Paradox of Big Decisions | The Economics of War | Memoirs Of A Modern Japanese Woman
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PNUT GALLERY |
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Daily Pnut’s publisher, Tim Hsia, will be interviewing Sean McFate on “The New Rules of War” this Thursday, February 7th, in San Francisco at the World Affairs Auditorium. Sean is a professor at the National Defense University and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. If you are local to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, then we hope you can attend. If you’d like a complimentary ticket, then email Tim and he’d be happy to provide one and connect in person after the program. |
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SEASONED NUTS: QUOTABLE |
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“One of the paradoxes of life is that our big decisions are often less calculated than our small ones are. We agonize over what to stream on Netflix, then let TV shows persuade us to move to New York; buying a new laptop may involve weeks of Internet research, but the deliberations behind a life-changing breakup could consist of a few bottles of wine. We’re hardly more advanced than the ancient Persians, who, Herodotus says, made big decisions by discussing them twice: once while drunk, once while sober.” – Joshua Rothman, Choose Wisely: Do we make the big decisions-or do they make us? (New Yorker) “Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.” – Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning |
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IN A NUTSHELL: MUST READ |
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Memoirs Of A Modern Japanese Woman: At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke proudly of the number of women who work outside the home in his country. 67 percent is an all time high for Japan, higher even than in the US. Unfortunately, cultural norms mean that the number isn’t translating into elevated opportunities for women, or for society’s economic betterment. The legacy of Japan’s exacting domestic expectations, and rigid gender roles for those who perform them, means the disproportionate burden a woman shoulders at home hinders not only her career opportunities, but the nation’s benefit as well. For women who marry, bear children, and hold down a job, the work day is truly non-ending. They must handle 90-95 percent of household and child rearing responsibilities along with their job duties. That is not to say husbands aren’t also working grueling hours. The work day may end at 10 pm, after which men are often expected to put in more hours entertaining clients. At least fathers can sleep in on Saturday mornings — mothers do not have that luxury. Japan was once the economic powerhouse of Asia, but with a declining and aging population, it has been overtaken by China. Japanese employers are struggling with a severe labor shortage, and while some foreigners are admitted in to work, overall the country is still opposed to significantly increasing immigration. Japan needs educated women in the workforce, and Abe has underscored the importance of working women to the economy. But nearly half of all women are employed part-time, and more than half are temporary workers, reinforcing the large pay gap between the genders. Additional reads: The mysterious case of Japan’s ‘dancing zombie squid’: Katsu ika odori-don came to global attention in 2010 thanks to a YouTube video that went viral. But how did this unique phenomenon come about? (BBC) |
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MIXED NUTS: QUICK TAKES ON WORLD NEWS |
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Blackwater’s Muddy Business: Erik Prince, founder of the security contracting firm formerly known Blackwater, has said he considers China a priority. He even partnered with one of China’s biggest conglomerates and set up a company to help Chinese companies overseas. But his company Frontier Services Group’s latest announcement that it will build a training camp in the northwestern region of Xinjiang has Prince scampering to distance himself. Xinjiang is where hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been detained in indoctrination camps that have been condemned by the US and several other nations. (NYT, $) Additional reads: From Daily Pnut’s Tim back in 2009: Blackwater and Security Contracting: The Economics of War (NYT, $) And A Security Company Cashed In on America’s Wars—And Then Disappeared: Sabre International Security employed guards for the Canadian embassy in Kabul. When a bombing left many of them dead or wounded, the company vanished. (Atlantic) There’s Almost No Left Left: Israel’s left-of-center opposition should be able to use Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal troubles to its advantage in the upcoming elections. Unfortunately, Netanyahu’s opponents are plagued by infighting, and in the case of the Labor Party, near mutiny. It is not an aberration— democracies around the world have been seeing the collapse of center-left alternatives amid the rise of right wing populism, and increasing political polarization. Indeed, the Palestinian question is no longer the most pressing political issue for Israelis; rather, it’s the conflict between the left and the right. One expert in political psychology said: “Today the word ‘leftist’ is almost a dirty word or a curse word in Hebrew,” adding that it was the result of “a very effective process of demonization.” (WaPo, $) China Wants To Build A Wall On The USA’s Northern Border: Amid growing tensions between the US and China over trade and the extradition of a senior Huawei executive, Beijing has begun exerting pressure on US allies in an attempt to “divide and conquer.” On Tuesday, following the unsealing of a 13-count indictment against Huawei’s CFO, Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested in Toronto last December, China’s ministry of foreign affairs called on Canada to “stop pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for the US.” An editorial in China’s state-run Global Times was a bit more blunt: “You cannot live the life of a whore and expect a monument to your chastity … If Canada insists on wrong practice, it must pay for it.” China has detained two Canadians for unspecified allegations of endangering national security and a third was sentenced to death for drug smuggling after a sudden retrial. The cases are suspected to be in retaliation for Meng’s arrest at the request of the US. (Guardian) If England Doesn’t Brexit, The Queen Might: In an abundance of caution over what could happen “in the event of civil disorder following a no-deal Brexit,” British officials have exhumed old Cold War emergency evacuation plans. Now if there’s any unrest in London, the “repurposed” evacuation plans can be used to expeditiously remove the royal family to a more secure location outside the city. (Guardian) Additional read: Fear and anger stalk thousands of Britons living on Costa del Sol: For 300,000 UK citizens in Spain, which does not allow dual citizenship, pension and healthcare worries are hard to resolve (Guardian) |
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NUTS IN AMERICA |
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A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Regrets: Virginia’s Democratic governor Ralph Northam says he won’t resign after the revelation that a scandalous photo of two men, one in blackface and one in a Ku Klux Klan costume, appeared on his page in his medical school’s 1984 yearbook. Friday Northam gave a statement seemingly admitting he was one of the two men pictured. He said later that upon reflection he couldn’t have been one of the men because he had no recollection of ever appearing in a racist photo. He said he hadn’t known the photo was on his page because he hadn’t bought a yearbook. (NPR) Additional read: A tip from a ‘concerned citizen’ helps a reporter land the scoop of a lifetime about Northam (WaPo, $) Daily Trump
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LOOSE NUTS: FASCINATING NEWS |
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Americans and America, Inc. Are Behind America’s Drug Problem: The Massachusetts attorney general filed a 247-page memorandum in court alleging the Sackler family behind Perdue Pharma knew its painkiller Oxycontin was causing overdoses, yet continued to cash in despite the mounting death toll. In the court documents AG Maura Healey details a chain of commands implicating eight Sackler family members, and nine Purdue board members and executives, in the nation’s deadly opioid epidemic. Healey accuses the Sacklers of flooding Massachusetts with sales reps, influencing state legislation, and financially backing medical facilities and universities in order to push Purdue opioids. (NPR) Additional reads:
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