2018
September
18
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

September 18, 2018
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Elon Musk announced Monday SpaceX has its first paying customer for a private, weeklong flight around the moon. Yusaku Maezawa, a young Japanese clothing tycoon, put down a “significant” deposit for a flight scheduled for five years from now.

It’s been 50 years since Apollo 8 made the same journey. Perhaps more interesting than the story of funding Musk’s vision of a “multi-planet civilization” or even the emergence of space tourism, is Mr. Maezawa’s spirit of generosity. He’s not going alone. He’s also paying for about a half-dozen musicians, painters, filmmakers, and other artists to go with him on a cosmic art project dubbed “Dear Moon.”

Solo travel can be revealing. But in my experience, travel is far more satisfying when you have someone else with you. Maezawa agrees: “I want to share these experiences and things with as many people as possible.”

Of course, this trip may have more in common with a Six Flags roller coaster than a Caribbean cruise. At the press conference, Musk paused to underline that “this is definitely dangerous.”

Aware of the risks, Maezawa’s starting to gently recruit passengers for this moonshot: “If you should hear from me, please say yes and accept my invitation. Please don’t say no.”

Perhaps you and I should brush up on our watercolors.

Now to our five selected stories, including the pursuit of justice by American sex-abuse victims and by Latin American activists, as well as what horses can teach humans about empathy. 


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

History often gives us some perspective on progress. Two former US senators offer their view of Anita Hill’s testimony before Congress in 1991.

Our reporter reached out to some residents of the Syrian province of Idlib, a lingering rebel stronghold, to get their perspective on the prospects for peace – or one last battle.

A deeper look

Kristen Norman/ Special to The Christian Science Monitor
Larry Antonsen, a retired building engineer in Chicago, endured childhood abuse that has never been officially acknowledged by either the Roman Catholic Church or the state. Yet by his own account, he has come to a place of inner healing that is complex and difficult to describe.

For many survivors of child sexual abuse by priests and pastors, there is still no legal recourse. But some survivors say that doesn't mean justice is unattainable – only that it takes different forms.

Ann Hermes/Staff
Laura Zúñiga Cáceres, daughter of slain environmental activist Berta Cáceres, was joined by her family's lawyer, Rodil Vásquez, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. This week, the country’s supreme court indefinitely suspended the trial of eight men accused of murdering Ms. Cáceres. Murders of environmental defenders rarely result in anyone held accountable, observers say.

Here’s another story about the pursuit of justice, this time in Latin America, where activists can be murdered for trying to protect the environment. Could the Berta Cáceres case mark a shift?

Laura Cluthe/The Christian Science Monitor
Dale Perkins of the nonprofit City to Saddle teaches Schneider, age 11, how to trot on a horse named Derby in Rutland, Mass. The program allows inner-city children to experience what it’s like to work on a farm and to interact with one of its largest animals.

When inner-city kids spend time on a farm, they find that building trust with an 900-pound equine can help with their human relationships.


The Monitor's View

Just a year ago, the world was tracking how much North Korea might be a threat as it tested new missiles and nuclear weapons. President Trump even promised “fire and fury” if the United States were attacked. These days, as yet another summit takes place between the two Koreas, the world is instead tracking how much the North’s young dictator, Kim Jong-un, wants economic freedom for his 25 million people.

A possible shift in Mr. Kim’s thinking may be visible during this week’s visit of Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president, to Pyongyang – their third summit. Mr. Moon brought along nearly a dozen top business executives to see if North Korea might be ready to take concrete steps in opening itself for trade and investment. In a summit last April, Moon offered a “new economic map” that would connect the two countries through roads, railways, and pipelines.

Their latest meeting is yet another test to see if Kim sees his survival relying more on progress toward a market economy and fulfilling his people’s rising expectations than in a nuclear arsenal that so far has done little for the regime.

If that is the case, then he may be ready to negotiate away his weapons in a grand deal with the US that could include a formal peace pact and a reduction of US forces on the peninsula. Another summit with Mr. Trump, like their historic meeting in Singapore last June, is being discussed for later this year.

North Korea watchers see strong signals that Kim wants to boost market competition in an economy that has been tightly controlled for 70 years under a socialist family dynasty. He may have no choice.

Decades of mismanagement have left North Korea with a per capita gross national income that is less than 5 percent of South Korea’s. Spending on the military eats up about a third of the official budget. And tough sanctions imposed by the United Nations after last year’s weapons tests have helped to shrink the economy.

The first signals of the regime’s openness to the world began in the 1990s under the current Kim’s grandfather – but only after aid from Moscow dried up with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It took a mass famine to drive the North Korean people to start growing food for themselves and to sell it in local markets, known as jangmadang. The country now has hundreds of such markets selling all sorts of goods in both local and foreign currency.

This informal economy may now exceed the official one. In a small survey of North Koreans for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, 83 percent said outside goods and information had a greater impact on their lives than decisions by the government.

In addition, state-run enterprises have lately been allowed to use American dollars and calculate supply and demand. Authorities are even cultivating a culture of competition and innovation. In an official parade last week that celebrated the country’s anniversary, there was no display of long-range missiles as in the past. Instead, one float proclaimed the “robust foundation of an economically strong state.”

The rise in individual freedom, if only in the economy, cannot be ignored by the regime. Political freedom may be far off but Kim must feel pressure to compromise with the US in return for the hope of prosperity.

Negotiations to find the right sequence of necessary compromises may be difficult. The sanctions will probably stay in place until the North denuclearizes. But the demands of North Koreans for more freedom is now easier to see.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

There has been a heightened focus on the issue of loneliness in the news this year, and today’s contributor found that it was prayer and turning to God, divine Love, that made the difference in finding freedom from feeling alone.


A message of love

Tyrone Siu/Reuters
Volunteers in Hong Kong clear a damaged path Sept. 18 in the wake of super-typhoon Mangkhut. The storm had previously ravaged the Philippines, killing more than 60 and affecting some 3 million people, according to a Voice of America report. It also inflicted serious damage in China’s Guangdong province, though it contributed to far fewer casualties there.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us. Come back tomorrow. We’re exploring this question: Does a strong US economy mean this is the “best” time for a trade war with China?

More issues

2018
September
18
Tuesday
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