*Gangster not Gangnam Style Diplomacy | Breaking America’s Alliances | Autocratic Layoffs

“If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, “This sucks. I’m going to do my own thing.” – Yvon Chouinard

“I don’t really believe that humans are evil; it is just that we are not very intelligent animals. No animal is so stupid as to foul its only nest, except humans.” – Ibid.

Trump Breaks With the West and Meets with the Autocrats: President Trump addressed an adoring crowd in Great Falls, Montana last Thursday. One of his loudest applause lines was his criticism of NATO. “I’ll tell Nato, you got to start paying your bills,” he said, referencing his planned trip to this week’s upcoming summit in Brussels. Continuing with complaints about the US paying for the collective defense of Germany, Trump said he told Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel: “You know Angela, I can’t guarantee it, but we’re protecting you and it means a lot more to you than protecting us because I don’t know how much protection we get by protecting you.” The US is the de facto leader of the nearly 70-year- old North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Of course, no one knows what the president will say when in Brussels, or during his UK trip prior to meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki July 16. But his relentless denigration of longstanding US alliances with NATO and the EU, and his unabashed praise for autocrats like Kim Jong-un, Duterte and Putin, indicates he has every intention of disrupting any attempt at consensus and solidarity. US and European officials have collectively sought to diminish the significance of Trump’s capriciousness, insisting that the underlying musculature of the Atlantic alliance is strong. But others are beginning to believe that a sea change could be in the making and that Trump has just tapped into a latent but growing fatigue many Americans have toward foreign involvement.

Gangster not Gangnam Diplomacy: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in disarmament talks in Pyongyang last week, but all that ended Saturday after North Korean officials accused Washington of having a “gangster-like mindset” and warning of the possibility of “yet another tragedy” if negotiations collapsed. North Korea made clear it had no intention of carrying out comprehensive unilateral disarmament, which was a clear reality check on what President Trump had claimed was the successful outcome of his June 12 Singapore summit with Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. As Pompeo left Pyongyang for Tokyo, he said the two delegations had made progress on “almost all the central issues” and that on some issues there was “a great deal of progress”.

But a long detailed statement from the North Korean foreign ministry flatly contradicted Pompeo’s upbeat assessment, describing the talks as “regrettable.” The statement was particularly critical of America’s insistence on complete, verifiable, irreversible disarmament (CVID). It also complained the US team never mentioned “a peace regime on the Korean peninsula”, which for North Korea involves scaling back the US military commitment to South Korea, and a formal declaration of peace. Regardless, when Pompeo spoke later in Tokyo, alongside Japanese and South Korean foreign ministers, he insisted Pyongyang had accepted it would have to dismantle its nuclear weapons program entirely.

– Part of western Japan have been hit by deadly floods; millions have been told to evacuate and dozens of people have been reported missing or dead. Over 23 inches of rain have fallen so far and an additional 10 inches is expected by Monday morning – this is over three times as much rain as the usual rainfall for July. (BBC)

– Over two weeks have passed since twelve boys and their soccer coach were trapped in the Tham Luang caves of Thailand. Rescue teams have worked nonstop to provide oxygen and supplies to the group, and the latest reports show that four boys have been rescued so far. (CNN)

– Talk about a big layoff. In an emergency decree published Sunday, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan fired thousands of state employees for alleged links to terrorist groups. 18,632 people, including nearly 9,000 police officers, 6,000 members of the military and hundreds of teachers and academics, got the Turkish version of pink slips and had their passports canceled. All in all, more than 130,000 people have been dismissed since the abortive coup attempt against Erdogan in July 2016. (The Guardian)

– The Trump administration is siding with corporate interests on numerous public health and environmental issues. One of the latest examples happened this spring in Geneva at the UN-affiliated World Health Assembly. The US delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, so intensely opposed a resolution to encourage breastfeeding that public health officials and foreign diplomats were stunned. Breastfeeding is a longstanding policy of the World Health Organization, based on decades of research that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes. Ecuador had planned to introduce the measure but backed down when American delegates threatened punishing trade measures and the withdrawal of crucial military aid. They even suggested the US might cut its contributions to WHO. Ultimately the Russians stepped in to introduce the measure, and the Americans did not threaten them. (NYT)

– For the first time since a border war broke out in 1998 between Ethiopia and Eritrea, leaders of the two African nations met on an airport tarmac Sunday, signaling the beginning of peace talks. Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, was greeted in Eritrea’s capital, Asmara, by President Isaias Afwerki, who has held power since his country gained independence from Ethiopia. Abiy announced last month that Ethiopia would “fully accept and implement” a 2000 peace deal that was supposed to end the border conflict with Eritrea. At a state dinner Sunday evening, Abiy said he had agreed with the Eritrean president to “resume the services of our airlines, to get our ports working, to get our people to trade and to open our embassies again.” Direct telephone lines were restored between the two countries on Sunday afternoon. (NYT)

– Three YouTube daredevils fell to their deaths at the edge of Shannon Falls in British Columbia on July 3rd. Controversy shrouds the incident due to their association with the channel “High on Life,” which often saw people vaulting over guardrails and diving off cliffs to spread the message of living life to the fullest. (Washington Post)

– Michal Kosinski, a Stanford Business School researcher, unveiled new theories and technologies to the Russian cabinet on July 14th, 2017. Groundbreaking research had led him to finding technology which he says could recognize not only personality traits through recorded online behavior but also psychological traits such as sexuality and political viewpoints through facial recognition. (Guardian)

– Move over Gucci, machines are paving way for the future of fashion and clothing design. Programmed algorithms are allowing machines to anticipate consumer wants and preferences, which allows companies to know what to stock. In doing so, trends and fashion will shift according to what the computers say, so the fashion shows can turn off the runway lights because tomorrow’s fashion is already calculated. (NYT)

– Move over AI and Watson, “tech firms quietly use humans to do bots’ work” and “In 2016, Bloomberg highlighted the plight of the humans spending 12 hours a day pretending to be chatbots for calendar scheduling services such as X.ai and Clara. The job was so mind-numbing that human employees said they were looking forward to being replaced by bots.” (Guardian)

– “Amazon continues to profit from the sale of white-supremacist propaganda … Shoppers can purchase Amazon.com merchandise displaying symbols of white supremacy, such as a swastika necklace, a baby onesie with a burning cross, and a child’s backpack featuring a neo-Nazi meme.” (Washington Post)

– Technology has clearly gotten way ahead of our political, moral, social, and legal conventions and institutions in the West. But it’s just as bad if not worse abroad. “With millions of cameras and billions of lines of code, China is building a high-tech authoritarian future. Beijing is embracing technologies like facial recognition and artificial intelligence to identify and track 1.4 billion people. It wants to assemble a vast and unprecedented national surveillance system, with crucial help from its thriving technology industry.” 2018 has become 1984. (NYT)

LAST MORSELS

“The more you know, the less you need.” – Yvon Chouinard

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