Gangsters, Islamic Terrorists, Deathmatch

English: The Muslim population of the world map by percentage of each country, according to the Pew Forum 2009 report on world Muslim populations. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

June 17, 2012: The continuing violence in the Moslem south has led to 5,000 dead and 8,000 wounded in the last eight years. But it has also led to over 200,000 people leaving the area. Most of those fleeing have been Moslem. About 30 percent of the Buddhists in the south (who were 20 percent of the population in 2004) have fled and ten percent of the Moslems. Criminal gangs, whose main business is smuggling drugs and other contraband from Malaysia, have long dominated the area. The gangs agreed to support the Islamic terrorists, since both groups had something to gain by trying to weaken law and order in the area. While the gangs made it more difficult to improve the economy, they were more tolerable than the Islamic terrorists. All this has become too much for most Moslems. The Islamic terrorists wanted to expel all non-Moslems, shut down secular schools, and didn’t care if they made it difficult to improve the economy. This was too much for most of the Moslems the Islamic terrorists were supposed to be representing. Those that don’t flee are increasingly joining pro-government armed defense groups. The gangs and Islamic terror groups refuse to negotiate or quit, so it’s a fight to the death. The gangs will probably turn on their Islamic radical allies eventually, as the criminal organizations are not run by religious fanatics but business-minded entrepreneurs who are not keen on getting wiped out. Then again, the gangsters believe that the Islamic radicals will have to be killed, otherwise the southern gangsters will have some pretty deadly and determined enemies in their own backyard.

‘Terrorism in Asia can be only prevented by SCO members’

An interview with Viktor Nadein-Rayevsky, Institute of World Economy & International Relations, Moscow

Thu Jun 7, 2012 4:6PM GMT

That is important that there have been several military exercises that give opportunity for joint operations here in Central Asia. Of course, this organization is the only real mechanism that can help stop terrorist activities here. It is a problem of course and this problem is on the way of solution.”

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has lashed out at NATO‘s eastward expansion, saying it’s aimed at stopping the growth of the member states of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

 

Ahmadinejad said NATO members are trying to resurrect what he called past colonialist relations, adding “the colonialists are equally opposed to the development of China, Russia, India and Iran as well as other members of the SCO.”

He further called for a new world order, saying the current one has failed because of its “inhumane and unfair nature.”

The SCO is an intergovernmental organization that was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Iran, India, Mongolia, Afghanistan and Pakistan are observer members of the organization.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Viktor Nadein-Rayevsky from Moscow’s Institute of World Economy & International Relations to further discuss the issue. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

 

Press TV:Nadein-Rayevsky, tell us what you think about the declaration especially the fact that it seems very firm regarding the expansion of the Western countries, in particular the United States, as they have said with the concentration in the Asia-Pacific.

Nadein-Rayevsky:In fact, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the last years has become a rather prominent and important partner of many international organizations in the world.

First of all, that was very important that it begins the cooperation from real problems; problems that are dangerous for all the countries of the region. First of all, there is the problem of terrorism and, of course, the problems of separatism and drug trafficking which are very dangerous things the countries of the region have to deal with.

While the world braces for e-threats, India moves slow

Image via Wikipedia

6 Feb, 2012, 10.58AM IST, Rajat Pandit,TNN

MUNICH: After the first four “real” battlefields of land, air, sea and now increasingly space, India needs to get very serious about the virtual front as well. The country should begin planning a full-fledged military cyber command, instead of the current piecemeal and disjointed steps to bolster cyber-security, grappling as it already is with incessant online espionage and other attacks from China, Pakistan and others.

This was the clear takeaway from the deliberations on cyber-security and cyber-warfare in the high-profile Munich Security Conference on Sunday, even though India hardly figured in the discussions.

Experts said the emergence of “cyber-weapons” like the Stuxnet software ‘worm’ that was used to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme over a year ago, had changed the entire security ballgame, almost on par with the use of nuclear bombs for the first time in 1945.

Migration Information Source – Living In Between: The Chinese in South Africa

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By Yoon Jung Park
Rhodes University, South Africa
Visiting Professor, Howard University, Washington DC

Two South African young men view a poster advertising a 2006 Chinese cultural festival in Pretoria, South Africa.

January 2012

While there is a long history of limited migration from China to Africa, the past decade has brought tens of thousands of Chinese to African cities, towns, and rural areas. These migrants are part of the growing political, economic, and sociocultural ties between China — now the world’s second largest economy — and the poorest and most underdeveloped continent.

In a clever political move, China recently supported South Africa’s candidacy to become the newest member of the international organization of rapidly emerging markets that make up BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), thus ensuring South African (and perhaps even African) support for China at the United Nations Security Council as well as other international bodies.

In terms of economic ties, trade figures between Africa and China are dazzling with respect to both their rapid rate of growth as well as their actual total, now estimated at more than $120 billion. Beijing is now Africa’s largest trade partner, with Chinese investments fueling 49 countries and a wide range of sectors, including mining, finance, manufacturing, construction, and agriculture. Where many Western investors see risk, the Chinese see opportunity — an outlook that has led to phenomenal growth in the numbers of Chinese in Africa.

Chinese Plan Reveals Space Ambitions

A modified model of the Long March CZ-2F rocket carrying the unmanned spacecraft Shenzhou 8 blasts off from the launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China’s northwest Gansu Province in November.

December 30, 2011

China is shooting for the moon in an effort to become a major player in the long-dormant space race.

A newly released five-year plan outlines Beijing’s goals of developing new rockets, satellites, and embarking on deep-space navigation. Longer-term, the aim is to have a global satellite-positioning system in place, construct a space station, and eventually to put a man on the moon.

Clean-burning fuels will power its next-generation rockets, which will launch heavy cargos into space, according to details of the program released by the government this week.

China’s space program has already made major breakthroughs in a relatively short time. In 2003, it became the third country to launch its own astronaut — known as a “Taikonaut” — into space, and five years later, completed a spacewalk.

Game Change–Five Bold Moves That Could Change World Affairs

From reciprocal nuclear reductions to making nice with Iran, 5 bold moves that could change the world.

BY STEPHEN M. WALT | DECEMBER 13, 2011

What are some potential game-changers in contemporary international diplomacy? By “game-changer,” I mean a bold and risky initiative that fundamentally alters the strategic landscape, creating new possibilities and forcing others to rethink their own positions.

I’m thinking about the kind of bold stroke that the late Michael Handel analyzed in his book The Diplomacy of Surprise: Hitler, Nixon, Sadat. He was interested in how certain leaders launched faits accomplis or other unexpected maneuvers to break out of diplomatic gridlocks. Obvious examples are Richard Nixon’s opening to China, Anwar Sadat’s surprise announcement that he was willing to go to Jerusalem in search of peace, or (less positively) the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that briefly united Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and helped open the door to World War II. These initiatives often involved advance planning behind the scenes, but they were unexpected at the time and had dramatic effects as soon as they were revealed.

So I’ve been trying to imagine other steps that contemporary world leaders could take that might have equally dramatic effects. This sort of initiative can be risky, of course, and there’s no guarantee that a bold gamble will succeed. With that caveat, here’s a short list of five potential “game-changers,” in no particular order.

AFP/Getty Images

The United States Takes the Military Option “off the Table” with Iran  

For at least a decade, U.S. leaders have repeatedly insisted that all options are “on the table” with Iran. In one sense this is a truism: as long as you have certain capabilities, you always have the option of using them no matter what you’ve said in the past. But constantly harping on the possibility of military action is not a good way to build trust — especially when the opponent is already deeply suspicious. It is also a very good way to convince an adversary that it ought to acquire some means of deterring a serious attack, such as acquiring a nuclear weapon, which is precisely what we don’t want Iran to do. In any event, keeping the military option “on the table” doesn’t appear to have achieved very much thus far.

So what would happen if the Obama administration announced that the military option was “off the table” completely? It could remind everyone that this step did not preclude military action to defend U.S. allies or retaliate against direct attacks on the United States or its forces, but that we were not contemplating any sort of preventive attack on Iran itself, and were going to rely on diplomacy instead. I doubt this would cause a sudden U.S.-Iranian thaw, but it might clear the air somewhat and strengthen the hand of Iranians who recognize that crossing the nuclear threshold may not be in their own interest.

I don’t for a minute think Obama & Co. will do any such thing between now and November 2012 (and probably not afterwards), and I certainly can’t imagine any of the GOP candidates (save Ron Paul) acting along these lines. But that just shows you how little imagination our foreign-policy establishment has these days.

Above, President Obama prepares to deliver a statement on the U.N. Security Council sanctioning Iran over its nuclear program in June 2010.

Roger L. Wollenberg-Pool/Getty Images

Hamas Revises Its Charter  

If you’ve never read the Hamas Charter, it’s worth a quick gander. You’ll find it pretty disturbing. Many experts believe that a lot of its elements (including the explicit rejection of Israel’s legitimacy, etc.) are not a true indication of Hamas’ bottom lines, but, even so, there’s a lot of offensive stuff that has nothing to do with concrete issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians. Case in point: the various references to a global Zionist conspiracy (going back to the French Revolution!), along with positive references to long-discredited anti-Semitic forgeries like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Check out Articles 22, 28, and 32, for example. In addition to making it easier for opponents to justify marginalizing Hamas, such passages make the organization sound out of touch with reality.

The Jamestown Foundation: Chinese Air Force Officer Recruitment, Education and Training

Publication: China Brief Volume: 11 Issue: 22

November 30, 2011 01:12 AM Age: 2 days

Category: China Brief, Military/Security, China and the Asia-Pacific

By: Kenneth Allen

PLAAF National Defense Students in Training

As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continues to emphasize the need to raise the quality of its personnel, analyzing the recruitment, education and training of the officer corps becomes all the more important for assessing Chinese military modernization, especially for the technology-dependent PLA Air Force (PLAAF). Based on the available information, it is unclear whether the PLAAF has succeeded in reforming officer recruitment, education and training to build a more highly-educated officer corps capable of commanding, operating and supporting a growing high-tech force in a combined-arms and joint environment.  It is clear however that a number of challenges remain, including limited opportunities for joint training in the academy and a lack of centralized management.

PLAAF officers come from military academic institutions, a Defense Student (Reserve Officer) Program and direct recruitment of civilian graduates. The PLAAF, which has multiple officer academic institutions, separates its education and training system at each level (cadet, basic, intermediate and advanced) based on the five officer career tracks: military/command, political, logistics, equipment and special technical. Whereas all PLAAF academic institution graduates receive their specialty training as a cadet, Defense Students and directly recruited graduates must receive their specialty training after graduation. In addition, almost all new officers serve a one-year probationary period and must serve at least eight years before leaving the military.

Classical Geopolitics Today – A Case Study

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Today we look at the classical approach to geopolitics in relation to China. There are those who would very much like to contain this growing geopolitical power, but there are very real impediments in the way – e.g., an economy expected to become the world’s largest in the coming decades, a lengthy coastline that cannot be ‘landlocked’ by containment-minded foes, and a growing ‘blue water’ naval capability. The latter development, of course, is of special interest to those nations that populate the broader Indian Ocean area. In the following STRATFOR conversation, it is also of interest to George Friedman and Robert Kaplan, who discuss China’s far reaching bid for sea power and its geopolitical implications.

China, Pakistan boost anti-terrorism

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JHELUM, Pakistan — The Pakistani and Chinese attack choppers swoop low across the valley, strafing a mock terrorist hideout and a bomb-making factory. Then a joint commando team storms the camp — to the gentle applause of top brass from both nations watching from the stands.

The fact that such a drill is needed reflects a new concern troubling their long-standing alliance: Chinese militants along the Afghan border allegedly aiding separatism in China and plotting terrorist attacks there

Countries around the world, especially the U.S., share Chinese concerns about Pakistan’s militant-infested tribal regions, but few get the same kind of public commitment of help as Beijing. It’s a legacy of China’s oft-hailed “all-weather friendship” with Pakistan.

Anti-terror cooperation is the latest example of the special relationship between the neighboring countries.

China’s good will is vital to Pakistan: China is its largest defense supplier, and it has helped construct two nuclear reactors. Chinese investments help keep the Pakistani economy afloat.