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Opinion
Adelle Chua, Editor mst.daydesk@gmail.com
TRUMP’S ECONOMIC STIMULUS, ONE TWEET AT A TIME
EDITORIAL
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By Conor Sen THERE’S a paradox in what Rust Belt voters want economically from the new US government. They want the government to facilitate job creation, but they don’t want the creation of government jobs. Donald Trump may have figured out a way to thread this needle with the help of his Twitter account. Trump’s challenge is simple— how do you create a resurgence for workers in the Rust Belt when decades of market forces, automation and trade deals have led to employment stagnation in much of the region? So far, it would appear that he’s using his Twitter account as a bully pulpit to change the mentality of corporate America. One recent indication that this would be his style came from his feud with Carrier over its plans to move some jobs to Mexico. Through tax incentives and leverage against parent company United Technologies because of its government contracts, Trump got Carrier to agree to keep 1,000 jobs in Indiana. It may be bad economics, but it sent the kind of political message he wanted to send. An announcement from SoftBank adds further evidence for this new model. On Dec. 6, Trump tweeted that Masayoshi Son (“Masa”) of SoftBank had agreed to invest $50 billion in the US. and create 50,000 jobs. He said that Masa told him it wouldn’t have happened if Trump had not won the election. While much of this investment was probably headed for the US anyway, and it’s unlikely that SoftBank’s investment plans in the US will ramp up as a direct result of Trump’s win, it shows that Trump will use carrots, on Twitter at least, with firms that serve his interests. And Trump has shown he’ll use sticks as well. On the same day as the SoftBank tweets, Trump tweeted that Boeing’s cost controls on the new Air Force One were “out of control” and said to cancel the order. He tweeted similar comments about Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program this week. Lockheed’s stock initially fell 4 percent in response before recovering somewhat. Trump’s prolific tweeting may have won him a pre-emptive victory when—ahead of this week’s summit between Trump and tech leaders— IBM announced plans to hire 25,000 US workers over the next four years. As in SoftBank’s case, much of this investment was probably already in the works, but the announcement shows that both Trump and corporate America are interested in playing this public relations game. Trump tweets something flattering or threatening about a specific company, and then the company makes at least a token PR move in response (perhaps not by actually changing business plans, but by announcing them with fanfare). Where could this eventually lead? It’s certainly an unexpected way to address regional job inequalities. Trump needs job growth, or at least the appearance of job growth, in the geographical territory he won, particularly the industrial Midwest, if he is to remain popular with his base. Corporate America wants policy certainty and to stay in Trump’s good graces. And at the moment, much of corporate America, particularly the
THE PERFECT EXCUSE
T
HE holiday season in the Philippines is mayhem. Commercial establishments are packed, with malls and restaurants extending their operating hours until late evening or even midnight.
Nowhere is the Christmas rush more felt, however, than in the unbearable transport situation in the metro. Public transportation is more challenging—costlier—to hurdle, and the roads are even more congested. We know better than expect to reach our destinations at the usual length of time it takes to get us there. In a little over two weeks, however, the holidays will be over. The packages will be put away, copious amounts of food consumed, the new year will begin and people will ease back into their regularly daily schedules. Not a few will be thankful at being able to go back to the usual routines. But will traffic and public transportation improve then? Alas, no. In fact, these twin evils have hounded metro commuters and motor ists since the previous administration, and even on the most ordinary of days. Exasperation with transport officials has led to
resentment of them and the straight path they claimed to represent. Th a t w a s t h e p re v i o u s administration, and at the beginning of this one we had hoped there would be some immediate respite from our transport woes. Alas, it has been half a year and it is obvious that mak ing the lives of commuters—who simply want to get to work or school and back home in one piece and without too much aggravation— easier is not a priority of this administration. They have in fact asked repeatedly for emergency powers so that the Executive can supposedly fix the problem. But what ex tra powers are needed when all the means to effect changes have always been there but have not been used wisely. When the holidays come and go, and transport remains as bad as it is, officials will no longer have a convenient cover for their apathy and ineptitude.
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1898: LOS ULTIMOS DE FILIPINAS—A SPANISH LOOK AT THEIR COLONIAL PAST POP GOES THE WORLD JENNY ORTUOSTE
IF WE have our epic film Heneral Luna, the Spanish now have their own look at their colonial past in 1898: Los Ultimos de Filipinas (Our Last Men in the Philippines), based on true accounts. The directorial debut of Salvador Calvo, the film’s events take place during the summer of 1898 on
the village of Baler in Luzon. A detachment of Spanish soldiers led by Captain Enrique de las Morenas and Lieutenant Cerezo are sent to the village to protect it against Filipinos, “rebel insurgents.” The captain later succumbs to beri-beri and dies, leaving Cerezo in command.
The soldiers turn the church into a military stronghold and endure against attackers for an unbelievable 337 days, almost a year, with Cerezo unable to accept that Spain has ceded the Philippine islands to the United States at the end the Spanish-American War. One by one, the soldiers fall to fighting
and illness, until one of them—Carlos, a painter and opium addict—finds a way to end the conflict and preserve the lives of his remaining comrades. The film’s tagline is: Hay hombres que quieren medallas y hombres que quiren volver (There are men who Turn to B2
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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2016 mst.daydesk@gmail.com
TRUMP’S..
THE POETIC JUSTICE AND IRONY OF GRAVITATIONAL WAVE DETECTION
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tech sector, is in high-priced coastal metro areas that overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton. The presidentelect is not stopping by their offices on his “thank you” tour. But it’s not too late to earn his gratitude. Profit margins are historically elevated, and a good deal of knowledge work, while perhaps needing some level of urban scale to find suitable pools of talent, could be done in places like Scranton, Pennsylvania, or Gary, Indiana, just as easily as it’s done in San Francisco or Seattle. Corporate America might decide that accepting somewhat lower profit margins to create less-profitable jobs in key Trump regions might appease the Trump administration, and would give them leverage with Trump on future issues. How sustainable would this sort of thing be? A cynic would say that at the end of the Trump administration, corporate America would go back to the way things were before and would eliminate any excess jobs (if indeed any were ever created to placate Trump), restoring profit margins to their more elevated level. Except that future candidates from both parties might be expected to pledge they would continue Trump’s pressure campaign in order to prevent jobs from disappearing. It’s a new style of economic stimulus, and it may not go away when Trump does. His legacy for the executive branch may be “tweet loudly and carry a big stick.” Bloomberg
1898:... From B1 want medals and there are men who want to return). This is a succinct characterization of Cerezo, whose pride renders him unwilling to surrender, and Carlos, who wants to stop fighting a war that has ended and that no longer has meaning. There are at least two Filipinos in the cast, Alexandra Masangkay, who plays Teresa, “an indigenous woman,” and the versatile Raymond Bagatsing as Comandante Luna. Film critic Jonathan Hopper, who reviewed “1898” for the Hollywood Reporter, says it “offers little that’s new but is still about as close as Spanish cinema has come of late to anything approaching epic cinema. Though its subject matter and general focus are utterly Spanish, its purely cinematic qualities makes it deserving of offshore exposure.” Hopper goes on to praise the acting skills of the cast, while lamenting that the story is stereotypical and clichéd. His bottom line: “Spectacular and striking, but none too subtle.” However, Miguel Juan Payan, writing for accionsine.es, has a deeper appreciation for the film and its impact. He says, “The important thing is that behind the shots, the races, the attacks, and the deaths, there are people, characters well-drawn in the script” that between the actors’ and director’s efforts “translate into moments of good cinema.” What the film lacks in the subtlety that Hopper seeks, it makes up for in its grand visuals, ambitious scope, and finely-wrought characterization. As Payan points out, the “shades in each character” and the “epic planes of the film and the action of the same” remind him of Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam in Apocalypse Now and Oliver Stone’s Vietnam in Platoon; which, he explains, is “logical because, were not the Philippines for Spain what years later would be Indochina for France or Vietnam for the United States?” Payan’s bottom line: “Highly recommended. Among the best Spanish cinema that has been released this year, and that’s saying a lot because we had a good movie crop here in 2016.” The film trailer can be viewed on the internet, and I confess it got me excited. The visuals are beautiful—the film was shot in the Canary Islands and Equatorial Guinea—and the acting that I could see in the trailer seems sincere and honest. My enjoyment of film is simple: filmmaking is storytelling, and any missteps in accuracy and production can be forgiven if the narrative touches the heart and mind, and evokes emotion or stimulates thought. There is much praise on the internet for the high quality of the script and the dialogue, and if it tells a good story, then it’s worth watching. The film is of much interest for Filipinos, because this is a look at how Spaniards understand and construct their past as colonizers of the Philippines. Heneral Luna is our own examination of the same time period. It’s time to find out how the other side has come to terms, if at all, with this historical event that has had enormous repercussions on our society and psyche as a people. Dr. Ortuoste is a California-based writer. Follow her on Facebook: Jenny Ortuoste, Twitter: @jennyortuoste, Instagram: @jensdecember
By Pecier Decierdo THIS is a story about ripples, of light and in space and time. This also is a story about one of the most poetic turns of events in the history of science. In the early years of the 1800s, Thomas Young performed a series of experiments that showed light is a wave. Young did this by showing that underwent interference, which is what happens when different waves meet each other and occupy the same place at the same time. The result of Young’s experiments led to the following question: what was light a wave of? Water waves are waves in water. Seismic waves are waves in the ground that spread from the origin of an earthquake. Sound, meanwhile, is a wave in air. Waves seem to require a medium, stuff through which to travel. What stuff did light travel through? This stuff came to be called the “luminiferous aether.” If it existed, it had to fill all of outer space to allow light to travel between stars and planets. It also had to be extremely thin because the planets had to move through it as if unobstructed. It was also very difficult to detect, so scientists tried to devise different ways of detecting it indirectly. Throughout the 1880s,
physicists Albert Michelson and Edward Morley devised a series of experiments to measure the speed of the “aether wind.” This “wind” would be a result of the Earth moving through the aether in the same way a moving car would experience a “wind” when moving through air, even when the air is not moving relative to the ground. At the heart of Michelson and Morley’s setup were two beams of the same length. They put the beams at right angles so that they formed an L shape. Then they placed mirrors at the end of each beam. Light was sent up each beam, and the mirrors at the end would reflect the light back. If light in one beam moved in the same direction as the aether wind, it was expected to move faster. This is similar to sound traveling faster along the direction of a wind. If the light happened to move against the aether wind, it was expected to move slower. (Try to scream at someone who is upwind of you.) This difference in the time it takes for light to go to and fro the beams will result in wave interference when they meet again at the corner of the L shape. That’s why the L-shaped setup was called an interferometer. Michelson and Morley did not find any interference. They
measured again and again, in different times of the year. They checked their setups. Other physicists copied their setup and ran the same experiment. The same results: no interference. They couldn’t measure the speed of the aether wind. Many proposals were put forward to explain this most famous negative result. The one that turned out to be true was put forward by a young Swiss patent clerk. Doing physics in his spare time, the clerk proposed the following: there was no aether wind because there was no aether. Light did not need a medium. That sounded simple enough, except that for the proposal to make sense, the patent clerk had to revise our view of space and time. In fact, there was no longer any space and time, there was only spacetime. The clerk’s name was Albert Einstein. In the decade that followed, Einstein’s project of revising our view of spacetime culminated in his theory of general relativity, our best theory to explain the behavior of the cosmos. As radical as it was, Einstein’s theory passed all the tests given to it with flying colors. All except one. Einstein predicted that spacetime itself could ripple and form waves. This effect, called gravitational waves, eluded the detection of scientists for a century.
Almost exactly a century. About a hundred years after they were predicted, gravitational waves were finally detected last year and their detection was announced this year. Now for the poetic justice. The experimental setup scientists used to detect gravitational waves? An interferometer. That’s right. The same setup that spurred Einstein’s scientific revolution was the very setup that gave him his final vindication. Scientists at the Large Interferometer GravitationalWave Observatory (LIGO)—a gargantuan version of Michelson and Morley’s experimental setup —detected gravitational waves using interference of light. These interferences were created when one beam of the L-shaped setup became longer or shorter as a result of a passing gravitational wave. But did I speak too soon? The latest data gathered using LIGO seem to suggest that the gravitational waves detected from spiraling black holes might actually carry signals that suggest a breakdown in the theory near the edge of the black holes. If this result holds, you can add irony to poetic justice. Decierdo is resident astronomer and physicist for The Mind Museum.
WHY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WON’T DISPLACE HUMAN ARTISTS By Leonid Bershidsky THIS year’s news about what artificial intelligence can do in the arts has been both exciting and scary. Neural networks have learned to paint like masters and compose sophisticated music. Those of us in creative endeavors might be as endangered by technological advances as blue-collar workers are often said to be—though we are protected by certain limitations that technology is never likely to overcome. Last summer, a team of Russian developers released Prisma, a mobile app based on the work of some German artificial intelligence researchers. The neural network behind it could redraw an image using techniques it had learned from studying the oeuvre of a number of painters, including Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch. The end product was impressive: Prisma could reproduce brushstrokes and palettes, using only a photo for guidance, almost the way a human painter could have. This month, Gaetan Hadjeres and Francois Pachet from the Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Paris published a paper about an artificial intelligence model called DeepBach, which can compose polyphonic chorales even professional musicians can mistake for the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. The chorale is a rather formulaic piece of Lutheran church music that usually reharmonizes a well-known melody. Bach composed hundreds, so there’s plenty of material for a neural network to learn. Musicians who listened to Bach and DeepBach music were more likely to correctly attribute the great composer’s work than the machine’s, but about 40 percent of them misidentified DeepBach chorales as works composed in 18th century Leipzig—even though the machine didn’t plagiarize Bach but produced genuinely new work. The researchers wrote: Despite some compositional errors like parallel octaves, the musical analysis reveals that the DeepBach compositions reproduce typical Bach-like patterns, from characteristic cadences to the expressive use of nonchord tones. The success of DeepBach follows work by the same team that produced a surprisingly hummable pop song in the style of The Beatles, and a separate effort by a team at Google in which an artificial neural network composed jingle-like piano pieces. Computers, of course, have generated music before, but these recent experiments are different because the machines aren’t programmed to perform specific tasks—they learn from big datasets to create music without further human
Gustav Klim’s The Kiss input. Models like DeepBach also allow human intervention, or, rather, collaboration. Machines also have been getting better at producing literary work. This year, an AI-written novel passed the first round of a Japanese fiction competition.
Obviously, these creative efforts are, at this point, somewhat short of stunning—but only if one considers their origin. Unlike most overhyped human creations, these only represent the first steps for a technology that most of us only know for its frustrating and often hilarious implementations
in the digital assistants on our mobile phones: Siri, Google Assistant and Cortana. Researchers are working to overcome a number of practical problems: The need for huge amounts of data to train the algorithms, the narrow specialization of the neural networks (a chess-playing one can’t write music, for example), the logical errors the networks make when discerning and interpreting patterns. Given more time and effort, these will probably be solved, at least to a degree that makes consumer applications of the algorithms widespread. There is, however, one boundary that no research team has approached and that, I suspect, will forever protect creative professions from displacement. It’s a problem described in David Hume’s “A Treatise of Human Nature,” published when Bach was still alive: “Even after the observation of the frequent or constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience.” It’s possible to teach a machine Van Gogh’s painting technique, but only if it already exists. An algorithm can write chorales like Bach because it can “study” Bach. Even when the work produced by AI is less specifically derivative than it is today—say, when the algorithms learn to combine various techniques they learn in an intelligent manner—they will never rise above previous work because the way they work is based on experience. They are constrained by Hume’s piece of wisdom. The one way in which we’re radically different from machines is in our ability to step into the unknown, to do things that have never been done before with paint, form, sound and the written word. Most of the rewards to creative professionals today accrue to that ability, not to skill or the extensive knowledge of predecessors’ work. Even a derivative work of art needs to be derivative in groundbreaking ways to be appreciated. It works this way because that’s how the infrastructure—critics, publishers, curators, performers—is set up. One could imagine work produced by machines getting some appreciation, but ultimately, we appreciate art through extremely human social mechanisms. Humans will take care of their own, and they’ll continue to prize originality. Human creators will probably use AI for narrow tasks, training it on specific datasets to write dialogue, orchestrate music or produce variations to make a print more unique. But they won’t be displaced as long as they have the courage to do new things. Bloomberg
World CANADA POLICE RAID POT STORES IN MONTREAL MONTREAL, Canada—Police in Montreal over the weekend raided six cannabis shops one day after they opened, following a warning by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that recreational marijuana is not yet legal in Canada. Ten people were arrested in the raids, police said, including veteran pro-cannabis activist Marc Emery. Trudeau, who campaigned last year on a promise to end nearly a century of pot prohibition, warned that the government is still at least one year away from legalizing pot use. “We haven’t changed the legislation yet,” Trudeau told reporters earlier in Montreal. “It is coming, but we’re going to take the time to do it right.” Until that happens, the current ban on the possession and sale of marijuana for recreational use remains in effect, he said. Emery on Thursday however went ahead and opened in Montreal six boutiques of the Cannabis Culture franchise chain, which already exist in other cities. Police raided the stores at the end of the day as buyers braved frosty conditions to crowd into the boutiques to buy marijuana. “The prime minister is a disgrace, as is the Mayor of Montreal, Denis Coderre,” Emery cried out as he was being taken away by police. Under the proposed rules, individuals would be allowed to grow up to four plants at home for personal use. Personal possession, however, would be limited to 30 grams (one ounce). AFP
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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2016 mst.daydesk@gmail.com
VENEZUELA CASH CRISIS SPARKS LOOTING
CHINA PROTESTS DALAI LAMA MEETING IN INDIA BEIJING—China has objected to the Dalai Lama meeting with Indian President Pranab Mukherjee earlier this month, saying the talks had negatively impacted ties between the Asian neighbors. The Tibetan spiritual leader met with Mukherjee at the Indian presidential palace in New Delhi during a child welfare summit attended by Nobel laureates and world leaders on December 10-11. “The Chinese side is firmly opposed to any form of contacts between officials of other countries with him (the Dalai Lama),” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular media briefing Friday. “We urge the Indian side to... fully respect China’s core interest and major concerns, (and) take effective means to remove the negative impact caused by the incident, so as to avoid disturbance to the China-India relationship.” India’s external affairs ministry brushed off Beijing’s objections, saying the Dalai Lama and Mukherjee had met at a “nonpolitical” event, local media reported. The Dalai Lama fled to India after a failed uprising in 1959, but is still deeply revered by many Tibetans in China. Beijing vigorously lobbies against foreign leaders meeting the Nobel Peace Prize laureate “in any form” and accuses him of seeking Tibetan independence through “spiritual terrorism.”AFP
People tie 100-Bolivar notes to a post during a protest over lack of cash as the new bank notes have not yet appeared, at the “Troncal 5” road in San Cristobal in Venezuela’s Tachira state. Venezuelans are stuck in currency limbo after President Nicolas Maduro ordered the 100-bolivar note – the largest denomination, currently worth about three US cents – removed from circulation in 72 hours. AFP
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aracas, Venezuela—Desperate Venezuelans looted delivery trucks and clashed with police as a botched plan to introduce new banknotes left people without cash – the latest shortage in a spiraling economic crisis. Late Friday President Nicolas Maduro blamed opposition politicians for the unrest, claiming that there were pictures and videos of some opposition members of the National Assembly involved in “attempts of vandalism and some acts of violence.” He warned that “parliamentary immunity does not reach that far,” but did not give any names. Maduro mentioned that rioters
had torched two state banks in the town of Guasdalito, near the border with Colombia. He blamed unnamed opposition leaders who were also part of a “contraband mafia” for the incident, and warned that they “will be captured and put behind bars in the next hours.” Faced with world-high inflation that has made its money increasingly worthless, the government
is trying to introduce new bills in denominations up to 200 times higher than the old ones. But the plan went off the rails when Maduro ordered the 100-bolivar note removed from circulation before the new bills arrived. Formerly the highest denomination bill, the 100-bolivar note was worth about three US cents, and accounted for 77 percent of the cash in circulation in Venezuela. Angry protests erupted around the country as the chaotic reform left people without money to buy food or Christmas presents. In the second city of Maracaibo in the west, groups of protesters hurled stones at police, reports said.
THOUSANDS PROTEST ALEPPO SIEGE NEAR TURKISH BORDER
SRI LANKA GETS $1.34-B WORLD BANK LOAN COLOMBO—Sri Lanka has secured $1.34 billion in loans from the World Bank to boost the cash-strapped island’s economy over the next three years, the finance ministry said Saturday. The loans would be at concessionary rates and repayments spread out over 15 years, the ministry said in a statement. “This is a great victory for us and it will help us in the fiscal consolidation programme that the new government has started,” Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said. There was no immediate comment from the World Bank. The new government, which came to power in January last year, also secured a $1.5 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund in June after facing a balance of payments crisis. The IMF last month described Sri Lanka’s performance since the rescue as “broadly satisfactory,” but said it needed to build its dwindling foreign reserves. On Wednesday, the ports minister said talks were under way to sell part of Sri Lanka’s loss-making $1.4 billion harbour to a Chinese company in January to help pay off crippling debts. AFP
In the eastern city of Maturin, dozens of people blocked off a major avenue and looting broke out. “I went by the market and it was being guarded by the military. A chicken truck was looted,” Juan Carlos Leal, a farmer in Maturin, told AFP. In the eastern city of Puerto la Cruz, “people rioted because they wanted to take out money and they weren’t allowed to,” said Genesis, a local baker. “By removing the 100-bolivar bills, they are jamming up the economy,” said economist Alberto Martinez. “Cash registers have no money. The system is under stress.” AFP
A woman holds a placard reading “Arrest Park Geun-Hye” during a small rally in central Seoul following the impeachment of South Korean President Park Geun-Hye. AFP
CILVEGÖZÜ, Turkey—Several thousand people protested Saturday on the Turkish border against the siege of Syria’s second city of Aleppo that has prevented deliveries of muchneeded aid. The crowds arrived in bus and car convoys from across the country under the slogan “Open the Way for Aleppo” close to Turkey’s Cilvegozu border gate which has become a key hub for transporting the wounded from Aleppo. They unfurled banners reading “Aleppo cannot be left under bombardment.” The action was organised by the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) Turkish Muslim charity, which is playing a large role in the transport of aid for Aleppo and pressing for greater access. Evacuation from the rebelheld areas of Aleppo has been suspended after renewed clashes – putting on hold a fragile ceasefire deal brokered by Russia and Turkey. Ankara has stepped up di-
plomacy with all major actors including Iran, with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speaking 13 times on the phone with Iranian counterpart Friday alone. “Murderer Russia, get out of Syria!” chanted the crowds gathering around three kilometres from the Turkish border crossing Cilvegozu that faces Syria’s Bab al-Hawa. “Iran will have to defend its actions in front of the ummah (Islamic community)!” The convoys also brought aid to be delivered to Syrians being evacuated from Aleppo. According to the IHH, thousands of cars and over 1,500 aid trucks have arrived in the border area as a result of their appeal. “God willing, we will not leave our brothers to the hands of the tyrants,” Kubra, a young female protester, told AFP. The UN Security Council could vote as early as this weekend on a French-drafted proposal to allow international observers in Aleppo and ensure urgent aid deliveries. AFP
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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2016 mst.daydesk@gmail.com Joyce Pangco-Pañares, Issue Editor
VIETNAMESE COMEDIAN JAILED FOR SEX CRIMES LOS ANGELES, United States—A popular Vietnamese comedian was sentenced in California to 18 months in prison on a charge of sexually assaulting a minor. Minh Quang Hong, who goes by the stage name Minh Beo, had pleaded guilty in August to the felony charge as well as another charge of attempting to commit a lewd act on a child under the age of 14. According to Orange County prosecutors, the 38-year-old entertainer – well known in Vietnam as an actor, comedian and stage director – had easy access to children and in March had traveled to the United States for shows in the states of Georgia and California. While in Huntington Beach, south of Los Angeles, he met with a group of dancers at a radio station talent show and told them he would be auditioning for a video project, prosecutors said. AFP UNDERWATER CHEER. A South Korean diver wearing a Santa Claus outfit swims with fish in a tank during a Christmas event at the Coex Aquarium in Seoul. AFP
OBAMA TO SEND ‘CLEAR MESSAGE’ TO PUTIN
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ASHINGTON—President Barack Obama vowed to send a “clear message” to Russia for trying to sway the US election, while calling on Donald Trump and Republicans to put national security before politics. Obama all but accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of personally ordering an audacious cyber hack that many Democrats believe gravely wounded Hillary Clinton in a closely fought election. The US intelligence community has concluded that a hack-andrelease of the Democratic Party emails was designed to put Trump – a political neophyte who has praised Putin – into the Oval Office. But with tensions rising between the world’s two preeminent nuclear powers and US political anger near boiling point after
Trump’s shock election, Obama sought to exude calm while promising a measured response. Assuring Americans that the ballot itself was not rigged, he promised to “send a clear message to Russia or others not to do this to us, because we can do stuff to you.” Noting that “not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin,” Obama said he had personally told the former KGB officer when they met in September to “cut it out.” “In fact we did not see further tampering of the election process,”
he told journalists before heading for his Christmas vacation in Hawaii. Regarding specific acts of retaliation, Obama said some would be carried out publicly, but that in other cases, “the message will be directly received by the Russians and not publicized.” Despite those coups, Obama belittled Russia as a second rate power with little going for it, using language that is sure to infuriate the status-conscious Russian leader. “The Russians can’t change us or significantly weaken us. They are a smaller country, they are a weaker country, their economy doesn’t produce anything that anybody wants to buy except oil and gas and arms. They don’t innovate.” But Obama’s sternest message may have been for Trump and other Republicans who have played down the cyber attack. “Over a third of Republican vot-
ers approve of Vladimir Putin,” Obama said citing a recent poll. “Ronald Reagan would roll over in his grave. How did that happen?” Obama urged the president elect – who has repeatedly questioned Russia’s involvement – to accept an independent nonpartisan investigation. “My hope is that the presidentelect is going to similarly be concerned with making sure that we don’t have potential foreign influence in our election process.” While Obama has ordered his own inquiry, a political battle is already being waged in Washington between Republicans who want a Congressional process they can control and Democrats who want to see something like the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. “One way I do believe the president-elect can approach this that would be unifying is to say that we welcome a bipartisan, independent process,” Obama said. AFP
MISSING CHINESE ACTIVIST ‘HANDED OVER STATE SECRETS’
People pay a three-minute silent tribute at noon to mark the fifth anniversary of late North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il’s death in Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang on December 17. AFP
BEIJING—A prominent Chinese human rights lawyer who had been missing for almost a month was held in police custody and “confessed” to handing over state secrets, official media said. Jiang Tianyong took on numerous high-profile cases, including those of Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetan protesters and victims of the 2008 contaminated milk powder scandal before being disbarred for his activism in 2009, according to campaign group Amnesty International. He disappeared on November 21 en route to Beijing from Changsha, the capital of the central province of Hunan, where he had gone to inquire about the situation of a detained human rights lawyer. On Friday, a Communist Party newspaper reported that he had been arrested after using another person’s documents to board the train and was held in administrative detention for nine days. “Investigations showed... that he was in possession of documents containing state secrets and was in contact with foreign structures, organisations and persons, and illegally handed over state
secrets abroad,” the website of Fazhi Ribao (Legal Daily) said, citing police sources. The newspaper reported that since December 1, Jiang had been subject to a “criminal coercive measure” – a vague term which indicates a restriction on freedom of movement. “Jiang Tianyong confessed the relevant crimes,” the daily added. Forced confessions are common in China, where courts are overseen by the ruling Communist Party. UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston met Jiang on a visit to China in August and said last week he feared the disappearance was in part a retaliation against the lawyer’s assistance to UN experts. President Xi Jinping has overseen a tightening of controls on civil society since assuming power in 2012, closing avenues for legal activism that had opened up in recent years. While the government initially targeted political activists and human rights campaigners, it has increasingly turned its attention to the lawyers who represent them. AFP
SEVERAL WOUNDED IN CAR BOMBING IN TURKEY ISTANBUL—Several people were wounded on Saturday in a car bombing close to a public bus in the central Turkish city of Kayseri, television reports said. Initial television pictures showed that the bus had been reduced to a smouldering wreck by the impact of the blast. The Dogan news agency said that the blast took place opposite the Erciyes University in the city. NTV television said that there could be fatalities as a result of the blast. The explosion comes a week after 44 people were killed in an attack in Istanbul claimed by Kurdish militants. Turkey has seen a spate of deadly bombings in 2016 blamed both in jihadists and Kurdish militants that have left dozens dead. One of the main cities of central Turkey, Kayersi is a key industrial hub that is usually seen as a peaceful area. AFP
GUNMEN KILL FIVE FEMALE AIRPORT WORKERS KANDAHAR, Afghanistan— Gunmen shot dead five female airport workers and their driver in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, underlining the threat to employed women in the country. The women were in a van driving to the airport in the southern Kandahar province when at least three gunmen on motorcycles opened fire at them, provincial spokesman Samim Kheplwak told AFP. “All the women and their driver aboard the van were killed. The attackers fled the area and we have launched an investigation,” he said. Kandahar International Airport Director Ahmadullah Faizi said the women were employees of a private company who would provide luggage and body search services for female passengers. He said the women were concerned about their security after receiving death threats from people who disapproved of their career. AFP