The Battle For Asia | Burying A Friend, Digging Up Answers | Coasting Is The Key To Happiness

“Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.”

“In all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.”

–  Carl Sagan

Two World Heavyweight Champs Duke It Out Over Trade: Of all the world leaders present this weekend at the 21 member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Papua New Guinea, the two most important by far were China’s President Xi Jinping and US Vice President Mike Pence. Before the summit started both men gave major policy speeches that showed their countries’ gaping divisions, and presaged what would be the first ever failure to agree on a formal written declaration on the rules of global trade. The stumbling block was US insistence that leaders issue what amounted to a denunciation of the WTO and a call for its wholesale reform. The host country’s prime minister, Peter O’Neill, dejectedly conceded defeat with: “You know the two big giants in the room. What can I say? APEC has got no charter over the World Trade Organization. That is a fact. Those matters can be raised at the World Trade Organization.”

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were not in attendance, which left Xi the star of the show. He arrived at the summit two days early to open a Chinese-funded school and road in the host country’s capital, Port Moresby, and took full advantage of each opportunity to appear front and center at official photos. In Pence’s policy speech, the VP had warned smaller countries not to be seduced by Beijing’s massive “belt and road” infrastructure program that offers money to poorer countries for construction and development projects. Pence said the loans come with strings attached and build up “staggering debt”; he mocked the initiative as a “constricting belt” and a “one way road.” Trump and Xi are scheduled to meet next at the G20 summit in Argentina at the end of this month.

Additional Reads: – “The Land That Failed To Fail.: The West was sure the Chinese approach would not work. It just had to wait. It’s still waiting.” (NYT) And “Facing Tensions Close to Home, Japan’s Abe Cements Alliance with Australia” (NYT)

Hong Kong Rains Punishment On Organizers: Nine leaders of Hong Kong’s 2014 pro-democracy “Umbrella Movement” will be tried starting Monday on criminal charges that could send some of the city’s best known activists to prison for seven years. Among them are the three founders of Occupy Central, organized in 2013, which called for the occupation of Hong Kong’s business district if the public was not given a fair vote for the city’s leader, who is appointed by a pro-Beijing committee. Organizers maintained the one-country, two-system arrangement negotiated by UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, when Hong Kong was given back to China in 1997, had promised free elections and a democratic Hong Kong. The campaign was taken over by a student movement that took off in September 2014 when huge crowds began turning out calling for political reform. The protest became known as the Umbrella Movement because protesters used umbrellas to shield themselves from pepper spray. (Guardian)

We Are The World: The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) opened Saturday in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. Participants hope to draw up a new deal for nature by 2020 that would halt and reverse the worst decline of life since the extinction of the dinosaurs. But they fear that when the Jair Bolsonaro takes office as Brazil’s president in January, he will disrupt international efforts to prevent the collapse of natural life support systems in the same way that President Trump is undermining cooperation to stabilize the climate. Bolsonaro supports weakening protections for the Amazon, the world’s richest area of biodiversity. This would mean less land is controlled by indigenous and forest communities, and more is open to agribusiness, miners, loggers and construction companies. The CBD is a legally-binding international treaty originally opened for signature at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. It has been signed by every nation except the United States. (Guardian)

Church State: Last week Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece announced that he will start severing ties between the state and the Greek Orthodox Church, including removing clerics from the state payroll and resolving a longstanding dispute over church property. The tentative agreement Tsipras reached with the head of the Orthodox Church, Archbishop Ieronymos, has opened up nervous divisions within the church,despite a new poll showing 59 percent of the population supports the deal. (NYT)

Theresa May Be In Trouble Over Brexit: The 585-page Brexit withdrawal agreement negotiated by UK Prime Minister Theresa May has been met with widespread criticism. The agreement, together with a shorter document setting out what the UK and EU’s future relationship could look like, is due to be signed off at a summit next week. Several lawmakers have resigned in protest, and there is some doubt over whether the deal can win approval in the House of Commons. Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn said his party could get a better deal in time for withdrawal on March 29, but Theresa May said getting rid of her as PM would not make delivering Brexit any easier. (BBC)

Additional Reads: “Brexit turmoil: Small businesses ‘fed up with the whole thing’” (BBC) and “UK shares remain fragile amid Brexit turmoil” (BBC)

– “Argentina’s missing submarine found a year after it vanished with 44 aboard” (CNN)

Burying A Friend, Digging Up Answers: Scores of friends and supporters of murdered Saudi dissident and Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, gathered Friday at one of Istanbul’s holiest mosques to hold funeral prayers over an empty marble slab. All along Turkey has claimed it has dispositive evidence of Khashoggi’s murder in the form of tape recordings. The Saudi government offered a number of shifting explanations about what happened, finally settling on a story that individuals close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) took it upon themselves to murder Khashoggi without the prince’s knowledge or approval. The CIA has concluded MbS is directly responsible for Khashoggi’s murder.

The Turkish government continually challenged Saudi Arabia’s versions of events, and has shown support for those gathered in Istanbul to honor Khashoggi. At the same time, however, police made a new round of arrests in a crackdown that has already led to the detention of over 100,000 people and the suppression of dissent in Turkey. Early Friday two prominent university professors were among at least 12 more people detained; the academics were charged with trying to overthrow the government for their participation in democracy protests in 2013. The arrests drew sharp criticism from the European Court of Human Rights and other rights groups.

Additional Read: “Trump refuses to listen to audio tape of Jamal Khashoggi’s ‘vicious’ murder.: Turkish defense minister says killers of Khashoggi may have taken his dismembered body out of Turkey in a luggage.” See no evil, hear no evil. How evil. (Guardian)

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Surprise Surprise: President Trump went on Fox News Sunday and said he would not overrule his acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, if Whitaker decides to curtail the special counsel probe being led by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election campaign. “Look, it’s going to be up to him . . . I would not get involved,” Trump said. He also said that he “did not know [Whitaker] took views on the Mueller investigation as such” before he appointed him to his position. Trump is referring to countless times in the past when Whitaker made public statements on Fox and elsewhere maligning the Mueller investigation, including declaring the special counsel had no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. (WaPo)

– “‘A dangerous precedent’: Texans outraged at prospect of tent cities for migrants: Soldiers based at Fort Bliss believe construction of detention center is imminent as locals speak out against Trump’s crackdown” (Guardian)

– “Trump suggests venerated Navy SEAL commander should have found bin Laden faster” (WaPo)

– “California wildfires: Why are so many listed as missing?: Over the last few days the number of people unaccounted for in the deadly Camp Fire in northern California has skyrocketed to more than 1,200.” (BBC)

– “Texas Students Will Soon Learn Slavery Played A Central Role In The Civil War” (NPR)

– “Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory: Credible sources say the Las Vegas shooting was a one-man job. But a small band of former government insiders is propagating a wild alternative theory—with dangerous consequences.” (Politico)

– “I Found the Best Burger Place in America. And Then I Killed It.” (Thrillist)

– “Evangelicals, Looking to 2020, Face the Limits of Their Base” (NYT)

– “Why coasting at work is the best thing for your career, health and happiness: A study has found that a third of us say we are ‘coasting’ in our jobs. Maybe they’ve worked out the key to a good life”

“‘Nothing on this page is real’: How lies become truth in online America.” (WaPo)

– “After the Retail Apocalypse, Prepare for the Property Tax Meltdown: Big-box retailers nationwide are slashing their property taxes through a legal loophole known as “dark store theory.” For the towns that rely on that revenue, this could be a disaster.” (CityLab)

– “Ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter Takes On The World’s Most Sadistic Endurance Race” (Deadspin)

– “This Deep-Sea Fisherman Is Still Posting His Discoveries and OH GOD THE TEETH WHY DOES IT HAVE TEETH” (Gizmodo)

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