How pirates steer corporate innovation: Lessons from the front lines

Calgary Innovation Week runs from Nov. 13-21, 2024.

By Chris Hogg
DIGITAL JOURNAL
November 19, 2024

Image generated by OpenAI's DALL-E via ChatGPT

If you ask Tina Mathas who should lead transformative innovation projects, she’ll tell you it’s all about the pirates.

“It requires a different type of mindset, a different type of ecosystem and environment, and it should be protected,” says Mathas, co-founder of Flow Factory, a company that aims to enhance human performance by integrating the concept of “flow state” with artificial intelligence.

For transformative innovation, she argues, big companies need pirates — not quite drunken Jack Sparrow adventurers, but individuals who challenge traditional processes and navigate uncharted waters of creativity and risk.

Mathas’s declaration set the tone for a lively virtual panel on corporate innovation at Calgary Innovation Week. The discussion brought together industry leaders to dissect how innovation can thrive in corporate environments often resistant to change.

The challenges, they agreed, are substantial, but the potential rewards for organizations that get it right are transformative.

Making the case for pirates

“Transformative innovation requires pirates,” Mathas said. “It’s not just about solving today’s problems — it’s about being bold and taking risks on where we think the industry is going.”

Mathas described her experience at ATB Financial, where her team was tasked with “breaking the bank.”

Operating with a $50,000 budget, they delivered a market-ready banking platform in just five weeks.

“We had no banking experience,” she said, “and people didn’t understand how we got that done. We had board support, and we had executive support. In other words, we reported directly into the executive and we were separate from the main organization.

 We were the pirates.”

This freedom is crucial, Mathas said, because transformative innovation rarely succeeds when confined by a corporation’s standard processes.

“According to an Accenture study, 82% of organizations run innovation in exactly the same way as any other regular project. Plus it takes about 18 months, and you’re still facing a 90% failure rate,” she said, telling the audience that is the reason she left the corporate world.

Innovation begins with people and alignment with business goals

Jeff Hiscock of Pembina Pipelines shifted the focus to the human element of innovation, emphasizing the challenges of workforce turnover and retention. Focus on the importance of building environments that retain experienced talent, while simultaneously attracting new entrants to the workforce, he advised.

“Thirty-five per cent of the energy workforce will turn over by 2035,” Hiscock said, referencing data from a provincial study. “A lot of that is through retirement. How do you create a workplace where those people want to stay in the roles longer?”

By focusing on creating workplaces that are innovative, engaging and adaptable, organizations can address this looming talent gap while driving forward their innovation goals.

Hiscock described innovation as a necessity, not a luxury, particularly in industries like energy.

“Innovation is about solving real problems that impact your business’s core value streams,” he said.

Pembina, for instance, focuses 70% of its innovation efforts on projects with direct EBITDA impacts, ensuring alignment with organizational goals.

However, Hiscock cautioned that innovation efforts often stall because of cultural resistance.

“What’s obvious to you is not obvious to everyone else,” he said. “It’s like playing a 4D chess game that only you can see. That’s a bad place to be.”

His solution? Securing buy-in from every level of the organization, not just senior executives.

From dollars to disruption

“Innovation isn’t about dollars, but it kind of is,” said Shannon Phillips, co-founder of Unbounded Thinking. Phillips’ work focuses on helping organizations, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, implement effective innovation management systems.

He explained that many companies struggle to balance innovation’s creative potential with the financial realities of running a business.

“If we keep talking about this vague concept of innovation that is just about something new and breakthrough, we’ll never get the respect that we need. We really need to start looking at how we measure it to make it part of our DNA, and to make it a revenue stream in itself.”

Phillips outlined a structured approach to categorizing innovation: core (incremental improvements), adjacent (new markets or products), and breakthrough (disruptive technologies).

He emphasized focusing on core innovation first, as it carries the least risk, while building maturity and trust over time to approach higher-risk, breakthrough projects effectively. This holistic, balanced approach helps companies mitigate risks and align innovation with their capabilities and goals.

“For smaller companies, it’s not a buzzword — it’s about survival,” he said. “They need proof that innovation will help them grow and keep their doors open.”

Partnerships that deliver

Lee Evans, head of low-carbon activities at TC Energy, discussed how partnerships can drive innovation in meaningful ways.

“We think about win-wins,” Evans said. “How do we find ways to work with others to support each other?”

As an example, TC Energy recently invested and partnered with Qube Technologies, a Calgary-based emissions monitoring company, to address its decarbonization goals.

Evans highlighted the importance of starting small with innovation initiatives.

“Minimum viable products are really important,” he said. “You test, you learn and then you scale.” This approach minimizes risk while building trust in the process.

Evans also stressed the need for resilience and adaptability.

“If you want to be working in this space, you’ve got to be resilient. You’ve got to be willing to face challenges and setbacks and be willing to pivot. Those are really important. And never give up if you think there’s true value in what you’re up to. Find ways to make sure people understand the value of what you’re doing.”

The role of government and academia in innovation

Panelists also weighed in on how external forces, like government policies and academic research, shape innovation.

Mathas argued that governments should incentivize competition to stimulate corporate innovation. “We need more competition coming into Canada and into Alberta to create more of that incentive to want to compete and to want to innovate.”

On the academic front, Mathas cautioned universities in their efforts to turn researchers into entrepreneurs. She said universities should focus on supporting research, not forcing students to commercialize their ideas because it can lead to a loss of investment in the research that drives real innovation.

Key takeaways for corporate innovators

The panel left attendees with practical advice for navigating the complexities of corporate innovation:Start small, think big: “Innovate like a startup, scale like an enterprise,” said Mathas.
Embrace failure: “Failures are just learning in disguise,” she added.
Focus on core problems: Hiscock advised innovators to align their projects with a company’s key value streams.
Measure impact: “We need to make innovation part of the DNA,” said Phillips.
Be resilient: “Understand the value of what you’re doing and keep going,” said Evans.

As the panel concluded, one message was clear: the future belongs to those bold enough to embrace risk, empower people and innovate with purpose.

 

Convicted Nigerian Pirate Charged Again for Second Hijacking

File image

Published Nov 14, 2024 6:15 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

 

A Nigerian pirate who was convicted and sentenced for hijacking a Dutch freighter has been charged again in connection with a previous piracy incident in 2017. 

The case has been in motion for more than six years. South African police arrested pirate action group leader Itoruboemi Benson Lobia at an airport in Johannesburg in late 2018, acting on an Interpol warrant issued by the Netherlands. A South African court approved his extradition, and in 2022, a Dutch court convicted Lobia of the hijacking and kidnapping attack aboard the FWN Rapide. The Dutch-flagged freighter was attacked by pirates off Port Harcourt in 2018, and the criminals held the 11 crewmembers hostage during a month-long series of ransom negotiations. The operator, ForestWave, reportedly paid a ransom of $340,000 to secure the release of the crew - a fraction of the $2 million reportedly sought by Lobia.  

The Rotterdam District Court ruled that Lobia was the operational leader of the hijacking gang, and he was sentenced to a term of 8.5 years in Dutch prison for the FWN Rapide attack. He may yet receive a longer penalty: Last week, he was "arrested" a second time while in prison, and he will be tried on additional charges related to an earlier hijacking - the attack on the German merchant ship BBC Caribbean. 

On February 5, 2017, BBC Caribbean was operating off Nigeria when she was boarded by armed pirates, who abducted eight members of the crew. The hostages were transferred back to Nigeria in skiffs and hidden at a compound in the creeks of the Niger Delta. Several crewmembers managed to hide and evade capture aboard the ship, and they navigated the BBC Caribbean safely to Las Palmas, 2,500 nautical miles to the northwest.  

After a month of hostage negotiations, which the pirates reportedly spent in a state of constant and severe inebriation, the kidnapped crewmembers were ransomed and released. The amount of the payment was not disclosed.

Meanwhile, the BBC Caribbean was searched on arrival at Las Palmas, and forensic investigators collected extensive evidence - including fingerprints and DNA traces from cigarette butts. One set of DNA eventually turned up a positive match: it was Lobia's. 

The Dutch Public Prosecution Service and the National Expertise and Operations Unit (LX) launched a second investigation after finding this link, and have asked authorities in South Africa - where Lobia was first arrested - for permission to prosecute him a second time for the additional crime. An examining magistrate granted a custody order to start the case last Thursday.  

New Trump admin to deliver 'body blow' to unions after courting union workers: report

Brad Reed

RAW STORY
November 8, 2024 

President-elect Donald Trump courted union voters during his successful 2024 presidential bid, and now Bloomberg reports that his incoming administration is poised to deliver a "body blow" to organized labor that has enjoyed a significant renaissance under President Joe Biden's administration.

While Biden's administration has helped multiple unions score big new contracts and organizing victories, as well as eliminating noncompete clauses that hold workers back, Trump's last National Labor Relations Board was far more hostile to organized labor and his next one could be even more so.

"The last time Trump ran the government, however, he filled key enforcement roles with management-side attorneys who pushed for companies to have more control over workers’ tips, more time to run anti-union campaigns and more discretion over who gets paid overtime," writes Bloomberg, before adding, "Now that he’s had some practice, he’s likely to do more, faster."

What's more, Bloomberg notes that the GOP blueprint Project 2025 "calls for the loosening of laws governing safety, nondiscrimination and child labor, and floats eliminating public-sector unions" all together.

Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California at Santa Barbara, tells Bloomberg that he expects a second Trump administration will deliver "a warrant for employers to do whatever they want."

But Jennifer Abruzzo, the general counsel for Biden's NLRB, warns that Trump could be playing with fire if he undercuts the work she and her colleagues have done in making life easier for unions.

"I think workers are going to take matters into their own hands," she said.

Expect 'mini-crusades' as government crumbles under Trump: analyst

Matthew Chapman
November 8, 2024 

  RAW STORY


Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump makes a campaign speech at the Johnny Mercer Theatre Civic Center in Savannah, Georgia, U.S. September 24, 2024. REUTERS/Megan Varner/File Photo


Former President Donald Trump and his allies have no plans to fix anything in government, and instead, they'll make a big show out of purging enemies from the civil service while shirking any responsibility for the ill consequences.

That's according to Marc Fisher who wrote in The Washington Post,"The rapscallions of the right are salivating over the scrumptious smorgasbord of opportunities for mischief that the District of Columbia represents."

"The pirates aboard the 'Trump Revenge Tour' need not pack an overnight bag because Washington has it all: a plump platoon of public servants ready to be sacked; a sad downtown emptied out by federal workers still enjoying covid-era downtime at home; a tax-happy city government struggling to improve troubled schools, provide safe streets and build decent housing," he wrote.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's plan to reshape the government for the GOP, calls for mass purges of the civil service and transformation of the federal workforce into a partisan army. Trump will do all this in spades, wrote Fisher — but don't expect him to care about what any of it does to the government or to people's daily lives.

"Sure, there’ll be some ritual firings, and every GOP administration loves to smack D.C. around," wrote Fisher — indeed, even Democratic presidents sometimes overturn D.C.'s decisions. "But does anyone think Trump will be eager to take on the challenge of addressing the 20 percent math proficiency rate among D.C. middle-schoolers? Will the middle managers of the Project 2025 Brigade really want to run D.C.’s sprawling bureaucracies and take the heat when the sewers back up, shoplifting worsens and school attendance remains shockingly low?"

None of that will be on the agenda, he continued, because Trump wants "credit, not responsibility."

"He will, as ever, look for showy ways to spotlight any lefty lunacies his foot soldiers find in the bloated federal workforce or in the region’s many woke institutions," he wrote. "They’ll mount mini-crusades against diversity, equity and inclusion departments, heavy-handed curriculums, and Maoist campus radicals. But actually run stuff? Make things better? Sorry, wrong channel."

And the reason is simple, he concluded: "Here on the Grievance Network, the show is about complaints, not solutions."

Pentagon preps for possible Trump order to deploy troops on Americans: report

Daniel Hampton
November 8, 2024 

The Pentagon is bracing for "major upheaval" ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's second term, according to CNN, with officials already holding informal talks about how the Defense Department will respond if Trump orders to deploy active-duty military troops on his own citizens and makes good on promises to boot large swaths of workers. (Screengrab via CNN)

The Pentagon is bracing for "major upheaval" ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's second term, according to CNN, with officials already holding informal talks about how the Defense Department will respond if Trump orders it to deploy active-duty military troops on his own citizens and makes good on promises to boot large swaths of workers.

Trump insinuated during his campaign he could use the military as a law enforcement mechanism to carry out his plan for mass deportations, and that he would replace government workers with loyalists.

CNN reported Friday that the Pentagon is preparing for an overhaul and is mapping out scenarios ahead of time.

“We are all preparing and planning for the worst-case scenario, but the reality is that we don’t know how this is going to play out yet,” one defense official told CNN.

The department is also preparing for Trump and his appointees to issue illegal directives.

“Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders,” another defense official told CNN. “But the question is what happens then – do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?”

CNN's Kristen Holmes told anchor Jake Tapper on Friday the top contenders for several Cabinet positions have met with the Trump team's transition leaders. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Bill Haggert (R-TN) are in the running for se
More names could be unveiled Friday, said Holmes, and Trump has been taking calls at Mar-a-Lago and going over a list of names.


The administration picked Susie Wiles for chief of staff to set a "no-nonsense" tone, Holmes reported.

Watch the clip below or at this link.

It’s Not Just About the President
It’s About the Presidency

By Karen J. Greenberg

November 7, 2024

Source: TomDispatch


Ted - Presidential seal. Flikr.



As the dust settles over election day, it’s worth reflecting that it’s not only the election results that have been at stake, but the future of the presidency and its powers. Over the course of the first quarter of this century, the American presidency has accumulated ever more power, rendering the office increasingly less constrained by either Congress or the courts. With Donald Trump’s reelection, the slide toward a dangerously empowered president has reached a moment of reckoning, particularly when it comes to foreign affairs and warfare.

Presidential Powers

Throughout American history, presidents have repeatedly sought to increase their powers, nowhere more so than in the context of war. As historian James Patterson has pointed out, “War and the threat of war were major sources of presidential power from the beginning.” Whether it was George Washington’s insistence that he was the one to formulate foreign policy when it came to diplomacy, treaties, and more; Thomas Jefferson’s assertion of complete control over whether or not to attack the Barbary Pirates; James Polk’s decision to take actions which risked war with Mexico; or Abraham Lincoln’s “sweeping assertions of authority” in the Civil War era, executive claims to authority when it comes to matters of foreign relations and warfare have been a persistent feature of American history.

The twentieth century saw a continued rise in the powers of the presidency. As historian Jeremi Suri noted in his book The Impossible Presidency, the four terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt were a transformative moment, essentially multiplying the responsibilities of the president with the ultimate goal of “mak[ing] the national executive the dominant actor in all parts of American life.” The presidents who followed Roosevelt continued to display such enhanced powers, especially when it came to foreign affairs.

As legal scholar Matt Waxman has reminded us, FDR’s successor, Harry Truman, went to war in Korea without congressional authorization. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who did consult with Congress over the need to protect U.S.-allied Pacific coastal islands from possible Chinese aggression and, in his farewell address, warned against “the military-industrial complex,” still believed “that the president had broad powers to engage in covert warfare without specific congressional approval.” In fact, his successor, John F. Kennedy, exercised those powers in a major way in the Bay of Pigs incident. Richard Nixon unilaterally and secretly launched the invasion of Cambodia in 1970, and Ronald Reagan created a secret Central American foreign policy, while arranging the unauthorized transfer of funds and weaponry to the Nicaraguan rebels, the Contras, from the sale of U.S. arms to Iran, despite the fact that such funding was prohibited by an act of Congress, the Boland Amendment.

The Twenty-First Century

Even within the context of repeated presidential acts taken without congressional assent (or often even knowledge) and in defiance of the constitutional checks on the powers of the presidency, the twenty-first century witnessed a major uptick in claims of executive power. In the name of war, this century has seen an astonishing erosion of constraints on that very power, as Yale law professor Harold Hongju Koh details in his illuminating new book, The National Security Constitution in the Twenty-First Century.

At the dawn of this century, the attacks of September 11, 2001, led to an instant escalation of presidential power and executive unilateralism. In the name of national security, President George W. Bush issued an order that authorized the indefinite detention of prisoners in what quickly came to be known as the Global War on Terror. He also set up an offshore prison of injustice at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and authorized military commissions instead of federal court trials for terrorism suspects captured abroad.

Meanwhile, Congress and the courts consistently deferred to the will of the president when it came to actions taken in the name of that war on terror. One week after the attacks of 9/11, Congress passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which undermined its own power in Article I of the Constitution to declare war and weakened its powers of restraint on presidential actions carefully articulated in the 1973 War Powers Resolution (WPR), passed to guard against the very kind of secretive engagement in war that Nixon had unilaterally authorized in the Vietnam era.

Now, turning their backs on the power given them by the Constitution and the WPR, Congress, with that AUMF, acceded to the expansion of presidential powers and opened the door to the disastrous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere early in this century. The president, it stated, was “authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons.”

In October 2001, Congress also passed the USA Patriot Act. It included an expansion of presidential power at home in the name of protecting the nation in the war on terror, including authorizing greatly expanded surveillance policies that would come to include, among other things, secret surveillance and searches that took place without evidence of wrongdoing, notably in Muslim communities in this country that were considered inherently suspect in the name of the war on terror.

As a result, when, in January 2009, Barack Obama entered the White House, his administration found itself with a strikingly expanded definition of the powers of the presidency on the table.

Obama’s Presidency

A former constitutional law professor, Barack Obama pledged to overturn some of the Bush administration’s most egregious, extralegal breaches, including the very existence of the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility and the use of torture (or what the Bush administration had politely termed “enhanced interrogation techniques”) authorized by executive unilateralism as part of the war on terror. In what became known as “trust me” government, Obama also pledged to reform the excessive surveillance policies implemented in the war on terror. In 2013, David Cole, a civil rights attorney and currently the National Legal Director of the ACLU, credited Obama with making substantial “shifts” toward restraint by formally declaring an end to many of the Bush administration’s “most aggressive assertions of executive power.”

But while Obama did indeed trim some of the most striking excesses of the Bush era, his record of presidential reform fell significantly short. Jameel Jaffer, the founding director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, for instance, disputed Cole’s claims, citing the Obama administration’s continued reliance on illegal and extralegal policies that Bush’s aggressive actions had already put in play — among them, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, and the military commissions to try prisoners at Guantánamo. In addition, as Jaffer pointed out, the Obama administration frequently relied on the powers granted the presidency in that 2001 AUMF to authorize targeted lethal drone strikes globally, as in the case of the drone-killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, without further congressional authorization, by expanding the definition of “imminence” in order to appear to be complying with the international rule of law.

When it came to such targeted killings — a military tactic introduced under President Bush but greatly expanded during the Obama years for strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen — the president reserved for himself the right to have the final say in authorizing such strikes. As the New York Times reported at the time, “Nothing else in Mr. Obama’s first term has baffled liberal supporters and confounded conservative critics alike as his aggressive counterterrorism record. His actions have often remained inscrutable, obscured by awkward secrecy rules, polarized political commentary, and the president’s own deep reserve.”

Although he served as legal adviser to the Department of State in the Obama administration, in his warnings about the perils posed by the slide towards unilateral presidential powers, Harold Hongju Kou concedes that the president could have done more to curtail the Bush era enhancement of the powers of the president. “[T]he cautious Obama administration,” he writes, “succeeded in swinging the national security pendulum only part of the way back” to restraint on executive power via the courts and Congress. While the “cascade of illegality” that defined the Bush era’s war on terror was indeed somewhat addressed by Obama, it remained, Koh reminds us, “undercorrected” — including not seeking “stronger accountability for past acts of CIA torture, and the stubborn continuation of a Guantanamo detention policy.”

While President Obama adhered more closely to restraints on presidential power than his predecessor, his administration did not make the kinds of structural and procedural changes necessary to deter future presidents from following in the footsteps of the Bush administration, as we were soon to learn, since, as Koh points out, enhanced unilateral presidential and executive powers would be “sharply re-intensified” under Donald Trump.

The Trump Years

Indeed, the first Trump presidency vastly accelerated the claims of expanded presidential power. Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer, lawyers who worked in the Bush and Obama administrations, respectively, served, as they put it, “very different presidents” and hold “different political outlooks.” Yet they agree that the Trump administration took unchecked presidential authority to a new level. In their 2020 book, After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency, they contended that “Donald Trump operated the presidency in ways that reveal its vulnerability to dangerous excesses of authority and dangerous weaknesses in accountability.”

And as they make all too clear, the stakes were (and remain) high. “The often-feckless Trump,” they wrote, “also revealed deeper fissures in the structure of the presidency that, we worry, a future president might choose to exploit in a fashion similar to Trump — but much more skillfully, and to even greater effect.” And with the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding the immunity of Donald Trump for acts taken while in the Oval Office, the shackles that once tied presidential acts in wartime to Congressional authorization are arguably now fully off the table, should a president be determined to act on his or her own say-so. (As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, the ruling “will have disastrous consequences for the presidency and for our democracy,” arguing that it will, in essence, “let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends.”)

The Biden Years

When it comes to recognizing limits on presidential powers, President Biden has had a distinctly mixed record. He immediately withdrew Trump’s executive order known as “the Muslim ban,” set out to close Guantánamo (but has not yet succeeded in doing so), rejoined the Paris climate accord, and revived international ties around the world that had been disrupted by Trump. And yet, that quintessential institutionalist, who prided himself on his ability to work with Congress, nonetheless veered in the direction of presidential unilateralism in the conduct of foreign affairs.

As Professor Koh put it: “In foreign affairs, even the longtime senator Joe Biden — who widely proclaims his love of the Senate — now operates almost entirely by executive fiat,” including a reliance on “classified policy memoranda, with minimal congressional oversight.” Overall, in fact, Biden issued more executive orders than any president since Richard Nixon. Though Biden wisely relied upon an interagency group of lawyers to advise him on national security decisions, following their advice, he issued “nonbinding political agreements, memoranda of understanding, joint communiques, and occasionally ‘executive agreements plus,’” just as Obama had done on the Paris climate accords and the Iran nuclear deal, relying on “preexisting legislative frameworks” rather than new Congressional authorizations. When it came to the war in Ukraine, Biden leaned heavily on “the coordinated use of sanctions, enhanced almost weekly post-invasion.” Most of those sanctions were set, as Koh also points out, “by executive orders and regulatory decrees,” rather than in consultation with Congress.

Our Future

A second Trump presidency will undoubtedly take unilateral presidential powers to a new level. After all, he already indicated that he might withdraw the U.S. from NATO and end support for Ukraine. Nor is Trump likely to be deterred by Congress. Reporting on Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s nearly 1,000-page prescription for a second Trump presidency, written primarily by former office holders in the first Trump administration, New York Times reporters Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman reported that Trump “and his associates” plan to “increase the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House.”

In particular, Project 2025’s stance on nuclear weapons is a reminder of just how dangerous a president who refused to be restrained by law or precedent will be. After all, in his first term in office, Trump unilaterally pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions on that country, leading its leaders to increase its nuclear capacity. Meanwhile, the march toward nuclear confrontation has accelerated worldwide. In response, Project 2025 argues for ramping up America’s nuclear arsenal yet more. “[T]he United States manifestly needs to modernize, adapt, and expand its nuclear arsenal,” the treatise declared, in order to “deter Russia and China simultaneously,” adding that the U.S. needs to “develop a nuclear arsenal with the size, sophistication, and tailoring — including new capabilities at the theater level — to ensure that there is no circumstance in which America is exposed to serious nuclear coercion.”

Consider all of that a frightening vision of our now all-too-imminent future: a president freed from the restraints of the constitution, unchecked by Congress or the courts — or by his cabinet advisors. In the words of MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, Project 2025 has set the stage for Donald Trump to be the very opposite of what this country’s founders intended, “a king,” surrounded not by “groups of qualified experts” but by “unblinking yes-men.”

(Dis)Trust in the Presidency

The growing power of the presidency has been taking place in plain view, as unilateral powers have accumulated decade after decade in the Oval Office, while the recent choice of president has also become a grim choice about the nature and powers of the presidency itself. Notably, the rise in executive powers has coincided with a creeping distrust of government in this country. Since the early 1960s, when nearly 80% of Americans said they trusted government “most of the time,” the public’s faith in this country’s federal government hovers at just over 20%, according to the Pew Research Center. And no wonder. When the office of the president refuses to accept the checks and balances that underlie the democratic system, the country’s trust in negotiated, reasonable, and restrained outcomes understandably falls away.

Sadly, in this era, the benefits of restoring the very notion of checks and balances that birthed the nation have come to seem ever more like a quaint dream.

Sacred Artifact Dispute Reveals Japan-Korea Tensions – OpEd

 November 5, 2024

By UCA News

By Cristian Martini Grimaldi

 

(UCA News) — Long-standing tensions between Japan and South Korea have reached a symbolic peak over a Buddhist statue stolen from Kannonji Temple on the Japanese island of Tsushima and transported to South Korea in 2012. This is despite South Korea’s Supreme Court recently ruling in favor of its return.

Though a small group of individuals stole the statue, its fate has become a broader reflection of unresolved tensions that echo historical grievances dating back to Japan’s occupation of the Korean Peninsula.

Even though both governments formally signed a UNESCO convention mandating the return of the stolen cultural property, the South Korean government’s inaction has reignited the complex debate surrounding anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea.

The Buddhist statue at the center of this controversy, the “Seated Statue of Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva,” holds a special place in Japan as a designated cultural property of Nagasaki Prefecture.

It was stolen by a South Korean group in 2012, marking one of many artifacts removed from Japanese temples by South Korean thieves during a time when Tsushima’s temples and shrines were under repeated assault.

This theft wave led to intense anti-theft security measures across the island and fueled frustration among the Japanese population.

Korean authorities recovered the religious artifact in early 2013, but Buseoksa Temple in South Korea claimed ownership, arguing that the statue had been initially looted by Japanese pirates centuries ago.

In response, Kannonji Temple stated that it had acquired the statue legally during the Joseon Period to protect it from frequent iconoclasm. This position holds historical support given the extensive records of Korean iconoclastic acts in temples at that time.

The dispute over the statue, therefore, represents not just a question of ownership but an ongoing struggle over the memory of Japan’s occupation of Korea and how history is perceived on both sides of the East Sea.

This is far from the only point of contention between Japan and South Korea, as recent years have seen multiple diplomatic and economic disputes that underscore the fragility of their relationship:

For instance, South Korea’s Supreme Court ordered Japanese companies to pay reparations to Korean laborers forced to work during World War II, a ruling Japan strongly opposed. Japan argues that all reparation issues were settled in a 1965 treaty, but many in Korea see this as insufficient acknowledgment of historical wrongs.

And of course, in 2019, Japan placed export restrictions on materials vital to South Korea’s technology sector, officially citing security concerns. South Korea interpreted this as retaliation for the forced labor compensation rulings, resulting in a trade dispute that impacted high-tech industries in both countries.

And the most internationally known case of comfort women. South Korea has long demanded a more formal apology and compensation for the Korean women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during the occupation.

While Japan has offered apologies and financial support over the years, South Korean public sentiment is that Japan’s remorse is thus incomplete. The topic often arises on anniversaries and at international forums, fueling resentment on both sides.

Let’s not forget the territorial disputes over the Dokdo/Takeshima Islands. Both countries claim sovereignty over the Dokdo (in Korean) or Takeshima (in Japanese) Islands, which are located in the Sea of Japan. This territorial dispute is another recurring issue that stirs up strong emotions, with both sides staging protests and diplomatic statements asserting their claims.

The recent resistance from South Korea to returning the stolen Buddhist statue demonstrates that its national identity is still fueled by lingering resentment toward Japan. This unwillingness to fully reconcile reflects a societal perspective in which Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945 remains a defining trauma.

For many South Koreans, Japan’s actions during the occupation are not merely historical facts but a reminder of a brutal period that shaped the nation’s modern identity.

South Korea’s national ethos continues to be influenced by historical remembrance, which, in some ways, also shapes the political landscape. Political leaders in South Korea occasionally evoke anti-Japanese sentiment to rally public support or to divert attention from internal challenges, a tactic that has successfully resonated due to the ingrained historical narratives.

The question of returning the Buddhist statue may seem like a small diplomatic matter, but it highlights the broader, unresolved issues between Japan and South Korea. While both nations are allies of the United States and share common concerns over regional security, including the threat from North Korea, their strained relations often limit real effective cooperation.

In the end, the fate of the Buddhist statue remains a powerful symbol of a fractured history that, even in modern times, still holds sway over both nations’ political and cultural landscapes. The broader question is whether Japan and South Korea can move beyond symbolic disputes to focus on a future that acknowledges but is not overshadowed by their shared past.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.

China Restricts Young Tibetan Monks In ‘Prison-Like’ Schools

 November 4, 2024

By UCA News

(UCA News) — Tibetans have accused the pro-Beijing authorities in the region of housing hundreds of young Tibetan Buddhist monks in prison-like conditions at government-run boarding schools, says a report.

The students forcibly transferred from the  Kirti Monastery schools in Sichuan province’s Ngaba county are not even permitted to leave the school grounds or meet their parents, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Oct. 31.

“Since being forcibly removed from the monastery, the students have been denied contact with their parents and receive inadequate medical care when ill,” RFA reported, citing an unnamed source.

“When parents request to meet their children, they are given various excuses about needing higher-level approval and ultimately face threats of imprisonment if they persist,” the unnamed source added.

The students between the ages of 6-17 are taught exclusively in Mandarin, RFA reported.

Some of the students who attempted to escape the school were apprehended and are now being treated “like criminals” and forbidden from leaving the school grounds.

Over 1,000 young Tibetan monks were transferred from the Kirti Monastery to state-administered “colonial style” boarding schools in July.

The authorities closed another school at Lhamo Kirti Monastery in Dzoge county, affecting some 600 students.x

The authorities had compelled parents to sign agreements ensuring that their children would be enrolled in government-run schools, where they would undergo state-approved “patriotic education.”

Pro-Beijing authorities in Tibet cite China’s regulations on religious affairs which mandate that the students at monastic schools must be 18 or older, display patriotism, and be compliant with national laws.

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Tibetan critics of China’s communist-led government allege that these regulations are part of a broader policy to eradicate the use of the Tibetan language, suppress Tibetan culture, and enforce “patriotic education.”

China’s patriotic education policy mandates that the love of China and the ruling Chinese Communist Party be incorporated into work and study for all citizens.

The Chinese authorities in the region have also intensified surveillance and restrictions on Tibetans in Ngaba county following the school closures.

A high-ranking official from China’s United Front Work Department is permanently stationed in Ngaba for several months, overseeing control measures over both the monastery and the local community.

The authorities have also unleashed a crackdown on any form of communication with the outside world, RFA reported.

In October, the authorities in Dzoge seized the phones of monks and teachers of Lhamo Kirti Monastery, accusing them of sharing the news of school closures.

In September, the authorities arrested four Tibetans, including two monks from Kirti Monastery, as well as two laypersons in Ngaba, accusing them of contacting Tibetans outside the region.

The Chinese government has claimed that the communication between Tibetans and their family members and friends abroad undermines national unity as a reason for communication restrictions, RFA reported.

Tibetans have denounced Beijing’s surveillance, accusing the authorities of violating their human rights and trying to eradicate their religious, linguistic, and cultural identity.'

UCA News

The Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News, UCAN) is the leading independent Catholic news source in Asia. A network of journalists and editors that spans East, South and Southeast Asia, UCA News has for four decades aimed to provide the most accurate and up-to-date news, feature, commentary and analysis, and multimedia content on social, political and religious developments that relate or are of interest to the Catholic Church in Asia.