Archive for the 'China' Category

Oh, dear! What can the matter be? Oh, dear! What a calamity.

Fancy such a supposed short-assed, no account, completely crappy kind of crummy country such as Kyrgyzstan having the temerity to tell the mighty US military machine to take a hike.

Oh, dear!

Bet they wouldn’t be as big & brave if they didn’t have their rich Russian & Chinese chums, eh?

Kyrgyzstan leaves US out in the cold

As the Kyrgyz parliament decides to close the only US military base in the country, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes considers the strategic and political impact of the announcement.

(snip)

Manas airbase is one of those peculiarly American creations. Outside the fence it is Central Asia, inside it is the mid-west of the United States.

A land of large white pick-up trucks, stars and stripes and huge, very polite people who insist on calling you “Sir”.

(snip)

But the truth, I knew, is that the Americans are here for one reason only, and it was sitting outside in the shape of 12 large aircraft.

There is nothing very sexy about a KC-135. It is a big drab grey airliner converted to be a flying petrol station.

But KC-135s are hugely important to American and British squaddies on the front line in Afghanistan.

[See map of existing and possible supply routes in the region]

Every time they get into a tight spot with the Taleban, they call in an air strike by fighter jets waiting in the sky above.

Those fighter jets can only remain airborne because of the KC-135s flying out of Manas. There is one circling high over Afghanistan 24 hours a day.

(snip)

… there is little to show for the eight years America has spent here.

Inside the Manas airbase the buildings all look distinctly temporary.

For all their talk of “partnering”, the Americans have not even fixed the broken concrete runway.

They pay a paltry $60m a year in rent. And one day, when their war in Afghanistan is done, they will go home. Unlike the Russians, who have already been here for well over 100 years.

Still, as is so often said by some, sometimes that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Others, lots less polite, say such stuff as tough shit, get over it, move on, business is business m’boy and so on & so forth.

Read the rest of this extremely interesting, and telling, report right here.

Hmm. Certainly does seem to be an especially super-duper, sort of sooo strategically globally positioned place of seriously significant importance doesn’t it?

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

Now, please read some of these seriously salient messages being sent from the wider world.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

Judge orders Chinese Muslims freed from Gitmo

Chinese, Muslim, Islamofascist terrorists?

Well, well, well. We do declare.

Hands up who knew.

Did you?

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A federal judge has ordered the immediate release into the United States of 17 Chinese Muslims who have been held for several years in the U.S. military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina on Tuesday ordered the 17 detainees to appear in his Washington courtroom at 10 a.m. Friday and said he would hold a hearing next week to determine under what conditions they will be settled in the United States.

The government late Tuesday afternoon announced it would file papers shortly with an appeals court seeking an emergency stay to stop the judge’s order in its tracks.

The detainees are ethnic Uighurs, from a mostly Muslim autonomous region in western China.

They have been in government custody for seven years and have been cleared for release for the past four years to any country willing to take them. No countries have volunteered.

The judge, visibly impatient, told government lawyers he wants no delays.

“There is a pressing need for them to be released,” Urbina declared.

And, good old Judge Ricardo flatly refused to let the matter rest, even at that.

“I have issued an order. I do not want these people interfered with in any way,” the judge said.

Read the rest of this (sorta semi-refreshing), report right here.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

Xinhau, China’s official news agency, reported a successful spacewalk before the rocket even left the ground:

A news story describing a successful launch of China’s long-awaited space mission and including detailed dialogue between astronauts launched on the Internet Thursday, hours before the rocket had even left the ground. The country’s official news agency Xinhua posted the article on its Web site Thursday, and remained there for much of the day before it was taken down.

The arcticle, dated two days from now on Sept. 27, vividly described the rocket in flight, complete with a sharply detailed dialogue between the three astronauts.

Excerpts are below:

“After this order, signal lights all were switched on, various data show up on rows of screens, hundreds of technicians staring at the screens, without missing any slightest changes …

‘One minute to go!’

‘Changjiang No.1 found the target!’…

“The firm voice of the controller broke the silence of the whole ship. Now, the target is captured 12 seconds ahead of the predicted time …

‘The air pressure in the cabin is normal!’

“Ten minutes later, the ship disappears below the horizon. Warm clapping and excited cheering breaks the night sky, echoing across the silent Pacific Ocean.”

Fortunately, the mission went as smoothly in real life as it did in the news story. That’s one small step for a meaningless individual, one giant leap for the Great Collective.

In other news, John McCain announced that he won Friday’s debate, hours before the debate actually began:

Although the fate of tonight’s presidential debate in Mississippi remains very much up in the air, John McCain has apparently already won it — if you believe an Internet ad an astute reader spotted next to this piece in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal this morning.

“McCain Wins Debate!” declares the ad which features a headshot of a smiling McCain with an American flag background. Another ad spotted by our eagle-eyed observer featured a quote from McCain campaign manager Rick Davis declaring: “McCain won the debate– hands down.”

Here’s the screenshot.

Even through all the heavy makeup along with the absolute absence of any signs of her having hips, it should have been obvious at the outset, even to the most short sighted of us, that the cute little Chinese gymnast called He Kexin was quite clearly, merely a kid.

International Olympic Committee launches probe into He Kexin’s age

The International Olympic Committee has ordered an investigation into mounting allegations that Chinese authorities covered up the true age of their gold-medal winning gymnastics star because she was too young to compete.

An IOC official told The Times that because of “discrepancies” that have come to light about the age of He Kexin, the host nation’s darling who won gold in both team and individual events, an official inquiry has been launched that could result in the gymnast being stripped of her medals.

The investigation was triggered as a US computer expert claimed yesterday to have uncovered Chinese government documents that he says prove she is only 14 - making her ineligible to compete in the Olympics - rather than 16, as officials in Beijing insist is her age.

(snip)

The IOC has been accused of deliberately ignoring the issue because it feared offending China.

Yet Giselle Davies, an IOC spokesperson, said tonight that because of troubling new developments, the committee had instructed the International Gymnastics Federation, the sport’s governing body, to investigate.

Read the rest of this sport report right here.

So, what we want to know now is whether or not both the US and the UK will soon be getting the medals they should have been given in the beginning?

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

A new Amnesty International report concludes that China’s human rights abuses have worsened during the run-up to the 2008 Olympics.

Nobody should be surprised by this outcome. For a couple of decades now, we’ve been told that integrating China into the world’s economic and political structures will lead to China’s becoming more democratic. The theory is that free markets and free speech are inextricably intertwined, as if Singapore was a beacon of democracy and Sweden a totalitarian state. Free the Chinese market, and you free the Chinese people.

So shortly after the Tienanmen Square massacre, George the Smart sent Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft to Beijing, in order to reassure the Chinese government that the US would not let a little thing like a televised massacre derail China’s quest for membership in the World Trade Organization.

But increased foreign investment expanded international trade had little effect on China’s human rights policies. Why would they? China didn’t suffer any significant penalty for the Tienanmen Square massacre. In fact, China’s oppression of its workers probably made foreign investors and corporations more eager to do business in China. Like the pigs in Animal Farm, the Chinese government had achieved a level of labor control that was greatly admired and envied by their capitalist trade partners.

A few years later, Bill Clinton decided to dispense with annual reviews of China’s human rights record, in which officials would fraudulently certify that China’s human rights record was improving, so their Most Favored Nation status should continue. Instead, he and the US congress decided to extend MFN status regardless of the human rights situation. In 2000, politically-motivated Republicans in congress accused the Chinese of forcing women to have abortions, and accused the Clinton administration of allowing Chinese spies to steal nuclear secrets. But they set such minor issues aside and voted overwhelmingly for granting China MFN status on a permanent basis. Democrats, who had criticized the Chinese for human rights and labor abuses just a couple of months before, followed suit. And in 2001, the Bush administration pushed for Chinese membership in the World Trade Organization, despite the fact that China’s human rights record had not improved, and despite the fact that only months before, the Chinese had detained for twelve days American Naval aviators who had crash landed in China.

The pattern remained unchanged for nineteen years. Outrageous behavior by the Chinese government was rewarded and repeated again and again. And now we find that rewarding China by awarding them the 2008 Olympic games has only led to further outrages? Imagine that.

Good for you, old el Gordo!

PM not attending Olympics opening

Prime Minister Gordon Brown will not attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, Downing Street says.

Read the rest of the report right here.

Beijing?

The capital city of the People’s Republic of China?

Hosting the next Olympic Games?

What sort of sick sodding joke was this idiocy in the first place, anyway?

We say the entire sordid shower of self serving shysters on the Olympic committee who (so shamelessly), cast their votes for such stupidity at the outset, should be unceremoniously sacked - at the very least. And, sacked straight away - if not sooner.

Well, we’ll tell you this for free, friends - they would be if we had our way.

*(Cross posted at How This Old Brit Sees It)

The Song-class submarine, with skewed propeller

A Chinese Song-class submarine popped up near the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk during a training exercise, greatly embarrassing the Navy. The Kitty Hawk carries 85 aircraft and 4,500 sailors, and ships of that size are supposed to be protected by a phalanx of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. If enemy subs can sneak up on our aircraft carriers, then none of our ships is safe.

Unmentioned in any of today’s coverage of the episode is the fact that this isn’t the first time this has happened. About this time last year, another Song-class submarine came within five miles of the Kitty Hawk before being detected. From that distance, it could have sunk the Kitty Hawk with its cruise missiles and wake-homing torpedoes. More about that incident and the submarine itself here.

So we’ve known for a year that our fleet is vulnerable to this model of submarine, but we haven’t yet figured out a way to reliably detect it.

(cross posted at Liberal Avenger)

(click to inflate)

The Burmese pro-democracy demonstrations that seemed to hold such promise a month ago have now dissolved after a fierce crackdown by Burma’s ruling junta (see Part I). The democracy movement is still very much alive, but it’s gone back underground. The question many are asking now is, what can nations outside of Burma do to help the cause of democracy?

Opinions range from doing nothing to launching a military invasion. But those who advocate invasion ignore the fact that the casualties would not be measured in the thousands, as they are now, but in the tens or even hundreds of thousands. Those who advocate doing nothing say they want to spare the Burmese the hardship of economic sanctions, but they ignore the fact that it was the current regime’s mismanagement of the economy that brought about the current wave of protests. It’s hard to see how allowing the junta to continue business as usual will be of any benefit, economic or otherwise, to the people of Burma.

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The market’s recent performance hasn’t been very good, when you take the falling value of the dollar into account (click to inflate)

From the Telegraph (UK):

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