I haven't ordered Michael Pillsbury's new book about China's plot to take over the world (The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. Instead, I obtained Sax Rohmer's 1913 novel on the same subject, which can be had gratis from Amazon in a Kindle edition. "The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu" portrays a Chinese genius who plans a rising of the East to overwhelm the West. It has the double advantage of being more entertaining and free.
Michael Pillsbury, a former defense and intelligence official now at the Hudson Institute, claims that China has planned a âhundred-year marathonâ since the days of Mao Zedong culminating in world domination. The difference between Rohmer's fantasy and Pillsbury's scholarship is that Pillsbury may turn out to be right after the fact. China may dominate the world, and future historians well may reconstruct China's intent to dominate the world from the same sort of documents that Pillsbury cites.
But China is not planning to take over the world. It doesn't want the world. It doesn't like the world that is, the world outside of China. Unlike Greeks, Romans, Muslims, and European imperialists, it does not want to plant its flag outside its borders, send its young men to conquer and defend new territories, or subject other peoples to colonial rule. Nonetheless, it may inherit the world, reluctantly and by default.
[Commentary] Obama is so focused on his legacy that he's using an imaginary Congress to build bridges to an imaginary president. All this should be kept in mind for when Hillary makes her campaign official. She will run claiming to support the middle class and declare her intention to unlock America's potential, no doubt triangulating on domestic energy production. She'll no doubt be seen as a visionary job creator, walking along the Keystone XL in her hardhat.
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But I have now been brought up to speed on Isaiah, that sucker was sent out to the various and sundry tribes to warn of an imminent invasion by the Zbabylonians. The various and sundry tribes failed to get right with the Lord and arm to the teef, and paid the price.
[WASHINGTONPOST] The Russians have sent in T-80 tanks and Grad rocket launchers. We've sent in humanitarian aid that includes blankets, MREs and psychological counselors.
How complementary: The counselors do grief therapy for those on the receiving end of the T-80 tank fire. "I think the Ukrainian people can feel confident that we have stood by them," said Obama at the news conference. Who does he think he is, a psychiatrist?
Indeed. And don't forget the blankets. America was once the arsenal of democracy, notes Elliott Abrams. We are now its linen closet.
Why no antitank and other defensive weapons? Because we are afraid that arming the victim of aggression will anger the aggressor.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/14/2015 00:00 ||
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[ThePoliticalInsider] Just now, news is breaking that the real terrorist planner of the Benghazi attacks - Mohammed al Zahawi, met Osama bin Laden in Sudan, according to a senior al Qaeda from the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). WHOA!
"Shortly before his own death in a US airstrike on Jan. 31, Harith al Nadhari, a senior sharia official in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), recorded an audio eulogy for another slain jihadist, Mohammed al Zahawi.
Ansar al Sharia Libya confirmed earlier in the month that Zahawi, the group's leader, had died of wounds he suffered while fighting in Benghazi. And Nadhari wanted to make it clear that al Qaeda considered Zahawi to be a 'martyr.'"
The author discusses the effects of having powerful religious parties, occasionally headed by lunatics, but he can't quite bring himself to think they might be a bad thing. That's possibly a matter of self-preservation.
[DAWN] ANOTHER week, another sectarian attack, yet another attack in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. . While no one expected the state to shut down the militancy complex and suppress terrorism in a matter of weeks, what yesterday's attack in Peshawar seems to have underlined is that the state strategy in the fight against militancy is inadequate and not wide-ranging enough.
First, the sectarian equation. From Shikarpur to Peshawar, gunnies have struck against Shias and their places of worship seemingly at will, indicating that yet another front in the militancy wars is once again being aggressively pursued.
While not all bad boy groups are avowedly and determinedly sectarian, it is nevertheless true that practically all operating here have a sectarian strain.
The failure of the state was in not giving priority to stemming the growth of avowedly sectarian bad boy groups -- the longer those particular groups have been allowed to operate with near impunity, the more it seems to have encouraged other bad boy outfits to focus on their sectarian agendas.
It is still not too late. The country, despite grievous blows to the Shia community in recent years, is not on the verge of a full-blown sectarian civil war. But if fighting sectarianism is not made a priority now, the implosion in parts of the Middle East is a haunting reminder of how quickly and irreversibly matters can get out of control.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/14/2015 00:00 ||
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Could also be titled "Are Causes Connected to Effects?"
How can they be, when somewhere around the eleventh century AD the ulema decided that Allah recreates the universe each moment, changing it according to his whims? This makes the appearance of effects deriving from causes a snare and a delusion.
[DAWN] ONLY when you are an observer of Pak politics and policies can you oscillate from utter despair to regaining some of your optimism and back again within the space of a week.
Yes, the attack on the Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. imambargah by hard boyz has pushed into background a faint glimmer of hope that was evidenced earlier in the week and even as the seven-day period was drawing to a close.
Pakistain's relations with Afghanistan, with the election to office of President Ashraf Ghani ...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. .. , a clean, clear-cut man of merit to replace the master of double-speak Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... whose family reportedly amassed a fortune during his decade-plus in power, have been like a breath of fresh air.
Of course, Hamid Karzai was no more than half the problem. Even if, as the Pak security establishment would have us believe, he was being instigated by India to lash out against Islamabad, he was often reacting to the disastrous policy pursued by GHQ-ISI to try and convert a sovereign western neighbour into a compliant satellite by the use of proxies.
Wherever Pakistain seeks extraordinary influence in the region, it would be foolish to assume India will remain a silent bystander and it hasn't. Add to this Iran's fears and aspirations towards Afghanistan and the recipe for a heady mess seemed ready. This, even when the interests and concerns of bigger powers such as the US, China and Russia have not been taken into account.
The fallout is for all to see. The architects of the policy, which involved fanning flames in Afghanistan, are now wholly preoccupied by trying to rather belatedly firewall Pakistain itself from this raging toxic, ideological storm. And, on any given day, a series of firefighting efforts are seen across the length and breadth of the country.
While it is too soon to reach definitive conclusions, one would be inclined to stick one's neck out and say the situation at least in terms of ties with the western neighbour is improving slowly as Karzai's exit from the scene in Kabul was accompanied by a change of guard in Rawalpindi too with some signs of change in policy, attitudes emerging.
The Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... -led civilian set-up has often spoken of its desire to have amiable relations with all neighbours and the new military leadership has not undermined the government at least where Afghanistan is concerned. With multiple visits by civilian and significantly different tiers of military and intelligence top guns, bonhomie can be sensed for the first time in many years.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[DAWN] APPROPRIATELY, the PPP announced its new partnership with the MQM just when we heard allegations of mass murder committed by thugs linked to the latter.
Both now harbour large numbers of criminals at all levels. The widely held perception is that the new deal, brokered on the basis of a 60:40 division of power, will split the loot in a similar ratio.
The growing criminalisation of politics in Sindh has made the accusations of arson by some elements of the MQM plausible. Even though it is based on the confession of a hit-man for the party, for those of us who have lived in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... these last 30 years, the allegation -- the first of its kind -- doesn't sound far-fetched.
Even to a country long hardened to violence, the death of 258 men, women and kiddies in a Baldia factory fire in 2012 came as a shock. At the time, the official inquiry identified an electric short-circuit as the cause of the fire. But the JIT report flatly contradicts this finding and names elements in the MQM as being behind arson and mass murder. While we can all guess, the truth remains murky.
The Sindh High Court, handed this hot potato, has directed the lower court to complete hearings and announce its verdict within a year. If it happens, it will probably set a record in a country where the judiciary is not renowned for the speed of its deliberations.
These last three decades have witnessed a steady decline of security in Karachi. Unsurprisingly, this same period has also seen the rise of the MQM as a political force whose strength is based as much on the violence of its holy warrior wing as on the popularity of its leader.
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
