And much, much more. . .
We begin with the genome-incorporating corporate panopticon from the Asahi Shimbun:
Yahoo offers DNA tests, expects growth in gene-based advertising
Advertisements tailored to individuals’ genetic makeup have moved closer to reality with the start of a DNA testing service by Yahoo Japan Corp.
The service, which began Nov. 7, analyzes 290 genetic aspects of saliva samples–from the risk of such illnesses as lung cancer and stroke to physical traits, including a tendency toward obesity and alcohol-tolerance levels.
The service costs 49,800 yen ($430), including tax. Users can also receive advice from doctors and nutritionists, for an additional charge.
In June, the company revised its regulations on the protection of personal information to allow for the use of DNA analysis results in advertising.
From the Boston Globe, an inescapable conclusion:
Vote all you want. The secret government won’t change.
The people we elect aren’t the ones calling the shots, says Tufts University’s Michael Glennon
Why did the face in the Oval Office change but the policies remain the same? Critics tend to focus on Obama himself, a leader who perhaps has shifted with politics to take a harder line. But Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon has a more pessimistic answer: Obama couldn’t have changed policies much even if he tried.
Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.
Glennon’s critique sounds like an outsider’s take, even a radical one. In fact, he is the quintessential insider: He was legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a consultant to various congressional committees, as well as to the State Department. “National Security and Double Government” comes favorably blurbed by former members of the Defense Department, State Department, White House, and even the CIA. And he’s not a conspiracy theorist: Rather, he sees the problem as one of “smart, hard-working, public-spirited people acting in good faith who are responding to systemic incentives”—without any meaningful oversight to rein them in.
Reuters covers signs of overstretch:
As Obama visits Asia, old alliances face new strains in face of China’s influence
In November 2011, with the Arab Spring uprisings in full tilt and Europe rocked by a debt crisis, President Barack Obama flew to Asia to promote a shift of America’s military, diplomatic and business assets to the region. His then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, declared in the same year that the 21st century would be “America’s Pacific century”.
Fast-forward to today: as Obama flies to Asia on Sunday, Washington’s “pivot” to the region is becoming more visible. It includes deployment of American Marines in Darwin, Australia, stepped up U.S. naval visits to the Philippines and many more joint drills with that nation’s armed forces, as well as the lifting of a ban on lethal weapons sales to Vietnam.
But just as Washington seeks to expand American interests in Asia as a counterpoint to China’s growing influence, some U.S. partners have shown less willingness to challenge Beijing. That may mean China will have a freer hand to assert its authority in the resource-rich South China Sea, where its territorial claims overlap those of Taiwan and four Southeast Asian countries.
The drubbing Obama’s Democrats took in this week’s mid-term elections, defeats that were blamed by many on his leadership, will hardly strengthen his position in discussions with China or with allies in the region. Obama will have less room for maneuver on foreign policy now he has a Republican-controlled Senate to deal with, and the political focus in Washington is already starting to turn to the 2016 presidential election.
More of the same, also via Reuters:
Unclear if China ready to sign IT agreement: WTO chief
China is part of “intensive” talks on a global trade pact regarding information technology products, the World Trade Organization’s chief said on Saturday, but it is unclear if a deal will be made at a meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders underway in Beijing.
The United States and other countries have been hopeful that China would sign on to the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), which requires signatories to eliminate duties on some IT products, during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that ends on Tuesday.
Washington has blamed China, the world’s biggest exporter of IT products, for derailing talks on an update to the 16 year old WTO pact on technology trade by asking for too many exemptions.
On to the war of the moment/clash of cultures/blowback via the New York Times:
U.S. Airstrikes in Iraq Target ISIS Leaders
An airstrike by a United States-led coalition hit a gathering of leaders of the Islamic State jihadist group in northwestern Iraq on Saturday, and Iraqi officials said they believed that a number of top militants had been killed.
Two Iraqi officials said that at least one strike had targeted a meeting near the town of Qaim, which is in Anbar Province, just across the border from the Syrian town of Bukamal. The area is in the desert heartland of the territory the group has seized for its self-declared caliphate.
Both officials said that the strikes had killed many militants from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, including two of its regional governors. Rumors also swirled that the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been at the meeting and was either wounded or killed. The officials said they had no confirmed information about Mr. Baghdadi’s presence at the meeting.
From the McClatchy Foreign Staff, strange bedfellows:
Sunni tribes join Shiite militias in battle for Iraqi town, a rare show of sectarian unity
Sunni Muslim tribesmen, Shiite militia fighters and Iraqi security forces set out Saturday to recapture a key city in Anbar province and stop Islamic State atrocities against a local tribe in an extraordinary coalition that could stir sectarian tensions or potentially serve as a model for future cooperation against the militants.
The operation to liberate Hit, about 90 miles west of Baghdad, could reshape the situation in Anbar in a way that would impact the mission of U.S. troops who are being deployed to the province from among the additional 1,500 U.S. military advisers the Pentagon said it is sending to Iraq at the end of the year.
“This is a dramatic change,” said Hisham al Hashimi, a prominent Iraqi defense analyst. “We have the Sunni Arab tribes fighting hand in hand with the Shiites.”
And from BBC News, another inescapable conclusion:
Ex-USSR leader Gorbachev: World on brink of new Cold War
The world is on the brink of a new Cold War, and trust should be restored by dialogue with Russia, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has said.
At an event to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Sunday, Mr Gorbachev said the West had “succumbed to triumphalism”.
He expressed alarm about recent Middle Eastern and European conflicts.
Along the same lines, via the New York Times:
As Russia Draws Closer to China, U.S. Faces a New Challenge
Mr. Obama is returning to Asia as Russia pulls closer to China, presenting a profound challenge to the United States and Europe. Estranged from the West over Ukraine, Mr. Putin will also be in Beijing this week as he seeks economic and political support, trying to upend the international order by fashioning a coalition to resist what both countries view as American arrogance.
Whether that is more for show than for real has set off a vigorous debate in Washington, where some government officials and international specialists dismiss the prospect of a more meaningful alliance between Russia and China because of the fundamental differences between the countries. But others said the Obama administration should take the threat seriously as Moscow pursues energy, financing and military deals with Beijing.
“We are more and more interested in the region that is next to us in Asia,” said Sergei I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to Washington. “They are good partners to us.” He added that a recent natural gas deal between Moscow and Beijing was a taste of the future. “It’s just the beginning,” he said, “and you will see more and more projects between us and China.”
The ante, via the Los Angeles Times:
Aging nuclear arsenal grows ever more costly
The nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile has shrunk by 85% since its Cold War peak half a century ago, but the Energy Department is spending nine times more on each weapon that remains. The nuclear arsenal will cost $8.3 billion this fiscal year, up 30% over the last decade.
The source of some of those costs: skyrocketing profits for contractors, increased security costs for vulnerable facilities and massive investments in projects that were later canceled or postponed.
“We are not getting enough for what we are spending, and we are spending more than what we need,” said Roger Logan, a senior nuclear scientist who retired in 2007 from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “The whole system has failed us.”
The Defense Department’s fleet of submarines, bombers and land-based missiles is also facing obsolescence and will have to be replaced over the next two decades, raising the prospect of further multibillion-dollar cost escalations.
On to drones, first with a partnership from MercoPress:
Anglo-French defence co-operation contract to develop unmanned combat air systems
A set of defence co-operation contracts, worth £120 million, for the early phase of a joint development of Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) between the UK and French governments have been awarded in Paris. A UCAS capability would, by the 2030’s, be able to undertake sustained surveillance, mark targets, gather intelligence, deter adversaries and carry out strikes in hostile territory.
The contracts will underpin a two-year Future Combat Air System (FCAS) Feasibility Phase program and will involve six industry partners exploring concepts and options for the potential collaborative acquisition of a UCAS in the future.
The contracts award was jointly announced by Bernard Gray, the Ministry of Defence’s Chief of Defence Materiel and his counterpart, Laurent Collet-Billon, head of the French Directorate General of Armaments.
Mr Gray said that the development of Unmanned Combat Air Systems is of vital importance to the UK and France, “which have the most capable and experienced armed forces in Europe and well-established defence industrial bases”.
On a parallel track with Want China Times:
US must act soon to counter China droning on
Because the United States only allows its unmanned aerial vehicles to be exported to the United Kingdom, American experts fear that China will eventually dominate the global drone market, Washington’s National Interest magazine reports.
The Zhuihai Air Show held in Southern China every two years has attracted the attention of aviation experts from around the world. Beijing invested huge amounts of resources to improve the nation’s drone technology. With those drones displayed in Zhuhai, China seems to be ready to challenge the status quo of global arms control as it begins to catch up to its competition in the overseas market of unmanned aerial vehicles.
Following a report which indicated that China is cooperating with the Algerian military in developing unmanned aerial vehicles, Saudi Arabia announced that it purchased an undisclosed number of Wing Loong drones from China on May.
From the McClatchy Washington Bureau, the very curious:
Judge orders Obama to explain rejection of Chinese bid to buy Oregon wind farms on national security grounds
President Barack Obama and a secretive government committee that vets foreign purchases of American companies must explain to a Chinese-owned firm why they rejected its bid to buy Oregon wind farms, under a new order by a federal judge.
The unprecedented ruling by Amy Berman Jackson, a U.S. judge for the District of Columbia who was nominated by Obama, also requires him to justify withholding any information from the Chinese on grounds of executive privilege, a legal principle that presidents going back to George Washington have claimed.
Jackson’s order was issued under a July mandate from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled then that Obama had violated the constitutional due process rights of Chinese-owned Ralls Corp. in his September 2012 directive voiding its purchase of an Oregon wind-farm conglomerate.
MercoPress goes undercover:
Former US soccer leader Blazer spied on FIFA as an FBI informant
Chuck Blazer, once the most powerful man in US soccer, was an FBI informant used to spy on Fifa, the New York Daily News reports. Blazer, who is now suffering from cancer, secretly recorded conversations with officials he arranged to meet at his London hotel during the 2012 Olympics, the report said.
Union-busting at Scotland Yard, via the Guardian:
Police ‘covered up’ links with union blacklisting
Leaked minutes show senior officer met group targeting union activists
Scotland Yard has been accused of seeking to cover up its involvement in the blacklisting of more than 3,200 construction workers following the emergence of minutes of a meeting between a senior officer in its anti-extremism unit and the organisation running the list.
The leaked document proves that as late as 2008 a detective chief inspector in the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (Netcu) briefed members of the Consulting Association, the secretive organisation that ran the blacklist keeping people out of work for decades. The association, which had a database of 3,213 names on which it held information, was raided and closed in 2009 by the Information Commissioner’s Office, but not before it destroyed the professional and personal lives of thousands of workers, according to those on the list.
A committee of MPs holding an inquiry into its activities heard evidence that at least two of those blacklisted committed suicide as a result. In 2012 the Information Commissioner’s Office told an employment tribunal that it believed information held in the files was from the police or security services.
From the London Daily Mail, peek-a-boo!:
Is this creepy website live-streaming YOUR living room? 73,000 webcams now viewable to anyone because their owners haven’t set a password
Website insecam.com running footage from more than 73,000 cameras
A total of 11,000 cameras in the United States are able to be viewed
There are 2,422 cameras in the UK which are also providing a live feed
Cameras which have not had their factory passwords changed are accessible
Users can view businesses, factories, building sites and private homes
The site states: ‘you can see into bedrooms of all countries of the world’
Easy to stop – just change the password on the camera
A creepy website has collected streaming footage from more than 73,000 cameras around the globe that are connected to the internet, because the owners haven’t changed their default passwords, making them accessible to virtually anyone.
Insecam claims to feature feeds from IP cameras all over the world with more than 11,000 in the U.S. and 2,400 in the UK alone.
Some of the shots are harmless with fly-on-the-wall views of stores, offices and parking lots, but there are also far more personal areas covered by the cameras, with living rooms and bedrooms featured prominently.
From Want China Times, the mal-adroit:
Apple blocks malware targeting Chinese iPhone user
Apple said they have blocked the malware hidden in apps of third-party app stores in China which aim to access information from Chinese iPhone users, Tencent’s online tech news outlet reports.
The malware, dubbed WireLurker, was brought to light by a Silicon Valley-based cyber security company Palo Alto Networks in a report published on Nov. 6. When users downloaded the apps from the third-party app stores in China and installed the apps on their Mac computers, the malware hidden in the apps stole user information from any iOS device, including the iPhone and the iPad, when it was connected to the computer with a USB.
iPhones are relatively safe from malware given the strong firewall protection Apple uses for the phones. Apps that aren’t developed by Apple have to be authorized first and users can only download from Apple’s app store. WireLurker is the first malware capable of invading privacy on iPhones and other iOS devices and it poses a big threat to Chinese Apple users, the tech outlet said.
And from Channel 4 News in Britain, selling you out:
eBay for credit card fraudsters: Thousands of details up for sale
Program notes:
How safe is your money? We’ve discovered that the credit card details of thousands of Britons are being offered for sale on the internet.
After the jump, hard times intolerance in Sweden and Austria, Israel lobby tanks British Labor Party funding, a Chavez ally charged with cartel links, Brazil prepares for war to defend the Amazon, an Israeli Arab general strike over a police shooting, military press censorship proposed in Egypt, protesters seize a Libyan oil port, new anti-gay laws in Uganda, a rare admission by India’s army in deaths of teens, arrested Americans feed by Pyongyang, discouraging words for Hong Kong Occupy activists, Abe confirms a summit in Beijing, Chinese media proclaim a win while China moves forward on a regional economic zone, and echoes from a battle a century past haunt the Beijing/Tokyo axis. . .
Racist parenting, Swedish style, from TheLocal.se:
Parents racially abuse child handball player
An eleven-year-old handball player was called a “negro bastard” and told to go back “home” to Africa by parents of the opposing team at a youth tournament in Eslöv last weekend, according to a police report.
The incident occurred when the boy’s team IFK Skovde met the home team Eslöv in the Skadevi Cup youth tournament last week.
The matter was reported to the police by the young boy’s parents and the incident has been classified as a suspected hate crime, according to the broadcaster Sveriges Radio.
According to the report the source of the racist abuse was the parents of the opposing team.
Austrian intolerance, via TheLocal.at:
Outrage after politician calls refugees ‘cavemen’
A right-wing Freedom Party politician in Lower Austria has caused a stink by referring to asylum seekers as “cavemen” on social media.
Christian Höbart posted the inflammatory comment in the Facebook group Traiskirchen, under a photo of a group of asylum seekers demonstrating at a railway station near to Austria’s overcrowded main refugee camp on Thursday evening.
One Facebook user posted a comment asking what the group was demonstrating about and Höbart responded by saying “there is no reason for this. Compared to where these people come from they have it great here. It’s scandalous that these cavemen don’t realise that here they have the best food, new clothes, and other nonsense. What insolence!”
Israel lobby tanks British Labor Party funding, via the Independent:
Labour funding crisis: Jewish donors drop ‘toxic’ Ed Miliband
The Labour party is facing desertion by Jewish donors and supporters because of Ed Mili-band’s “toxic” anti-Israeli stance over Gaza and Palestine. In a fresh headache for the Labour leader, it is understood that Mr Miliband has been warned that Jewish backers are deserting the party in droves over what community leaders perceive to be a new, aggressive pro-Palestine policy at the expense of Israeli interests.
One prominent Jewish financial backer, a lifelong Labour supporter, said he no longer wanted to “see Mr Miliband in Downing Street or Douglas Alexander as Foreign Secretary”.
A senior Labour MP warned that Mr Miliband now had a “huge if not insurmountable challenge” to maintain support from parts of the Jewish community that had both backed and helped fund Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s election campaigns.
From the Guardian, a Chavez ally charged with cartel links:
Ally of Hugo Chávez jailed for links to Colombian drugs cartels
Top judge’s sentence for extortion charges associated with illicit drugs trade taints late Venezuelan president and party
It was meant to be a relaxing holiday at Disney World for Benny Palmeri-Bacchi, a senior Venezuelan judge, and his family. A chance to unwind at the Florida fantasy land from the stresses of the job. But the fairytale vacation quickly became a nightmare when his plane from Caracas was greeted by federal agents at Miami airport and he found himself carted off to jail.
Now, after a secretive and far-reaching inquiry by US investigators into links between Venezuelan government officials and Colombian drugs cartels, Palmeri, 46, will be spending at least 20 years in prison.
Prosecutors had accused Palmeri of taking bribes to ease shipments of cocaine through Venezuela to Mexico and the Caribbean for distribution in the US, and his admission of guilt in a federal court in Miami this week – on money laundering, conspiracy and extortion charges – marks the first time an ally of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has been tied to the Colombian drugs trade.
Brazil prepares for war to defend the Amazon, from the New York Times:
Brazil Military Drills to Defend Amazon
Brazil’s army is deploying troops this month to the far reaches of the Amazon in a military exercise simulating a foreign invasion of the rain forest, focusing attention on sensitivity over sovereignty in a region rising in importance as a strategic pillar of Latin America’s largest economy.
The troop mobilization, starting on Monday and called Operation Machifaro, points to a deepening of a central element of military doctrine in Brazil, which holds the defense of the Amazon as a top priority. The Amazon’s mineral wealth and vast reserves of fresh water place the region “in the context of potential threats,” military officials here said in a statement.
“The operation will provide ways for optimizing a strategy of resistance in the region,” said Gen. Guilherme Cals Theophilo Gaspar de Oliveira, chief of Brazil’s Amazon Military Command. He also emphasized that the exercise was aiming to “consolidate a doctrine of jungle combat.”
An Israeli Arab general strike over a police shooting, via Reuters:
Israeli Arabs declare strike after police kill man during arrest raid
Community leaders of Israel’s Arab minority declared a 24-hour general commercial strike, starting on Sunday, following the shooting dead by police of a man from the village of Kafr Kana in the north of the country.
Thousands took to the streets on Saturday and some threw rocks and lit fires at the entrance to Kafr Kana near a main road hours after Khayr al-Din al-Hamdan was shot by police after he attacked them as they came to arrest a relative.
Hamdan died of his wounds at a nearby hospital, police said.
Israeli Arabs, the majority of them Muslim, make up a fifth of Israel’s predominantly Jewish population of 8 million. Often they are resentful of entrenched discrimination but they rarely resort to violence.
Military press censorship proposed in Egypt, via the Guardian:
Egypt mulls military news ban
Proposed law would outlaw coverage of armed forces’ activity without prior approval from senior military officials
Egypt is considering whether to ban news about its armed forces, after the cabinet drew up a draft law that would outlaw coverage of military activity without prior approval from senior military officials, several Egyptian newspapers have reported.
The proposed law would ban “the disclosure or display of any news or information or statistics or data or documents relating to the armed forces or its formation or movements or equipment or work or plans”, according to a leaked version of the legislation.
The army is the single most influential institution in contemporary Egypt and revered by a majority of Egyptians. But its critics have drawn attention to the lack of oversight in the military budget, and lack of accountability for its alleged human rights abuses, including the disappearances of hundreds of civilians inside military institutions.
Protesters seize a Libyan oil port, via Reuters:
Libyan protesters seize eastern oil port as Benghazi toll hits 300
Libyan state security guards have started a protest at the 120,000 barrel per day Hariga oil port in the east, halting all oil exports from the terminal, a Libyan oil official said on Saturday.
The closure only adds to the growing chaos in Libya, whose internationally recognized government has been driven out of the capital by an alliance led by forces from the city of Misrata, which has installed a rival government and parliament.
In the main eastern city of Benghazi, five pro-government soldiers were killed and 28 wounded on Saturday while fighting Islamists, lifting the death toll from three weeks of clashes to 300, medics said.
New anti-gay laws in Uganda, via the Guardian:
Uganda drafts new anti-gay laws
Politicians want seven-year prison term for ‘promotion’ of homosexuality, according to leaked copy
The Ugandan government could introduce new wide-reaching anti-gay laws before the end of the year, which could see people jailed for up to seven years for “promoting homosexuality”, activists warned on Saturday.
The move comes nearly a year after Ugandan politicians passed legislation that could have imposed life sentences on gays. The bill was struck down by the constitutional court on a technicality.
According to a leaked copy of the new draft law, MPs have instead focused on outlawing the “promotion” of homosexuality – a potentially far more repressive and wide-reaching measure.
A rare admission by India’s army in deaths of teens, via Channel NewsAsia Singapore:
Indian army admits ‘mistake’ in killing two teenagers
The Indian army said late Friday (Nov 7) that it takes responsibility for the death of two teenagers who died after soldiers fired at a car on the outskirts of Srinagar this week
The Indian army has admitted it made a mistake in shooting dead two teenagers in restive Indian-administered Kashmir this week, a rare public admission of fault by the military. The teenagers died after soldiers fired at a car on the outskirts of Srinagar on Monday (Nov 3), while another youngster was critically wounded.
“We take responsibility for the death of the two boys in Kashmir,” the chief of the army’s northern command, D S Hooda, told reporters in Srinagar late Friday (Nov 7) in televised remarks. “We admit a mistake was made … there was some information about a white car with terrorists. Obviously, the identity was mistaken in this case,” the lieutenant-general added. Hooda promised an investigation into the deaths that would be conducted with “the highest standard of transparency”.
Anger has been mounting in the scenic Kashmir valley over the killings, with the families of the dead youths rejecting the army’s offer of one million rupees (US$16,283) as compensation. “The blood of my 14-year-old son is not so cheap that I would barter it. I reject this compensation,” Mohammad Yousuf Bhat, one of the boys’ fathers, was quoted as saying by the Times of India newspaper on Saturday.
Arrested Americans feed by Pyongyang, via Al Jazeera:
North Korea frees US detainees after hushed-up talks with Washington
Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller released after negotiations led by US intelligence chief James Clapper
The last two American detainees being held in North Korea have been released and are on their way back home, U.S. authorities said Saturday. It follows previously unpublicized negotiations between Pyongyang and the White House’s national intelligence chief James Clapper.
In a statement from the State Department, it was announced that Kenneth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller had been freed after a respective two years and seven months captivity.
“We join their families and friends in welcoming them home,” State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said. Both men were released following secretive talks led by Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence. The State Department also thanked the government of Sweden, which acts on behalf of U.S. citizens in North Korea in lieu of formal diplomatic relations between Washington and Pyongyang.
Discouraging words for Hong Kong Occupy activists, from South China Morning Post:
‘There is no point in talks with Beijing’, ex-Hong Kong chief executive Tung Chee-hwa tells students
Former chief executive sidesteps request by students that he help arrange meeting with state leaders, saying their stance won’t change
Former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa has sidestepped a request by student organisers of the Occupy movement to meet state leaders, saying Beijing will not change the political reform framework for Hong Kong.
Tung’s response came a day after a member of student activist group Scholarism on a personal trip to Shenzhen was denied entry to the mainland because he had taken part in activities that “violate national security”.
Tung, a vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, had read an open letter delivered to him by the Federation of Students on Friday, asking him to arrange the meeting, his spokesman said.
Abe confirms a summit in Bejing, via Reuters:
Japan PM Abe says summit with China on the cards
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Friday his government was making final arrangements to hold a bilateral summit with China in Beijing next week.
“Both Japan and China are coming to the view that it would benefit not just the two countries but regional stability if a summit is held,” Abe said in a television program.
China and Japan on Friday agreed to work on improving ties and signaled willingness to put a bitter row over disputed islands on the back burner, paving the way for their leaders to meet at an Asian-Pacific summit next week.
Chinese media proclaim a win, via the Japan Times:
China’s media claims victory after Japan ‘agreement’ on isle, historical issues
Chinese state-run media claimed victory Saturday for Beijing after it reached an accord with Japan to tone down tensions over territorial and historical disputes that had fueled concerns of conflict.
The two sides issued similar statements Friday after a meeting in Beijing between State Councilor Yang Jiechi, China’s top foreign policy official, and Shotaro Yachi, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s national security adviser.
The Chinese statement said the two “acknowledged that different positions exist between them regarding the tensions” over the islands, while the Japanese text said they “recognized that they had different views as to the emergence of tense situations.”
While China moves forward on a regional economic zone, via Kyodo News:
APEC ministers adopt road map for new free trade zone
Ministers of 21 Asia-Pacific economies on Saturday adopted a road map toward the creation of a Chinese-backed new free trade zone and agreed to launch a study on the possibility of realizing the scheme over the next two years as new steps to further strengthen regional integration.
They agreed to seek the establishment of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific “as early as possible” and start a “collective strategic study” to that end, instructing officials to report the results to ministers by 2016, according to a joint statement announced following a two-day ministerial meeting in Beijing.
The decision to launch the study is “a milestone in the history of APEC,” Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said at a press conference.
And echoes from a battle a century past haunt the Beijing/Tokyo axis, via JapanToday:
Echoes of WWI battle in China resonate over Japan ties
A century ago on Nov 7, German troops raised the white flag over a fortress on the Chinese coast, surrendering to Japan as Tokyo expanded its presence, fuelling animosity that hampers relations with Beijing to this day.
The Siege of Tsingtao was the sole battle of World War I fought in East Asia, and total deaths were in the hundreds, far from the carnage Europe would see during its four-year slaughter.
But the battle’s implications were far-reaching, highlighting China’s impotence in the face of machinations by foreign powers on its own soil as German control was ceded to Japan, and contributing to an ongoing awakening in Chinese national consciousness.
“This is a small, relatively forgotten battle but it’s emblematic both of the way that foreign powers fought one another, handed out territory between themselves and so on in China with no reference to the Chinese at all,” British author Jonathan Fenby, who published a history of the siege, said at a talk in Beijing.
