Foreign students attend an International Day event at the main plaza of Aju University in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, on Nov. 6, 2014. (Yonhap)

I hope there is more to this story that we don’t know about because there is no way this guy should be punished the way he is for enforcing appropriate dining out conduct:

The Army is moving to discharge a decorated combat pilot who intervened to stop two lesbian officers from showing what he considered inappropriate affection on the dance floor during a full-dress formal ball at Fort Drum, New York, in 2012.

Lt. Col. Christopher Downey, who was once assigned to the White House and completed tours in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, ended up being convicted administratively of assaulting a soldier trying to videotape the kissing and grabbing. Col. Downey’s attorney, Richard Thompson, says his client merely pushed down the camera to prevent photos and video that could end up on social media.

Mr. Thompson said Col. Downey’s commanding officer also convicted him of violating the directive that ended the ban on gays openly serving in the military.

“It’s political correctness run wild,” Mr. Thompson said. “Military rules do not apply to lesbian officers because of political correctness.” (Washington Times)

You can read more at the link, but to me it is amazing how many careers I have seen ruined by dining outs.

Interesting article in Forbes that explains why the U.S. economy has passed the point of no return:

Chinese leader Xi Jinping knows something Barack Obama doesn’t: America is finished. The U.S. economy is an ocean liner holed below the waterline. In the stateroom, the band plays on – but, on the bridge, the outcome is clear.

With the arguable exception of the late-era Soviet Union, America is sinking faster than any Great Power in history.

As a proportion of national output, America’s foreign debts are already larger than those of any Great Power since the rotten-to-the-core Ottoman empire a century ago. For those who need reminding, the Ottoman empire, which had flourished for more than six centuries, was then within a decade of final collapse.

Because every dollar of current-account deficit (the current account is the largest and most meaningful measure of trade) represents an extra dollar that has to be funded from abroad, America’s foreign indebtedness is now accumulating at a rate of more than $1 billion a day.

There is no way America can export itself back to national solvency. As Xi Jiping knows only too well, this is a matter of technology. As soon as American corporations come up with a more efficient new production technology, they ship it to China or elsewhere overseas where it will boost the productivity of foreign workers. Any corporation that wants to sell in China must not only manufacture there but bring its best technology. Then it is expected to export back to the United States. All this means that the American economy has passed the tipping point. It is now simply too hollowed out to make a recovery. Even apparently solid U.S. manufacturers like Boeing, Caterpillar, and Corning Glass have long since sourced many of their most advanced components and materials from Japan, Korea, Germany, and other manufacturing-focused nations. (For a closer look at Boeing, click here and here. Much of Boeing’s most valuable technology has long since been transferred to East Asia, not least its avionics and its incomparable wing technology.)

In proceeding full steam ahead towards national bankruptcy, the United States is world history’s ultimate example of the triumph of ideology over commonsense. Beginning in the Eisenhower era, succeeding Washington administrations have bet the farm on ever-freer trade. Supposedly this would strengthen American economic leadership. To say the least, the powers that be in Tokyo, Seoul, and Taipei, as well as in Bonn, Frankfurt, and West Berlin, discreetly laughed at such epochal naïveté.

No nation has understood the stupidity of America’s trade policy more clearly than post-Mao China. On the one hand, American leaders have thrown the U.S. market wide open to Chinese exports. On the other, they have ignored Beijing’s in-your-face blocking of virtually all advanced American exports to China. The United States has been by far the most serious victim of Chinese protectionism. ( Forbes)

You can read more at the link, but the article goes on to explain how American corruption is worse than in China and how South Korea gets more goods through the Chinese wall of protectionism than the U.S. does.

So are we watching slow motion national suicide?

Here is the latest sexual assault / harassment story making headlines:

Katie Rapp was surprised when she was told to go to a Perkins restaurant outside Cincinnati to discuss the investigation into her claims of sexual harassment.

Rapp, a member of the Ohio National Guard, sat in a corner booth trying to fend off a panic attack as she described her experience in Afghanistan. A Beyoncé song blasted in the background.

“Everything I went through in [the] country was hard. It really sucked,” Rapp told BuzzFeed News. “But my investigation was the hardest four hours of my life.”

It’s been over two years since Rapp was sent home from Afghanistan and 19 months since her investigation interview in March 2013. In about 30 days she will learn if she will get her wish to receive an honorable medical discharge from the military, or be required to stay until her contract ends in 2018. She had been distracting herself from thinking about the case by attending classes in biochemistry at the University of Cincinnati, but has since taken some time off due to the medical board evaluation process.

Rapp’s case was assigned to Lt. Col. Lisa Gammon. The National Guard and Gammon would not comment on how many previous military sexual assault cases Gammon had investigated, but, according to her LinkedIn profile, she had been working with the Ohio National Guard since 2008.

Rapp had already become disillusioned with the National Guard by the time she met with Gammon. Rapp claims that she was repeatedly sexually harassed by men on her unit, both while deployed in Afghanistan and also during basic training in South Carolina. She said that after reporting the incidents, her captain transferred her to a different platoon, rather than punishing her alleged harassers. She was sent to a mandatory psychological evaluation, diagnosed with an “adjustment disorder,” and sent home.

“I learned that nobody believes you unless you can prove it,” said Rapp. So she decided to record her interview with Gammon, just in case the meeting didn’t go well.

In her words, “It was four straight hours of victim-blaming.” (Buzzfeed)

You can read the rest at the link.

It will be interesting to see if she gets the discharge she wants due to claiming to have PTSD for sexual harassment. Instead of discharging her they should first conduct a more professional investigation then what was reported in this article.

Considering the cover ups of such cases uncovered in the Alaska National Guard this makes me wonder if the Guard has got the memo that all sexual harassment and assault cases will be thoroughly investigated?

@isaacstonefish yes of course ! pic.twitter.com/SrbOWeWkSL

— Vladimir (@Vladimir258046) November 12, 2014

The North Koreans have been using near slave labor for decades now in places like the Kaesong Industrial Complex or Siberian logging sites. So this latest news is nothing new:

Thousands of migrant labourers from North Korea are toiling for years on construction sites in Qatar for virtually no pay – including on the vast new metropolis that is the centrepiece of the World Cup – in what may amount to “state-sponsored slavery”.

According to testimonies from workers and defectors, labourers from the reclusive state said they receive almost no salaries in person while in the Gulf emirate during the three years they typically spend there.

They work in the expectation they will collect their earnings when they return to North Korea, but according to a series of testimonies from defectors and experts, workers receive as little as 10% of their salaries when they go home, and some may receive nothing. One North Korean worker at a construction site in central Doha told the Guardian: “We are here to earn foreign currency for our nation.” (The Guardian)

You can read more at the link.

Actor Lee Jong-suk (R) attends an event in Seoul on Nov. 6, 2014, to promote the new SBS drama “Pinocchio,” the story of broadcast reporters chasing the truth. At left is actress Park Shin-hye. (Yonhap)

It is pretty amazing the length that the Chinese censors go to protect the image of their leaders:

It was a warm gesture on a chilly night when Vladimir Putin wrapped a shawl around the wife of Xi Jinping while the Chinese president chatted with Barack Obama. The only problem: Putin came off looking gallant, the Chinese summit host gauche and inattentive.

Worse still were off-color jokes that began to circulate about the real intentions of the divorced Russian president — a heartthrob among many Chinese women for his macho, man-of-action image.

That was too much for the Chinese authorities.

The incident at a performance linked to this week’s Asia-Pacific summit originally was broadcast on state broadcaster CCTV and spread online as a forwarded video. But it was soon scrubbed clean from the Chinese Internet, reflecting the intense control authorities exert over any material about top leaders while also pointing to cultural differences over what’s considered acceptable behavior in public.

“China is traditionally conservative on public interaction between unrelated men and women, and the public show of consideration by Putin may provide fodder for jokes, which the big boss probably does not like,” said Beijing-based historian and independent commentator Zhang Lifan. ( Associated Press)

You can read more at the link, but I wonder if China has some emergency command center where people monitor the news and social media all day to determine what to censor?

Smart @ZacharyKeck take on the US-China climate deal. http://t.co/f6x0Xjtqd5

— Matt Schiavenza (@MattSchiavenza) November 12, 2014

Actor Ahn Yong-jun (L) attends an event in Seoul on Nov. 7, 2014, to promote the new KBSN drama “SOS Please Help Me.” At right is actress Kim Bora. (Yonhap)