computers to find future criminals through algorithms.
The article says:
“Risk scores, generated by algorithms, are an increasingly common factor in sentencing. Computers crunch data—arrests, type of crime committed, and demographic information—and a risk rating is generated. The idea is to create a guide that’s less likely to be subject to unconscious biases, the mood of a judge, or other human shortcomings. Similar tools are used to decide which blocks police officers should patrol, where to put inmates in prison, and who to let out on parole. Supporters of these tools claim they’ll help solve historical inequities, but their critics say they have the potential to aggravate them, by hiding old prejudices under the veneer of computerized precision. Some people see them as a sterilized version of what brought protesters into the streets at Black Lives Matter rallies {in the U.S.}”
To read the whole article, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jul 19, 2016 | News
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union has “thrown a spanner in the works” of its global economic growth forecast.
The IMF’s 2017 growth forecast for the U.K. has been slashed to 1.3 percent from 2.2 percent and this year’s has been cut to 1.7 percent from 1.9 percent.
The IMF’s global growth forecast for 2017 has also been revised down, to 3.4 percent from 3.5 percent.
To read the BBC story on this, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jul 19, 2016 | News
Boxed areas contain islands claimed by China.
China’s state media said the government plans to put offshore nuclear-power platforms to promote development in the South China Sea. Such a development could make it much more difficult to militarily stop the increasingly aggressive and expansionist regime in Beijing because of the threat to the environment. China could essentially hold the entire sea and its neighbors hostage.
The announcement came only a few days after an international court ruled that Beijing had no historic claims to most of the waters of the sea, which most of the world considers international waters and through which 30 percent of global trade passes.
Sovereignty over the South China Sea is contested by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
To read the article on this development, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jul 20, 2016 | News
Dictatorships tend to support other dictatorships in order, in part, to discourage democracy. Thus it was no surprise that the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad sides with China’s claim to virtually the entire South China Sea — in opposition to the decision of a nonpartisan international tribunal in the Hague that essentially said that China’s claim was bogus.
To read the statement from the Assad regime’s organ, please hit this link.
