Sunday, May 08, 2011
China Confidential Repeatedly Questioned State of Rail Security
Copts Occupy Cairo Square
Pakistan and China
Israel Remembers Fallen Troops
Now is Not the Time to Leave Afghanistan
Taliban Launch Spring Offensive
MUSLIM MOBS BURN CHURCHES IN EGYPT
Tunisian Islamists Poised to Take Power
Forecasting Obama's Dimming Halo
HAMAS-FATAH PACT PANICS LEFT
Monday, 9 May 2011
EGYPTIAN CHRISTIANS DEMAND
HELP; WILL OBAMA SPEAK OUT?
Thousands of Coptic Christians protesting Egypt's latest round of deadly sectarian violence are calling for the removal of the country's top military ruler, and are vowing not to leave a sit-in outside the state television building in Cairo.
By late Sunday, demonstrators were demanding that Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi step down and that the arsonists who burned two Coptic churches be brought to justice.
Protesters also want to make it a crime to instigate religious violence. Earlier in the day, fighting broke out when Muslim youths attacked the protesters.
State media have reported that 12 people were killed and more than 220 wounded during two days of sectarian clashes that began late Saturday in the poverty-stricken Cairo slum of Imbaba. Medical sources said 65 of the injured were shot.
Witnesses say a group of about 500 conservative Salafist Muslims converged on a Coptic church in response to rumors that a Christian woman was being held there to prevent her from converting to Islam. Other reports said the crowd believed the woman had already converted and was being prevented from marrying a Muslim man.
MEAD'S MUST READ ANALYSIS:
As US-Pakistan tensions rise, the Pakistanis have looked to China as an alternative great power backer. The Pakistani argument to China is that Pakistan offers an offset to India that makes it harder for India to challenge Chinese influence in southeast Asia and elsewhere. Pakistan can also offer China friendly ports close to the vital oilfields of the Middle East and also a useful land route for trade and power projection.
This is not an unattractive proposition, and China is already in business with Pakistan, providing foreign aid and promoting growth in bilateral trade. The value of China’s aid to Pakistan is hard to estimate, but trade between the two countries is worth about $8.7 billion. (US military and economic aid to Pakistan last year totaled almost $4.5 billion and US-Pakistani trade was worth $1.6 billion.) Additionally, China provides material and financial assistance for Pakistan’s nuclear program; during a visit to Pakistan in December 2010, Wen Jiabao and Pakistani officials finalized plans for the construction of a one gigawatt nuclear reactor in Chashma, making it the third and largest reactor in Pakistan. China’s agreement to provide nuclear materials to Pakistan despite Pakistan’s nuclear program and poor record on proliferation was seen in Pakistan and elsewhere as a counter to the US-India agreement.
But for the Chinese, who have so far flirted with Pakistan but never come close to giving the Pakistanis the support they desperately crave, there are three very big catches. First, Pakistan looks as bent on self-destruction to China as it does to everyone else in the world; why put your money on a such a weak horse?
Second, if China becomes the partner of Pakistan’s dreams, it wrecks its relationship with India and drives India into America’s arms. A closer relationship with Pakistan might be necessary for China in the event that the US and India developed a tight alliance aimed against China, but China’s best strategy now is to prevent the US-India relationship from turning into an anti-China alliance. Flirting with Pakistan makes sense as a way to keep both Washington and Delhi on their toes, but anything more would be a costly mistake.
Click here to read the whole thing.
China Confidential analysts expect Islamists to win Tunisia's upcoming constituent assembly elections--scheduled for July 25 but likely to be postponed until the fall.
Should an Islamist party win the elections, analysts add, there is a good chance Tunisia's army will seize power.
But the Obama administration and the European Union are almost certain to condemn a military coup, even if it is the only way to prevent a clerical fascist takeover of Tunisia.
The administration is pro-Islamist--seeking the installation of "Islamist democracies," or Islamocracies, run by so-called moderate Islamists (a concept akin to moderate Nazis or moderate Communists).
The only Islamist groups that the administration regards as unfit to engage(Obama code for appeasing and attempting to align with) are Al Qaeda and its affiliates and offshoots and "irreconcilable" elements of the Taliban, which are are in the process of retaking Afghanistan (with Pakistan's support).
Prediction: the Anointed One's halo, post-Bin Laden, will dim ... fast.
By 2012, it will be commonly understood that the (Muslim-born-and-reared) President who got Bin Laden is also the President who gave Egypt to the Muslim Brotherhood and allowed Islamist Iran to acquire atomic arms.
And failed to revive the American economy.
And helped to drive energy prices to crushing heights by being anti-oil, anti-gas, anti-coal, anti-shale ... anti-realenergy.
The electorate will come to realize, at long last, that it's one thing to be anti-OPEC oil; another thing, altogether, to be anti-American oil.
The PLO’s Desperate Defenders
Not since the infamous Hitler-Stalin pact have Stalinists and their fellow travelers been so in bed with fascists--in this case, the clerical fascists, known as Islamists, that seek to enslave the civilized world with the sword of their barbaric, fundamentalist faith.
Related: Hamas, Bin Laden Same Gang
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