Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Chinese Police Go Door-to-Door in Hunt for Killer
Police have launched a door-to-door search for a man who shot dead a teenage soldier on duty outside army barracks in southwest China, state media reported Tuesday.
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Han Junliang, 18, was shot twice in the chest Thursday in the city of Chongqing, and police have announced a 300,000-yuan (44,000-dollar) reward for anyone able to help arrest the suspect, the China Daily said.
The newspaper, quoting an unnamed police source, said that preliminary investigations suggested the killer might be Tibetan.Terrorist Leader Praises Obama
As if to confirm that the fix is in, the exiled leader of Hamas (formally designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department), has praised Presdent Obama's "new language" for dealing with the Middle East.
Khaled Meshaal made the comment in an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica published Sunday.
He was responding to the Obama administration's recent calls for dialogue with Iran and Syria to try to resolve long-running disputes and improve relations.
Meshaal said the challenge for the U.S. and European Union is to make Obama's appeals a "prelude" to sincere policy changes.
The Palestinian terrorist leader predicted that an official U.S. and European overture to Hamas is "only a matter of time."
He's right about that. The Obama administration is tilting toward Hamas and its state sponsor, Iran.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The official overture, when it comes, will be the culmination of efforts by former President Jimmy Carter and his former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to influence the U.S. into abandoning Israel and appeasing Islamist Iran and Islamism in general. The two Democrats, who backed Obama, collaborated during the 2008 Presidential campaign. Brzezinski commented publicly, includingtestifying before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Carter met with Meshaal in Damascus. 
It is important to recall that Brzezinski was the author of the Carter administration's covert, anti-Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in support of Islamist warlords (an operation that the Reagan administration escalated), and that the administration, thanks to his influence over Carter, betrayed the Shah of Iran, a long-time U.S. ally and modernizing monarch, in order to jump aboard the Islamist bandwagon. The craven attempt to appease Islamism failed miserably. Intervention in Afghanistan led to Al Qeada and the global jihad, and the betrayal of the Shah led to the rise of an implacable enemy of the U.S. and Israel--nuclear-arming Iran.Monday, March 23, 2009
The Death of the Dollar?
China's central banker is calling for an end to U.S. dollar dominance and the creation of a "super-sovereign reserve currency."
Click here to read his essay.
China Confidential has learned that the Obama administration is receptive to the idea.US Journalists Held Hostage by Nuclear North Korea
China Confidential has learned that nuclear-armed North Korea is holding two detained American journalists as hostages in order to deter Washington from shooting down the menacing long-range rocket that North Korea intends to launch early next month.
Euna Lee and Laura Ling were kidnapped--captured while filming from Chinese territory--by North Korean soldiers. The two American citizens are being held in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and are being interrogated by officers of the North's National Security Agency and the Defense Security Command of the Korean People’s Army.
China is fully aware of the situation ... and essentially complicit in the crime, considering that North Korea is a Chinese vassal.
The Obama administration is afraid of challenging China and eager to appease North Korea, fearing that its long-range rocket, a Taepodong-2, will hit or come close to hitting the Western United States.
The last thing the administration needs now is an international crisis. North Korea knows this and intends to exploit U.S. weakness and vulnerability to the hilt.
Not surprisingly, North Korea's nuclear-arming ally, Islamist Iran, is monitoring developments with intense interest.Testing Time for China-Russia Relations
The receding economic tide is part of a larger cycle in Sino-Russian relations, which have vacillated from friendship to acrimony and back to friendship over the past half-century. Now the two nations are at a high point, enjoying a strategic partnership that's brought them closer than at any time in decades, but that's being tested by Russia's resentment at China's growing economic and military strength.
Click here to read Tim's article.China Confidential TV: Focus on Pollution
China Condemns Protectionism
China hit out at trade protectionism on Monday, a day after stressing its veto of Coca-Cola's bid for a local company does not mean it is hostile to foreign investment.
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Vice Finance Minister Li Yong called on the Group of 20 (G20) major economies to reject protectionism at next week's meeting in London, saying it could set back recovery from the economic slowdown.
"Protectionism will seriously dampen the momentum of economic recovery," Li told reporters.
"We call on the G20 to send a signal of opposing trade protectionism."South Korea Says North Will Fire Rocket April 4-5
Countdown to crisis....
South Korean intelligence sources predict North Korea will fire its menacing Taepodong-2 rocket--capable of hitting Alaska--on April 4 or 5.
South Korean and Japanese analysts confirm that North Korea regards the new U.S. administration as weak and distracted by domestic affairs--overwhelmed, in fact, by dealing with a recession that could turn into a depression. [Scroll and click on the video clip.]
North Korea's Stalinist/Kimist/criminal regime is probably right about that. Pyongyang's planned, provocative long-range rocket launch is meant to frighten the United States and Japan, focus world attention on nuclear-armed North Korea, and divert attention from the nuclear nd missile programs of its ally, Iran--an implacable, Islamist foe the Obama administration is bent on appeasing.
China, meanwhile, is unruffled by the planned launch. On some levels, China Confidential analysts say, Beijing actually approves of the move because it reinforces China's importance as a potential peace preserving power with regard to the Korean peninsula and guarantor of stability in the North in the event of a regime collapse.
COMMENT: As for Obama's perceived weakness, click below to view a disturbing clip from last night's 60 Minutes interview. The nation needed and wanted another FDR--a President who beat both the Axis and the Great Depression. Obama is no FDR. One can't help but suspect that should the North Korean rocket hit or come close to hitting U.S. soil, the President's first response would be to call for calm--that, and, also, perhaps, protection for North Korean assets or diplomats at the U.N. In the name of diplomacy and tolerance, naturally.Some Stimulus: Creating More US Unemployment, US Aid Agency is Switching to Chinese Condoms
China Will Continue Buying US Debt
China’s top foreign-exchange official said the nation will keep buying Treasuries and endorsed the dollar’s global role, supporting the U.S. as the Obama administration increases spending to revive growth.
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Treasuries form “an important element of China’s investment strategy for its foreign-currency reserves,” Hu Xiaolian, director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said at a briefing in Beijing today. “We will continue this practice.”China's Housing Market Bottoms Out
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Severe Food Shortage in North Korea
A never-ending nightmare of depraved criminality and totalitarianism....
Vitit Muntarbhorn, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea, says food deprivation is still a major human rights issue in North Korea.
Pyongyang last week barred any more American food aid from entering the reclusive nation. Muntarbhorn says the North Korean regime's abuse of its citizens should be addressed by the entire global community. His ABC Radio Australia interview is availablehere.The Great Recession: China May Recover First
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
AFP reports:
Tim Johnson reports that rising China is waltzing "gingerly with the Russian bear."
A striking look at the harsh realities....
AFP reports:
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which has donated 10 billion U.S.-made condoms to poor countries, is switching to cheaper, Chinese-made condoms--a move that is expected to kill 300 American jobs. Click here for the story, here for a report on China's condom market, and here and here for stories about unauthorized use of celebrity images to sell Chinese condoms.
Dune Lawrence and Kevin Hamlin report from Beijing:
China’s housing market has probably hit bottom. Falling interest rates, the government’s stimulus package and other measures seem to be reviving demand. Read all about it here.
China's economy may recover first from the global recession. Click here to read Irene Shen's report from Shanghai.
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