Amazon’s Elysium Robots | The Sino-American Digital & Device War | Facebook’s Rendezvous With Infamy

Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

Behind Bars With No Bars: Meng Wanzhou is a top executive for Huawei, one of the world’s largest makers of telecommunications network equipment. She is also the eldest daughter of the company’s founder Ren Zhengfei. In China, Meng is “business royalty”, effectively on the level of Apple CEO Tim Cook, or Microsoft founder Bill Gates. So it was a shock of seismic proportions when Meng was arrested in Vancouver on Saturday December 1 by Canadian authorities, at the request of US officials who want her extradited to the US on suspicion of sanctions violations. Investigations into Huawei have been underway in the US since at least 2016 for allegedly shipping American-origin products to Iran and other countries in violation of America’s export and sanctions laws.

The timing of Meng’s arrest is also a shocker. Saturday evening was when President Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping had a dinner meeting at the Group of 20 summit and supposedly came away with a trade-war truce. Early Monday morning December 3 President Trump tweeted: “My meeting in Argentina with President Xi of China was an extraordinary one. Relations with China have taken a BIG leap forward! Very good things will happen.” Wednesday night Canada confirmed Meng was being detained. Thursday Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton said he had been aware of the pending legal action against Meng. “I knew in advance. That is something we get from the Justice Department,” Bolton said. Then he added that he didn’t know if Trump also knew, by itself a puzzling and somewhat shocking remark. Meanwhile, China is apoplectic and demanding Meng’s immediate release, global stock markets are spiraling downward, and a US-China trade war truce is looking anything but attainable.

Additional reads: “Arrest of Huawei ‘heiress’ throws rare spotlight on family.: the 46-year-old chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies had been widely tipped to one day take the helm

of the tech giant her father founded.” (Reuters) And: “What to know about China’s Huawei Technologies. For one thing, it recently sold more smartphones than Apple.” (WaPo)

Moving On To Plan D: The plan Denmark’s right-wing government has devised to make unwanted immigrants lives awful is reminiscent of the 1989 movie Major League, where the new owner of the Cleveland Indians wanted the team to lose its season so she could move the club to Miami. When the team started winning, she contrived every wretched experience imaginable to make their lives so miserable they couldn’t physically win games. But that’s a movie. Denmark’s scheme, to isolate unwelcome foreigners on a tiny, hard-to-reach island that now holds the laboratories, stables and crematory of a research center for contagious animal diseases, is real. (NYT)

Gang Warfare Rises In Yemen: The centuries-old city of Taiz, now in ruins, is a microcosm of Yemen. In 2015 the Houthis, northern Yemeni rebels, had captured the country’s capital of Sanaa, some 160 miles from Taiz. A ragtag group of local militias, including fighters linked to terrorist groups, rose up to fight the Houthis. The militias were armed and financed by the Saudis and the allied United Arab Emirates, with support from the US. By the end of 2016, the Saudi-led coalition had pushed the Houthis to the outer edges of Taiz, where they have remained ever since. Taiz forms part of the war’s front lines, and its residents have been caught in the crossfire between Houthi and coalition fighters. But almost unimaginably, the saga has grown even darker as local militias are now turning on each other in a competition for territory, wealth and control over the country’s future. The crisis deepening in Taiz is revealing how wartime decisions made by Saudi Arabia, with Mohammed bin Salman its de facto leader, are continuing to fuel turmoil in Yemen for years, perhaps decades, to come. (WaPo)

Five Eyes For An Eye, Makes The Whole World Log Off: The Australian parliament passed a piece of controversial legislation Thursday that would require technology companies to provide law enforcement and security agencies access to encrypted correspondence. The government said the law was necessary to block criminals and terrorists who use encrypted messaging programs to communicate. Opponents of the bill said it not only compromised Australians’ privacy but was so vaguely written it could be abused. A human rights lawyer had argued the bill has global implications under the so-called Five Eyes agreement, an alliance that allows Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the US to share intelligence. (NYT)

Quiet Violence, Silent Explosions: A government psychiatrist in Sri Lanka is doing what he can to heal invisible wounds that still remain after a devastating 26-year-long civil war in which more than 100,000 lost their lives. It is estimated that nationwide about 10 percent of the country’s roughly 22 million people have some sort of mental disorder; nearly 800,000 suffer from depression. Research suggests those numbers are far worse in northern areas, where much of the fighting was concentrated. Small studies done in the northeast around the time of the war’s end in 2009 showed post-traumatic stress disorder among children as high as 30 percent. The World Health Organization recently ranked Sri Lanka 29th out of 176 nations for suicide rates. (NYT)

Clear Out The Space Under Your Desk: Two experts on North Korea’s missile program said Thursday that new research based on satellite imagery shows the expansion of a missile base that would be one of the most likely sites for deploying intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US. The experts said the activities at the Yeongjeo-dong missile base near North Korea’s border with China and the expansion of a new suspected missile factory seven miles away are the latest indications that the North is continuing to improve its missile capabilities, despite President Trump’s insistence that progress is being made in efforts to denuclearize the North. The experts said they were still not sure whether Yeongjeo-dong and the new facility under construction in nearby Hoejung-ni were separate bases or parts of a larger single operation. (NYT)

– “Luxembourg to Become the First Country to Offer Free Mass Transit for All” (NYT)

– “Iceland in Uproar Over Secret Recording of Politicians’ Sexist Remarks” (NYT)

– “American Priest Is Accused of Molesting Boys in the Philippines: The suspect, Rev. Kenneth Bernard Hendricks, 77, was arrested Wednesday in the town of Naval” (NYT)

– “Ecuador’s Moreno says Wikileaks’ Assange can leave embassy if he wants: Assange has claimed that Ecuador is seeking to end his asylum and hand him over to the United States” (Reuters)

Free 2 Day Hospital Visit: 24 Amazon employees working in a warehouse in Robbinsville, New Jersey were hospitalized Wednesday after a can of bear repellent containing concentrated capsaicin fell off a shelf and an automated machine accidentally punctured it. An Amazon spokesperson said the workers were only taken to the hospital in an abundance of caution because: “The safety of our workers is always our top priority….” But the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union said: “Amazon’s automated robots put humans in life-threatening danger. This is another outrageous example of the company putting profits over the health and safety of their workers….” In June a Guardian investigation detailed multiple instances of workers left unable to work after injuries sustained in the warehouses, including the Robbinsville fulfillment center. (Guardian)

Yes, Virginia, There Is Voter Fraud: Sometime after the November midterms, the North Carolina board of elections voted unanimously not to certify one of the state’s 13 congressional races, but didn’t give specifics. Then some old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting and sharp data analysis brought to national prominence the story of widespread voter fraud involving a mail-in ballot collecting scheme run by an operative with a criminal history working for the Republican congressional candidate in North Carolina’s 9th. (WaPo)

-“He’s a US soldier deployed on the southern border — and an unlawful immigrant.” The Chinese-born soldier followed the Pentagon’s program that promised quick naturalization in exchange for military service. But after nearly 10 years he’s still serving, and waiting, and illegal, and he’s been deployed to the southern border — to catch illegal immigrants. (WaPo)

– “Congress Punts Shutdown Fight Deep Into December: Congress voted to delay the threat of a partial government shutdown until Dec. 21 as lawmakers try to avoid political sniping in the midst of the public mourning for former President George H.W. Bush.” (NPR)

– “More Potholes, Traffic Jams On The Horizon Unless Interstates Are Fixed, Report Finds” (NPR)

– “Knocked out at 48: Chuck Liddell and the plight of former UFC fighters” (Guardian)

– “‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside,’ Seen As Sexist, Frozen Out By Radio Stations:The tune “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” with words that seemed charming when FDR was in office, may land with a tone-deaf thud on the ear of today’s listener.” (NPR)

– “YouTube deletes cheating videos after BBC investigation: YouTube has deleted thousands of videos promoting academic cheating in the last week after a BBC Trending investigation.” (BBC)

– “The Reason Many Ultrarich People Aren’t Satisfied With Their Wealth: At a certain point, another million dollars doesn’t make anything newly affordable. That’s when other motivations take over.” (Atlantic)

– “The unbelievable tale of a fake hitman, a kill list, a darknet vigilante… and a murder: Hitman-for-hire darknet sites are all scams. But some people turn up dead nonetheless” (Wired)

– “Big Tuna Finds a Scapegoat: Millennials” (NYT)

– “What’s Really Happening to Retail?: Manhattan’s shuttered storefronts tell a larger American story: Only Amazon-proof businesses can now survive in brick and mortar.” (Atlantic)

– “The Cowardly Face of Authoritarianism: People need truth, which a cult of personality destroys.” (NYT)

Facebook is Nuts: “Mark Zuckerberg Strategy Email: ‘That May Be Good For the World But It’s Not Good For Us’” (NY Mag) “The “Yellow Jackets” Riots In France Are What Happens When Facebook Gets Involved With Local News” (Buzzfeed) “Facebook emails reveal discussions over call log consent” (Guardian)

“I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

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