Ben Innes’ terrorist selfie on EgyptAir (Guardian)
40k petition: Carry guns at GOP convention (Quartz)
FBI Comey to interview Hillary (WA Times)
Video: Cruz comedy, which car pedal for Trump? (The Hill – Jimmy Kimmel)
Japan-bound plane goes back to Hawaii, violent passenger, yoga (San Diego Union-Tribune)
Global headlines are dominated with much ado about Trumping. Everyone has something to say, Japan being slowest to judge, judging nonetheless. In a declining world of failed political correctness, controversial reactions to Trump almost indicate who might have been doing something wrong and who just might be doing something right.
It is more and more difficult to categorize headlines into countries. The Pacific Conflict has become so intertwined that the publishing world will soon shift to taxonomies using a plurality of tags rather than mutually-exclusive categories. Any more, every news article seems to involve more than one country and it’s going to confuse the librarians.
Japan takes a hardline against China, but doesn’t want Trump’s help, taking a hardline against Trump for taking a hardline against Japan and China. China wants Japan and Trump to keep quiet as it militarizes islands that, technically, don’t exist, at least in the minds of everyone except China. China seems to have map-reporting conflicts with nearly everyone, Trump and Japan notwithstanding. Beijing’s explanation for nearly everything is that other countries don’t want diplomacy with China. Though, by claiming disputed lands and demonstrating authority over what Japan can and can’t talk about, it seems that China isn’t interested in diplomacy either, at least as much as it is in domination.
Nothern Korea jailed a college student for wanting to take Kim propaganda to the US—missing the point that usually one wants one’s propaganda spread around, that is, if one believes that one’s own propaganda is true. Maybe the North’s failing economy has caused a shortage in propaganda, which seems more and more necessary to convince the Northerners that their economy isn’t failing.
Japan just banned 22 North Koreans from re-entering Japan, one of them a graduate of the University of Tokyo. Why Japan let a North Korean study Japanese rocket science in the first place remains unknown. Perhaps Japan prefers North Korea’s diplomatic methods over Donald Trump’s. There appears to be no word from Japan about whether they agree with Trump on North Korea.
Soros funds Hillary (Bloomberg)
Trump wants two-way street protection alliance with Japan, Japan objects (Japan Times)
Japan softly protests Trump’s ‘devalued yen’ comment (Japan Today)
China angry at Trump (Australia Network)
Pro-Cruz Establishment (WA Post)
Bernie’s still kicking (Politico)
Kasich and Rubio likely to lose home games (McClatchy DC)
Trump protests: police, video, pics, Tweets (RT)
Palin’s husband in snow machine accident, detours home (NBC)
Unplanned: Edward Snowden joins Twitter… 47GB of notifications | RT
China is cracking down! All enemies are in the crosshairs: Facebook pages, SCMP news articles, terrorists, religions, demonstrators, “separatists”, “hostile forces”, the Dalai Lama… the usual suspects.
Northern Korea has the sky in its crosshairs, and it doesn’t miss. Now, Kim wants to aim at Manhattan. China didn’t talk about that, specifically, but, Japan isn’t happy. The North announced their plan to “liquidate” Southern assets remaining in their possession, though they didn’t specify any potential buyers.
Taiwan’s military may have squandered efforts last week in the raid of three documents about the KMT’s “White Terror”. Another man claims to have 1,000 such documents, including pre-execution photos of prisoners. He told the public that the soon-to-be-no-longer-KMT military may have been looking in the wrong place for self-inditing documents. He asked to be contacted. At press time, no word yet on any reply.
Since Taiwan’s election, China and the KMT-Nationalists have been largely silent. While the Chinese aren’t spending as much money at home, and while the Chinese economy looks evermore shaky, Xi Jinping has no problem dealing with Egypt or declaring all but war against Israel. Historically, talking ill of Israel is bad political luck. Perhaps China thinks itself the exception to many things.
Taiwan’s pro-China KMT-Nationalist party is out for the count. Defeated. Wind knocked-out. Humiliated. It’s over. And, it is surprising. Not only did the KMT respond by acknowledging their defeat; its members showed no awareness of how their pro-China policies would dissolve their power at home nor how their mismanagement of domestic disarray from poor policies would make their aspirations untenable. There was no way the could win, yet the only seem to have seen this in retrospect.
That hindsight realization could have a contagious affect and spread to US policy. The Obama administration has made a Trump nomination and victory ever bit as inevitable as how Taiwan’s DPP opposition victory owes thanks to Taiwan’s Ma administration. Tsai couldn’t not have won in 2016 just how Obama couldn’t have lost with George W. Bush’s foreign policies and refusal to respond to the press. Maybe the West will get wise. This year, there were no Chinese missiles fired across Taiwan, as there was in 1996. Few things indicate that Beijing is learning like this.
In pre-WWII terms, last week, North Korea tried a “Hitler” in Southern seas and got sent home running. This week, the US did a sail by and China pulled a “France”. It’s clear who’s boss of the Pacific.
At least that’s what the Pentagon will think.
China’s response, though proof that it lacks strength, neither proves weakness nor will. Chinese are calculating and polite. Chinese conflicts do not escalate slowly; the pressure builds slowly, then the conflict erupts faster than American’s can blink.
But there is more going on with indirect communication, and Beijing is learning, for better or worse. In all likelihood, Beijing expected the US to react like most Chinese do to new power’s assertion. Specifically, they expected either silence or some kind of neighboring buildup. Remember, China is the land of the Great Wall. They built the islands with a fleet, they probably expected the US to confront them either with a fleet or not at all. · · · →
