Tag: USAID

RAND and SeaLight Part 3b: Four Ways China Is Growing Its Media Influence in Southeast Asia

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

05-10-2022: Four Ways China Is Growing Its Media Influence in Southeast Asia

China’s most straightforward method of media outreach is directly broadcasting or publishing its state media content in target ASEAN countries. Xinhua, China’s official state media agency, has print bureaus in every Southeast Asian country. TV news channels CCTV-4 and the English-language CGTN likewise operate in nearly every country in the region, while China Radio International airs multilingual content in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar. Xinhua is a ministry-level agency directly under the State Council, while the other media organizations all operate under the Chinese Communist Party Publicity Department. 

Read More »

Personal: Honest update on the Philippines and Indonesia

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

I’ve been trying to work on my RAND and SeaLight document, but I can’t seem to get into it. I’m still not feeling well, either. For some reason, I can’t format my document on my iPhone the way that I would like, and I still can’t use my iPad for it. This morning, my iPad fell out of its mount and landed on my face. No worries, my ego was hurt more than my nose. To be honest, I’ve about lost all interest in it. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? I feel like that tree. The tree makes a sound, but no one is around to hear it fall. Who has time to worry about details, anyway? I barely do anymore, and I’m unemployed. I’m going to stop now before I have to get the violin out.

Read More »

PH: The BongBong Rocket 🤭

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Source: President Marcos hails AFP as a force for peace

The Mystery of Marcos’ Rocket Program

’A Failed Project?’
The only VALID reason I could think of for all these “secrecy” or lack of transparency is that the program itself was NOT successful, and there are a number of ways that it could have failed. For one, the FAILURE or SUCCESS RATE of the launches were never published, and it’s possible that there were just too many launch failures, like the rockets exploding or veering off course at their launch pad or after launch, or even rockets not taking off at all. And even if the launches were successful, there is the issue of how accurate the rocket was in terms of hitting its target. If it ends up several hundreds or thousands of meters from its intended target, then it’s not very useful. And just like the Launch Rate, the Accuracy of the rockets were also never published.

Read More »

More notes on the marriage of RAND and SeaLight

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Understanding and Countering China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations | RAND

As noted, there appear to be real challenges working through the necessary technologies to support command messaging efforts from being able to acquire simple programs, such as Adobe [1], that can help improve image quality of released content to access to social media. It would seem prudent that an assessment of such issues should be conducted by the command with necessary remediation actions undertaken when the new commander comes into USINDOPACOM.

…

The Global Engagement Center (GEC) at the U.S. Department of State [2], for example, partially funds the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative [Center for Strategic and International Studies]. The GEC, the State Department, or DoD should seek to identify other voices that can support and that can more credibly communicate key messages.

Read More »

5 Vietnamese Communist Party officials jailed for helping abducted blogger +

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
PanNature

5 Vietnamese Communist Party officials jailed for helping abducted blogger

Vietnam has jailed five party members for feeding information to Duong Van Thai, a blogger who is believed to have been abducted in Thailand last year and resurfaced in Vietnamese custody, the human rights group 88 Project reported, citing sources inside the government.

Related:

Vietnamese court sentences blogger to 12 years in prison for anti-state propaganda

Read More »

Congress Considers Neocon Lesson Plans to Keep Kids Off Communism

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Lady Izdihar

Congress Considers Neocon Lesson Plans to Keep Kids Off Communism

In the latest front in the culture war over school curricula, the House of Representatives is set to vote Friday on a bill that would give a congressional stamp of approval to the lesson plans of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a group closely linked to fervently hawkish corners of the foreign policy blob. 

Read More »