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SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2017 Adelle Chua, Editor
Opinion
Joyce Pangco Pañares, Issue Editor
mst.daydesk@gmail.com
NO MORE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
EDITORIAL
By Leonid Bershidsky A NEW report by Bloomberg News about Russia being suspected of recently hacking a dozen US power plants, including a nuclear one, is far more serious than any possible attempt to influence an election. It could be a sign of something even scarier: two military superpowers stepping up a cyberwar in the shadows and without rules of engagement that protect civilians from other kinds of warfare. Attacks on power grids have a potential for mass destruction. A temporary power outage doesn’t appear to be all that threatening compared with the use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but blackouts kill people even when they don’t last long. During the East Coast blackout of 2003, some power was restored within seven hours, and still dozens of deaths were ascribed to the event. A lasting power grid breakdown could be an apocalyptic scenario, with hospitals and other critical services running out of fuel for reserve generators and unable to obtain it easily; traffic, food and water supplies disrupted; urban life plunged into chaos. And that’s before we even think of nuclear power plants getting out of control. The US Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation are stressing that “there is no indication of a threat to public safety, as any potential impact appears to be limited to administrative and business networks.” But that’s a bold statement, given that a 2015 report by the think tank Chatham House said this about the security of civilian nuclear facilities: There is a pervading myth that nuclear facilities are ‘air gapped’—or completely isolated from the public internet—and that this protects them from cyber attack. Yet not only can air gaps be breached with nothing more than a flash drive (as in the case of Stuxnet), but the commercial benefits of internet connectivity mean that nuclear facilities may now have virtual private networks and other connections installed, sometimes undocumented or forgotten by contractors and other legitimate third-party operators. Stuxnet was the malware the US used in its most successful hacking operation to date, the crippling 2010 attack on the Iranian nuclear program. It’s openly celebrated now as an example of what the US can do to an adversary’s infrastructure if it sets its mind to it. Paranoid security professionals in Russia and elsewhere have long worried about factoryinstalled backdoors in Americanmade software and equipment. National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden revealed a range of such physical and software-based implants. If Russia is behind the power plant hacks, they could very well be responding to US threats to deploy “implants” in important Russian networks. According to a recent Washington Post report, then President Barack Obama ordered the use of implants on Russian networks that would cause “pain and discomfort if they were disrupted.” Russia appears to be eager to
THINK AGAIN
“CONSULTANT” is a loaded word.
It implies expertise in any given field. A consultant is presumed to have a wealth of theoretical and practical knowledge in the industry, whatever that is. A graduate or post-degree is not necessary, or enough. Years of experience in dealing with real-life situations are equally important, if not more. Because of the nature of the engagement, consultancy also presupposes a high commanding price. It’s some sort of return on the investment the person has made on education and time specializing in the field. Valuable things come with great price, and since we cannot get those from just anyone, we are willing to pay. It also implies autonomy. A consultant is so good he or she cannot be “owned” or employed by any single entity. The consultant’s opinion carries so much weight and integrity. The air of independence guarantees that the opinion is not influenced in any way by affiliation with a person or group. Consultants are expected to “tell it like it is.” Consultancy points to direct access to the person—usually a well-placed official with a lot of power but not as much expertise—needing the services. The relationship bypasses layers upon layers of bureaucracy. At any time or day, the personality can call the consultant and ask for input regarding the subject matter—no more appointments, or security clearances, or cumbersome paperwork. Finally, because of the nature of relationship between the one who consults and the one who is consulted, the latter enjoys absolute discretion on whose services to tap. Nobody can tell the official, for instance, that the consultant has a less-than-clean reputation, or that the qualifications for expertise do not meet usual standards. Indeed, only the official can say how much good the consultant is bringing him, even how many he needs to employ. And at the first instance the official is not pleased with the consultant, he or she can let go, at once. We bring these up because consultancies are often convenient ways for private individuals to influence public policy and get paid with taxpayers’ money without the accompanying accountability that public officials are measured against. These days, for instance, there are a lot of social media consultants, not because they have any real or practical expertise but simply because they have enough following to be deemed influencers—at least to those who have access to the internet. All they have are vociferous online voices or controversial statements that generate traffic, likes, comments or shares. Whether the stories are true or their arguments are fair and valid is immaterial. Some of these popular online presences get appointed to government— say, for instance, assistant secretary for the communications department. Mocha Uson has been able to maximize the gains from her blog and other social media accounts where she has defended the Duterte campaign, and later on the Duterte administration. Out of gratitude, the President appointed her to her post where she said her mandate was to fight fake news. Alas, it was difficult to draw the line between her online persona and her official voice, so that her boss suggested they would engage editors to moderate her work. That they would ever dream up superfluous jobs is bad enough. Worse, we wonder, where will the funds for these editorial consultants be sourced? Just recently, another blogger was appointed consultant by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, for its communication efforts with overseas Filipino workers. The man behind the site “Thinking Pinoy” has promised not to be adversarial in carrying out his work—although, again, it is not clear if he has been oriented on the delineations between his job and his personal advocacies, which he espouses so passionately in his online space. We do not know, too, whether he appreciates that the secretary he is supposed to advise is no longer working as a politician, but as a diplomat, and should not be given to incendiary statements or pick up a fight with anybody who disagrees with him. The country’s top diplomat’s job is best carried out with hard facts, solid argument and a cool head. Anything he says or does binds the country in the eyes of the international community. His advisers need to be reminded of this every so often.
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WRITERS FROM THE VISAYAS, MINDANAO HAVE NEW PLATFORM POP GOES THE WORLD JENNY ORTUOSTE
EVERY few months or so I do a listing of the latest literary events that should prove of interest to readers and writers of Philippine literature. Here are details about a call for submissions from Visayan and
Mindanaoan writers, an upcoming writers’ workshop, and a children’s book summit. *** Payag Habagatan (Southern Hut), an inaugural literary home for
emerging voices from the southern Philippines, is now accepting poems, short stories (both literary and genre fiction), flash narratives, creative nonfiction/literary essays (memoirs, personal essays, travel writing, and
other hybridized forms), and critical essays in English and/or in Binisaya languages that speak of a sense of place and placelessness. Contributors must be emerging writers born or based in the Visayas Turn to B2
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From B1
demonstrate—without admitting it—that it has a similar capability. There’s circumstantial evidence that it has messed with the Ukrainian power grid, causing two brief blackouts. The current attacks on the US power plants can only loosely be attributed to any state agents, let alone to Russia, but they reportedly match the profile of earlier attacks by a hacker group known as Energetic Bear, which has targeted energy companies in Russia’s adversary nations. I’ve long written that I consider the story of Russian meddling in last year’s US presidential election overblown. If the actual voting and tabulation weren’t affected—which no one appears to doubt—Americans made up their own minds how to vote; propaganda and the release of stolen emails, Russian or not, are par for the course in election campaigns. Only strong evidence of something like collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian intelligence services could make this a national security problem. Attacks on civilian services, and especially on nuclear plants, are a different matter. They are unambiguous acts of war. It is known that the US is capable of them, and it would stand to reason that Russia wouldn’t let itself be outdone. Nor would China and, given that cyberweapons are relatively cheap to develop, smaller players such as Israel or North Korea. And yet there are no rules of engagement for countries that have the capability to shut off each other’s power grids or, say, traffic light systems. There’s no cyberwar equivalent of the Geneva and Hague conventions, which set rules for the treatment of civilians and ban certain kinds of cruel weapons. In the so-called Tallinn Manual, originally published in 2013, a group of experts working for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization attempted to lay down some rules, warning against attacks on critical infrastructure. It specifically named hospitals and nuclear power plants as facilities that should be out of bounds. But the manual is not even an official Nato document. In February, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2341 calling on states to arm themselves against terrorist attacks on critical infrastructure. But what about such attacks initiated by other governments, not terror groups? It’s time there were some internationally recognized principles that applied to them, defining, for example, what constitutes an attack, what response is permissible, and what can and cannot be done to civilian networks. It would be helpful to establish some international attribution mechanism; a nation’s intelligence services cannot be trusted to make an assessment that would be used to justify international sanctions. Conventions have often been broken in wartime. Some countries still make and use chemical and biological weapons, even if they won’t openly admit it. Some militaries mistreat prisoners and kill civilians. But rules of engagement are still useful: Most belligerent parties aim to act honorably and avoid being branded as war criminals. Official cyberwar rules wouldn’t stop attacks, but they would define unacceptable behavior for all concerned. These rules are necessary before the US, Russia and China go after each other with all they’ve got, which is more than we know. Bloomberg
WRITERS... From B1 and Mindanao. This soon-to-be launched online and free-access literary journal comes from the necessity to serve as a critical, counter-canonical platform to the hegemony of mainstream gatekeeping institutions, assert multifaceted constructs of identity in the literatures from the southern Philippines, and abolish centerperiphery orientations in the “national” literary landscape. Submissions, either previously published or unpublished, may be any of the following: one poem (not more than 70 lines each); one flash narrative, i.e. flash fiction and flash nonfiction (500-1000 words); one short story (2,500-4,000 words); or one literary essay/creative nonfiction (2,500-4,000 words). Critical essays about works and writers from the Visayas and
THERE IS A WAY FORWARD ON NORTH KOREA BUT IS TRUMP UP TO IT? By Jon Finer PERSUADING a dangerous country to abandon its ambition for nuclear weapons is akin to a two-horse race. In one lane is the adversary (say, North Korea) galloping ahead as quickly as possible toward ever greater levels of destructive capacity. In the other is the rest of the world (or whatever coalition of responsible nations can be cobbled together), using carrots and sticks to compel the adversary to slow, stop and ultimately reverse its course. The finish line (you could call it a red line) varies from case to case. On Iran, the President Barack Obama’s administration vowed to deny the regime even one nuclear weapon—and used years of relentless pressure, the threat of military action, and eventually a timely diplomatic opening to ensure that outcome for the foreseeable future. North Korea has been a different story entirely. Pyongyang has sprinted through a series of ever-more troubling finish lines for decades, starting before it possessed nuclear weapon or a sophisticated missile program. Today it has both. Now Kim Jong Un has crossed the most menacing threshold yet by successfully testing what experts believe was an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching US territory. This leaves the planet’s most unpredictable nation on the cusp of being able to hit the US homeland with the most powerful weapons known to man. Once North Korea demonstrates it can miniaturize a nuclear warhead to fit on the missile, its quest will be complete. In other words, decades of US policy toward North Korea—which has amounted to far less pressure than was placed on Iran, despite a far greater threat— have now, definitively, failed. Predictably, the news left Washington abuzz with talk of options, the only apparent consensus being that none of them is likely to work. Most center on China, which is responsible for as much as 90 percent of North Korea’s economic activity. But because Beijing worries more about the collapse of its ally than about missiles that aren’t pointed in its direction, it has declined to use enough leverage. One proposal that may be worth a shot would have Beijing, rather than the United States, pay off North Korea for restraining its program, and subject China to US sanctions if it doesn’t deliver. The problem with such plans is that they may be years too late. North Korea is on the brink of achieving its ultimate goals, leaving the US with one
major policy question that leads to two basic and unpalatable options. The policy question, which is harder than it sounds, is whether we can live with a North Korea that can strike our territory with a nuclear tipped missile. The easy answer—which virtually every prior administration has given, and which President Donald Trump has tweeted—is no. The policy option that flows from that answer is to launch a pre-emptive military strike against North Korea, perhaps conducted, according to one recent description, in two phases: first take out as much nuclear infrastructure as possible, coupled with a clear message that any significant retaliation—against US forces in the region, against South Korea, against Japan, against US territory—will mean the end of the Kim regime. The problem with this option is that, with limited intelligence, the US cannot be sure it will eliminate all of North Korea’s weapons and long-range missiles. And rather than be restrained, Pyongyang, faced with an existential threat, will almost certainly unleash its arsenal of artillery, missiles and chemical and biological weapons sitting just 35 miles from Seoul, a city of more than 10 million, leading to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of deaths, including many Americans. This reality leads many analysts, grudgingly but rationally, to believe that yes, given the alternative, Americans should prefer to live with a nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. But this road is also not as simple as it sounds. It is, in effect, a high-stakes bet on the fundamental rationality of a leader who often behaves as if he is anything but. This is, after all, a man who boasts of turning the US into a “sea of fire,” runs the planet’s most brutal gulag, and routinely assassinates members of his own family. But since the best explanation for why Kim wants nuclear weapons in the first place is to ensure the survival of his regime, it stands to reason that he will not take an action that he knows will end it, as well as his life. The problem is that even a small chance that this view is wrong is incredibly unsettling. The Trump administration will likely face this horrible choice sooner rather than later. In the meantime, the most prudent course is to prepare for failure, while taking a last, genuine shot at avoiding disaster by accelerating both carrots and sticks. Preparing for failure means strengthening our deterrent, and communicating in a format more serious than a tweet, that if Pyongyang moves
toward actually using a nuclear weapon, we will end the regime. It means improving our ability to target North Korea’s nuclear sites, including elusive targets like mobile launchers. It means reassuring our allies, Japan and South Korea, in part to avoid any inclination to pursue nuclear weapons of their own. And it means bolstering our missile defences—a technological challenge experts likened to “hitting a bullet with a bullet”—which remain imperfect despite billions of dollars invested. It also means a significant escalation of sanctions pressure, including against Chinese entities that do business with the North. These so-called “secondary sanctions,” which the US effectively employed on Iran, will cause real friction with China, and could lead to blowback on other issues. But at this point, there should be no higher priority for this relationship. Of course, pressure alone will not be enough. China is more likely to play ball, and North Korea more likely to consider a new path, if there is a diplomatic off-ramp from the current road to confrontation. Therefore, before resorting to war, or resigning ourselves to live indefinitely under nuclear threat, the US should offer direct negotiations with Pyongyang, even as the pressure increases, and consider uncomfortable incentives like a guarantee against regime change by force, massive economic assistance, and temporarily reducing military exercises in the region, in exchange for North Korea freezing and eventually rolling back its program. It may also mean contemplating an outcome short of full denuclearization by the North, which is longstanding US policy. Critics of such reversible concessions are correct that they have avoided rewarding bad behavior—but, meanwhile, the threat we face, and available options, have only grown worse. The president should also reconsider his rhetoric. His comments on North Korea thus far have been limited to cryptic jabs at China, and warnings that lack credibility (let alone specificity). The president should level with the American people about the terrible choices we face. Calibrating such a message to inform and not terrify people would be difficult even for a far more disciplined administration. But in a democracy, at the darkest times, a leader should prepare the public for what may be to come, rather than provide a false sense of security and hollow threats. Unlike many of the self-inflicted crises generated since January, this one Trump can genuinely assert is not his fault. But he will still own whatever consequences flow from it. Bloomberg
HAVING AN AFFAIR IS GOING OUT OF STYLE By Megan McArdle SENATOR Ben Sasse recently observed, apropos of Rousseau’s “Emile,” that it “turned out sex was really similar most centuries.” Sex is the cornerstone of human evolution, and evolution is an inherently conservative institution, killing far more innovations than it allows to thrive. So it would hardly be surprising if we humans stayed with the same basic standbys in bed. Hardly surprising, either, that this assumption is widespread in both speculative and historical fiction. Open a historical novel, and you’ll find characters who would, sexually speaking, not have much difficulty fitting into the 21st century dating scene. Authors usually pay lip service to the era’s taboos, and sometimes use them as plot devices. But even there, the assumption is that what is being suppressed, or happening on the sly, is pretty much the same as what 21st century Americans enjoy, or wish they were enjoying. Humans have been having sex for millions of years. How different could it have been? Quite, argues sociologist Gabriel Rossman. (The link is frank, but not prurient.) Ask an anthropologist, or a classicist, just how different it can be. Even things that look superficially similar—Greek tolerance toward homosexuality, for example—turn out upon closer examination to have been
Mindanao (1,500-4,000 words in the MLA format) are also welcome. All prose submissions should be in Times New Roman font size 12, double spaced, in MS Word format. For previously published works, indicate publications where these have appeared. Copyright of the works remains with the authors. Send manuscripts as email attachments to payaghabagatan@ gmail.com together with the author’s full name, email address, mobile number, home address, and a short bionote in the email’s body. Submissions are welcome all throughout the year. *** The University of the Philippines’ Likhaan: Institute of Creative Writing is now accepting applications for the second Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio Writers Workshop. Twelve fellows will be accepted, six writers in English and six in
quite different. It wasn’t what we call “homosexuality”—neither the social nor the physical activity resemble a modern gay couple all that closely. I will leave the frank discussion to Professor Rossman. But a couple of less … er … colorful examples may suffice to illustrate just how culturally and time specific sex actually is. Take kissing. Pretty basic, yes? We might imagine that the cultural rules for when people kiss would vary, as indeed they do in our own culture, where very orthodox religious groups proscribe it before marriage, and libertines kiss strangers on national television. But it’s hard to imagine that the activity itself really varies all that much. Except it does. For starters, a whole lot of cultures don’t kiss, at least romantically. It isn’t necessarily proscribed; they just don’t do it. The idea that kissing is a foundation for further sexual activity is to us so natural that it rarely occurs to any of us to question it, and yet, this is apparently a learned behavior, not an instinctive one, because in large cultural areas it is seen as weird and doesn’t happen. (And so it is, if you think about it. If you enjoy kissing, I recommend not thinking about it very hard.) Is sex the same, without the kiss? In some aspects, obviously. And yet try to imagine the West’s romantic literature, its poetry, its art and film, without the
Filipino. Application is open both to published and unpublished writers who are between 18 and 35 years old as of Aug. 15, 2017. The workshop is set for Oct. 6 to 9, 2017. Successful applicants will receive a modest stipend, as well as board and lodging at the workshop venue in Quezon City. This year’s focus is on young adult literature. This refers to work written specifically for a teenage audience. A work in this genre usually has a young protagonist and presents that young person dealing with issues that other young people face (for example: belonging, falling in love, or deciding what to do in the future). Works may also tackle issues that young people are afraid they may have to face (ex., violence, drug dependency, alcoholism, being alone, death of a loved one, pregnancy, or the separation of parents). Young adult literature incorporating speculative elements
kiss. The result feels different not just in degree, but in kind. Now consider extramarital sex. On first glance, that seems to be a steady though hardly ubiquitous activity. As Nicholas Wolfinger notes, over the last 30 years of the General Social Survey, attitudes toward extramarital sex seem to have held fairly steady, as has the amount of extramarital sex (with about 15 percent answering yes to the question “Have you ever had sex with someone other than your husband or wife while you were married?”). And yet, when you peer closer at the data, it turns out that extramarital sex is changing before our very eyes. While the overall rate of people reporting extramarital flings is the same, the demographics of the people who report the adultery are changing dramatically. And not necessarily in the direction you might think. The millennials, with their Tinder and their sexting and their Godknows-what-they-get-up-to-on-thoseinterwebs, are not driving this trend. It’s the baby boomers, with their Jimi Hendrix box sets and their Viagra prescriptions and their dog-eared copy of “The Joy of Sex” that they thought they’d lost four moves ago. People under the age of 55 are actually having markedly less extramarital sex than people in that age group did in the 1990s. But people over the age of 55 are busy making up for their missed
action. This kind of survey data can’t tell us exactly why folks over the age of 55 are having more extramarital sex than ever, while those under that age are having less. Some of it is probably age effects: People get bored with their marriage, or the couple develops relationship problems or sexual problems. But Wolfinger notes that some of it also seems to be cohort effects. The boomers came of age in the era of peak sexual libertinism, and they are carrying that peak with them as they age through the demographic charts. Younger generations, meanwhile, marry later (which may explain some, though not all, of the skew), and when they get married, they seem to stay faithful. We don’t have to ask whether sex has changed over the centuries; we are watching it do so before our very eyes. Some things about sex remain constant, of course. Mechanically, for one. Culturally, people have always used it for procreation, recreation, affection and a medium of exchange to fulfill other needs. They probably always will. But the details, it turns out, can differ wildly, and importantly— limiting what relationships we have, and how those relationships progress. With sex, as with many things: the past really is another country, and the future a land unknown. Bloomberg
are also welcome. Entries must be two unpublished stories (in English or Filipino, but not a combination of both) with a length of 3,000 to 10,000 words per story; a suite of three to five poems; or a one-act play. The portfolio must be accompanied by a short bionote, not more than 150 words, and an author’s photo. The author’s name must not appear anywhere on the submitted work. Email the complete portfolio to albw.workshop@gmail.com no later than July 21, 2017. For more information, contact landline 981-8500 (loc. 2117) and look for Isa Lorenzo, or email albw. workshop@gmail.com. *** The National Book Development Board (NBDB) and the Philippine Board on Books for Young People (PBBY) are organizing the Philippine Children’s Book Summit in celebration of National Children’s
Book Day. This year’s summit, themed “Laging Bago ang Mundo ng Libro,” will be held on July 22, 2017, at GT Toyota Asian Center, University of the PhilippinesDiliman from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. The biennial literary summit aims to create a platform for discourse on the different issues of creating and promoting children’s content in the country. It is open to teachers, educators, students, readers, children’s literature enthusiasts, and aspiring artists and writers. Visit booksphilippines.gov.ph and the NBDB and PBBY Facebook pages for the program and more information. Admission to the event is free. Register at ncbdph@gmail. com. Dr. Ortuoste is a Californiabased writer. Follow her on Facebook: Jenny Ortuoste, Twitter: @jennyortuoste, Instagram: @ jensdecember, @artuoste
World TEN HURT IN SPANISH BULL RUNNING FEST PAMPELUNE, Spain—Ten people were hurt Saturday in Spain’s annual San Fermin bull running fiesta in Pamplona, regional government sources said. Five Americans, three Spaniards and two French visitors, all males, required treatment after joining hundreds of intrepid participants in the second running of the bulls through Pamplona’s narrow streets this week. Two US visitors aged 22 and 35 were gored, the younger man seriously. The eight others hurt suffered bruising and grazing after tumbling on cobbled stones left slippery by rain. Television pictures showed one man caught on the horns of a bull, being dragged several meters before being trampled on a bend along the 800-meter course. Red Cross personnel said they treated 77 people in all for assorted minor injuries after the race. San Fermin, immortalised by Ernest Hemingway in his 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises,” attracts hundreds of thousands of visiors from around the world. The race lasted four minutes – about a minute longer than usual – after one of the six bulls caused brief confusion by turning around at one point. Fifteen people have died at San Fermin since 1911, with the last fatality occurring in 2009. Last year, 87 were hurt, of which 12 were gored. AFP
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SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2017 mst.daydesk@gmail.com
MOSUL: ‘GRAVEYARD’ OF FOREIGN JIHADISTS M
osul, Iraq—The decaying bodies of foreign jihadists are piling up among the ruins of Mosul where the last few dozen Islamic State group fighters are mounting a desperate last stand. More than three quarters of the remaining jihadists in Mosul are foreigners, according to Iraqi commanders who have reported a spike in suicide attacks as anti-IS forces close in on the Old City. “They never surrender,” said General Abdel Ghani al-Assadi, a commander in Iraq’s elite CounterTerrorism Service. “Old Mosul will be their graveyard.” It was in Mosul in July 2014 that IS supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
made his only public appearance, to urge Muslims worldwide to move to his “caliphate,” proclaimed less than a week earlier, straddling Iraq and Syria. Thousands of foreigners responded to his call. According to Iraqi police and army commanders, most of the foreign IS fighters still in Mosul in recent months came from Russia, particularly Chechnya, and other former Soviet bloc
countries, as well as various Arab states. Then come Muslims from Asia —Afghans, Pakistanis, Uighurs from China—as well as Europeans from France, Germany, Belgium and Britain, along with Americans, the same sources said. They are also believed to include a few dozen jihadists from other French-speaking countries. “Most of them come from countries such as Algeria, Morocco or Tunisia,” said General Abbas al-Jabouri, a commander of the police Rapid Response force. Pale, hungry civilians who managed to escape from the Old City described the foreign fighters as cruel men who detained them in houses, many of which were bombed out.
When Iraqi forces launched an assault on the Old City on June 18, foreigners accounted for only 20 percent of the 1,200 jihadists identified at the time, according to army officers. But most Iraqi jihadists have fled by mingling in with the flood of civilians fleeing the Old City. The army says many were arrested, but officers privately estimate that several hundred were able to slip through the cracks. Foreigners though would be “arrested immediately” during exit screening, says Lieutenant Colonel Haider Hussein, instantly recognisable because of their poor grasp of Iraqi Arabic. An Iraqi officer is more blunt: “When we see them, we kill them.” AFP
GERMAN, US DOCTORS VISIT ILL CHINESE NOBEL WINNER BEIJING—German and US doctors visited China’s cancer-stricken Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo on Saturday, the hospital where he is receiving treatment said in a statement. “After listening to a detailed medical history of the patient and receiving a report on his diagnosis and treatment, the medical experts examined the patient in the sickroom,” according to an update on the website of First Hospital of China Medical University in the northeastern city of Shenyang. “The American and German specialists have fully endorsed the treatment program and measures by the group of national experts,” it said. China has faced international pressure to let Liu travel abroad for treatment since he was transferred from prison to the Shenyang hospital after he was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer more than a month ago. Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison in December 2009 for “subversion” after calling for democratic reform. AFP
BANGLADESH POLICE ARREST TOP MILITANT OVER CAFE ATTACK DHAKA—Bangladesh police have arrested an Islamist militant over last year’s deadly Dhaka cafe siege, officials said Saturday, as authorities continue to crack down on militant outfits a year after the attack. The counter-terrorism unit arrested Sohel Mahfuz, who allegedly supplied the weapons used in the Holey Artisan Bakery attack where armed gunmen killed at least 22 people, mostly foreigners, after taking them hostage. “He was the supplier of the weapons in the Holey incident. We were hunting him way before the attack,” Abdul Mannan, counter-terrorism additional commissioner, said. Acting on a tip-off, police arrested the 33 year old from the northwestern Chapainawabganj district along with three associates, Mannan said. Mahfuz is the chief of the northern command of Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a homegrown Islamist extremist outfit blamed for the attack. He is also wanted in India for his alleged role in a 2014 blast in Burdwan, West Bengal, in which two people were killed and police recovered a huge cache of improvised explosives, the official said. Bangladesh has been reeling from a spate of extremist violence in recent years, with dozens of foreigners, secular writers, atheist activists and members of religious minorities killed. AFP
SEEING RED. A Jose Escolar’s fighting bull charges a participant on the second day of the San Fermin bull run festival in Pamplona, northern Spain on July 8, 2017. Each day at 8:00 a.m. hundreds of people race with six bulls, charging along a winding, 848.6-meter course through narrow streets to the city’s bull ring, where the animals are killed in a bullfight or corrida, during this festival. AFP
ERITREA’S ‘CITY OF DREAMS’ GIVEN UNESCO HERITAGE
GERMAN HARD POWER. Riot police reflect in a puddle during protests in Hamburg’s Schanzenviertel district where leaders of the world’s top economies gather for a G20 summit. AFP
WARSAW, Poland—The people of Eritrea have long said their capital Asmara is like no other city in Africa, and on Saturday the UN agreed, designating it a World Heritage site. The proclamation ends a long-running quest by Eritrean authorities to have the city’s unique architecture, which includes an art-deco bowling alley with coloured glass windows and a petrol station built to resemble a soaring aeroplane, recognized by the UN cultural body, UNESCO. It is also a rare example of positive world recognition for the Horn of Africa nation that is a major source of migrants fleeing across the Mediterranean to Europe due to the country’s repressive policies. “The city’s recognition as a heritage site of outstanding universal value fills us with tremendous pride and joy, but also with a profound sense of responsibility and duty,” said Hanna Simon, Eritrea’s permanent delegate to UNESCO. The decision was taken at a meeting of the World Heritage Committee in the Polish city of Krakow. A former Italian colony, most of the futuristic designs of the Eritrean capital date back to the rule of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini from 1936 to 1941. Architects whose designs were unwelcome in conservative European cities found a place in Asmara at a time when about half of the city’s population was Italian and the city was known as ‘Piccola Roma’ or “Little Rome.” While the modernist architecture of other Eritrean cities was destroyed during a decades-long war of liberation from Ethiopia, Asmara’s survived and was declared a national monument by the government in 2001, which refers to it as Africa’s “City of Dreams.” But efforts to restore the marble facades and Romanstyle pillars of the city’s theatres and cinemas have been hampered by a shortage of money and local expertise, city authorities say. AFP
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SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2017 Cesar Barrioquinto, Editor / Jimbo Gulle, Issue Editor
World
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JAPAN FLOODS DEATH TOLL RISES TO 15
SHOW OF FORCE. This handout photo taken on July 8, 2017 and provided by the South Korean Defense Ministry in Seoul shows B-1B Lancers flying over South Korea during a South Korea-US joint live fire drill conducted at a range in Yeongwol County. US bombers carried out the rare live fire drill close to the DMZ in a show of force after Pyongyang’s latest missile test. AFP
US BOMBERS DRILL NEAR KOREAN DMZ S
eoul—US bombers carried out a rare live fire drill in South Korea Saturday, flying close to the DMZ in a show of force after Pyongyang’s latest missile test, the South’s defense ministry said.
The exercise by two B-1B Lancers, flown from Andersen Air Base in Guam, was part of a 10-hour mission with South Korean and Japanese fighter jets in response to a “series of increasingly escalatory actions by North Korea including the intercontinental ballistic missile” on Tuesday, US Pacific Air Forces said. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the long-range heavy bombers flew close to the tense and heavily militarised land border with the North before turning back.
The exercise aimed to “sternly respond to the series of North Korea’s ballistic missile launches,” the South’s air force said in a statement. Four US and South Korean jet fighters joined the live fire drill, which was conducted at a range in Yeongwol County, some 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of the inter-Korean border, the South’s air force said. The long-range heavy aircraft each dropped a 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) laser-guided bunker-busting smart bomb, Yonhap
said. The US statement said the B1Bs released “inert” weapons at the Pilsung Range. The drill simulated the two US bombers destroying enemy ballistic missile batteries and South Korean jets mounting precision strikes against underground enemy command posts, the South’s air force said. “Through this drill, the South Korean and US air forces demonstrated strong determination to thoroughly punish the enemy for its provocative acts, and showed off their capability to pulverise enemy command posts,” it said. Lieutenant General Thomas Bergeson, US Forces Korea deputy commander, said the mission demonstrated the allies remain “prepared to use the full range of capabilities to defend and to pre-
serve the security of the Korean peninsula and region.” En route back to Guam, the B1Bs flew and integrated with Japanese fighter jets over the East China Sea, US Pacific Air Forces said in a press statement. “The US-Japan alliance and the relationship between our militaries are stronger than they have ever been,” said Lieutenant General Jerry P. Martinez, US Forces Japan commander. “We continue to train with our Japanese allies to ensure we are ready to defend ourselves from attack,” he said. North Korea on Tuesday testfired an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time, an apparent game-changer in its confrontation with Washington over its nuclear and missile programs. AFP
G20 LEADERS COMPROMISE ON TRADE, AT ODDS ON CLIMATE HAMBURG, Germany—G20 leaders including US President Donald Trump have reached a compromise on the wording of a final summit statement on trade but remain at odds on climate change, according to an EU source Saturday. On trade they will commit to fighting protectionism but will also allow “legitimate” measures to protect their markets, the source said on the final day of the talks in Germany. The outcome represents a compromise with Trump who wants to do more to protect domestic companies from foreign competition through his “America First” policy. However, on climate change, negotiators remain at loggerheads following Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the 2015 Paris climate accord, the source said. The sticking point in the communique is about fossil fuels – blamed for global warming – with the US side wanting to be able to continue to export and promote their use. AFP
US, RUSSIA AGREE ON CEASEFIRE IN SOUTHWEST SYRIA
POPE WARNS OF ‘DANGEROUS ALLIANCES’ AMONG G20 POWERS
ROME—Pope Francis said Saturday that the G20 summit in Germany “worries” him because of the potential for “very dangerous alliances” among world leaders, with particularly dire consequences for migrants. “I worry about very dangerous alliances between powers which have a distorted vision of the world: America and Russia, China and North Korea, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and (Syria’s Bashar al-) Assad over the war in Syria,” the pope said in an interview with Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper. “The danger concerns immigration. Our main and unfortunately growing problem in the world today is that of the poor, the weak, the excluded, which includes migrants,” he said, pointing to countries which “fear an invasion of migrants.” “This is why the G20 worries me: It mainly hits immigrants,” he said. Concerning Europe, the “richest continent in the whole world” which has faced an influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees since 2015, the pope warned its leaders not to fall prey to the illusion that it is possible to seal its borders. On Friday, Francis had urged G20 leaders to work toward “more inclusive and sustainable global economic growth,” while also highlighting the plight of some 30 million people trapped in conflict and famine, especially in Africa and Yemen. AFP
TOKYO—The death toll from heavy rains and flooding in southern Japan has risen to 15, a government official said Saturday, as rescuers continued work to evacuate isolated survivors. Raging rivers overflowing with water and mud have devastated swathes of Kyushu—the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands—after heavy rainfall, sweeping away roads and houses and destroying schools. Thousands of rescuers have been fighting through thick mud and battling rain to search for missing and stranded people, with more than 500 believed to still be cut off, according to public broadcaster NHK. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters early Saturday that the death toll “rose to 15” and 16 people were still missing. Local governments announced Friday that a total of eight people have died. “The region is expected to see a localized heavy rain today,” Suga said, advising local residents to gather information from the government and media. AFP
NOT YOUR USUAL RIDE. Malaysian cosplayers pose amidst passengers onboard a Light Rapid Transit train during a “Commuter Cosplay” event in Kuala Lumpur on July 8, 2017. AFP
HAMBURG, Germany—Russia and the United States have agreed to a ceasefire in southwest Syria starting from midday on Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. “Today in Amman Russian, American and Jordanian experts... agreed on a memorandum of understanding to create a de-escalation zone” in the regions of Daraa, Quneitra and Sweida, Lavrov said. “There will be a ceasefire in this zone from midday Damascus time on July 9.” Lavrov was speaking at the G20 summit in Hamburg where he sat in on talks between US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin – their first face-to-face meeting. The agreement includes areas that have seen Israel retaliate for stray fire into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from recent clashes between Syrian regime forces and rebel fighters. Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has been engaged in talks this year with Turkey and Iran over four socalled de-escalation zones in the war-torn country. AFP