RUSSIAN "LORD OF WAR" BUSTED IN
THAILAND SENT TO USA
BANGKOK,
November 16 (Itar-Tass) - Six officers of the American Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) are escorting Russian businessman Viktor Bout to
the United States, police officials said on Tuesday. The extradition
procedure was guarded by 50 police officers and several snipers.
Russian Consul in Thailand Andrei Dvornikov also confirmed to Itar-Tass
that the “plane on which Russian citizen Viktor Bout was supposedly
taken left Thailand at 13:30, local time (09:30 MSK).” “Neither the
Russian embassy nor consulate and even relatives of Viktor Bout were
notified of the coming extradition, we have to simply face the fact and
still have no official information,” the diplomat stressed. Bout’s
lawyers call his extradition “unlawful, as not all procedures have been
completed in the Appeals Court.” The extradition followed a decision of
the government of Thailand that approved the extradition of the
43-year-old Russian citizen to the United States on charges of
complicity in smuggling arms. Viktor Bout was detained in Bangkok in
March 2008 based on Washington’ s request. New York’s federal district
Attorney’s Office brought four charges against him. He is charged with
conspiracy with the aim of supply of arms to gunmen of the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) “known that they will be used to kill US
citizens and officers.”
The Thai
Appeals Court on August 20 granted the US request for extradition of the
Russian citizen to the United States. In America, Bout faces a maximum
sentence of life in prison if convicted in the United States on charges
including conspiracy to kill US nationals and providing material support
or resources to a foreign terrorist organisation. Bout has denied the
US charges of trade in weapons and claims that in the period from 1993
to 2001 he owned a legal business in the sphere of international air
transportation. “Many media spread information about me as a major
illegal arms trader in the world, even not trying to think that no
evidence proving these allegations really exist,” he said. Touching
upon the Thai court’s decision to extradite him to the United States
Bout stated that it fails to meet “many norms of Thai legislation.” “I
was arrested on charges of ‘support of terrorism,’ according to an
article of the Thai law. In connection with the absence of evidence
proving this crime the Prosecutor’s Office of Thailand did not open a
criminal case against me, and the court turned down the US extradition
request. However, the Appeals Court of Thailand overturned this decision
and again passed a verdict on my extradition to the United States,” said
the businessman.
According to The Bangkok Post, Viktor Bout was flown out of Thailand on
Tuesday on a special US government jet to face trial in the United
States, bringing to an end months of legal wrangling over his
extradition. The 43-year-old former soviet air force pilot has been
fighting extradition on terrorism charges since his March 2008 arrest
after a sting operation in Bangkok involving undercover US agents posing
as Colombian FARC rebels. “Bout left Thai soil at 1:27 pm (06:27 GMT)
from Don Mueang airport,” Pol Col Supisarn Bhakdinarunart, commander of
the Crime Suppression Division, said. “He left on a US jet escorted by
six officials,” Pol Col Supisarn said. “I myself saw him off. The next
destination of the flight is secret, but its final destination is the
US,” he noted. Bout’s sudden departure came shortly after the Thai
cabinet approved his handover. He was escorted by police from Bang Kwang
maximum security prison in a convoy of police cars with their sirens
blaring. Bout’s wife Alla was waiting outside but did not have a chance
to see her husband immediately before he left.
VIKTOR BOUT-AKA-LORD OF WAR FACTS
1967: Born on 13 January 1967, reportedly in the Soviet republic of
Tajikistan.
1987: He visits Angola as a “lieutenant and translator in the Soviet
army.”
1991: The Soviet Union collapses.
1995: He founds an air freight company called Aircess operating across
Africa.
1995-2002: He stands accused of selling weapons to UNITA rebels in the
Angolan civil war during this period.
1995-2003: He stands accused of selling weapons to Liberia’s Charles
Taylor to help him fight two civil wars during this period.
1998-2003: He stands accused of selling weapons to participants in the
Second Congo War during this period.
2001: He is alleged to have supplied weapons to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban
in Afghanistan.
2004: His assets in the United States are frozen and he is named by
Washington as an arms dealer. Ironically, allegations surface that he
flew hundreds of flights into Iraq on behalf of the US military.
2005: A film starring Nicolas Cage said to be loosely based on his life
called ‘Lord of War’ appears. He rubbishes it.
2008: He is arrested in Thailand after a sting operation set up by US
Drug Enforcement Agents and accused of conspiracy to sell weapons to
FARC rebels in Colombia.
NORTH
KOREA BURMA CONNECTION REPORT
UN says
North Korea giving nuclear equipment to Burma
UNITED NATIONS: North Korea is supplying banned nuclear and ballistic
equipment to Burma, Iran and Syria using “surreptitious” means to avoid
international sanctions, according to a UN report released on Saturday
morning. China had blocked publication of the report which has been
ready for six months, diplomats said. North Korea is involved with “the
surreptitious transfer of nuclear-related and ballistic missile-related
equipment, know-how and technology” to countries including Iran, Syria
and Burma, said the report. A UN sanctions committee panel of experts
called for heightened vigilance to stop the nuclear trade and for more
detailed investigation into the sophisticated means used by North Korea
to circumvent sanctions. North Korea, known officially as the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea, “employs a broad range of techniques to mask
its transactions, including the use of overseas entities, shell
companies, informal transfer mechanisms, cash couriers and barter
arrangements,” said the investigators. Since the last sanctions were
imposed in June 2009, four “non-compliance cases involving arms exports”
had come to light, the report said. It did not give details but said
North Korea used “masking techniques” including mislabelling containers,
falsifying ships’ manifests and destination details “and use of multiple
layers of intermediaries, shell companies, and financial institutions.”
The North is increasingly using foreign-owned ships and modern air
freight jets which can now easily get from North Korea’s main airports
to the Middle East without refuelling and so avoid checks. The experts
said the Security Council should consider ordering North Korea to
declare all air cargos before countries give overflight clearance. The
experts “expressed concern that certain countries, such as the Syrian
Arab Republic, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Burma, continue to be
associated with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in regard to
proscribed activities and believes that special attention should be
taken by all member states to inhibit such activities. North Korea
staged one nuclear test in 2006 and claims it set off another nuclear
device in 2009, when the last sanctions were imposed. The UN Security
Council has banned trade in nuclear and ballistic material. The UN has
named eight entities and five individuals for asset freezes and travel
bans. The report said the number involved was much higher and called on
countries to name other banks and other entities that should be added to
the list.
North Korea had been involved in nuclear talks with China, the United
States, Russia, Japan and South Korea. But the last talks were in late
2008 and the isolated North pulled out of the negotiations the following
year. International Atomic Energy Agency director Yukiya Amano said this
week that the standoff with North Korea was now “very bad”. The UN
report said there were no signs that North Korea “is ready to move
forward on denuclearisation or to step back from its other existing
weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile development
programmes.” The North “has continued to engage in activities proscribed
by the relevant Security Council resolutions and has continued to
boycott the six-party talks. It continues to market and export its
nuclear and ballistic technology to certain other states. China has been
the North’s main ally on the international stage and it had blocked the
report since it was prepared in May, diplomats said.
FSOC
RUSSIA REPORTS
China
and Russia have decided to renounce the US dollar and resort to using
their own
currencies for bilateral trade, Premier Wen Jiabao and his
Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin announced late on Tuesday. Chinese
Premier Wen Jiabao ® shakes hands with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin in St. Petersburg, Russia, Nov. 23, 2010. Chinese
experts said the move reflected closer relations between Beijing and
Moscow and is not aimed at challenging the dollar, but to protect their
domestic
economies.
“About trade settlement, we have decided to use our own currencies,”
Putin said at a joint news conference with Wen in St. Petersburg. The
two countries were accustomed to using other currencies, especially the
dollar, for bilateral trade. Since the financial crisis, however,
high-ranking officials on both sides began to explore other
possibilities.The yuan has now started trading against
the Russian rouble in the Chinese interbank market, while the renminbi
will soon be allowed to trade against the
rouble in Russia, Putin said.
“That has forged an important step in bilateral trade and it is a result
of the consolidated financial systems of world countries,” he said.
Putin
made his remarks after a meeting with Wen. They also officiated at a
signing ceremony for 12 documents, including energy cooperation.The documents covered
cooperation on aviation, railroad construction, customs,
protecting
intellectual property, culture and a joint communiqu.
Details of the documents have yet to be released.Putin said one of the pacts between the
two countries is about the purchase of two nuclear reactors from Russia
by China’s Tianwan nuclear power plant,
the most advanced nuclear power complex in China.
Putin has called for boosting sales of natural resources – Russia’s main
export – to China, but price has proven to be a sticking point. Russian
Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who holds sway over Russia’s energy
sector, said following a meeting with Chinese representatives that
Moscow and Beijing are unlikely to agree on the price of Russian gas
supplies to China before the middle of next year.Russia is looking for China to pay
prices similar to those Russian gas giant Gazprom charges its European
customers, but Beijing wants a discount. The two
sides were about $100 per 1,000 cubic meters apart, according to Chinese
officials last week.
Wen’s
trip follows Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s three-day visit to
China in September, during which he and President Hu Jintao launched a
cross-border pipeline linking the world’s biggest energy producer with
the largest energy consumer. Wen said at the press conference that the
partnership between Beijing and Moscow has “reached an unprecedented
level” and pledged the two countries will “never become each other’s
enemy”. Over the past year, “our strategic cooperative partnership
endured strenuous tests and reached an unprecedented level,” Wen said,
adding the two nations are now more confident and determined to defend
their mutual interests. “China will firmly follow the path of peaceful
development and support the renaissance of Russia as a great power,” he
said. “The modernization of China will not affect other countries’
interests, while a solid and strong Sino-Russian relationship is in line
with the fundamental interests of both countries.”
Wen said
Beijing is willing to boost cooperation with Moscow in Northeast Asia,
Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific region, as well as in major
international organizations and on mechanisms in pursuit of a “fair and
reasonable new order” in international politics and the economy. Sun
Zhuangzhi, a senior researcher in Central Asian studies at the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences, said the new mode of trade settlement
between China and Russia follows a global trend after the financial
crisis exposed the faults of a dollar-dominated world financial system.Pang Zhongying, who
specializes in international politics at Renmin University of China,
said the proposal is not challenging the dollar, but aimed at avoiding
the risks
the dollar represents.
Wen arrived in the northern Russian city on Monday evening for a regular
meeting between Chinese and Russian heads of government. He left St.
Petersburg for Moscow late on Tuesday and is set to meet with Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday.
RUSSIA
SOLUTION FOR USA AND MEXICO DRUG EPIDEMIC
Russia’s
top drug official warned in an interview with
Foreign Policy on Friday of what he called the “catastrophic”
consequences of marijuana legalization measures like California’s
upcoming ballot initiative, saying darkly that widespread legal drug use
would produce “psychiatric deviations” and will only encourage drug
addiction.
Viktor Ivanov, a former KGB officer and prominent member of Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, even took the unusual step of
going to Los Angeles earlier this week to “conduct a campaign against
legalizing marijuana in California,” as he said in the interview. He
also came to Washington this week to meet with U.S. drug czar Gil
Kerlikowske and U.S. Afghan envoy Richard Holbrooke to discuss
anti-poppy measures in Afghanistan and call for an intensified program
of aerial eradication. The United States has largely abandoned
eradicating the poppy crop in favor of a narrower strategy focusing on
cutting off funding to the Taliban and cracking down on traffickers.
Ivanov says that isn’t enough to counter the flow of heroin into Russia,
which kills tens of thousands of users every year.
But
California’s laxity, it seems, was particularly startling to him. “I
hadn’t known about it before and I was absolutely shocked when I was in
the city and saw these posters saying that you can get marijuana for
medical purposes,” he said. He met with Los Angeles mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa and Sheriff Leroy Baca to voice Russia’s opposition to the
measure. Noting that U.S. President Barack Obama has also expressed his
opposition to legalization, Ivanov described it as “one of the cases
where Russia and the U.S. agree completely.”
He continued: “I’m afraid that the consequences of [legalization] will
be catastrophic. Even the Netherlands, where they sell marijuana legally
in coffee shops, they are now reversing on this. Because there, and
everywhere, drug addiction is becoming stronger and the people who are
addicted develop psychiatric deviations. They say, ‘What does God do
when he wants to punish a person? He deprives him of his mind.’” Ivanov,
who served in Afghanistan with the KGB during the Soviet Union’s war in
the 1980s expressed skepticism about the war effort in Afghanistan.
“During the last five years the perception of the foreign powers by the
local population has changed,” he said. “Now they take it as a military
occupation of their country.”
This was
Ivanov’s sixth meeting with his U.S. counterpart, Kerlikowske. In this
meeting, Ivanov sought to push usa to resume aerial eradication
campaigns against poppy growing in Afghanistan. He thinks the United
States should use “methods of defoliation similar to what’s used in
Colombia.”
According to Russian figures, heroin, nearly all of it from Afghanistan,
kills 30,000 Russians every year, Ivanov said. He also believes that the
Central Asian states between Russia and Afghanistan are being “destroyed
from the inside” by the violence and crime associated with the drug
trade. While Ivanov stressed that coordination with the U.S. side is
improving, he also noted “American officials are quite disciplined and
they always stick with the strategy as it’s been laid out.” That seems
to apply in particular to the State Department. After a meeting last
year with Holbrooke—a skeptic of the utility of poppy eradication—Ivanov
saysthat the envoy had “confirmed our fears that they are not prepared
to destroy the production of drugs in Afghanistan.” This time, Ivanov
noted that, as “[Holbrooke] was a bit short of time, we started the
meeting with him; then he handed us to his deputy.” He said the two
still don’t completely see eye to eye.
“The
argument that now NATO and Holbrooke are using is that if we destroy
poppy crops it will deprive peasants of their livelihood. It sounds so
touching that they’re taking care of the peasants, but it’s not to be
taken seriously,” he says. “Those peasants do not profit from poppy.
They make at most $70 per year. Those who profit from it are the
landlords living in Europe and American and the Gulf countries. If we
could give the land back to the Afghan government and provide these
peasants with wheat, they could easily make their $70 a year growing
wheat, not poppy.”Ivanov
also said reports of progress on shutting down opium laboratories have
been exaggerated. “One of the results we discussed is a 92 percent
increase in the number of laboratories destroyed. From the point of view
of arithmetic, this is the case. In reality it looks a little bit
different.” According to Ivanov, the number of identified drug
laboratories operating in Afghanistan has actually increased from 175 in
2008 to 425 today. The real number is likely much higher. He described
the efforts to crack down on laboratories so far as a “drop in the
ocean.” According to Ivanov, Russian authorities have passed on the
location—including GPS coordinates—of several known Afghan drug
laboratories to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. But because
resources for drug eradication are controlled by NATO forces, no steps
have been taken to eradicate them, he claims. Ivanov said he also has
doubts about the very premise of the war in Afghanistan. “[In 2001] it
was explained that the Taliban was a terrorist organization and that’s
why [the invasion] was necessary. Now many years later, it turns out
that there’s a so-called moderate Taliban—moderate terrorists—who can be
reintegrated back into power. Does that mean we made a mistake nine
years ago and all this time we have been correcting it?”
Ivanov
suggested that the invasion of Afghanistan might have been partly
motivated Western companies seeking to exploit Central Asian energy
resources. “If we look back before the invasion, starting in 1997, a
number of American companies were negotiating with the Taliban about
putting in a pipeline in Afghanistan ... bringing gas from Turkmenistan
south toward India. There were negotiations in Kabul and Houston and
Washington. In 2001, those negotiations ended in a deadlock because the
American side wanted a bigger pipeline, while the Taliban wanted smaller
pipes in order to provide smaller towns and villages with gas. From the
American side, the negotiator was Unocal and the negotiator from that
company was the employee of that company, Hamid Karzai.”
It has been suggested several times, notably in Michael Moore’s
documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, that Karzai may have once worked as
a consultant for Unocal, but both the company and the Afghan president
deny it. Despite
his staunch support for anti-drug measures, Ivanov also said that
efforts so far have not borne much fruit and might in fact be making the
problem worse. “In this one single location, 95 percent of global
heroin production is taking place,” he told FP.
“Ironically, it’s the same place where the efforts of the global
community are concentrated. It’s like a surgeon who has decided to treat
one organ but as a result has cut up all the organs around it.”
MEXICAN DRUG WARS
CIUDAD
JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) – Families mourned on Sunday the victims of one
of Mexico’s worst shootings, weeping over the open coffins of teenagers
as young as 14 as Ciudad Juarez residents expressed outrage at surging
violence.Crowding
around the bodies in white and gray coffins, parents and friends sobbed
as they bid farewell to the 14 people killed at a family birthday party
on Friday night in the Mexican city that is the epicenter of the
country’s drug war.“This
can’t be happening. Today it’s them who are killed, and tomorrow who
will be next?” said a sister of one of the victims, who gave only her
first name, Miriam.In
Tijuana across the border from San Diego, California, suspected drug
gang hitmen shot dead 13 people at a drug rehab clinic on Sunday, a
member of the local police force said.And in
the northern state of Coahuila, two women and a teenage boy died on
Sunday after being caught in crossfire during a shootout between
unidentified gunmen, police and soldiers, state prosecutors said.The
shooting in Juarez on Friday was the second massacre at a party this
month in the city across from El Paso, Texas. Ciudad Juarez has become
one of the world’s most violent cities since drug cartels launched a
turf war there in early 2008. Almost 7,000 people have been killed in
the city since then.Police in the state of Chihuahua where the shooting
took place declined to say if there was any progress in the search for
the gunmen. They were trying to identify the killers using artist
impressions based on witness reports, a source in the prosecutors’
office said.One
father told newspaper El Diario the gunmen drove up to the house and
asked about a local criminal. When those in the front patio said they
didn’t know of him, the men started shooting. “Ah, you’re not going to
talk? Give it to all of them,” they said, the paper quoted the father as
saying.
UNRELENTING MURDERS
The
killings put new pressure on President Felipe Calderon, who condemned
the massacre but faces sharp criticism across Mexico that his war
against the cartels in Ciudad Juarez has failed and may have even
provoked more violence.Calderon
sent some 10,000 troops and federal police to Ciudad Juarez in 2008 to
fight the cartels, but killings have surged since then and even a switch
of security operations to federal police from the army has had little
impact.More
than 200,000 people, mainly wealthy and middle-class residents, have
fled the city of some 1.5 million people.Once a
poster child for free trade, with its factories exporting goods across
the border, Ciudad Juarez has become the worst flashpoint in the drug
war that Calderon launched in December 2006. Almost 30,000 people have
died since then in drug violence across Mexico.Mexican
business leaders say U.S.-run factories are freezing investment in the
city because of the violence, hurting its recovery from the 2008-2009
recession.Calderon
flew there on October 12 in a rare visit, offering more jobs and schools
to stop youths from joining drug gangs.But the
city is proving to be the president’s toughest test and threatens to
hurt wider public support for his drug war.
The entire
police force in a small Mexican town abruptly resigned Tuesday after its
new headquarters was viciously attacked by suspected
drug cartel gunmen.
All 14 police officers in Los Ramones, a rural town in northern mexico,
fled the force in terror after gunmen fired more than 1,000 bullets and
flung six grenades at their headquarters on Monday night.
No one was injured in the attack. the mayor told local media that the
officers resigned because of the incident.The gunmen’s 20-minute shooting spree destroyed six police vehicles and
left the white and orange police station pocked with bullet holes.
The station had been inaugurated just three days earlier.
The attack was the second in less than a week against police forces.
Last week, thugs threw two grenades at police in Sabinas Hidalgo.
Los Ramones is in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, which has been a war
zone of turf violence between two of the country’s fiercest drug gangs,
the Zetas and the gulf cartel.Police have blamed members
of both cartels for attacks on several police stations throughout the
area. Several mayors in the region have been assassinated.
Mexico ’s municipal police forces often quit out of fear after being
attacked by cartels.About 90% of forces have less than 100
officers, and 61% of cops earn less than $322 a month.
Mexico ’s intelligence chief said this summer that nearly 30,000 people
have died in drug related crimes since 2006.
MONTERREY, Mexico – The police chief and all 38 police officers of a
northeastern Mexican town have quit following a series of drug cartel
attacks, including the decapitation of two of their colleagues.
Soldiers, state and federal police had been deployed to patrol General
Teran, a town along a notorious drug-smuggling route to the U.S. border,
said Mayor Ramon Villagomez. The police quit after the discovery
Wednesday of the mutilated bodies of two officers who had been kidnapped
by gunmen two days earlier. The killings followed three attacks on the
police headquarters since December. Gunmen hurled grenades and sprayed
the building with machine-gun fire. Villagomez said another police
officer has been missing for weeks in the town of 14,500 people
southwest of the industrial city of Monterrey. Mass police resignations
have been common in small towns in Mexico. Municipal police complain
they are outnumbered and outgunned by Mexico’s brutal drug cartels, who
frequently stage bold attacks on security forces with semiautomatic
assault rifles and grenades. President Felipe Calderon has introduced a
proposal in Congress to dissolve Mexico’s more than 2,000 municipal
police forces. They would be replaced by a single force for each of
Mexico’s 31 states. Municipal police are generally underpaid susceptible
to corruption. Many have only an elementary school education. In some
towns, police have protested that they lack bullets and flak jackets.
Villagomez said General Teran’s officers earned around 9,200 pesos
($760) per month.
Armed
men opened fire and hurled a grenade into a crowded nightclub early
Saturday, killing six people and wounding at least 37 in a western city
whose former tranquility has been shattered by escalating battles among
drug cartels. The attack in Mexico’s second-largest municipality took
place just hours after a shootout between soldiers and presumed cartel
gunmen left eight people, including an innocent driver, dead in the
northeastern city of Monterrey. Monterrey is Mexico’s third-largest
city. In the Guadalajara attack, assailants in a Jeep Cherokee and a
taxi drove up to the Butter Club, located in a bar and restaurant
district popular with young people, and sprayed it with bullets. Some of
the men then got out of the taxi and threw a grenade into the nightclub
entrance, said a police official, who spoke to news media at the scene
and left without giving his name. The gunmen fled after the pre-dawn
attack, he said. Three were killed at the scene and three more died
later in hospitals, said Medical Services Director Yannick Nordin. A
Venezuelan and a Colombian were among the dead. In a press conference
led by state Attorney General Tomas Coronado Olmos, authorities said the
attack may have been the result of a fight between two groups hours
earlier in the trendy disco. Some of the people left and returned to
attack the others. State authorities said they are studying surveillance
video from inside the nightclub to help determine what happened. While
there have been isolated grenade attacks around the city, Saturday’s was
the first to be thrown into a crowd and cause so many injuries.
The U.S.
Consulate in Guadalajara recently warned U.S. citizens not to drive at
night in parts of the city after suspected drug-gang members burned
vehicles and blocked streets. Such alerts have become common for
highways in some areas of northern and western Mexico, but not for
Guadalajara, which is known more for its mariachi music and tequila than
as a focal point of a drug war that has claimed nearly 35,000 lives
since 2006. But in recent months the picturesque colonial city has come
to resemble embattled areas of northern Mexico — including the state of
Nuevo Leon, where Monterrey is located. Seven presumed cartel gunmen
were shot dead by soldiers near Monterrey during a chase and shootout
just after midnight Friday. A civilian was also killed when the gunmen
crashed into his car as they tried to flee soldiers. A soldier and a
state police officer were wounded during the clash in the suburban city
of San Nicolas, the military said in a news release. Soldiers also freed
a woman who is presumed to have been kidnapped and was traveling in one
of the vehicles. Two other vehicles, carrying an unknown number of
attackers, escaped, and there were no arrests, said a spokesman for the
state public security office, who was not authorized to give his name.
Nuevo Leon has been hit by a wave of drug-fueled violence in recent
years as the Gulf Cartel battles a gang of its former enforcers known as
the Zetas. The cartels have staged a bloody turf war over drug peddling
points and smuggling routes to the U.S. border 125 miles (200
kilometers) to the north, and clashes with the military and police have
become almost a daily occurrence in and around Monterrey. In
Guadalajara, the violence has heated up just in the past few months from
cartels warring for turf. The city is key to western drug routes once
controlled by former Sinaloa leader Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, who was
killed in a gunbattle with soldiers in July.
MEXICAN
MAFIAS ARE NOT CLOWNING AROUND
Two street clowns were found dead in southeastern Mexico along with
messages allegedly from a drug gang accusing them of working as army
informers, their families said Tuesday. Another 15 people were reported
killed in the northern border state of Chihuahua overnight, including a
woman who was beheaded, amid rampant drug violence across Mexico which
killed more than 12,000 people last year alone. The clowns were found in
bright costumes and makeup on a roadside Sunday in the city of
Villahermosa, bearing signs of torture and a message accusing them of
being army informers, their families said. The Tabasco state attorney
general’s office said they were found with a message attributing the
crime to the Zetas drug gang, which is known to be active in the area.
Police meanwhile found a female head wrapped in a jacket in a park in
the Chihuahua town of Jimenez, in the most gruesome of 15 murders
uncovered overnight, the state attorney general’s office said. Eleven of
the deaths occurred in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El
Paso, Texas, which has Mexico’s highest murder rate. More than 30,000
people have been killed in violence related to the drug trade across
Mexico since December 2006, when the government launched a major
military offensive against organized crime.
RUSSIA
MAFIA GLOBAL DRUG EMPIRE
NEW YORK
– Federal investigators are piecing together details of an audacious new
trend in drug smuggling: South American gangs are buying old jets,
stuffing them full of cocaine and flying them across the Atlantic to
feed Europe’s growing coke habit. At least three gangs have struck deals
to fly drugs to West Africa and from there to Europe, according to U.S.
indictments. One trafficker claimed he already had six aircraft flying.
Another said he was managing five airplanes. Because there is no radar
coverage over the ocean, big planes can cross the Atlantic virtually
undetected. “The sky’s the limit,” one Sierra Leone trafficker boasted
to a Drug Enforcement Administration informant, according to court
documents. The new air route is remarkable because of the distances
involved and the complexity of flying big jets, said Scott Decker, a
criminology professor at Arizona State University who studies smuggling
methods. A trip from Venezuela to West Africa is about 3,400 miles —
about triple the distance to Florida. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime
began warning about trans-Atlantic drug planes after Nov. 2, 2009, when
a burned-out Boeing 727 was found in the desert in Mali. Drug smugglers
had flown the jet from Venezuela, unloaded it and then torched the
aircraft, investigators said.
In some
cases, executive jets have been used, including a Gulfstream II that
landed in Guinea-Bissau in 2008 and another Gulfstream seized in 2007 as
it tried to depart Venezuela for Sierra Leone. In the last year, a
flurry of arrests has begun shedding light on how the air routes work.
The cases are being prosecuted in a New York federal court because some
of the cocaine was supposed to have been sent to the United States. “The
quantity of cocaine distributed and the means employed to distribute it
were extraordinary,” prosecutors wrote in one case. They warned of a
conspiracy to “spread vast quantities of cocaine throughout the world by
way of cargo airplanes.” In some ways it is a throwback to the 1970s and
‘80s, when drug pilots flew freely between Colombia and staging areas
near the U.S. border, Decker said. Back then, drug lords such as Amado
Carrillo, nicknamed The Lord of the Skies, sent jets with as much as 15
tons of cocaine from Colombia to northern Mexico.
Recent
U.S. court cases involving trans-Atlantic flights include:
• The
Valencia-Arbelaez Organization, broken up by undercover U.S. agents
after it bought a $2 million plane to run monthly flights between
Venezuela and Guinea. The group claimed to have six aircraft already
flying between South America and West Africa.
• A ring
based in Colombia and Liberia, arrested after one of its planes was
seized in May with two tons of cocaine as it prepared to leave
Venezuela. Prosecutors say the group was planning to fly jets twice a
month. One defendant claimed to manage five other aircraft making
similar hauls.
• Three
Sierra Leone men, accused of scouting out airstrips and arranging for a
four-ton flight of cocaine from South America in March.
Two
other recent cases have involved cocaine and cargo jets, though
investigators have not revealed yet whether the flights were going to
Africa:
•
Francisco Gonzalez Uribe, a Colombian trafficker due to be sentenced
this month. Gonzalez Uribe was recorded while trying to purchase large
aircraft including a DC-8, a four-engine jet.
• Walid
Makled-Garcia, who prosecutors say controlled airstrips in Venezuela
used to launch drug flights. Prosecutors say Makled-Garcia was behind
one of the biggest drug plane shipments in recent years: a DC-9 that
landed in Mexico in 2006 with more than 12,300 pounds of cocaine on
board.
All five
cases are being prosecuted in a federal court in Manhattan. Several
factors have made trans-Atlantic air routes more attractive, said Carlos
Moreno, an expert on trafficking at Icesi University in Cali, Colombia.
Cocaine use has been rising over the last decade in Europe, unlike the
United States, where it has remained flat, he said. Meanwhile, better
radar coverage has made it harder to move cocaine to the United States.
“Going that way, especially from South America, really gets you outside
the majority of the security envelope for air traffic,” said Decker, the
criminology professor. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s decision to
sever ties with most U.S. law enforcement agencies in 2005 has made it
easier to bring cocaine to staging sites on the Venezuelan coast, said
Vanda Felbab-Brown, a fellow at The Brookings Institution, a Washington
think tank. “The DEA is not present there, the Venezuelan military is
making money off it, and much of the territory is just not controlled by
the government,” Felbab-Brown said. The global economic slump has also
idled hundreds of cargo jets, which can be bought cheaply. Ads on
websites such as Planemart.com offer DC-8s for as low as $275,000.
The
cases show the extraordinary lengths that traffickers are going to
exploit the new air routes. The Valencia-Arbelaez gang used detailed
spreadsheets to compute flight costs and distributed codebooks to
conceal their plans. Planning sessions were held in Denmark, Spain,
Romania and a Best Western hotel in Manhattan. At one meeting the gang’s
leader, Jesus Eduardo Valencia-Arbalaez, sketched a map of West Africa
showing points where the drugs would be delivered. Fuel and pilots were
paid for through wire transfers, suitcases filled with cash and, in one
case, a bag of $356,000 in euros left at a hotel bar. The gang hired a
Russian crew to move a newly acquired plane from Moldova to Romania, and
then to Guinea. Most of the cocaine was destined for Europe, but part of
each shipment was supposed to go on to New York. “I sold airplanes to
these people so I knew what was going on,” Manuel Silva-Jaramillo, an
American aeronautical engineer, told a judge. “I knew that they were
bringing the drugs to the United States.” The gang also discussed
setting up a methamphetamine lab in Liberia and exporting the drug to
Japan and the United States. The gang had access to a private airfield
in Guinea, was considering buying its own airport and had sent a team to
explore whether it could send direct flights from Bolivia to West
Africa, Valencia-Arbelaez said in recorded conversations. A plane seized
in Sierra Leone in July 2008 with 600 kilograms of cocaine belonged to
the group, the DEA says.
The
European drug market was hugely profitable. Silva-Jaramillo claimed the
gang had as much as $82 million in euros stashed in Spain that it needed
to launder, according to court documents. Valencia-Arbelaez pleaded
guilty to cocaine trafficking and was sentenced in July to 17 ½ years in
prison. Another conspirator, Javier Caro, received 3 ½ years.
Silva-Jaramillo and two other men have pleaded guilty and are awaiting
sentencing. Drug trafficking is especially dangerous to West Africa
because of the corrupting effect it has on already weak governments,
Felbab-Brown said. In the Liberia case, traffickers offered bribes to
Fumbah Sirleaf, the head of the Liberian security agency and son of the
country’s president. Sirleaf was secretly coordinating with the DEA.
The flights were to come from Venezuela and Panama. The ring had already
sent aircraft into Liberia, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, one of the
traffickers was recorded saying.
The case
has attracted attention in Russia because one of the defendants, Russian
pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, says he was tortured by Liberian police
before being handed over to the DEA. He and the other five defendants
have denied the charges against them. The Russian foreign ministry
accused the United States of “kidnapping” Yaroshenko and failing to tell
the Russian government. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called his arrest
an example of the United States overstepping its bounds. The DEA denies
Yaroshenko was abused. The U.S. Department of State said it mistakenly
faxed Yaroshenko’s arrest notice to the wrong embassy.
RUSSIA
RETURNS TO AFGHANISTAN
Russia
has agreed to return to the war in Afghanistan at the request of the
Western states which helped the mujahedin to drive its forces out of the
country 21 years ago. The Independent has learnt that Moscow is
engaged in training the Afghan army and counter-narcotics troops and has
agreed in principle to supply Nato with helicopters for use in
Afghanistan.A number
of aircraft have already been sold to Poland, a member of the US-led
coalition, for use in the conflict. Now Nato is in talks with the
Russians over direct supplies of more helicopters, training the pilots,
and allowing arms and ammunition to be transported through Russian
territory as an alternative to a Pakistani route which has come under
repeated Taliban attack.A
groundbreaking agreement with Russia on the issue is likely to be
announced at the Nato summit next month in Lisbon, which is due to be
attended by President Dmitry Medvedev.
In
return for help in Afghanistan Moscow is seeking what it terms as more
co-operation from Nato. President Barack Obama has already scrapped
missile-defence shields in Poland and the Czech Republic, proposals for
which had led to prolonged protests from Moscow, and Nato has agreed
that Russia will be consulted on the replacement system.Moscow
would also like Nato to accept a fait accompli over Georgia, where
Russian troops remain in South Ossetia and Abkhazia after the war of two
years ago. American and European officials maintain that the occupation
of a member state’s sovereign territory is not a matter for compromise.The
helicopters are needed for the use of Afghan forces which Isaf
(International Security and Assistance Force) is training to take over
security as part of the West’s exit strategy from the war.It was
the supply of American Stinger missiles by US and British intelligence
to Afghan rebels, enabling them to shoot down Russian helicopters, which
changed the course of the Soviet war in Afghanistan and helped to hasten
the collapse of the Communist government in Moscow.
That
war, with its acts of brutality committed by both sides, has left bitter
memories among many in the country, and the news that the Russian
military is playing a part in the war is likely to be exploited by the
Taliban.The
former Cold War enemies have been drawn together by the common threat of
Islamist terrorism, some of it directly spawned from Western aid to
jihadists in the 1980s.Moscow
is also concerned about a flow of heroin through central Asia to its
cities from Afghanistan. And it urgently wishes to reassert its
influence in the region.The Nato
secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, asked for helicopters during a
visit to Moscow last year. “Russia has reflected on that and there are
now bilateral talks between Russia and the United States on such
helicopters,” Mr Rasmussen said on Monday in Brussels. He added that he
“would not exclude that we could facilitate that process within the
Nato-Russia Council”, a body which acts as a discussion forum with
Moscow.
Russian
and Western defence sources told The Independent that Moscow has
provided five Mi-17 military helicopters to Poland for Afghanistan, with
the first two to be delivered by the end of the year.Afghan
military officers are already being trained in a number of Russian
defence institutes, according to the Russian deputy foreign minister
Aleksander Grushko. Mr Grushko underlined that Moscow wanted a binding
mutual restraint agreement with Nato and an agreement to delink the
Georgia crisis from an arms treaty. He added: “We are ready to
co-operate with Nato, because we think we are doing a common job.”
Anatoly Serdyukov, who became the first Russian defence minister to
visit the Pentagon where he met the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates,
last month, said that Russia was willing to sell or lease Mi-17s for use
by Afghan forces, and will countenance similar deals with Nato member
countries.“It is a
matter of several dozen Mi-17s that Nato will purchase from us,” Mr
Serdyukov said.
“I hope
that Western peacemaking troops will not withdraw before they have
fulfilled their mission. We are watching things in Afghanistan very
closely and we are exchanging our experience with the Americans. Russia
is ready to pass on to America the experience gained by our veterans of
the war in Afghanistan.
“Withdrawal of the [Western] troops would naturally affect the situation
in central Asia, we currently cannot even imagine how. For this reason
we want to help the West, among other things with helicopters, whose
delivery we are now discussing.”Securing
new supply routes for Nato forces in Afghanistan – which now number more
than Russian troops during their war – has become urgent for the West
with attacks on convoys in Pakistan by insurgents, some of which, claim
Western officials, are instigated by members of the Pakistani military
and intelligence service.Russia
allows some movements of supplies along its territory, but restricts the
types of weaponry being moved. Nato would like this removed. According
to defence sources, Moscow has indicated that it may agree to this after
carrying out security checks along the route, which starts at the
all-weather Latvian port of Riga and arrives in Afghanistan through
Russia, and the former Soviet territories of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Russia’s
changing role-July 1979 Operation Cyclone launched by the CIA, using US
and Saudi money and help of the Pakistani military regime to start
arming the mujaheddin.December
1979 Soviet intervention at request of Afghan government. Moscow falls
out with President Hafizullah Amin, his palace in Kabul is attacked and
he is killed.March
1980 to April 1985 Soviet forces begin offensives, especially near the
Pakistani and Iranian borders. US and British supply Stinger missiles
enabling mujaheddin to shoot down Russian helicopters. New Soviet
General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev increases troop levels to 110,000.April
1985 to January 1987 Russian exit strategy based on training up Afghan
security forces to take on insurgency. Rebels are still aided by the
West.January
1987 to February 1989 Soviet forces withdraw from Afghanistan with loss
of 14,427.
The
United States last summer brought accusations that Russia was still
fighting the Cold War two decades after the Soviet collapse. But some
believe the Kremlin leaked this week’s news that they were exposed by a
top Russia intelligence officer to justify taking a real step back
toward the Soviet Union by reconstituting a security service that would
closely resemble the communist-era KGB. That’s one of the possible moves
discussed in Moscow about what’s expected to be a major shake-up of the
foreign intelligence service, the SVR. “Kommersant” newspaper broke the
story on November 11, reporting that a “Colonel Shcherbakov” defected to
the United States after exposing 11 so-called illegal agents, who worked
without diplomatic cover and legal protection. One escaped after
disappearing in Cyprus.
Internal
Disputes-The
news has prompted speculation the Kremlin wants to fold the SVR into the
domestic Federal Security Service,
the FSB. They were the two major agencies created when the KGB was split
after Boris Yeltsin came to power in 1991, in what was seen as a major
step toward dismantling the Soviet security system. Intelligence expert
Leonid Velikhov of the Sovershenno Secretno publishing house told
RFE/RL’s Russian Service the two “Kommersant” reporters who reported the
defection this week had previously never written about intelligence
affairs. “All of a sudden they conduct a grandiose research
project, citing several unnamed sources who all say the same thing,” he
says. “In fact, there was probably only one source who made the leak for
domestic political purposes.” Legislators have demanded SVR chief
Mikhail Fradkov be sacked. Some believe the calls are meant to clear the
way for presidential administration chief Sergei Naryshkin, a reputed
former KGB officer with close ties to Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin, to replace him. After the spies were exposed in July,
many believe Putin—a former KGB officer who has often praised the
service—hinted he’d known about the betrayal, saying, “This was the
result of treason and traitors always end badly. They finish up as
drunks, addicts, on the street.”
“Kommersant” reported that Shcherbakov headed the American department of
Directorate S, which runs illegal agents. “Kommersant” reported that he
handed the FBI the personal file
of one of the illegals, Mikhail Vlasenko, known as Juan Lazaro, a
longtime spy who’d been awarded the most prestigious Hero of the Soviet
Union award and promoted to general. Those who criticize the SVR say
Shcherbakov’s refusal to accept a promotion last year—possibly because
he would have had to take a lie-detector test—should have raised alarm
bells, along with the fact that such a high-ranking intelligence officer
had a daughter living in the United States. His son, who worked for the
Russian Federal Drug Control Service, left Russia last June,
“Kommersant” reported. Infiltrating Policy-Making Circles-Former
KGB officer Viktor Cherkashin, who recruited the KGB’s two biggest-ever
spies, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, in Washington in 1986, says
spying on that level should never have been able to take place. “The
head of a department shouldn’t have had access to that amount of
information about so many people,” he says.
The FBI
says Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, tasked its agents
with infiltrating U.S. policy-making circles, from which they gathered
no sensitive information. The alleged operatives aren’t even charged
with espionage, only for failing to register as agents of a foreign
government and for money laundering. Military
analyst Alexander Golts says the information about Shcherbakov may have
been leaked because it’s easier to explain intelligence failures by
blaming them on a traitor. He says it makes little sense for Russia to
run illegal agents, which he says are a holdover from the Cold War, when
the Soviet Union groomed them partly for use as possible saboteurs in
case real war broke out. “Kremlin officials see illegals as a necessary
attribute of a great power,” he says, “along with nuclear weapons.”
Former KGB London station chief Oleg Gordievsky escaped from Moscow
after he was found to have spied for Britain in the 1980s. He says the
maintenance of so many spies in the United States reflects Russia’s
growing authoritarianism. “All the killings on the streets, all the
manipulated court cases, all the rigged elections show Russia is
becoming a new totalitarian country,” he says, “although to a lesser
degree than before.”
Gordievsky says the latest news about the spy scandal won’t affect
relations between the two countries because Moscow and Washington have
agreed “not to let such an insignificant group of spies” affect ties.
But Golts says the presence of so many Russian spies in the United
States shows the countries are returning to a situation in which “they
constantly spy on one another.” “In that case, how can you talk
cooperation over missile defense or Afghanistan?”
he says. “At the very least, this story reflects Moscow’s very deep
mistrust of the United States.” Moscow’s intelligence services have seen
major leaks of information in the past, including KGB archivist Vassily
Mitrokhin, who fled Russia in 1992 with a massive trove of hand-copied
archive information that came to be known as the Mitrokhin archive.
DASSK BURMA UPDATE
RANGOON
BURMA– Myanmar’s military government freed its archrival, democracy
leader Aung San Suu Kyi, on Saturday after her latest term of detention
expired. Several thousand jubilant supporters streamed to her residence.
A smiling Suu Kyi, wearing a traditional jacket and a flower in her
hair, appeared at the gate of her compound as the crowd chanted, cheered
and sang the national anthem. “If we work in unity, we will achieve our
goal. We have a lot of things to do,” she told the well-wishers, who
quickly swelled to as many as 5,000. Speaking briefly in Burmese, she
said they would see each other again Sunday at the headquarters of her
political party. The 65-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, whose
latest period of detention spanned 7 ½ years, has come to symbolize the
struggle for democracy in the Southeast Asian nation ruled by the
military since 1962. The release from house arrest of one of the world’s
most prominent political prisoners came a week after an election that
was swept by the military’s proxy political party and decried by Western
nations as a sham designed to perpetuate authoritarian control.
Supporters had been waiting most of the day near her residence and the
headquarters of her party. Suu Kyi has been jailed or under house arrest
for more than 15 of the last 21 years. As her release was under way,
riot police stationed in the area left the scene and a barbed-wire
barricade near her residence was removed, allowing the waiting
supporters to surge forward.
Her
release was immediately welcomed by world leaders and human rights
organizations. Obama called Suu Kyi “a hero of mine” said the United
States “welcomes her long overdue release.” “Whether Aung San Suu Kyi is
living in the prison of her house, or the prison of her country, does
not change the fact that she, and the political opposition she
represents, has been systematically silenced, incarcerated, and deprived
of any opportunity to engage in political processes,” he said in a
statement. British Prime Minister David Cameron also said the release
was long overdue. “Aung San Suu Kyi is an inspiration for all of us who
believe in freedom of speech, democracy and human rights,” he said in a
statement. “It is now crucial that Aung San Suu Kyi has unrestricted
freedom of movement and speech and can participate fully in her
country’s political process,” European Commissioner Jose Manuel Barroso
said.
Critics
allege the Nov. 7 elections were manipulated to give the pro-military
party a sweeping victory. Results have been released piecemeal and
already have given the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development
Party a majority in both houses of Parliament. The last elections in
1990 were won overwhelmingly by Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy
party, but the military refused to hand over power and instead clamped
down on opponents. Suu Kyi’s release gives the junta some ammunition
against critics of the election and the government’s human rights
record, which includes the continued detention of some 2,200 political
prisoners and brutal military campaigns against ethnic minorities. It is
unlikely the ruling generals will allow Suu Kyi, who drew huge crowds of
supporters during her few periods of freedom, to actively and publicly
pursue her goal of bringing democracy to Myanmar, formerly known as
Burma. But some see hope in her release.
“There
is no formal opposition (in Myanmar) so her release is going to
represent an opportunity to re-energize and reorganize this opposition.
So in that sense, of revitalizing the opposition in some concrete way,
Suu Kyi’s release is going to be very pivotal,” said Muang Zarni, an
exiled dissident and Myanmar research fellow at the London School of
Economics. Suu Kyi herself earlier cautioned about optimism. “My
release should not be looked at as a major breakthrough for democracy.
For all people in Burma to enjoy basic freedom, that would be a major
breakthrough,” she said after her earlier release in 2002. Suu Kyi was
convicted last year of violating the terms of her previous detention by
briefly sheltering an American man who swam uninvited to her lakeside
home, extending a period of continuous detention that began in 2003
after her motorcade was ambushed in northern Myanmar by a
government-backed mob.
Suu Kyi
has shown her mettle time and again since taking up the democracy
struggle in 1988. Having spent much of her life abroad, she returned
home to take care of her ailing mother just as mass demonstrations were
breaking out against 25 years of military rule. She was quickly thrust
into a leadership role, mainly because she was the daughter of Aung San,
who led Myanmar to independence from Britain before his assassination by
political rivals. She rode out the military’s bloody suppression of
street demonstrations to help found the NLD. Her defiance gained her
fame and honor, most notably the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
Charismatic, tireless and outspoken, her popularity threatened the
country’s new military rulers. In 1989, she was detained on trumped-up
national security charges and put under house arrest. She was not
released until 1995 and has spent various periods in detention since
then. Suu Kyi’s freedom had been a key demand of Western nations and
groups critical of the military regime’s poor human rights record. The
military government, seeking to burnish its international image, had
responded previously by offering to talk with her, only to later shy
away from serious negotiations. Suu Kyi — who was barred from running
in this month’s elections — plans to help probe allegations of voting
fraud, according to Nyan Win, who is a spokesman for her party, which
was officially disbanded for refusing to reregister for this year’s
polls. Such action, which could embarrass the junta, poses the sort of
challenge the military has reacted to in the past by detaining Suu Kyi.
Awaiting
her release in neighboring Thailand was the younger of her two sons, Kim
Aris, who is seeking the chance to see his mother for the first time in
10 years. Aris lives in Britain and has been repeatedly denied visas.
Her late husband, British scholar Michael Aris, raised their sons in
England. Their eldest son, Alexander Aris, accepted the Nobel Peace
Prize on his mother’s behalf in 1991 and reportedly lives in the United
States. Michael Aris died of cancer in 1999 at age 53 after having been
denied visas to see his wife for the three years before his death. Suu
Kyi could have left Myanmar to see her family but decided not to,
fearing the junta would not allow her back in.
CAMBODIA
UPDATE
Old anti-tank mine kills 14 in Cambodia: police
PHNOM PENH
-
Wed Nov 17
2010-Fourteen people, including a
one-year-old girl, were killed after their vehicle hit an old anti-tank
mine in northwestern Cambodia, police said Wednesday. The child and 11
other passengers were killed instantly in Tuesday’s blast in the
province of Battambang, said Buth Sambo, police chief of Banan district.
One person died on the way to the hospital and another on Wednesday
morning, he said. “It is a tragedy that 14 people from five families
were all killed,” he told AFP. The group was returning from a day’s work
at a chilli farm when the driver decided to take a short cut through a
field and set off the anti-tank mine. Landmines and other unexploded
ordnance left over from decades of civil war in Cambodia are still
killing people on a weekly basis, new figures released on Wednesday
showed. From January to October of this year, 53 people died because of
mines or other ordnance, according to CMVIS, the government’s data
collection body. The total number of casualties from unexploded ordnance
recorded between 1979 and October 2010 stands at 63,754.
LAOS UPDATE
RIP-GENERAL VANG PAO-THE BEST SOLDIER ASIA EVER HAD-OLD
SOLDIERS NEVER DIE-THEY JUST FADE AWAY...
For three days, as Hmong custom has it, his family and
friends would have mourned in high-pitched chants, feasted on freshly
slaughtered beef and burned a giant pile of paper money to buy his soul
into the spirit world. But Gen. Vang Pao
was no plain Hmong elder, and his death last month at age 81 has brought
forth no ordinary grief. He is known to his people as the general, the
hero of the
Central Intelligence Agency’s
long-ago secret war in the jungles of
Laos,
a man who was leaving behind 25 children, 68 grandchildren and an
uprooted nation of Hmong refugees who regard him as something near a
king.
So his funeral — six days and nights, with 10 cows
slaughtered and stir-fried each day — has become a send-off for the
ages. It began last Friday, his body borne on a horse-drawn
carriage through the streets of downtown Fresno, throngs of grieving
Hmong lining the way. Scottish bagpipers played “The Green Hills of
Tyrol” and two T-28 planes, the aircraft piloted by Hmong guerrilla
fighters in the Vietnam War, flew overhead. And the funeral rolled
down a long red carpet through the weekend, as thousands more Hmong from
across the country, and some from as far away as Thailand and France,
strode into the convention center of this farming capital of California
to say goodbye. Many of the Hmong here — tens of thousands of
tribal people who immigrated from Thai refugee camps in the 1970s, ’80s
and ’90s — wanted to see General Vang Pao buried at Arlington National
Cemetery with full military honors, befitting a man, they say, whose
Hmong battalions saved the lives of many downed American pilots. On
Friday, however, the Pentagon announced that it had denied the family’s
request to waive the policy that restricts military burials at Arlington
to American service members.
General Vang Pao’s family and friends said they were
“very disappointed” by the decision. “The C.I.A. recruited Gen. Vang Pao
in 1961 to lead a guerrilla force,” a statement read. “He fought in
combat situations for 15 years. The covert war resulted in the death of
35,000 of the general’s men. We strongly believe the right thing to do
is to honor his contributions to the United States.” General Vang
Pao was certainly given a hero’s farewell in Fresno. His body rested in
a coffin made of wood, right down to its nails. Hmong custom holds that
a single piece of metal, planted by a rival clan, can block the soul’s
journey. His coffin was draped by a United States flag. All
through the cavernous hall, men in wide suits and women in ornately
patterned home-sewn garments, their hats the color of eggplant, mourned
and gossiped and drank and ate while their children and grandchildren
snapped photos on their cellphones. It was, in some respects, a
state funeral for a people who, decades after landing in the United
States as slash-and-burn farmers new to written language, could still
see themselves as stateless. “I have been crying for weeks,” said
Youa Vang, a distant cousin of the general who buried her soldier
husband almost 40 years ago in their Laotian mountain village. “I
worry that the Americans will treat us differently now that our father
is gone,” she said. “Tell the Americans to still love us the same way.”
General Vang Pao died of pneumonia on Jan. 6, after
celebrating Hmong New Year in Fresno. That it took a full month to stage
the service spoke to its intricate pageantry and the general’s singular
standing, but also to the rifts that simmer among the 18 Hmong clans
over how to conduct their affairs in this land of exile. In the
end, clan leaders decided, a three-day service would not be sufficient.
The shamans would need double that time to guide the general’s outsize
soul back to his birthplace, the highlands of Laos. If this was a
traditional Hmong funeral, it came with plenty of modifications, said
Lee Vang, a nephew of the general who helped organize the service.
There were 30 spiritual guides instead of one. The wood coffin was not
like those usually favored by the Hmong: Orthodox Jewish models with the
Star of David engraved on top. This coffin, the nephew said, had been
planed and carved and flown in by a team of Hmong men from St. Paul.
As congressmen and state senators and retired C.I.A. agents filed in to
deliver speeches and bow their heads, a scattering of old guerrilla
fighters stood outside in the winter sun, puffing on Marlboro
cigarettes. Xa Chao Xiong, 63, was dressed in a camouflage uniform
that came not from his years as a jungle warrior, but from a recent
shopping spree at the local Army surplus store. “I wear this
uniform for my general,” he said through a translator. After 20 years in
America, he apologized for not knowing English. “Today, I am a soldier
again.”
THAILAND
SPECIAL REPORT
In the past
two months there has been a rash of unsolved deaths of Farangs in
Phuket. One Canadian man in Patong,shot multiple times in dispute over
property, one British man living and working out of a shop house, head
bashed in, near-by the Lotus Super Store By-pass road, poisoning of an
American lady, a Norwegian lady and two other foreign persons on Kho Pi
Pi island, and lastly one British lady found face down in the sand on
Keron beach strangled to death. None of these cases have been found to
have any weight within the public news media in Thailand other than
reports in the local Phuket Gazette, when it reports and then never
follows up as is the norm here on the island. To date no person or
persons have been found by local police and prosecuted for any of the
alleged crimes/murders. Foreign Embassy Staff have registered their
dismay along political circles, but as is common practice this leads to
embarrassing faces all around. The recent death of the American lady on Kho Pi Pi was said to have the
body taken to Bangkok for a autopsy by local police, however it was
later established that the body was subsequently cremated without an
autopsy having been performed. It has been established that the Thai
authorities did however provide slices of the deceased skin for further
examination by the deceased family at their own cost back in America.
I’m wondering if this is some sort of pattern being established
regarding expected follow-up by local and Bangkok police following
foreigners deaths in the Kingdom Of Thailand? Is this a cover-up to save
face for the future safety of foreign visitor’s and tourists. It seems a
backward way of doing so since all the foreign press are covering these
as well as multiple other stories regarding life within Thailand.
PHUKET,
Thailand (8 May 2009) — A Swiss woman was found dead on a beach in Krabi
where she may have been strangled and robbed. Edith Jungen, believed to
be in her 30s, was found in shallow water on Noppharat Beach in Tambon
Ao Nang in Krabi’s Muang district. According to unconfirmed reports,
Jungen was found with the strap of her handbag tied around her neck as
if she had been strangled to death. Police said the victim checked in to
the Andaman Sunset Hotel on Tuesday and checked out a day later. Her
body was found near the hotel. Witnesses told police Jungen had been
upset and feared that she would be attacked. While the mainstream media
continues to promote Thailand as a holiday paradise, violence against
tourists, especially women, has increased sharply in recent years. In
March, a British tourist was murdered on his sailboat. Last January
police arrested a local Thai man for the murder of a German woman who
was killed during a full moon party on a beach in southern Thailand. In
2007, two young female tourists were murdered on the beach in Pattaya.
In January 2006, two Thai men were convicted of raping and killing
21-year-old British tourist Katherine Horton on Koh Samui. The next day,
a Swedish woman who was visiting Thailand with her husband and children,
was also raped on Koh Samui.Chetn Dadhwal, a 24-year-old Indian, who
was trying to stop a fight during a Full Moon party at Koh Phangan on
March 22 .A 23-year-old Japanese woman, Tomoko Kawashita, who was
murdered in Sukhothai Historical Park during the Loy Krathong water
festival during an attempted robbery on Nov 25 last year .Russians
Tatiana Tsimfer, 20, and Liubov Svikova, 25, who were shot dead while
they were sitting in beach chairs on Pattaya’s Jomtien Beach on Feb 25
last year.American actor David
Carradine has been found dead, hanging by a nylon rope in a hotel room
closet in Bangkok, Thailand, according to a Thai police official.Carradine became famous in the 1970s
when he starred in the television series “Kung Fu.”
BE ADVISED
THAILAND - Two female tourists die mysteriously at same Koh Phi Phi
resort
THAILAND - Widow of murdered tourist returns to UK
THAILAND - Fishermen find body of murdered British tourist
THAILAND - Pirates attack, kills British yachtie near Koh Dong
THAILAND - Crippled UK diver warns tourists not to visit Thailand
THAILAND - Thai man arrested, charged with murdering tourists
THAILAND - Police double reward for capture of Thailand tourist killer
THAILAND - Game show winner helping to track down tourist killer
THAILAND - Tour guide key suspect in Thailand tourist murder case
THAILAND - $3k reward for capture of gunman who killed tourists
THAILAND - Two female tourists shot dead on Thailand resort beach
THAILAND - Murder in Thailand: another tourist shot dead
THAILAND - Thai men who raped, killed British tourist escape death
THAILAND - Paradise lost: Another tourist raped at Thailand resort
island
THAILAND - Increasing violence against tourists threatens Thailand’s
tourism industry
THAILAND - Thai killers get death sentence for murdering tourist
The path of the righteous
man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of
evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the
weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper
and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great
vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.
And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.
YOKOSUKA, Japan – A new "carrier killer"
missile that has become a symbol of China's rising military might will not force
the U.S. Navy to change the way it operates in the Pacific, a senior Navy
commander said.
Defense analysts say
the
Dong Feng 21D
missile could upend the balance of power in Asia, where U.S. aircraft carrier
battle groups have ruled the waves since the end of World War II.
However, Vice Adm. Scott van Buskirk,
commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet, told the AP in an interview that the Navy does
not see the much-feared weapon as creating any insurmountable vulnerability for
the U.S. carriers — the Navy's crown jewels.
"It's not the Achilles heel of our
aircraft carriers
or our Navy — it is one weapons system, one technology that is out there," Van
Buskirk said in an interview this week on the bridge of the
USS George Washington,
the only carrier that is home-based in the western Pacific.
The DF 21D is unique in that it is
believed capable of hitting a powerfully defended moving target — like the USS
George Washington — with pinpoint precision. That objective is so complex that
the Soviets gave up on a similar project. The missile would penetrate defenses
because its speed from launch would not allow enough time for carriers or other
large ships to complete countermeasures. That could seriously weaken
Washington's ability to intervene in any potential conflict over Taiwan or North
Korea, as well as deny U.S. ships safe access to international waters near
China's 11,200-mile (18,000-kilometer) -long coastline. Van Buskirk, whose fleet
is responsible for most of the Pacific and Indian oceans, with 60-70 ships and
40,000 sailors and Marines under its command, said the capabilities of the
Chinese missile are as yet unproven. But he acknowledged it does raise special
concerns. "Any new capability is something that we try to monitor," he said.
"If there wasn't this to point to as a
game changer, there would be something else," he said. "That term has been
bandied about for many things. I think it really depends in how you define the
game, whether it really changes it or not. It's a very specific scenario for a
very specific capability — some things can be very impactful." The development
of the missile comes as China is increasingly venturing further out to sea and
is becoming more assertive around its coastline and in disputes over territory.Late
last year, China and Japan were locked in a heated diplomatic row over several
islands both claim in the
East China Sea,
an area regularly patrolled by U.S. Navy vessels. A flotilla of 10 Chinese
warships, including advanced submarines and destroyers, passed through the
Miyako Strait last April in the biggest transit of its kind to date.
Experts saw it as an attempt by China to
test Japan and the United States and demonstrate its open water capabilities.
China has also expressed strong
displeasure with U.S. carrier operations off the Korean Peninsula, saying that
they posed a security risk to its capital. Still, van Buskirk said the Navy has
no intention of altering its mission because of the new threat and will continue
to operate in the seas around Japan, Korea, the Philippines and anywhere else it
deems necessary. "We won't change these operations because of this specific
technology that might be out there," he told The AP while the USS George
Washington was in its home port just south of Tokyo for repairs last week. "But
we will carefully monitor and adapt to it."
The faster-than-expected
development of the missile has set off alarm bells in Washington. Further, China
is developing a
stealth fighter jet
that could be used to support its navy in a potential conflict and hopes to
deploy its first aircraft carriers over the next decade.
Before visiting Beijing last month, U.S.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he has been concerned about the anti-ship
missile since he took office. In December, Adm. Robert Willard, the head
of the U.S. Pacific Command, told Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper he believed
the missile program had achieved "initial operational capability," meaning a
workable design had been settled on and was being further developed.
The
missile is considered a key component of China's strategy of denying U.S. planes
and ships access to waters off its coast. The strategy includes overlapping
layers of
air defense systems,
naval assets such as submarines, and advanced ballistic missile systems — all
woven together with a network of satellites. At
its most capable, the DF 21D could be launched from land with enough accuracy to
penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a
distance of more than 900 miles (1,500 kilometers). To allay regional
security fears, van Buskirk said, China needs to be more forthcoming about its
intentions. "It goes back to transparency," he said. "Using the United
States as an example, we are very clear about our intent when conducting routine
and normal operations in international waters ... That is what you might expect
from other nations that might operate in this region
CHINA 101
Sooner
or later China will take revenge for the opium war of 1839-1842 when it suffered
its most humiliating defeat by the West, especially the British, being forced to
let in opium shipments from British colonies and have it sold within her own
borders, pushing millions of Chinese into addiction, rendering the Chinese
emperor a powerless puppet and basically making China become a de-facto colony
of the West for the next 60 years. A
national disgrace of the 1st order for the Chinese. And then there's also the
brutal crackdown of the "Boxer uprising" of 1901, when an
expeditionary force of 8 Western nations quelled Chinese anti-colonialist
insurgency in Beijing.
CHICOM PSYOPS
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke fired back amid criticism
at home and abroad of the Fed's easy-money policies, arguing that China and
others are causing global problems by preventing their currencies from
strengthening as their economies boom. Bernanke fired back at critics upset with
the Fed's new stimulus plan, arguing that China and other nations are causing
problems by preventing their currencies from strengthening. Jon Hilsenrath, Evan
Newmark and Dennis Berman discuss. And Brett Arends discusses the oddly behaving
market for muni bonds, whose yields rose above not only Treasurys but also above
some corporate bonds. By keeping their currencies artificially weak, Mr.
Bernanke argued in Frankfurt Friday, China and other emerging markets are
allowing their economies to overheat, preventing trade imbalances from adjusting
and worsening what he called a "two-speed" global recovery. Their
"strategy of currency undervaluation" is preventing more "balanced and
sustainable" global growth, he warns, echoing a view expressed by Obama
Administration officials.
Mr. Bernanke has come under attack for the Fed's decision to
purchase $600 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds in an effort to drive down
long-term interest rates. Critics in the U.S say it could cause inflation.
Critics abroad say the flood of dollars that the Fed is effectively printing to
finance its bond purchases is pouring into overseas markets and could cause
asset bubbles. Some also have accused the Fed of trying to weaken the
dollar to spur U.S. exports. Fed officials have denied that is their goal,
though Mr. Bernanke effectively acknowledged the U.S. currency should weaken
against currencies in emerging markets, because their economies are growing so
much faster than economies in the developed world. The Fed chairman's
message, though scholarly in tone, was unusually blunt in laying blame for
inflationary pressures in emerging markets and for tensions over currencies on
countries like China. A chart accompanying his comments also pinpoints Taiwan,
Singapore and Thailand as aggressively trying to hold their currencies down,
while India, Chile and Turkey aren't.
"Why have officials in many emerging markets leaned against
appreciation of their currencies toward levels more consistent with market
fundamentals?" Mr. Bernanke asks. Mainly, he says, because they are sticking to
a long-term strategy of pushing for export-led growth with cheap exchange rates.
Central banks manage exchange rates by intervening in currency markets. As
dollars flood into their economies from exports, the central banks use the
dollars to purchase assets like U.S. Treasury bonds rather than allowing those
dollars to be exchanged freely for domestic currencies. That keeps the domestic
currencies from rising in value. Mr. Bernanke noted that in preventing the
yuan from appreciating, China has accumulated a massive $2.6 trillion stock of
foreign-currency reserves. Most of that is in U.S.-dollar assets. An alternate
risk for the U.S.: If China sells its U.S. bonds, it could push down their value
and push up U.S. interest rates.
Mr. Bernanke also made his case against domestic critics, arguing
that U.S. unemployment could keep rising without action by the Fed and that
inflation is too low and could fall further. Though critics say inflation
could soar because of the Fed's actions, Mr. Bernanke said it is around 1%, is
likely to be "quite subdued" for a long time and that he is committed to
allowing it to go no higher than 2%. "On its current economic trajectory
the United States runs the risk of seeing millions of workers unemployed or
underemployed for years," Mr. Bernanke warned. "As a society, we should find
that outcome unacceptable."Mr. Bernanke got a voice of support Thursday from
Narayana Kocherlakota, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. In
comments in Chicago he supported the Fed's easing program, describing it as "a
move in the right direction," though he had expressed some skepticism about the
program in the past. He and Mr. Bernanke said the program wasn't a cure-all.
China has $2.6 trillion in foreign-currency reserves, mostly in U.S.-dollar
assets. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said China has $2.6
trillion in U.S.-dollar assets.
The head of the
World Trade Organization
on Friday warned countries against keeping their currencies undervalued to
create jobs, saying such policies could spark a return to 1930s-style
protectionism. Pascal Lamy,
WTO director general, said the fight over currency values -- in a reference to
the
United States
and
China -- could
upset global financial stability. Generating
employment "is at the heart of the strategy of some countries to keep their
currencies undervalued," Lamy said in New Delhi.
"Just as it is also at the heart of other countries' loose monetary policies."
Competitive devaluations, which have raised fears of a global
currency war, could trigger "tit-for-tat protectionism", he told a business
audience. Lamy singled out "unsustainable and socially unacceptable
unemployment" levels around the world as the most serious challenge facing the
global economy. But "uncoordinated 'beggar thy neighbour' policies will
not result in increased employment," he said.
Washington
has urged
Beijing to
allow its yuan to rise, saying the currency has been undervalued to create an
unfair trade advantage and stoke
China's
economic boom. The
United States,
where unemployment is nearly 10 percent, has been accused of doing the same with
a 600-billion-dollar cash injection announced earlier this month as it seeks to
jump start its sluggish economy. Lamy
also said he was aiming for a preliminary deal in the stalled Doha round of WTO
trade talks
by mid-2011. The WTO director general said the
Group
of 20 advanced and emerging economies summit in
Seoul last
week "called for negotiations across the board to conclude the end game" of the
global trade liberalisation talks in 2011. "This
means a political version of the deal should be available by some time around
the middle of next year," Lamy said, adding that the lion's share of the work
towards an agreement had already been done. The Doha round of
global
trade talks
began in 2001 with a focus on dismantling obstacles to trade for poor nations.
But the negotiations have been dogged by disagreements. They include how
much the
United States
and the European Union
should reduce farm aid and the extent to which
developing countries
such as India and
China should
lower tariffs on industrial products.
Successive deadlines to conclude the talks have been missed.
Failure to reach an agreement would weaken the only institution which governs
the rules of world trade and could lead to "unilateralist, populist policies
which discriminate against foreign workers and goods," Lamy warned. For a
sustainable global recovery, "economic evidence tells us that opening to
international trade" is better for growth and jobs than being a closed economy,
he said. Lamy warned against efforts by nations to
achieve a trading advantage similar to moves that worsened the Great Depression
of the 1930s. "The lessons of history are there -- showing that it is
coordinated action through international cooperation that maximises benefits for
citizens of the world," Lamy said.
U.S. Treasury Secretary warned Republicans against politicizing the
Federal Reserve and said the Obama administration would oppose any effort to
strip the central bank of its mandate to pursue full employment. “It is
very important to keep politics out of monetary policy,” Geithner said in an
interview airing on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital ” this weekend.
“You want to be very careful not to take steps that hurt our credibility.”
The Republican
congressional leadership , nominated as the next House speaker, has criticized
the Fed’s plan to buy $600 billion in assets, saying it would fuel inflation and
asset bubbles. Senator , a Tennessee Republican who serves on the Banking
Committee, said he favors confining the Fed’s mandate to promoting price
stability. Geithner, 49, declined to say what
compromise the Obama administration would be willing to consider on extending
Bush- era tax cuts, while ruling out making permanent the reductions for the
wealthiest Americans. “It is not responsible, and I could not recommend to
the president in good conscience, that we go out and borrow $700 billion to make
those high-end tax cuts permanent,” Geithner said. He said he doesn’t
think the tax cuts for the middle class will be allowed to expire in December,
or that all of the tax cuts, including those for the wealthy, will be extended
permanently.
General Motors
Geithner said the government would get back “a very substantial part” of its
investment and all the money the Obama administration spent on bailing out the
automaker. Taxpayers put about $13.4 billion into GM under former President
and $36.1 billion under Obama. GM, which went bankrupt last year after
almost a century on the New York Stock Exchange, raised more than $20 billion in
an initial public offering yesterday. On Europe, Geithner said a financial
rescue of Ireland could mark an end to the continent’s sovereign debt crisis.
Officials from the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European
Central Bank spent a second day in Dublin today discussing a possible bailout of
Irish banks. “I believe they will achieve that because this government,
Ireland has demonstrated that they are willing to do some very, very difficult,
very, very hard things to dig their way out of this mess,” Geithner said. “And
leaders of Europe have made some very tough political choices.”
China Currency
He said China is
allowing its currency to strengthen, and that “we want to make sure they sustain
that.” The Fed’s monetary easing, which Chinese officials have said
weakened the dollar, hasn’t hurt U.S. efforts to convince China to let the yuan
rise, Geithner said. The yuan has gained about 2.6 percent against the dollar
since Sept. 1. Fed Chairman defended the monetary stimulus in a speech in
Frankfurt today and in a meeting with U.S. senators earlier this week. The
best way to underpin the dollar and support the global recovery “is through
policies that lead to a resumption of robust growth in a context of price
stability in the United States,” Bernanke said in his speech. The asset
purchases will be used in a way that’s “measured and responsive to economic
conditions,” Bernanke said. Fed officials are “unwaveringly committed to price
stability” and don’t seek inflation higher than the level of “2 percent or a bit
less” that most policy makers see as consistent with the Fed’s legislative
mandate, he said.
Letter to Bernanke
Also this week, 23 people, including former Republican
government officials and economists, urged Bernanke to halt the stimulus. Among
those who signed the letter
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget
Office director; Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol, and Stanford University
Professor John Taylor, creator of a monetary-policy formula used by the Fed.
The
Republican attacks on the Fed have been among the harshest since the central
bank rushed to rescue the financial system with support for Bear Stearns Cos.
and American International Group Inc. during the financial crisis.
“It is very important that we respect and honor what the Congress
did when it set up our independent central bank with a mandate to keep prices
low and stable over time and to make sure” it promotes “sustainable economic
growth,” said Geithner, who was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York before taking over as Treasury secretary last year.
Who fed the tiger? Pat Buchanan reveals
which Americans
enabled China's 'economic nationalism'
November 18, 2010
Missiles fired from the Chinese
mainland could destroy five of the six major U.S. air bases in the Far East. So
states a new report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission,
adding: "Saturation missile strikes could destroy U.S. air defenses,
runways, parked aircraft, and fuel and maintenance facilities. Complicating this
scenario is the future deployment of China's anti-ship ballistic missile, which
could hold U.S. aircraft carriers at bay outside their normal operating range."
Opposite Taiwan, China's missile force has reached 1,600. Beijing is also
building rockets, submarines and surface fleets to extend her dominance out to
the third chain of islands, enabling the People's Liberation Army to strike U.S.
carriers and bases as far away as Guam. Since the demise of the blue-water
navy of Russian Adm. Sergei Gorshkov, the Pacific has been an American lake. No
more. China lays claim to all the Paracel and Spratly islands of the South
China Sea, all the Senkakus in the East China Sea, and all the oil and gas
beneath and around those islets and reefs. America's offer to mediate
these claims, which involve half a dozen other anxious Asian nations, has been
rudely rebuffed by Beijing.
At the G20 gathering in Seoul, South
Korea, Barack Obama got an earful from China about the Fed sinking the dollar
and learned that Beijing would not be revaluing its currency to help with our
chronic trade deficits. As China holds a huge share of U.S. debt, Obama is
not about to get sassy with our banker, who might just cut off the credit
America, running a budget deficit of 10 percent of gross domestic product,
desperately needs. Napoleon said of the Middle Kingdom, "Let (China)
sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world." The shaking has begun.
So the question arises: Who put us in this predicament? Who awakened, fed and
nurtured this tiger to where she is growling at all Asia and baring her teeth at
the United States? Answer: the free trade uber alles Republicans.
Richard Nixon opened China. His 1972 Shanghai communique pointed
inexorably to
what Jimmy Carter did in 1979: break
relations and abrogate our security pact with Taiwan, and recognize the People's
Republic as the sole legitimate government of China.
In 1982, the Ronald Reagan White House
signed on to a communique with Deng Xiaoping's China by which we agreed to
reduce and eventually end all arms sales to Taiwan as tensions in the strait
diminished. Under George H.W. Bush, Beijing's crushing of the Tiananmen
Square protest with tanks was not allowed to interfere with business.
Repeatedly, Republicans voted to extend most-favored-nation status to China.
Dissenters were castigated as "isolationists and protectionists." Under
Bush II, the GOP made MFN permanent and sponsored Beijing's entry into the World
Trade Organization, despite China's downing of a U.S. surveillance plane and
incarceration of its American crew on Hainan Island. Colin Powell was forced to
apologize. For decades, corporate America championed investing in China
and trade with China, though the massive transfer of U.S. factories,
technologies and jobs was clearly empowering China and weakening America.
Now, with U.S. political, military,
industrial and strategic decline vis a vis China manifest to the world, we hear
the wails of American businessmen that they are not being treated fairly by the
Chinese. And the politicians responsible for building up China are now talking
tough about confronting and containing China. Sorry, but that cat cannot be
walked back. Review commission chair Dan Slane says his members have
concluded that "China is adopting a highly discriminatory policy of favoring
domestic producers over foreign manufacturers. Under the guise of fostering
'indigenous innovation' ... the government of China appears determined to
exclude foreigners from bidding on government contracts at the central,
provincial and local levels."
Imagine that! The Chinese are ignoring WTO
rules and putting China first. Don't they understand how the Global Economy
works? You're not supposed to tilt the field in favor of the home team.
One knows not whether to laugh or cry. The policy the Chinese are
pursuing, economic nationalism, was virtually invented by the Republican Party.
Protectionism was the declared policy of the GOP from the day its first
president took office in 1861 to the day Calvin Coolidge left in 1929.
Free trade was the policy of a Great Britain whose clocks those
generations of Americans cleaned, even as the Chinese are
cleaning ours. As for a U.S. policy of containment, we have no vital interest in
China's border dispute with India, or Beijing's claims to islands in the South
and East China seas, or in China's claims against Russia dating to the ninth
century. Time for our Asians friends to take responsibility for defending their
own claims. As LBJ said in 1964, "We are not about to send Americans boys 9 or
10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for
themselves." This time, let's mean it.
The day of the globalist has come and gone.
U.S. Tomahawk Missiles Deployed Near
China
Send Message
If
China
's satellites and spies were working properly, there would have been a flood of
unsettling intelligence flowing into the
Beijing
headquarters of the chicom navy last week. A new class of
U.S.
superweapon had suddenly surfaced nearby. It was an Ohio-class
submarine, which for decades carried only nuclear missiles targeted against the
Soviet Union, and then
Russia
. But this one was different: for nearly three years, the U.S. Navy has been
dispatching modified "boomers" to who knows where (they do travel
underwater, after all). Four of the 18 ballistic-missile subs no longer carry
nuclear-tipped Trident missiles. Instead, they hold up to 154 Tomahawk cruise
missiles each, capable of hitting anything within 1,000 miles with non-nuclear
warheads.
Their
capability makes watching these particular submarines especially interesting.
The 14 Trident-carrying subs are useful in the unlikely event of a nuclear
Armageddon, and
Russia
remains their prime target. But the Tomahawk-outfitted quartet carries a weapon
that the
U.S.
military has used repeatedly against targets in
Afghanistan
,
Bosnia
,
Iraq
and
Sudan
.
That's
why alarm bells would have sounded in
Beijing
on June 28 when the Tomahawk-laden 560-ft. U.S.S. Ohio popped up in the
Philippines
'
Subic Bay
. More alarms were likely sounded when the U.S.S. Michigan arrived in
Pusan
,
South Korea
, on the same day. And the Klaxons would have maxed out as the U.S.S. Florida
surfaced, also on the same day, at the joint U.S.-British naval base on Diego
Garcia. In all, the Chinese military awoke to find as many as 462 new Tomahawks
deployed by the
U.S.
in its neighborhood. "There's been a decision to bolster our forces in the
Pacific," says Bonnie Glaser, a
China
expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington
. "There is no doubt that
China
will stand up and take notice."
U.S.
officials deny that any message is being directed at
Beijing
, saying the Tomahawk triple play was a coincidence. But they did make sure that
news of the deployments appeared in the Hong Kong–based
South ChinaMorning Post - on July 4, no less. The Chinese took notice quietly.
"At present, common aspirations of countries in the Asian and pacific
relations are seeking for peace, stability and regional security," Wang
Baodong, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in
Washington
, said on Wednesday. "We hope the relevant
U.S.
military activities will serve for the regional peace, stability and security,
and not the contrary."
Last
month, the Navy announced that all four of the Tomahawk-carrying subs were
operationally deployed away from their home ports for the first time. Each
vessel packs "the firepower of multiple surface ships," says
Captain howard of Submarine Squadron 16 in
Kings Bay
,
Ga.
, and can "respond to diverse threats on short notice."
The
move forms part of a policy by the
U.S.
government to shift firepower from the Atlantic to the Pacific theater, which
Washington
sees as the military focus of the 21st century. Reduced tensions since the end
of the Cold War have seen the
U.S.
scale back its deployment of nuclear weapons, allowing the Navy to reduce its
Trident fleet from 18 to 14. (Why 14 subs, as well as bombers and land-based
missiles carrying nuclear weapons, are still required to deal with the Russian
threat is a topic for another day.)
Sure,
the Navy could have retired the four additional subs and saved the Pentagon some
money, but that's not how bureaucracies operate. Instead, it spent about $4
billion replacing the Tridents with Tomahawks and making room for 60 special-ops
troops to live aboard each sub and operate stealthily around the globe.
"We're there for weeks, we have the situational awareness of being there,
of being part of the environment," Navy Rear Admiral Mark Kenny explained
after the first Tomahawk-carrying former Trident sub set sail in 2008. "We
can detect, classify and locate targets and, if need be, hit them from the same
platform."
The
submarines aren't the only new potential issue of concern for the Chinese. Two
major military exercises involving the
U.S.
and its allies in the region are now under way. More than three dozen naval
ships and subs began participating in the "Rim of the Pacific" war
games off
Hawaii
on Wednesday. Some 20,000 personnel from 14 nations are involved in the
biennial exercise, which includes missile drills and the sinking of three
abandoned vessels playing the role of enemy ships. Nations joining the U.S. in
what is billed as the world's largest-ever naval war game are Australia, Canada,
Chile, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the
Netherlands, Peru, Singapore and Thailand. Closer to
China
, CARAT 2010 - for Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training - just got under
way off
Singapore
. The operation involves 17,000 personnel and 73 ships from the
U.S.
,
Singapore
,
Bangladesh
,
Brunei
,
Cambodia
,
Indonesia
,
Malaysia
, the
Philippines
and
Thailand
.
China
is absent from both exercises, and that's no oversight. Many nations in the
eastern Pacific, including
Australia
,
Japan
,
Indonesia
,
South Korea
and
Vietnam
, have been encouraging the
U.S.
to push back against what they see as
China
's increasingly aggressive actions in the
South China Sea
. And the
U.S.
military remains concerned over
China
's growing missile force - now more than 1,000 - near the
Taiwan Strait
. The Tomahawks' arrival "is part of a larger effort to bolster our
capabilities in the region," Glaser says. "It sends a signal that
nobody should rule out our determination to be the balancer in the region that
many countries there want us to be." No doubt
Beijing
got the signal.
CHINA EXPANSION
Fears of Chinese land grab as Beijing's billions buy up resources. China is
pouring another $7bn into Brazil's oil industry, reigniting fears of a global
"land grab" of natural resources. State-owned Sinopec clinched the deal with
Spain's Repsol yesterday to buy 40 per cent of its Brazilian business, giving
China's largest oil company access to Repsol Brasil's estimated reserves of 1.2
billion barrels of oil and gas. The whopping price tag for Repsol Brasil – which
values the company at nearly twice previous estimates – is a sign of China's
willingness to pay whatever it takes to lock in its future energy supplies and
avoid social unrest. It will give the company enough cash to develop all its
current oil projects, including two fields in the Santos Basin. The Repsol deal
is not China's first in Brazil. In February last year, Sinopec stumped up a
$10bn loan to Petrobras, the state-owned oil company, in return for guaranteed
supplies of 10,000 barrels of oil every day for the next 10 years. It also
follows a slew of similar deals across the world. While much of the developed
world is baulking at its debts in the aftermath of the financial crisis, China
has continued a global spending spree of unprecedented proportions, snapping up
everything from oil and gas reserves to mining concessions to agricultural land,
with vast reserves of US dollars.
This year alone,
Chinese companies have laid out billions of dollars buying up stakes in Canada's
oil sands, a Guinean iron ore mine, oil fields in Angola and Uganda, an
Argentinian oil company and a major Australian coal-bed methane gas company.
"China is rich in people but short of resources, and it wants to have stable
supplies of its own rather than having "Chinese acquisitions are increasingly on
the political radar," said Robin Geffen, the chief executive of Neptune
Investment Management, which runs a leading China investment fund. "The pinch
points come when people feel that supplies affecting national security could be
threatened by China buying them all up." Contrary to the conspiracy theories,
China is not looking for world domination. It has seen economic growth averaging
a massive 10 per cent for the best part of three decades, and although it is
expected to drop into the high single-digits in the coming years – in response
to a dip in export demand – the natural resources required to support even
slightly moderated growth are an overwhelming priority. China is already the
second-largest oil consumer in the world and far outstrips its domestic
supplies. Neptune estimates that it will need to buy two companies the size of
BP each year for the next 12 years to meet its growing domestic energy demand.
Demand for electricity alone is growing each year equivalent to Britain's entire
output. "These are massive, massive numbers," Mr Geffen said. "The deal with
Repsol today, and all the others we have seen in recent years, are wholly
strategic, to nail down what they estimate future demand will be." But, despite
the concerns that China is cornering the market and will push up prices, the
developed world also has a vested interest in China pursuing a successful
strategy.
Notwithstanding qualms
about a change in the global balance of power, China's continued economic growth
has been vital to hauling the world out of recession – and will continue to do
so for the foreseeable future. The threat from political instability if Chinese
growth stalls has similarly global implications. "The whole world needs China to
have these resources to help pull us out of recession and avoid local unrest,"
said Ian Sperling-Tyler, a partner and oil and gas expert at the consultancy
Deloitte. But concerns remain about China's involvement in politically difficult
countries, particularly in Africa. China is not squeamish about the politics of
its business partners. It follows a simple formula, offering premium prices and
massive infrastructure investments in return for long-term concessions for key
resources. There are several well-documented deals on the continent – including
a recent $2.5bn tie-up with Britain's Tullow Oil in Uganda and off-shore
production in Angola and Nigeria. And the positive impact is evident in spanking
new infrastructure including hospitals, ports, and road and rail links being
built with the influx of Chinese money. But China is also involved in some of
Africa's more controversial countries. It came in for widespread criticism in
2008 for arms sales to war-torn Sudan, a major trade partner, and its alleged
refusal to help resolve the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. It has also been
accused of paying multimillion-dollar backhanders in return for African leaders
repudiating Taiwan at the UN, although nothing has ever been proved. And because
the majority of the deals are done on a government-to-government basis, there is
no way to be clear on the extent of the relationships.
CHINA
SENDS AMERICANS TO PRISON FOR SPYING
A
U.S. geologist was sentenced to eight years in prison by a Chinese court after
being convicted of violating the state secrets law by selling a database on the
country’s oil industry. The U.S. said it was “dismayed” by the sentence
given to Xue
Feng and
remains concerned about his rights to due process under Chinese law. Xue was
also fined 200,000 yuan ($29,550) today by a Beijing court at a hearing that was
attended by U.S. Ambassador to China Jon
Huntsman,
Richard Buangan, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy said. Calls to Beijing No. 1
Intermediate People’s Court and the Foreign Ministry weren’t answered today.
The case highlights China’s use of the law to protect economic information,
three months after the jailing of four Rio Tinto Group executives strained
relations with Australia. Groups including the U.S.-China Business Council have
criticized China’s definition of state secrets as too broad and say lack of
transparency is hurting the confidence of foreign investors. “These cases
definitely make international companies worried,” said Nicolas
Groffman, a
Beijing-based partner at Australian law firm Mallesons Stephen Jaques. China in
April passed legal changes aimed at making people, companies and organizations
more responsible for protecting state secrets, according to amendments approved
by legislators at the time. State Secrets=State secrets include information that
may damage the nation in fields ranging from defense and diplomacy to
“national, economic and development projects” and technology. The government
also has the power to label anything else a state secret, according to the
amendments passed in April.
Three
Chinese nationals were sentenced with Xue today. Li Yongbo, a manager at Beijing
Licheng Zhongyou Oil Technology Development Co., was sentenced to eight years
and fined 200,000 yuan, AP reported, citing Xue’s lawyer Tong Wei. Chen
Mengjin and Li Dongxu, who worked at a research institute affiliated with
PetroChina Co., were each given 2 1/2 year sentences and fined 50,000 yuan,
according to AP. Former Rio Tinto executive Hu, an Australian citizen, was
detained in July 2009 with three colleagues. They were initially accused of
stealing state secrets, with the accusations later reduced to bribery and
infringing commercial secrets. ‘Weapon of Retaliation’=“These kinds of
cases have been linked to international politics as a weapon of retaliation in
the Chinese government’s arsenal,” Hank
Wang, a
Beijing-based lawyer at Garvey
Schubert Barer
and co-chairman of the legal committee at the American Chamber of Commerce in
the People’s Republic of China, said in an e-mail. “As the U.S. and China
have reopened talks on human rights issues, this should be included in the
agenda.”
China
“missed an opportunity” to be transparent and give companies more confidence
when the government decided to hold Hu’s and his colleagues’ hearings in
secret, then Australian Prime Minister Kevin
Rudd said in
March.China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang rejected Rudd’s criticism
and said Australia should respect the result of the process and “stop such
irresponsible remarks.” The database that Xue arranged to sell contained
detailed information on the state of the Chinese oil industry, AP reported.
China’s three biggest oil companies are all state- owned. China, the world’s
fastest-growing major economy, has been dipping into $2.4 trillion of foreign
currency reserves to buy stakes in oil and natural-gas fields and has spent at
least $21 billion on overseas resources in the past year. China Petrochemical
Corp. bought a stake in a Canadian oil sands project for $4.65 billion in April.
Since his detention, Xue has appeared three times in court before today’s
hearing, AP reported. The court also repeatedly postponed sentencing, according
to the report.
CHICOMHACKERS
Urgent
warnings have been circulated throughout Nato and the European Union for secret
intelligence material to be protected from a recent surge in cyber war attacks
originating in
China
.
The attacks have also hit government and military institutions in the
United States
, where analysts said that the West had no effective response and that EU
systems were especially vulnerable because most cyber security efforts were left
to member states.
Nato diplomatic sources told The Times: “Everyone has been made aware
that the Chinese have become very active with cyber-attacks and we’re now
getting regular warnings from the office for internal security.” The sources
said that the number of attacks had increased significantly over the past 12
months, with
China
among the most active players.
In the
US
, an official report released on Friday said the number of attacks on Congress
and other government agencies had risen exponentially in the past year to an
estimated 1.6 billion every month.
The Chinese cyber-penetration of key offices in both Nato and the EU has led to
restrictions in the normal flow of intelligence because there are concerns that
secret intelligence reports might be vulnerable.
Sources at the Office for Cyber Security at the Cabinet Office in London, set
up last year, said there were two forms of attack: those focusing on disrupting
computer systems and others involving “fishing trips” for sensitive
information.
A special team has been set up at GCHQ, the government
communications headquarters in Gloucestershire, to counter the growing
cyber-threat affecting intelligence material. The team becomes operational this
month.
British and American cyber defenses are among the most sophisticated in the
world, but “the EU is less competent”, James Lewis, of the Centre for
Strategic and International Studies, said. “The porousness of the European
institutions makes them a good target for penetration. They are of interest to
the Chinese on issues from arms sales and nuclear non-proliferation to
Tibet
and energy.”
The lack of routine intelligence sharing between the
US
and the EU also contributes to the vulnerability of European systems, another
analyst said. “Because of
Britain
’s intelligence-sharing relationship with
America
our systems have to be up to their standards in a way that some of the European
systems don’t,” he explained.
Jonathan Evans, Director-General of MI5, warned in 2007 that several states
were actively involved in large-scale cyber-attacks. Although he did not specify
which states were involved, security officials have indicated that
China
now poses the gravest threat.
Beijing
has denied making such attacks.
Robert
Mueller, FBI Director, has warned that, in addition to the danger of foreign
states making cyber-attacks, al-Qaeda could in the future pose a similar threat.
In a speech to a security conference last week, Mr. Mueller said terrorist groups
had used the internet to recruit members and to plan attacks, but added:
“Terrorists have \ shown a clear interest in pursuing hacking skills and they
will either train their own recruits or hire outsiders with an eye towards
combining physical attacks with cyber-attacks.”
He said that a cyber-attack could have the same impact as a “well-placed
bomb”. Mr. Mueller also accused “nation-state hackers” of seeking out US
technology, intelligence, intellectual property and even military weapons and strategies. To
help to fight the growing threat, the Office of Cyber Security,
set up last year as part of the Government’s national security strategy,
liaises with America’s so-called cyber czar, Howard Schmidt, who was appointed
by President Obama to protect sensitive government computers.
British officials said that everyone in sensitive jobs had been warned to be
especially cautious about disseminating intelligence and other classified
information. Whether British intelligence is involved in retaliatory attacks is
never confirmed. However, officials said that there was a significant difference
between being part of an information war and indulging in aggressive attacks to
disrupt another country’s computer systems. Dr
Lewis said that neither the
US
nor any of its Western allies had formed an effective response to the Chinese
threat, which has its origins in a massive boost to Chinese technology ordered
by Deng Xiaoping, the late Chinese leader, in 1986. The West’s own cyber
offensives have so far been directed largely at terrorists rather than nation
states, giving
China
virtually free rein to penetrate Western systems with its own world-class
hackers and increasingly popular Chinese-made components. “You almost have to
admire them,” Dr Lewis said. “They have been very consistent in their goals.
yahoos
Chinese partner issued a scathing criticism of the
US
technology company at the weekend, calling it “reckless” for publicly
supporting Google's threat to quit the country in protest over a wave of Chinese
cyber attacks.
Alibaba Group, in which Yahoo holds a 40 per cent stake, said it had
“communicated to Yahoo that Yahoo’s statement that it is ‘aligned’ with
the position Google took last week was reckless given the lack of facts in
evidence. Alibaba doesn’t share this view”.
Yahoo had no immediate response.
Yahoo and Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, have clashed repeatedly, with Yahoo
upset that Alibaba has allowed Yahoo
China
to play a smaller part inside the group while its share of the Chinese search
engine market dwindles. Alibaba has moved its online classified business from
Yahoo
China
to Taobao, a rival internal property. Google said that it was no longer willing to censor search results as required
by the Chinese government has turned the spotlight on other western technology
companies such as Yahoo and Microsoft that do business in the world’s largest
internet market by user numbers.
So far no other company has followed Google’s lead in threatening to pull out
of the country or refusing to comply with Chinese censorship regulations.
Yahoo is believed to have also been targeted in the cyber attacks that Google
says prompted its public challenge to
Beijing
and last week it issued a statement supporting Google’s position.
“We condemn any attempts to infiltrate company networks to obtain user
information,” Yahoo said. “We stand aligned that these kinds of attacks are
deeply disturbing and strongly believe that the violation of user privacy is
something that we as internet pioneers must all oppose.”
Alibaba is
China
’s largest e-commerce company and represents Yahoo’s only real presence in
the country after the
US
company turned over its Chinese operations and paid $1bn for a 40 per cent
stake in Alibaba in 2005.
Yahoo is a passive investor with only one representative on Alibaba’s board
of directors and no management responsibility or oversight at the company,
according to Alibaba.
The decision to outsource its
China
business came after Yahoo was heavily criticized by human rights groups and
western governments for handing over e-mail messages to the Chinese government
which were used to jail human rights activists and political dissidents.
At the time, Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, said he was willing to hand over any
information requested by the Chinese government and that the company always
complied with Chinese laws and regulations.
Google’s
clash with Chinais
about much more than the fate of a single, powerful firm. The company’s
decision to pull out of china, unless the government there changes its policies
on censorship, is a harbinger of increasingly stormy relations between the
US
and
China
.The
reason that the Googlecase is so significant is because it suggests that the assumptions on
which
US
policy to
China
have been based since the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 could be plain wrong. The
US
has accepted – even welcomed –
China
’s emergence as a giant economic power because American policymakers
convinced themselves that economic opening would lead to political
liberalization in
China
.Read the FT’s international affairs columnist’s authoritative and lively
commentary throughout the week If that assumption changes, American policy
towards china could change with it. Welcoming the rise of a giant Asian economy
that is also turning into a liberal democracy is one thing. Sponsoring the rise
of a Leninist one-party state, that is
America
’s only plausible geopolitical rival is a different proposition. Combine this
political disillusionment with double-digit unemployment in the
US
that is widely blamed on Chinese currency manipulation and you have the formula
for an anti-China backlash. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush firmly
believed that free trade and, in particular, the information age would make
political change in
China
irresistible. On a visit to
China
in 1998, Mr. Clinton proclaimed: “In this global information age, when
economic success is built on ideas, personal freedom is essential to the
greatness of any nation.” A year later, Mr. Bush made a similar point:
“Economic freedom creates habits of liberty. And habits of liberty create
expectations of democracy ... Trade freely with the Chinese and time is on our
side.”
The
two presidents were reflecting the conventional wisdom among
America
’s most influential pundits. Tom Friedman, New York Times columnist and
author of best-selling books on globalization, once proclaimed bluntly: “
China
’s going to have a free press. Globalization will drive it.” Robert Wright,
one of Mr. Clinton’s favorite thinkers, argued that if
China
chose to block free access to the internet, “the price would be dismal
economic failure". So far, the facts are refusing to conform to the theory.
China
has continued to censor new and old media, but this has hardly condemned it to
“dismal economic failure”. On the contrary,
China
is now the world’s second largest economy and its largest exporter, with
foreign reserves above $2,000bn. But all this economic growth shows little sign
of provoking the political changes anticipated by Bush and Clinton. If anything,
the Chinese government seems to be getting more repressive, liu xiao a leading
Chinese dissident, was recently sentenced to 11 years in prison for his
involvement in the Charter 08 movement that advocates democratic reforms. Google's
decision to confront the Chinese government is an early sign
that the Americans are getting fed up with dealing with Chinese
authoritarianism. But the biggest pressures are likely to come from politicians
rather than businessmen. Google is an unusual company in an unusually
politicized industry. If the Google’s do indeed head for the exits in
China
, they are unlikely to be crushed by a stampede of other multinationals rushing
to follow them. To most big companies the country’s market is too large and
tempting to ignore. Despite Google,
US
business is likely to remain the lobby that argues hardest for continuing
engagement with
China
.
The
pressures for disengagement will come from labor activists, security hawks and
politicians – particularly in Congress. To date, the Osama administration has
based its policy firmly on the assumptions that have governed
America
’s approach to
China
for a generation. The president’s recent set-piece speech on Asia was a
classic statement of the case for
US
engagement with
China
– complete with the ritualistic assertion that
America
welcomes
China
’s rise. But, after being censored by Chinese television in
Shanghai
and harangued by a junior Chinese official at the
Copenhagen
climate talks, Barrack Osama may be feeling less warm towards
Beijing
. An early sign that the White House is hardening its policy could come in the
next few months, with an official decision to label
China
a “currency manipulator". Even if the administration itself does not move,
the voices calling for harder line on china are likely to get louder in
Congress. Google’s decision to highlight the dangers of cyber attack from
China
will play to growing American security fears about
China
. The development of Chinese missile systems that threaten
US
naval dominance in the Pacific are also causing concern in
Washington
. Impending
US
arms sales to
Taiwan
are already provoking a dispute. Meanwhile, protectionism seems to be becoming
intellectually respectable in the
US
in ways that should worry
China
.A trade war between
America
and
China
is hardly to be welcomed. It could tip the world back into recession and inject
dangerous new tensions into international politics. If it happens, both sides
will share the blame. The
US
has been almost willfully naive about the connections between free trade and
democracy. The Chinese have been provocative over currency and human rights. If
they want to head off a damaging clash with
America
, changes in policy would be well advised.
(CHINA
HACKER SOLUTION)
BEIJING
- China’s Ministry of Health has banned the use of physical punishment
to wean teens off the net, months after a boy was beaten to death at an Internet
boot camp.Chinese parents have turned to more than 200 organizations offering
treatment for Internet “disorders” as the government increasingly warns of
unhealthy Internet habits among the young. Many of the camps are imbued with a
military atmosphere. Patients are forced to replace hours in front of the
computer with arduous physical drills or even more extreme “treatments"." When
intervening to prevent improper use of the Internet, we should ... strictly
prohibit restriction of personal freedom and physical punishments,” the
ministry said in a draft guideline for Internet use by minors, posted on its
website. It appeared to have dropped the term “Internet addiction”, widely
used in earlier ministry documents, perhaps in a bid to calm worried parents who
fuelled a mushrooming business of harsh camps to prevent teens from spending
hours online. The death of 15-year-old Deng Senshan, just hours after he checked
into an Internet boot camp in the southwestern Guangxi region in early August,
caused a media storm in
China
.Days later another teenager, Pu Liang, was taken to hospital with water in the
lungs and kidney failure after a similar attack in
Sichuan
Province
.The government in July had already banned electro-shock therapy as a treatment
for Internet addiction, after media reports about a controversial psychiatrist
who administered electric currents to nearly 3,000 teenagers. The latest
guidelines suggest officials in
Beijing
do not think that those with unhealthy Internet habits should be forced offline
permanently." The goal of intervention is ... to urge the target people to use
the Internet in a healthy way,” the guideline said. “It’s not to stop them
from using the Internet.”
Fourteen
young detainees overcame their guard and fled a boot camp regime of physical
training and psychological treatment designed to cure their addiction — to the
internet.The
group, aged 15 to 22, staged their mass breakout by grabbing a duty supervisor
when he was in bed and immobilising him in his quilt.He
shouted for help and they apologised before tying him up. They then made their
way in groups of three to the home town of the leader of the group.The
addicts made their break from the Huai’an Internet Addiction Treatment Centre
in eastern Jiangsu province last Wednesday, complaining that they could no
longer endure its “monotonous work and intensive training”.It
is the latest incident to highlight the sometimes brutal techniques employed at
camps across China to wean young people off the internet. A 15-year-old boy was
beaten to death last year days after he was admitted to a camp. Last month a
court sentenced two instructors to up to ten years in jail for the incident.The
China Youth Association for Network Development estimates that about 24 million
Chinese adolescents are addicted to the internet, many to gaming sites.For
the recent escapees freedom proved short lived. A taxi driver alerted police
after the young men were unable to pay the fare.
There
was little sympathy from their exasperated parents either, who had paid 18,000
yuan (£1,830) for their children to receive six months’ treatment at the
camp.Most
insisted that their children should go back to the camp at once and since the
breakout all but one have been returned.One
mother wept at the police station when she described how her son once spent 28
consecutive hours playing online games. A camp official justified the methods
used to cure the addiction, saying: “We have to use military style methods
such as total immersion and physical training on these young people. We need to
teach them some discipline and help them to establish a regular lifestyle.”The
camp requires its “inmates” to be up at 5am and in bed at 9.30pm. During the
day they must undergo two hours of physical drills, as well as courses in
calligraphy, traditional Chinese philosophy and receive counselling.Yang
Guihua, the mother of the youth who orchestrated the escape, said that her son
must return and defended the treatment. She said: “I don’t think there is
any problem with the training methods at the centre. They are for my child’s
own good.”? China underscored its commitment to keeping a tight grip on the
internet yesterday, vowing in a new White Paper to block anything deemed
subversive or a threat to national unity.It said that it wanted to boost
internet usage to 45 per cent of the population in the next five years but gave
no indication that it would ease the Great Firewall, which blocks websites such
as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
Chinese
micro-blogging sites have become the latest target of Beijing’s internet
police, which have ordered companies providing Twitter-like services to step up
monitoring and purge sites of politically “sensitive” words and expressions.In
the last week, most of the largest and most popular micro-blogging websites in
China have been shut down for “maintenance” or have switched to “beta”
or “testing” versions.These
backup websites are being used while the companies “strengthen their
self-censorship systems” and remove all politically sensitive content under
orders from Chinese internet authorities, according to employees at some of
those companies.The
micro-blogging site run by the popular Chinese portal netease shut down ,
replaced with a notice saying the site had been “under maintenance” since
7pm on Tuesday.The
Twitter-like service provided by leading internet portal soho shut down for
“maintenance” over the entire weekend but reopened on Monday morning.Other
companies that have switched to “beta” or “testing” versions of their
micro-blogging sites include Sina, which claims to have 20m registered micro-bloggers,
as well as Tencent, QQ and even the micro-blog site of the People’s Daily
website, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party.
Popular
US micro-blog and social networking sites including Twitter, Facebook and
Youtube are all banned by thr chicoms, but domestic imitators have been allowed
to flourish, provided they observe the government’s stringent self-censorship
requirements.“In
some places the local Public Security Bureaus have started their own official
micro-blogs which shows how the government understands the importance of this
new communication channel,” according to Hu Yong, associate professor of
journalism and communications at Peking University. “The government is
strengthening its censorship over micro-blog contents but it’s very unlikely
it will close them all down.”The
chicom bloggers tightly controlled media environment has been highlighted by a
case in recent days in which a popular crusading micro-blogger raised serious
questions about the integrity of one of China’s most prominent business
executives.Tang
Jun, a former President of Microsoft China and reportedly the highest-paid
executive in China, was forced to admit he did not receive a degree from the
prestigious California Institute of Technology after accusations he falsified
his resume were posted by micro-blogger Fang Zhouzi, known for his online
campaigns against academic plagiarism and fraud in China.
The
case has pissed off chicom webnerd anti mao mao communist hackers on the Chinese
internet and forced Mr Tang to reveal his “doctorate” came from an
unaccredited US institution that recently changed its name after it was accused
by US media of being a “diploma mill” that does not provide any actual
classes.Propaganda
authorities have since clamped down on reporting of the case after some Chinese
media published lists of other prominent Chinese figures who received degrees
from similar institutions, including government officials, executives and
judges.
CHINA
AND INDIA GRAB GOLD
Stephen
Jen from the hedge fund Blue Gold Capital has a warning for those who think that
gold has risen far too high, is necessarily in a speculative bubble, and must
soon come clattering back down. Mr. Jen is an expert on sovereign wealth funds
from his days at Morgan Stanley. The gold story — essentially — is that the
rising economic powers of Asia, the
Middle East
, and the commodity bloc are rejecting Western fiat currencies.
China
,
India
, and
Russia
have all been buying gold on a large scale over recent months. Why should that
stop when the AAA club of sovereign debtors is pushing towards the danger
threshold of 100pc of GDP? These new players account for almost all the
accumulation of foreign currency reserves worldwide over the last five years, so
what they do matters enormously. After crunching the numbers, Mr. Jen found that
the share of gold in their reserves is just 2.2pc compared to 38pc for the
Old World
(perhaps we should just call them the deadbeats from now on). They would have
to buy $115bn of gold at current prices to raise their bullion to just 5pc of
total reserves, and $700bn to reach just half western levels. The killer-term
here is at current prices since any such move in the tiny global market for gold
would send prices into the stratosphere. Mr. Jen says that you know where you are
in the currency markets — more or less — because there are concepts of
“fair value” used by experts. Ditto for the equity markets, where you have
P/E ratios (warts and all I might add, since the actual reported P/E of the
S&P 500 was a record 141 in September before the agency stopped publishing
the figure — a far cry from the forward earnings in vogue). How on earth do we
determine what fair value should be for gold? “We have no such concept,” he
said. Actually, that is not quite true. You can use the dollar monetary base as
a proxy .Mr. Jen said
China
alone accumulated $150bn in reserves in the third quarter, pushing the total to
$2.3 trillion. These are colossal sums.
China
is amassing almost as much each month as the
United States
($63bn) has built up in the entire history of the country. True, the
US
understates the value of its gold, but you get the picture. Something big is
going on.
So far,
China
has just 1.7pc of its reserves in gold, or 34m troy ounces. I was told by a top
Chinese official that they are "buying on the dips" so as not to crowd out the market, which means of
course that gold cannot “crash” unless you think China itself is going to
crash — or stop building reserves (which is possible: Albert Edwards from
SocGen says China may be in current account deficit next year, leading to a Yuan
move — down, not up). The gold proportions are: Hong Kong (0),
Singapore
(0),
Korea
(0.2),
Brazil
(0.6),
India
(4.8) after its shock purchase of IMF gold, and
Russia
(5.5). Yes, the West still has a lot in percentage terms — US (86), France
(78), Italy (72), Switzerland (33), Germany (25) — but they don’t count for
so much any more. It is true that the
Old World
could meet demand for a while (a short while actually) by selling some of their
gold. But will they do so? They did not use up their quota for the last year
under the
Washington
accord. My own guess is that they too are wondering whether it makes any sense
to keep selling metal in order to buy the fiat paper of the bankrupt peers (note
that the Bank of England’s own pension fund has got rid of almost all its
Gilts, buying inflation protection instead).
Britain
may become a net buyer of gold under the Tories, Who knows?
Bottom line:
“The scope for EM central banks to buy more gold is substantial, if they
choose to do so,” he wrote cautiously in a note to clients. Will they choose to
do so?" I suspect they will,” he told me. Personally, I have been feeling
vertigo with gold near $1180. All my contrarian instincts cause me to
dislike momentum stories — but there again, maybe this is not momentum.
Perhaps it is a civilization shift. Can’t make up my mind.
CHICOM
OBJECTIVE
BEIJING
China
should build the world's strongest military and move swiftly to topple the
United States as the global "champion," a senior Chinese PLA officer
says in a new book reflecting swelling nationalist ambitions.The
call for China to abandon modesty about its global goals and "sprint to
become world number one" comes from a People's Liberation Army (PLA) Senior
Colonel, Liu Mingfu, who warns that his nation's ascent will alarm Washington,
risking war despite Beijing's hopes for a "peaceful rise."
"China's big goal in the 21st century is to become world number one, the
top power," Liu writes in his newly published Chinese-language book,
"The China Dream."
"If China in the 21st century cannot become world number one, cannot become
the top power, then inevitably it will become a straggler that is cast
aside," writes Liu, a professor at the elite National Defense University,
which trains rising officers.
His 303-page book stands out for its boldness even in a recent chorus of
strident Chinese voices demanding a hard shove back against Washington over
trade, Tibet, human rights, and arms sales to Taiwan, the self-ruled island
Beijing claims as its own.
"As long as China seeks to rise to become world number one ... then even if
China is even more capitalist than the U.S., the U.S. will still be determined
to contain it," writes Liu.
Rivalry between the two powers is a "competition to be the leading country,
a conflict over who rises and falls to dominate the world," says Liu.
"To save itself, to save the world, China must prepare to become the
(world's) helmsman."
"The
China Dream" does not represent government policy, which has been far less
strident about the nation's goals.
Liu's book testifies to the homegrown pressures on China's Communist Party
leadership to show the country's fast economic growth is translating into
greater sway against the West, still mired in an economic slowdown.
The next marker of how China's leaders are handling these swelling expectations
may come later this week, when the government is likely to announce its defense
budget for 2010, after a 14.9 percent rise last year on the one in 2008.
"This book represents my personal views, but I think it also reflects a
tide of thought," Liu told Reuters in an interview. "We need a
military rise as well as an economic rise."
Another PLA officer has said this year's defense budget should send a defiant
signal to Washington after the Obama administration went ahead in January with
long-known plans to sell $6.4 billion worth of arms to Taiwan.
"I think one part of 'public opinion' that the leadership pays attention to
is elite opinion, and that includes the PLA," said Alan Romberg, an expert
on China and Taiwan at the Henry L. Stimson Center, an institute in Washington
D.C.
"I think the authorities are seeking to keep control of the reaction, even
as they need to take (it) into account," Romberg said in an emailed
response to questions.
Liu
argues that China should use its growing revenues to become the world's biggest
military power, so strong the United States "would not dare and would not
be able to intervene in military conflict in the Taiwan Strait."
"If China's goal for military strength is not to pass the United States and
Russia, then China is locking itself into being a third-rate military
power," he writes. "Turn some money bags into bullet holders."
China's leaders do not want to jeopardize ties with the United States, a key
trade partner and still by far the world's biggest economy and military power.
Yet Chinese public ire, echoed on the Internet, means policy-makers have to
tread more carefully when handling rival domestic and foreign demands, said Jin
Canrong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.
"Chinese society is changing, and you see that in all the domestic views
now on what China should do about the United States," said Jin. "If
society demands a stronger stance, ignoring that can bring a certain cost."
Liu's book was officially published in January, but is only now being sold in
Beijing bookstores.
In
recent months, strains have widened between Beijing and Washington over trade,
Internet controls, climate change, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and President
Barack Obama's meeting with Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, who China
reviles.
China has so far responded with angry words and a threat to sanction U.S.
companies involved in the Taiwan arms sales. But it has not acted on that threat
and has allowed a U.S. aircraft carrier to visit Hong Kong.
Over the weekend, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said he wanted trade friction with
the United States to ease. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg is due
to visit Beijing this week.
Liu and other PLA officers, however, say they see little chance of avoiding
deepening rivalry with the United States, whether peaceful or warlike.
"I'm very pessimistic about the future," writes another PLA officer,
Colonel Dai Xu, in another recently published book that claims China is largely
surrounded by hostile or wary countries beholden to the United States.
"I believe that China cannot escape the calamity of war, and this calamity
may come in the not-too-distant future, at most in 10 to 20 years," writes
Dai.
"If the United States can light a fire in China's backyard, we can also
light a fire in their backyard," warns Dai.
Liu said he hoped China and the United States could manage their rivalry through
peaceful competition.
"In his State of the Union speech, Obama said the United States would never
accept coming second-place, but if he reads my book he'll know China does not
want to always be a runner-up," said Liu in the interview.
CHICOM'S
MISSION
May
11th, 2009 The Chinese “String of Pearls” strategy around
India
appears to be have broken. By definition, the “String of Pearls” describes
the manifestation of China’s rising geopolitical influence through efforts to
increase access to ports and airfields, develop special diplomatic
relationships, and modernize military forces that extend from the South China
Sea through the Strait of Malacca, across the Indian Ocean, and on to the
Arabian Gulf (USAF Lieutenant Colonel Christopher J. Pehrson, “string of
Pearls: meeting the challenge of china’s rising Power across the asian
littoral” July 2006, Strategic Studies Institute, United States Army War College). Around
India
, the Chinese pearls include
Myanmar
,
Bangladesh
,
Nepal
,
Sri Lanka
,
Maldives
,
Mauritius
,
Seychelles
and
Pakistan
.Currently there might be no comprehensive policy by the current Indian
government to contain it, but, a mix of luck, some policy, some internal and
external events seem to have worked in favor of
India
.Myanmar(
Burma
):
Sittwe
Port
,
Coco Island
,
Burma
Hianggyi, Khaukphyu, Mergui and Zadetkyi are the main names associated with
Chinese interest in
Myanmar
.
India
shares a border of more than 1,600 kms with
Myanmar
.
Myanmar
also serves as a gateway to South East Asia and ASEAN and is supposed to be the
Eastern Flank to the
Bay of Bengal
.“Look East” policy by former Indian Prime minister, Father of Modern
India, Hon. PV Narasimha Rao, had brought
Myanmar
in Indian sights. Subsequently,
India
had toned down its criticism of the junta, supplied
Myanmar
with military spares, joint action on rebels in each others borders and offered
economic co-operation. Vice Senior General Maung Aye visited
India
from 2 to
6 April 2008
. During his visit, The Kaladan Muti Model Transit Transport Project agreement
was signed which saw
India
gaining access to Sittwe.
India
also signed Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement with
Myanmar
.
India
and
Myanmar
are engaged in various sectors like cross-border developmental projects, trade,
IT, Telecommunication, hydrocarbon etc. Myanmar
does not lean towards
China
or
India
. It makes best of the competition between
China
and
India
which are competing for
Myanmar
’s resources. Bangladesh
:
Bangladesh
currently has an
India
friendly government and army. Before this
Bangladesh
had an anti-Indian government and Army.
China
had taken full advantage of it. Nepal
:
China
and
India
are currently locked under a tussle over
Nepal
.
China
can do little but has increased considerable influence with the Nepali Maoist.
India
is not expected to loose its clout in
Nepal
.Sri Lanka: This is another area where
China
is trying to influence. Hambantota port is being developed by
China
and
China
is a supplier of military wares to
Sri Lanka
. Indian influence in
Sri lanka
is not expected to be lost. Maldives
,
Mauritius
and
Seychelles
: china is trying, but, it is not successful in getting ports or bases
in these countries due to Indian objections. Pakistan
:
Pakistan
is currently involved in counter insurgency in its own country and has a very
heavy US influence.
Pakistan
proxy is not currently available to
China
due to
US
influence. Gwadar port, which was built with Chinese assistance is under the
management of
Singapore
based company. Chinese have not been able to complete central Asia - Gwadar
link due to
US
influence and Indian friendly government in
Afghanistan
.There are two more countries that are within the Chinese String of Pearls
strategy, i.e,
Thailand
and
Cambodia
.
Thailand
has a proximity with Indian Andaman and
Nicobar
Island
.
India
needs to work on relations with
Thailand
.
Cambodia
is currently of less direct significance to
India
.For china, the fight for dominance over these regions is not yet over as it
needs to secure its energy and trade route with Middle East and
Africa
.
India
needs a strategy to keep these gains and discourage Chinese dominance within
Indian Ocean
.
CHICOM
STAR WARS
BEIJING-China’s air force chief has called
military competition in space “inevitable”, a departure from
Beijing
’s past insistence that it is not pursuing space programmes for military
purposes.The
remarks by General Xu Qiliang, head of the People’s Liberation Army air force,
published in several state media, are a reminder of another area of potential
future rivalry between the US and China. In addition, they indicate increased
competition within
China
's military.
“Competition between military forces is developing towards the sky and space,
it is extending beyond the atmosphere and even into outer space. This
development is a historical inevitability and cannot be undone,” said Gen Xu according
to Xinhua, the official news agency.
“The militarization of the sky and space is a challenge to the peace of
mankind. In the face of this challenge, you don’t have a voice unless you have
power. Only if you have strong power can you protect and safeguard peace,” Gen
Xu was quoted as saying.
“As the air force of a peace-loving country, [we] must forge a sword and a
shield capable of winning peace.”
Gen Xu also said the PLA air force would refocus from defense of national
territory to a partly offensive stance, a phrase first heard from
China
’s defense minister in August.As
US military experts have long warned of China’s growing military capabilities,
the remarks are certain to be read in Washington as a clear expression of
Beijing’s ambitions to counter US power in space.
In
the past,
China
has demanded an international ban on the use of space for military purposes but
failed to gain
US
support. In 2007, Beijing
alarmed military observers in the US by shooting down one of its own satellites
– a move seen as proof that
China
could theoretically target enemy satellites and thus already possesses the
capability for space warfare.Chinese
military experts fiercely denied that the country might be planning to build
weapons in space.
“[Gen Xu] just characterized the source of a threat and stated a
technological outlook,” said Wang Xiangsui at
Beihang
University
. But he added: “Of course, all satellites, military or private, have a
certain military background.”
Some security experts believe
Beijing
is playing down the air force chief’s comments because he was not so much
expressing a strategic shift as lobbying for more funds in competition with the
PLA navy.
The timing and style of Gen Xu’s message resembled similar comments by
China
’s navy chief this year. They come a week ahead of the 60th anniversary of
the PLA air force.In
April, a week before the PLA navy celebrated its 60th anniversary, Admiral
Wu Shengli, its commander-in-chief, announced
through state media that the service would develop a new generation of warships.
The remarks were seen as confirmation of plans for an aircraft carrier but
China
has not clarified its stance since then.
CHINA-NORTH
KOREA AXIS-CHICOM NORTH COMMAND
SEOUL-South
Korea - North Korea claimed Tuesday that it has successfully weaponized
more plutonium for atomic bombs, a day after warning Washington to agree quickly
to direct talks or face the prospect of a growing North Korean nuclear arsenal.
The announcement underlined
Pyongyang
's impatience over securing one-on-one talks with
Washington
, as well as the difficulties in dealing with a regime that resorts to threats
and provocations to get what it wants. Pyongyang
's official Korean Central News Agency said
North Korea
had finished reprocessing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, which experts say
would provide enough weapons-grade plutonium for at least one more nuclear bomb.
The claim may not mean much, since
North Korea
is believed to already have enough weaponized plutonium for half a dozen
nuclear weapons. But the timing—a day after
Pyongyang
warned it would beef up its nuclear arsenal if the
U.S.
refused to agree on bilateral talks—shows the communist regime is flexing its
atomic might to push
Washington
to act, analysts said.
"
North Korea
is trying to show off its nuclear might as a way to pressure the United States
to agree to the talks," said Kim Yong-hyun, a
North Korea
expert at
Seoul
's Dongguk University
.
The U.S. Embassy in
Seoul
said it had no comment.
North Korea
has long sought direct nuclear negotiations with the
U.S.
, believing that it is the easiest, fastest and surefire way of ensuring the
survival of the totalitarian regime and win economic concessions to rebuild its
moribund economy.
On Monday,
North Korea
's Foreign Ministry warned that "if the
U.S.
is not ready to sit at a negotiating table with the (North), it will go its own
way," an apparent threat to bolster its nuclear arsenal.
Pyongyang
has claimed it needs atomic weapons to defend itself against the
U.S.
, which fought against the North during the Korean War of the 1950s and has
28,500 troops stationed in
South Korea
to protect the ally.
The
U.S.
says it has no intention of attacking the North.
But the North said Tuesday that it remains "compelled to take measures to
bolster its deterrent for self-defense to cope with the increasing nuclear
threat and military provocations of the hostile forces."
KCNA reported "noticeable successes" in weaponizing plutonium.
Washington
has said it is willing to meet one-on-one with the North if the talks lead to
the resumption of six-nation negotiations involving
China
,
Japan
, the two
Koreas
,
Russia
and the
U.S.
However, discussions between a North Korean envoy and a
U.S.
official last week did not yield an agreement to hold talks, both sides said.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Monday that Sung Kim, the
chief
U.S.
nuclear negotiator, recently had useful discussions with Ri Gun,
North Korea
's No. 2 official for nuclear talks. He said the
U.S.
is still considering
North Korea
's offer.
North Korea
agreed in 2007 to disable its main nuclear facility in Yongbyon—a step toward
its ultimate dismantlement—in exchange for much-needed energy aid and
political concessions. However,
Pyongyang
halted that process more than a year ago and later abandoned the pact amid
international censure for a series of nuclear and missile tests.
North Korean officials restarted the nuclear facilities in April in retaliation
for a U.N. rebuke of a rocket launch widely criticized as an illicit test of its
long-range missile technology. The country also kicked out international nuclear
monitors.
The North then conducted its second-ever nuclear test in May and later launched
a series of banned ballistic missile tests, prompting the U.N. Security Council
to toughen sanctions against the regime.
In September,
North Korea
said it was in the final stage of reprocessing spent fuel rods, and claimed it
had succeeded in enriching uranium, a process that would give the regime a
second way to build atomic bombs.
Tuesday's announcement was designed to hurry along negotiations, analysts said.
"
North Korea
is pressuring the
United States
to decide quickly whether it wants to resolve the standoff through bilateral
talks or allow the (plutonium) to be used for atomic weapons,"
North Korea
expert Koh Yu-hwan of
Dongguk
University
said.
CHINA-BURMA
AXIS-CHICOM SOUTH COMMAND
RUILI
(
China
), Jan 25 — The giant red poster staring over
China
’s Wanding border crossing with
Myanmar
proclaims that their “brotherly feelings will last forever”.A few kilometres away, just
outside the dusty frontier town of
Ruli
, a border village proudly tells its few visitors that
Myanmar
chickens cross over the rickety bamboo fence to lay their eggs in
China
.But behind the bonhomie and
poems of friendship,
China
’s relationship with its impoverished southeastern neighbor and erstwhile ally
formerly known as
Burma
is deeply troubled.
This was bought sharply into relief last August when
Myanmar
’s military overwhelmed and disarmed the Kokang rebel group, triggering an
exodus of more than 37,000 refugees into
China
, prompting an unusual outburst of anger from
Beijing
.
“I wouldn’t characterize them as friends, in the way
Britain
and
America
or
Australia
and
New Zealand
could be regarded as friends. It’s often a tense and difficult
relationship,” said Ian Storey, a fellow at
Singapore
’s
Institute
of
Southeast Asian Studies
.
“It’s basically a marriage of convenience. The Burmese rely on
China
for money and armaments, and
China
uses its position at the UN Security Council to protect
Burma
to some extent, in return for which
China
gets access to the country’s natural resources, and it gets a voice in
Asean,” he added.
In 1997, despite fervent US and EU opposition,
Myanmar
joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, set up in 1967 as a bulwark
against the spread of Communism in the region.
Logic may dictate that
Myanmar
and the generals who have run it for the last five decades or so would give
unquestioning support to
China
.
China
backed
Myanmar
following the bloody suppression of pro-democracy protests in then-capital
Yangon, once called
Rangoon
, in 1988, and has continued to stand by the junta and sell them arms in the
face of sweeping international sanctions.
In 2006, during a visit to
China
’s southwest
Yunnan
province which shares a long border with
Myanmar
,
Myanmar
’s Commerce Minister Tin Naing Thein thanked
Beijing
for being a “good neighbor” and offering “vigorous support” after the
1988 events.
Yet profound suspicion of China in Myanmar, which dates back to before
independence from the British in 1948, has not changed despite Beijing’s overt
support in the past 20 years or so.
For years,
China
backed the Communist Party of Burma’s armed struggle against the
Myanmar
government.
“Chinese soldiers wore Burmese Communist military uniform and they
participated in actual battles against the Burmese armed forces,” said Maung
Zarni, a
Myanmar
expert at the London School of Economics' Centre for the Study of Global
Governance.“The current leadership
is made up of people who cut their teeth in the anti-communist/anti-Beijing
operations in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s difficult to conceive of change of
heart on behalf of the Burmese generals towards
Beijing
.”China
’s fear is that the kind of unrest seen last August in Kokang will be repeated
with any one of a number of different ethnic rebel militias, and spill into its
territory again.
The threat is especially acute as the generals gear up for an election some time
this year — a ballot rights groups call a sham — by trying to get rebel
groups along the border to cooperate, by force if necessary.
The
problem for
China
is most acute in
Yunnan
, where the long and in places remote frontier is porous, and ethnic minorities
on both sides share close blood ties.
Activists say that
Myanmar
’s army is preparing for another offensive against these rebels, including the
30,000-strong ethnic Chinese United Wa State Army (UWSA), denounced as a
narcotics cartel by the
United States
.
That worries
China
, not only because of the potential for more refugees, but because, simply
stated, instability on the border is bad for business.
“Anything that causes the border to shut we of course do not welcome,” said
Chinese jade trader Lin Mingqi, sitting in his shop stuffed full of jade
bracelets, Buddha's and charms made from Burmese jade and overlooking Ruli’s
border post.
“We’re here to do business. We don’t want to have to worry about
politics.”
Already drugs flow easily from
Myanmar
into
China
, fuelling an AIDS epidemic in
Yunnan
driven by the sharing of dirty needles, as well as prostitution.
Yet
Myanmar
is very good at hedging its bets, playing off friend and foe alike to ensure
the survival of the regime.
Luo Shengrong and Wang Aiping, two academics at
Yunnan
University
, wrote in last month’s Chinese journal Contemporary International Relations
that the Kokang attack was deliberately designed to tell
Beijing
not to take relations for granted.
“It was done to show the West that
Myanmar
’s military government is adjusting its foreign policy, from just facing
China
to starting to have frequent contact with the
United States
,
India
and other large nations, to have a balanced foreign policy,” they wrote.
“(The attack) also seemed to be showing that they were reducing their reliance
on
China
.”
They noted that the operation could be construed as
Myanmar
trying to curry favour with the
United States
, by showing
Washington
what a useful ally
Myanmar
could be against
China
, a country viewed with mistrust by many on Capitol Hill.
The academics noted that as a “reward” for the Kokang operation,
Washington
lifted a visa ban on
Myanmar
officials to let Prime Minister Thein Sein address the United Nations in
New York
.
While
it is hard to pinpoint exactly what
Myanmar
’s secretive government hoped to achieve more broadly with the Kokang move,
the academics’ comments are a reflection of Chinese suspicion as to what their
supposed friend is up to.
The neighbors have significant business ties. Bilateral trade grew more than
one-quarter in 2008 to about US$2.63 billion (RM8.9 billion).
In late October, China’s CNPC started building a crude oil port in Myanmar,
part of a pipeline project aimed at cutting out the long detour oil cargoes take
through the congested and strategically vulnerable Malacca Straits.
For
China
, any discomfort at its friendship with
Myanmar
may also be outweighed by another strategic consideration —
India
.
While relations may have improved considerably with
New Delhi
since the brief border war in 1962 that poisoned ties for decades,
China
is a strong supporter of
India
’s traditional enemy
Pakistan
.
“From
China
’s perspective, having a close relationship with
Burma
gives it an additional pressure point on
India
because it has good relations with
Pakistan
and increasingly with
Nepal
and also with
Bangladesh
,” said Singapore-based Storey.
“If you were sitting in
New Delhi
, you may see that as a policy of encircling
India
with friends of
China
.”
Myanmar
’s wily generals realize this, and see being friends with
India
as an import foil to
China
.
“If you look at the patterns of their foreign relations, they’re constantly
playing one off the other. If it’s not
China
and the
US
, it’s
China
and
India
. It’s a very simple but effective strategy, to keep everyone coming after
you,” said David Mathieson,
Myanmar
researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch.
“You
always see things balanced out. Say the Chinese come one month, and then the
Indians comes the next, or a senior Burmese official goes to
Delhi
. It’s just them being prudent, saying ‘we don’t have friends, we just
have partners'." Burmese campaign groups called for the suspension of
China
’s billion-dollar Shwe Gas and Oil Pipeline project on the Global Day of
Action Oct. 28. The groups, with support from organizations in over 20
countries, stated that the project would invite increased human rights
violations, forced relocations, environmental damage, and human rights abuses. The
pipeline starts from the bank of the Bay of Bengal, passes through
Burma
’s military-ruled country for nearly 622 miles, and ends in
Yunnan Province
,
China
. All but eight miles of the pipeline are set to traverse Burmese soil. The
pipeline would be used to pump the oil shipped from the Middle East and Africa,
and the natural gas from the Shwe gas fields of
Burma
(also known as
Myanmar
) to
China
.
The
campaign groups—an alliance of All Arakan Students & Youth Congress,
Arakan Oil Watch, Shwe Gas Movement India, and Shwe Gas Movement
Bangladesh—sent an open letter to Chinese Communist Party leader Hu Jintao
through 12 Chinese Embassies around the world. The letter asserted that if the
pipeline is implemented, there would be two visible impacts; firstly, more
militarization of
Burma
and secondly, more rights violations." The Burmese military regime will receive
more than $800 million every year from the project,” said Kim, the Shwe Gas
Movement coordinator. “But the money will never go to the people. And there
will be more human rights violations like forced labor, lands confiscation, and
even rape of women.”
Kim said that the project would not only seriously threaten the people of
Burma
, but also would pose risks for regional security, diplomacy, and financial
aspects to both
Burma
and
China
. “We demand to suspend the project to prevent a human and environmental
disaster from taking place,” he said. The letter said: “We understand and
support the fact that
China
has increasing energy needs, in order to support the development of your
country and its people.
However,
we believe that in order to nurture a relationship based on regional stability
and development that would benefit the people of both the countries, an urgent
measure is definitely required." The state-owned China National Petroleum
Corporation (CNPC) holds a 50.9-percent stake in partnership with the Myanmar
Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) in the construction of the oil and gas pipeline
from Arakan to
Yunnan
. The project is expected to yield $29 billion over 30 years to the military
junta of Nay Pie Taw.A number of international corporations is also involved in
the petroleum production activities in Burma, including Daewoo International
from South Korea, holding 51 percent of shares in Shwe Gas Consortium; Oil and
Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) from Videsh, India, with 17 percent of shares;
Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL), with 8.5 percent of shares; the China
National Petroleum Corporation, purchaser of the gas and builder of pipelines;
and PetroChina Company Ltd.The letter expressed concern for the thousands of
communities living along the planned pipeline corridor." The escalation of
abuses around a project when
Burma
army soldiers provide security is well documented by U.N. agencies and NGOs,”
the letter said. The letter alluded to a historical precedence for halting the
project.
“In the 1990s, the Yadana gas project was developed by TOTAL of
France
and UNOCAL Corporation of the
United States of America
,” the letter said. “The project directly resulted in forced labor, land
confiscation, displacement, rape, and killings. TOTAL and UNOCAL were
subsequently sued in French and U.S. courts, respectively, for what amounted to
their involvement in the human rights abuses, and each case was settled out of
court. These same questions of complicity, aiding and abetting, and otherwise
exacerbating the human rights situation in
Burma
are raised again by the Trans-Burma pipeline project and directed at CNPC under
your government’s policy and administration. The letter also said that
conflicts have already surfaced in
Burma
in response to oil and gas exploration by a Chinese corporation in partnership
with
Burma
’s MOGE. The China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) Ltd. conducted
explorations in western
Burma
between 2005 and 2007, which led to land confiscation, environmental
degradation, and loss of livelihoods.
The
prospect of civil war looms in Burma as talks between the ruling junta and key
ethnic groups in the north remain deadlocked. To ethnic leaders across the
rolling hills of the northern Shan and Kachin states, the military regime's
upcoming election promises little more than a new chapter in an old story of
struggle against domination by an ethnic Burman regime. And if north-eastern
Myanmar is not involved in the election, it means that a third of the country
would be left out of the process. War will present a problem for both Asean and
the international community, particularly given other complications in a region
awash with militias and drugs. On February 20, for example, 13 Burmese policemen
and 'local militia' were killed in a gun battle with drug traffickers on the
Mekong river near Tachilek on the Thai border. In the event of war, a flood of
refugees will almost certainly descend on Thailand and cross the border into China. When
Burma's armed forces, the Tatmadaw, moved against the ethnic Chinese Kokang in
August last year, 37,000 Kokang people crossed into China's Yunnan province
within days. China will want to make sure this does not happen again, not least
because it has considerable strategic investments at stake and needs stability
on the border. For landlocked Yunnan province, and for Beijing, stability in
northern Myanmar offers the prospect of sustained tapping of natural resources,
and passage southwards to the Indian Ocean.
One
example of Chinese interests is the 2,400 kilowatt Kunlong hydropower project on
the upper Salween - a joint venture between the Burmese government and China's
Hanergy Holding Group and Gold Water Resources. Kunlong,
however, is sited in territory controlled by the United Wa State Army (UWSA),
one of the ethnic 'ceasefire groups' which have a loose ceasefire agreement with
the ruling junta, or State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).The SPDC,
through its chief negotiator and intelligence chief General Ye Myint, has
proposed that the ethnic armies break up into a Border Guard Force comprising
units of up to 300 men each, under the command of Tatmadaw officers. The ethnic
armies see the proposal as a clear attempt to break up and co-opt them. The
Kachin, the Wa and the Shan want political rights and freedoms amounting to
autonomy, which are guaranteed under a 1947 accord, before they will agree to
scale back their armies. The SPDC, which is weighed down by historical baggage
from decades of conflict and is intent on maintaining a unified Burmese, sees it
as imperative to tame the restive border regions.Chinese
army officers have been closely monitoring talks between the Wa and the junta.
Three deadlines for a negotiated agreement have passed. The latest deadline set
by the SPDC is March 15.In
a report on Tuesday, the online Shan Herald quoted a Chinese source as saying
that if the UWSA did not agree to the SPDC's terms, it could expect to be
declared an unlawful organization and face the use of force.
Beijing
had counseled utmost tact 'to the last minute', the report said. In another
worrying sign, China has reportedly built up its troops on the Sino-Myanmar border. The
ball is now in the junta's court. If Senior General Than Shwe does not
compromise, the future for the volatile region looks increasingly uncertain. A
recent BBC report from inside the Kachin state showed Kachin Independence Army
soldiers taking part in combat drills and digging trenches in preparation for war. In
a war, the huge fighting force that is Tatmadaw would be ranged against the
UWSA, the country's largest ethnic army with 15,000 to 20,000 under arms. The
Kachin army has another 5,000 to 6,000. The northern and southern Shan armies
between them have a few thousand. An alliance among them is not impossible. But
the situation is complex and makes predictions difficult. The Tatmadaw's attack
on the Kokang, for instance, was unexpected. The larger question, however, is
whether Myanmar can ever be at peace with itself." I do believe that if you
don't solve the ethnic crises, there will be no democracy, there will be no
peace, there will be no development," said Tom Kramer, a Burmese specialist
with the Netherlands-based Transnational Institute." If you look at how the SPDC
has dealt with these groups, they will always try to split them, weaken them,
break them." The SPDC's way, he added, has always been to manage the conflict
rather than to solve it.
CHICOM
MILITARY BUILDUP
HONG
KONG
— A U.S. Navy admiral expressed new concern Friday over
China
's military buildup and urged
Beijing
to be clearer about its intentions. With
China
's military growing at an "unprecedented rate," the
U.S.
wants to ensure that expansion doesn't destabilize the region, Rear Adm. Kevin
Donegan told reporters on a visit to the Chinese
territory
of
Hong Kong
.Donegan referred to
China
's expanded weaponry. His remarks echoed the concerns of other
U.S.
military leaders who have said the growth in
China
's military spending — up almost 15 percent in the 2009 budget — raises
questions about how
Beijing
plans on deploying its new power." When we see a military growing at that
rate, we're interested in transparency and the understanding of the uses of that
military," said Donegan, commander of the USS George Washington aircraft
carrier strike group, a key part of the U.S. Pacific Fleet .Donegan's comments
come as a top Chinese general visits the
United States
on a mission to strengthen trust between the two militaries and dispel
U.S.
concerns about the growth of the People's Liberation Army.Xu Caihou, the PLA's
second-highest ranking officer, told President Barack Obama on Wednesday that
ties between the two countries' militaries play "an important role in
enhancing strategic mutual trust and deepening their pragmatic
cooperation," according to Chinese media reports.
China
has boosted military spending by more than 10 percent annually for almost two
decades, and the official figure of $71 billion this year is thought by many
analysts to represent only a portion of total defense spending. It still amounts
to only a fraction of
U.S.
defense spending. China
says much of the increase is used to improve salaries and living conditions for
soldiers, but it has also been adding sophisticated new warships, submarines,
fighter jets and other weapons systems to its arsenal. PLA leaders have also
said they are considering building an aircraft carrier, but such a development
is thought to be years, if not decades, away. Donegan acknowledged the
possibility of a Chinese aircraft carrier, but also said he was concerned with
anti-access weapons. This class of weapons includes missiles and submarines that
can threaten
U.S.
forces in the region and prevent them responding in the event of a crisis." I am absolutely concerned," Donegan
said. He went on to say,
"When a navy is doing that, we just want to make sure it's transparent
enough so those in the region understand what they're doing.
"At the same
time, Donegan described positive exchanges between the two militaries that he
said he hoped would continue, including a visit by five Chinese army generals
aboard the George Washington during its call in
Hong Kong
this week. Ties between the two militaries have been repeatedly roiled by
China
's objections to
U.S.
arms sales to
Taiwan
, claimed by
Beijing
as its own territory, as well as Chinese efforts to disrupt Navy surveillance
missions off its shores. A series of confrontations involving vessels from the
two navies has raised concerns over
China
's rising determination to defend what it sees as its territorial interests in
the
South China Sea
, where the
U.S.
has long operated as the major international power. Donegan said the Navy would
continue to operate in international waters — something that could come in
defiance of
Beijing
's claims it has the right to bar surveillance work inside its exclusive
economic zone." We are going to continue to operate in the
South China Sea
and international waters and not in territorial seas of another country,"
he said. The visit of the George Washington, considered the crown jewel of the
U.S. Pacific Fleet, is its first to
Hong Kong
in its 17-year history.
CHINA ENERGY
HOGS
Published:
12/03/2010-Claims that Chinese dams are causing severe drought along the
Mekong
River
are groundless and inappropriate, Chinese government officials say. hen Dehai, a
counselor at the Chinese embassy in
Bangkok
, denies Chinese dams had caused the
Mekong
River
to dry up. The three Chinese dams built on the
Mekong
River
had not affected river flows downstream, embassy counselor Chen Dehai said in
Bangkok
yesterday. China
's Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue told Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva
on Monday
China
's dams were not a major cause of problems along the river. China
's dams were blamed for unusual flooding along the Mekong two years ago and have
been blamed for this year's severe drought, which has hit fishermen, farmers and
tourism operators in lower Mekong countries, including
Thailand
."Changes in the
Mekong
River
have nothing to do with our activities," Mr. Chen said. Only 64 billion
cubic meters of water - about 13% of the water that feeds the Mekong - comes
from
China
. The other 86.5% comes from the downstream countries, Mr. Chen said. He cited a
statement from the Mekong River Commission (MRC) last week that low water levels
in the
Mekong
River
were the result of a drought in the north of
Thailand
and
Laos
."Statistics show that the rainfall volume in
Thailand
's Chiang Saen district was measured at just 20 millimeters last December -
lower than the average of 52mm," he said.Mr Chen said the drought had not
only wreaked havoc in the lower Mekong countries but also many regions of
China
such as
Yunnan
and
Sichuan
.
Beijing
is standing firm in its desire to develop the
Mekong
River
for what it says is the mutual benefit of countries along the river. Chinese representatives will attend the Mekong River Commission meeting in Hua Hin next
month. However, Mr. Chen voiced concern that some groups would use the Hua Hin
meeting as a platform to criticize
China
. "We hope to see positive talks [at the MRC meeting], not to blame each
other," he said. Although China is not a member of the MRC, the country had
cooperated with the regional body in sharing information on the Mekong water
level in China as requested by MRC members, he said. The commission's members are
Cambodia
,
Laos
,
Thailand
and
Vietnam
."We have good relations with the lower
Mekong
countries," Mr. Chen said." There is no reason to create problems for
our friends." We are now facing the problem of water shortages together." Activist
Pianporn Deetes, of the Southeast Asia Rivers Network,
said she was disappointed with the Chinese government's response's Ms. Pianporn
said
China
had failed to provide important information on the
Mekong
flow and the operation of the dams for the benefit of people living downstream. Agriculture
and Cooperatives Minister Theera Wongsamut yesterday said
his ministry planned to build water gates on Mekong tributaries in
Thailand
to prevent water from flowing down to the
Mekong
River
during the dry season. The water gates would help store water in Thai waterways
for farm use and other consumption, the minister said. People living along the
Mekong
River
want the government to scrap its plans to build dams, to help safeguard the
river from further exploitation." Experience and scientific evidence show
there is no way to heal environmental and social damage caused by
mega-dams," the Mekong People Network said in a statement yesterday to mark
International Day of Action for Rivers.
"The
dams will destroy our food sources and bring severe droughts to the river,"
the residents said. The government plans to build two dams on the mainstream
Mekong
River
- Ban Koum dam in Ubon Ratchathani, and Pak Chom dam in Loei. Agriculture and
Cooperatives Minister Theera Wongsamut said the ministry also planned water
gates on the Mekong tributaries to save water for agricultural purposes instead
of letting it flow into the
Mekong
River
."The government must stop using the drought to justify its plan to build
more dams, which have proved they can overcome neither droughts nor
flooding," the villagers said. The group also urged the government to join
forces with the other three member countries of the Mekong River Commission -
Cambodia
,
Vietnam
, and
Laos
- in seeking an explanation from
China
on the impact of Chinese dams on the downstream
Mekong
.The government must raise the matter at the MRC meeting in Hua Hin early next
month, they said. The water level in the
Mekong
has hit a 20-year low, which some farmers believe is related to the Chinese
dams.
China
, however, denies it is hogging water, and insists water levels have fallen
because of the drought. Meanwhile, about 500 villagers gathered yesterday on the
banks of the
Salween
River
in Mae Hong Son's Sob Moei district to oppose dam construction on the Salween -
the last free-flowing international river in
Southeast Asia
.
The villagers, mostly fishermen and horticulturalists, performed a traditional
ritual to bless the river's fertility. Conservationists and villagers are
protesting against the proposed Hut Gyi and Ta Sang hydropower dams on the
river. The dams will be developed jointly by the Electricity Generating
Authority of Thailand and
Burma.China
has invited countries from the lower
Mekong
sub region to visit its Jinghong dam in a bid to counter claims that its poor
water management is causing drought in downstream countries .Kasemsun
Chinnavaso, director-general of the Water Resources Department, said China had
invited representatives from Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand early this
year to visit the Jinghong dam, one of four dams it operates along the Mekong
River, but the trip was postponed due to cold weather. The new visit is expected
to take place this month." This is a very significant step for closer bilateral
cooperation between
China
and members of the lower
Mekong
sub region for effective river management to deal with recent unusual drought
and floods," Mr. Kasemsun said. The downstream countries blame
China
's dams for unusual flooding along the
Mekong
two years ago and for this year's severe drought. Jinghong is one of the
largest dams on the
Mekong
, with a generating capacity of 1,500 megawatts. It is located just 280km from
Chiang Rai province.
Chinese
authorities earlier brushed aside calls by the Mekong River Commission for it to
reveal information about the dam's water management.
The
commission is made up of representatives from
Thailand
,
Laos
,
Cambodia
and
Vietnam
.
China
has rejected the allegations. Its Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue told
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on Monday that
China
's dams were not a major cause of problems along the river. Just 13% of the
water that feeds the Mekong comes from
China
, he said. The Chinese embassy in
Thailand
is expected to hold a news conference tomorrow to explain the impact of its
dams on the
Mekong
.
The
Chiang Khong Conservation Group in Chiang Rai will submit a protest letter to
the Chinese embassy on April 2, said Niwat Roykaew, a key member of the group.
The
Chiang Khong group will also submit a letter to the MRC. which is meeting in Hua
Hin from April 3-7.
The
group will demand that the international organization reviews its role after
failing to protect and preserve one of the world's largest fresh water
ecological systems, Mr. Niwat said.Meanwhile,
Chiang Rai governor Sumet Saengnimnuan said he would ask local fisherman not to
catch giant catfish this year, due to a dramatically declining population in
the
Mekong
. Laos
has issued a law banning the fishing of the endangered species which is only
found in the
Mekong
. Thailand
should also take more aggressive action to protect the giant catfish, Mr. Sumet
said.Drought
has also spurred Provincial Police Region 3, which is responsible for the lower
Northeast, to step up patrols along the Mekong to curb cross-border drug
trafficking which has become easier as the river's water level drops.
Ten
drug traffickers with more than 200,000 methamphetamine tablets in total have
been arrested while trying to enter
Thailand
illegally over the past couple of months, regional police chief Dechawat
Ramsomphop said.
He
said three spots along the river are often used by traffickers to cross between
Thailand
and
Laos
- tambon Ban Khok Sarn Tha in Amnat Charoen, and tambons Ban Song Khon and Ban
Bueng Suay in Ubon Ratchathani.
CHINA'S
UNSAFE INDUSTRIES
Widespread
disregard of basic safety standards in
China
’s fireworks industry has led to numerous major accidents in fireworks
factories across the country over the past few years. Despite repeated
government promises to tighten and clamp down on safety standards, hundreds of
people are killed each year in these avoidable workplace disasters.
On 4 October 2004, an explosion at the Changliang Firecrackers Factory in
Pubei
County
, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, killed no fewer than 37 workers. The blast
destroyed three workshops, tore down the roofs of nearby houses and left the
surrounding area strewn with bodies and rubble.
Nearly half of all the fireworks produced in
China
fail to meet basic quality and safety standards, a recent inspection conducted
on 120 fireworks manufacturing enterprises from seven provinces in
China
by the State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine
has found.
According to Zhang Guanghua, director of the Chemical Safety Supervision and
Management Department under the State Administration of Work Safety, “The
production and standards of many small and medium-sized fireworks producers in
townships and villages do not meet state requirements.” Fireworks safety
standards are a major concern for the people in
China
, she added, as it is a traditional Chinese practice to celebrate festive
seasons with firework displays.
The
official investigation found that only 56.7 per cent of the fireworks checked
had met the approved quality standards. And among 120 brands of fireworks
assessed, 36.7 per cent were found to have defective blasting fuses, creating a
high risk of premature explosion and injury. Another major problem identified in
the survey was the widespread use of banned inflammable or explosive chemicals
in making the fireworks.
One-fifth of the inspected products were found to have safety defects that could
make them explode or detonate too close to the ground. The packaging of 19 of
the brands was also found to have defects that could lead to accidents during
transportation or storage.
The fireworks industry employs tens of thousands of people, many of them from
the poorest parts of
China
. They do most of the work by hand, often at home or in small village workshops.
According to Zhang Guohua, “These workshops are to be phased out or developed
into more advanced factories.” She added that five new national standards on
fireworks’ production will come into effect in March, in an effort to ensure
better safety and quality standards in the industry.
On
1 February, three of the managers and contractors responsible for the Guangxi
fireworks factory disaster of last October were sentenced to terms of up to
seven years’ imprisonment for employing prohibited materials. Ma Dezhong and
Huang Xiujuan were jailed for seven and three years respectively, while another
manager, Ma Jing, received a five-year term. The sentences came as factories
around the country rushed to fill orders for firecrackers to celebrate the Lunar
New Year – the peak period for reports of deaths in fires and explosions.
The explosion at the Changliang Firecrackers Factory was the third accident to
have occurred in fireworks factories in
Pubei
County
between May and October 2004. On 20 August 2004, an explosion occurred at a
fireworks factory there in which the factory manager was killed by falling
rubble. In May 2004, another blast at an illegal fireworks factory in the same
town killed two workers and injured about ten others. Two children who were
playing in the rubble after the initial blast were also injured when some of the
remaining explosives ignited.
Although
the death toll of firework accidents in China is much lower than that of
coalmine disasters, a total of 322 people died in officially-reported firework
explosions alone last year – 67 more fatalities compared with 2003, according
to government statistics. The real figure is undoubtedly much higher. Other
reported major accidents at fireworks factories in the past few years include
the following:
·On 27 and 28 January
2005, three firework explosions took place in Hengshui, Xingtai and Dingzhou
cities in
Hebei
Province
killing nine people in total. All three explosions were caused by illegal
firework production.
·On 11 January 2005,
an explosion occurred at Xianglu Firecracker Factory in
Xiangfen County
,
Shanxi
Province, claiming the lives of 25 workers and injuring nine others. Most of
the victims were female temporary workers.
·In mid-September
2004, 11 female workers were killed at Hedong Fireworks Factory in
Hekou Township
,
Hunan
Province.
·An explosion at the
Safe Environment Friendly Fireworks Company Ltd in
Changtu County
,
Liaoning
Province, on 30 December 2003 killed 36 workers and left 32 others injured. The
company owner, Chen Jicheng, was sentenced to death on 22 December 2004 for
illegally producing explosives and causing the explosion, while the factory’s
general manager, You Tao, was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for
illegally producing explosives.
·In July and August
2003, four separate explosions occurred in several fireworks factories in
Hebei
,
Fujian
,
Zhejiang
and
Guizhou
provinces within a single week, killing at least 31 workers. The accidents
raised concern about the use of child labour in the production of fireworks,
since it was found that the youngest worker in one of the factories was a
15-year-old girl.
China
has seen a death toll of 40 in six fireworks accidents, with another 23 people
injured and three missing, since October, according to the Ministry of Public Security. An
explosion on Oct. 22 in a firecracker workshop in the remote
Xiushan
County
in southwestern
Chongqing
province killed 17. This was the highest death toll among the six accidents. The
other five occurred in
Hebei
(two incidents),
Guangxi
,
Hunan
and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Most of the accidents occurred in
fireworks plants. The ministry has told local public security departments to
step up supervision of all phases of the industry, including production,
transport and use, to ensure public safety. Like mining and cargo
transportation, unauthorized production and storage of fireworks and explosives
remain black spots in the country’s production safety record. As of 2006,
China
had about 7,000 fireworks plants and 140,000 distributors, with about 1.5
million people working in the sector.
On average, there are 406 fireworks accidents every year around the nation, with
445 deaths. A
Chinese province halted all fireworks production following a factory explosion
that killed nine people, official media reported Sunday.
The order from the Shaanxi government followed Friday’s’ blast at the
Xinping Firecrackers Co., where workers were rushing to fill orders for this
month’s Lunar New Year festival, the Xinhua News Agency said.The
explosion tore through seven workshops in
Shaanxi
’s Pucheng county where more than 100 workers were laboring in cramped
conditions, it said.Provincial
officials have ordered police and government safety and commerce departments to
conduct a “thorough overhaul” of all fireworks factories in the province,
Xinhua said. It gave no details and did not say when the factories would be
allowed to restart production.The
factory’s manager, Qu Pingxin, initially fled before turning himself in to
authorities on Saturday, Xinhua said.Pucheng
county is a traditional base for the industry in the province, employing 30,000
people and producing 300 million yuan ($44 million) worth of fireworks last
year, Xinhua said.Six
workers died Sunday when the highway overpass they were building in
Yunnan
province collapsed, a further example of the human cost of
China
’s breakneck drive for development. The overpass is part of a massive new
airport complex in the provincial capital,
Kunming
.The
23 billion yuan ($3.3 billion) project is designed to handle 38 million
passengers and 1.3 million tons of cargo per year by its completion in 2020.
CHINA
COAL MINE DISASTERS
About
100,000 people die each year in industrial and traffic accidents in
China
, many in the country’s notoriously deadly coal mines.
CHINA
POOR IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES LOCKED UP WITH POLICE GUARDS 24/7 LIKE OLD MAO MAO
DAYS
BEIJING – The
government calls it "sealed management." China's capital has started
gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police
or security checking identification papers around the clock, in a throwback to
an older style of control.It's Beijing's latest effort to reduce rising crime
often blamed on the millions of rural Chinese migrating to cities for work. The
capital's Communist Party secretary wants the approach promoted citywide. But
some state media and experts say the move not only looks bad but imposes another
layer of control on the already stigmatized, vulnerable migrants.So far, gates
have sealed off 16 villages in the sprawling southern suburbs, where migrants
are attracted to cheaper rents and in some villages outnumber permanent
residents 10 to one.
"In some
ways, this is like the conflict between Americans and illegal immigrants in the
States. The local residents feel threatened by the influx of migrants,"
Huang Youqin, an associate professor of geography at the University at Albany in
New York who has studied gating and political control in China, said in an
e-mail. "The risk is that the government can control people's private life
if it wants to."The gated villages are the latest indignity for China's
migrant workers, who already face limited access to schooling and government
services and are routinely blamed by city folk for rising crime. Used to the
hardship of the farm and the lack of privilege, migrants seem to be taking the
new controls in their stride.Jia Yangui said he accepts the new system as a
trade-off for escaping farm work in the northern province of Shanxi. He arrived
in Beijing less than two months ago and lives with a relative in one of the
gated villages, Dashengzhuang. He sells oily pancakes just inside one of the
gates.
"Anyway,
it's not as strict as before, when we migrants would be detained on the way to
the toilet," said Jia's relative, a middle-aged woman who gave her family
name as Zheng.
"Sealed
management" looks like this: Gates are placed at the street and alley
entrances to the villages, which are collections of walled compounds sprinkled
with shops and outdoor vendors. The gates are locked between 11 p.m. and 6
a.m., except for one main entrance manned by security guards or police, there
to check identification papers. Security guards roam the villages by day.
"Closing
up the village benefits everyone," read one banner which was put up when
the first, permanent gated village was introduced in April.
But
some Chinese question whether problems arising from growing gap between the
country's rich and poor can be fixed with locks and surveillance cameras.
"It's a
ridiculous idea!" said Li Wenhua, who does private welfare work with
migrant workers in Beijing. "This is definitely not a good long-term
strategy. The government should dig up the in-depth causes of crime and improve
basic public services such as education and health care to these people."
Crime
has been rising steadily over the past two decades, as China moved from state
planning to free markets and Chinese once locked into set jobs began moving
around the country for work. Violent crime in China jumped 10 percent last
year, with 5.3 million reported cases of homicide, robbery, and rape, the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reported in February.
"Sealed
management" was born in the village of Laosanyu during the Beijing Olympics
in 2008, when the government was eager to control its migrant population. The
village used it again during the sensitive 60th anniversary of Communist China
last year. Officials then reported the idea to township officials, who decided
to make the practice permanent this year.
"Eighty
percent of the permanent residents applauded the practice," said Guo
Ruifeng, deputy director of Laosanyu's village committee. He didn't say how many
migrants approved, though they outnumber the locals by 7,000 to 700.
"Anyway,
they should understand that it is all for their safety," he said. Guards
only check papers if they see anything suspicious, he said. Gating
has been an easy and effective way to control population throughout Chinese
history, said Huang, the geography professor. In past centuries, some walled
cities would impose curfews and close their gates overnight. In the first
decades of communist rule, the desire for top-down organization and control
showed in work-unit compounds, usually guarded and enclosed.As
the economy has grown, privately run gated communities with their own security
have emerged in the biggest cities, catering to well-to-do Chinese and
expatriates, offering upscale houses and facilities like pools and gyms.
The new gated
villages in Beijing are very different.
"To
put it crudely, gated communities in the city are a way for the upper
middle-class and urban rich to keep out trespassers, whereas gated villages
represent a way for the state to 'keep in' or contain the problem of 'migrant
workers' who live in these villages," Pow Choon-Pieu, an assistant
professor of geography at the National University of Singapore who has studied
the issue, said in an e-mail. Jiang
Zhengqing, a supermarket owner in the gated compound of Laosanyu, told the China
Daily newspaper in May that he doesn't even know if he'll be in business next
year because of the drop in customers."Before,
the streets were crowded with people in the afternoon but now the village is
deserted," he said. "I can't understand why the government has
invested such a large amount of money into putting up these useless fences,
rather than repair our dirty public restrooms and bumpy roads."
Death toll for
China
fireworks blast rises to 19
Mon Aug 16,
8:55 pm ET
BEIJING
– The death toll from a massive explosion at a fireworks factory in northeast
China rose Tuesday to at least 19 workers, with five still missing. Up to 50
people were working at the fireworks factory in the
Heilongjiang
province city of
Yichun
when it was rocked by the explosion Monday, damaging nearby buildings and
sparking secondary blasts, according to a statement on the local government's
website. A News Agency reported the death toll rose to 19 on Tuesday, with five
missing. A total of 153 people were injured by the blast, which could be felt up
to 2 miles (5 kilometers) away and smashed windows in the CHICOM COMMAND OFFICES
and other buildings the still in shock shell shocked witnesses said. The
tally appeared to include workers at the factory as well as people in the
surrounding area, but the report gave no details. State television video showed
plumes of smoke curling above the plant.
Safety
is lax at Chinese fireworks plants, and accidents are common. Dozens of people
also die each year from unsafe handling of fireworks while celebrating weddings
and traditional holidays. In another industrial accident on Monday, an elevator
plunged on a construction site, killing 11 workers riding in it. Investigators
were looking into the cause of the elevator accident in the city of
Meihekou
in the northeastern
province
of
Jilin
. The elevator dropped as many as 12 stories, according to a statement from the
local government. Although deadly accidents persist,
China
has placed an increasing emphasis on improving industrial safety. Fatalities
in the country's notoriously dangerous coal mines decreased to 2,631 last year,
compared with a peak of 6,995 deaths in 2002, according to official figures. That
works out to 7.2 deaths a day in 2009, down from 19.1 a day in 2002.
YUMMY CHINESE FOOD
Chinese
legal experts call for ban on eating cats and dogs.
Widespread
and ancient practice of eating dog meat increasingly distasteful for
China
’s growing affluent, pet-loving middle class
Caged cats after being rescued by China Small Animal Protection Association from
a market in in
Beijing
where cats are traded for meat and fur. Photograph: AP
Chinese legal experts are proposing a ban on eating dogs and cats in a
contentious move to end a culinary tradition dating back thousands of years.
The recommendation will be submitted to higher authorities in April as part of a
draft bill to tackle animal abuse.
In ancient times, dog meat was considered a medicinal tonic. Today, it is
commonly available throughout the country, but particularly in the north where
dog stew is popular for its supposed warming qualities.
In recent years, however, such traditions are increasingly criticized by an
affluent, pet-loving, urban middle class. Online petitions against dog and cat
consumption have attracted tens of thousands of signatures. Videos showing the
maltreatment of farmed dogs have spurred protests at markets where the animals
are bought and sold.But
the drafters of the new proposal want far more drastic measures, which would
oblige law enforcement authorities to close down thousands of dog restaurants
and butchers which supply the meat.
According
to the draft, illegal sale or consumption of pets would incur a maximum penalty
of 15 days in prison for individuals or a 500,000 Yuan fine for businesses.
Public security bureaus would be obliged to respond to hotline calls from the
public about violations.
“We are proposing that all dog and cat eating should be banned because it is
causing many social problems,” said Chang Jiwen, a law professor at the
Chinese
Academy
of Social Sciences who heads the drafting team.
He said recent murders and thefts related to the dog meat trade showed that it
had become a source of tension, while the economic impact of a ban would be
small because an increasingly affluent population was less dependent on dog and
cat meat.
The proposal reflects changing public opinion and international input. Drafters
have been consulting for more than a year with Britain’spca and the US-based
peta.
But the plan for a dog meat ban has stirred up fierce debate between groups and
defenders of traditional values.
“I support this proposal.
Whether
you judge this as a question of security or emotions, there is absolutely no
necessity in china for people to eat dogs and cats,” said Zeng Li, the founder
of the Lucky Cats shelter in
Beijing
. “We need something more than moral pressure.
Beijing
’s dog restaurants get their meat mainly from vagrant and stolen dogs. In the
suburbs, dogs are hung and slaughtered in front of buyers.”
Online critics said it was hypocritical to protect only dogs and cats, and that
the government should focus on human welfare before protecting animals.
“This is absurd. Why only dogs and cats? How about pigs, cows and sheep,”
wrote a poster going by the name Mummy on the.
“I hope the experts went to see what laid-off workers and people in rural
areas have to eat. They should pay more concern to problems that people really
care about,” said another contributor under the name Starfish.
Even before the pet meat ban, the draft bill had already provoked controversy.
Initial plans for a comprehensive animal welfare law had to be dropped in the
face of criticism that human living conditions ought to be the priority at this
stage in
China
’s development.The
focus has now been narrowed to prevention of animal abuse, which is defined as
inflicting unnecessary pain and brutality. Even so, it is far from certain that
the draft will be adopted by the government.
BEIJING –
Every summer during the height of the rainy season, villagers of all ages in a
corner of southwestern China would suddenly die of cardiac
arrest.
No
one knew what caused YunnanSudden Death Syndrome,
blamed for an estimated 400 deaths in the past three decades.
Now,
after a five-year investigation, an elite investigative unit from China's
Center for Disease Control and Prevention believes it has pinpointed the
cause: an innocuous-looking small mushroom
known as Little White.
The
search for the culprit began in 2005 and took investigators to remote villages
spread over the rural highlands of Yunnan
province, said Robert Fontaine, an epidemiologist
with the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
There was
"this very obvious clustering of deaths in villages in very short periods
of time in the summer," said Fontaine, who helped in the investigation.
"It appears that there was something a little different going on."
Local
health officials had noted the deaths for years. In 2004, they appealed to Beijing
for assistance. The government gave the task to the China Field Epidemiology
Training Program, a unit of medical
investigators at China's CDC assigned some of the country's toughest
health mysteries.
The
medical teams encountered obstacles. Many villagers didn't speak standard
Chinese, instead communicating in their own dialect. Villages were
scattered in often remote areas. Rapid burials made it difficult to conduct
autopsies. Torrential rain and mudslides hampered travel.
But
that first year, investigators were able to narrow down the list of
possibilities: most victims had drunk surface water, they had emotional stress
and they ate mushrooms.
The
investigators zeroed in on mushrooms, because the deaths were closely aligned
with the harvesting season. More than 90 percent of the deaths occurred in July
or August. By the end of 2005, investigators began issuing warnings to some
villages to avoid eating unfamiliar mushrooms.
That
was a difficult order to follow. Yunnan province is legendary for its wide
variety of wild mushrooms, many of which are exported at high prices. Entire
families go out to hunt for them during the summer months.
By
2008, investigators had discovered a relatively unknown mushroom
in a number of homes where people had died. The mushroom is not usually sold in
the markets, because it's too small.
"We
repeatedly found it at all these sites," Fontaine said.
A public
information campaign to warn against eating the mushrooms has dramatically
reduced the number of deaths. Only a handful have been reported in the last
couple of years, and none so far this year.
However,
the mystery has not yet been definitively solved. Testing
found the mushroom contained some toxins,
though not enough to be deadly. Chinese scientists need to isolate the toxin and
test whether it triggers cardiac
arrests.
Researchers
have hypothesized that there is a second agent. Many of the victims showed high
levels of barium, a heavy
metal in the soil that seeps into mushrooms.
"There
is a lot of work left to do," Fontaine said. "We really need
additional lab investigations."
Problems
with poisonous mushrooms are common throughout Asia,
said Diderik De Vleeschauwer, a spokesman for the U.N.
Food and Agriculture Organization regional office in Thailand.
"Normally
we expect people to have knowledge of what they can and can't eat. One would
think there is indigenous knowledge available about what they can forage,"
he said. "But these are accidents that can happen."
CHINA SOUTH AMERICA
OPERATIONS
Chinese plans for a rail link in Colombia could
compete with the Panama canal which transformed global trade
when it was opened in 1914. Photograph: David Levene It is
a dream that bewitched Spain, ruined Scotland, stumped France
and empowered the US: a path from the Atlantic to the Pacific
oceans. The ambition unleashed ruinous follies in Panama's
jungles until the US finally finished a canal in 1914, an
engineering feat that transformed global trade. Now,
almost a century later,
China
is envisaging a new link between the seas: a rail link through
Colombia
– a potential rival to the canal that would crown China's
economic push into Latin America.
Beijing on Monday confirmed an announcement by
the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, that both
governments are considering a rail connection from Cartagena, in
the Caribbean, to the country's Pacific coast 280 miles (450km)
away. The president's office refused to say which Pacific site
was being considered. The railway would facilitate the export of
raw materials such as coal, as well as opening the way for
Chinese imports. "It's a real proposal ... and it is quite
advanced," Santos told the Financial Times. "The studies [the
Chinese] have made on the costs of transporting per tonne, the
cost of investment, they all work out."
Few
doubt China can carve a path through the northern tip of south
America. It has, after all, carved a 550km railway to Tibet,
rebuilt Angola's railways and is busy erecting a
giant industrial port in Brazil.
The question is whether the railway would be cheaper or faster
than the Panama canal, which is only a third as long and
undergoing a $5.25bn (£3.3bn) expansion to double its capacity.
Panama also has an 80km railway connecting both
sides of the isthmus, but until now the canal's main competition
has been the rail link from California to the US eastern
seaboard, which is faster but more expensive. Could Colombia's
railway compete? President Santos seemed to have little doubt,
stressing the "incredible" number of Chinese delegations
pitching proposals. The railway would require a production and
assembly hub in a new city south of Cartagena, he said. "I don't
want to create exaggerated expectations, but it makes a lot of
sense. Asia is the new motor of the world economy." With Chinese
financing, the project would be a viable and attractive way for
Bogota to ease transport bottlenecks in its mining industry,
said Heather Berkman, a Eurasia Group analyst. "Colombia is no
position to refuse offers of investment in its infrastructure.
They need financing from outside sources and this makes sense
for them." Bogota also hopes the plan will focus Washington's
mind on ratifying a stalled free trade accord. "The Colombians
have made it clear if there's no movement on the FTA this year
they will court other parties. So there is pressure on the US."
The railway would hardly have the same impact of
the canal a century ago but would be a symbol of China's
economic incursions into what the US once considered its
backyard. Latin American exports to China leapt to $41.3bn
between 2000 and 2009. China is Colombia's second largest trade
partner after the US, with bilateral trade rising from $10m in
1980 to more than $5bn in 2010. However, the railway project
could yet join a list of venerable pipedreams. In 1534 King
Charles V of Spain ordered a survey for a route through Panama,
hoping for a strategic edge over the Portuguese. In 1698 a
Scottish flotilla landed in Darien, a remote wedge of rainforest
straddling what is now Panama and Colombia, hoping to found a
colony and a gateway to the new world. The venture collapsed and
bankrupted Scotland, hastening its loss of independence to
England. "If the Scots had been successful the canal might have
been constructed in Darien, by Panamanians speaking English in a
lowland Scots dialect!" rued Jim Malcolm, a Scot and former
British ambassador to Panama, in a 2005 booklet. A French effort
in the 1880s under Ferdinand de Lesseps, who built the Suez
canal, foundered because of poor planning and disease which
killed about 22,000 workers. The US revived the canal project in
1903 after encouraging Panama, then part of Colombia, to secede
and hand control of the waterway to Washington. In 2006
Nicaragua revived its own long-held dream of a rival canal but
the idea quickly faded. It did not have Chinese backing.
CHINA SOUTHEAST ASIA OPERATIONS
Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Suthep
Thaugsuban on Wednesday reported to the
Cabinet the success of his recent visit to
China, saying that the neighbour to the
north has agreed to invest in Thailand’s
first high-speed railway and provide funding
to the development on the Thai rail link
system.China
has agreed to invest in Thailand’s first
high-speed railway, which was part of the
talks between the two countries during
Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister’s visit to
China on July 16-23. Thailand’s Deputy Prime
Minister Suthep Thaugsuban Wednesday
reported to Thai Cabinet that China will
provide investment, technology and
management support for the 240-kilometre
railway line from Bangkok to province of
Rayong, the country’s official MCOT news
agency reported. Suthep
also disclosed that the two countries may
also cooperate in railway projects at the
Thai-Lao border of Thailand’s Nong Khai
province to Laos and China. The line is
expected to also link southern Thailand to
Malaysia.He praised the quality of China’s
high-speed railway system, adding that
Chinese technology for high-speed trains is
highly advanced. China has said it would
promote Thailand as a tourist destination
among Chinese. It will as well consider
buying more rice from Thailand, while adding
the rail link development will provide
convenience of people in the region to
travel and enhance a better logistics and
transport system.
The
Chinese mainland’s length of high-speed
railways in operation has now reached 6,900
kilometers, ranking first in the world, and
the length of high-speed railways under
construction has reached 10,000-plus
kilometers, according to the “Seventh World
High-speed Railway Conference” held by the
Ministry of Railways on July 28. The
high-speed railway lines, including the
Beijing-Tianjin, Wuhan-Guangzhou,
Zhengzhou-Xi’an and Shanghai-Nanjing lines,
are all in operation and running at speeds
of 350 kilometers an hour, making them the
fastest in the world. According to the plan
and current construction progress, the total
length of high-speed railways in China will
exceed 13,000 kilometers by 2012 and will
exceed 16,000 kilometers by 2020. Thailand
performs well compared to other countries in
the region on many aspects of government
regulations and regulatory procedures that
facilitate business. According to the latest
annual World Bank’s Doing Business report,
in 2008 Thailand ranks 13th among over 180
countries and 4th in East Asia in the ease
of doing business. The ease of doing
business is measured by quantitative
indicators of regulatory requirements and
procedures in ten areas in the life cycle of
typical small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
in the largest city in a country. They
include, for example, the number days,
steps, and cost needed to obtain business
licenses, registering property, clear
customs, pay taxes, and close a business. It
only takes 2 steps and 2 days to register
property in Thailand, on of the fastest in
the world. Progress over the recent years
has been particularly on the improvements in
the customs process after the introduction
of the internet-based customs clearance
system, which has reduced the number of
required documents and time taken to clear
customs for exports.
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
That where there is hatred - I may bring love,
That where there is wrong - I may bring the spirit of forgiveness,
That where there is discord - I may bring harmony,
That where there is error - I may bring truth,
That where there is doubt - I may bring faith,
That where there are shadows - I may bring Thy light,
That where there is sadness - I may bring joy.
Lord, grant that I may seek to console - than to be consoled,
To understand - than to be loved.
Because
It is by giving that one receives,
It is by self-forgetting that one finds,
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven,
It is by owing that one awakes to the eternal life.
SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI-1182-1226-ASSISI-ITALY
"IF"
If you can keep your head when all about
you
demorats are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all demorats doubt you
But make allowance for their dumb doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in demorat lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to demorat hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream- and not make dreams your master,
If you can think- and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by demorat knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings- nor lose the common touch,
If neither demorat foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And- which is more- you'll be a REPUBLICAN
- Rudyard Kipling-
WORDS
OF WISDOM FROM THIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI
FATIMA,
Portugal - Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday called abortion and same-sex
marriage some of the most "insidious and dangerous" threats facing the
world today, asserting key church teachings as he tried to move beyond the
clerical abuse scandal. Benedict made the comments to Catholic social workers,
health providers and others after celebrating Mass before an estimated 400,000
people in Fatima. The central Portuguese farming town is one of the most
important shrines in Christianity, where three shepherd children reported having
visions of the Virgin Mary in 1917.
Benedict's
visit to Fatima on the anniversary of the apparitions was the spiritual
centerpiece of his four-day visit to Portugal, which ends Friday. It was cast by
Vatican officials as evidence that he had turned a page in weathering the abuse
scandal, which has dogged him for months. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev.
Federico Lombardi, pointed to the turnout in Fatima and said it was "very
beautiful and encouraging" that pilgrims hadn't been deterred in expressing
their faith despite months of revelations in Europe about priests who molested
children and bishops and Vatican officials who turned a blind eye. The faithful
understand "the capacity of the church to effectively overcome—via
conversion, penance and prayer—the dimension of real sin there is in our
community," Lombardi said.
Benedict
himself admitted to the "sins within the church" on the first day of
the trip, his most explicit admission of Church culpability in the scandal. By
Thursday, however, he had moved on to stressing core church teachings in the
largely Roman Catholic country, where abortion on demand has been available
since 2007 and where Parliament in January passed a bill allowing same-sex
marriage. In addition, a judge in 2008 made it easier to obtain divorce even
when one spouse objects.
Benedict
told the gathering of lay Catholics that he appreciated their efforts fighting
abortion and promoting the family based on the "indissoluble marriage
between a man and woman"—the Vatican's way of expressing its opposition
to divorce and same-sex unions. Such initiatives "help respond to some of
the most insidious and dangerous threats to the common good today," he
said. "Alongside numerous other forms of commitment, such initiatives
represent essential elements in the building of the civilization of love.
"The admonition was a break of sorts from the continuous message Benedict
has delivered in Portugal about the suffering of the world and church—a
message which resonates in Fatima, where the sick and infirm flock seeking
remedies for ailments. In a special message to the sick during Mass, Benedict
urged them to take heart, saying they should "overcome the feeling of the
uselessness of suffering which consumes a person from within and makes him feel
a burden to those around him."
"In
suffering, you will discover an interior peace and even spiritual joy," he
said. His message struck a chord with many in the huge gathering, among them
elderly and infirm people who, with their heads bowed, fingered rosaries. Aurora
Clemente, a 65-year-old cook from Portugal's northeastern tip, close to the
border with Spain, said she had been coming to Fatima on May 13 for more than 30
years. "Fatima makes miracles. When my son was seriously ill, I prayed to
the Virgin of Fatima and he survived," she said. "I find it very
moving here. For me, this is the most beautiful place in the world," she
said, sitting beneath a red umbrella on the fringe of the crowd. Like Lourdes in
France, Fatima attracts millions of pilgrims a year seeking cures. One of the
rituals pilgrims perform at Fatima involves casting replicas of body
parts—eyes, lungs, hearts—on sale at local shops into a big bonfire while
reciting a prayer asking for healing.
Pope
Paul VI visited Fatima in 1967. Pope John Paul II—who was shot in St. Peter's
Square on May 13, 1981—came three times before his death, believing that the
Virgin's "unseen hand" had saved him. During his third and final visit
in 2000, the Vatican announced the "third secret" of Fatima: the third
part of the message the Virgin is said to have told the three children: a
description of the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. The first two
secrets of Fatima were said to have foretold the end of World War I and the
outbreak of World War II and the rise and fall of Soviet communism. After the
third secret was revealed, the Vatican essentially implied the Fatima case was
closed. But on Thursday, Benedict said its message continued to be
relevant." We would be mistaken to think that Fatima's prophetic mission is
complete," Benedict said in his homily during the Mass. Lombardi was asked
if such comments were merely an effort to keep Fatima's fascination relevant to
the faithful at a time when the Cold War and John Paul's assassination attempt
are no longer front-burner issues. "The term 'prophetic' doesn't mean an
announcement of concrete facts that one sees in a crystal ball but rather
knowing how to read history and events in the light of faith," Lombardi
said.
---------------------------------
Pope Benedict XVI last night attacked the rise of aggressive secularism in Western societies, warning them that they risked drifting into a 'desert of godlessness'.
He used his Good Friday meditations to compare deliberate attempts to remove religion from public life to the mockery of Jesus Christ by the mob as he was led out to be crucified.
'Religious sentiments' were increasingly ranked among the 'unwelcome leftovers of antiquity' and 'held up to scorn and ridicule', he added.
'We are shocked to see to what levels of brutality human beings can sink,' said the Pope at an evening ceremony at the Coliseum in Rome.
'Jesus is humiliated in new ways even today when things that are most holy and profound in the faith are being
trivialized, the sense of the sacred is allowed to erode.
'Values and norms that held societies together and drew people to higher ideals are laughed at and thrown overboard. Jesus continues to be ridiculed.'
The German-born Pope, who turns 82 later this month, prayed Christians would respond by growing in faith.
More...
Catholic leader's rebuke for Blair
Gory scenes as Filipino Catholic devotees are nailed to the cross in brutal Good Friday ritual
'May we never question or mock serious things in life like a cynic,' he added. He also condemned the oppression of women, saying there were 'many societies in the world where women fail to receive a fair deal.'
'Christ must be weeping for them,' he said.
------------------------------------
FROM MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS LED BY THE
HOLY FATHER POPE BENEDICT XVI ON GOOD FRIDAY 2006
COMPOSED BY Archbishop ANGELO COMASTRI Vicar General of His Holiness for Vatican
City President of the Fabric of Saint Peter's
• We have lost our sense of sin!
Today a slick campaign of propaganda
Is spreading an inane apologia of evil,
A senseless cult of Satan,
A mindless desire for transgression,
A dishonest and frivolous freedom,
Exalting impulsiveness, immorality and selfishness
As if they were new heights of sophistication.a
Lord Jesus,
Open our eyes:
Let us see the filth around us
And recognize it for what it is,
So that a single tear of sorrow
Can restore us to purity of heart
And the breadth of true freedom.
Open our eyes, Lord, Jesus!
• Surely God is deeply pained
By the attack on the family.
Today we seem to be witnessing
A kind of anti-Genesis,
A counter-plan, a diabolical pride
Aimed at eliminating the family.
There is a move to reinvent mankind,
To modify the very grammar of life
As planned and willed by God.
But, to take God’s place, without being God,
Is insane arrogance,
A risky and dangerous venture.
May Christ’s fall open our eyes
To see once more the beautiful face,
The true face, the holy face of the family.
The face of the family
which all of us need.
• Lord Jesus,
Purity has everywhere fallen victim
To a calculated conspiracy of silence: an impure silence!
People have even come to believe
A complete lie:
That purity is somehow the enemy of love.
But the opposite is true, O Lord!
Purity is necessary
As a condition for love:
A love that is true, a love that is faithful.
In any event, Lord,
If we cannot be the master of ourselves?
How can we give ourselves to others?
• Everything seems over,
The wicked seem to triumph,
And evil appears more powerful than good.
But faith enables us to see afar,
it makes us glimpse the break of a new day
On the other side of this day.
Faith promises us that the final word
belongs to God: to God alone!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pope says rich nations "plundered" Third World
Wed Apr 4, 2007
VATICAN CITY - Rich countries bent on power and profit have mercilessly "plundered
and sacked" Africa and other poor regions and exported to them the "cynicism of
a world without God," Pope Benedict writes in his first book.The Pope also condemns drug trafficking and sexual tourism, saying they are signs
of a world brimming with "people who are empty" yet living among abundant material
goods.One section of the book was printed in Wednesday's Corriere Della Sera daily
before publication later this month by Italian publisher Rizzoli, which owns the
newspaper. A Rizzoli spokeswoman confirmed the authenticity of the excerpts.In the 400-page book, called "Jesus of Nazareth," the Pope offers a modern application
of Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan, who stopped to help a man who had been
robbed by thieves when others, including a priest, had not."The current relevance of the parable is obvious," the Pope writes."If we apply it to the dimensions of globalised society today, we see how the
populations of Africa have been plundered and sacked and this concerns us intimately,"
the Pope says in his book, which comes out on April 16, his 80th birthday.He drew a link between the lifestyle of people in the developed world and the
dire conditions of people in Africa.
STRIPPED NAKED
"We see how our lifestyle, the history that involved us, has stripped them naked
and continues to strip them naked," he writes.The German Pope, who has condemned the effects of colonialism before, said rich
countries had also hurt poor countries spiritually by belittling or trying to wipe
out their own cultural and spiritual traditions."Instead of giving them God, the God close to us in Christ, and welcoming in
their traditions all that is precious and great ... we have brought them the cynicism
of a world without God, where only power and profit count...," he writes.The Pope says his comments were valid for other regions apart from Africa.In what could be seen as a strong self-criticism of the Roman Catholic Church,
whose missionary activities often went hand-in-glove with colonialism, the Pope
writes:"We destroyed (their) moral criteria to the point that corruption and a lust
for power devoid of scruples have become obvious."
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE
- Pope Benedict warned Catholic politicians they risked excommunication from
the Church and should not receive communion if they support abortion.It was the first time that the Pope, speaking to reporters aboard the plane taking
him on a trip to Brazil, dealt in depth with a controversial topic that has come
up in many countries, including the United States, Mexico, and Italy.The Pope was asked whether he supported Mexican Church leaders threatening to
excommunicate leftist parliamentarians who last month voted to legalize abortion
in Mexico City."Yes, this excommunication was not an arbitrary one but is allowed by Canon (church)
law which says that the killing of an innocent child is incompatible with receiving
communion, which is receiving the body of Christ," he said."They (Mexican Church leaders) did nothing new, surprising or arbitrary. They
simply announced publicly what is contained in the law of the Church... which expresses
our appreciation for life and that human individuality, human personality is present
from the first moment (of life)".Under Church law, someone who knowingly does or backs something which the Church
considers a grave sin, such as abortion, inflicts what is known as "automatic excommunication"
on themselves.The Pope said parliamentarians who vote in favor of abortion have "doubts about
the value of life and the beauty of life and even a doubt about the future"."Selfishness and fear are at the root of (pro-abortion) legislation," he said.
"We in the Church have a great struggle to defend life...life is a gift not a threat."
"ALWAYS A GIFT"
The Pope's comments appear to raise the stakes in the debate over whether Catholic
politicians can support abortion or gay marriage and still consider themselves proper
Catholics.In recent months, the Vatican has been accused of interference in Italy for telling
Catholic lawmakers to oppose a draft law that would grant some rights to unwed and
gay couples.During the 2004 presidential election, the U.S. Catholic community was split
over whether to support Democratic candidate John Kerry, himself a Catholic who
backed abortion rights.Some Catholics say they personally would not have an abortion but feel obliged
to support a woman's right to choose.But the Church, which teaches that life begins at the moment of conception and
that abortion is murder, says Catholics cannot have it both ways."The Church says life is beautiful, it is not something to doubt but it is a
gift even when it is lived in difficult circumstances. It is always a gift," the
Pope said.Only Cuba, Guyana and U.S. commonwealth Puerto Rico allow abortion on demand
in Latin America. Many other countries in the region permit it in special cases,
such as if the fetus has defects or if the mother's life is at risk.Brazil, the world's most populous Catholic country, is mulling bringing the debate
to a referendum.
Letter of His Holiness Pope Benedict
XVI to Chinese Catholics
IN RED COMMUNIST CHINA
27 May 2007
By his “Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of the
Catholic Church in the People’s Republic of China”, which bears the date of Pentecost
Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI wishes to express his love for and his closeness to the
Catholics who live in China. He does so, obviously, as Successor of Peter and Universal
Pastor of the Church.From the text two basic thoughts are clear: on the one hand, the Pope’s deep
affection for the entire Catholic community in China and, on the other, his passionate
fidelity to the great values of the Catholic tradition in the ecclesiological field;
hence, a passion for charity and a passion for the truth. The Pope recalls the great
ecclesiological principles of the Second Vatican Council and the Catholic tradition,
but at the same time takes into consideration particular aspects of the life of
the Church in China, setting them in an ample theological perspective.
A. The Church in China in the last fifty years
The Catholic community in China has lived the past fifty years in an intense
way, undertaking a difficult and painful journey, which not only has deeply marked
it but has also caused it to take on particular characteristics which continue to
mark it today. The Catholic community suffered an initial persecution in the 1950s, which witnessed
the expulsion of foreign Bishops and missionaries, the imprisonment of almost all
Chinese clerics and the leaders of the various lay movements, the closing of churches
and the isolation of the faithful. Then, at the end of the 1950s, various state
bodies were established, such as the Office for Religious Affairs and the Patriotic
Association of Chinese Catholics, with the aim of directing and “controlling” all
religious activity. In 1958 the first two Episcopal ordinations without papal mandate
took place, initiating a long series of actions which deeply damaged ecclesial
communion. In the decade 1966-1976, the Cultural Revolution, which took place throughout
the country, violently affected the Catholic community, striking even those Bishops,
priests and lay faithful who had shown themselves more amenable to the new orientations
imposed by government authorities. In the 1980s, with the gestures of openness promoted by Deng Xiaoping, there
began a period of religious tolerance with some possibility of movement and dialogue,
which led to the reopening of churches, seminaries and religious houses, and to
a certain revival of community life.
The information coming from communities of
the Catholic Church in China confirmed that the blood of the martyrs had once again
been the seed of new Christians: the faith had remained alive in the communities;
the majority of Catholics had given fervent witness of fidelity to Christ and the
Church; families had become the key to the transmission of the faith to their members.
The new climate, however, provoked different reactions within the Catholic
community. In this regard, the Pope notes that some Pastors, “not wishing to be subjected
to undue control exercised over the life of the Church, and eager to maintain total
fidelity to the Successor of Peter and to Catholic doctrine, have felt themselves
constrained to opt for clandestine consecration” to ensure a pastoral service to
their own communities (No. 8). In fact, as the Holy Father makes clear, “the clandestine
condition is not a normal feature of the Church’s life, and history shows that Pastors
and faithful have recourse to it only amid suffering, in the desire to maintain
the integrity of their faith and to resist interference from State agencies in matters
pertaining intimately to the Church’s life” (ibid.). Others, who were especially concerned with the good of the faithful and with
an eye to the future “have consented to receive Episcopal ordination without the
pontifical mandate, but have subsequently asked to be received into communion with
the Successor of Peter and with their other brothers in the episcopate” (ibid.).
The Pope, in consideration of the complexity of the situation and being deeply desirous
of promoting the re-establishment of full communion, granted many of them “full
and legitimate exercise of Episcopal jurisdiction”.
Attentively analyzing the situation of the Church in China, Benedict XVI is aware
of the fact that the community is suffering internally from a situation of conflict
in which both faithful and Pastors are involved. He emphasizes, however, that this
painful situation was not brought about by different doctrinal positions but is
the result of the “the significant part played by entities that have been imposed
as the principal determinants of the life of the Catholic community” (No. 7). These
are entities, whose declared purposes – in particular, the aim of implementing the
principles of independence, self-government and self-management of the Church –
are not reconcilable with Catholic doctrine. This interference has given rise to
seriously troubling situations. What is more, Bishops and priests have been subjected
to considerable surveillance and coercion in the exercise of their pastoral
office. In the 1990s, from many quarters and with increasing frequency, Bishops and priests
turned to the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Secretariat
of State in order to obtain from the Holy See precise instructions as to how they
should conduct themselves with regard to some problems of ecclesial life in China.
Many asked what attitude should be adopted towards the government and towards state
agencies in charge of Church life. Other queries concerned strictly sacramental
problems, such as the possibility of concelebrating with Bishops who had been ordained
without papal mandate or of receiving the sacraments from priests ordained by these
Bishops. Finally, the legitimizing of numerous Bishops who had been illicitly consecrated
confused some sectors of the Catholic community. In addition, the law on registering places of worship and the state requirement
of a certificate of membership in the Patriotic Association gave rise to fresh tensions
and further questions. During these years, Pope John Paul II on several occasions addressed messages
and appeals to the Church in China, calling all Catholics to unity and reconciliation.
The interventions of the Holy Father were well received, creating a desire for unity,
but sadly the tensions with the authorities and within the Catholic community did
not diminish. For its part, the Holy See has provided directives regarding the various problems,
but the passage of time and the rise of new situations of increasing complexity
required a reconsideration of the overall question in order to provide the clearest
answer possible to the queries and to issue sure guidance for pastoral activity
in years to come.
B. The history of the Papal Letter
The various problems which seem to have most seriously affected the life of the
Church in China in recent years were amply and carefully analyzed by a special select
Commission made up of some experts on China and members of the Roman Curia who follow
the situation of that community. When Pope Benedict XVI decided to call a meeting
from 19-20 January 2007 durring which various ecclesiastics, including some from
China, took part, the aforementioned Commission worked to produce a document aimed
at ensuring broad discussion on the various points, gathering practical recommendations
made by the participants and proposing some possible theological and pastoral guidelines
for the Catholic community in China. His Holiness, who graciously took part in the
final session of the meeting, decided, among other things, to address a Letter to
the Bishops, priests, consecrated persons and lay faithful.
C. Content of the Letter
“Without claiming to deal with
every detail of the complex matters well known to you”, writes Benedict XVI to the
Catholics of China, “I wish through this letter to offer some guidelines concerning
the life of the Church and the task of evangelization in China, in order to help
you discover what the Lord and Master Jesus Christ wants from you” (No. 2). The
Pope reiterates some fundamental principles of Catholic ecclesiology in order to
clarify the more important problems, aware that the light shed by these principles
will provide assistance in dealing with the various questions and the more concrete
aspects of the life of the Catholic community. While expressing great joy for
the fidelity demonstrated by the faithful in China over the past fifty years, Benedict
XVI reaffirms the inestimable value of their sufferings and of the persecution endured
for the Gospel, and he directs to all an earnest appeal for unity and reconciliation.
Since he is aware of the fact that full reconciliation “cannot be accomplished overnight”,
he recalls that this path “of reconciliation is supported by the example and the
prayer of so many ‘witnesses of faith’ who have suffered and have forgiven, offering
their lives for the future of the Catholic Church in China” (No. 6).In this context, the words of
Jesus, “Duc in alum” (Lk 5:4), continue to ring true.
This is an expression
which invites “us to remember the past with gratitude, to live the present with
enthusiasm and to look forward to the future with confidence”. In China, as indeed
in the rest of the world, “the Church is called to be a witness of Christ, to look
forward with hope, and – in proclaiming the Gospel – to measure up to the new challenges
that the Chinese people must face” (No. 3). “In your country too” the Pope states,
“the proclamation of Christ crucified and risen will be possible to the extent that,
with fidelity to the Gospel, in communion with the Successor of the Apostle Peter
and with the universal Church, you are able to put into practice the signs of love
and unity” (ibid.). In dealing with some of the more urgent problems which emerge from the queries
which have reached the Holy See from Bishops and priests, Benedict XVI offers guidance
regarding the recognition of ecclesiastics of the clandestine community by the government
authorities (cf. No. 7) and he gives much prominence to the subject of the Chinese
Episcopate (cf. No. 8), with particular reference to matters surrounding the appointment
of Bishops (cf. No. 9).
Of special significance are the pastoral directives which
the Holy Father gives to the community, which emphasize in the first place the figure
and mission of the Bishop in the diocesan community: “nothing without the Bishop”.
In addition, he provides guidance for Eucharistic concelebrating and he encourages
the creation of diocesan bodies laid down by canonical norms. He does not fail to
give directions for the training of priests and family life. As for the relationship of the Catholic community to the State, Benedict XVI
in a serene and respectful way recalls Catholic doctrine, formulated anew by the
Second Vatican Council. He then expresses the sincere hope that the dialogue between
the Holy See and the Chinese government will make progress so as to be able to reach
agreement on the appointment of Bishops, obtain the full exercise of the faith by
Catholics as a result of respect for genuine religious freedom and arrive at the
normalization of relations between the Holy See and the Beijing Government.
Finally, the Pope revokes all the earlier and more recent faculties and directives
of a pastoral nature which had been granted by the Holy See to the Church in China.
The changed circumstances of the overall situation of the Church in China and the
greater possibilities of communication now enable Catholics to follow the general
canonical norms and, where necessary, to have recourse to the Apostolic See. In
any event, the doctrinal principles which inspired the above-mentioned faculties
and directives now find fresh application in the directives contained in the present
Letter (cf. No. 18).
D. Tone and outlook of the Letter
With spiritual concern and using
an eminently pastoral language, Benedict XVI addresses the entire Church in China.
His intention is not to create situations of harsh confrontation with particular
persons or groups: even though he expresses judgments on certain critical situations,
he does so with great understanding for the contingent aspects and the persons involved,
while upholding the theological principles with great clarity. The Pope wishes to
invite the Church to a deeper fidelity to Jesus Christ and he reminds all Chinese
Catholics of their mission to be evangelizers in the present specific context of
their country. The Holy Father views with respect and deep sympathy the ancient
and recent history of the great Chinese people and once again declares himself ready
to engage in dialogue with the Chinese authorities in the awareness that normalization
of the life of the Church in China presupposes frank, open and constructive dialogue
with these authorities. Furthermore, Benedict XVI, like his Predecessor John Paul
II before him, is firmly convinced that this normalization will make an incomparable
contribution to peace in the world, thus adding an irreplaceable piece to the great
mosaic of peaceful coexistence among peoples.
POPE CALLS FOR PALESTINIAN HOMELAND
Pope Benedict XVI called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian
homeland immediately after he arrived in Israel Monday, a stance that could put
him at odds with his hosts on a trip aimed at easing strains between the Vatican
and Jews. The pope also took on the delicate issue of the Holocaust, pledging to
"honor the memory" of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide at the
start of his five-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories. Benedict
urged Israelis and Palestinians to "explore every possible avenue" to resolve
their differences in remarks at the airport after he landed. "The hopes of
countless men, women and children for a more secure and stable future depend on
the outcome of negotiations for peace," he said. "In union with people of
goodwill everywhere, I plead with all those responsible to explore every
possible avenue in the search for a just resolution of the outstanding
difficulties, so that both peoples may live in peace in a homeland of their own
within secure and internationally recognized borders. "While Benedict's support
for a Palestinian homeland alongside Israel is widely shared by the
international community, including the United States, it was noteworthy that he
made the call in his first public appearance. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, leader of the hard-line Likud Party, has pointedly refused to endorse
the two-state solution since his election. But he is expected to come under
pressure to do so when he travels to Washington next week. The pope has tried to
improve interfaith relations throughout his four-year papacy.
But Benedict has had to tread carefully on his Middle East visit after coming
under sharp criticism from both Muslims and Jews for past statements. He is
hoping his weeklong trip to the Holy Land, which began with three days in
neighboring Jordan, will improve interfaith ties. Benedict angered many in the
Muslim world three years ago when he quoted a Medieval text that characterized
some of Islam's Prophet Muhammad's teachings as "evil and inhuman," particularly
"his command to spread by the sword the faith. He later expressed regret that
his comments offended Muslims. The Vatican has also come under widespread
criticism over the years for not doing enough to stop the genocide - a charge it
rejects. And the German-born pope himself has faced questions for his
involvement in the Hitler Youth corps during the war. Benedict says he was
coerced. The pope also outraged Jews earlier this year when he revoked the
excommunication of an ultraconservative bishop who denies the Holocaust. Later
Monday, Benedict is scheduled to lay a wreath at Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust
memorial.
"It is right and fitting that, during my stay in Israel, I will have the
opportunity to honor the memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of the shoah,"
he said, using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust. He said he would "pray that
humanity will never again witness a crime of such magnitude." Dignitaries and
religious leaders greeted the pontiff at a red-carpet ceremony at the Tel Aviv
airport. Yellow and white Vatican flags fluttered alongside blue and white
Israeli banners as an honor guard played in the background. The pope smiled as
he walked along the carpet, flanked by Israeli President Shimon Peres on one
side and Netanyahu on the other. Other political leaders, along with black-robed
Christian clergymen and Muslim religious leaders, stood in line to shake his
hand. "Your visit here brings a blessed understanding between religions and
spreads peace near and far. Historic Israel and the renewed Israel together
welcome your arrival as paving the great road to peace," Peres said. The pope
plans to visit holy sites in both Israel and the Palestinian territories. He
also will try to draw attention to the shrinking Christian community in the Holy
Land. In Jordan, he said he had a "deep respect" for Islam and toured the
country's largest mosque, where he did not pray but had a moment of reflection.
Before heading to Israel, Benedict urged Christians and Muslims at a farewell
ceremony in Jordan to work for religious tolerance. He said his visit to a
Jordan's largest mosque was one of the highlights so far of his first Middle
East pilgrimage. "I would like to encourage all Jordanians, whether Christian or
Muslim to build on the firm foundations of religious tolerance that enable the
members of different communities to live together in peace and mutual respect,"
Benedict said. During his three days in Jordan, the pope said he hoped the
Catholic Church could be a force for peace in the region.
---------------------------------------
My Religious Faith
By
KUOMINTANG GENERAL Chiang Kai-shek
A radio broadcast,
originally entitled “Why I Believe In Jesus,” delivered to Chinese Christian throughout
the land on Easter eve, April 16, 1938
One who wishes to succeed in his work, especially one engaged
in a revolutionary task, must be free from superstition and yet he must be
a man of faith. Especially today, when the evil passions of men are running riot,
do we need a firm faith in the ultimate triumph of right. Our country is now being
torn asunder; our fellow countrymen are suffering untold agonies; our men are being
massacred, and our women are being ravished. The very existence of our nation is
threatened. How can we avert except by faith? Therefore, while we must eradicate
all superstitions, we must at the same time cultivate a strong and positive faith.
For example, if we believe with all our hearts that the San Min Chu I (Three
Principles of the People) are essentially true and just principles, then we shall
have the power to put them into effect, and our enemies will never be able to conquer
us, no matter how fierce and cruel they may become. Fearlessness and confidence
have their roots in an unshakable faith. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. This evening I have been asked by
the National federation of Chinese Christians to speak to my fellow-Christians throughout
the country. I propose to follow my talk of last year with a further testimony on
the subject, “Why I Believe in Jesus. ”To my mind the first reason why we should believe in Jesus
is that He was the leaser of a national revolution. At the time of Jesus’ birth
the Jewish people were steadily weakening under the heavy oppression of Rome.
If
we study the history of this period we find that the Jews were treated like slaves
and animals at the hands of their enemies. The Romans has power of life and death
over them. The Jews had not only failed to resist the aggressors, but they had even
lost the will to resist. Then a people’s revolutionist was born in the person of
Jesus, who courageously took upon Himself the heavy task of regenerating the nation.
With sacrificial determination He set out to save His people, the world, and all
mankind. He took His disciples on many itineraries, and by means of His preaching
and healing, His Heaven-given wisdom and matchless eloquence, and His three ideals
of truth, righteousness, and abundant life, He aroused the nation, led the masses,
and prepared the way for a people’s revolution. The second reason why we should believe in Jesus is that He
was the leader of a social revolution. The causes of a nation’s weakness are many.
One of the most serious is the inability of the people to improve their living and
economy and to put them on a rational foundation.
Therefore, one engaged in a people’s
revolution must begin by ridding society of its darkness and corruption, and then
with fresh spirit create a new, expanding, abundant life for all the people, thus
setting the nation free. Jesus fully realized that in order to revive His nation
and regenerate His people He must launch a social revolution. He sought by the inspiration
of His leadership and personality to awaken the perishing masses so that they would
give up the ways of darkness, become new citizens, and build the foundations of
a new society.In the third place, Jesus was the leader of a religious revolution.
Jesus saw that unless there was a radical reform to sweep away the superstitions
and corruption in the organized religion of His day, the real spirit of religion
could not shine forth. Hence He often denounced those who prayed on the street corners,
and strongly opposed the use of religion to exploit the people. All of His acts
were designed to lead the Jewish religion from darkness to light, from decay to
health, from chaos to order, from corruption to purity, and to lead society from
the blackness of night in to the brightness of day. How important and yet how difficult
was this task of reforming religion and of cleansing the religious society! Yet
Jesus went ahead with utter disregard of personal suffering, in order that He might
rescue religion and society from the evils that beset them and awaken the people
from their spiritual lethargy.
I call Jesus a great religious
revolutionist. I have often sought to study the secret of Jesus’ revolutionary
passion. It seems to me that it is found in His spirit of love. With His wonderful
love Jesus sought to destroy the evil in the hearts of men, to do away with social
injustices, and to enable everyone to enjoy his natural rights as a human being
and receive the blessings of liberty, equality, and happiness. He believed that
all men are brothers and that they should love one another and help one another
in need. He believed in peace and justice between nations. Throughout His life He
opposed violence and upheld righteousness. He was full of mercy and continually
helped the weak. His great love and spirit of revolutionary self-sacrifice were
demonstrated in all His words and deeds. His purpose to save the world and humanity
was firm and His faith was immovable. He gave Himself in utter love and sacrifice
for others. He was absolutely fearless, and He struggled to the end. When He was
nailed to the Cross and made to suffer unspeakable pain, He faced the ordeal with
calm and fortitude. His loyalty to His cause and to His sense of duty, and his magnanimity
to friends and associates were virtues as precious as they are difficult to attain.
See Jesus lifted on the cross; He still looks to Heaven and pleads with God to forgive
His enemies for their ignorance.
What marvelous Love! Jesus’ revolutionary spirit
came from His great love for humanity. If we compare the situation in China during the past few centuries
when our national life degenerated under Manchu domination, we find that it was
very similar to that occurring among the Jews under the rule of Rome. Our late leader,
Dr. Sun Yat-sen, with his universal sympathy for all oppressed and his profound
understanding of Jesus’ revolutionary spirit of Love and sacrifice, carried on his
revolutionary work for forty years and brought about at last the liberation of
the Chinese people. In 1911 he overthrew the autocratic Manchu Dynasty and established
the Republic of China, thereby completing his mission of national revolution. As I look at the future of our Revolution I am convinced that
we cannot truly regenerate our nation unless we have the spirit-the revolutionary
spirit-of struggle and sacrifice such as we find in Jesus. I once said, “We will
not abandon peace until all hope of peaceful settlement is gone; but when we reach
the limit we will consider no sacrifice too costly.” This, I believe, reflected
Jesus’ spirit. During the past five years, in addition to my regular duties, I have
promoted several social movements.
The best-known movement, and the one which has
achieved some measure of success, is the New Life Movement. And yet I feel
that this movement is apt to emphasize outward forms to the neglect of the inner
substance, and to put more stress upon material than spiritual values. Where is
the trouble? The answer is that many people are thinking only of new modes of living
and not of a new quality of life. So I wish to give you this thought tonight: If
we want to promote new ways of living, we must have not only a new spirit but also
the quality of life that is inspired by the love and sacrificial purpose of Jesus.In conclusion, Jesus’ spirit is positive, sacrificial, sure,
true, progressive, inspiring, and always revolutionary. We observe Easter this year
at a time of grave national peril. Easter testifies to the immortality of Jesus’
spirit. We who share the Christian faith should treasure the Easter message of rebirth
and resurrection. We should follow Jesus’ way of sacrifice. We should take His life
as our example, His spirit as out spirit, His life as our life. Let us march together
toward the Cross, for the regeneration of our nation and for the realization of
everlasting peace on earth.
Monday, Apr. 26, 1943
Chiang Kai shek's Christian belief Testimony
The declaration of faith of Christendom's most famed living convert
was made public last week by the Methodist Church. Chiang Kai-shek had written it
in 1937, shortly after his capture and release by his Sian kidnappers. The hardboiled, stern Generalissimo, whose mother was a devout Buddhist,
came under the influence of three powerful Christian influences in youth and early
manhood—Dr. Sun Yatsen, "Mother" K. T. Soong and her daughter, Meiling. In 1930,
three years after he had married the brilliant, Wellesley-educated Meiling, Chiang
was baptized a Methodist, the faith of his wife and her family. But not until his
captivity in Sian, by his testimony, did his religion become a part of himself,
and thus a part of China. Christian Husband. Chiang had resisted threats of violence, torture
and public trial from his captors. "From my captors I asked but one thing—the Bible. . . . The greatness
and love of Christ burst upon me with a new inspiration, increasing my strength
to struggle against evil, to overcome temptation and to uphold righteousness. .
. . When Christ entered Jerusalem the last time He knew the danger ahead, but triumphantly
He rode into the city. . . . "In comparison, how unimportant my life must be! ... I remembered the
prayers offered by Dr. Sun Yat-sen during his imprisonment in London. . . .* My
strength was redoubled and ... I was prepared to make the final sacrifice. ... I
was comforted and at rest. . . .
"The greatest thing [about Dr. Sun] was the love he received from Christ
—love which sought the emancipation of the weaker races and the welfare of op pressed
peoples. This spirit remains with us now and reaches to the skies. "Today I find that I have taken a further step and have become a follower
of Jesus Christ. This makes me realize more fully than ever that the success of
our revolution depends upon men of faith, men of character, who because of their
faith will not sacrifice principle for personal safety. . . . "The life of Christ is a long record of affliction and persecution.
His spirit of forbearance, His love and His benevolence shine through it all. No
more valuable lesson has yet come to me out of my Christian experience. "Without religion there can be no real understanding of life. Without
faith our human problems, great and small, are difficult of solution." Christian
Wife. The Methodist Church also published the vivid and more emotional testimony
of the Madame: "By nature I am not a religious person ... a mystic.
I am practical
minded. Mundane things have meant much to me . . . mundane, not material things.
I care more for a beautiful celadon vase than for costly jewels. . . . Also I am
more or less skeptical. ... I do not yet believe in predigested religion in palatable,
sugar-coated doses. . . . "I know my mother ['Mother' Soong] lived very close to God. I recognized
something great in her. And I believe that my childhood training influenced me greatly
even though I was more or less rebellious at the time. ... I found family prayers
tiresome. ... I hated the long sermons. But today I feel that this church-going
habit established something, a kind of stability. . . . "During the last seven years I ... have gone through deep waters because
of the chaotic conditions in China. ... All these things have made me see my own
inadequacy. More than that, all human insufficiency. To try to do anything for the
country seemed like trying to put out a great conflagration with a cup of water.
"During these years of my married life . . . there was [first] a tremendous
enthusiasm and patriotism. . . . But there was no staying power. I was depending
on self. Then ... I was plunged into dark despair ... I realized that spiritually
I was failing my husband. . . . Thus I entered into the third period where I wanted
to do not my will, but God's. ... I used to pray that God would do this or that. Now I pray only that God make His will known to me. . . . "Prayer is
not self-hypnotism. It is more than meditation. ... I do not think it is possible
to make this understandable to one who has not tried it. ... What I do want to make
clear is that whether we get guidance or not, it's there. It's like tuning in on
the radio. There's music in the air whether we tune in or not."
* Where he was arrested in 1896 for extradition to China, apparently
on the request of the Peking Government.
-------------------------------------------------
WORDS OF WISDOM
FOR THIS GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS
AND
THE DOMINO COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT
In 1923, at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago,
Illinois, eight of the most powerful money magnates in the world gathered together
for a meeting one day. These eight, if they combined their total resources and assets,
controlled more money than the U.S. Treasury. In that group were such men as Charles
Schwab, the president of a steel company; Richard Whitney, the president of the
New York Stock Exchange; Arthur Cutton, a wheat speculator; Albert Fall, a presidential
cabinet member and personally a very wealthy man; Jesse Livermore, the greatest
bear on Wall Street in his generation; Leon Fraser, the president of the International
Bank of Settlements; and Ivan Krueger, who headed the largest monopoly. Quite an
impressive and ambitious group of people!
Let's look at the same group of men later in life. Charles Schwab
died penniless. Richard Whitney spent the rest of his life serving a sentence in
Sing-Sing Prison. Arthur Cutton became insolvent. Albert Fall was pardoned from
a Federal Prison so he might die at home. Leon Fraser committed suicide. Jesse Livermore
committed suicide. Ivan Krueger also committed suicide. Seven of these eight ambitious
money-magnates lived lives that ended in disaster before they passed on from this
life. What mistake did they make? What led to their ruin? I think it was that their
ambition was misplaced and they thought that happiness lay in the accumulation of
wealth.
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust
destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven....For where your treasure
is, there your heart will be also" (6:19,20).
--------------------------------------------
WHAT IS A
FSOC PROFESSIONAL?
A professional learns every aspect of the job. An amateur skips the learning process
whenever possible.
A professional carefully discovers what is needed and wanted. An amateur assumes
what others need and want.
A professional looks, speaks and dresses like A professional. An amateur is sloppy
in appearance and speech.
A professional keeps his or her equipment clean and orderly. An amateur has dirty
gear.
A professional is focused and clear-headed. An amateur is confused and distracted.
A professional does not let mistakes slide by. An amateur ignores or hides mistakes.
A professional jumps into difficult assignments. An amateur tries to get out of
difficult work.
A professional remains level-headed and optimistic. An amateur gets upset and assumes
the worst.
A professional persists until the objective is achieved. An amateur gives up at
the first opportunity.
A professional produces more than expected. An amateur produces just enough to get
by.
A professional produces a high-quality product or service. An amateur produces medium-to-low
quality product or service.
The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to
assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which
the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these
rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles
and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that
Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient
causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more
disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by
abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to
reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to
throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future
security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is
now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of
Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of
repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment
of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted
to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the
public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing
importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be
obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of
people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in
the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable,
and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose
of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly
firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be
elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have
returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the
mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions
within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose
obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others
to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new
Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to
Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their
offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers
to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent
of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the
Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our
constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts
of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which
they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province,
establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so
as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same
absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering
fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with
power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and
waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed
the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to
compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with
circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous
ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear
Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and
Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring
on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known
rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and
conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the
most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated
injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a
Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have
warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an
unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances
of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice
and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to
disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and
correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of
consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces
our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War,
in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in
General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the
rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good
People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United
Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they
are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political
connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be
totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power
to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do
all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the
support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our
sacred Honor.
