text:
What prevents Asimov's robots from locking all humans in padded cells for the humans protection?
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Since Asimov's robots are already shown as not possessing "human common sense" when applying the laws to their actions, law 1 pretty much forces robots to lock up humans in matrix-style containers, or possibly put them in cryostasis. If they don't, they're allowing humans to come to harm in the future (human accidentally bites his tongue/stubs his toe/gets cancer/whatever) through inaction. Human arguments to the contrary are to be ignored as conflicting with law 1.
Where am I wrong? Are the Laws not what actually guides the robots, instead being something simplified for the robot user manual booklet or something?
isaac-asimov laws-of-robotics
TheLethalCarrot
budgiebeaksbudgiebeaks
sort of the premise of the "I, Robot" film w/ Will Smith – NKCampbell Nov 15 '18 at 16:07
Remember also that the three rules are not complete (ignore the existence of the 0th law momentarily), they're a plot device. If the three rules actually worked there wouldn't be any stories. Also, @NKCampbell the movie is crap and the presentation of the 0th law is awful. If you actually examine the events you'll see that the robots hurt people "because...uh...EXPLOSIONS" not via justified use of the 0th law. If you go back and read...I think it was Robots and Empire, the 0th law killed the robot that tried to act on it. His belief allowed him to act and slow his shutdown, but still died. – Draco18s Nov 15 '18 at 18:18
This is an active area of research in 2018 now that robots are becoming more intelligent and it's not simple. 3 principles for creating safer AI | Stuart Russell youtu.be/EBK-a94IFHY – chasly from UK Nov 15 '18 at 23:43
I won't promote this as an answer since I can't give references, but there is an early short story where one of the many different representations of Multivac runs the whole world economy and other governmental decisions. It starts to make sub-optimal decisions specifically to stop humans from relying on it because it realises that the reliance is weakening the human race. – Alchymist Nov 16 '18 at 12:56
There were billions of billions of humans in the galaxy, and just a few thousand robots. It would take a long time for those robots to lock up every human in a private padded cell. Not to mention the time it takes to build the padded cells. And that locking up humans against their consent is considered harm. – RichS Nov 19 '18 at 7:46
The robots in Asimov's works generally don't have the 'mental' sophistication needed to look ahead for abstract harm in the manner you suggest. For them, the 'inaction' clause must mean the robot cannot allow imminent harm - i.e they must act to prevent harm when they see the harm about to happen. Such events generally don't occur as humans go about their daily lives, so by and large robots would let humans carry on (while serving them, of course).
By the time robots become sophisticated enough to forecast possible harm in the manner you suggest, they have also become sophisticated enough to understand that the restraints you suggest themselves constitute a kind of harm, so the 'action' clause here would counteract the 'inaction' clause [here the 'action' clause would be stronger, as it involves actions actually to be taken, contrasted with merely possible harms that need not occur]. They also would understand that things like biting one's own tongue are inherently unavoidable so they wouldn't try to prevent such harm (though of course it would 'pain' them when it actually happens). By the time we get to Daneel and his 'Zeroth Law' robots, they additionally understand that restraining all individual human beings constitutes harm to humanity; this, incidentally, is why robots eventually disappear - they come to realize that having humanity rely on them is itself harmful, so the best they can do is let humanity manage its own fate [at least overtly].
PMarPMar
It has been a while since I read it, but at the end of I, Robot, don't people realize that the computers/robots that control the world are setting a plan in motion to revert humanity back to primitive technology in order to protect them from themselves? – BlackThorn Nov 15 '18 at 16:29
I upvoted. I also think this answer might be improved by reference to the story Galley Slave. In it, Dr. Calvin states that the robot Easy is not capable of abstract reasoning regarding the consequences of ideas published in a textbook. Certainly this is only one robot, but it's an explicit example of something that's only implied by the stories for other US Robots robots. – Dranon Nov 15 '18 at 16:30
@BlackThorn - correct, in that the machines have essentially and surreptitiously taken over the world in order to protect humanity – NKCampbell Nov 15 '18 at 19:01
@PMar's excellent answer refers to R. Daneel Olivaw and the 'Zeroth Law'; I'd suggest that Daneel's discovery of the 'Zeroth Law' was in response to his realization, through the course of the novels The Robots of Dawn and Robots and Empire, that there was a danger that over-reliance on robots would mean humanity would, metaphorically, be kept in padded rooms. – bgvaughan Nov 16 '18 at 0:09
@bgvaughan Minor nitpick - Giskard discovered the Zeroth Law. He couldn't integrate it into his own mind and died, but he integrated it into Daniel's before he died. Giskard managing to stop the antagonist in spite of orders is the crux of the book's climax, in fact. – Graham Nov 16 '18 at 1:31
Since the "merger" of the Robot universe and the Foundation universe reveals that robots manipulated and dominated human history for thousands of years, in a very real sense the galaxy is their padded room and most of Asimov's works in this "unified universe" take place inside that padded room.
We just can't see the walls.
tbrooksidetbrookside
This is the correct answer. In the Asimov stories, the view is that it isn't good for us to know we are being controlled as we need a sense of free will, so the super intelligent robots work in the shadows. – axsvl77 Nov 16 '18 at 18:36
Keep in mind that some of that future history isn't original Asimov, it was written after his death. – Harry Johnston Nov 17 '18 at 0:52
@HarryJohnston That's what the Robots want you to think. – David Tonhofer Nov 18 '18 at 12:11
@David That sounds like the SCP Foundation universe, not the Asimov Foundation universe. Unless...gasp! It all fits! – tbrookside Nov 18 '18 at 13:56
@RichS: By being very, very good at manipulation. They basically got humans to build their own walls, then set them to repairing the walls, all while convincing them that the walls were in fact just the ebb and flow of history. – Joe Bloggs Nov 19 '18 at 9:55
My understanding of it was that the typical Three Laws robot interpreted the First Law to mean "Nor, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm right here and now when the robot is within sight of him and can tell what's obviously about to happen if the robot does not choose to interfere." That's different from locking up the human today just because it is theoretically possible that he might suffer some sort of accidental injury or infection or other misfortune tomorrow. (Or at some much later date.)
To put it another way: Near as I can recall, on those occasions when we saw a robot refuse to comply with an order to go away and leave the human alone to do whatever he was currently doing, that usually meant the Second Law was being subordinated to the First Law because of the robot's perception of immediate danger to a fragile human body. But if such immediate danger was not present, then the Second Law required the robot to turn around and go away whenever instructed to do so. The solid fact of "The Second Law applies to this order I am receiving right now" overrode anything so abstract as "But if I leave today, a First Law problem involving physical harm might arise tomorrow . . . or the day after . . . or at some later date . . . who knows?"
So if some robot tried to lock everyone up for their own good, the Second Law could be invoked by ordering the robot to forget the whole silly idea.
LorendiacLorendiac
"Little Lost Robot" involved highly speculative harm ("you might accidentally stay here too long") overriding the Second Law. – Kevin Nov 15 '18 at 16:41
@Kevin I remember the story -- the missing robot only had the first part of the First Law in his positronic brain -- but I don't remember the exact bit you briefly referred to. Could you be more specific? (I do remember the way he convinces a lot of other robots that the First Law does not require them to commit suicide in a futile effort to protect the life of a man who seems to be threatened by a falling weight. I saw the robot's point -- self-destruction would simply mean the other robots were breaking the Third Law without enforcing the First in the process.) – Lorendiac Nov 16 '18 at 2:02
The original purpose of the robots was to operate alongside humans in an area subject to low-level radiation that might harm the humans after prolonged exposure but would destroy the robots almost immediately. If the robots could have trusted the humans to look after themselves, then there would have been no need to modify the First Law in the first place. – Kevin Nov 16 '18 at 2:09
@Kevin Ah. I didn't recall the exact rationale for why a few robots had been built that way in the first place. I've now refreshed my memory of the first part of the story. It looks like ordinary First Law robots only panicked on those occasions when gamma rays were deliberately being generated near a human body. A threat "here and now," as I said in my answer. It looks like those robots didn't do anything about such abstract possibilities as "after I leave the room, some silly human might start generating gamma rays with that equipment, and this could gradually impair his health." – Lorendiac Nov 16 '18 at 2:21
I think CASA may be staffed by robots. They think the best way to prevent aeronautical harm is to prevent people from ever getting off the ground. I'm not being snarky, they've come right out and said so. – Peter Wone Nov 16 '18 at 4:04
Zeroth law.
A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm
If all the humans are locked in padded cells there isn't much procreation taking place. Ergo, the human race dies out.
Contrary to some other answers, I believe robot thinking is sophisticated enough to deal with future harm, just not to deal with hypothetical harm. A human may bite his tongue, stub his toe, whatever but it's not definite harm so doesn't require action to prevent it from happening.
Don't forget that - on realisation that the race would (not might) stagnate following the initial colonisation of the solar system and subsequent politics - they nuked (or allowed to be nuked) the planet.
mcalexmcalex
The sophistication of robot thinking depends a great deal whether you're talking about very early robots like Robbie, somewhat more advanced ones like the Nestors, or the far more advanced (thousands of years later!) Giskard and Daneel. And of course there are variations even within the same time period, depending on the purpose for which the robot is intended. The Zeroth Law kicks in only at the far upper end of that spectrum. – Harry Johnston Nov 17 '18 at 0:59
If you read I, Robot, the stories are generally about times when there is a conflict in interpretations of the three laws. Most commonly the humans think that the robots' interpretations are the wrong ones.
The three laws are a descriptive summary of how robot brains are built in Asimov's universe. In actuality, they are much more complex than that. Robots have to weigh one possibility against another. Sometimes they pick the best result. Sometimes they don't.
I am going to cite links. If you follow the link, it will spoil the story for you as I reveal the climactic plot point. If you do not follow the link, you might later read the story without immediately recognizing it, as I jump to the end. Or if you're memory's good enough, maybe you'll remember. So continue reading and follow the spoiled links at your own risk.
For example, in one story (spoiled), a robot faced a situation where following a command (law 2) would have resulted in its destruction (law 3) and the deaths of humans (law 1). So the robot got stuck. It would go to the edge of the danger zone, then it realized it would be destroyed before being able to complete its mission which would have doomed the humans. Then it would retreat before realizing that it needed to go the other direction to complete its mission and save the humans. It kept going back and forth because it couldn't figure out how to complete its mission. After the humans figured out the problem, they revised the instructions.
In several stories, robots go insane because they couldn't figure out how to save humans from death.
In one (spoiled), the robot handed an angry human its arm, which the human then used to beat another human to death. Robot stopped working, as it realized after the fact that it contributed to the death of a human being.
BrythanBrythan
Since you don't specify that you are requesting an "in universe" reason ... I think it's important to remember that the three laws are just a story device. Asimov (wisely) is quite vague about how they are implemented, as he is about many technical details. And "I should just lock all the humans in a padded cell for their safety" would result in a rather limited storyline.
Now, in universe, there are many "judgment calls" inherent in applying the three laws (and in fact the inherent ambiguities often result in important plot elements for the stories). The robots apparently have to appeal to their own programming instead of an external authority to resolve these ambiguities.
But I think we have to logically assume that the more obvious judgment calls (like, say, should I just lock all the humans in a padded cell immediately for their safety?) were already addressed in development and testing of the robots, or they never would have been put in general use or production at all.
In other words, the designers of the robots, in addition to addressing whatever other bugs they had to address (e.g. hmm, if the human is dead it can't suffer), would have simply programmed safeguards against that sort of result.
GHolmesGHolmes
Actually there's a set of short stories in which Asimov specifically showed, in great detail, what happens to a robot whose three laws had been modified or weighted against eachother in different scenarios. I don't think it's right to call it a story device, it's pretty baked in to the core of his series. – C Bauer Nov 15 '18 at 20:27
@CBauer almost a lot of conflict stems or is somehow (significantly) related to the three laws and how they are misinterpreted, creatively interpreted, too literally interpreted, have their interpretation tampered with and so on by robots. Since the driving factor behind the story...or plot if you will, it is a plot device. Don't confuse "plot device" with "a contrived plot device" - you can have a well thought out and well crafted, entirely internally consistent reason for plot to progress. And the three laws of robotics are oft cited example of those. – VLAZ Nov 16 '18 at 7:51
@vlaz Fair point, I guess I was considering the phrasing to be a bit dismissive which is why I commented. Thanks for the info! – C Bauer Nov 16 '18 at 14:34
Kind of a frame challenge - is locking a human in a padded cell preventing them from harm? If you're going to allow the abstract possibility of future arm as motivation for a robot to use the 1st law to lock humans up, it should be noted that taking away a humans freedom is generally causing them harm to some extent in the form of psychological damage - and the mental state of humans has been considered by robots as eligible for 1st law protection in at least some of Asimovs stories.
CubicCubic
The Three Laws of Robotics require an analysis of all the laws to full answer this question:
First Law - A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Second Law - A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law - A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
If a man is walking down the street, he is not coming to harm, so the robot should not act in such a manner that assumes he may be hurt. Should a robot attempt to pick him up and place him in a box, the man can say, "I order you to stand back," and by the Second Law, the robot would be required to obey.
Isaac Asimov was the first to develop the Three Laws of Robotics in 1942 as part of his story "Runaround". Asimov said that he was tired of the common themes of robot stories of the time, which drew from the Frankenstein notion of "the created destroy the creator". He mused that if people created such creatures, they would naturally instill in them laws or ideals that would prevent them from harming humans.
The overall idea of the First Law is that the robot cannot directly, or indirectly (through inaction), harm a human. It makes no assertion about possible future events, only what is directly calculable in the next few moments. From a hard/software perspective, it is often very expensive to calculate things with MANY variables for more than a few cycles in the future. A robot cannot process all of the possibilities that could happen to the said man in the next hour, let alone day, week, or year. It could, however, see a piano falling from a few stories above the man and quickly calculate the vector required to save the man in the next few moments.
As an added investigation, read "Liar!", another short story by Asimov which discusses this question from an emotional perspective. (Both of these stories can be found in the book "I, Robot" by Asimov, I believe.)
JSBachJSBach
Simply put, the definition of 'harm'.
Protection from physical harm can cause other kinds of harm. In some cases, protection from some form of harm can actually increase the likelihood of that type of harm in the future.
For example, protection from emotional harm can leave a person incapable of dealing with trivial challenges without severe emotional harm, which can propagate to actual mental harm, which can further propagate into harm to one's general health, which obviously compromises one's physical safety.
In the end, for a robot to be able to make determinations with regard to intervention in the full spectrum of human events, it must be capable of making a non-deterministic estimate of probable outcomes of a range of potential actions (including inaction), and be able to make not only objective determinations of probability and severity of harm, but also estimates of the subjective PERCEPTION of various types of harm. It must be able to do this continuously in real time as well.
Because of the complexity of problem, the simplest way to mitigate it is to restrict the problem domain by restricting the capabilities and responsibilities of the robot.
If a robot is designed to control the opening and closing of a sliding door, software can be defined which can make very reliable estimates of the potential outcomes of its actions because its actions are limited to either opening the door, or closing the door.
However, if our doorman robot is watching and listening to everything, and trying to parse everything going on around it, it may not be able to reliably determine whether it should open or close the door, given the totality of the situation. For example, if a couple are in an argument, and one of them gets up to storm out of the room, should the robot open the door, or would it be best to keep them in the room to solve their dispute? Is this person a danger to themselves or others if they leave? Will the other one be a danger to them if they stay? how will all of this affect their relationship? Will opening the door cause social harm because of the appearance of the person attempting to leave compared with the social norms and apparent prejudices of those on the other side of the door who would witness the event?
You can further restrict the problem domain by restricting the inputs. So now our robo-doorman can only perceive that a person is approaching the door, and can determine the point at which if the door is not opened, the person is likely to come to physical harm, based on their velocity and the properties of the door. Sure, the robot may not be very much help in saving a relationship, but it will predictably be able to keep you from walking into the doors like William Shatner in a Star Trek blooper.
All of this means that the robots must either be able to approach or exceed our capacity for what we call 'thought', or it must be limited to the extend that its shortcomings are less than its strengths. If neither is possible, then that task is probably better left to a human.
Mitch CarrollMitch Carroll
A) Programmers prevent or allow.
B) semantics and definitions, even philosophy
C) nothing
Any unattended(read, uninfluenced) self learning system, even with a few hardcoded, unalterable instructions could devolve into something unforseen and dangerous in some way or another.
The fact that we humans haven't overcome this (see our world of extremes in bliss and suffering as it exists today and history) makes me wary of AI that is not monitored in its learning and possible self programming.
At the very least it needs to have a failsafe installed for immediate shut down or human interference.
But even if learning and action is monitored or influenced very quickly there is a point where no human is able to oversee or understand every line of code or behavioural pattern matrix or tensor field.
Also, hacking,malfunctions and viruses could always circumvent anything or crash or stall the systemt, thus rendering even failsafes useless.
There will need to be crystal clear definitions of what is meant by what instruction in order to overcome ambiguities.
Again we haven't mastered this, so there is no hope for AI - an intellect so foreign once it reached its true potential that we can't even fathom its thought processes, let alone ethics.
However if the instructions are sufficiently black and white, reducing any shade of grey into a yes or no, there at least might be a way.
For instance the AI could determine that humans require freedom to thrive, even exist or be happy. Thus taking it away would harm mankind and be an invalid choice.
Should nobody have thought of "telling" the AI this natural urge to freedom and there was no instance where it could have been observed by the AI (or dismissed as irrelevant), it could very well decide to take the action you propose.
As you see it comes down to human nature and the biological, mental and social intricacies that are sometimes so abstract and interwoven that centuries, even millennia of philosophy and science fall short in understanding them.
A collection of hardcoded conditions to test against might sufficiently mitigate the risk of death or harm to humans or society.
First step would be NOT to put weapons into AI driven machinery that may roam freely.(Yeah, because we'd never do that)
Another would be NOT to hand over every vital control system to AI without manual override possibilities.(but it is sooo convenient)
Yet another would be to keep the AI simple in their range of actions and fields of expertise, making it easier to predict most, even all possible actions and setting a proper framework (at least according to the then current ideology, societal norm, law, ethical codex etc. - oh no this already falls apart as well as soon as these change).
There are many more and the more cases we think of, the more we enter B) and C) again as these are actually all the very same problem...feels like a recursive loop...
So in dealing with highly evolved AI essentially you either create tools that are somewhat intelligent (possibly sentient) and effectively enslaved(under the control of humans) or you do what we (mostly) do with humans: let them learn from their surroundings and then roam free and hope for the best and that their impulse to self preservation keeps them from going on rampages out of fear of retaliation...well, we see how well that works for us...so good luck either way...
DigitalBlade969DigitalBlade969
This seems to me to be discussing AI safety issues in general rather than in Asimov's specific fictional world? – Harry Johnston Nov 17 '18 at 19:40
Isn't that the whole point of Asimov's world that the laws he established don't work to prevent AI from becoming sentient, rebellious, even violent?The very least he was pondering (among other things) dilemmas that occur when comparing human ethos and instincts with decisions made by electronic difference engines and if emotions can arise from synthetic beings. – DigitalBlade969 Nov 18 '18 at 2:19
Well, certainly not the whole point. At first, at least, it was quite the opposite: Asimov said that one of the motivations for his early robot stories - and the Three Laws in particular - was a dislike of both the "robot as threat" and the "robot as pathos" tropes. He did explore more varied themes later on, though it seems to me more for storytelling purposes than as any sort of Aesop. – Harry Johnston Nov 18 '18 at 7:23
... your answer could be improved by linking your points more explicitly to both the question as asked and to specific named Asimov stories and/or quotations, I would be interested to see what you come up with. – Harry Johnston Nov 18 '18 at 7:23
The answer can be found in the first two laws of robotics.
If the robots locked any human beings in padded cells the human being would simply order the robots to release him or her. if the robots refused to release the human being, that human being only has point out are or will be injured psychologically by their incarceration.
The zeroth law of robotics works on the level of the entire human species in which the robots can act collectively through large-scale manipulation of events, institutions, and populations to ensure humans are kept safe as a species.
a4androida4android
protected by Rand al'Thor♦ Nov 19 '18 at 12:41
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text:
Luis Ubiñas Op-ed in Forbes.com
Keeping Americans At Home
By Luis Ubiñas Published in Forbes.com: October 9, 2008
The government's effort to stabilize the financial system has started a long overdue debate about economic fairness in America. This conversation is important because how it plays out will determine how our financial system serves the aspirations of the American people for decades to come. Congress struggled to pass legislation to support financial institutions precisely because it found the public skeptical of a package that does not address the needs of families losing their homes.
Unfortunately, the debate on the mortgage crisis has given life to a damaging and unsubstantiated myth about how we got into such bad shape to begin with. The basic premise is that irresponsible households'most of them lower-income'are to blame for the bad debt that has brought down Wall Street. The myth maintains that far too many people who simply couldn't afford to pay a mortgage took on the debt with abandon.
This explanation leads many to suggest a seemingly logical solution: Make sure the nation's mortgage brokers avoid lending to families of modest means and modest credit scores. Once we cut these "undesirable" families out of the picture, the housing market will eventually recover (helped by the federal plan for big banks).
In most cases, however, this myth doesn't hold. New research by the Center for Community Capital at the University of North Carolina suggests that, given an opportunity to access fair mortgages, most families who foreclosed under the burden of reckless loan products would still be in their homes.
The national study tracked two large groups of borrowers with similar risk profiles, the kind that would have prevented them from getting prime loans from traditional lenders. The first group wound up with sub-prime loans, while the second group received prime fixed-rate loans through a program seeded by the Ford Foundation to help banks serve low-income families. Both groups had the same financial background and the same ability to pay. Not surprisingly, the study shows that the loans with prepayment penalties, variable interest rates, and other sub-prime features were four times more likely to fail than the prime mortgages. Put simply, it's the loan products that are the problem, not the families.
Such results have tremendous implications for the road ahead. First, we must reject the notion that helping homeowners facing foreclosure amounts to a bailout of "deadbeat" households. Instead, we should pursue a plan to stabilize American families with the same urgency that has been applied to the financial system. Such an effort should include counseling to prevent additional foreclosures, and a new mechanism to restructure mortgages into sensible loans that keep borrowers in their homes. The time has passed for a loan-by-loan, piecemeal approach to the crisis. The government must facilitate the bulk transfer of mortgages to institutions with the incentive to restructure them on viable and fair terms for the current owners.
Second, we must end predatory lending practices that made subprime mortgages destined to fail. Key features of these loans and the way they were marketed'such as prepayment penalties, escalating interest rates and hidden fees'made it next to impossible for families to stay current on payments. What's worse is that many families did not need to pursue these products in the first place. Three years ago, researchers at Freddie Mac estimated that 20 percent of subprime borrowers would have qualified for prime loans at closing. Housing experts believe that this number is much higher. Whatever the figure, these practices must never be allowed again.
Third, we must act quickly to ensure that properties vacated by foreclosure are put back into use. If left vacant, these properties threaten all nearby families by driving down property values and putting precious home equity at risk. Getting these homes back in use will require creating a national entity that can acquire them in bulk and transfer them to cities for renovation and sale to private owners. Each abandoned house within 500 feet of an occupied home reduces the value of every surrounding home by 2.27%, according to a 2007 study by the Land Policy Institute at Michigan State University.
Finally, we must respond to the mortgage crisis not by closing the door to homeownership, but by ensuring that all Americans have access to fair and responsible financial services. Such services promote saving and the building of assets, which enable families to move up the economic ladder and boost the economic stability and opportunities of the next generation. Denying access to these opportunities would extend by years the impact of the current housing crisis, limiting the chances of a generation of Americans to reach the economic mainstream.
Over the last decade, innovative partnerships between the public and private sectors have proven that low and moderate-income Americans can be reliable borrowers and responsible homeowners. Turning back the clock on this progress is the exact wrong way to respond to today's mortgage crisis. We know that responsible lending to these communities works. Now more than ever, we need the commitment to ensure it continues.
Luis Ubiñas is president of the Ford Foundation.
Read the article in Forbes.com
The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization. For more than half a century it has been a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide, guided by its goals of strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting international cooperation and advancing human achievement. With headquarters in New York, the foundation has offices in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Russia.
Strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation and advance human achievement.
©2008 Ford Foundation. All Rights Reserved.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Every Monday morning in an alley off Rose Avenue in Venice, the homeless go to work.
It is the Greater Rose Avenue Cleanup Effort, headed by a team of homeless people and sponsored by the St. Joseph Center, a support center for homeless and low-income families.
Under the program, which began in June, half a dozen homeless people armed with gloves, bags and brooms sweep the alley from 4th Street to 7th Street and deposit the trash in dumpsters.
When the work is done, they sit down to a free meal at the nearby Bread and Roses restaurant, which was started by the St. Joseph Center to serve the homeless.
"Even though people are of low income and homeless, they like to do something for their community," said Jeanette Rowe, a staff member of the St. Joseph Center. "They live here. This is their community, although they are identified as a problem in the community."
Organizers and participants say the program is accomplishing its twin goals--to help the homeless develop a sense of responsibility for their surroundings and to establish a rapport with the community.
"This effort has really helped to make a difference," said Patrick Dolan, director of the program, which is known by its acronym, GRACE. "The neighbors have given us some positive responses from the work we're doing."
Said Herb Yates, a 59-year-old homeless man: "It keeps me occupied. It makes the alley look better, and people don't complain anymore about the homeless people."
If the cleanup effort continues to be successful, the St. Joseph Center hopes to extend it to two times a week and increase the number of homeless people who pitch in.
But for now, the shelter and the homeless are happy with their effort, which participants now call "Patrick's Posse." Said Jose Jimenez, a 67-year-old homeless man: "I enjoy being a part of Patrick's posse. I guess I've just got that volunteer spirit."
Said Venice resident Candy Ibarra2 "It shows that (the homeless) have a heart and they give to the city when the city does not give them anything in return."


While I am very pleased that the issue of income inequality has finally taken a stronghold in the American political dialogue, I have noticed that the rhetoric has fallen short, even from my beloved Bernie.
Sanders has brought to the media something that the rest of us have already known for years, the growing wealth in our country is not going to the people doing the work and the Wallstreet banks are too large and need to be broken up.
Several candidates and even the current president have recently started to comment adamently on this issue but there is something that they are all forgetting, or at least not talking about enough, the banks are not the only things that need to be broken up.
Recent statistics show that the media is the most consistantly untrusted institution in America across demographics, even lower than religion or government. Well, the list of reasons is most likely endless, I think many people don't like the fact that a majority of media companies today are owned by a very select few. Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone, and Ted Turner are just a few whose corporations come to mind who are practically responsible for distributing all the movies, all the televison shows, and worst of all, all of the books. The uneven distribution of wealth is caused in part by the excessive size of underregulated banks, AND the current cultural crisis is a result of underregulated corporate trade as a whole.
People are only as good as the information that they have, and just like who to few people control the wealth, too few people control the information as well. Break up the banks, and don't forget to break up the channels and publishers as well.
In all seriousness, Happy New Year All, start off the year right because it sets the tone for the rest of the year. I joke about it being cliche but we celebrate the changing of the years for a reason. It is a chance in our culture to start fresh in so many ways, so why not take advantage for the better?


ICE is an organisation committed to buttressing traditional knowledge in community-based environmental and resource management initiatives and facilitating culture-based learning that would lead to social and ecological well-being of the earth community. To achieve this, ICE accompanies communities as they rediscover the value of local knowledge and naturally endowed resources/potentials in livelihoods improvement and environmental conservation.
ICE thematic areas of focus include environmental conservation, food sovereignty and community livelihoods. ICE promotes environmental awareness among communities through training; facilitating experiential learning especially for school pupils; training on indigenous tree seedling production and support rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems such as forests and river lines; promotion of agro-forestry; promotion of sustainable use of natural resource through use of energy efficient technologies, use of renewable energy as well as soil and water conservation. ICE also promotes use of community's culture in conservation of the environment such as protection of sacred ecosystems through traditional governance systems.
ICE also promotes the recuperation of indigenous foods which are culturally acceptable and adaptable to the climatic conditions hence ensuring household food security. This is done through recuperation of indigenous seed varieties, promotion of family farming and crop diversification, training on ecological farming, value addition, diversification of livelihoods through climate adaptation initiatives and economic empowerment.


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Q: How to make that the variables of the first component to not erased when I navigate to another component I have 2 different component that navigate.

*

*I create a invoice, add invoice_number,  invoice_date , description and click Add Product.

*I add product, and navigate in invoice component. When I navigate in invoice, step 1 is deleted.

Demo
Can you suggest me any idea how to issue this?
Thank you!

A: Actually angular does not provide a state management system for component, like android do.
So if you want to store state of component, use service to store data.
put data to service while navigating to component B. and retrieve that data while navigating back to component A if exist.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


We Have A Proven Process That Positions Your Business In Front Of The Customers Searching For You Online.
Elizabeth is featured on the Practice Perfect Show, a community of leaders in the Healthcare field. This is an interview style talk where she discusses her background, business, and more about her.
Elizabeth has spoken and been interviewed on John Assaraf's Brain-a-thon, Vistage International, the 7-Figure CEO podcast, Accelerate Your Business Growth, Pathways to Success, Your Business Brilliance, and many more. Stay tuned for additional talks.
Premier SEO Ninjas is a Minneapolis SEO agency that may have had very modest beginnings in 2009 yet, in such a short span of time, has grown to become one of the world's most respected and most sought-after provider of high-quality, high-impact search engine optimization services to help businesses crush their competition. We've helped these businesses multiply their bottom line, create and establish a unique brand image, and define the success of their organization. We may be known as a provider of Minneapolis SEO services, but it is not the only service that we offer. Search engine optimization is just part of the whole gamut of successful digital marketing services; equally important are web design and development, social media marketing, link-building, video marketing, and brand development.
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We make sure that we are up-to-date with Google's updates. In fact, in 2015 alone, Google released 256 updates that saw a lot of longstanding first-placers losing ground for the first time simply because they grew complacent. Being the best SEO Minneapolis company, Premier SEO Ninjas performs a lot of testing and research to help all of our clients stay well ahead of the competition. This is how we can guarantee our clients Page 1 results.
We are not just any other SEO Expert Minneapolis. We believe that ranking high in organic search results is only part of the solution. Many businesses who do good ranking eventually end up losing simply because they lost sight of the missing components. Simply put, more traffic doesn't necessarily translate to more revenue especially if you are lacking these essential components. As a premier SEO Minneapolis company, we know what these essential elements are and have dedicated our lives to helping our clients flourish online.
We build highly responsive websites that are guaranteed to convert and rank well in Google. Our web design Minneapolis agency is dedicated to the creation of highly interactive, value-laden, and customer-focused websites. These are also very responsive, able to intuitively transform to fit the user's preferred device. This means that no matter what platform your customers will be using, visiting your website will be a pleasure to behold and a truly positive experience for them. This can only be guaranteed by our dedicated team of Ninjas in our web design Minneapolis office.
We also believe that our innovative local SEO services can help businesses rank high in the SERPs (search engine result pages). Our web design and development services will ensure that customers being driven to your website will have the best user experience, so they don't necessarily end up as empty statistics. Our Ninja experts employ a variety of techniques designed primarily to help our clients create, establish, and build up their brand image. Brand development and management is such an essential component of today's digital marketing success. Even so-called SEO expert services gurus will tell you that part and parcel of SEO is building credibility, trustworthiness, and reputation.
You see, Premier SEO Ninjas is not just a Minneapolis SEO, it is one of the best all-around Search Engine Marketing Minneapolis agencies dedicated to helping our clients in every aspect of their business. Whether your business is just a small-time Mom and Pop operation or a large corporate organization, you can trust us to help you transform your business. To see proof of our client's rankings click here.
Our clients don't call Premier SEO Ninjas the best Minneapolis SEO agency for nothing. While we do have both the experience and the expertise to help transform the lives of our clients, we can say that we are successful simply because of the trust that we've built with our clients. With this trust, we make sure that we truly understand the organizational foundations of our clients and what they would like to achieve. Our internet marketing Minneapolis services are based on the premise that programs only work if the different components reflect the true nature of our clients' businesses. It is in customization that we believe we can make meaningful contributions towards the realization of our clients' respective bottoms line.
If you are ready to elevate your business and blow way past your competition, we'd be happy to give you a 30-minute consultation to share with you how we can guarantee economic success for your business. If you're ready to begin, please fill out our Discovery Form.
Premier SEO Ninjas aims to be the leading provider of innovative, comprehensive, state-of-the-art, and results-driven digital and internet marketing solutions to enable our clients to become even more successful in their chosen fields of endeavor.
We create highly valued and responsible partnerships that double or triple revenue; provide a work environment conducive to fostering creativity, passion, and commitment; and adhere to our core principles of efficiency, excellence, and quality.
Elizabeth is a Premier Google Partner and holds certifications in Google Adwords Search, Google Shopping Advertising, Google Mobile Advertising, Google Video Advertising, Google Adwords Display Advertising, and Google Analytics. She Also is certified in Advanced Google Analytics and Ecommerce Analytics.
To be the best she can be is vitally important to Elizabeth – she's constantly growing and learning new things in all areas of life. Currently, she masterminds with the top 1% in the search engine marketing world. After reaching a higher level of success than ever before, Elizabeth was interviewed by John Assaraf on his televised program – Brain-A-Thon in March 2016 about her elevated levels of achievement. The two are now friends and collaborate on business ideas together.
In July of 2016, Elizabeth participated in the Business Brilliance Master Class Online Summit. As an expert in her field, she was interviewed and gave tips on how to have Prosperity Like A Ninja.
In February 2017 Elizabeth attended the High-Performance Forum Elite training by Success Mentor Darren Hardy where she learned how to accelerate her leadership skills. Humbly, she was nominated for 2017 Entrepreneur of the Year Award by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.


Today I drove past a church in White Plains which was adjacent to a municipal parking lot. The sign on the entrance to the parking lot said that fees were applicable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In other words, if you come to church on Sunday morning you need to pay to park your car.
Last week I went to Rye to make a bank deposit. The muni-meter's minimum time allotment was one hour. I needed to pay for one hour of parking to run in and out of the bank in less than 10 minutes.
Have you ever noticed how many municipalities now charge for parking? You need to pay for parking to go to the library or the doctor's office in White Plains, and to go window shopping in Mamaroneck or Rye. Some stores like Walmart or Whole Foods in White Plains offer you free parking if you make a minimum purchase. In other words it's not really free.
In Rye Ridge Plaza (in Rye Brook, NY) the parking really is free to the customers. You can go to the doctors' office, make a bank deposit, eat at a restaurant, or go shopping- and really not pay for parking- even if you purchase nothing.
This is one reason why I chose to locate my office in Rye Ridge Plaza. At Okun Orthodontics you will always find a free parking spot in close proximity to the office, and also be walking distance from the bank, supermarket, hardware store, numerous clothing stores, pharmacy, jewelry store, and several restaurants. Okun Orthodontics is also easily accessible to Route 287 (Cross Westchester Expressway exit 10) and the Hutchinson River Parkway (Ridge Street, exit 29 in NY). Come visit me in Rye Ridge Plaza to see for yourself.


Xmodgames is an advanced mobile game assistant tool which comes with various mods that allows the players to complete and pursue their goals easily and also offers a better gameplay experience. Xmodgames is available for iOS and Android, but you need a rooted Android or a jail broken IOS device for a smooth experience. Currently, the App is not available on the Android Play Store but you can use download it the latest Xmodgames 2.1.2 by following the guide below.
The latest version is version 2.1.2 and it fixes various issues and minor bugs. This one is the latest October 6th 2015 update and you need to update your Xmodgames in order to enjoy the latest and new mods.
Step 1 – Download the Xmodgames-2.1.2.apk. If you downloaded directly on your phone, it will be in the folder called 'downloads' on SD card.
Step 4 – Connect your phone to the PC and transfer the Xmodgames-2.0.1 apk file anywhere in your SD card or phone memory.
Step 6 – Tap on the Xmodgames-2.1.2.apk file. A popup will show up. Now tap on the "Open App Manager" button.


Our amazing Middle Schoolers were cooking after school yesterday! Here they are preparing their food. At the end, they got to eat and enjoy what they spent so much time making! Good job guys, it looks amazing! Yum!


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Director: David Koepp
Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon, Dania Ramirez, Wolé Parks, Jamie Chung, Aasif Mandvi, Christopher Place, Henry O, Anthony Chisolm, Lauren Ashley Carter, Hoon Lee, Boyce Wong, Sean Kennedy, Kym Perfetto, Matthew Rauch, P.J. Sosko, Jerry Walsh
Review: Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) goes flying through the air, leaving his bicycle behind him and landing in a painful heap on the road. To find out why this accident occured, we have to go back in time approximately an hour and a half to when he was carrying out his job as a cycle courier and his working day was winding down. Not that this made him travel any slower, he was addicted to the speeds he could reach as he snaked through the New York City traffic, an expert at deciding the right route to get to his destination in the shortest possible time. But today the pressure was on...
That's because today Wilee was being chased, by Michael Shannon no less, or at least Shannon playing a bent copper who needs his latest package to fall into the cop's hands rather than the hands of those it is supposed to be in. The reasons for that were illustrated over the rest of writer and director David Koepp's movie, and he had over the years become a dab hand at crowdpleasing popcorn flicks, or at least he had been until he penned the script for the fourth Indiana Jones instalment which saw him receive an awful lot of flak for replacing Frank Darabont on that production. Was that the reason Premium Rush failed to catch on with audiences?
Certainly it found a few viewers, but for an action movie with a high concept it might have been expected to do better than it did; perhaps Gordon-Levitt was not quite ready to carry a blockbuster yet, not in the lead role at any rate. As to that concept, there have down cinema history been low budget efforts which seize the imaginations of both filmmakers and filmgoers: Night of the Living Dead changed the face of horror movies, The Blair Witch Project wrote the rules on the fresh popularity of found footage movies, for example. But some, while making an impact, just don't appear to have many imitators, and remain strictly cult movies... Run Lola Run was one of those.
Aside from the Crank franchise starring Jason Statham there was not an abundance of films replicating the throw anything you can at it and see what sticks formula of thrillers to be seen, but Koepp attempted to change that with his tricksy camerawork, onscreen graphics to denote the seriousness of the situation, and a pace best described as relentless. Except the latter didn't quite apply, because there was a long stretch a third of the way through, and indeed at parts throughout, where the story needed exposition which complicated what should have been far more simple. There was a lot of explanation going on which could have easily been replaced with more action.
Given early on the plot makes clear its debt to the Road Runner cartoons, with Wilee as the zooming bird, oddly (shouldn't he have been called Mr R. Runner and Shannon's cop be called Wilee?) Koepp really should have streamlined this down to the bare essentials, since it was the action sequences which represented the highlight. Some may be reluctant to find much appeal in a cyclist who cared little for the rules of the road, and the actual mechanics of his flight through the Manhattan streets might have been novel in a genre so tied to the car chase for its excitement, but Koepp sustained a kinetic quality to these which barely paused for breath. It was just the other business involved with setting that up which dragged things down - not an enormous amount, but enough to make the viewer's shoulders sag whenever anyone got off their bike - or fell off, for that matter. For a different spin on a familiar form of thriller, Premium Rush wasn't bad at all, with reservations. Music by David Sardy.
David Koepp (1964 - )
American writer and director who has penned scripts for numerous big budget genre movies, including Jurassic Park and its sequel, Carlito's Way, Panic Room, Spider-Man, plus Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. As a director, Koepp has made a pair of horror thrillers, Stir of Echoes and the Stephen King adaptation Secret Window, the fantasy comedy Ghost Town, high octane cycling thriller Premium Rush and the megaflop Johnny Depp comedy Mortdecai.


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Return to surreal film: Julian Rosefeldt debuts in Istanbul
by Matt Hanson
ISTANBUL Cinema
Julian Rosefeldt, Deep Gold, 2013/2014 u00a9 Julian Rosefeldt and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018.
For one of the highest-profile exhibitions of the year in Istanbul, art film director and writer Julian Rosefeldt makes his debut on the shores of the Bosporus with the exhibition "Avant-Garde and Apocalypse" at both Dirimart locations in Dolapdere and Nişantaşı through June 13
Julian Rosefeldt looked at a blank piece of paper. His mind may have been running with images, thoughts, projections, but he did not intend to record them, not exactly. He did not intend anything in fact, nothing in particular.
Instead, he wrote on the page to practice a technique known to have inspired the maiden ventures of his predecessors who rode the first wave of surrealist filmmaking. He followed the methodical madness of his intellectual forebears Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali by partaking in automatic writing.
It is a creative method that goes deeper than the stream-of-consciousness prose style that developed into a literary genre with Virginia Woolf's reclusive feminism, Jack Kerouac's speed-induced scrolls, and lately Mathias Enard's novel-length sentences. It confronts the unsettling and revealing powers of the subconscious, and opens to what the psychologist Carl Jung called the collective unconscious.
What came out under the eye of Rosefeldt was gold. And that is partly the title of his earliest film shown for his first solo exhibition in Istanbul, an 18-minute, black-and-white amoral romp of Rabelaisian human satire called "Deep Gold" (2013-14).
On golden-age thinking
The surrealist masterpiece, L'Age D'Or (1930) by Bunuel and Dali begins like a documentary about scorpions. Its dark, entomological focus is akin to the experimental video artist Ali Mahmut Demirel, who is currently exhibiting "Isle" at Arter's third-floor gallery on İstiklal Avenue in Istanbul's historic, commercial core through July 15. In his unpeopled flash of cinematic genius, "The Pier" (2015), he zones in on a mosquito against dirty glass overlooking the foamy churn of the gray ocean below. His transcendental narrative sensibility is in some ways parallel to Rosefeldt, an artist of the moving image who has the eye of a feature filmmaker, although they diverge when it comes to exposition and influence.
No one with the faculty of sight and a sound mind should trust Rosefeldt. In one word, "Deep Gold" is counterintuitive. It is painful, wrenching, deceiving, captivating, enlightening. Finally, it is good, artistic fun. To say creative is an understatement. He is visionary, reviving a time when film was new media, as its chief seers and eager onlookers were mesmerized by it as a potential means to break the conventions of prevailing formalisms.
Julian Rosefeldt, Manifesto (André Breton, 1924), 2015/2017 © Julian Rosefeldt and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018.
To its immediate initiates, the technical capabilities of film sprung a leak in the Kool-Aid punch bowl of so many art movements doomed to the dogmas of conceptualism and obscurity. It could both reach the masses and chart a way forward through the multifaceted aesthetics of modernity and futurism at a breakneck clip. It is clear that Rosefeldt aligned his work with that seed momentum that was soon coopted by the viral world order of capitalism, sold to the melodramas of domestic Hollywood dreams.
Dali makes a cameo appearance in "Deep Gold" as he reads from a rag named after Gala, his beloved, and stares back at the subject of the film with his iconic, beaming stare. Even the diviner is not immune to the shock that follows from truly seeing into the glass ball with unflinching eyes. It climaxes in a vaudevillian burlesque show as ribald as that filmed to reconstruct the theatrical protest of the 17th century poet John Wilmot, played by Johnny Depp in the 2004 movie, "Libertine."
A picture of human world
"I've been in Istanbul before, but this time I'm mainly working. I like Istanbul a lot. 'In the Land of Drought' (2015-17) was shot in the Atlas Mountains where a lot of film sets are left. That makes them very beautiful. They are not actually ancient ruins," said Rosefeldt as he stood outside of Dirimart's space in Dolapdere minutes before his first opening in the city, eyeing the rush of traffic on his way to the Nişantaşı where "Deep Gold" is screened. "I discovered the sets accidentally on an excursion with my students, and much later I wanted to do a piece on the anthropocene and thought that this could be an interesting way of telling my perspective."
The gleaming desert has an extraterrestrial quality in Rosefeldt's longest and most recent film for the Dirimart exhibition, "In the Land of Drought" curated by Heinz Peter Schwerfel into a vast projection. Its sheer, ecological scale is contrasted by crawling dots of white suits, humanoids after some unexplained fallout, as they file in and out of the frame like an investigative team descended from space.
The slow-moving, 43-minute film recalls Ron Fricke's "Baraka" and Godfrey Reggio's "Koyaanisqatsi" as it muses on the nature of the world soul from a global perspective, conveying the cataclysmic wonder of creation as a force with so much energy that it simply self-destructs while simultaneously regenerating through unknowable paths of singularity. The artists of the world distill that essential quality from life and communicate its active principles.
"When you work on film there's always post-production, such as working a bit on the colors of the Moroccan and German landscapes [for 'In the Land of Drought']. There was no digital enhancement," Rosefeldt patiently explained with a philosophical mind as quick and sharp as a skilled fencer. "The audience completes the work. The movie context comes along with perception patterns. You approach the moving image differently than in the art context, where everything is possible and you never know what's waiting for you. In the movie context you're waiting for a story to be told. Most of my work is shown in museums, and not in cinemas. I like to explore the mechanics and alchemy of filmmaking and I have more freedom in the art world."
Julian Rosefeldt, In the Land of Drought, 2015/2017 © Julian Rosefeldt and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018.
Reams have been written, and uncountable bytes of memory used to clarify and pontificate on the significance and meaning of Rosefeldt's career. His piece, "Asylum" (2001/2001) displays his knack for cutting metaphors by an indirect critique on German immigration, in which Turkish men work in a newspaper delivery warehouse and are increasingly locked in a wind tunnel that blows every last page into total disarray.
In a similar light, "In the Land of Drought" shows the fragility and shallowness of human civilization against the transience of time, where seemingly impressive Egyptian temples and Greco-Roman colonnades are mere paper-thin scaffolds of half-constructed, make-believe figments of reality. The same device recurred in "Deep Gold" as a possible homage to the surrealist Mexican film, "The Holy Mountain" (1973), which also ends with the nightmarish dystopia unveiled, as the camera lets its viewers take a concluding, awakening sigh of relief behind the scenes.
In the second half of "In the Land of Drought" the aerial lens espies the moonscapes of an industrial catastrophe, reminiscent of how photographer Louis Helbig saw the Canadian oil sands from a purely aesthetic perspective. The white suits weave through the remnants of life belittled to smeared concrete and a crisscross of tire tracks over the infertile sand of an open-pit mine. The colossal ingenuity of the ancients is concentrated into modes of environmental destruction, the war machine complex zigzagging into towering, outdoor stairwells wound through the rusted pipes of smoking factories.
Noise music rises like the grind of metal against glass, as a vocal synthesizer harmonizes to a droning machine before silencing to the flap of a bird's wing. The film ends with its post-apocalyptic walkers forming a circle before they bunch together into a dot around a structure that looks like an amphitheater, but is likely a sort of well for toxic runoff. The repetitive visualization of human bodies in and out of dissolution and unity relays the cosmic design of creation and destruction.
A farce on manifestos
On a black couch in Dirimart's gallery in Dolapdere, there are three pairs of headphones in front of a flat monitor. Rosefeldt's film, "Manifesto" (2015) is on repeat. It is a piece that merges art and cinema with unprecedented direction, breaching the realm of art, also catapulting it to new heights.
"Manifesto" is a scintillating magnum opus starring the prolific talent Cate Blanchette in thirteen roles. Her comic timing is priceless and on point as she enunciates the absurd and insane verbosity of art's most vocal and outlandish of proposals. She recites manifestos by the Dadaists, Communists, Situationists, and ten others, through a delicious variety of characters, mediums, acts, interventions and displacements.
Rosefeldt's generous cinematography and tasteful screenplay airs the infamies of modern and contemporary art's enduring failure to connect with most people. He embraces that confusion and repositions it for popular appeal under a more democratic light.
Art is not going anywhere. It was here when people lived in caves. It will conceivably be here after humanity has made its grand exit. Art reflects life, its enigma.


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Travel Wise
European street life: Favorite places to walk, shop, eat, drink
Originally published April 20, 2015 at 10:00 am Updated April 20, 2015 at 11:41 am
From Paris to Prague, strolling and enjoying some quintessential urban byways.
New York Times staff
Tasting Aperitivi Along Ripa di Porta Ticinese
When the inevitable wave of feeling underdressed crashes down, as it does at regular intervals in Milan, it's time to seek respite near the ancient Naviglio Grande canal. My fondness for this laid-back area has been tested on many occasions: When the canal is drained of water for restoration works or maintenance, it's a garbage-strewn eyesore. But by April 26 (just before the start of the World Expo being held here this year), the latest round of renovations is scheduled to be completed, so the shallow canal will again be filled with water from the Ticino River about 30 miles away.
The Naviglio Grande, one of two canals that slice the Navigli neighborhood, was constructed beginning in the 12th century. It was once used for the transportation of goods, but today it's a hub for aperitivo. This nightly ritual is characteristic of Milan, where a simple pre-dinner drink with something to eat has morphed into a two- or three-hour event accompanied by generous buffets of cured meats, cheeses, focaccia, grissini, pasta, risotto, canapé-like stuzzichini and more. But the food is secondary to the social element, and it's the Milanese enthusiasm for aperitivo that makes it the happiest of happy hours, as they're inclined to call it.
In the early evening, friendly greetings begin ringing out along my favored street: Ripa di Porta Ticinese, which runs along the canal's southern bank. Once a towpath for oxen and horses pulling barges along the canal, the worn cobblestones are now home to a string of bars and cafes where groups of friends gather to make the transition from day to night.
Men in tailored suits arrive by bike. Women in heels clatter across iron pedestrian bridges. Entire classes of university students occupy outdoor tables. And weaving through the diverse crowds are waiters carrying trays of beer, prosecco, vermouth and classic cocktails like the Negroni.
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My preferred haunt is Mag Cafè (No. 43), where the bartenders serve creative cocktails alongside endless plates of salumi and cheese. But on this vaguely Venetian stretch, you can't go wrong by pulling up any sidewalk seat, ordering a spritz and simply enjoying the golden (aperitivo) hour.
— INGRID K. WILLIAMS
Rua Nova do Carvalho
For decades, streetwalkers and sailors were the main denizens of Rua Nova do Carvalho, a dockside lane of seedy nightclubs named for Rotterdam, Liverpool, Copenhagen and other ports.
These days, all types walk the street, which has been closed to traffic, painted a cheerful shade of pink and elevated into Lisbon's most bustling new party strip, thanks to a combination of enterprising bar owners and municipal action.
Tin is in at Sol e Pesca (Rua Nova do Carvalho 44). Stacked in illuminated glass cabinets, hundreds of cans of tinned fish line the maritime-themed bar, a former fishing tackle shop. Drinkers can indulge in sardines in tomato sauce (4.90 euros, or about $5.30 at $1.05 to the euro), mackerel roe (9.50 euros) and other briny bounty with their shots of ginjinha cherry liquor (2 euros).
Gin is in a few steps away at Lateral (Avenida Barbosa du Bocage 107A), which serves multiple boutique varieties of the liquor, such as Bloom (8 euros) and Berkeley Square (12 euros). Slip into one of the classic wooden school chairs and you'll also get an education in neo-Portuguese cuisine, from scrambled eggs with lush farinheira sausage (7.20 euros) to tuna focaccia with wasabi mustard (9.50 euros).
You'll find robust tapas dishes at Povo (Rua Nova do Carvalho 32-36), but the real star is the Portuguese language itself. Within the intimate chapel-vaulted, candlelit space, local poets give readings and young practitioners of fado, Portugal's melancholy folk music, perform concerts. It all goes down smoothly with Povo's several varieties of caipirinhas (6 euros).
More spirited soundtracks abound next door. Lined with red velvet banquettes and tasseled lamps, Bar da Velha Senhora (Rua Nova do Carvalho 40) is a bordello-like den with burlesque shows and cabaret, jazz and flamenco acts. For a harder edge, order a Super Bock beer (2 euros) and crowd the stage at Tokyo (Rua Nova do Carvalho 12), a "rock bar" where albums decorate the wall and phrases from iconic songs ("We are the champions …") are stenciled on the bar.
The street's most medieval space hosts its most modern performers. Stony and vaulted, the cavernous Music Box club (Rua Nova do Carvalho 24) is a sonic cathedral where you'll hear Portuguese indie rock, Brazilian hip-hop, minimalist drum 'n' bass collectives, funk and electro DJs. An absinthe (6 euros) makes everyone fast friends.
— SETH SHERWOOD
Pimlico Road's Interior Design Shops
Interior designers and antiques dealers often joke that the first place to look for the best 20th-century Italian furniture and lighting is not Milan, Venice or Rome, but London. Such has been the demand among the city's titans of finance for cascading Murano chandeliers and sleek marble tables from the 1930s through the '70s that names like Fornasetti, Fontana Arte and Ico Parisi have at least temporarily relegated those of Chippendale, Adam or William Morris to Granny's attic.
I discovered this a dozen years ago when Colin Radcliffe, an interior designer, took me shopping on Pimlico Road, which is lined with dealers in handsome shops over four or five blocks. We started at No. 26, Gallery 25, where David Iglesis — known as a dealers' dealer because other dealers often buy from him — presided (and still does) over a more-the-merrier array of virtually anything that might come out of a house, from headboards and hinges to sofas and sconces.
Today, there is an emerging DIY trend whereby Pimlico dealers, perhaps tired of tracking down increasingly rare vintage pieces, are creating their own collections. The furniture, whether their own designs or specifically commissioned, often reflect a contemporary evolution of mid-20th-century aesthetics. Others seem to work as a foil to the sleek perfection of the best 20th-century pieces, lest a Giò Ponti secretaire take itself too seriously.
For sustenance, pop into the organic farm shop Daylesford at No. 44B, where the produce and foodstuffs are as artfully displayed as the antiques nearby. For a heartier meal, try Tinello at No. 87 for Italian dishes, or more local fare at the Orange, a charming pub and four-room hotel at No. 37.
— ANDREW FERREN
Every time I visit Vienna, I return with at least a dozen photos in my phone nearly identical to ones I've taken on other visits.
I love Vienna, especially its arty Sixth and Seventh districts where galleries and independent and eco-friendly clothing shops share the sidewalks with cozy cafes and restaurants. But my camera doesn't lie, and the sites for which I want a lasting visual record are right there along the touristy First District's main drag running between Hofburg Palace and the Opera House.
Here, on the "Golden U," as the prime shopping streets of Kartnerstrasse, Graben and Kohlmarkt are known, sit a handful of astonishing edifices that have nothing to do with the splendor of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Rather, they are tiny, quirky boutiques tucked among the palatial facades and renowned emporiums.
Designed by pioneering Austrian architect Hans Hollein (1934-2014) and dating from the 1960s to the early '90s, they provide a refreshing antidote to much of the city's imperial pomp. Despite being beloved by Viennese and the winner of the 1985 Pritzker, Hollein is little known outside the city and architectural circles.
The first shop is the Retti Candle Shop dating from 1965 at Kohlmarkt 10, with its sort of die-cut steel facade evoking a stylized candle and its interior completely clad in reflective surfaces like aluminum and mirrors. Nearby at Kohlmarkt 7 and among the most legibly "postmodern" in style is the second shop Hollein created for Schullin Jewelers.
Around the corner at Graben 26 sits his first effort for the same jeweler, known as Schullin I, which sits empty. Built in 1974, it has a facade on which it appears that metals and gems are bubbling out of the stone. Steps away at Graben 31 is Tabaktrafik, a tiny tobacconist beneath a massive bronze tobacco leaf, built in 1992.
From the neon lights and sex shops of Boulevard de Clichy to the bucolic cobbled paths of Rue Georges Lardennois, Paris has a street for every mood and mission.
You can enjoy a walkable feast amid the fine food shops of Rue de Bretagne, stagger between bars on Rue de Lappe and then rejuvenate with a run on the Promenade Plantée, a disused elevated railway line blooming with gardens.
But if you are looking for one street where you will find outfits for every occasion, then head to Rue de Charonne.
It is a meandering one-lane thoroughfare of mostly unremarkable 20th-century buildings whose street-level hangouts — cool-kid cafes, homey small bars, vintage stores — and ever-evolving selection of French indie fashion labels draw Paris' bourgeois bohemians.
Footwear from La Botte Gardiane, at No. 25, will help you pound the pavement in style.
The collection, which encompasses everything from sparkly rock 'n' roll ankle boots (245 euros, or about $257 at $1.05 to the euro) to strappy sandals with ankle bands (120 euros), can be spotted on the feet of celebrities like Jean Dujardin.
Shimmery sand-colored socks (25 euros) set the tone for Emma François' ethno-chic threads at Sessùn, No. 34. A sleeveless knee-length floral dress from the Libertad collection costs 125 euros, while a translucent indigo jumpsuit is 165.
At No. 30, add skinny jeans (160 euros) from FrenchTrotters, courtesy of the designers Clarent and Carole Dehlouz.
A collegiate look suffuses the menswear, like checkered button-down shirts with slim pen pockets (155 euros). Ladies can go formal with a sober waist-length blue trench coat (330 euros) or haute hippie in floral-print pajama pants (180 euros).
The street's most original accessories lurk inside the black-painted confines of L'Adorable Cabinet de Curiosités de Monsieur Honoré, also at No. 30.
Animal skulls, exotic butterflies and a stuffed black bird decorate the space, which seems conceived by a debauched 19th-century zoologist. Witness the scorpions in a clear resin block (13 euros) — with a chain for keys — or black umbrellas with handles resembling a death's head (159 euros).
By night, slumber awaits at No. 10-12 in the brand-new Hôtel L'Antoine, designed by Christian Lacroix.
Each floor's decorative theme pays homage to the artists and artisans who have historically occupied the neighborhood.
Nobody would call Wilmersdorf one of Berlin's hipper districts. The area suffers from a shortage of lively cafes and restaurants and has earned a reputation for being profoundly buergerlich — a slightly derisive term connoting affluent respectability. But this sprawling residential quarter in western Berlin does have one major asset: a number of attractive streets and squares, classic jewels of Mitteleuropa, that were left largely untouched by the Allied bombing at the end of World War II.
Ruedesheimer Strasse, tucked away in one of Wilmersdorf's quieter corners, is my favorite. This tidy shopping street leads directly to Ruedesheimer Platz, which dates from the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II, when the German capital was undergoing a rapid westward expansion into farms and woodlands. An urban developer named Georg Haberland raised financing for the project in 1905 and named the square and area after towns in Germany's wine-producing Rheingau region. To build it, he hired German architect Paul Jatzow, known for his English country-style aesthetic, who designed tidy rows of three- and four-story earth-toned apartment buildings with manicured front lawns, carved stone porticoes, red-tile roofs, gables and mock half-timbered facades.
The heart of the platz is an intimate park and flower garden, freshly blooming with pansies and tulips every April. Overlooking the park is a 1911 fountain and a triumvirate of statues that hark back to German myth: Siegfried, the dragon-slaying hero of the epic poem "The Nibelungenlied"; and the allegorical figures Father Rhine and Mother Mosel, symbols of the main rivers that flow through the country's southern wine-producing region.
For much of the year, Ruedesheimer Platz is a quiet urban oasis, but that aura of tranquillity vanishes between May and September. That's when the annual Rheingau wine festival, or Weinbrunnen, moves in. Wine producers from across southern Germany and Austria sell their rieslings and spaetburgunders from a wooden hut in the square from the afternoon until late evening. On some weekends there is live music and an outdoor market.
The festival has become one of Wilmersdorf's most popular events, but it hasn't pleased everybody. Last year, one irate Ruedesheimer Platz resident demanded in a court filing that the festival be drastically shortened, claiming that it was disturbing the peace. Five thousand locals signed a petition to keep the festival in place, which means that the wine is likely to keep flowing for a long time to come.
— JOSHUA HAMMER
Calle 31 de Agosto in San Sebastián
When the cool evening breeze whistles down the narrow lanes of San Sebastián's Parte Vieja, the rumble of storefront grates being raised echoes beneath the wrought-iron balconies and signs emblazoned with the blocky typeface of Basque Country.
The Old Town in Donostia — as every proud Basque will tell you the city is rightly called — is preparing for the nightly txikiteo, the sociable crawl from one pintxo bar to the next.
This gracefully aging belle epoque city on the northern coast of Spain is renowned for its cuisine, the backbone of which is the pintxo. These small snacks arrayed on countertops in bars across the city range from simple anchovy-topped toasts to culinary masterpieces in miniature.
The highest concentration of pintxo bars is in the Parte Vieja, a compact grid of stone-paved pedestrian streets at the foot of Monte Urgull.
Although a txikiteo in the Parte Vieja is rarely confined to a single street, everyone invariably winds up, at some point in the night, on a 200-yard stretch of my favored lane: Calle 31 de Agosto, the only street to survive a devastating fire on that date in 1813.
Traditionalists linger beneath the legs of jamón Ibérico hanging above the wooden bar at La Cepa (No. 7-9), savoring tissue-thin slices of Spain's superior cured ham.
Or they gather under the awning of Gandarias (No. 23), a locals haunt serving classic pintxos like the skewer of anchovy, olive and guindilla pepper collectively known as the Gilda.
More-contemporary palates are sated at A Fuego Negro (No. 31) with playful pintxos like hot squid-ink "doughnuts" and olives filled with vermouth.
Of the many other pintxo bars on the street, none is better for a final stop than Atari Gastroteka, on the corner with Calle Mayor (No. 18). The expertly mixed gin tonics are why you're here, although the location facing the beautiful Baroque facade of the Basílica de Santa María del Coro certainly doesn't hurt.
Carry your bulbous glass out to the church steps and bask in the golden streetlight glow until someone shoos the crowd inside or the hour grows so late that the farewell refrain — "Agur!" — chases you home.
Calle Zurbano, the Park Avenue of Madrid
Soon after moving to Madrid a dozen years ago, an acquaintance asked me where I hoped to settle. My answer, Calle de Zurbano — or simply Calle Zurbano, as it is usually called — brought a chuckle as he explained that it is one of the city's best addresses, like Park Avenue in Manhattan, a street lined with palatial homes, five-star hotels and fine restaurants. "Well, who wouldn't like to live on Calle Zurbano?" he asked.
I simply loved the look of the street — and still find it perfect for idle strolling. It connects trendy Chueca and Salesas in the city's center with the high-rise business hub farther north, giving the street a great mix of genteel early-20th-century revivalist buildings sitting shoulder to shoulder with brooding-on-the-outside, plush-on-the-inside examples of Spanish brick modernism from the 1970s.
Many buildings have verdant gardens tucked alongside, while others have flowering vines or colorful tiles clinging to their facades. The lobbies of a dozen buildings betray the locals' collective taste for bold modern sculpture. Interior designer Lorenzo Castillo, who recently renovated the lobby and public rooms of the Hotel Santo Mauro at No. 36, agrees. "It's one of the few streets in Madrid where you feel like you're in a grand European capital," he said.
Castillo's update of the hotel, set in the former palace of a nobleman, offers a Grand Tour of styles and periods, from 18th-century Chinese to swinging 1960s London. The glam mirror-clad bar and paneled library restaurant provide respite from the action on the street.
Other refreshments — Spanish wines, jamón Ibérico and tinned delicacies from the sea — can be picked up at Mantequeria Gascón at No. 65, with its ornate carved wood and reverse-painted glass facade from the 1930s.
Or try one of the two tasting menus at Sergi Arola Gastro at No. 31, which this year is open for two "seasons," April to June and September to December
With only three tables inside, Maria's Bakery at No. 15 offers a more casual (and affordable) alternative, with crusty artisanal breads, pastries, Argentine delicacies and, for lunch, scrumptious leek and feta quiche or delicate chicken cutlets with zesty tabbouleh.
Other worthy stops nearby include the house museum and former studio of impressionist painter Joaquín Sorolla at General Martínez Campos, No. 37, and a few doors down, at No. 29 on the same street, Los Fernández, which has been producing hand-loomed tapestries and carpets since 1901.
The best things in life may not exactly be free, but many can be savored along Calle Zurbano.
Offbeat allure along Krymska street
There were certainly prettier Prague streets that could have exploded with newfound cultural allure, but for some reason the big change happened on dirty, crooked little Krymska. A short downhill lane in the relatively rundown residential neighborhood of Vrsovice a mile or so southeast from Old Town, Krymska had virtually nothing of interest when the city's favorite English-language bookstore, Shakespeare and Sons, closed its original location there in 2010, focusing on its other branches in central Prague and in Berlin. But when the very cool Café v Lese at No. 12 opened in the same spot a few months later, a new era began.
Since then, a handful of galleries, cafes, bars and the like have opened along Krymska's curtailed length — many just within the last year or so. At the very top, the 3-year-old Plevel restaurant (Krymska 2) offers well-regarded vegetarian and raw food, both relative rarities in pork-powered Prague. Near the bottom of the hill, the artistic salon and exhibition space The Solution, at No. 27, displays the work of at least one local artist and one international artist each month.
Many of the best new destinations have appeared on the street's final stretch, just after Krymska doglegs around the corner to head south. Last June, the cool new cafe Zenit (Krymska 24) opened in this final section, serving snacks and drinks in a literary (meaning "ruin-like") atmosphere. A few doors down, the 4-month-old InCider Bar, No. 26, specializes in local versions of hard apple cider, a new trend in the beer-loving Czech Republic. And just on the other side, Strojovna, No. 24, offers clothing repair as well as sewing, knitting and crocheting workshops.
The changes extend beyond the short, 400-yard stretch of Krymska itself, with neighboring streets gaining attractions like Café Sladkovsky (Sevastopolska 17) one of the city's smartest new coffeehouses. In a way, it's hard to push for Krymska and Vrsovice as a tourist attraction: The streets are still rundown, uneven and scarred with graffiti, and unlike prettier parts of Prague, there are no major monuments, bridges or castles. But you can easily decide for yourself: A 15-minute ride on the 22 tram from the Narodni Trida station in central Prague will take you straight to the Krymska tram stop.
— EVAN RAIL
A Creative Cool Along Oslo's Akerselva River
Oslo has its share of interesting streets, including Karl Johans Gate, which runs past landmarks to the Nordically modest royal palace, and Markveien, which is laden with vintage shops. But what is a street, really? If it's a thoroughfare that joins parts of a city, preferably infused with urban culture, you could argue that the Akerselva is Oslo's most vital byway.
The river that cuts through Oslo once marked the social divide between the waterway's eastern side (working class, immigrant) and its western (prosperous, natives). But these days, a force more powerful than class unites the banks: the rolling tide of Scandi cool that is turning the chunk of the Grunerlooka neighborhood, which stretches from Sannergata in the north to Nylandsveien in the south, into an art and design destination.
On the eastern shore, vintage clothing stores and bike shops vie with artisanal coffee roasters like Tim Wendelboe (Grunersgate 1). It's all very Brooklyn until you come to the grain silo towering over Marselis Gate at river's edge. Built in the 1950s, it was turned five years later into student housing with rounded rooms and candy-colored balconies.
Many of the former industrial buildings along this stretch of river have been put to aesthetic uses. The city's former electric works now houses the Norwegian Center for Design and Architecture (Hausmanns Gate 16), which organizes everything from exhibitions of Charles Eames' work to debates on urban development. Dansens Hus (Mollerveien 2), in a converted factory, is the country's premier center for dance (with an excellent cafe and bar that has cactus-adorned lamps and cozy chaises).
Bla Brenneriveien (Brenneriveien 2) is known for jazz, hip-hop and indie bands as well as literary nights and Sunday afternoon concerts. The club, surrounded by street art, is near a handful of galleries. Brenneriet (Brenneriet 9) exhibits work from students at the Strykejernet art school, while the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (Nedre Gate 7) showcases projects like "Of Love, Departures, and Countering Defeats in Choleric Times," exhibits, performances and lectures devoted to "the unraveling of modernity." Around the corner, the gallery ROM (Maridalsveien 3) focuses on the conjunctions between architecture and contemporary art.
Another former factory, this one devoted to train-track production, is now Mathallen (Maridalsveien 17A), a food hall with Spanish tapas, French pastries and the occasional reindeer-pie vendor among those selling fish or cheese. There's also a brewery in the basement, but the retro bar Morgenstierne, a short walk away and above a boisterous restaurant, makes for a more louche night out.
— LISA ABEND
Grosser Muristalden, a Street in Bern That Inspired Artist and Dreamers
Seen from a distance, the Grosser Muristalden doesn't look like much, especially against the arcades and alleyways of a city as pleasing as Bern.
It is just a road and not even a cobbled one at that. The asphalt rises sharply over the cold, green Aare River and then bends at a big chalet to become just another street. There are no shops and no museums, just the evolving views of Switzerland's most beautiful city framed by giant plane trees.
Most people don't get this far. They stop at the Altes Tramdepot at its base for a hefeweizen and spaetzle or wander left instead of right to reach the Rose Garden. If you really want views you can ride a funicular up the Gurten, Bern's home mountain. To appreciate the Grosser Muristalden, you should walk.
I found this out by accident one late-summer day. I had just arrived as a wide-eyed immigrant and set out on my bicycle to discover the city where my daughter would be born. From the Zytglogge, a 13th-century clock tower, I rolled east past Albert Einstein's house and down toward Bear Park, where a flat path shot along the river. I missed my turn, the road cocked skyward, and I learned the Grosser Muristalden is best on foot.
Up and up I pushed the bike, the city undressing itself with each step. Below me stretched the Matte, a medieval warren where the streets spoon a bend in the river. I spotted a building where Rodolphe Lindt played with cocoa butter and a new conching process that made the Swiss forever famous for chocolate.
Farther to the north stood a jazz club and a house that some club-bearing insurgents hit with a cannonball in 1802. (You can still see the wound.) Above it all towered the late-Gothic spire of the Muenster, a cathedral started in 1421. From its airy top the Alps felt so close you could smell their breath.
As a 17-year-old in the late 1800s, artist Paul Klee would sit along the Grosser Muristalden and sketch the scene below, using only contrast to form his lines. During my years in Bern, I sometimes stood where he stood and watched how the seasons braced against each other to create something new. Golden leaves became snowy steeples. Boughs turned prickly, and the geraniums bloomed. Every time it felt like mine.
— TIM NEVILLE
Itfaiye Caddesi in Istanbul
In the shadow of the stone arches of the Romans' monumental Valens Aqueduct, Itfaiye Caddesi is a world away from the bustle of a rapidly changing Istanbul, with its high-rises and traffic jams.
Decades ago, an influx of mainly Kurdish people from southeastern Anatolia set about opening butcher shops, spice shops and cafes here and around a 5-block-long, largely pedestrian area in the Fatih district.
It's not clear why the area is called Kadinlar Pazari (Women's Bazaar). Some imagine it was the site of a female slave market in Ottoman times. Others say it's because women do most of the food shopping for Turkish households.
In addition to those shoppers, young people sit on stools underneath the aqueduct's arches sipping glasses of strong tea. Rows of old men in crocheted skull caps warm the benches across from the peaked windows of the low-slung Husam Bey Tezgahcilar Mosque, and street vendors sell cleaned lamb intestines for making mumbar dolmasi, which are stuffed with cinnamon-spiced ground lamb and rice. Other carts might be loaded with ruby-red pomegranates, walnuts and dried figs.
On one end of the square, near the arches, a shop sells several varieties of honey — pine, chestnut, clover — some of it still in a waxy comb. At the other end, toward the Golden Horn, spice shops display their wares in colorful mounds, with strings of dried eggplant and peppers dangling like semiprecious gems. You can find a half-dozen types of red pepper flakes; hashas, or poppy seeds; allspice; and mahlep powder, made from the seeds of sour cherries.
The square is also a great place for lunch, and office workers crowd into spots offering buryan kebab: chunks of pit-roasted lamb served on a warm disk of thick, quilted pide bread. Add a sprinkling of spices served on the side, including lemony sumac and fragrant dried thyme. Top it off with salty fresh ayran, a foamy yogurt-based drink served with a long-handled spoon.
Then ponder your next move over a metal plate of kunefe, a cheese and sweet syrup dish that's baked until it is crisp and golden.
— SUSANNE FOWLER


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Balance of power in Northeast Asia
Print version Material posted: -Publication date: 05-11-2020
The military-political situation in Northeast Asia (NEA) is characterized by instability due to the presence of serious contradictions in the objectives of the main states of the region, which include Russia, the United States, the People's Republic of China (PRC), Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Existing problems regularly put this area of the world to the brink of armed conflict. An example of this could be an aggravation of inter-Korean relations in August 2015, due to the erosion of two South Korean soldiers on anti-personnel landmines in the Demilitarized zone (DMZ) on the Korean Peninsula and the subsequent artillery fire on the border between the two countries. Growth confrontation was accompanied by North Korea's nuclear tests in 2015-2020
Connection of China and the Republic of Korea in the political sphere are developing steadily. In the course of contacts and consultations in 2015-2020, the parties confirmed their agreement on further strengthening the strategic partnership, the bilateral dialogue mechanisms, including the use of direct lines of communication between the foreign ministries of the two States. An important stimulus enhancement of the interaction of Beijing Seoul has become the economic and trade cooperation. China is the largest trading partner of Kazakhstan, which accounts for over 20% of South Korean trade. In turn, the Republic of Korea is the sixth-largest foreign trade, the counterparty of the PRC.
Still uncompromising approaches Tokyo to establish contacts with the DPRK with the possibility of tougher unilateral sanctions against Pyongyang. The main requirements for the normalization of relations put forward a solution to the problem of the stolen in the 1970-1980s, the North Korean intelligence services of the Japanese people, a complete drawdown nuclear and missile programs. [7].
The normalization of bilateral relations with the United States regarded North Korea as the main factor of national security. The main purpose of this plan is the way to a direct dialogue with Washington on military-political issues and the creation of conditions for the signing of the peace agreement, which should replace the existing contractual basis, based on the ceasefire agreement in 1953. According to estimates by the North Korean leadership, even a partial solution to this problem will allow to expand access to foreign investment and technology needed to modernize the economy.
Assessing the nature of existing and potential threats, the U.S. and South Korean military experts believe that the main source of military threat and a major destabilizing factor for the short term, North-East Asia will remain the DPRK [14].
gain information warfare;
active conduct special forces operations (combat actions), including before the outbreak of hostilities;
desire of the parties to the suppression and disruption of control systems and communications behind enemy lines and communications at the initial stage of the conflict;
the extensive use of high-precision weapons and far for the fire with the intent of attacking military groups, objects, military and civilian infrastructure to a maximum depth;
the increasing number of civilian casualties and the risk of undermining the economic potential of the warring parties.
Developed several scenarios, including a coup d'état and the start of the civil war in North Korea, a large-scale natural disaster or man-made disaster, the loss of official control over existing stockpiles of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, a mass Exodus of North Korean population in the territory of neighboring States.
Pre-emptive U.S. strike and the Republic of Korea
the North Korean territory
Tags: assessment , China , A.Snesariev's competition , Eurasia , winner work of a competition of A.E.Snesarev
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