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Dokdo island, also known as Takeshima in Japanese, east of Seoul, is seen in this August 2011 file photo. (Lee Sang-hak/Yonhap/Reuters/File)
Whose Islands are they? South Korea tries branding in its dispute with Japan
When it comes to some disputed islets located in the Sea of Japan, South Korea is not shy about making its claim.
Though the Japanese refer to island group as Takeshima and remain in a bitter dispute over the issue, Koreans are adamant that Dokdo is Korean sovereign territory – and they are very committed to letting the rest of the world know.
The latest ploy: a Napa Valley wine produced by Korean-American dentist Ahn Jae-hyun at his Dokdo Winery that uses the island post code as its moniker.
Illustrating the fervor with which such attempts to garner attention for Korea’s sovereign claims over the outcrop, when the wine debuted on the Korean market the local distributor pledged to donate all proceeds to nonprofit groups promoting Korean sovereign claims in other countries.
While both Korea and Japan point to historical documents to back up their respective claims, South Korea has occupied Dokdo/Takeshima for more than half a century. And it remains a key rallying symbol for lingering resentment over Japan's colonial occupation of the then unified Korean Peninsula in the first half of the 20th century.
RELATED: 5 top East Asian island disputes
Previous efforts to highlight Korea’s territorial claims to Dokdo/Takeshima range from what some observers view as the practical to the more extreme.
In 2010, the Korean singer Kim Jang-hoon was behind a months-long video advertisement in New York's Times Square that not only specifically proclaimed Dokdo as Korean territory but also made sure to refer to the sea in which they are located the East Sea, as opposed to the Sea of Japan.
In recent years, a series of ads taken out in major American newspapers announced a near identical message. The latest, placed as a full-page ad in The New York Times in March by Dokdo campaigner Seo Kyoung-duk and South Korean e-commerce firm Gmarket displayed the national flags of four countries – including the South Korean Taegukgi – alongside the names of four islands related to each.
In the case of the other three countries, a line connects each island with the relevant national flag – except that of South Korea and Dokdo. Readers were encouraged to connect the two, the implication being that Dokdo is Korean territory. Japan protested the ad.
In 2008, the president of the Korean Dry Cleaners Association in the US produced plastic bags emblazoned with a picture and a map of the disputed island along with the English slogans “Dokdo Island is Korean territory” and “The Japanese government must acknowledge this fact,” which were taken up by about 100 Korean dry cleaners in New York.
And the Korea Times, a leading South Korean English-language newspaper, has for several years run an international Dokdo-themed essay competition in conjunction with the Seoul-based Northeast Asian History Foundation that invariably challenges entrants to tip their hat toward Korea’s claims to the outcrop. The winner receives a $1,270 cash prize.
Still, despite the stated intentions of Dokdo wine producer Ahn and others like him, his website gently hints at what could be seen as the futility of the territorial dispute.
Without any apparent irony, it states: “For as long as we can remember, there has been much controversy over the island and the ownership of it. Instead of appreciating the beauty of Dokdo, the world has been too busy fighting over it.”
In this September 2007 file photo, a Sukhoi Superjet 100 is displayed outside the aviation factory in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Russia, about 3,900 miles east of Moscow. (Ruslan Krivobok/RIA-Novosti/AP/File)
Report: Russian intelligence suspects US hand in SuperJet crash
Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU, suspects that US-inspired industrial espionage may have caused the May 9 crash in Indonesia of a Sukhoi Superjet 100 – Russia's only hopeful entry in the civilian aviation market – according to Moscow's leading tabloid newspaper, the usually reliable and officially connected Komsomolskaya Pravda.
While most Russian aviation experts contacted today dismissed the sabotage theory, they say there is a deepening mystery about how Russia's most modern civil aircraft, with all its systems apparently functioning perfectly, came to slam into the side of a mile-high volcano during a routine demonstration flight.
"All the theories put forward so far are badly flawed, there is a shortage of hard information and there are a lot of irresponsible rumors," says Roman Gusarov, editor of Avia.ru, an online aviation journal. "I am afraid that Russia is not going to emerge from this story without taking a black eye."
RELATED – Think you know Russia? Take our quiz.
Citing an unnamed GRU general, Komsomolskaya Pravda claimed that electronic jamming of the plane's on board equipment is the most plausible explanation for how the jet, which was making a demonstration flight out of Jakarta airport with 45 people aboard, smashed into a mountainside even though an initial investigation has found that its terrain and collision avoidance systems were all functioning properly.
"We are investigating the theory that it was industrial sabotage," the GRU officer is quoted as saying. He said that Russian intelligence has long monitored the activities of US military electronic specialists at the Jakarta airport.
"We know that they have special equipment that can cut communications between an aircraft and the ground or interfere with the parameters on board," he said. "For example, the plane is flying at one altitude, but after interference from the ground onboard equipment shows another."
The investigation has so far turned up the plane's "black box" cockpit voice recorder, which shows that no system-failure alarms went off during the plane's final minutes, nor did the crew take any audible emergency action. But the aircraft's digital flight recorder, which monitors flight systems and engine performance, remains missing in the rough jungle terrain around Mount Salak, where at least seven other deadly air disasters have occurred.
Big questions
The biggest question about the crash is why the SuperJet's pilot, Alexander Yablontsev, one of Russia's most experienced test pilots, requested permission to descend amid a rainstorm in a notoriously mountainous area – and why a ground controller in Jakarta granted that permission.
"Maybe he didn't see that the plane was heading straight at the mountain. On the other hand, we don't rule out the possibility that this was deliberate industrial sabotage to drive our aircraft from the market," an unnamed official at Sukhoi, the plane's manufacturer, told Komsomolskaya Pravda. "Fortunately, we don't foresee any loss of orders [for the SuperJet]."
The SuperJet is a medium-range 100-seat airliner whose $35 million price tag makes it the ideal replacement for hundreds of aging Soviet-era planes on Russia's myriad of far-flung regional routes. It is also greatly hoped that the new plane will pull Russia's depressed and scandal-ridden aviation industry into the 21st century by succeeding on international markets against competitors like the Canadian Bombardier Inc. and the Brazilian Embraer SA.
It's not the first time Russian officials have blamed a technological disaster on foreign meddling. Earlier this year the head of the space agency Roskosmos, Vladimir Popovkin, hinted that the failure of the ambitious Phobos-Grunt probe to the moons of Mars might have been caused by US electronic jamming of the vehicle in the Earth's "radar shadow" where Russian controllers couldn't see it happening.
(Such speculations are not always necessarily wrong. In 2004 a former secretary of the Air Force and special adviser to President Ronald revealed in his book "At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War" that in the 1980s the CIA used cyber warfare to sabotage the USSR's trans-Siberian pipeline for delivering Soviet gas to Western Europe, which caused a massive "3-kiloton" blast that destroyed a huge section of the line. Some critics have labeled that account "rubbish").
Contradictory statements
Mr. Gusarov says that Sukhoi has handled the information side of the SuperJet disaster very badly.
"From the very beginning they developed this plane as if it were a secret combat jet rather than a civil airliner," he says. "Now they're putting out contradictory statements, and making all sorts of premature declarations. For instance, how can they assert that there were no system failures based on an examination of the cockpit voice recorder alone?
"Of course, all possible theories are bad. Either we have a fault with our newest and most hopeful plane, or with one of Russia's finest aircrews. So, finding a scapegoat, putting out a story about some malicious external force bent on wrecking the SuperJet is just the thing they needed."
Oleg Pantaleyev, an expert with Aviaport.ru, an online aviation news service, points out that the US does not produce this particular class of aircraft, and several foreign firms, including Boeing, have been involved in the SuperJet's development and have big stakes in its success.
"This is a difficult investigation because part of the black box is missing, and the terrain makes it very hard to retrieve all the plane's fragments," he says. "It takes time to complete a probe of this complexity, and we can't expect any hard conclusions soon.
"It's this very lack of objective information plus low professional ethics that gives rise to all these rumors. They should be ignored."
Russia claims new missile can overcome missile defenses
Within days of NATO's announcement that its European antimissile shield is now "provisionally operational," Russia has claimed to have tested a new type of intercontinental missile that can outwit the new missile defenses.
The new missile, which some Russian media said is named the "Avante-garde," was successfully fired on Wednesday from Plesetsk cosmodrome in northwestern Russia, and reportedly hit its target on the Kamchatka Peninsula, several thousand miles away, a few minutes later. The Russian Defense Ministry says the new weapon has a maximum range of about 10,000 miles and can carry a bigger payload than any previous Russian missile.
"This new intercontinental ballistic missile is intended to strengthen the capabilities of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, including its capabilities for overcoming antimissile defenses," Defense Ministry spokesman Vadim Koval told journalists.
"The missile was built with maximum use of existing components with new elements and technologies developed during the production of fifth-generation missile systems, in order to shorten its development time," he added.
Analysts say the new missile is probably a modification of the Topol-M, a modern, mobile ICBM that is well known in the West and is accounted for under the terms of the new START accord signed by US and Russian leaders two years ago. That treaty stipulates that both sides have the right to modernize their missile delivery systems as long as they remain under a ceiling of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads.
The new missile reportedly can boost into space faster than previous models thanks to a powerful new fuel, which would presumably enable it to outrun any ground-launched interceptors from NATO's European antimissile system.
The independent Interfax agency quoted a retired Russian missile commander, Gen. Viktor Yesin, as saying the new weapon was specifically designed as part of Russia's efforts to counter NATO's antimissile system, which is slated to become fully operational by 2018, as well as other regional shields being contemplated by the Pentagon.
"This is one of the technical means Russia’s political and military leadership has developed in response to America’s global system of missile defense," Yesin was quoted as saying.
Another potential Russian reaction is to deploy short range Iskander-M ground-to-ground missiles in the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad and around Russia's periphery, in order to be able to strike quickly against US missile defense systems.
Earlier this month, Russia's top general, Nikolai Makarov, even threatened to launch a preemptive strike against NATO's antimissile shield if it appears to undermine Russia's strategic nuclear deterrent.
Russian press reports suggest that the new missile is not only faster in the boost-phase than all its predecessors, but that it may also be able to maneuver during its flight in order to baffle enemy radars and dodge interceptors.
Media reports also say that a previous attempt to test the new missile on Sept. 27 failed, when it suffered an undisclosed malfunction and crashed just 10 miles from its launch site.
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Pakistani men walk by the Central Jail in Peshawar, Pakistan, Wednesday, May 23. A Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden has been sentenced to 33 years in jail. (Mohammad Sajjad/AP)
Pakistan jails doctor who helped find bin Laden: why the US may not intervene
A Pakistani tribal court has found the Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA effort to locate Osama bin Laden guilty of treason, and sentenced him to 33 years in prison.
To Pakistan, Shakil Afridi is a traitor who helped a foreign power locate and kill an enemy on its territory. To the US, Dr. Afridi is a hero who will now, apparently, spend the next 33 years of his life in prison.
The US lobbied hard with the Pakistani government to gain Afridi’s release. US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, during a February 2012 visit to Islamabad, urged Pakistani authorities to release Afridi, but Pakistan declined. Given the substantial public anger in Pakistan over the bin Laden killing – more about the US’s violation of Pakistani sovereignty than for sympathy for the man – Pakistan sealed Afridi’s fate.
Now his sentencing marks another low-water mark for the US-Pakistani relationship, and highlights how little common ground the two countries share. But expectations for each side are now so low that it’s unlikely the US is going to adopt another full-court press as seen when another US spy – Raymond Davis – faced detention in Pakistan.
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To be sure, Afridi’s Pakistani nationality also means the US isn’t going to view his detention in quite the same leave-no-man-behind terms. And the US does not have the same legal arguments of the Geneva Conventions as it did in the case of Mr. Davis.
But there’s also much less riding on the US-Pakistan relationship than even a year ago when the Davis affair erupted. NATO has managed to keep the Afghan war effort going, despite Pakistan cutting off supply lines through its territory. Then, too, trust has evaporated since the discovery of bin Laden in Pakistan and the unauthorized US raid to kill him.
Roller coaster ride
America has had a roller coaster relationship with Pakistan for years. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the US and Pakistan were as thick as thieves, funding, arming, and training Afghan and Pakistani fighters to take on the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. After the Soviets withdrew, and after Pakistan successfully tested a nuclear device, the US imposed strict military sanctions against Pakistan, and left that country with tens of thousands of former militants, thousands of politically charged Islamic seminaries, and a Pakistani economy addicted to foreign aid.
Today, the US and Pakistan have spent a decade ostensibly fighting on the same side against Islamist extremist groups – some of whom use Pakistan’s less-well-controlled corners, such as Swat and Northern Waziristan, as their bases – and yet it is not clear how much these two countries share in common anymore.
That the US military ended up recruiting Afridi, a Pakistani doctor, to masquerade as a Save the Children doctor on a child-immunization campaign to help locate bin Laden, rather than trust the intelligence it was receiving from Pakistan’s own Inter Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) speaks volumes about how far the US-Pakistani relationship had fallen.
Pakistan consistently insisted that it had no idea where bin Laden was. US intelligence agents, cell phone intercepts, and Afridi succeeded where the ISI failed, all contributed to finding bin Laden in a large home just half a mile away from a major Pakistani military academy in the town of Abbottabad.
Far from feeling apologetic, Pakistan’s military establishment cried foul, and accused the US’s acknowledged agent of treason.
Eye to eye
There is no surprise, though, that these two nations don’t see eye to eye.
America has a much broader strategic partner in South Asia in India, with whom it shares a number of parallel goals of keeping the growing economic and political power of China somewhat contained, of promoting the expansion of democracy and free markets, and of fighting against militant extremist groups. The fact that Pakistan continues to see India as its chief existential threat, with whom it continues to spar over disputed territories in Kashmir, adds to Pakistan’s sense of betrayal by the US.
But Pakistan also feels anger that the US fails to look at matters from its perspective.
The US once understood Pakistan’s challenge of holding an unwieldy collection of language groups and religious groups together as a nation, Pakistani academics say. The US once understood Islamabad’s difficulty of maintaining even the most basic sort of control over the semi-autonomous regions along the Afghan border called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. But after 9/11, the US has insisted that Pakistan launch military incursions into those FATA areas in pursuit of well-armed militant groups, and in recent years, has launched numerous drone attacks against these groups, without prior notification to Pakistan.
These drone attacks have created a tremendous blowback effect, even among liberal Pakistanis who once supported the war against radical Islamist militant groups. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, liberal and moderate Pakistanis welcomed efforts to contain terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Sipah-e-Sahaba. But after the US invaded Iraq, that support waned, and many Pakistanis adopted a Michael Moore view of the US as a superpower bent on crushing weaker Muslim states.
Today, it's hard to see how the relationship can be repaired. In the end, the US can console itself that if Afridi had been tried under Pakistani national law – not a tribal court – he could have faced the death penalty.
(L.-r.) Italy's Prime Minister Mario Monti, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and France's President Francois Hollande attend an informal EU leaders summit in Brussels May 23. European leaders will try to breathe life into their stricken economies at a summit over dinner on Wednesday, but disagreement over the issue of mutual eurozone bonds and whether they can alleviate two years of debt turmoil will dominate the gathering. (Francois Lenoir/Reuters)
Amid eurozone turmoil, Germany borrows money for free
Germany's central bank borrowed €4.5 billion ($5.7 billion) today. The interest demanded by lenders in return? Nothing, a measure of the panic in the rest of the eurozone.
“That’s a very good result for us,” said a spokesman of Germany’s Federal Finance Agency in Frankfurt, which manages the sales. “It is an impressive illustration of investors’ search for quality.”
But the first time in history the German central bank sold two-year notes to yield zero percent is evidence of how much trouble the rest of Europe is in. The free money for Germany amount to a loss for investors after inflation. Why are bankers willing to lose money on a loan to Germany? Because it isn't Greece. Or Italy. Or Spain.
Germany is not only one of the few growing European economies but its domestic finances are rock solid, unlike its eurozone peers. Spain and Italy are paying more than six percent to borrow, because investors fear they'll default. European bankers, worried about ending up holding worthless paper, have few good options but the Bundesbank.
Seven percent is perceived as the threshold beyond which borrowing becomes unsustainable – Greece, Portugal and Ireland all asked the European Union and International Monetary Fund for financial aid after their borrowing costs breached that threshold.
The zero-interest sale reflects investors' interest in "a return of their money over a return on their money," Rabobank rate strategist Richard McGuire told Reuters.
High interest rates are exacerbating the economic problems in southern Europe. Greece, now in its fifth year of recession, seems more and more likely to leave the eurozone. Even after negotiating a far-reaching debt reduction with private investors earlier this year, the country won’t be able to service the remaining debt. Reuters quoted two Eurogroup officials today confirming that member states are being asked to prepare individual contingency plans for the eventuality of a Greek exit.
While Germany made its record-breaking bond sale, EU leaders prepared for yet another crisis summit. Tonight they are convening for an informal meeting in Brussels to discuss measures to stimulate economic growth in the eurozone. The meeting is seen as the first battle between German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who strictly objects to growth programs financed through additional borrowing, and the new French president, Francois Hollande, unofficial spokesman for the growing group of leaders who advocate credit-based stimulus plans.
Before the meeting, Germany’s deputy finance minister, Thomas Steffen, rejected renewed calls for the introduction of eurobonds – debt securities issued by the eurozone as a whole which in effect would mean that Greece could borrow at the same rate as Germany.
“We would sign up for 100 percent liability for new debt in the euro area,” Steffen said in Berlin today. “We can’t do this, we’re not strong enough economically.”
The NATO Missile Defense exhibit stands near the NATO summit media center at The McCormick Place, Friday, May 18, in Chicago. (Kiichiro Sato/AP)
NATO: European missile shield 'provisionally operational'
At its weekend summit in Chicago, NATO announced that the first phase of its controversial European missile defense shield has become "provisionally operational," news that will not be received well in Moscow.
If there is any issue that threatens to derail the fragile East-West détente that's held since President Obama set out to reverse the mini-cold war that prevailed under George W. Bush, it's the increasingly acrimonious dispute over missile defense.
Earlier this month Russia's top general, Nikolai Makarov, went so far as to suggest that his forces might launch a preemptive strike against NATO missile defense emplacements in Central Europe if they were perceived to threaten Russia's strategic nuclear deterrent.
But NATO, which has made the issue a litmus test of alliance unity, has remained unmoved by Russian bombast on the subject and is clearly moving forward with the project, which is planned to reach full operational capability by 2020.
"This is the first step towards our long-term goal of providing full coverage and protection for all NATO European populations, territory, and forces. Our system will link together missile defense assets from different Allies – satellites, ships, radars, and interceptors – under NATO command and control," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told the summit on Sunday. "It will allow us to defend against threats from outside the Euro-Atlantic area," he added.
Buried deep inside NATO's Chicago Summit Declaration is the strongest political statement yet offered by the alliance in hopes of mollifying Russian worries: "NATO missile defense is not directed against Russia and will not undermine Russia’s strategic deterrence capabilities," it says. "While regretting recurrent Russian statements on possible measures directed against NATO’s missile defense system, we welcome Russia's willingness to continue dialogue with the purpose of finding an agreement on the future framework for missile defense cooperation."
While that statement may be perceived in Moscow as progress, it falls far short of the legally binding written pledge that the Kremlin has demanded.
"We've heard this before," says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a leading Moscow-based foreign-policy journal. "The thing is, when the Americans say their missile defense plans are not directed against Russia, they're telling the truth. It's against everybody. Since Ronald Reagan first floated the idea, missile defense has been seen as a way to protect the US against any and every possible missile threat. But Russia is the main country whose national security is based on strategic nuclear deterrence, in a balance with US forces. It cannot help but concern us directly."
At cross-purposes
The dispute looks almost impossible to resolve, in part because both sides are talking at cross-purposes, and the threats each is concerned about remain theoretical future possibilities rather than immediate realities that might be negotiated over.
NATO claims it needs a shield to defend against hypothetical rogue missile strikes from Iran or North Korea – a threat that does not presently exist – while Moscow complains that the shield currently being installed in Europe might undercut Russia's strategic edge in its later stages, almost a decade hence.
"The paradox of this debate over missile defense is that it's completely disconnected from real issues on both sides," says Mr. Lukyanov. "The actual military issues they're both talking about are countering virtual threats, not real ones. But in political terms it's about the basis of trust, and it's causing trouble right now."
On the Russian side, the missile defense controversy helps gin up domestic support for newly inaugurated President Vladimir Putin's sweeping rearmament plans, which may be popular in Russia's conservative hinterland where nostalgia for USSR-era superpower status remains strong, but are not necessarily the wisest economic priority for Russia at this time.
"At this juncture of history, for the first time, Russia faces no significant threat whatsoever, from any direction. So there needs to be a threat of some sort to talk about," says Sergei Karaganov, head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policies, a leading Moscow think tank.
But the fractious dialogue over missile defense has made a bad situation worse and, he adds, Western leaders are not addressing the legitimate concerns of Russian military leaders in a forthright manner.
"It's all explained as if it's a counter to this nonexistent Iranian threat," which may be addressed by other means in coming days and months, Mr. Karaganov says. "These are either lies, or they are cover for other goals. We are simply not talking openly or realistically about the missile defense issue, and this drags down the level of trust."
Pushing Russia toward China?
It could also be pushing Russia into what some observers are describing as a possible foreign-policy pivot toward China and the East under its newly returned Kremlin leader, Mr. Putin. Speculation on this theme has been spiking since Putin announced that he would skip last Friday's Group of Eight summit at Camp David and will instead make his first foreign visits to Belarus and China in the next couple of weeks.
Though it has been little remarked in coverage of the issue, Moscow and Beijing see eye to eye on missile defense, says Karaganov.
"We've been having constant conversations with our Chinese colleagues about this, and they have the same point of view as us," he says. "They haven't spoken up much about it, but they may start to do so."
NATO summit: The Taliban's view
Hours before the start of a major NATO summit in Chicago, the Taliban's main spokesman released a lengthy statement signaling the insurgency was open to a political solution to the conflict, but accused NATO of "wavering in their stance" on negotiations.
"The Islamic Emirate has left all military and political doors open," read the statement, written in English and attributed to spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. "[H]owever the invaders are utilizing a one step forward, two steps backwards tactic. They are conjuring artificial excuses to prolong the occupation of Afghanistan, are wavering in their stance and do not seem to have a clear strategy for a political solution."
Until NATO stops wavering, the statement continues, the Taliban considers the coalition's calls for talks to be "meaningless."
It was the Taliban who suspended negotiations in March following the burning of the Quran on a US base and a shooting spree by a US soldier. But the United States and NATO have continued to talk of seeking a negotiated settlement to the 11-year conflict.
Most recently, President Obama backed negotiating on a visit earlier this month to Afghanistan. However, he also outlined a new strategic pact with the US-backed government in Kabul that would let some American soldiers stay in Afghanistan past 2014 until 2024.
Obama's two-pronged message of peace talks but prolonged troop presence unsettled what appeared to be a Taliban strategy of running out the clock on the US withdrawal target of 2014. The Taliban's statement today suggests the insurgency is irked by the move to "prolong the occupation."
Whether Mr. Obama's gambit pushes the Taliban to publicly return to negotiations remains to be seen. While today's statement signaled openness again to negotiations, it also expressed doubts about NATO's sincerity in wanting to leave.
"The foreigners should forgo prolonging and complicating the Afghan issue for their colonialist objectives," the statement reads.
It goes on to remind NATO that, despite the 2024 extension, there are domestic pressures to wrap up the war soon. The statement cites a recent CBS News/New York Times poll in which 69 percent of respondents said the US shouldn't be involved in Afghanistan. Indeed, Monitor polling on the new US-Afghanistan strategic pact found nearly two-thirds of Americans reject the broad outlines of the deal.
The Taliban statement also reiterated the group's stance that they were not involved in the 9/11 attacks and will not allow Afghan soil to be used to launch attacks on other countries.
"The Islamic Emirate once again declares that it holds no agenda of harming anyone nor will it let anyone harm other countries from the soil of Afghanistan hence there is no reason for the occupying countries including America to continue the occupation of Afghanistan under the pretext of safeguarding its own security," the statement reads.
NATO helped overthrow the Taliban government in 2001 after the regime failed to hand over Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In this May 2 file photo, blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng (c.) holds hands with US Ambassador to China, Gary Locke, at a hospital in Beijing. (U.S. Embassy Beijing Press Office/AP)
Two propaganda flops in less than two weeks: Is Beijing losing its touch?
The official Chinese media really have it in for US Ambassador Gary Locke. But now their angry attacks against him are backfiring.
Ever since he arrived here last August, Mr. Locke’s image as a “regular guy” has won widespread admiration from Chinese bloggers and, it seems, irked the authorities.
The way he tried to get a discount at Starbucks with a coupon en route to Beijing, and carried his own backpack, is the polar opposite of the way aloof and pampered Chinese officials behave. So when Chinese citizens praise him, by implication they are criticizing their own leaders.
Lashing out at the US ambassador earlier this month for his role in protecting blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng, the Beijing Daily published a strongly worded criticism of his “little tricks.”
But readers’ reactions to the editorial were so negative that within hours “Beijing Daily” was a banned search word on the Chinese Internet, effectively closing down social media debate on the article.
That setback does not appear to have chastened Beijing Daily, however, and today the paper put its foot in it again.
Editors used the daily’s account on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, to post a snide request, responding to another post about Locke’s wealth.
“Will Gary Locke please disclose his personal assets?” it asked.
The question was, perhaps, conceived as a sideways commentary on the lively debate currently underway in China about the need for top officials here – often accused of corruption – to disclose their wealth.
But of course, the editors simply revealed their ignorance. As scornful readers quickly informed them, Locke HAS disclosed his personal assets, just like every other member of the US government. (According to his 2010 declaration, he is worth between $1,356,025 and $7,615,999, which makes him the sixth richest person in the executive branch.)
“Of course Gary Locke’s personal assets have been disclosed,” read one comment on the Beijing Daily post. “And what about the assets of those imperial officials [of ours]?
Within hours, Beijing Daily’s original post and all comments on it had been deleted from Sina Weibo, according to David Bandurski of Hong Kong University’s China Media Project, who tracked the incident in real time.
Two propaganda flops in less than two weeks: Beijing Daily is losing its touch.
Seattle skier falls 160 feet into Canadian crevasse, rescued unscathed (+video)
Nikolai Popov was back country skiing, alone, this past Friday on Decker Mountain, about five miles from Whistler, British Columbia.
He knew the risks, and knew enough to watch for crevasses.
"I saw that there was a little crack and started probing with a pole to see where the crevasse is," Popov told CTV News. "Just as I was doing that, the whole thing collapsed under me and I found myself in a very nasty hole, it was quite deep."
In fact, it was about 50 meters (164 feet) deep.
Popov wasn't hurt in the fall. But he sat there in the deep crevasse waiting for two hours before rescuers arrived. It might have been longer if another skier hadn't noticed that Popov was suddenly no longer behind him.
Neither Popov nor the other skier had a cell phone. The good Samaritan skied to where he could alert a search and rescue team. A helicopter brought in a rescue team and Popov was pulled out of the crevasse.
Popov's incident is a cautionary tale: Don't ski alone and bring a rope in this kind of terrain, under these conditions.
"I wouldn't recommend touring alone," said Daren Romano with Whistler Search and Rescue. "Be prepared for self-rescue if you're going with a party. Take some ropes with you."
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Antonio Manfredi (l.) director of the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, and Italian artist Rosaria Matarese burn one of Matarese's creations in front of the museum, near Naples, Italy, Wednesday, April 18. Manfredi is burning paintings to protest a shortage of funds. Italy's museums have been strapped for funds for decades, but art world officials say the economic crisis has aggravated the plight. (Franco Castano/AP)
Italian museum sets its art on fire to protest lack of government funding
Is a “Fahrenheit 451”-style fire the solution for Italy’s increasingly debt-ridden museums?
Perhaps not, but it’s certainly a powerful wakeup call to a government and populace busier worrying about the euro crisis and unemployment statistics.
So says Antonio Manfredi, the director of the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum (CAM), which is located in a small town near Naples, Italy. A little less than a month ago, Mr. Manfredi started to burn the gallery’s collection piece by piece, saying that he didn't have the funds for upkeep. “Our artworks will end up being destroyed anyway, since institutions are not sustaining us,” he told Italian daily Corriere della Sera before starting the protest.
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The first to go was “Promenade,” a canvas by French artist Severine Bourguignon, who approved of the protest and followed it on Skype. “I hope that this action will help the Italian government reconsider CAM's situation,” she wrote in The Guardian. “Without funds, CAM will be closed and its collection will effectively cease to exist.”
Bourguignon’s piece was followed by many others, as meticulously recorded on CAM’s Facebook page.
Some contended that the protest is only the provocative performance of an attention-seeking artist – Manfredi is himself a painter, sculptor, and photographer – and that because CAM is not technically a public museum, the government doesn't have to support it (although most private museums also receive some funding from the Ministry of Culture).
But there is no doubt that Italy’s culture sector has been hit hard by cuts because of the economic crisis. The Italian daily Republica reported that between 2010 and 2011 the Ministry of Culture’s funding saw a 14.5 percent decrease, dropping from 1.7 million ($2.2 million) to 1.5 million euros.
Despite its world-class cultural wealth, Italy invests in the culture sector less than other countries. According to a government report, in 2010 the Ministry of Culture received only 0.21 percent of the country’s budget (compared, for instance, to 1 percent in France). It’s no surprise then that several prestigious institutions are going through a rough time.
MAXXI, Rome’s contemporary museum, which opened only two years ago, has predicted losses of 11 million euros for 2012 through 2014. Naples’s and Parlermo’s contemporary art museums are also in deep financial trouble.
In the meantime, some organizations representing workers in the culture sector are protesting against low wages and the lack of adequate benefits. In a letter recently published in Corriere della Sera, they stressed the importance of what they do, which they say goes well beyond the workplace. “We produce intangible but necessary goods on a daily basis: intelligence, relations, social welfare,” they wrote.
Investing in culture is also the recipe called for by renowned writer Dacia Maraini, who in a recent trip to the United States was surprised by the interest Americans still have in Italian culture and history. “Shouldn’t we focus obstinately on what we can do best instead of competing with China in producing cheap jeans?” Maraini recently wrote in Corriere della Sera.
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