The Atlantic: How to Deal With North Korea

The myth holds that Korea and the Kim dynasty are one and the same. It is built almost entirely on the promise of standing up to a powerful and menacing foreign enemy. The more looming the threat—and Trump excels at looming—the better the narrative works for Kim Jong Un. Nukes are needed to repel this threat. They are the linchpin of North Korea’s defensive strategy, the single weapon standing between barbarian hordes and the glorious destiny of the Korean people—all of them, North and South. Kim is the great leader, heir to divinely inspired ancestors who descended from Mount Paektu with mystical, magical powers of leadership, vision, diplomatic savvy, and military genius. Like his father, Kim Jong Il, and grandfather Kim Il Sung before him, Kim is the anointed defender of all Koreans, who are the purest of all races. Even South Korea, the Republic of Korea, should be thankful for Kim because, if not for him, the United States would have invaded long ago. [...]

And with only a few of its worst weapons, North Korea could, probably within hours, kill millions. This means an American first strike would likely trigger one of the worst mass killings in human history. In 2005, Sam Gardiner, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who specialized in conducting war games at the National War College, estimated that the use of sarin gas alone would produce 1 million casualties. Gardiner now says, in light of what we have learned from gas attacks on civilians in Syria, that the number would likely be three to five times greater. And today North Korea has an even wider array of chemical and biological weapons than it did 12 years ago—the recent assassination of Kim’s half brother, Kim Jong Nam, demonstrated the potency of at least one compound, the nerve agent VX. The Kim regime is believed to have biological weapons including anthrax, botulism, hemorrhagic fever, plague, smallpox, typhoid, and yellow fever. And it has missiles capable of reaching Tokyo, a metropolitan area of nearly 38 million. In other words, any effort to crush North Korea flirts not just with heavy losses, but with one of the greatest catastrophes in human history. [...]

These aren’t the only problems with a preventive strike. To be effective, it would depend on surprise, on delivering the maximum amount of force as quickly as possible—which would in turn require a significant buildup of U.S. forces in the region. At the start of the Iraq War, American warplanes flew about 800 sorties a day. An all-out attack on North Korea, a far more formidable military power than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, would almost certainly require more. In order to resist a ground invasion of South Korea, the U.S. would need to bolster the assets currently in place. U.S. Special Forces would need to be positioned to go after crucial nuclear sites and missile platforms; ships would have to be stationed in the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea. It’s highly improbable that all of this could happen without attracting Pyongyang’s notice. One of the things North Korea is better at than its southern neighbor is spying; recruiting and running spies is much easier in a free society than in a totalitarian one. [...]

What would be left? North Korea, a country of more than 25 million people, would be adrift. Immediate humanitarian relief would be necessary to prevent starvation and disease. An interim government would have to be put in place. If Iraq was a hard country to occupy and rebuild, imagine a suddenly stateless North Korea, possibly irradiated and toxic, its economy and infrastructure in ruins. There could still be hidden stockpiles of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons scattered around the country, which would have to be found and secured before terrorists got to them. “Success,” in other words, would create the largest humanitarian crisis of modern times—Syria’s miseries would be a playground scuffle by comparison. Contemplating such a collapse in The Atlantic back in 2006, Robert D. Kaplan wrote that dealing with it “could present the world—meaning, really, the American military—with the greatest stabilization operation since the end of World War II.” [...]

“If I am sitting in Pyongyang, and I think you are coming after me, I’ve got minutes to decide if this is an all-out attack, and if I wait, I lose,” Jim Walsh told me. “So it’s use nuclear weapons or lose them—which makes for an itchy trigger finger. The idea that the U.S. and South Korea are going to have a limited strike that the North Koreans are going to perceive as limited, and that they are willing to stand by and let happen, especially given the rhetorical context in which this has been playing out, complete with repeated, stupid statements about ‘decapitation’—I can’t see it happening.”

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VICE: Man vs. Apple

Apple is the world’s most valuable company, and it’s used to getting its way. Yet here in rural Ireland, one man has managed to block its ambitions. Data centers aren’t sexy like iPhones, but as smartphone sales slow, they are now critical to Apple’s future, powering services like iTunes, the App Store, iMessage, and iPhoto. As lawmakers in Brussels clamp down on U.S. companies sending customer data across the Atlantic, the ability to store data in Europe is becoming essential. Without its own data centers, Apple would need to rely on companies like Amazon and Google — something it doesn’t like doing. [...]

Daly and some neighbors appealed the local authority’s decision to Ireland’s quasi-independent planning body, An Bord Pleanala, in September 2015. Once again, Daly laid out his objections: Apple’s environmental impact statement was insufficient and the company’s claims of using renewable energy were misleading. Again, the board rubber-stamped the permission. [...]

When Athenry was chosen over 25 competing sites for Apple’s Ireland data center, the news was widely hailed by most residents and local politicians as a huge boon for the area. Apple said it would build eight halls in 15 years, promising an investment of 850 million euros ($950 million). Last November, 2,000 people packed the streets of the town in a demonstration designed to show Apple that despite Daly’s legal challenge, the vast majority of locals were in favor of the planned data center. [...]

Ireland is an ideal location for data centers thanks to the temperate climate, which naturally cools the huge amount of heat generated by the servers housed in data centers. It will soon be the only English-speaking member of the EU. And, of course, its low corporate tax rate doesn’t hurt in attracting tech investment.

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The Guardian: How does the Irish border affect the Brexit talks?

Passport checks are highly unlikely: the EU signalled in its negotiation guidelines that it would like to see a codified version of the 1920s common travel agreement – which means passport-free travel for Irish and British citizens between the two islands – included in a final deal. [...]

Trade and services between the two sides now flourishes. Between 23,000 and 30,000 people commute across the border – a figure that discounts “frontier workers” such as community nurses or farmers who go back and forth across the border several times a day. [...]

The former European commission customs lawyer, Michael Dux, drew gasps from MPs on the Northern Ireland select committee in February, as he told how every vehicle carrying goods worth more than €300 (£264) crossing from Ireland into Northern Ireland would, under EU law, be liable for checks. [...]

One solution mooted is to move the border checks to ports and airports under a new unilateral agreement along the lines of the treaty of Le Touquet, which allows French border police to carry out immigration entry checks in Dover and British police to operate in Calais.

Technically, it is also possible that the customs checks on goods can be conducted electronically, with trusted trader status for regular cross-border freight and spot checks for standards.

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BuzzFeed: Russia's "Gay Propaganda" Ban Violates International Law, Top Human Rights Court Rules

Some regional governments in Russia adopted versions of this legislation beginning in 2003, and it was enacted nationwide in 2013, setting up a showdown over LGBT rights ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The law technically prohibits "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships to minors," but authorities have also used the rule to justify shutting down LGBT rights protests, and to fine a newspaper for reporting on LGBT issues. The law led to an investigation of Apple after the company rolled out gay-friendly emojis for the iPhone, and has been invoked in bizarre campaigns against everything from a statue of a pair of dolphins, to a video of a tiger befriending a goat. [...]

"Above all, by adopting such laws the Court found that the authorities had reinforced stigma and prejudice and encouraged homophobia, which was incompatible with the values – of equality, pluralism and tolerance – of a democratic society," the ECHR wrote in an opinion agreed to by six of the seven judges who reviewed the case. [...]

"The Court found that the Government had been unable to provide any explanation of the mechanism by which a minor could be enticed into '[a] homosexual lifestyle', let alone science-based evidence that one’s sexual orientation or identity was susceptible to change under external influence," the judges wrote. [...]

The Russian Ministry of Justice vowed to appeal the ruling, which is supposed to bind the courts of Russia under the terms of the European Convention on Human Rights. But Russia has repeatedly thumbed its nose at the ECHR's authority in recent years, including adopting legislation in 2015 allowing for ECHR rulings to be ignored when they contradict the Russian Constitution.

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The Atlantic: Macron's Majority

French President Emmanuel Macron’s decisive win in the second round of the country’s legislative election Sunday was no surprise, with polls projecting strong showings for both Macron’s La République En Marche (LREM) party and its small centrist ally, Democratic Movement (MoDem), which collectively took 350 of the National Assembly’s 577 seats.

While the results mark a transformation of France’s political landscape from one controlled by two establishment parties to one controlled by a year-old political movement, it also marks a renewal of the very faces that make up the country’s lower, but more powerful, house of parliament. Of the 354 incumbents who sought re-election, 148 retained their seats—giving way to 429 new deputies, making up 75 percent of the incoming legislature. Historically, turnover rates average closer to between 120 to 270 seats. [...]

Indeed, Macron pledged this “renewal of faces” in the months leading up to his presidential win last month, vowing to field a diverse slate of parliamentary candidates, half of whom were women and more than half of whom never previously held political office. The pledge paid off: The average age of deputies dropped from 53 to 48, with the number of deputies under the age of 30 jumping from four to 29. The number of women now stands at 38.65 percent, up from 27 percent—a change that prompted France to surge from 64th to 17th place in the world’s rankings of female parliamentary representation and sixth place in Europe, besting both Britain and Germany.  

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The Economist: Bromantic interest

But a bigger change is afoot. A popular online collection of old photos shows how much American men used to casually touch each other: Victorian gentlemen posing with hands clasped; grizzled cowboys sitting with arms entwined, and a striking amount of lap-sitting. But such pictures from the middle of the 20th century and later are rare.  The culprit is homophobia: as gay men became more visible, they were reviled, and men in the English-speaking world (though not only there) started avoiding any touch that might indicate they were that way inclined. [...]

It turns out that straight men’s need for intense, intimate relationships with each other never went anywhere, as evidenced by the ebullient burst of words celebrating it. Pop culture has been a leading indicator: our Prospero blog recently reviewed two movies in the same week—“The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” and “The End of the Tour”—which our reviewers concluded were essentially “bromances”, a male friendship at the heart of each story. The word itself was boosted by 2009’s “I Love You, Man”, which Wikipedia describes without scare-quotes as a bromantic comedy—a genre with its own Wikipedia entry, created in 2014. [...]

A whole generation of young men feel comfortable taking man-dates out together, saying “I’m gay for” a male celebrity they like, and generally pressing man-, bro- (and dude-) into service for new words signalling that their straight-maleness is secure. The eagerness is refreshing, and telling. Everyone wins when no one is afraid to appear to be something that was never wrong in the first place.

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Al Jazeera: Analysis: The implications of the Qatar-Turkey alliance

Shortly after Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates severed diplomatic relations with Qatar and closed their airspace to commercial flights, Turkey condemned the blockade against Qatar, sent food stocks to stave off possible shortages in the country, and fast-tracked legislation through parliament to deploy Turkish troops on Qatari soil. [...]

A key ally of Qatar, Turkey is setting up a military base in the country - the first Turkish overseas military installation in the Middle East. Qatar also hosts the largest US airbase in the Middle East, Al-Udeid, where around 10,000 military personnel are stationed.

The defence cooperation between Doha and Istanbul dates back to 2014, when the two nations signed an agreement aimed at helping them confront "common enemies". [...]

They have both also refused to classify the Muslim Brotherhood movement and Hamas as "terrorist organisations" and backed rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. [...]

Furthermore, Turkey's disputes with several of its fellow NATO partners have prompted Ankara to seek new partnerships and diversify its alliances to counterbalance the country's dependence on its traditional Western allies.

Turkey already has a presence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo whether through peacekeeping, humanitarian or other missions. In addition, Turkey is also reportedly setting up a military training camp - said to be its largest overseas facility - this year in Mogadishu, Somalia. The camp will be used to train Somali soldiers in the fight against the al-Shabab group.

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Quartz: It was normal for women in 18th- and 19th-century China to have two husbands

That’s right: in 18th and 19th century rural China, women took two (or sometimes more) husbands. This happened in every province in China, and for the most part, their communities tolerated or even accepted it.

The little-known prevalence of polyandry comes to light in Matthew Sommer’s fascinating history of peasant family structures, Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China. Since most peasants were illiterate and the Qing elite regarded polyandry as supremely immoral, there are few traces of the practice. Sommer, a Stanford University historian, draws descriptions from court cases. [...]

Given how hard it was for peasants to survive, this was no easy feat to pull off. Between 1700 and 1850, the Middle Kingdom’s population tripled in size. Cultivated farmland, however, only doubled—encouraging people to simply work the land even harder. That left more people depending on less productive land for food. Mass famine was common.

Meanwhile, thanks to female infanticide and the Chinese elite’s concubine habit, among other things, the Middle Kingdom was amidst a “marriage crunch,” as demographic historian Ted Telford put it. The scarcity of demand meant rural men had to pay a heavy bride price—steeper than most could afford. The value of women’s sexual attention, companionship, and child-bearing capacity rose too. [...]

Exactly how common was the practice? It’s impossible to know. Since the Qing elite condemned the practice—while at the same time celebrating polygyny—many polyandrous families weren’t always open about the “uncle” living in the spare bedroom. Sommer notes that for every case recorded in the legal records of the time, there “must have been a great many others that left no specific written record.”

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The Conversation: Emergency doctors are using acupuncture to treat pain, now here’s the evidence

The study, published today in the Medical Journal of Australia, finds acupuncture is as effective as medication in treating pain for lower back pain and ankle sprain. But it took more than an hour for either to provide adequate pain relief. [...]

Using acupuncture to relieve pain involves placing needles in various parts of the body to stimulate the release of endorphins and other neurochemicals, which can act as the body’s naturally occurring pain relievers.

For generations various cultures around the world have used acupuncture to treat multiple conditions, including providing pain relief. And in Australia, it is reimbursed through the Medicare Benefits Schedule when administered by a medical doctor. [...]

So, we randomly assigned more than 500 patients to receive standard painkillers, standard painkillers plus acupuncture, or acupuncture alone when they presented with back pain, migraine or ankle sprain at four Melbourne hospitals (some private, some public). While the patients knew which treatment they had, the researchers involved in assessing their pain didn’t (known as a single-blind study). [...]

Our findings suggest acupuncture may be a viable option for patients who come to the emergency department for pain relief. This is especially important for those who cannot or choose not to have analgesic drugs.

This is also an important finding in light of the potential for side effects and abuse with opioid analgesics, which might otherwise be used to relieve pain in the emergency department.

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