China-North Korea: Update. China's Foreign Ministry declined Wednesday, 8 May, to confirm the Bank of China's closure of the account of the North Korean Foreign Trade Bank. In response to a question at Wednesday's news conference, Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, “For specifics, please refer it to competent Chinese authorities.”
Sources of the Daily NK reported that since 7 May, “other Chinese state banking entities including China Construction Bank have apparently ceased business dealings with North Korean financial entities as well. The banks did so in accordance with guidance handed down by the China Banking Regulatory Commission, and as such is actually a policy of the Chinese government.”
Comment: If the Chinese are exerting economic pressure against North Korea as punishment for refusing to listen to guidance, some reaction by North Korea should become evident soon. Such action would represent a strategic change in China's relationship with North Korea. More on this later.
One of the world’s leading terrorists, the mass murderer Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has been summoned to China where he will be confronted with evidence of his involvement in the March 11, 2011 nuclear and tsunami terror attack against Japan, according to Chinese government sources.
The evidence is a tape recorded phone call to then Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan in which Netanyahu threatened to destroy all of Japan’s nuclear reactors if Kan did not order the Japanese government to write off its holdings of US government debt, according to Japanese military intelligence. In exchange for sweeping this issue under the carpet, the 180 nation BRICS alliance will demand an end to all further war-mongering in the Middle East.
The Israeli use of a nuclear bunker buster bomb against Syria just before Netanyahu’s departure was a futile gesture of defiance as the worldwide crackdown on the Sabbatean Satanic mafia unfolds.
In a related development, the UK Police and Crime Commission have opened an investigation into the Thames Valley police, Sara Thornton in particular, concerning, among other things, the murder of bio-weapons specialist Dr. David Kelly. This is part of a wider police investigation into the cabal that fooled the UK government into participating in the invasion of Iraq.
The heads of MI5, the London Metropolitan Police counter terror squad and of UK Special Forces have all left their posts, according to an MI5 source. Several journalists have also been arrested, he said. Many witnesses of substance (military) are coming forward in support having realized the UK police have been acting outside correct procedures in many instances, according to an MI5 source. “The emphasis will now be on internal investigations of corruption in the Police and Civil service,” the source said.
The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, Head of the Civil Service, will also find his position under close scrutiny. Then Prime Minister Tony Blair has already been investigated and has basically sung like a canary. Blair has already implicated many EU leaders as having accepted bribes in exchange for allowing the Soviet Union modeled EU to gradually usurp the sovereignty of European nation states.
This of course, is a preliminary to investigations that will finally bring justice to the perpetrators of the 911 terror and mind-control attack against the US. The wheels of justice will roll towards George Bush Jr., Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Frank Carlucci, Michael Chertoff and the entire fascist cabal that seized control of the US following the rigged year 2000 election, according to patriotic CIA and Pentagon sources.
Next week I am doing an invited talk in London. My subject is search and Big Data. I will be digging into this notion in this month’s Honk newsletter and adding some business intelligence related comments at an Information Today conference in New York later this month. (I have chopped the number of talks I am giving this year because at my age air travel and the number of 20 somethings at certain programs makes me jumpy.)
I want to highlight one point in my upcoming London talk; namely, the financial challenge which companies face when they embrace Big Data and then want to search the information in the system and search the Big Data system’s outputs.
Click on Image to Enlarge
Notice that precision and recall has not improved significantly over the last 30 years. I anticipate that many search vendors will tell me that their systems deliver excellent precision and recall. I am not convinced. The data which I have reviewed show that over a period of 10 years most systems hit the 80 to 85 percent precision and recall level for content which is about a topic. Content collections composed of scientific, technical, and medical information where the terminology is reasonably constrained can do better. I have seen scores above 90 percent. However, for general collections, precision and recall has not been improving relative to the advances in other disciplines; for example, converting structured data outputs to fancy graphics.
I don’t want to squabble about precision and recall. The main point is that when an organization mashes Big Data with search, two curves must be considered. The first is the complexity curve. The idea is that search is a reasonably difficult system to implement in an effective manner. The addition of a Big Data system adds another complex task. When two complex tasks are undertaken at the same time, the costs go up.
You read reports like this one and you realize once again how big a disconnect there is between what Obama and his administration say, and what they actually do. That a Republican administration would have been even worse is small comfort. As these sorts of acts make cl! ear both are corrupt and more interested in representing their corporate masters, then representing the best interests of the American people.
If you read SR regularly you know my views on the importance of creating Thriving and Resilient Communities if the middle class is to preserve a decent quality of life. Here is an excellent essay on alternatives to a world dominated by corporate special interests. This is good news
It can be done. We can build a different kind of world. It is not technology but attitude that has to change. As you read this contrast it with the piece on North Carolina in yesterday's edition.
Click through to see the pictures of the apartment building.
My former professor and former Legal Adviser Abram Chayes once said, after he had sued the United States government from the academy, “I have always thought there is nothing
wrong with an American lawyer holding the United States to its own best standards.”
It is in that spirit that tonight, from this important podium, I call my country to its own best values and principles.
More than any one strategy or capability, the core virtue in this environment is a commitment to adapting as the old certainties break and adopting the new capabilities we can still only partially understand, and to remember that the only reason any of this matters to more than the current employees of what we used to call the news industry is that journalism—real reporting, about whatever someone somewhere doesn’t want published—is an essential public good.
Good thing I have access to CCTV-English (Chinese state television) for international news or I would have totally missed the scoop that Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu has frozen new settlement activity in the Palestinian West Bank. CCTV-English is a free channel on Freeview, New Zealand’s free digital hook-up.
I suspect this relates to China recently surpassing Australia as our most important trade partner. It looks like World War III is about to break out any day now in Syria. Thus what I like most about CCTV-English is that they have a correspondent in Damascus (unlike US networks, the BBC or even Al Jazeera) with sources among rebel groups and the Syrian military. .
Two nights ago, I was really intrigued to learn that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in China at the time of the Israeli air strikes on Syria. So was Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. This was no accident, as China’s new president Xi Jinping was very hopeful the two leaders would take up his offer to mediate a meeting between them.
Israel’s Export Imperative
Netanyahu was in China hoping to increase exports to the world’s second largest economy. Given that 40% of Israel’s GDP is based on exports, Bibi is keen for trade with China(Israel’s number 3 trading partner) to reach $10 billion over the next three years. While also interested in increasing exports, Abbas is more interested in economic aid China has offered, as well the likelihood their intervention could shift the stalemated peace process.
China’s new president Xi Jinping has issued a four point proposal for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to a statement issued by Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying: “The immediate priority is to take credible steps to stop settlement activities, end violence against innocent civilians and lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip in order to create the necessary conditions for the resumption of peace talks.
