Royal command appoints House speaker, deputies
A royal command has been issued, appointing Wan Muhamad Noor Matha, former leader of the Prachachat Party, as speaker of the House of Representatives.
The royal command, countersigned by caretaker Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, was published in the Royal Gazette on Friday.
Under the same royal command, Padipat Suntiphada, Move Forward Party’s MP for Phitsanulok, has been appointed as the first deputy House speaker, and Pichet Chuamuangphan, Pheu Thai Party’s MP for Chiang Rai, as the second deputy House speaker.
The appointments were effective on Wednesday.
On Friday morning, a ceremony was held in Room 604, located in Zone N on the sixth floor of the parliament building, to formally bestow the royal command upon Mr Wan, Mr Padipat and Mr Pichet.
Mr Wan addresses the House after being nominated as the sole candidate for the job of speaker, in the parliament on Tuesday morning. (Photo: Chanat Katanyu)
Former teacher gets jail for showing pornography to student, suggested sexual methods to ‘destress’
SINGAPORE: A former teacher from a top school in Singapore was sentenced to 54 days’ jail on Friday (Jul 7) for showing pornographic material to a teenage student.
The teen, who was 17 at the time, had been thinking of skipping school as he felt ostracised and felt he had no purpose in life, so his mother had reached out to the offender for help.
The 49-year-old man, whose identity is under gag order along with details of the school and the subject he taught, had pleaded guilty to one count of showing sexual material to the teen.
A second charge of possessing over 1,000 obscene video files was taken into consideration.
At the time of the offence, the man had been teaching for more than 22 years.
The victim was in year 6, the equivalent of junior college year 2. The offender was the boy’s form teacher since 2020.
In January 2021, the victim’s mother emailed the teacher, seeking help for her son as she wanted to find out how he was doing in school.
The teacher told the teen’s mother that he had noticed the boy was very withdrawn, less cheerful, tired and falling behind on schoolwork. They agreed for the teacher to find a chance to speak to the victim.
When the teacher spoke to the boy after class, the teen confided that he had been having negative thoughts and engaged in self-harm to cope with his emotions.
The man then gave his phone number to the victim, suggesting that it be saved under a different name as their conversation was “not exactly legit”.
The boy went home and told his mother what happened, expressing surprise and gratitude that an adult man could understand him so well.
The teacher began texting the boy. At the same time, he lied to the boy’s mother that he had obtained the green light from the school to handle the boy on his own.
In February 2021, the teacher led the boy to a consultation area in the school and gave him a self-help book. They began talking and discussing coping mechanisms for emotions.
The teacher told the victim that males of his age had only two ways to destress – “medication and masturbation”. This made the boy uncomfortable.
The teacher then began asking the boy sexual questions and showed him some links to pornographic websites.
He invited the boy to his flat a few days later, where he talked to the boy about watching porn and his experience visiting sex workers while on holiday in Bali.
Neither the victim nor the accused had told the victim’s parents about this meeting.
The teacher kept plying the teen with alcohol, continued to ask him sexual questions and showed him pornographic videos. The boy tried to avoid watching them, and the teacher noticed his discomfort.
When the teen wanted to leave, the teacher only booked a ride home for him about an hour later as he wanted the smell of alcohol to dissipate first.
The boy said that when he got home, he realised that “there was some immorality” in the teacher’s behaviour.
He told his mother about it the next day. The matter was escalated to school authorities and the vice-principal filed a police report. The teacher resigned that same month.
After his arrest, he said he had reached out to the victim out of genuine concern for the boy’s well-being. However, he said he also felt depressed and “starved of companionship”, so crossed boundaries.
He was assessed at the Institute of Mental Health and found to have major depressive disorder, benzodiazepine use disorder and some personality disorder traits. However, these conditions had no causal link with his offences, and he was fit to plead in court.
SENTENCING SUBMISSIONS
The prosecutor had sought three months’ jail, noting that the offence was relatively new, with no direct precedents to refer to.
Instead, the prosecution referred to precedents for similar offences such as sexual exploitation of a child or young person or exhibiting obscene objects to minors.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Yvonne Poon said the accused was the victim’s form teacher and had abused this formal position of trust.
On top of this, he further cultivated a personal relationship of reliance and independence between himself and the victim, making an effort to gain the latter’s trust.
The man already knew that the victim was in a position of acute vulnerability but went on to commit the offence “with nary an iota of consideration for the sort of havoc he might wreak upon the victim’s mental and emotional states through such exploitation”, said Ms Poon.
The teacher was also a “corrupting influence”, encouraging the teen to perform sexual acts, getting him to drink alcohol while underaged and touching the boy inappropriately.
However, she accepted the mitigation that the man has no prior convictions and has a generally unblemished and extended career as an educator, who genuinely cared for his students’ welfare.
The man had also been struggling with depression for almost 10 years.
The judge allowed the man to begin his jail term on Jul 17.
For making a teenager view pornographic material while he was in an exploitative relationship, the man could have been jailed for up to a year, fined, or both.
Taylor Swift general ticket sales for Singapore concerts start: Fans queue at SingPost outlets and online
However, upon the break of dawn on Friday, reports of rushes emerged as a Taylor Swift fan group on Telegram shared videos of crowds running up escalators in Northpoint City to queue for tickets.
At ION Orchard, on the other hand, fans queued as early as about 8pm on Thursday night but were asked to leave as the area was to be shuttered off. Many of them returned by the time Orchard MRT station opened at about 5.45am on Friday. Fifteen minutes later, the shutters opened and fans scrambled to be among the first to enter the outlet, with some crawling through the gap to get ahead of the crowd.
Staff then told fans to form an official queue, allowing about 30 people to line up and wait at the designated area. Those who did not make it to the official queue were asked not to wait at the premises.
CNA Lifestyle visited SingPost’s Tampines branch at around 11am on Friday to check out the crowd and suss out potential victors of “The Great War”.
Taylor Swift general ticket sales for Singapore concerts: Fans queue at SingPost outlets and online
However, upon the break of dawn on Friday, reports of rushes emerged as a Taylor Swift fan group on Telegram shared videos of crowds running up escalators in Northpoint City to queue for tickets.
At ION Orchard, on the other hand, fans queued as early as about 8pm on Thursday night but were asked to leave as the area was to be shuttered off. Many of them returned by the time Orchard MRT station opened at about 5.45am on Friday. Fifteen minutes later, the shutters opened and fans scrambled to be among the first to enter the outlet, with some crawling through the gap to get ahead of the crowd.
Staff then told fans to form an official queue, allowing about 30 people to line up and wait at the designated area. Those who did not make it to the official queue were asked not to wait at the premises.
CNA Lifestyle visited SingPost’s Tampines branch at around 11am on Friday to check out the crowd and suss out potential victors of “The Great War”.
Japanese workers are finally seeing their pay jump
Getty ImagesJapanese workers have seen their pay go up at a record rate after the government called on companies to help employees facing rising prices.
Official figures show that, compared to a year earlier, wages rose by 1.8% in May, the fastest pace in 28 years.
The salaries of many people in Japan had barely moved for decades as inflation was almost non-existent.
However, as the cost of living jumped the country’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida urged employers to take action.
Prices around the world have risen in recent months as countries eased pandemic restrictions and the war in Ukraine pushed up the cost of key goods such as oil and wheat. In Japan costs of everyday items were also pushed higher by its weakening currency.
Inflation in the world’s third largest economy has been rising for more than a year. The most recent official reading showed core consumer prices rose by 3.2% in May from a year earlier.
This year, companies including, Fast Retailing, which owns fashion chain Uniqlo and motor industry giants Toyota and Honda said they would increase their employees’ pay.
Earlier this week, Japan’s largest trade union Rengo said firms had agreed at annual labour talks to the largest pay increases in three decades.
The hikes represent a “symbolic structural change in the Japanese economy,” research analysts from Japanese investment bank Nomura said.
“Japan’s potential labour pool shifted to a rapid decline around the end of 2021,” they added. “This should put sustained upward pressure on wages.”
Earlier this year, Uniqlo owner Fast Retailing said it was raising salaries to “remunerate each and every employee appropriately for their ambition and talents”.
The firm added that it aimed to “increase the company’s growth potential and competitiveness in line with global standards”.
Meanwhile, Toyota boss Koji Sato said he hoped the move would have a positive impact across Japan’s motor industry and “lead to frank discussions between labour and management at each company.”
Rival car maker Honda said the extra money will largely be distributed to younger employees as starting salaries are boosted.
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US, China want to reconcile but donât know how
A People’s Republic of China (PRC) scholar’s recent commentary on US-China relations is refreshing in its even-handedness and optimism. The author of the July 5 essay, Wu Xinbo, is the dean of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai and has substantial experience exchanging views with US foreign affairs experts.
Nevertheless, Wu oversimplifies the difficulty of repairing this dangerously frayed bilateral relationship. Echoing what PRC officials have recently been saying, Wu argues that the 2022 meeting in Bali between PRC General Secretary Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden established a useful “foundation” for improved US-China relations.
Wu summarizes the commitments at the Bali meeting as follows: Xi said “China does not seek to change the existing international order or interfere in the internal affairs of the US, and has no intention to challenge or displace the US.” Wu paraphrases Biden as saying “the US respects China’s system, does not seek to change it and has no intention for a new Cold War.”
In practical terms, however, this foundation is so riven with cracks as to be nearly useless. From the US standpoint, Beijing’s insistence that Taiwan must become a province of the PRC, whether voluntarily or by military force, is an attempt to change the existing order.
And so are PRC claims to ownership of the South China Sea, PRC encroachment on the Sino-Indian border and PRC designs on Japan’s Ryukyu Islands. China’s attempts to interfere in the domestic politics of the US are well-documented.
Xi’s denial of an intent to “displace the US” as a global or regional leader similarly lacks credibility. PRC officials and media relentlessly attempt to de-legitimize US leadership by defaming the United States as warlike, declining, hypocritical and pushing allies toward disaster.
Beijing frequently threatens US partners with economic or military harm if they cooperate too closely with the Americans. On July 3, Politburo member and former foreign minister Wang Yi rather bizarrely told Japanese and South Korean diplomats they should side with China against the West because of common Asian racial ancestry.
Nor do Biden’s Bali commitments offer China much to build on.
A statement that the US government “respects China’s system [and] does not seek to change it” is an improvement over the Trump administration’s call for the international community to work toward the overthrow of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
But it does not mean Washington will cease publicly criticizing the CCP government for being “authoritarian” and for denying its subjects civil and political rights, criticism that enrages Beijing.
The Chinese might think that if America says it does not want a “new Cold War,” it logically follows that the US government will stop what Beijing alleges is supporting Taiwan’s independence and attempting to build an “Asian NATO.”
In Washington’s view, however, the way to achieve peace and stability is to strengthen the potential counter-China coalition enough to dissuade Beijing from attempting military adventurism.
In sum, Xi and Biden talked past each other at Bali, which explains why the bilateral relationship did not improve in the months afterward.
Academic Wu says China and the US should “draw red lines for both sides” and that “each does not pose an existential threat to the other.” The “red lines” idea is similar to the Biden administration’s “guardrails” metaphor.
By adding the additional phrase “existential threat,” however, Wu previews why this idea would fail.
The strategic flashpoints with the highest risk of US-China military conflict all involve cases of PRC expansionism mingled with irredentism: Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Sino-Indian border and the East China Sea.
Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government claims all of these areas as rightfully Chinese territory, the “loss” of any of them is by definition an existential threat to China.
Complying with Beijing’s red lines would require the US to abandon Taiwan and the South China Sea to PRC annexation. Washington is clearly unwilling to do that. The most the US side could do is restate that it is not actively encouraging Taiwanese independence, which the PRC side does not believe.
Meanwhile, politicians from both major US parties continue to use support for Taiwan as a means of virtue signaling, undercutting the White House’s assurances to the PRC.
Wu argues that “Washington has stressed too much competition” with China at the expense of cooperation. Instead, he says, “we should sit down to discuss what will be a realistic agenda for cooperation.”
Wu is certainly correct that despite the strategic tensions, there remains a broad array of areas where China and the US can and should cooperate for mutual benefit. There are, however, two problems here.
First, Beijing tends to hold important areas of potential cooperation hostage to unrelated bilateral disputes, requiring that Washington first make concessions before Beijing will agree to talk about making progress on an issue that is also in China’s interest. Examples are confidence-building measures and climate change. So the discussion on a “realistic agenda” would likely begin with some attempted extortion by the PRC delegation.
A second problem is that economic “de-risking” is not going away. The top “cooperation” priority for the PRC today is to regain the degree of access to US technology that China previously enjoyed. China, however, used that previous access to build up formidable military capabilities and demonstrated alarming intentions toward important US interests.
Now that China is a dangerous potential adversary, the bilateral relationship is permanently changed. US policymakers will increasingly forego cooperation that promises immediate economic rewards if the longer-term result would be increased US vulnerability.
The discussion that Wu envisions is unlikely to result in the US buying Huawei equipment or lifting the restrictions on PRC access to advanced semiconductors.
Washington would be open to talking about cooperating on climate change and avoiding accidental military incidents, but it’s unclear that is what Beijing really wants.
Finally, Wu calls for Sino-US negotiations on “some adjustments” to an “international order” that he says excessively caters to US preferences. In principle, this is reasonable. China is an emergent great power in a region already dominated by a long-established great power, a historically recurrent war-prone situation.
Accommodating China by changing the rules of international interaction is preferable to a decision by China that it must fight a war to replace US rules with Chinese rules. As with the “red lines” issue, however, it is doubtful that the “adjustments” the US is willing to make would satisfy Beijing.
Key sticking points would be China’s insistence on winning its territorial claims, Chinese opposition to US alliances and military activity in the region, and US opposition to PRC economic coercion.
Wu suggests a new order should be based on the United Nations Charter. But neither this nor any other legal document would be sufficient to smooth over the current frictions or adjudicate future disputes between the PRC and US.
Even now, Beijing argues that US military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan violated the UN Charter. Washington can point to the PRC’s human rights violations, disregard for the Law of the Sea and support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Great powers pursue their self-interests first, often in defiance of the rules, and then secondarily limit reputational damage as best they can.
Wu’s commentary graciously avoids the usual Chinese call for the US to “correct its mistakes.” Nor does it admit to any imperfection in PRC policies, which is typical of PRC-based analysts. This evasion makes possible a hopefulness that, unfortunately, is superficial and unrealistic, despite Wu’s apparently admirable intent.
Denny Roy is a senior fellow at the East-West Center.
Chinaâs Wuhan, where COVID-19 was first detected, struggles to shed legacy of pandemic
However, for some, memories of the lockdown remain and questions persist.
“There is still trauma. Maybe the reality we saw was crueller than what the news reported. For example, the number of deaths,” a Wuhan resident, whose mother was among the first wave of those infected, told CNA.
“We are exposed to what is said to be the real data, but for various reasons, there is a difference between what we see in Wuhan and the reported data. I accept it because how should I put it? The country has its considerations, right?”
There are also physical reminders of the last three-and-a-half years.
The Huanan seafood market in Jianghan district, the epicentre of the outbreak, remains boarded up and inaccessible. It was shuttered in January 2020 when the earliest COVID-19 cases linked to the market were first announced.
Today, it remains at the centre of a controversial debate over the origins of the virus.
China to ban food imports from Japan citing safety reasons
BEIJING: China will ban the import of food from about one-fifth of Japanese prefectures for safety reasons, Chinese customs said on Friday (Jul 7), citing Japan’s move to discharge nuclear-contaminated water into the sea. China, the biggest buyer of Japan’s seafood exports, said it would also strictly review the documentsContinue Reading
China tightens scrutiny of some Japanese food imports over Fukushima water release
BEIJING: China will tighten its scrutiny on food from Japan and maintain curbs on some Japanese imports, the government said on Friday (Jul 7), citing Tokyo’s decision to discharge treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima plant into the sea. The Japanese plan, approved on Tuesday by the United Nations nuclearContinue Reading
Vilnius NATO summit will likely be a flop
Any decision on NATO membership is between the 31 Allies and aspirant country. And so, in this case, when it comes to Ukraine, we have been discussing with our NATO Allies and Ukraine how we can collectively support Ukraine’s aspiration for Euro-Atlantic integration.
Ukraine would have to make reforms to meet the same standards as any NATO country before they join. President Biden thinks that Ukraine can do that.
US President Joe Biden will spend three days in Europe at the NATO Summit in Vilnius scheduled for 11 and 12 July. The main topic will be Ukraine and where to go from here.
Ukraine is pushing for either immediate NATO membership or actionable security guarantees from NATO. But Ukraine’s position is undermined by the failure of the counteroffensive against Russia, and the failure of its attempts – via sabotage, assassination and lethal drones aimed at the Kremlin – to destabilize the Putin government. Now Ukraine is saying it needs NATO air power to be able to win its war.
It will be very hard to get a NATO consensus on the road ahead, no matter how much arm twisting Washington uses on its European partners.
Europe is already in a recession thanks to the Covid catastrophe, the sanctions on Russian energy and the huge unemployment levels, which impact recent immigrants. The result of all that is social unrest across Europe. France is already experiencing a serious revolt, and while the French situation has eased in the past few days, it will come back.
Meanwhile, the German government coalition is steadily losing popular support and the AfD, Germany’s right-wing party, is now the second most popular party in the country. Olaf Scholz and his coalition partners don’t know what to do: they may try banning AfD as a last ditch effort. Italy is also far from out of the mess.
The country has a conservative leadership but is being battered by unprecedented waves of immigrants coming from the Middle East.
Europe is out of money and out of bullets. It is not in a mood to give a blank check to Ukraine or risk a bigger war that might spread into Europe. President Biden will have a hard time trying to squeeze more from the Europeans.
Biden knows that he cannot unilaterally use US forces, especially airpower, without airbases and supply centers in Europe. Right now, Washington has a free hand because US warplanes are not bombing Russian positions in Ukraine. Bombing them, however, would force a strong European reaction and shatter NATO.
Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky has been pressuring Washington for advanced warplanes, saying airpower would make it possible for Ukraine to win. But the only practical way forward with that over the next year is to operate from bases outside of Ukraine using US and possibly other NATO aircraft.
This would certainly mean war in Europe and the currently ruling governments in Europe either would have to say no or face being removed by force. It is, therefore, an unlikely, if highly dangerous, scenario.
Washington has already signaled that it has been unable to convince its partners about Ukrainian NATO membership. It is likely that behind the scenes Washington is trying to craft some sort of security guarantee for Ukraine, but any meaningful guarantee is probably a bridge too far.
Russia is also restive after the Yevgeny Prigozhin-led coup attempt. Putin wants a military victory soon, as does the Russian army, which was badly stressed by the Prigozhin accusations.
Holding the line against a Ukrainian counteroffensive is not really a victory for the Russians since their image remains tarnished at home. It is reasonable to expect, therefore, that once the Ukrainian losses mount up high enough in the coming weeks, the Russian army will make dramatic offensive moves against Ukraine.
The big unknown is what the Russian army will do: Will it launch a big attack on Kiev, Kharkiv or Odesa? If, after Vilnius, Moscow sees Zelensky without any expectation of NATO coming to save him, it will exploit the situation very quickly.
Part of the Western foundation for Ukraine’s offensive was the introduction of modern technology on the battlefield, represented especially by the appearance of the Leopard tank. Unfortunately for NATO, the Leopard tanks have not saved the day for Ukraine.
So far, between 16 and 20 Leopards have been knocked out on the battlefield along with lots of other NATO-supplied armor, including infantry fighting vehicles such as the US Bradley and mine clearing systems like the Finnish Leopard 2R HMBV and the German Wisent 1.
The Leopard and US Abrams main battle tank form the armor backbone of NATO’s land defense.
While the US and its allies have superior airpower, they have sparse and inadequate air defenses compared with what Russia can bring forward. This means that a land defense needs to stand up to Russian attack helicopters armed with missiles, lethal drones and air-launched mines in addition to artillery.
The failure of the Leopard in Ukraine represents a huge challenge for NATO and signals that the current NATO “tripwire” strategy may not work.
Under the tripwire paradigm, the idea is that an initial Russian attack (most likely in the Baltic states because Russian forces are very close to Estonia and Latvia) can be held for some days while the US ships heavy forces into Europe. But if the tripwire is illusory, then NATO is exposed to rapid Russian advances in Europe should an attack be launched.
The bottom line is that NATO’s strategy needs revision or, alternatively, that the Europeans and Russians need to work out a mutually acceptable security arrangement. It is exactly such an arrangement that Russia proposed to NATO in December 2021. It was rejected without discussion.
Now the ammunition cupboard is bare, even in the United States. The Russians are learning how to counter advanced Western systems, a negative development for NATO’s security. It could not be a worse time to risk Europe’s security on the basis of being able to stop a Russian attack.
It may be easy for British politicians to scream they want NATO to fight in Ukraine, but it isn’t London that is likely the first target of Russia’s missiles. Cracks in the alliance are emerging more quickly than anticipated, and Europe’s weak governments are in trouble.
It will be interesting to see how Vilnius plays out. It will certainly be a propagandistic show, but there is a good chance Vilnius will be a flop.
Stephen Bryen is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute. This article was originally published on his Substack, Weapons and Strategy. Asia Times is republishing it with permission.