A Bridge Over Troubled Borders | A Deal Made In China And America | Six Degrees of Feelings

“In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now).”

– Peter Thiel

“Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.”

– Anton Chekhov

The Enemy Of My Enemy Is All Of You, Hopefully: Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has issued a warning to Asia: “If it’s Taiwan today, people should ask who’s next? Any country in the region — if it no longer wants to submit to the will of China, they would face similar military threats.” China’s President Xi Jinping has been pursuing a much more aggressive foreign policy, and nowhere is the muscle-flexing more obvious than against the semi-autonomous island of 23 million inhabitants. Besides placing mounting diplomatic and economic pressure, Beijing has conducted live-fire drills in nearby seas and flown H-6K bombers and surveillance aircraft around the island. “With China becoming increasingly strong and ambitious, we are faced with growing threats,” Tsai said.”Our challenge is whether our independent existence, security, prosperity and democracy can be maintained. This is the biggest issue for Taiwan.”

Ever since China and Taiwan were split at the end of a destructive civil war in 1949, Communist China’s long-term goal has always been reunification. The two managed to maintain an uneasy truce until the election in 2016 of Tsai and her pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party. As the first woman elected to lead Taiwan, Tsai was carried into office on a swell of anti-Beijing sentiment, but her popularity has suffered in the face of domestic opposition to her policies and a struggling economy. Regardless, Tsai intends to run for reelection in 2020, something Xi is not likely to embrace. The US has acted as Taiwan’s unofficial ally for decades against the threat of Chinese military action, but when asked if she believed President Trump would come to her aid, Tsai answered instead that her focus is on strengthening Taiwan’s own defense capabilities.

Additional read:

• “2019 Is a Sensitive Year for China. Xi Is Nervous.” (NYT, $)
• “Taiwan says no compromise on democracy after opposition’s China peace overture.” (Reuters)

Putin’s Popularity VS The Internet: The percentage of Russians watching President Putin’s annual state-of-the-nation address on February 20 was just 6.3 percent, the lowest since 2013. The Kremlin linked the dip in viewership to the rising use of the Internet. Viewership hit 8.9 percent in 2014, the year Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula. Opinion polls registered a slight slide in Putin’s popularity ratings following moves last year to raise the retirement age and hike sales tax. His overall approval rating remains high at over 60 percent. The most current Gallup poll shows President Trump’s overall approval rating at 44 percent. (Reuters, Gallup)

Additional read: “Russian state TV shows map of potential US nuclear targets. New hypersonic missiles could hit targets including Pentagon in under five minutes, it claims.” (Guardian)

The Little Extremely Isolated Village That Could: A reporter for New York Times Magazine takes a fascinating, up-close-and-personal look at one of the most remote places on earth — somewhere that is home to perhaps the last surviving pastoral nomads in Central Asia — Khorgos, Kazakhstan. It is also the place that is poised to become the hub of the largest infrastructure project in the history of the world — China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Khorgos’ location, at the juncture of the world’s soon to be largest national economy and its largest landlocked country, could make this tiny village the next Dubai. (NYT)

Little Castles On The Hillside: Drone footage of an abandoned luxury housing development halfway between Ankara and Istanbul is a testament to Turkey’s struggling economy, particularly its debt-laden construction sector. The intention behind the development of Disney-style mini-castles was to offer holiday homes to wealthy Gulf tourists. Construction began in 2014, with 587 of the planned 732 buildings completed when the company declared bankruptcy and quit the project last year. Now hundreds of closely packed chateaux resemble an eerie ghost town in an episode of The Twilight Zone. (Guardian)

A Bridge Over Troubled Borders: The crisis continues at Venezuela’s border with Colombia, where nearly 300 people have been injured and 5 have reportedly died in President Nicolas Maduro’s campaign to keep humanitarian aid trucks from entering the country. Witnesses said two trucks carrying supplies were set on fire Saturday while attempting to cross over the border. Vice President Mike Pence, who is meeting with opposition leader Juan Guaido in Bogota, Colombia on Monday, said the US will offer the self-declared interim president its ‘unwavering support’. (CNN).

Fifth Times The Charm: Tens of thousands of Algerians rallied over the weekend, protesting President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s decision to seek a fifth term as president after 20 years in power. Hundreds demonstrated in the streets of the capital, Algiers, which has banned demonstrations since 2001. After the first demonstrations on Friday, security forces arrested more than 40 people. On Sunday police sprayed the crowds with teargas, brought in water cannons and rounded up protesters; state radio journalists complained that a blackout was imposed on media coverage. The 81-year-old Bouteflika is in ill health and has been seen publicly only a handful of times since suffering a stroke in 2013. (Guardian)

Nigerian Elections: A week after Nigeria’s election ended, officials have finally begun counting the ballots cast by those among the country’s 73 million eligible voters. Election officials had postponed the count due to ‘logistical challenges.’ Incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari, who is seeking a second term, is one of dozens of candidates vying for the position. The other front-runner is Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president and businessman who has promised to jump start Nigeria’s economy. (NPR)

I Surrender I Surrender: ISIS fighters are still holding thousands of civilians as human shields in the last half a square kilometer of ground they control in Baghouz Syria. US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said Saturday they have been able to liberate 10 captives recently. In its heyday ISIS controlled an area the size of Great Britain and ruled over 10 million people. (CNN)

Additional read: “German teenage ISIS wife wed at 15. Two children later she faces uncertain future.” (CNN)

A Deal Made In China And America: President Trump has decided to postpone tariff hikes on hundreds of billions of dollars in Chinese importsafter what he said were “very productive” trade talks in Washington last week. Trump tweeted that the two sides had made “substantial progress” on structural issues, including protection of intellectual property and an end to the forced transfer of US technology. “Assuming both sides make additional progress, we will be planning a Summit for President Xi and myself, at Mar-a-Lago, to conclude an agreement,” Trump wrote. Tariffs had been scheduled to jump from 10 to 25 percent next Saturday. (NPR)

Additional USA news:

• Here’s why the average tax refund check is down 16% from last year(CNBC)
• Federal judge rules male-only draft is unconstitutional (CNN)
• More than 50 ex-national security officials tell Trump his national emergency is not justified: In a letter, the former officials said redirecting funds to build the border wall could hurt national security by pulling resources from programs that keep the U.S. safe. (NBC News)

Six Degrees of Feelings: A 32 year research project conducted by Yale University sociologist Nicholas Christakis has demonstrated that emotions can spread through social networks almost like the flu or a cold. For example, if you start to become happier with your life, your partner is more likely to feel better as well. Even a friend living close by has a 25 percent higher chance of becoming happy too. Happiness can even spread to people to whom you’re only indirectly connected. To document his research Christakis and his colleagues mapped out the face-to-face interactions of about 5,000 people living in one town over the course of three decades. Their emotional ups and downs were tracked via periodic surveys. “We were able to show that as one person became happy or sad, it rippled through the network,” Christakis explained.

It’s not just happiness that spreads. Unhappiness and anger can be contagious, too. And not surprisingly, there’s evidence that emotional contagion can spread through digital interactions. A research study dubbed “I’m Sad, You’re Sad” documented that if someone in a negative mood texts his or her partner, the partner is likely to both sense the emotion and mirror it. Likewise, a study of nearly 700,000 Facebook users suggests individuals can pick up on and mirror emotions they encounter in their social media feeds. (NPR)

• Falls Can Kill You. Here’s How to Minimize the Risk.: Falls are the leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries among older adults. Every 19 minutes in this country, an older person dies from a fall. (NYT, $)
• Beyond ‘Bumper Sticker’ Slogans: 2020 Democrats Debate Details Of Medicare-For-All (NPR)
• Michael Jackson doc director challenges ‘cult of celebrity’: “The cult of celebrity is pernicious and it leads people to go blind and parents to do stupid things,” says Dan Reed, director of a new Michael Jackson documentary. (BBC)
• How to catch a catfisher: When Max Benwell found out someone was using his photos to approach women online, he decided to track down the trickster – setting up a fake Instagram account and changing his gender on Tinder along the way (Guardian)

Big Tech and Big Brother: Google says the built-in microphone it never told Nest users about was ‘never supposed to be a secret’ (Business Insider) And Your phone and TV are tracking you, and political campaigns are listening in (LA Times)

“And, like the MBTI (Myers–Briggs Type Indicator), education helps people discover who they are—what they like doing, what they’re good at. To the extent that graduates then list these traits in their job-application letters, they are commodifying their personalities, it’s true. But personal qualities have value in service and information economies. As for surveillance regimes: your browser already knows what kind of person you are a thousand times more intimately than any test will ever reveal.”

– Louis Menand, What Personality Tests Really Deliver: They’re a two-billion-dollar industry. But are assessments like the Myers-Briggs more self-help than science?

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