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Philippines and US Secure Deal for 4 Military Bases

Philippines and US Secures Deal for 4 Military Bases

The United States has gained access to four additional military bases in the Philippines, providing a critical piece of real estate from which to monitor the Chinese in the South China Sea and around Taiwan.

The agreement closes a gap in the arc of US alliances stretching from South Korea and Japan in the north to Australia in the south. The Philippines, which borders two of the most dangerous potential flashpoints – Taiwan and the South China Sea – had been the missing link.

The agreement, which partially reverses the US’s departure from their former colony more than 30 years ago, is significant.

“There is no contingency in the South China Sea that does not necessitate access to the Philippines,” Gregory B Poling, director of the Southeast Asia program at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies told the BBC.

“The United States is not looking for permanent bases. It’s about locations, not bases.”

Under the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), the US already had limited access to five sites; the new additions and expanded access, according to a statement from Washington, will “allow more rapid support for humanitarian and climate-related disasters in the Philippines, as well as respond to other shared challenges,” likely a veiled reference to countering China in the region.

On Thursday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr in Manila.

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United States Accused of Posturing

The Unite States has not specified the location of the new bases, but three of them could be on Luzon, an island off the northern coast of the Philippines that is the only large piece of land close to Taiwan if China is excluded.

China criticized the agreement, saying “US actions escalate regional tension and undermine regional peace and stability”.

“The United States continues to step up military posture in this region out of self-interest and a zero-sum game mentality,” its embassy said in a statement.

Rather than bases where large numbers of troops will be stationed, the US is now seeking access to areas where “light and flexible” operations involving supplies and surveillance can be carried out as needed.

In other words, this is not a return to the 1980s, when the Philippines hosted 15,000 US troops and two of Asia’s largest American military bases, Clark Field and nearby Subic Bay.

The Philippine government finally called it quits in 1991. The Filipinos had recently deposed the despised dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, and returning the old colonial masters would strengthen both democracy and independence.

The Vietnam War had ended, the Cold War was winding down, and China was still a military underdog. So, in 1992, the Americans returned home – or, at least, the majority of them did.

After some 30 years, another Marcos has returned to the Malacaang Palace.

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China Encroaching on Philippines Territory

More importantly, China is no longer a military underdog, and it is banging on the Philippines’ door. Manila has stood by, horrified but powerless to intervene, as Beijing redraws the map of the South China Sea, or the West Philippine Sea, as Manila prefers to call it.

China has constructed ten artificial island bases since 2014, including one at Mischief Reef, deep within the Philippines’ own exclusive economic zone, or EEZ.

According to Herman Kraft, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines, relations between Manila and Beijing had been relatively trouble-free up until that point.

“In the South China Sea, we had a live and let live situation. However, in 2012, they attempted to seize control of Scarborough Shoal. The islands were then built beginning in 2014. China’s land grab altered the relationship.”

“We have very limited capability against the Chinese threat,” says Jose Cuisia Jr., former Philippine Ambassador to the United States.

He claims that China has repeatedly broken promises to not militarize their new South China Sea bases.

“The Chinese have militarized those features, putting more of our territory at risk. Only the United States has the ability to stop them. The Philippines cannot do it on its own.”

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US troop violence and abuse

However, thousands of US marines and airmen will not be filling the red-light districts of Olongapo or Angeles City this time. In the 1970s, Olongapo, which was close to a US naval base, was a hub for the illegal sex trade.

The history of US troop violence and abuse in the Philippines is still a sensitive subject. When their American fathers returned home, an estimated 15,000 children were left with their Filipino mothers.

“We have a long history of inequality in our relationship,” says Renato Reyes, secretary general of the left-wing New Patriotic Alliance. “The Philippines has had to bear the social costs. Rape, child abuse, and toxic waste have all occurred in the past.”

The Philippines’ left-wing groups are strongly opposed to the United States’ return.

While there will be fewer troops than previously requested, Washington is now requesting access to several new locations, some facing the South China Sea and others facing north towards Taiwan. According to unofficial reports, there are options in Cagayan, Zambales, Palawan, and Isabela.

The first is facing Taiwan, the second is facing the Scarborough Shoal, and the third is facing the Spratly Islands. New US facilities will be built within existing Philippine bases. US troops will arrive in small groups and on a rotating basis.

According to Mr. Poling, the goal will be to deter further Chinese territorial expansion in the South China Sea while also providing a location for the US to monitor Chinese military movements around Taiwan.

Oppose China’s Rise in the South China Sea

“Without this alliance, the Philippines has no way of deterring China,” he says. “It has purchased BrahMos missiles from India. The United States wishes to deploy Tomahawk cruise missiles. They can hold Chinese vessels together.” With rising fears of a conflict over Taiwan, the Philippines could serve as a “rear access area” for US military operations or even a safe haven for refugees.

However, Professor Kraft warns that Manila will not become a full-fledged member of an American alliance to challenge or oppose China’s rise.

“The Philippines, unlike Australia and Japan, is not directly challenging Chinese interests in the South and East China Seas. President Marcos desires good relations with the United States. However, he also desires good relations with China for economic reasons.”

Beijing has also stated that it will not allow a new base agreement between Manila and Washington to destabilize relations with its neighbour.

China’s state-run Global Times accused the US of “setting a trap for the Philippines” and “trying to push the Philippines to the frontlines of confrontation with China” in an editorial published to coincide with the arrival of the US defence secretary in Manila.

“We are once again caught in the middle,” says Mr Reyes, who believes China is a capitalist imperialist power just as much as the US.

“The Philippines retains a colonial mentality, viewing the United States as its big brother.”
“People forget that there are between 150,000 and 200,000 Filipinos in Taiwan,” says Mr Poling.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

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Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

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Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

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Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

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Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

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Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

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