Foreign Confidential ™
Foreign News and Analysis Since April 2005 -- formerly China Confidential -- What's Really Happening in the World
Thursday, May 03, 2012
Thinking Big, Russian Railways Proposes Tunnel Link to Alaska
Trans-Bering Rail Would End 15,000-Year Asia-N. America Separation
By James Brooke
Russia’s Urals oil has been over $100 a barrel for a year now. The country’s budgets are balanced. Debt is low. Savings are piling up. Russians are getting their pre-recession mojo back.
On the consumer end, sales of foreign cars made in Russia jumped 90 percent during the first quarter of 2012 over last year.
In the Kremlin, leaders are thinking big again.
In rapid succession, the government leaked a plan to create a “super agency” to develop the Russian Far East; President-elect Vladimir Putin vowed to spend $17 billion a year for new and improved railroads, and Vladimir Yakunin, president of Russian Railways, promoted a think big plan--a rail and tunnel link connecting Russia and the United States.
'Not a Dream'
“It is not a dream,” Yakunin, a close ally of Putin, told reporters last week. “I am convinced that Russia needs the development of areas of the Far East, Kamchatka. I think that the decision to build must be made within the next three-five years.”
Next year, Russia’s railroad czar will open one big leg on the trip toward the Bering Strait – an 800 kilometer rail line to Yakutsk, capital of Sakha Republic, a mineral rich area larger than Argentina.
But the 270,000 residents of Yakutsk do not want to live at the dead end of a spur line. They dream of five kilometer long freight trains rolling past their city, carrying Chinese goods to North America, and North American coal and manufactured products to Russia and China.
Tickets to New York
From their city, 450 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, passenger tickets could be sold west to London, and east to New York.
With the West’s swelling population of aging affluent retirees, what better gift for Mom and Dad than a one-month train trip, rolling across the International Dateline, traveling by rail three quarters of the way around the world? A TransBering rail voyage would make the TransSiberian and the TransCanada look like short hops.
To push thinking along, Yakutsk hosted a trans Bering rail conference last August. Engineers showed charts indicating that the tunnels under the Bering Strait would be 103 kilometers long, about twice the length of the tunnel under the English Channel. Unlike Europe’s “Chunnel,” there are two islands along the Bering route--geographical factors that would ease construction and allow for ventilation and emergency access.
For now, the only trains in Alaska run from Seward on the coast 760 kilometers into the interior, carrying tourists to Denali National Park and freight to two military bases.
First Proposed in 1905
A trans Bering rail link was first seriously proposed by Czar Nicholas II in 1905. One century later, with the rise of China and the explosion of Asian manufacturing, some Russian economists believe that the day is near when a rail link to North America up would be economically viable.
The current price tag for the missing 10,000 kilometers, tunnel included: $100 billion. Freight fees are estimated at $11 billion a year.
Russian Railways estimates that a Bering Strait tunnel could eventually handle 3 percent of the world’s freight cargo. Yakunin says that China is interested in the project. At a railway meeting in Moscow Thursday, Putin said that freight traffic on a main Siberian line, the Baikal-Amur Mainline, is expected to nearly triple by 2020.
To critics who worry about harsh winter weather, Russian Railways notes that since 1915, the company has been running passenger and freight trains year round to Murmansk, located 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The proposed route for a tunnel under the Bering Strait would pass 50 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle.
Trans Bering rail promoters envisage building feeder lines to connect 'stranded' mineral deposits and to allow shipment of freight between North American and Russia, China, Japan and the Korean peninsula.
Linking Two Continents
For a tunnel linking two continents, support has to be generated on the North American side. In Alaska, Fyodor Soloview, a native of Moscow, recently formed InterBering, a private group to lobby for rail construction to the Bering Strait.
“We can ship cargo between two the continents by rail,” Soloview said by telephone Thursday from his office in Anchorage. “Once the Bering tunnel is built, it will convert the entire world to different thinking.”
Yakunin estimates that the Russian side of a trans Bering railroad would take 10 to 15 years to build. That could fit into the political calendar of his friend Mr. Putin. On May 7, Putin will be inaugurated for a new six year term. He has left open the possibility of running in 2018 for another six year term.
So Russian Railways may have the political cover for another 12 years.
The question is whether oil prices will stay high enough to build a tunnel linking America and Asia. If so, Washington’s diplomatic reset with Moscow could be welded in steel.
New Report on North Korean Prison Camps
Turns out, most North Korean prisoners are "desperate," not dissidents--people imprisoned and tortured for seeking food, or for trying to escape the country, or for the most frivolous reasons. Click here for the story.
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Someone Spends $120 Million to Buy One Painting Instead of Saving the Lives of One Million Starving Children in Africa
The Art of Injustice ...
An anonymous bidder at a prestigious auction just spent that much--a staggering $120 million--to buy a painting.
What's wrong with this picture?
Endnote: There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men. -Proverbs: 30:14
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Now Comes 'New Communism'
Radical Left Theorists Resurrect Utopian Delusion
A specter is haunting the academy—the specter of “new communism.” A worldview recently the source of immense suffering and misery, and responsible for more deaths than fascism and Nazism, is mounting a comeback; a new form of left-wing totalitarianism that enjoys intellectual celebrity but aspires to political power.
Indian Consumers Still Going Strong
Rumman Ahmed reports on the market's reaction to Hindustan Unilever’s better-than-expected fourth quarter earnings:
Read the full article.
The market was keeping a close eye on the performance of India’s largest consumer goods maker by sales in order to gauge how well local demand is holding up at a time when the Indian economy is sputtering. The vast distribution reach of the local unit of Unilever PLC makes its sales performance a good barometer of consumer sentiment in the country.
Read the full article.
Japan, S. Korea to North: No More Provocations!
Japan and South Korea today urged North Korea to refrain from further provocations, amid reports that the North is about to test a uranium-based nuclear weapon. Click here for the story.
Greek Democracy Threatened by Neo-Nazi Rise
Athens News says
Click here to read the entire editorial. Greece's economic crisis has morphed into a political crisis--with implications for the rest of Europe.
The fact that polls suggest the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party … will garner somewhere between four and five percent of the vote in the Greek national elections on May 6 is indeed a cause for concern.
It will be a first for Greece. A party founded on racist principles and with a thinly veiled admiration for Adolf Hitler appears poised to make it to parliament. And the fact that it is expected to get around a dozen MPs in a parliament of 300 is not something to take lightly. Its rise is impressive, given it received 1.5 percent of the vote in a May 2011 opinion poll.
Click here to read the entire editorial. Greece's economic crisis has morphed into a political crisis--with implications for the rest of Europe.
HRW Says Syria Committed War Crimes
Regime Forces Reportedly Massacred Villagers
An international rights group Wednesday accused the Syrian government of committing war crimes, while opposition groups said rebels killed 15 security force members as a UN-brokered cease-fire continues to unravel.
Human Rights Watch says Syrian forces and pro-government militias killed at least 95 civilians between late March and early April in the northwestern province of Idlib, in the lead-up to the April cease-fire brokered by international envoy Kofi Annan.
The Middle East deputy director for the rights group, Nadim Houry, said villagers were rounded up and killed.
“We've documented the extrajudicial executions of at least 35 civilians. These were people that came under the custody of the army and security forces and were shot, in some cases point blank, after they were taken out of their homes.”
Families and Communities Targeted
Houry also said Syrian forces appeared to have aimed at families and communities.
“We've documented dozens and dozens of cases of houses that have been burned intentionally or destroyed, not from shelling, but actually from soldiers going in and setting them on fire,” Houry said.
The Syrian government says it is fighting what it calls armed terrorists and says it reserves the right to defend the national against insurgency despite a cease-fire.
The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says rebels killed 15 security force members in an ambush in Aleppo province on Wednesday.
A day earlier, rights groups and activists said at least 30 people were killed during violence, including nine family members in an Idlib province village.
South Korea Says North Tries to Disrupt Air Traffic
GPS Navigation on At Leaset 250 Flights Affected
South Korea says North Korea is using electronic jamming signals to disrupt civilian and military flights. Click here for the story.
In related news, a South Korean nuclear expert says the North has stockpiled enough highly enriched uranium for a half-dozen nuclear bombs. Pyongyang's previous two confirmed nuclear tests were of plutonium bombs.
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
UN Says Syrian Heavy Weapons Still in Cities
The UN’s peacekeeping chief said Tuesday that the Syrian government still has heavy weapons in cities, and that both the government and opposition have committed violations of a UN-brokered truce.
UN peacekeeping chief Hervé Ladsous said the 24 monitors already in Syria have reported that heavy weapons are still in several cities--a violation of the peace deal brokered by UN-Arab League mediator Kofi Annan.
“Yes, our military observers do see a number of APCs [armored personnel carriers], for instance, they see a number of howitzers and other military equipment in most places where they are. It is being claimed the APCs have been disarmed, but that is not verified in all cases,” Ladsous said.
Ladsous called the level of violence “appalling” and urged both sides to respect the cessation of hostilities. He said the monitors have reported violations from both government forces and the opposition.
Scientists Will Know N. Korea Tests Nuke Within Minutes of Blast
Scientists across the globe will know within minutes when North Korea next detonates a nuclear device. Click here for the report.
Prominent Mali Politician Calls for Unity
Samake Calls Crisis Distraction
A prominent politician in Mali says the ongoing military crisis is a distraction to the aim of restoring constitutional rule in the West African nation.
Niankoro Yeah Samake, leader of the Party for Patriotic and Civic Action (PACP) called for unity among sections of the military after he expressed disappointment with division among the rank and file of the army.
“We should not lose focus of where Mali is today and where we need to take Mali to…We are at a time where we need to unify the Malian army to take on the challenges [and] to protect the territorial integrity of the country,” Samake said. “We call on the leader of the junta to be the leader of the army as we work hard with the international community, the political parties the civil society in Mali to restore democracy for the benefit of the people of Mali.”
Samake’s comments came after soldiers who support the junta took control of the main base for troops loyal to ousted President Toumani Toure after a second day of heavy fighting following Monday’s attempted counter coup d’état.
Coup leaders said in a televised statement Tuesday that they remain in control of key sites in the capital, Bamako. They described the fighting as an attack by ill-intentioned people set on destabilizing Mali's transition to constitutional order.
ECOWAS Summit Scheduled for Thursday
Meanwhile, regional heads of states and government are scheduled to attend an Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) summit Thursday. Officials say the leaders will review the current situation in Mali. The summit will be held in the Senegalese capital, Dakar.
Coup leaders in Mali have rejected an ECOWAS proposal to restore constitutional order. They accused the regional bloc of not keeping its part of the agreement it signed with the junta.
Samake said Malians should be allowed to lead the effort to resolve the country’s challenges.
“Mali needs its partners, but we need to make sure that this is a Malian solution. We cannot make this solution outside of Mali [because] that will be an imposition. We don’t want that and it is not going to be a lasting solution,” Samake said. “The people of Mali need to come together and define the terms of how the country should be run during the transition.”
Samake said his party, together with 14 other political parties, have outlined what he said would be the best possible solutions to resolving the crisis in Mali.
“What we said is that there is a need to organize a convention [and] to put in place a national transitional committee with 30 people- seven military, 18 political leaders and five [from the] civic society. And these 30 people will elect among them the president of the transitional power, excluding any military officials,” Samake said.
Video in Name of Boko Haram Threatens VOA
Nigerian Terrorists Purportedly Target Many News Organizations, Complain About 'Bad Press' in Posted Video that Shows Car Bomb
The threats are contained in an 18-minute video posted to YouTube on Tuesday in the name of the Islamist group Boko Haram.
The video shows a car bomb exploding in Abuja last Thursday outside an office of This Day, one of Nigeria's most prominent national newspapers.
Later, scrolling text notes that the group has complained about “bad press,” and an unnamed man, sitting next to a rifle, threatens seven other Nigerian papers and VOA's Hausa service, which broadcasts to Nigeria.
The authenticity of the video could not be immediately confirmed.
In a statement, VOA spokesman David Borgida said, “VOA has no comment but takes the safety of all its journalists very seriously.”
Terrorist Bombings
Boko Haram, which calls itself Ahlis Sunnah, previously claimed responsibility for the Abuja blast, which killed three people. It also claimed responsibility for a blast near This Day's office in the city of Kaduna, which killed four.
Human Rights Watch says the group has been responsible for more than 1,000 deaths over the past three years, mostly in the north.
Boko Haram says it is fighting to impose Islamic law in Nigeria and does not recognize the country's constitution.
In the video, the group says it attacked This Day because the newspaper and other media outlets have published lies about the group and defamed Islam.
It accuses Nigeria's government of arresting wives and children of the group's members and demolishing their houses.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has vowed to crush the group and has increased security across the north.
-VOA
Dutch Intensify Anti-Piracy Patrols Off Somali Coast
The Netherlands plans to intensify its anti-piracy patrols off the Somali coast. The move reportedly follows recent European agreements on a strategy to combat piracy that is starting to show results. But intervention on land will probably be needed to end the threat. Click here for the story.
More Gunfire in Mali; Junta Claims Control of Key Sites
Heavy Fighting in Capital Between Rival Army Factions
At about 4:00 a.m. local time on state television Tuesday, a soldier with the junta declared that the group controls the airport, the central TV station and its own headquarters, following attacks Monday on the three sites.
Residents of Bamako said red berets - soldiers loyal to ousted president Amadou Toumani Touré - deployed throughout the capital on Monday, setting up barricades at strategic points. Loyalist soldiers also were seen headed to Kati, the town just outside Bamako where the junta is headquartered.
Clashes and Casualties
The loyalist soldiers clashed with junta troops in Kati and in Bamako, and there are reports of several dead.
The junta said Tuesday, though, it had the situation under control.
Surrounded by a group of men, some in army fatigues and some in civilian clothing, the soldier said the junta would like to inform the Malian people and the international community that ill-intentioned people attacked the junta’s military base, state television and the airport, with the aim of destabilizing Mali’s transition to constitutional order.
The soldier said the junta has detained several of those who clashed with junta troops on Monday. He said the individuals who attacked come from various backgrounds and were supported by unknown entities.
A resident of Bamako said the leader of the March 22 coup, Amadou Sanogo, made a statement Monday night in the local Bamanan language on a local pro-junta radio station, saying that many soldiers were killed in clashes at the entrance of Kati.
Casualties Include Other W. African Nationals
Mady Gambélé, an assistant to Sanogo, told VOA that among those killed and captured are people from other West African countries.
It is not yet clear to what extent the loyalist soldiers’ actions were planned, or under whose orders they were operating. The junta early Monday reportedly had sent men to arrest a member of the presidential guard who was a top military aide to former president Touré, and who provoked clashes.
During the weekend, coup leader Sanogo publicly rejected decisions by the West African bloc ECOWAS to extend the term of the transitional government to 12 months and to deploy ECOWAS troops in Mali.
The junta continues to wield power, even though a transitional civilian president, prime minister and government have been put in place.
Junta members had been scheduled to meet Tuesday with ECOWAS mediator Blaise Compaoré, president of Burkina Faso, in the Burkina capital Ouagadougou.
Government offices are closed on Tuesday, which is a national holiday in Mali.
How the US Tracks the LRA in Central Africa
Advanced Intelligence Key to Campaign
By Gabe Joselow
Come home, the message says, your family will accept you, no matter what atrocities you may have committed.
Emmanuel Daba, one of the hosts at the U.S.-funded Radio Zereda, was kidnapped by the LRA in 2008 and served as a porter for the rebels for a year, before he escaped.
“We conducted raids on villages in South Sudan and the Congo,” he said. “We killed a lot of people, with machetes, with sticks and clubs.”
Daba was one of the thousands abducted by the LRA since it first launched an insurgency in Uganda 20 years ago, led by the notorious and elusive commander Joseph Kony.
Since then, the group has spread out into South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. Once numbering in the thousands, the LRA now is believed to have only a few hundred fighters at most.
While their numbers have diminished, their ability to inflict terror has not. The United Nations estimates that 465,000 people were displaced last year because of the LRA threat.
Guiding the 'pointy end'
Last year, U.S. President Barack Obama authorized the deployment of about 100 U.S. special forces troops to help capture or kill members of the LRA.
Small teams of soldiers have helped set up operating centers in five locations across central Africa.
The head of U.S. counter-LRA operations, Navy Captain Ken Wright, said the soldiers' role is to work in the background, to actively support regional militaries.
“They are the ones who will go out and affect the capture of Joseph Kony on the battlefield,” he said, “We don't need to be at the pointy end of a patrol to affect and support their actions.”
In Obo, U.S. soldiers share information with their counterparts from the Ugandan and Central African Republic militaries at the Counter-LRA Operations Fusion Center [COFC]. The center is housed in a small building that once belonged to a doctor murdered by the LRA. Maps of central Africa adorn the walls of the meeting room, along with pictures of the LRA commanders, including Kony.
The room is open to members of the local communities, as well as hunters and nomadic herdsmen who may have information to share about the LRA's whereabouts.
Wright said this information sharing is bringing the joint forces closer to tracking down the group's senior leaders.
“Every day we are out here working with our partner nation forces, we develop a better understanding of the LRA and their location in the battle space,” he said. “Every day that view is refined more and more.”
Ugandan military spokesman Colonel Felix Kulayigye said U.S. intelligence support could be the turning point in the hunt for Kony.
“As you are aware, a military without intelligence is as good as a blind person,” he said. "We believe this support will definitely help us capture Kony, or kill him.”
Where is Kony?
Tracking the rebel leader is a major challenge. LRA fighters have all but abandoned using mobile or satellite phones to communicate with one another, making them very difficult to trace.
Dispersed across an area the size of California, the LRA moves in small groups, only occasionally meeting up at pre-determined rendezvous points.
Kulayigye says the latest intelligence reports suggest Kony is somewhere in the Central African Republic, though he previously said the rebel leader was in the southern Darfur region of Sudan.
Mathew Brubacher, the political affairs officer for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the DRC, has been studying the LRA for nine years, and regularly interviews abductees who have been released or freed from the group, looking for information about their leaders.
Brubacher also had heard Kony may have been in Sudan, but said that information is difficult to verify.
“I imagine he's just moving around,” he said, “crossing borders frequently, probably with a fairly small group with a bigger group providing extra support. That's the way he usually moves.”
Wright said the LRA's small group numbers pose a unique challenge, but that military pressure is working.
“Their ability to negatively affect the environment and the people around them is greatly reduced,” he said. “They are almost on a survival mode at this point.”
Related: Analysts Probes LRA Mindset
Saudi Role Seen in Palestinian Power Struggle
Involvement Reportedly Influenced by Fear of Iran
Pinhas Inbari reports:
The ongoing rivalry between PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas and his young challenger Mohammad Dahlan is an open secret on the Palestinian street. What may, however, come as a surprise, is the involvement of Saudi Arabia in the internal Palestinian struggle for power. Recently, the kingdom has dramatically decreased its subsidies to the Palestinian Authority. Furthermore, Abbas is almost never invited to visit any of the Gulf Emirates or Saudi Arabia. Dahlan, on the other hand, is known to have a home base in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as well as a special relationship with Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia.Read more.
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