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Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT        Politix   
N. Korea appears to have conducted second nuclear test
Today's Headlines
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Page 4: Opinion
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China-Japan-Koreas
Tragedy Is Inherited for Refugees
The terrible human rights abuses against refugees in China are still going on. Among them, the human trafficking of young women is thriving. The State Council of the People's Republic of China estimates that 38 million older bachelors in rural provinces of China have difficulty finding a spouse. In practice, some are consumers of North Korean women who cross the border.

Depending upon the locations the women have to move to after being sold, their age and health condition, they sell for between a few thousand and 15 thousand Yuan.

Those who are involved in human trafficking are not always gangsters, but general citizens in rural areas certainly sell North Korean women. In some bad cases, women are sold to people in western or southern provinces, thousands of kilometers from the northeastern provinces where refugees generally take shelter. Some of them don't know even where their new home is, or even whether they are in China, according to NGO activists.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White || 05/25/2009 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  38 million older bachelors in rural provinces of China have difficulty finding a spouse.

Oi vey
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 05/25/2009 4:42 Comments || Top||

#2  Modeling on the Islamic system? Where the alpha male gets a harem and the rest of the boys get castrated, or goats, or suicide bombs?
Posted by: Glenmore || 05/25/2009 8:48 Comments || Top||

#3  North Korea - the Useless Nitwits' first great "success."

**spit**
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 05/25/2009 10:00 Comments || Top||

#4  I can't get fired up over this. It's not what I'd want for a daughter, but then, we don't live in NKor, one of the poorest countries on earth next door to relatively prosperous China.

China's cut its supply of marriageable women by its birth control and favored son policies. NKor has made leaving preferable to staying for most of its people. I think the "human traffickers" in this case are more in the mail-order bride business, with the usualy older fellow getting a comely young bride, and the girly getting what should be a good home. With the exception of abuse cases, it's a relatively humane solution to both problems.
Posted by: Fred || 05/25/2009 10:51 Comments || Top||

#5  I have een told that the 38 million bachelors is a statistic; that the ratio of men to women all over China is about the same. When a rural family has a girl, they just don't register her birth and continue to make babies until a son is born.

If anything, there is a surplus in fact of Chinese woman, not a shortage. They're just unregistered children.
Posted by: badanov || 05/25/2009 12:35 Comments || Top||


Europe
Eurabia Has A Capital: Rotterdam
Here entire neighborhoods look like the Middle East, women walk around veiled, the mayor is a Muslim, sharia law is applied in the courts and the theaters. An extensive report from the most Islamized city in Europe

by Sandro Magister
Posted by: anonymous5089 || 05/25/2009 12:01 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Someone put a video on youtube a couple of years ago showing all of this, including the Islamic call to prayer blasting from the mosques 5 times a day. It was one of those things that if you didn't see it with your own eyes, it would be hard to believe.

Submission.
Posted by: Zorba || 05/25/2009 12:28 Comments || Top||

#2  Think you can find that video Zorba? My bet is that YouTube pulled it as being 'unislamic'...
Posted by: CrazyFool || 05/25/2009 12:36 Comments || Top||

#3  Here you go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEWrlq0s8YI
Posted by: Zorba || 05/25/2009 13:15 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
China warns Federal Reserve over 'printing money'
Posted by: tipper || 05/25/2009 09:39 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  If China Stops buying then your interest rates SOAR.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 05/25/2009 10:45 Comments || Top||

#2  The USG at this point thinks there is no other choice but to "monetize the debt", or "print money". This is because that current debt and self-imposed obligations would require the Chinese to double, triple, or quadruple their current purchases of T-bills to pay for Washington's excess, and they not only won't, but they can't.

The only alternative to monetizing the debt is bankruptcy, which, truth be told, may be inevitable. And the Chinese won't like that a hell of a lot more.

Talk about the US joining an "international currency" is b.s., because that would have the same effect as bankruptcy. All the overspending and largesse would end.

By this I mean that Dr. McCoy has already pronounced Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid dead, and the Defense budget cut by 50% or more.

Interestingly, I saw a trial balloon in Wired magazine of the idea of abolishing paper currency and coins. This is because that would be the only way for the government to force everyone in to an electronic payment system under their control.

Otherwise, even if the government went hog wild with the electronic currency, it *couldn't* prevent people from having a stable paper currency. This is because there is no physical way for the government to print US dollars fast enough to inflate them alongside its electronic dollars.

If the public insists on cash, the currency is split, with electronic money becoming worthless, and paper money and coins becoming very valuable. Paper money and coins are legal tender, electronic money is not.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 05/25/2009 12:13 Comments || Top||

#3  Coin is the only thing keeping our currency afloat right now. It won't last forever.

The Idiot walks in the door and spends $10 trillion thinking that inflation gets us out of housing problems. What a miserable waste of money and it does screw China hard as they are hevily invested in our system.

Such a poor, terrible waste.
Posted by: newc || 05/25/2009 13:20 Comments || Top||

#4  The only thing keeping our currency afloat at the moment is the fact that most of the developed world is printing money at least as fast as we are.

China's stuck: if they stop buying treasuries their $2T in UST holdings evaporates as the fed steps in with new money to shore up Treasury's ability to borrow; if they decouple their currency from the dollar completely their currency soars against the dollar and their export base crashes; if they keep buying treasuries the dollar & their UST holdings erode away.

If I were the Chinese I'd divest all of those US Treasury assets for farms & mineral interests in nominally friendly nations, ramp down new purchases of UST issues to zero, and then float the currency. The ensuing dollar crash, US hyperinflation & US federal bankruptcy would give them at least a decade, and probably two, to become a global military superpower with little interruption from a neutered USA.
Posted by: AzCat || 05/25/2009 22:22 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
They May Not Want The Bomb
And other unexpected truths.
One of the Middle East's most formidable apologists will try to convince that even though it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, has webbed feet like a duck, an orange bill like a duck, and feathers like a duck, it's not a duck. Good luck, Fareed.
Fareed Zakaria

Everything you know about Iran is wrong, or at least more complicated than you think. Take the bomb. The regime wants to be a nuclear power but could well be happy with a peaceful civilian program (which could make the challenge it poses more complex). What's the evidence? Well, over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted the regime's founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were "un-Islamic." The country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral. In a subsequent sermon, he declared that "developing, producing or stockpiling nuclear weapons is forbidden under Islam." Last year Khamenei reiterated all these points after meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. Now, of course, they could all be lying. But it seems odd for a regime that derives its legitimacy from its fidelity to Islam to declare constantly that these weapons are un-Islamic if it intends to develop them. It would be far shrewder to stop reminding people of Khomeini's statements and stop issuing new fatwas against nukes.

Following a civilian nuclear strategy has big benefits. The country would remain within international law, simply asserting its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a position that has much support across the world. That would make comprehensive sanctions against Iran impossible. And if Tehran's aim is to expand its regional influence, it doesn't need a bomb to do so. Simply having a clear "breakout" capacity—the ability to weaponize within a few months—would allow it to operate with much greater latitude and impunity in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Iranians aren't suicidal. In an interview last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the Iranian regime as "a messianic, apocalyptic cult." In fact, Iran has tended to behave in a shrewd, calculating manner, advancing its interests when possible, retreating when necessary. The Iranians allied with the United States and against the Taliban in 2001, assisting in the creation of the Karzai government. They worked against the United States in Iraq, where they feared the creation of a pro-U.S. puppet on their border. Earlier this year, during the Gaza war, Israel warned Hizbullah not to launch rockets against it, and there is much evidence that Iran played a role in reining in their proxies. Iran's ruling elite is obsessed with gathering wealth and maintaining power. The argument made by those—including many Israelis for coercive sanctions against Iran is that many in the regime have been squirreling away money into bank accounts in Dubai and Switzerland for their children and grandchildren. These are not actions associated with people who believe that the world is going to end soon.

One of Netanyahu's advisers said of Iran, "Think Amalek." The Bible says that the Amalekites were dedicated enemies of the Jewish people. In 1 Samuel 15, God says, "Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." Now, were the president of Iran and his advisers to have cited a religious text that gave divine sanction for the annihilation of an entire race, they would be called, well, messianic.

Iran isn't a dictatorship. It is certainly not a democracy. The regime jails opponents, closes down magazines and tolerates few challenges to its authority. But neither is it a monolithic dictatorship. It might be best described as an oligarchy, with considerable debate and dissent within the elites. Even the so-called Supreme Leader has a constituency, the Assembly of Experts, who selected him and whom he has to keep happy. Ahmadinejad is widely seen as the "mad mullah" who runs the country, but he is not the unquestioned chief executive and is actually a thorn in the side of the clerical establishment. He is a layman with no family connections to major ayatollahs—which makes him a rare figure in the ruling class. He was not initially the favored candidate of the Supreme Leader in the 2005 election. Even now the mullahs clearly dislike him, and he, in turn, does things deliberately designed to undermine their authority. Iran might be ready to deal.

We can't know if a deal is possible since we've never tried to negotiate one, not directly. While the regime appears united in its belief that Iran has the right to a civilian nuclear program—a position with broad popular support—some leaders seem sensitive to the costs of the current approach. It is conceivable that these "moderates" would appreciate the potential benefits of limiting their nuclear program, including trade, technology and recognition by the United States. The Iranians insist they must be able to enrich uranium on their own soil. One proposal is for this to take place in Iran but only under the control of an international consortium. It's not a perfect solution because the Iranians could—if they were very creative and dedicated—cheat. But neither is it perfect from the Iranian point of view because it would effectively mean a permanent inspections regime in their country. But both sides might get enough of what they consider crucial for it to work. Why not try this before launching the next Mideast war?
Posted by: Steve White || 05/25/2009 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Oh, Fareed, you are so funny.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon || 05/25/2009 4:04 Comments || Top||

#2  And if they do drop a nuke on my family, do I have your permision to come over and shove your children into a meat grinder, Fareed?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 05/25/2009 4:45 Comments || Top||

#3  Feet first please, Grom.
Posted by: gorb || 05/25/2009 6:03 Comments || Top||

#4  It's not a perfect solution because the Iranians could--if they were very creative and dedicated--cheat.

With crap statements like the above, I coulda sworn this was Scrappleface.
Posted by: Zorba || 05/25/2009 12:23 Comments || Top||

#5  Well, over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons.

That convinced me right there! Why would senior Iranian officials lie? It wouldn't be nice.
Posted by: SteveS || 05/25/2009 15:12 Comments || Top||

#6  As before, IMO RADICLA ISLAM'S = MILTERR'S priority focii is to induce the breakup of the COLD WAR "GREAT POWER" NUCLEAR STATES OF ASIA, aka RUSS, CHINA, + INDIA, CAPTURING VARIOUS COLD WAR COMMIE NUC/MILTECHS + as "hedge" in case IRAN gets mil attacked and occupied.

* Year 2009-2012/2016 POST-DUBYA POTUS PERIOD > IRAN's role for itself in the time being is to do what it can to NOT get itself attacked andor invaded by the US-NATO + ISRAEL while it nuclearizes, + COVER THE FLANK OF FUTURE ISLAMIST CENTRAL ASIA/ASIA. IRAN'S NUCLEARIZATION IS IN PARALLEL WID RADICAL ISLAM'S NUCLEARIZATION.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 05/25/2009 19:02 Comments || Top||

#7  BLOOMBERG > ADMIRAL MULLEN says IRAN MAY GET TO KEEP ITS NUCLEAR PROGS [ *** cough** ENERGY? *** cough ***] AS LONG AS IT ALLOWS SAME TO BE SUBJECT TO UNO IAEA INSPECTION.

* SSSSSHHHHHHHHH, all the MULLAHS + MILTERRS need are SOLAR FLARES/STORMS 2010-2012/2016 to "verify" Vee DIVINE MANDATE the end of ZIONISM + end of US-WEST + RISE OF NUCLEAR ISLAMISM???
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 05/25/2009 19:07 Comments || Top||



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Two weeks of WOT
Mon 2009-05-25
  N. Korea appears to have conducted second nuclear test
Sun 2009-05-24
  Pak security forces enter Mingora
Sat 2009-05-23
  Car boom kills 10, injures 75 in Peshawar
Fri 2009-05-22
  Thousands flee tense Wazoo
Thu 2009-05-21
  Iran tests long range missile
Wed 2009-05-20
  Army takes Sultanwas, kills 81; Mullah Fazlullah maybe titzup
Tue 2009-05-19
  Prabhakaran dead as a rock!!!!!
Mon 2009-05-18
  Norks to nullify Kaesong agreements
Sun 2009-05-17
  Tamil Tigers say they surrender
Sat 2009-05-16
  Sri Lanka president declares victory in civil war
Fri 2009-05-15
  60 Talibs killed in Swat
Thu 2009-05-14
  Morocco dismantles Salafiya Jihadiya cell
Wed 2009-05-13
   113 deaders, thousands flee Somalia festivities
Tue 2009-05-12
  Pak commandos dropped into Taliban stronghold
Mon 2009-05-11
  200 Taliban killed in Swat operation

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