An Indonesian warship challenged four Chinese fishing vessels suspected of operating illegally in Indonesian waters. After the Chinese ships failed to respond, the Indonesians fired on the largest ship, killing one crew member. They later took ten Chinese sailors into custody.
The Chinese government is complaining about the event.
China spent $67.49 billion on their military in 2004. In contrast, Indonesia spent $1.3 billion that year.
Leading edit: This was one of those cases that teaches me to understand a problem before I go off about it. The actual issue was not the display of Taiwan on Google maps -- many island nations do not receive the outline -- but that searching for Taiwan on Google maps yielded "Taiwan, Province of China."
Protesting letters make more sense when they are written from knowledge than when they are written from ignorance. Lesson, hopefully, learned.
The original post, ignorance included:
Google currently does not identify Taiwan as an independent country on its maps -- there's no gray line around it. Instead, it's batched in as a province of China, in accord with the official policy of the People's Republic of China that Taiwan is not a separate nation.
Here's a BBC article on the topic.
I agree that this is a bad thing. Here's the letter I just wrote to Google:
Hello--
I'm writing to request that you correctly identify Taiwan as a country in Google Maps. Though the presence or absence of a thick gray line on an online map may seem unexceptional, you know that it matters. By going along with the People's Republic of China and failing to identify Taiwan as an independent nation, you tacitly support the idea that just because its occupants are Chinese it is the manifest destiny of Taiwan to be annexed by the PRC.
In your philosopy, you say that you can "make money without doing evil." By and large, Google empowers people, giving them quick and easy access to information. It would be a bad thing, however, for that information to be tainted by your desire to crack the mainland Chinese market. You are powerful right now. Don't compromise on your basic philosophy for a short-term gain.
I've met several Google employees, and you've all been great people. I live in your home town. I'm not from Taiwan or even Chinese, so I have no direct, personal stake, except for the fact that I recognize the power of perception. I'd let the people of Taiwan decide whether they're part of China or not. Please don't make that decision for them.
That letter was sent to their Help center under the "I'd just like to say" option.
For the Google philosophy including "without doing evil," look here.
If you just want to call them, mail them a letter or talk to them, their offices are here:
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View CA 94043
phone: (650) 253-0000
fax: (650) 253-0001
It's never nice to have someone else in control of your water supply.
The Russian city of Khabarovsk is waiting for an 80-km stretch of benzene-laden water in the Amur river to make its way to them from China, where it's currently causing problems for Harbin.
According to this Al Jazeera story, China is sending arms to Nepal to help it put down the local Maoist insurgency.
China has been supporting the ruling monarchy against the efforts of Maoist rebels who wish to replace it with communist rule.
The All-Japan Standing Committee (Pirika Zenkoku Jikkoninkai) is asking for the Ainu to have a place in Russia-Japan meetings meant to resolve ownership of the islands alternately known as the Southern Kurils or the Northern Territories.
The Ainu want the islands - along with Hokkaido and Sakhalin - recognised as their homeland and granted autonomy.
"The Kurils, Hokkaido and Sakhalin are all traditional Ainu lands and we want both governments (Japan and Russia) to remember that when they sit down to talk about their future," said Tadashi Shirakawa...
Both governments are dismissive of the request. Neither would want to give up territory, of course, but Russia in particular has an interest in not allowing ethnic minorities to successfully campaign for autonomy.
(This is exactly why Al Jazeera is in my news rotation. Where else was this story carried?)
Hugh Thompson Jr., the helicopter pilot who intervened to stop the My Lai massacre, died today at age 62.
Maoist insurgents attacked a number of government facilities in the Western Nepal town of Tansen this week, killing seventeen police officers and three soldiers. Their attack struck on the one-year anniversary of the coup by King Gyanendra and in the run-up to municipal elections that many in the country think are a sham intended to reinforce Gyanendra's rule.
The BBC story
The Al Jazeera story
The CNN story
The Maoists have been at it since the mid-90s, which is a surprisingly late start for a Maoist insurgency. In the last year, general displeasure with the King's coup has led the legal opposition to make a sort of accord with the Maoists, as reported here by the BBC. This can't be a comfortable situation for the opposition, however, as successful Maoist insurgencies tend not to produce democratic governments.
The Shanghai Co-operation Organization (SCO) members nations of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan announced that they will conduct joint anti-terror exercises in Russia next year. Three notable paragraphs from the BBC article:
"The threat of SCO borders being crossed by armed groups is absolutely real," Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.
He said the armed forces of member states "should, if needed, help neighbouring states block and possibly destroy large armed groups".
Terrorism, religious extremism and separatism were identified as the threats central to Wednesday's meeting, by a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman.
You can also look at the SCO's web site and read the organization's charter. From that same charter, their goals include maintaining stability, countering terrorism, drug trafficking and illegal migration, promoting balanced growth, promoting "human rights and fundamental freedoms in accordance with the international obligations of the member States and their national legislation" and cooperation in conflict prevention. The charter includes a principle of nonaggression within the SCO as well as a principle that the SCO is "not directed against other States and international organisations."
That charter is worth a read if you have a few minutes.
In case you haven't seen it in the news today, North Korea claims to have tested a nuclear device.
The USGS reported a correlated 4.2 quake in North Korea, 385 km Northeast of Pyongyang (thanks to Tim for that linK).
Based on that, the estimated yield is 0.5-15 kt (that's a pretty wide range).
The BBC story
The al Jazeera story
This is likely to now go to the UN Security Council for action. Notably, the new UN head for 2007 is likely to be the current South Korean foreign minister, Ban Ki Moon. You can read about that here.
You can read the official North Korean announcement here. I'm skeptical of the claim that "The nuclear test was conducted with indigenous wisdom and technology 100%."
Although South Korea and Japan continue to indicate they've tracked no radiation following the alleged North Korean nuclear test, preliminary results from American air sampling say that yes, there was radiation released at the test site:
"The betting is that this was an attempt at a nuclear test that failed," another official said. "We don't think they were trying to fake a nuclear test, but it may have been a nuclear fizzle."
The al Jazeera story.
The CNN story
Japan's foreign minister Taro Aso made the news today by making two contradictory statements to two different audiences. To the outside world:
There is no need to have nuclear weapons as the Japan-US security framework will be activated for the defence of Japan..."
To a parliamentary committee:
"When a neighbouring country is going to have nuclear weapons, one can refuse to even consider the matter," he said. "But I think it is important to discuss the issue."
A more telling remark came from party official Shoichi Nakagawa, who said that Tokyo must discuss nuclear armament:
"...because countries with nuclear weapons don't get attacked."
Let's amend that. Countries with nuclear weapons have been attacked, more than once, both by stateless and national enemies. Consider the following cases that only cover "attacks on the home nation itself", rather than the broader issue of attacks on your nationals abroad:
United States of America - Two attacks on the World Trade Center, the second successful. Attack on the Pentagon.
Russia - Moscow theatre attack, Beslan school atack, Moscow bombing campaigns, border war (!) with China
China - Border war with Russia (the Soviet Union, at the time)
France - Paris bombings
United Kingdom - London bombings
Israel - Hamas bombings, open warfare with Hezbollah
That last case is particularly telling. Hezbollah is a militant group, yes, but one that maintains an actual territory in southern Lebanon. Although it probably would have stopped Hezbollah had Israel used nuclear weapons in southern Lebanon, that's a ridiculous proposition in terms of civilian death and destruction alone....and it wouldn't keep Israel from being hit first if someone like Hezbollah actually had nuclear weapons.
The truth is, every country with nuclear weapons has been attacked, save one - South Africa, who gave their weapons up a decade ago.
Vietnam has been accepted as the 150th member of the WTO. As part of the process of integration, it will be forced to reduce tariffs on imports from about 18% to about 14%, which will cause a hit on its budget, but will in turn be able to ignore other countries' import tariffs on many goods. Vietnam will also have to rescind its policy of limiting foreign ownership of businesses in Vietnam.
Vietnam is only very, very nominally "communist" at this point. Much like China, it "is what it is" -- totalitarian, with the people in charge planning on staying in charge, but with a thriving capitalist economy. This demonstrates, once again, that capitalism and democracy don't always go hand in hand.
South Korean prosecutors have indicted five people on charges of spying for North Korea.
Which didn't stop South and North Korea from announcing their joint bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics in Pyongchang.
Hm.
Apparently, the PRC used a ballistic missile to kill an old weather satellite last week, marking a successful test of an antisatellite weapon. The satellite was orbiting at 500 miles altitude, which is around where one would expect to find most imaging satellites.
The US, Australia and Canada have all expressed their concerns to the Chinese government, with more criticisms expected to follow from others.
All you future Tom Clancys can now start writing your stories about a cross-strait invasion of Taiwan following the "blacking out" of the sky over that area. Of course, the actual Tom Clancy featured a satellite-killing weapon in Red Storm Rising, twenty years ago.
From the ever-informative Korean Central News Agency of DPRK we learn that:
Pyongyang, February 12 (KCNA) -- General Secretary Kim Jong Il received a floral basket from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the occasion of his birthday.
The floral basket was conveyed to an official concerned by Chinese Ambassador to the DPRK Liu Xiaoming on Monday.
Pyongyang, February 12 (KCNA) -- General Secretary Kim Jong Il received a greeting card, a gift and a floral basket from Sazhi Umalatova, chairperson of the Party for Peace and Unity of Russia, on the occasion of the February holiday.
They were conveyed to the DPRK ambassador to Russia by her last Wednesday.
Pyongyang, February 12 (KCNA) -- General Secretary Kim Jong Il received a floral basket and a congratulatory letter from the officials in charge of cultural and friendly relations of foreign embassies here on the occasion of his birthday.
The basket and letter were conveyed to an official concerned on Monday by Esmaeil Babaei Ragheb, second secretary of the Iranian embassy, on behalf of the officials.
Pyongyang, February 12 (KCNA) -- Meetings were held in South Africa and Mongolia on Feb. 5 and 6 in support of the decision of the International Kim Il Sung Prize Council on awarding the "International Kim Il Sung Prize" to Kim Jong Il.
A branch chairman of the Pretoria City Committee of the African National Congress of South Africa said in a speech at the meeting that the decision reflected the unanimous desire of the world progressives highly praising the exploits of Kim Jong Il who is leading socialism and the human cause of independence to victory with his distinguished political ability and outstanding leadership ability.
Flowers from China, Iran, and Russia, and the dad prize. Amazing. Previous prize winners include DPRK filmmakers Pak Jong Ju, Kim Ryong Rin, and Kim Jong Hwa, who tell us that their studio staff have "always shared the destiny, will and life with the leader and the country."
More seriously, North Korea has agreed to shut down its primary reactor in exchange for fuel aid.
Under the agreement, Pyongyang has pledged to close its Yongbyon reactor within 60 days, in return for 50,000 metric tons of fuel aid or economic aid of equal value.
The closure of Yongbyon will be verified by international inspectors.
The North will eventually receive another one million tonnes of fuel oil or an equivalent when it permanently disables its nuclear operations.
We'll see how long this lasts:
Pyongyang has not commented officially on the deal. However, North Korea's official news agency, KCNA, described it as being based on the "temporary suspension" of its nuclear activities.
Ever since the war began, the North Korean negotiating modus operandi has involved stalling, promising anything, and stalling some more, then going back on promises. So we'll see.
Which is to say that sectarian violence is not terribly original.
Lest you end up over-focused on the violence in Iraq, consider the continuing sectarian violence in southern Thailand. More than two thousand people have been killed since the beginning of 2004 as would-be Muslim separatists wage a futile war against civilians of other religions in lieu of being able to upset the eminently pragmatic Thai army.
Recent violence has included the killing of Buddhist commuters followed by the shooting of Muslim civilians and the bombing of a Mosque, the latter being blamed on the Muslim separatists, who are suspected of trying to rile other Thai Muslims. Blaming that bit of violence on Muslim separatists seems a bit too pat, but it's really hard to say. The one given is that it's people on both sides who get a sense of purpose and meaning out of violence who keep sectarian violence going.
I'll quote the AP story:
China said Wednesday that the detention of Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is an internal matter for the Southeast Asian country's government, declining to join other nations urging her release.
China's stance came a day after the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, broke with its core policy of noninterference and pointedly called on Myanmar's military-backed government to release Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that "the Aung San Suu Kyi matter is Myanmar's internal affair. The Chinese side hopes to see Myanmar maintain political stability and continue to make progress in the process of national reconciliation."
China and Russia both vetoed an American-sponsored resolution in the Security Council of the UN calling for an end to political suppression in Myanmar. Naturally, those two bastions of endemic political suppression really don't want to be setting precedents against these policies.
Notably, the other members of ASEAN include nations not traditionally thought of for their human rights records, such as Vietnam and Indonesia. Even they, however, are more concerned with Aung San Suu Kyi's situation than with reinforcing a precedent of allowing suppression. I'll take that as a good sign.
As I've discussed recently, American politicians have a pathological fear of admitting that actions have consequences. Indeed, we've learned that the penalty for marketing a lethal product to American soldiers is to have your contract renewed, that we broadcast propaganda for terrorists without any oversight to stop it, that there are no real checks on failed or even corrupt procurement practices, that it's okay to redefine our goals rather than admit failure, and that the penalty for real, solid failure is either a Medal of Freedom or a job heading the World Bank.
Imagine if, instead, the penalty for dereliction of duty were death?
The former head of China's Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, was just sentenced to death for corruption. Zheng stands accused (and we suppose now convicted) of accepting just shy of a million dollars in bribes to allow many drugs and other products onto the market without proper oversight. This corruption may well have contributed to many deaths over the last few years.
I'm not actually advocating execution for malfeasance that leads to injury or death, but prison and admission of responsibility would be an amazing start. A standout quality of America is our relative lack of corruption. I'm dismayed, if not surprised, that a bunch of people who like to claim moral authority are the ones most prone to corruption of the rankest, most lethal sort. Do you suppose I care more about someone's adultery, or someone else's sweetheart deal that puts our soldiers in defective body armor?
Of course, those who seize the moral high ground most stridently and publically have a long and tainted pedigree.
I'd like some more responsibility, wouldn't you?
This week brings some contrasting efforts to change the world, two happening in the courts, the third ending up in the courts.
In the Netherlands, relatives of people killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre are suing the Dutch government. While the Dutch governmental response is that all claims should be made against those who committed the massacre, the plaintiffs in this case argue that the Dutch government is at fault for refusing to provide air support for Dutch troops in Srebrenica. Certainly, it's true that people flocked to Srebrenica as a safe haven, only to find that is really wasn't. You can read more in this BBC article.
Elsewhere, the government of Nigeria, as well as the government of the Nigerian state of Kano, have filed suit against big pharma company Pfizer, claiming that it carried out improper trials for a meningitis drug, and in so doing caused deaths, as well as mental and physical problems. Pfizer holds that it did everything properly, and obtained "verbal consent" from parents of children who were involved. you can read more in this BBC article.
Finally, a plot to violently overthrow the government of Laos was busted up in California. Nine people, led by former Hmong general Vang Pao, were trying to buy weapons en masse to equip an insurgent effort in Laos, with the goal of taking out several government buildings. The Hmong, who you may never have heard of, are ethnic minorities in Laos who were backed and equipped by the CIA during our larger war in Southeast Asia. When we pulled out of the effort, we mostly abandoned the Hmong, although some have filtered over to the US, and others ended up lingering in refugee camps in Thailand for years. The BBC has an overview of the state of the Hmong in Laos here. You can read the full article on this abortive insurgency here.
Abu Djana, the current military leader of Jemaah Islamiah, was captured this week by Indonesian security forces on the island of Java. Djana was wanted in connection with a number of attacks, including the 2004 bombing of the Australian embassy and others. Indonesian security officials couldn't be sure that the man they'd wounded during a raid was really Djana until they carried out fingerprint and DNA analyses to confirm his identity.
Analysts say Abu Dujana has key information about logistics and operations within JI, and his arrest will be a serious blow to the organisation.
"With this arrest we have successfully stopped acts of terrorism in the future," said police spokesman Sisno Adiwinoto. "He was a key figure in the terrorist network in Indonesia."
Leading Jemaah Islamiah analyst Sidney Jones also agreed that the arrest was "a major triumph for police".
"If he is willing to talk he will be able to tell the police about the structure, the strength, the finances and the international connection and the goal and objectives of JI," she told reporters.
"Willing to talk" is an interesting way to put it.
For the first time in half a decade IAEA inspectors are on the ground in North Korea, ready to begin talks about shutting down and sealing the Yongbyon nuclear facility. This step was overdue per the terms of the agreement North Korea made in Beijing, which said that the shutdown would start by mid-April. Other key points of that agreement:
In return for all these things, North Korea will receive an initial shipment of 50,000 tons of fuel oil, upped to 1,000,000 tons when Yongbyon is completely shut down. South Korea has also said it will restart food aid now that the shutdown appears to actually be happening.
So why the action now? The likely motivation to move is our release of $25 million in North Korean funds held in a bank in Macao.
Consider just how wrecked the North Korean economy is at all levels, that this amount of money is enough to induce Kim Jong-il to hold up peace talks that he, apparently, was otherwise willing to at least pretend to move on. Obviously, the money's going straight to him, but its importance suggests that perhaps he's unable to imbezzle that money anywhere else out of the destitute economy of the DPRK. Either that, or his ego couldn't stand the prestige hit of having his funds frozen.
US envoy Christopher Hill had a few understandably cautious words about all this:
"I think the next couple weeks are going to be a very important period for the six-party process," Hill told reporters Monday. He expects the reactor to be shut down within a few weeks.
Here's the DPRK's official take on the funds issue:
Pyongyang, June 25 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry gave the following answer to a question put by KCNA Monday as regards the settlement of the issue of the funds frozen in the Banco Delta Asia in Macao:
The funds frozen at the above-said bank were finally wired as demanded by the DPRK side, thus settling the controversial issue of the frozen funds.
It has thus become possible to use the de-frozen funds for improving the standard of people's living and humanitarian purposes, as planned.
The DPRK took a serious view of the issue of de-freezing the funds not because of that amount of money but the action taken to freeze the funds was a vivid manifestation of the hostile policy toward the DPRK.
This is also in line with the principle of "action for action" confirmed by the six parties. Now that the issue of de-freezing the funds has been settled, the DPRK, too, will start implementing the February 13 agreement on the principle of "action for action."
As part of it, the DPRK will hold a discussion on the suspension of the operations of nuclear facilities, its verification and monitoring with the working delegation of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Pyongyang from June 26.
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia just charged Kang Kek Ieu (also known as "Duch") with crimes against humanity. This is a significant step for both the Cambodian people and the human race, and it's coming sooner than many expected to see it happen.
Duch was in charge of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison during the time of the Khmer Rouge. He personally oversaw the torture and subsequent murder of 17,000 of his fellow Cambodians, as part of the Khmer Rouge's program of "resetting" their nation.
As with the charges levied against war criminals from Bosnia and Rwanda and the dogged pursuit of Pinochet, this action shows that there is never a statute of limitations on crimes against humanity. The message is clear -- you are subject to the law until you die.
It's the best message we can send.
With a turnout of just below 58%, voters in Thailand gave a lukewarm 58% "yes" to the newest proposed Constitution -- the 18th in 75 years or so. The average doesn't tell the real story, which is one of regional divides, as the rural northeast voted roughly two-thirds against the new constitution. The simple figures also miss some of the "quirky" features of the referendum:
Human rights groups have criticised the poll as a sham, given that nearly half of Thailand's 76 provinces remain under martial law and that a "No" vote would have allowed the army to impose any one of the previous 17 constitutions.
So it wasn't so much a "yes or no" vote as it was a "pick the one in column A, or we pick one of the seventeen in column B" vote. Even so, quite a few people turned out to cast a symbolic "no" as a protest against the military's effective rule in Thailand.
After all, as long as the military can keep hitting the big reset button, you're not really a democracy.
The government of the golden land of Myanmar has taken the popular totalitarian tack of blaming external agents provacateurs -- specifically, the "neo-colonialist" kind -- of inciting all that unpleasantness that's been going on for the past week or so in their country. Although late last week they were blaming the BBC and Radio Free Asia for spreading misinformation, it's notable that this week they finally caved to how information is really being spread and largely shut down internet access and mobile services within the country.
They've also been killing protesters, beating and jailing monks, and, apparently, assassinating foreign journalists. Along with an uncounted number of Burmese citizens, Japanese journalist Kenji Nagai was killed -- on camera, no less. It's looking suspiciously like he was not a random bystander, but was specifically targeted for killing by government troops. The Japanese government has not yet decided what to do -- it's in the odd position of having very little it can refuse to send to Myanmar, as it's already limiting itself to purely humanitarian aid.
The government propaganda site I linked to at the top helpfully tells me that protesters are using "catapults" against police, and that monks are threatening people into protesting. Seriously:
Some monks and people enter homes Saboteurs threaten families demanding them to join protest if not provide cash, kind Authorities urge people to make complaints in person or on line to Ward PDCs, Township PDCs or local authorities against intimidations, extortions, coercion
Yup. Cash extortion. Apparently that's just how the Buddhist monks roll in Myanmar's propaganda imaginariverse.
Recent revisions to Japanese textbooks that redirect blame for mass suicides in Okinawa during the war have led to some of the biggest protests Okinawa has seen in decades. From the International Herald Tribune:
For the past quarter-century, Japan's high school textbooks had included the accepted historical fact that Okinawans had been coerced into mass suicides by Imperial Army soldiers.
But six months ago, the Education Ministry said that government-endorsed textbooks would eliminate all references to Japan's soldiers. According to the revised passages, the Okinawans simply committed mass suicide or felt compelled to do so. But by whom?
"If Japanese soldiers had not been there, the mass suicides would have never occurred," said Kinjo, who said he decided not to kill himself after he saw that Japanese soldiers were not committing suicide.
The ministry said that it "is not clear that the Japanese Army coerced or ordered the mass suicides" but cited no fresh evidence to explain its change in policy. What was clear, though, was the timing of the announcement, which came a few months after the Japanese government passed a new law emphasizing "patriotism" in public schools.
In fact, for at least the past decade, nationalist scholars and politicians, including the former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, had fought to cleanse textbooks of passages on crimes committed by Japanese soldiers. If the deletion of passages on wartime sex slaves or massacres angered Asian nations in recent years, this was the first time that the government's whitewashing of the past had caused this kind of anger in Japan.
Some publishers are preparing to reinstate references to the military's role in the mass suicides, according to NHK, Japan's public broadcaster. The government would then review the changes before handing out a final decision.
The Kinjo mentioned above is the Reverend Shigeaki Kinjo, who, under direction from Japanese soldiers, beat the rest of his family to death ahead of the American advance into Okinawa in the Spring of 1945. He, and many others like him, can directly attest that they didn't just spontaneously decide to kill their families.
After U.S. troops landed, Japanese soldiers expelled Okinawans from shelters and used them as human shields. Thousands are believed to have committed suicide in villages occupied by Japanese soldiers; mass suicides did not take place where there were no soldiers.
As the article notes, although historical revisionism within Japan has repeatedly angered neighboring nations, this is the first time people within Japan have expressed outrage at this happening. Notably, of course, Okinawa is still a special case within Japan, as it was its own nation until fairly recently, and Okinawans are still culturally distinct from mainland Japanese.
Even as the Burmese military government curtails protests in the capital by killing and jailing people into submission, it's also running an active campaign of killing and displacement among minorities in its eastern jungles. You can get a brief overview via this documentary short, titled "Shoot on Sight" --
That film was produced by the human rights group Witness. You can learn more about the movie and the situation by clicking here.
Backstopping such ground-level videos and eyewitness accounts are the efforts of the Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights group within the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Science and Human Rights Program. As they've done in other areas such as Sudan where people are abused and the official policy is denial, the GTHR group has used satellite imagery to track the effects of military actions against civilians in the Burmese jungles.
This "before and after" picture set, of an area within the Papun District on the Thai border, shows the complete removal of a local village. Other picture pairs from Papun, which you can see on this page, also show the rise of military bases in the area.
Even though international eyes have been on urban protest in the last few weeks, we must remember that for decades, Burma's military leaders have been attempting to maintain power for power's sake by killing minorities and razing their homes.
A little over a week I ago, we left the government of Japan mulling over how to respond to anti-democracy violence in Myanmar in general, and specifically to the assassination of Japanese journalist Kenji Nagai:
The Japanese government has not yet decided what to do -- it's in the odd position of having very little it can refuse to send to Myanmar, as it's already limiting itself to purely humanitarian aid.
Now, the decision has come down to start cutting the humanitarian aid. Japan is canceling a $4.7 million grant that was meant to fund a business education center at Yangon University. This is a sound move, as it strikes at economic progress in Myanmar while limiting the degree to which loss of aid will directly impact the average citizen of that country on a day-to-day basis.
The official word of the Golden Land has nothing to say about this recent development, although it does tell us the inspiring and highly plausible story of people counterprotesting that recent disruption by the evil monks:
The people of Shan State (South) and Kayah State who wish to see stability of the State, the rule of law and community peace and tranquillity regarded recent protests instigated by some monks and NLD members as a threat to peace and stability . So they held mass rallies to denounce such protests on 13 and 14 October after seeking permission from the authorities concerned .
...while tempering that with news that good folks from all over are giving provisions to monasteries and nunneries. No word, yet, on what they're feeding the several thousand protesters who remain imprisoned.
Indonesia's constitutional court has upheld death sentences for nine Australians convicted of attempting to traffic heroin into Indonesia. As reported by Voice of America:
The court found that a constitutional clause supporting the right to life did not prevent the state from executing people for serious crimes. The ruling went against Australians Myuran Sukumaran, Andrew Chan and Scott Rush, who are facing execution for their convictions on heroin smuggling charges.
Relevant to more than just the nine currently on death row is the constitutional court's ruling that "foreigners do not have legal standing to challenge Indonesian laws." This has the potential to have far-reaching effects on every non-Indonesian, individual or corporation, attempting to operate in the country:
Andrew Sriro is a lawyer in Jakarta and writes an annual guide to Indonesian law.
He says if this is true, it will cripple foreigners' ability to defend themselves in Indonesian courts. Sriro thinks the ruling could affect a broad range of legal proceedings, from business disputes to criminal cases.
"I think this is a draconian ruling that is a significant setback for the rule of law in Indonesia and the security of foreigners residing in or doing business in Indonesia," said Sriro.
...I believe it.
Americans are now in Yongbyon and have begun the process of disabling the reactor there. Although this still leaves open the possibility of nuclear facilities elsewhere, it removes any fuzziness about activity at Yongbyon.
That, at least, is comforting.
Director Mueller was in scenic Phnom Penh today to mark the opening of the FBI's first field office in Cambodia. After icy diplomatic relations for just short of forever (well, over three decades), we're now flooding Cambodia with prominent American officials.
I'm happy to see an FBI presence in Cambodia, as in addition to any boost it gives our anti-terrorist efforts, I'm hopeful that our agents can contribute in the struggle against exploitation of Cambodian children. That would be a good fight for Americans to be a part of, in Cambodia as everywhere else.
Nuon Chea, also known as "Brother Number Two," the effective second-in-command of the Khmer Rouge, appeared in court for the first time this week. He is charged with a panoply of crimes against humanity for his actions as a leader within the extraordinarily cruel and bloody Khmer Rouge regime.
The tribunal, convened in 2006, has charged Nuon Chea with "murder, torture, imprisonment, persecution, extermination, deportation, forcible transfer, enslavement and other inhumane acts".
The tribunal is expected to hear documentary evidence that Nuon Chea personally ordered the murder of 14,000 people held at the Tuol Sleng prison, a former Phnom Penh high school.
The hearing today was meant to address a request by Nuon Chea that he be allowed out of custody. It had to be deferred, however, due to accreditation issues with one of the two Dutch attorneys on his defense team (Victor Koppe, whose bio can be found here).
Speaking before Monday's court appearance, Son Arun, Nuon Chea's lawyer, said his client "feels an absence of freedom in his detention, where all he does is eat and sleep".
As one assumes detention is necessarily meant to cause an absence of freedom, we're all glad to hear it's working properly. Nuon Chea is the second Khmer Rouge leader up on crimes against humanity charges to ask for bail. Earlier this year, Kang Kek Leu was denied bail, as the judge thought the former head of Tuol Sleng prison might, possibly, flee in the face of being charged with 17,000 murders. Given the similarity of Nuon Chea's charges, one imagines a similar outcome for his plea for bail.
The pressing of decades old crimes against humanity charges continues to be a high point of our nascent millennium. Whether it's Southeast Asian communists or former right-wing Latin American leaders, everyone is now on notice that there is no statute of limitations for crimes against humanity.
In his own half-assed, self-justifying defense, Nuon Chea once said: "Naturally, we are sorry, not only for the lives of the people, but also for the animals. They all died because we wanted to win the war."
Eliding the difference between his fellow Cambodians and farm animals is, more than anything else, the clearest view of what Nuon Chea thinks of everyone around him.
The United States has resumed military aid to Thailand close on the heels of the swearing in of a new, democratically elected government.
Aid was automatically suspended, with some exceptions, following the coup in late 2006 due to a provision in American law banning aid to nations whose elected leaders have been deposed. Exceptions included continuing counter-terrorism aid, and continuing joint military exercises between American and Thai forces.
US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte "certified to Congress that a democratically elected government has taken office in Thailand", state department spokesman Tom Casey said.
"We congratulate Thailand's new cabinet on its inauguration, and the Thai people on their success in re-establishing an elected government," he said.
As a recent visitor to ostensibly military-controlled Thailand, I'll attest that it's a country that keeps on trucking regardless of who's nominally in power on the elected side. Given that the country's government has been rebooted at least fifteen times since 1932, it's unsurprising that the Thai people have a relaxed attitude about the rise and fall of elected governments.
The new Thai cabinet is full of loyalists to deposed PM Thaksin Shinawatra, raising the question of how long this government will get to stick around before the military hits the reset button again.
Alleged arms dealer Viktor Bout was picked up by Thai authorities this week in a Bangkok hotel. Bout stands immediately accused by the Thai police of traveling to their country in attempt to secure arms for the Colombian narco-rebel group Farc, but he also has a long and storied pedigree of international arms trafficking that includes charges of importing weaponry past UN embargoes into areas such as Bulgaria, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, as well as supplying arms to combatants in Liberia, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and Afghanistan. He has also been accused of supplying weapons to Hezbollah and al Qaeda.
Not surprisingly, his fleet of saved-from-mothballs Soviet-era transport craft has also been subcontracted by American-paid contractors to fly supplies into Iraq for us (given how poorly we vet our contractors, it's not shocking that they subcontract to very dodgy people). More recently, the Treasury Department froze all of Bout's assets it could find, as well as seizing those planes of his that it could reach.
The Russian government is reportedly seeking Bout's extradition into Russia from Thailand, where they will most likely not bring him to any kind of trial. Russia will have to wait, however, as America has dibs on Bout once the Thai authorities are done, under an earlier DEA warrant for his arrest.
This week, the government of Thailand began the (quite likely forced) repatriation of Hmong refugees into Laos, in an attempt to clear the roughly 8,000 Hmong who are currently living in a refugee camp in Petchabun province, Thailand. This is a problem, as the Hmong people, our ally in an anti-communist insurgency in Laos in the 70s, face a very credible threat of persecution if they are kicked back into that still-communist nation.
For their role in helping us during the war, the Hmong have already been subject to extensive persecution, including chemical weapon attacks on fleeing civilians. The United States is already home to a substantial Hmong refugee population, and has taken refugees from Thailand before. I see no reason why we can't continue to provide a second, safe home to these people who continue to be punished for having once fought on our side.
Given that the government of Thailand is looking to clean its hands of the refugee problem and establish better relations with Laos, now is an excellent time to write to your senators and representative, urging them to take action.
We could do worse than adopting another couple thousand good people into a country that already has the fourth-largest Hmong community in the world. Here's a template:
Representative/Senator X -
I'm writing to bring to your attention the critical plight of Hmong refugees living in camps in Petchabun, Thailand. These women, children, and men were once our strong allies in our fight against communism in Laos and surrounding nations. Now, they face persecution at the hands of the Laotian government if they are forced to leave Thailand and return to a land that they can no longer safely call home.
The government of Thailand is, at this moment, making moves to send 8,000 Hmong living in Petchabun over to Laos. I urge you to take immediate action to prevent this. The United States is already home to one of the largest Hmong communities in the world. They have proven that they can be an integral part of American society, and have proven their commitment to our side many times over in the past. It is no small thing to place your life and home on the line for a cause you believe in. Now that they have lost that life and their homes, I urge you to take action now, and to provide asylum, safety and a new life for these people here in the United States.
Thank you --
That's what I'm about to mail out to my representative and senators. Our abandonment of the Hmong was one of many terrible, falsely "realpolitik" minded moves me made in the wake of our wars in Southeast Asia. It is our responsibility as a nation to live up to our ideals and, when a friend needs our help, give them a place to stay and a new community to call home.
A libel case against Nobel prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe was thrown out today, after a judge ruled that the weight of history supported the plausbility of Oe's claims that the Japanese army ordered Okinawan civilians to commit suicide as the island was lost to the Americans late in World War II.
A retired army officer and another man said the military never gave the order, but the court dismissed their claim.
The claimants had wanted the book banned and claimed 20m yen ($200,000; £100,000) in compensation.
Judge Toshimasa Fukami did not rule on whether the military ordered the mass suicides, but he concluded: "The former Imperial Japanese Army was deeply involved in the mass suicides."
The ruling gives legal weight to the notion that the Japanese army coerced Okinawans into killing themselves when it became evident that the Japan's most southern outposts were about to fall to American troops.
The judge noted that Japanese officers handed grenades to the locals, and that the suicides - possibly as many as 1,000 - occurred only on islands where army posts were located.
Although the judge avoided trying to definitely declare that the Japanese army of the time did order civilian suicides, he carried out a very practical, evidence-based evaluation of linkages between those suicides and the presence and actions of the military. This is an important step in a continuing struggle over Japanese history. In the long run, historical honesty, as practiced by the judge in this case, is certainly the best policy. A denial of history in service to ideology often undercuts the health and future of the nation or group the deniers think they're supporting.
Or, in other words, if you convince yourself that everything was sunny and rosy when it wasn't, you may well do the same stupid, self-destructive things over and over again.
As reported in this al Jazeera article, worldwide rice stocks continue to decline even as demand increases:
Worldwide rising demand has seen rice stocks plummet to their lowest in about three decades, with average prices doubling over the last five years.
Earlier this month the UN secretary general warned that global food stocks had fallen to their lowest level in decades, driving prices up and threatening millions with starvation.
...and...
And recently the Philippines, the world's top importer of rice, asked Vietnam, the world's number two exporter, to guarantee supplies.
In the Philippines in particular, a key problem is that land devoted to rice growing has actually been decreasing even as the nation's population increases. I have to wonder to what extent we -- meaning California in particular -- are a driver for this kind of outsourcing in basic staple food production in Asian nations. With the combination of massive farms and general economic measures in the U.S. that drive down the cost of crops produced here, California rice is often cheaper for citizens of Asian nations than rice grown in their own back yards. South Korea has seen a number of large-scale protests by farmers who are being priced out of their own market by California product.
This is just conjecture at the moment, but I will be on the lookout for solid economic analyses of this situation and oru role in it.
In the news this week is yet another food and pharma safety scandal in China. At issue is, once again, the addition of melamine to food products. This same unexpected additive caused kidney failures in American pets earlier this year, and is now causing the same problems in over a thousand Chinese infants that we know of.
The belief is that the melamine is being added at the farm level to milk that has been diluted with water, in an effort to mask that dilution by raising the "protein" count -- really, raising the detectable nitrogen level, as that's likely the proxy being used as a measure of protein abundance. Unfortunately, adding this plastic precursor to infant formula has resulted in many babies developing kidney stones, and at least two known deaths.
What's particularly upsetting about all this is that Sanlu, the Chinese milk company distributing the tainted product, has been receiving customer complaints about problems with infants since March of this year. Action was not taken until New Zealand firm Fonterra, who owns a significant stake in Sanlu, went to the New Zealand government after failing to get Chinese officials to issue a recall. According to Fonterra, they tried for about a month to get the recall to happen, then finally contacted government officials in New Zealand, who immediately went at the national level to the PRC government, who finally issued the recall.
Had there not being a foreign company with a stake in the issue and a government willing to make a move, it's likely this problem would have kept going. Although the men who adulterated the milk in the first place have now been arrested, one wonders what exact combination of bribes and image maintenance was at work in keeping a recall from happening even when a major shareholder in the producing company was calling for it. If it's bribery at the local or regional level, we may expect more arrests (and as is the way of these things, executions). If it was the PRC trying to save image, then nothing much will happen.
But if so, that's just more logs on the fire of civil unrest in China.
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