Week 16

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May might need to revise her thinking that an election victory will strengthen her hand in the Brexit talks.

It turns out European governments are already toughening up their negotiating plan. Diplomats revised EU Donald Tusk’s draft guidelines to include harder language on safeguarding citizens’ rights, Britain’s potential financial dues, trade and security, Bloomberg’s Ian Wishart reports.

Sad, but..

I empathize with creating a maximum win-win deal for UK post-Brexit, but if EU is a club, people in it must be better off than when they are out. Plus the UK-EU relationship so far probably contained some favorable concessions in it for the British that were disadvantageous for the EU, so the concept of win-win is always related to some strategic necessity. 

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Comment

US must be careful with North Korea

NK must be careful with US

Japan is a US ally in the region. NK keep lobbing grenades -missiles- over their heads. US cannot look like a chump. Put these together - where do we arrive?

Do we want a nuclear Korea, a nuclear Japan? No. The arrangement so far is US provides security for Japan, and Japan forks off some cash once in a while to cover military cost  (Japan paid for the first Iraq War for example). NK leadership is highly erratic and don’t come across as a credible state. Do these guys think this is a game? How disconnected from reality do you have to be to mess with a power 20 times your size?

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News

ISIS attack in France reported close to election day

Riiiighhhttt

“ISIS attacks”. Close to election day… Yeah.

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