World Rethink - Rethinking the World

Tuesday, August 1, 2023

MY WSJ BLOG COMMENTS - AUGUST 1ST, 2023

DOMINGO TRASSENS - POSTS: 14.3K

Maybe, it is an invitation of the Moon to visit her...

August Will Have Two Supermoons, Including a Rare Blue Supermoon

Posted 1d ago

Disney is living over its past glories. But its future doesn't look brilliant.

Opinion | Ashes to Ashes, Disney to Dust

Posted 1d ago

Hunter Biden will accelerate the fall of Joe Biden.

Opinion | Hunter Biden Is a Geopolitical Disaster

Posted 1d ago

Today is difficult to surpass the crisis of the age because the environment is not friendly. I don't believe in the people that make a business around this subject.

Catering to Your Midlife Crisis Is a Growing Business

Posted 2d ago

The best is that the Republicans nominate a candidate different from Donald Trump.

Opinion | Trump Is Charged With a Coverup

Posted 2d ago

Good luck, New Barnes and Noble! I like to visit this bookstore.

That Cool New Bookstore? It’s a Barnes & Noble.

Replied to terri smith 4d ago

The cost of the college has to be reasonable.

Can AI Replace Humans? We Went to the Fast-Food Drive-Through to Find Out

Replied to ALAN KAUFMAN 1w ago

It is good that we agree!

‘I’m Not the Nanny.’ Hollywood’s Fiery Activist Gears Up for a Long Fight.

Posted 1w ago

This program alone will not solve the serious crisis that the border suffers. It is necessary the federal government talks seriously with the governments of the countries that are the most important implicated in the massive immigration like

Sunday, May 28, 2023

RETHINKING - MAY 28, 2023 - POLITICS OF DISORDER

Two days ago, The Wall Street Journal published an interview with Henry Kissinger for the celebration of his 100s birthday.

The title of the story is “Henry Kissinger Surveys the World as He Turns 100”, written by Tunku Varadarajan, on May 26, 2023.

The interesting point of this story is the opinions of the former secretary of state and national security adviser.

Despite his age, Kissinger shows that he remains immersed in the analysis of worldwide politics, and maintains his brains in activity focusing on the key events of the current days.

He says that the world today is a disorder. “Almost all major countries are asking themselves about the basic orientation”.

Kissinger criticizes the French politics that are not running in total coordination with the western world. President Macron's recent visits to Beijing was an act of “autonomy” in a time when the countries of the free world have to try to be careful in the deal with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes.

The former U.S. Secretary of State also says that India and other big countries “do not have a dominant view of what they want to achieve in the world”.

He remarks that today the world is divided by the competition between the U.S. and China.

From the other side, he recognizes that President Xi Jinping is stronger globally than any previous Chinese leader, and he manipulated the two last American presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Nonetheless, he thinks that the attitude of Joe Biden in the case of Ukraine is right, and the firm support of the Ukrainians put President Putin in the side of the loser.

In the end, Russia will have to leave all the territories it conquered in 2014 with the exception of Crimea. But Kissinger, like other political analysts, thinks that the peninsula and Sevastopol are not linked with Ukraine's history. Theirve ha historic links are with Russia.

In the case of Taiwan, he says that it is “an insoluble problem”. He suggests an intelligent diplomacy from the side of the U.S. to avoid a total confrontation with China.

In summary, Henry Kissinger suggests that the American politicians from both sides of the aisle have to work together with “patriotism” to go ahead with the country, surpass the international “disorder” and continue leading the free world.

SOURCES: The Wall Street Journal, my own think tank.

Monday, April 24, 2023

RETHINKING - APRIL 24, 2023 - JACK TEIXEIRA, ONLY ANOTHER LEAKER

Some days ago, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion column from the journalist Daniel Henninger titled “Our Jack Teixeira Problem”.

Starting with the case of Air National Guardsman, the WSJ’s columnist made a review of a series of digital leakers of state secrets in the last fifteen years.

Mr. Henninger wrote “The revelation that for months the video-gamer community was able to see highly classified intelligence documents allegedly pilfered from the U.S. government by a 20-something Air National Guardsman has repeatedly raised the question: How could this happen?”

After that, the WSJ’s columnist reminded us of other cases of leaking highly secret documents that showed recently the vulnerability of the information systems of the national intelligence services. He compared Teixeira’s case with Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and others. Do you remember some of these cases?

We have to observe that all these cases have common points. Secret documents of the government were revealed by youngsters with special affinity for computers and technology while nobody was monitoring their actions.

After the analysis of cases, the Wall Street Journal journalist concludes his column with skepticism about the supervision levels of organizations of the national secret services.

Myself, after years working in the monitoring of security issues of the technology systems, I have similar thinking to Mr. Henninger.

A lot of young technicians who play with computers like to test the vulnerability of the systems. And frequently, their supervisors don’t look into the wrongdoing of their employees because they don’t realize the danger that these technicians mean for intelligence services.

I agree with Daniel Henninger about Teixeira's case. In the last paragraphs of the column, he says: “the bureaucracies will wait out the story’s brief attention span and let calls for accountability evaporate.”

And I would like to add that probably, in the short or long term, another computer genius will again put at risk the national intelligence services because according to all the cases, we see that nobody questions: How to avoid it happening again?

Wednesday, March 22, 2023

RETHINKING - MARCH 22, 2023 - HAVANA SYNDROME

Several days ago, the Wall Street Journal posted a story titled “Havana Syndrome Revisited” written by Mary Anastasia O’Grady. (March 19, 2023)

The story starts with the following paragraph: “Cuban intelligence opposed warming U.S. relations. Did it send a message?”

The WSJ’s columnist about Latin American’s issues explained that Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, in the beginning of this month put down all the government's concerns about the famous “Havana Syndrome”.

The report explains that “preexisting conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental factors” are more probable causes of the sickness that some members of our foreign services in Cuba felt since President Obama opened the Havana Embassy.

During years, officers and employees of embassies like Cuba, Russia, Serbia, China and Vietnam returned to the U.S. sick with headaches and brain problems due to an apparent “directed-energy technology” that they received when they were working in the foreign offices.

In particular, the officers working in Havana since the U.S. embassy was reopened, in frequent opportunities commented that the building is under special electrical vibrations that affect the normal performance of the members of the office.

After the document was issued by the director of national security, some former members of the foreign relations came to the press objecting to the official report.

The case remains open and the provisional conclusion of some observers is that the U.S. government doesn’t want to close embassies in rival or enemy countries, and for this reason, the intelligence services try to put down the complaints of American officers.

My comment posted in the blog section of the WSJ Online page was: When we travel to countries that have a high animosity against America, we cannot expect a friendly attitude with us.

SOURCES: The Wall Street Journal, my own think tank.

Monday, March 20, 2023

RETHINKING - MARCH 20, 2023 - CHINA IN BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE

The trip of China’s President Xi to Russia and Ukraine opens a new chapter in the war that started a year ago. This is the subject of The Wall Street Journal’s story titled “China’s Xi Arrives in Moscow as Beijing Seeks to Position Itself as a Peacemaker”.

The story was written by Thomas Grove and it started with a gloomy observation: “But with Russia and Ukraine fighting for advantage on the battlefield neither is interested in talks for now.”

Russia’s President Putin doesn’t want to recognize that till now his country really didn’t make significant progress after the 2014’s war.

From the Ukrainian side, President Zelensky wants to recover the territory that his country lost in 2014 including the Crimea Peninsula.

Both belligerent countries expect to redefine the current geography in the battlefield when the spring campaign starts.

It is interesting to see that the bloggers who wrote comments behind the WSJ's story don’t show optimism about the “declared intentions” of President XI to become a peacemaker of this war.

Everybody believes that the Chinese leader is trying to help Mr. Putin before the Russian President drowns in the blood of his dead soldiers.
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And like the author of the story says, President Zelensky is willing to welcome President Xi to Kyiv, while he maintains his conditions that everybody knows.

Ukraine can be not accept "the peace until Russian troops leave Ukraine entirely, including the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine that Moscow has occupied since 2014.”

My comments posted in the blog section of WSJ Online were:

1) China has hurry for the peace treaty because it is playing to legalize in Putin's benefit the Ukrainian territories that Russia took since 2014.

2) The peace treaty brokered by China is a farce.

Other bloggers of the Wall Street Journal Members Community applauded my opinions.

SOURCES: The Wall Street Journal, my own think tank.

Saturday, February 18, 2023

RETHINKING - FEBRUARY 18, 2023 - CUT OF HEADS IN FACEBOOK

Barron’s in one of its last issues of 2022 predicted that the New Year would not be happy for everybody in the technology sector.

After that, The Wall Street Journal in a succession of stories of 2023 informed the readers about the cut of jobs in Microsoft, Google and also Facebook.

Today – February 18, 2023 – in a very exclusive story, the WSJ posted a research of two of its journalists that starts “Facebook Parent Meta Gives Thousands of Workers Subpar Reviews. The performance ratings may signal more job cuts are on the way.”

"Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. META 0.26%increase; green up pointing triangle gave thousands of employees subpar ratings in a recently concluded round of performance reviews, a signal that more job cuts may be on the way, people familiar with the matter said. // The company also cut a bonus metric, the people said, one of several steps senior executives are taking after Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg declared 2023 would be a “year of efficiency.” "

From my experience in the technology industry, I can add that periodically, the tech companies hire a lot of employees, but they don’t maintain these workers for a long time. They don’t keep their soldiers in combat positions when they don’t need them for an immediate battle. They are not government institutions that guarantee a salary for everybody until the retirement day.

About this subject, this was my comment posted today in the blogger section of WSJ Online:

“Big tech corporations don't want to feed huge crowds of people who only look for the tech panacea.”

And the frequent cutting of heads in the big tech corporations is not new.

They are the risk that the newcomers of the technology industry have to assume from the first day of work.

SOURCES: The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s