千风不化

［SAVE-ONLY］TIME 1

ISSUE: Jan 16 2017

The top global risks for 2017, a year of geopolitical recession

By Ian Bremmer

The inaugration of Donald Trump on Jan. 20 is set to bring to an end the 70-year era of Pax Americana (Latin: American peace), when U.S. hegemony (dominance) in security, trade and the promotion of values provided stability for the global economy. In its absense, the world will fall into a deep geopolitical downturn. With that as a backdrop (play term, background), here are my top eight political risks for the coming year:

1. UNPREDICTABLE AMARICA The world's sole superpower is now a wild card. President Trump will use U.S. power primarily to advance U.S. interests, forging a more hawkish (political term, aggressive), and less predictable, foreign policy. Allies in Europe and Asia will hedge. Rivals like China and Russia will probe (investigate) for weakness.

2. CHINA OVERREACTING The sheer number of places where U.S.-China tensions might play out -- North Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the East and South China seas -- make 2017 a dangerous year for China, and all who depend on it for growth and stability.

3. A POWER VACUUM IN EUROPE Though Angela Merkel is likely to win re-election as Germany's Chancellor in 2017, she'll emrge as a weakened figure. This will leave Europe with no strong leadership at all, at a time when strong leaders are badly needed.

4. A PAUSE IN ECONOMIC PROGRESS Don't expect a surge in needed economic reforms in 2017. India and Mexico have accomplished as much as they can for now. In France and Germany, reform will wait until after coming elections, and China faces an all-consuming leadership transition in the fall. In Brazil, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia, ambitious plans will advance but fall short of what's needed.

5. TECHNOLOGY DISRUPTING THE MIDDLE EAST Technological change is furthe weakening an already fragmenting region. The revolution in energy production undermines states still depedent on oil and gas exports for revenue, while new communication technologies enhance the ability of angry citizens to find like minds and to orgnize. 

6. CENTRAL BANKERS GET POLITICAL Trump may use the Federal Reserves as a political scapegoat, piling pressure on future decisions. This isn't just a U.S. risk. Britain's Theresa May has blamed the Bank of England for exacerbating the income inequality, and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble says low interest rates have acted as a disincentive for reform among E.U. states. 

7. THE WHITE HOUSE V.S. SILICON VALLEY When it comes to technology, Trump wants security, control and new jobs. The tech giants want freedom, privacy and more automation. There will be plenty in 2017 for them to fight over.

8. TURKEY'S ONGOING CRACKDOWN President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will likely use a referendum to formalize his powers, and tighten his hold on judiciary, bureaucracy, media and even business sector. This will exacerbate the country's economic problems and worsen relations with Europe.

Two Stars that lived -- and shone -- orbiting each other.

By Stephanie Zacharek

DEBBIE RENOLDS WAS A GREAT BROAD (slang for woman) WITH THE FACE of a cutie-pie. You might not know that just from watching Singin' in the Rain (1952) or The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964). Reynolds was often cast in roles that capitaized on her cherublike (cherubic, round-face with sweetness) adorability, her button-nosed (small and round nose) brightness, her wind-up energy, all fine qualities in a performer. But as a human being -- revealed in interviews and three memoirs -- Reynolds never came off as naive. She was many things -- actor, singer, comedian, mother -- but never a pushover(someone who always say yes). 

Reynolds died at age 84 on Dec. 28, the day after her daughter Carrie Fisher, another great broad, actor and writer, died at 60. Their mother-daughter story is like no other: Fisher grew up in Reynold's larger-than-life shadow, partly dazzled by her mother's glamour and verve (vim/vigor/elan) and partly feeling lost amid the glitter (sparkle). She built her own acting career, appearing, at age of 18, in Hal Ashby's Shampoo, playing a flirty, deadpan (poker-faced) tomboy (boyish) rich girl. She's impetuous (impulsive), calculating, extraordinary -- it's the kind of debut that promises great things. Her next role wat that of the radiant, wisecracking (clever and pithy spoken witticism) Princess Leia in the 1977 Star Wars: Episode 5 -- A New Hope. Though the medieval-Cinnabon hairdo has always been a target for jokes, the astonishing thing is how well Fisher carried it. She was the diva of the grandest space opera, after all. 

There was much more to Fisher than Leia: she was also a prolifc and piercingly funny writer. Across seven books, she mapped her battles with mental illness and substance abuse, as well as career disappointments, without a shred of self-pity. If Fisher was her own greatest subject, her mother was a close second. Reynolds, who has moved with her family from El Paso, Texas, to California at 7, was dicovered in 1948 at age 16 when she won the title of Miss Burbank. If the ensuing contract with Warner Bros. was the stuff of Hollywood dreams, Reynolds later suffered from Hollywood scandal too.

In 1958, Eddie Fisher, her husband of three years -- and the father of Carrie and brother Todd -- left her for Elizabeth Taylor. Reynolds, Fisher, Taylor and Mike Todd, Taylor's husband untill his death in a plane crash in 1958, had been close friends. Reynolds was much tougher than most people would have assumed at the time. In 2011 she and Carrie Fisher gave an interview to Oprah Winfrey, and by the time Reynolds had spun pain into comedy: At one point, Reynolds needed to reach her philandering (womanize) husband. When she got no answer at his New York hotel, she rang up Taylor's room, and he answered. When Reynolds heard Taylor in the background asking who was on the line, she said to her husband -- with implied exasperation (annoyance) more than anger -- "Would you just roll over and put Elizabeth on the phone?"

That story tells you something about the complicated and funny person Reynolds must have been, traits she passed on to her daughter. It's easy to see how their similarities could result in stress cracks. Fisher's one-woman show, Whishful Drinking -- which she later adapted into a wry (ironic) 2008 memoir -- is like a guided tour through Reynold's life, narrated by a daughter who sometimes found her mother tremendously trying (the two barely spoke for roughly 10 years, when Fisher was in her 20s) but who was also intensely sympathetic. In the show, Fisher told the story of her mother's several failed marriages not just from the point of view of the abandoned daughter, but from the adult position of recognizing exactly how much her mother had suffered -- and how resolutely she picked up the pieces. Reynolds' career began to fade after 40, but there was still highs to come, like her co-starring role in Albert Brooks' 1996 comedy Mother. And in 2011, Reynolds made a TV movie co-written by Fisher and called, fittingly, These Old Broads. (Taylor also starred)

Fisher knew better than anyone how Reynolds' roles of mother and performer were intertwined in a kind of unbreakable wholeness. Fsiher once described how her mother's closet was organized with pants and comfortable shoes -- mom clothes -- at one end and glamorous gowns and dresses at the other: "She'd go in on this end as my mom and come out the other end as Debbie Reynolds." People often talk about drawing strength and inspiration from their parents, which Fisher obviously did. But Fisher was a constant in her mother's life as well. According to Todd Fisher, Reynolds was planning her daughter's funeral when she suffered a stroke. She died a few hours later. It's hard not to read Reynolds' timing as the ultimate expression of grief. Her rock was gone.

Are some years more important than others?

By Lily Rothman

THE YEAR 2016 MIGHT BE OVER, BUT debates rage on whether it was one of the most important -- or worst -- years ever. Yet amid talks of surprising election results and shocking celebrity deaths, these conversations often miss a key point: this question is impossible to answer. 

One probelem is that humans have recency bias. Mordern events are easy to remember and -- thanks to the Internet -- easy to communicate, so it can feel like more important stuff happens now than before. This is why you hear people talking about the 2016 election being the natiest in history, even though the 1876 election featured rumors that Rutherford B. Hayes had shot his own mother. 

The second problem is the idea of the year itself. At its core, it's a somewhat arbitrary construct -- a 12-month frame for events that are essentially continuous. Take the moon landing, for example. Even if we all agree it was a uniquely important event, the story of the space rase is not confined to 1969. Years fro now, as our perspective evolves, we may see that the real giant leap for mankind took place long before or after.

Of course, it's only human to look for patterns that offer more immediate satisfation; it's what helps us make sense of a world that is fundamentally chaotic. But as we begin another year that may or may not be the most important one in history, it's worth remebering what mathematician John Allen Paulos has said, in reference to the idea that celebrity deaths come in threes: everything comes in threes if you just "wait for the third one to occur."

There is no God in Caloocan City, not tonight.

By Nash Jenkins

The lights have gone out in the window of the Catholic church in this Manila slum, and the hot rain falling on its streets isn't enough to wash the stench (bad smell) of human sewage (waste water) from the air. It's a quater to 2 in the morning. A hand-painted public-service announcement hangs on the rusted tin wall of a corner shop: STAY AWAY FROM DRUGS! GET INTO SPORTS!

Up the muddy lane, police officers climb on a flight of concrete stairs to a narrow corridor where there is a fresh body -- one of at least five people summarily executed in Manila on this night, Dec. 7, five more killed in Phillippine President Rodrigo Duterte's relentless war on drugs. The residences within Manila's slums are stacked haphazardly on top of one another, affording little privacy, but the man's neighbor did not come out to look when they heard the gunshot -- maybe to avoid trouble, maybe because they are used to this by now. 

The victim appeared to be in his mid-20s, and he wore black athletic shorts and rubber flip-flops, one of which buckled (bent out of shape) under his weight when he fell. There is little blood this time. The police won't disclose his name, which may be fitting, since in war-time, the dead are often relegated to the anonymity of statistics. Since Duterte took office in late June, more than 6,000 people have been killed in his campaign to purge the Philippines of illegal drugs and those associated with them, according to reliable estimates by local media. The victims -- suspected users and pushers -- do not enjoy due process, and they are always killed at night, sometimes inside their own homes. The perpetrators are vigilantes, hired guns and likely cop too.

Duterte made no secret that this would happen. "All of you who are into drugs, you sons of bitches, I will really kill you," he said last April, a month before he was elected. It wasn't just campaign bluster. For 22 years Duterte has served as mayor of the southern city of Davao, where he took a pathological approach to restoring order to the city's streets. Under his leadership, the extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals and drug users in Davao by vigilantes was practically state policy.

In December, speaking to a group of business-people, Duterte admitted to personally killing a few himself while he was mayor. The reaction of the international community has been one of outrage and reproach: Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on Dec.20 that Duterte should be investigated for murder; on the same day, folk-music legend James Taylor said he had cancled his February concert in Manila.

But many Filipinos take a utilitarian approach to the war on drugs: killing is bad, but a society tainted (contaminated) by drugs and crime is worse. About 77% of Filipinos are satisfied with Duterte's performance, according to a poll conducted in December. On the dating app Tinder, some Filipino women have overlaid their profile pictures with "I'm a Filipino, and my president is Duterte!"

Duterte, 71, was the dark-horse candidate when he entered the 2016 presidential election. But disillusioned (disappointed) Filipinos, who saw the drug epidemic as a symptom of a broken sociopolitical system, quickly came around. They liked his coarseness -- he has called both President Barack Obama and Pope Francis "son of a whore" and made jokes about raping women -- and his record as a change agent, even when he advocates violence. Three decades after the fall of the kleptocratic dictator Ferdinand Marcos, politics in the Philippine, though now a democracy, is still corrupt and ineffectual. The country's homicide rate was the highest in Asia in 2013, while the trade and consumption of methamphetamine are booming. The tourism industry, which employs 1 in 10 Filipinos and provides 7.8% of GDP, is reeling (stagger). Roughly a quarter of the population of nearly 100 million lives below the poverty line.

As grisly (horrible) accounts of the drug war grip audiences worldwide, pro-Duterte Filipinos -- and the President himself -- have responded with increasingly hostile anti-Western sentiments. Duterte is willfully carrying out what he calls a "seperation from the United Sates," a former colonizer and longtime ally that has funneled troops and aid into the country for decades. Manila is now cozying up to Beijing, even though both government dispute maritime territory in the South China Sea. Duterte has pledged to buy arms from China, and Beijing has promised to help build infrastructure in the Philippines, dealing a blow to American presence and prestige in the region.

Duterte's fiercest critic is Senator Leila de Lima, a former Secretary of Justice who has attempted to wage a war in the legislature against a strongman President who she says is actually "rather meek." Duterte and his allies have struck back, and de Lima fears impeachment (formal charges), arrest or worse. But, she says, "Will I stop fighting? Over my dead body." 

----------