| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, an omen-filled omnibus of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here. When National Brands Go to War | This week's military clashes between Thailand and Cambodia stand in stark contrast to how the countries have branded themselves as tourist destinations. Both have projected images of wellness and meditation, with shimmering Buddhist temples as lures to otherworldly introspection. Now, they are battling over territory surrounding a 1,000-year-old temple site that is just 1.3 times the size of New York City's Central Park. As Karishma Vaswani summarizes: "Both sides have exchanged artillery fire, and Thailand carried out air strikes with F-16 jets after accusing Cambodia of firing rockets into civilian areas." About a dozen people may have been killed. The current round of fighting flared in May and July, but Karishma says the roots of the problem go back to when French colonial cartographers assigned the territory to Cambodia in 1907.
Thailand did not object until 1934 — the start of decades of international wrangling, including arguments in front of the International Court of Justice and, in 2011, artillery and rocket exchanges. Domestic political dramas are also fueling the current hostilities. I also blame the Peace of Westphalia. What, you may ask, does the treaty that ended Europe's Thirty Years War back in 1648 have anything to do with contemporary Southeast Asia? The agreement established that nations had sovereign rights within recognized territorial bounds. That principle was brought to mainland Southeast Asia during the period of Western colonialization. Prior to that, the region operated under what is called the "mandala system" — where power and authority radiated outward from certain political centers, having nebulous and indistinct edges that often overlapped. The phenomenon sounds very Buddhist, but the name was coined by a Western historian in the 1960s. It didn't mean there weren't wars: This round of karma was kicked off by a pre-colonial conflict that had the temple area within Siam's mandala of influence. It just meant things weren't measured out in exacting square kilometers. Before anything gets too bloody, perhaps Bangkok and Phnom Penh should examine their Buddhist traditions — specifically the Second Noble Truth's admonition against craving and clinging. As an old Khmer saying goes, "Suffering begins when we say 'mine.'" The Creature that Saved Osaka | Those of you who follow my columns know that I love kaiju like Godzilla, indeed, anything smacking of the yokai or supernatural beings (monsters, if you will) of Japan. So I was elated to read Gearoid Reidy's column about the recently concluded Osaka Expo. While it did draw 25 million visitors to Japan's second city, the quinquennial showcase of nations was expecting slightly higher attendance. It did make up for the shortfall, however, with sales of its mascot, Myaku-Myaku — which could pass for the lovechild of Smurfette and Cthulhu.  Myaku-Myaku just before opening day of the Osaka Expo back in April. Photographer: RICHARD A. BROOKS/AFP I love Myaku-Myaku, even if Gearoid didn't originally. "Myaku-Myaku went from liability to asset," he concedes. "Its capering with then-Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was the most endearing thing the former leader did." The bottom line is what matters. Gearoid says: "One report has the expo bringing in over ¥3 trillion ($19.4 billion) to the area, some ¥300 billion ahead of estimates as visitors queued for hours to snap up the character's goods in record numbers." "For pharmaceutical firms, watching the lucrative patents on their top-selling drugs expire has long been part of the business cycle. There's enormous pressure to find ways of covering the shortfall. … There is so much revenue to replace that the shopping spree has extended to a phenomenon not seen during the last patent-cliff cycle: A surge in licensing agreements with Chinese companies to take their experimental therapies worldwide. The dealmaking has been frenzied, with seven of the top 10 biggest agreements since 2020 happening this year." — Juliana Liu in "Big Pharma's Patent Cliff Puts China Front and Center."  "Export data show that the EU's overall imports from the UK have fallen 45% — yes, almost half — since the referendum year of 2016, with most of that after Brexit formally took place in 2020. … There's also damage to the labor market. A key aim of leaving the EU was to regain control over immigration. That appears to have translated into labor shortages. According to the CBI, from 1980 (when it started asking about the issue) until 2016, an average of 6% of employers complained that a shortfall of workers would limit their ability to spend over the next 12 months. Over the ensuing three-and-a-half years, until the pandemic hit, this rose to 19%, and the most recent reading was 17%." — John Authers in "The UK Needs a New Deal, Without Saying Brexit." Oracle's "Code Red" moment. — Chris Bryant Finally, an official debunking of debanking. — Paul J. Davies Let Britain's Millennials take over! — Rosa Prince IndiGo's hubris led to faltering. — Mihir Sharma FIFA is dirtying the beautiful game. — Lara Williams Is all's fair in Google's AI war? — Parmy Olson Crying "wolf!" at the ECB. — Marcus Ashworth Keir Starmer's Mission: Implausible. — Chris Hughes Walk of the Town: "I Read the News Today..." | On Monday, Dec. 8, I was talking to a much younger friend here in London and said if I were in New York I'd have taken a walk by the Dakota to pay tribute to John Lennon. He had no idea who John Lennon was, which made me sadder. It was 45 years ago that day… The news had come over television late that night in 1980: The co-founder of the Beatles had been shot dead in front of the fabled apartment building where he lived with his wife, Yoko Ono. A man who'd requested and received an autograph from him a few hours before had waited for the rock star by the security booth at the entrance to the Dakota; and, as Lennon returned from dinner with his wife, opened fire. The city and the world were in shock.  By the fatal gate of the Dakota. Photograph by Howard Chua-Eoan Today, most fans who want to pay tribute to Lennon walk across from the apartment building into Central Park and Strawberry Fields. In 1985, Ono dedicated the circular black-and-white mosaic with the word "Imagine" on it — the title of one of his most inspiring songs, written after the breakup of his original band. Strawberry Fields also got its name from a Beatles song.  Strawberry Fields after a 2017 snow storm. Photograph by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg But what I remember most about the tragedy was a moment that happened almost a week after the killing.
In December 1980, I'd been in New York just under a year and loved its noisy, ceaseless energy. So, when Lennon's widow requested 10 minutes of silence as homage to him on Dec. 14, I had real doubts it would happen. When the appointed time came, though, the city was completely still. I remember staring out of my apartment in Flushing, Queens, being stunned by the calm. New Yorkers usually don't sit still for anything. In its Dec. 22, 1980 issue, The New Yorker summed it up: "All in all one would have to go far back in time to find as moving an expression of public sorrow. The silence seemed to create a space into which the strong emotion felt by Lennon's generation — and by many who were not of his generation—could rush. In fact, in that quiet interval the generation itself, with its old message of 'Peace' and 'Love' held aloft again on placards, magically reappeared in public for the first time in years, after losing itself in the general population for a while. In a noisy and distracted age, a silence had proved more eloquent than any number of words could have been." It was Emily Dickinson's 195th birthday on Dec. 10. Fly even when you feel hopeless ...  "I am the thing without feathers!" Illustration by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg Notes: Please send faith, charity and reassuring feedback to Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net. Sign up here and find us on Bluesky, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn and Threads. | 
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