Politics

I read an article from Taipei Times in the 20th February 2021 edition of The Week. It’s entitled ‘A coup with China’s fingerprints all over it’ and I am reproducing it here by way of introduction

China’s response to the recent military coup in Myanmar has been “conspicuously muted”, says the Taipei Times. While the rest of the world rushed to condemn the takeover, Beijing simply declared that it had “noted” the event, which its state news agency characterised as a “major Cabinet reshuffle”. Is this because China covertly orchestrated the coup itself, or at least gave the generals its blessing? Some analysts believe so.

Beijing has long had close ties to Burmese military leaders, and in recent years it has extended billions of dollars in high-interest loans to Myanmar as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. In practice, this initiative often amounts to a form of “debt-trap diplomacy” allowing Beijing to snap up strategic assets from defaulting nations. The signs are that Myanmar’s civilian government had been trying to extricate itself from its over-reliance on Chinese loans, and was being “heavily courted by Japan and India, with New Delhi even donating the Burmese navy a submarine last year”.

Given the potential threat this posed to China’s strategic investments in Myanmar, it seems all too likely that Beijing “stepped in to protect its interests”.

Taiwan has every reason to see ‘the hand of mainland China’ everywhere, but the scenario is credible. So with that in mind, when I saw photos of Myanmar protests come up in my Twitter stream this morning, I looked at the source, which is FrontierMyanmar, and from their ‘story’ page I found their former chief reporter, Mratt Kyaw Thu, and followed him on Twitter.

Meanwhile, FrontierMyanmar has a subscription page run by, as they state, Pico. So I went to look at Pico. It offers memberships and subscriptions and a way to ‘collect signups and payments in one seamless experience’. And it’s ‘$0/mo until you grow past 500 contacts’.

I followed the sign-up process to see how it is integrated into a website bearing in mind the myriad of different platforms running memberships and subscriptions. I found a dedicated guide for WordPress and other CMSs.

On their front page there is a link to an article in TechCrunch. Strangely there is no mention of Pico there but there is a mention of Morning Brew. I went looking and found a site that offers:

Get the daily email that makes reading the news actually enjoyable. Stay informed and entertained, for free.

It has the most pared down homepage ever. Like Google, but everyone knows Google and who is behind it and what it is about. But Morning Brew? I added ~/about to the URL and that came up with a 404 but it did have links to pages with actual information on them.

Meanwhile there is also The Morning Brew, which is a blog by a software developer with links to what is going on in tech, that I’ve bookmarked.

FrontierMyanmar.net
TryPico.com
MorningBrew.com
TheMorningBrew.net

President Biden has made clear that climate change is central in his policy thinking. As reported everywhere, on his first day in office he signed a number of executive orders. One is for the US to rejoin the Paris Agreement. Another to revoke the permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline. A third to direct all federal agencies to review and take appropriate action on at least 100 of the Trump’s policies or regulations. The basis for addressing them is that the Biden Administration consider them damaging to the environment or public health.

Biden’s Administration also announced the induction of progressive thinkers to join the Department of Energy. And he has re-established a panel to calculate the social cost of carbon technology use.

I believe the likelihood of President Biden being successful in driving that vision is enhanced precisely because President Trump came before him.

If Hilary Clinton had won the US election four years ago, I don’t think the political will would have been there in the same way it is now. It is as though the reactionary actions by President Trump have given extra impetus to the imagination today.

I liken it to a heavy spaceship trying to get to Mars that uses the impulse given to it by an orbit around the Moon to slingshot itself off into space.

The Military

Meanwhile, in Letter From An American, I read that an investigation by NPR. revealed that nearly one in five of the rioters charged with the assault on the Capitol so far have served in the military. That contrasts with the general population, of whom only 7% are military veterans.

If that ratio holds true when all those who took part have been charged then we ought to ask some questions.

Are they predisposed to their political position because of their time in the military? Are they radicalised by people in the military?

What risk does this pose for Biden in the same way that it posed a risk for President Anwar Sadat? The bad thing is that it only takes one. The good thing is that if the peace holds then it’s a thumbs up for democracy in the hearts and minds of the people.

The fact that climate change is central in President Biden’s thinking might be the factor that saves him from alienating some violent people to the point that they want to take action.

Reported in The Week in its issue of 28 November 2020 is this

President Trump’s foreign policy doctrine — a mixture of isolationism and occasional violent interventions — has never made much sense, said Max Boot in The Washington Post. And it’s becoming no more coherent in the dying days of his administration. Last week, Trump reportedly asked senior advisers about options for attacking Iran’s main nuclear site at Natanz. Yet at the same time, he also ordered the return of more than half the US troops in Afghanistan, reducing their number from 4,500 to 2,500. The order left analysts “mystified”, said Frog Kaplan on Slate.

President Trump’s behaviour is not ‘mystifying’ if you link Iran and Afghanistan by their geography. If the US were to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities, then what about the thousands of US troops in Afghanistan, a country that is right next door on the eastern border of Iran? So which way does the wind blow?

It would make a lot of sense to get those troops out of Afghanistan before attacking Iran. Of course, if there was a cloud of radioactivity that spread, he would have to put up with international complaints about injuries to the innocent civilian population in Iran and Afghanistan. With troops safe, he could argue that he saved the world from a greater threat of a nuclear Iran. But to add injury to American troops to that mix would seal his fate.

From Marginal Seat 5 September 2016

I noticed today, Monday 5 September that there is a link in the bottom right-hand corner of the home page of Apple’s UK site.

It is entitled, ‘A Message to the Apple Community in Europe’. Because the page might be relegated elsewhere or taken down at some point in the future, I have copied the full text of Tim Cook’s message here. 

This is what he says:

August 30, 2016 A Message to the Apple Community in Europe 
Thirty-six years ago, long before introducing iPhone, iPod or even the Mac, Steve Jobs established Apple’s first operations in Europe. At the time, the company knew that in order to serve customers in Europe, it would need a base there. So, in October 1980, Apple opened a factory in Cork, Ireland with 60 employees.

At the time, Cork was suffering from high unemployment and extremely low economic investment. But Apple’s leaders saw a community rich with talent, and one they believed could accommodate growth if the company was fortunate enough to succeed.

We have operated continuously in Cork ever since, even through periods of uncertainty about our own business, and today we employ nearly 6,000 people across Ireland. The vast majority are still in Cork — including some of the very first employees — now performing a wide variety of functions as part of Apple’s global footprint. Countless multinational companies followed Apple by investing in Cork, and today the local economy is stronger than ever.

Steve Jobs visits Apple’s new facility in Cork, October 1980. The success which has propelled Apple’s growth in Cork comes from innovative products that delight our customers. It has helped create and sustain more than 1.5 million jobs across Europe — jobs at Apple, jobs for hundreds of thousands of creative app developers who thrive on the App Store, and jobs with manufacturers and other suppliers. Countless small and medium-size companies depend on Apple, and we are proud to support them.

As responsible corporate citizens, we are also proud of our contributions to local economies across Europe, and to communities everywhere. As our business has grown over the years, we have become the largest taxpayer in Ireland, the largest taxpayer in the United States, and the largest taxpayer in the world.

Over the years, we received guidance from Irish tax authorities on how to comply correctly with Irish tax law — the same kind of guidance available to any company doing business there. In Ireland and in every country where we operate, Apple follows the law and we pay all the taxes we owe.

The European Commission has launched an effort to rewrite Apple’s history in Europe, ignore Ireland’s tax laws and upend the international tax system in the process. The opinion issued on August 30th alleges that Ireland gave Apple a special deal on our taxes. This claim has no basis in fact or in law. We never asked for, nor did we receive, any special deals. We now find ourselves in the unusual position of being ordered to retroactively pay additional taxes to a government that says we don’t owe them any more than we’ve already paid.

The Commission’s move is unprecedented and it has serious, wide-reaching implications. It is effectively proposing to replace Irish tax laws with a view of what the Commission thinks the law should have been. This would strike a devastating blow to the sovereignty of EU member states over their own tax matters, and to the principle of certainty of law in Europe. Ireland has said they plan to appeal the Commission’s ruling and Apple will do the same. We are confident that the Commission’s order will be reversed.

At its root, the Commission’s case is not about how much Apple pays in taxes. It is about which government collects the money.

Taxes for multinational companies are complex, yet a fundamental principle is recognized around the world: A company’s profits should be taxed in the country where the value is created. Apple, Ireland and the United States all agree on this principle.

In Apple’s case, nearly all of our research and development takes place in California, so the vast majority of our profits are taxed in the United States. European companies doing business in the U.S. are taxed according to the same principle. But the Commission is now calling to retroactively change those rules.

Beyond the obvious targeting of Apple, the most profound and harmful effect of this ruling will be on investment and job creation in Europe. Using the Commission’s theory, every company in Ireland and across Europe is suddenly at risk of being subjected to taxes under laws that never existed.

Apple has long supported international tax reform with the objectives of simplicity and clarity. We believe these changes should come about through the proper legislative process, in which proposals are discussed among the leaders and citizens of the affected countries. And as with any new laws, they should be applied going forward — not retroactively.

We are committed to Ireland and we plan to continue investing there, growing and serving our customers with the same level of passion and commitment. We firmly believe that the facts and the established legal principles upon which the EU was founded will ultimately prevail.

Breaking that down:

• The message is addressed to the Apple Community, and by making a public statement it is telling the EC it is not going to back down and it is confident it is right.
• Apple has been in Ireland for a long time – thirty-six years, in fact.
• Apple is an important player in Ireland, with 6,000 employees.
• Apple is an important player in Europe, in the USA, in the world.
• The principle is that countries are taxed where they create value. Apple’s R&D is in the USA and that is where the value is created and that is where the tax should be paid.
• The EC wants to retroactively remake the tax laws for Ireland and internationally.
• This will adversely affect many companies, not just Apple.
• If the EU wants to change its tax laws, it should do so by legislative change and this should be applied going forward and not retroactively.
• A warning that if the EC does change the tax laws even going forward, remember what is set out in the preceding points and realise that Europe will be the loser.