Tag Archives: Dawn

A Russia-China Alliance Brewing? | The Diplomat

Posted by on April 12, 2013 Comments Off

The short answer is yes there is an alliance brewing. There are issues between the countries that could limit this alliance.

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin’s recent summit drew wide international attention. Are we witnessing the dawn of a new alliance?

…

If Moscow and Beijing are able to consummate the major deals begun at the summit we are likely witnessing the start of a more robust Sino-Russian relationship. On the other hand, as we have seen in the recent past, historical suspicions, mutual mistrust, and divergent strategic interests may once again prevent the development of a deeper and more coordinated Sino-Russian relationship.

A Russia-China Alliance Brewing? | The Diplomat

In China, Families Bet It All on a Child in College – NYTimes.com

Posted by on February 18, 2013 Comments Off

Wu Yiebing has been going down coal shafts practically every workday of his life, wrestling an electric drill for $500 a month in the choking dust of claustrophobic tunnels, with one goal in mind: paying for his daughter’s education.

His wife, Cao Weiping, toils from dawn to sunset in orchards every day during apple season in May and June. She earns $12 a day tying little plastic bags one at a time around 3,000 young apples on trees, to protect them from insects. The rest of the year she works as a substitute store clerk, earning several dollars a day, all going toward their daughter’s education.

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… A slightly above-average student, she thinks of dropping out, finding a job and earning money.

“Every time my daughter calls home, she says, ‘I don’t want to continue this,’ ” Mrs. Cao said. “And I say, ‘You’ve got to keep studying to take care of us when we get old’, and she says, ‘That’s too much pressure, I don’t want to think about all that responsibility.’ ”

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Ms. Wu realizes the odds against her. Among those who graduated last spring from her polytechnic, she said, “50 or 60 percent of them still do not have a job.”

In China, Families Bet It All on a Child in College – NYTimes.com

This is what happens when everybody wants to do the same thing. They march off a cliff together. It looks like this family is a train wreck waiting to happen. I hope I am wrong about that, but it’s not looking good.

With Longer Reach, Rockets Bolster Hamas Arsenal – NYTimes.com

Posted by on November 18, 2012 Comments Off

When Israel assassinated the top Hamas military commander in Gaza on Wednesday, setting off the current round of fierce fighting, it was aiming not just at a Palestinian leader but at a supply line of rockets from Iran that have for the first time given Hamas the ability to strike as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, had shifted Hamas’s low-grade militia into a disciplined force with sophisticated weapons like Fajr-5 rockets, which are named after the Persian word for dawn and have significantly increased the danger to Israel’s major cities. They have a range of about 45 miles and are fired by trained crews from underground launching pads.

With Longer Reach, Rockets Bolster Hamas Arsenal – NYTimes.com

Beyond the scandal lies a crisis at the heart of China’s legitimacy

Posted by on April 15, 2012 Comments Off

What too few people recognise is the Communist party’s colossal legitimacy crisis. The battle between Bo and the leadership is about much more than the way he acquired the personal fortune that allowed him to educate his children at top British public schools. It is about finding an answer to the legitimacy question. Unless a convincing strategy can soon be developed, a Chinese spring sometime in the next decade seems nearly certain.

The party’s right to govern is that it led the communist revolution, the dawn of an egalitarian paradise in which the party as champion of the proletariat was to govern the economy and society harmoniously in the name of all. But while China’s growth has been remarkable and 400 million have been lifted out of poverty, it has plainly very little to do with socialism or an egalitarian paradise. The revolution’s leaders are long dead and they have been replaced by a competent if rotten administrative elite that looks more and more like the Confucian mandarinate the revolution overthrew.

Beyond the scandal lies a crisis at the heart of China’s legitimacy | Will Hutton | Comment is free | The Observer

Loss of faith in democracy could make 2012 the most frightening year ever | Mail Online

Posted by on December 31, 2011 Comments Off

The dawn of a new year is usually a time of hope and ambition, of dreams for the future and thoughts of a better life. But it is a long time since many of us looked forward to the new year with such anxiety, even dread.

Here in Britain, many economists believe that by the end of 2012 we could well have slipped into a second devastating recession. The Coalition remains delicately poised; it would take only one or two resignations to provoke a wider schism and a general election.

But the real dangers lie overseas. In the Middle East, the excitement of the Arab Spring has long since curdled into sectarian tension and fears of Islamic fundamentalism. And with so many of the world’s oil supplies concentrated in the Persian Gulf, British families will be keeping an anxious eye on events in the Arab world.

Loss of faith in democracy could make 2012 the most frightening year ever | Mail Online

Debt relief: A time for forgiveness – FT.com

Posted by on December 29, 2011 4 comments

Yet there is a strange absence in the cacophony of demands. Almost no echo can be heard from a long tradition of economic protest movements, which, since the dawn of recorded history, have put one unambiguous demand at the top of their agenda: cancel the debts, redeem the debtors.

According to David Graeber, an anthropologist at Goldsmiths, part of the University of London, the first act of many successful rebellions was to annihilate the records of debt owed. In his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Mr Graeber describes how “cancelling the debts, destroying the records, reallocating the land, was to become the standard list of peasant revolutionaries everywhere”. Is this time different?

Debt relief: A time for forgiveness – FT.com

Conversations w/ Great Minds – Dr. David Graeber Debt: The 1st 5000 years P1

Rise of political Islam | DAWN.COM

Posted by on November 30, 2011 1 comment

ENNAHDA, the Islamic party in Tunisia, won 41 per cent of the seats of the Tunisian constitutional assembly last month, causing consternation in the West. But Ennahda will not be an exception on the Arab scene. Last Friday, the Islamic Justice and Development Party took the biggest share of the vote in Morocco and will lead the new coalition government for the first time in history.

And in Egypt`s elections, the Muslim Brotherhood is predicted to become the largest party. There may be more to come. Should free and fair elections be held in Yemen, once the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh falls, the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, also Islamic, will win by a significant majority. This pattern will repeat itself whenever the democratic process takes its course.

Rise of political Islam | Opinion | DAWN.COM

Think of Islam as a political system first then a religion. Ultimately, it is a way for Allah to seize control of the planet. Of course, Allah is not the god that those in the West know. It is not the god of Jews and Christians.

What is the purpose of Islam?

As far as I can tell, the purpose of Islam is to facilitate the transfer from man’s rule to God’s rule. Rather than dragging out the process for hundreds of years, the God of Jews and Christians has decided to make the process short and quick. That also means the process will be brutal.

Nebuchadnezzar’s statue provides the road-map. The American empire will end, then the EU empire will rise. The EU empire will end, and a final empire (Islamic) will rise. This is where Allah comes in. This last empire will end too with the arrival of the real Jesus. The overall process of transfer is short and brutish.

The American empire ends abruptly due to nuclear war. The EU empire ends abruptly due to nuclear war. The final empire (Islamic) ends abruptly due to war. The world is completely devastated and a little more open to outside governance.

That is where we are headed over the next 30 years (approximately). At least that is where I think we are headed. If real world events change then my thinking will change with it.

Beyond Cairo Embassy Attack, Israel Senses Wider Siege – NYTimes.com

Posted by on September 11, 2011 Comments Off

With its Cairo embassy ransacked, its ambassador to Turkey expelled and the Palestinians seeking statehood recognition at the United Nations, Israel found itself on Saturday increasingly isolated and grappling with a radically transformed Middle East where it believes its options are limited and poor.

The diplomatic crisis, in which winds unleashed by the Arab Spring are now casting a chill over the region, was crystallized by the scene of Israeli military jets sweeping into Cairo at dawn on Saturday to evacuate diplomats after the Israeli Embassy had been besieged by thousands of protesters.

Beyond Cairo Embassy Attack, Israel Senses Wider Siege – NYTimes.com

Contagion in Three Forms Has Grip on Europe: Simon Johnson – Bloomberg

Posted by on July 18, 2011 Comments Off

There are three types of contagion in a financial crisis, when the potential collapse of a firm, bank or country threatens to spiral out of control. The European Union today has all three.

The first type is purely psychological — the panic of herd behavior. The second comes from thinking through the real effects that a collapse would have, as the potential spillovers dawn on people. The third, and most devastating, emerges when smart investors realize that their assumptions — based on the pronouncements of policy makers — are all wrong and need to be tossed overboard.

Contagion in Three Forms Has Grip on Europe: Simon Johnson – Bloomberg

Israel and Hamas near a Spring war

Posted by on April 2, 2011 Comments Off

After nearly two months of rising tension, Israel and Hamas have taken a step towards a full-blown military confrontation: Before dawn Saturday, April 2, an Israeli air strike killed three senior Hamas Izz al-Din Qassam Brigades gunmen in the Gaza Strip in an operation described by an Israeli army spokesman as pre-empting a major Palestinian terror-cum-kidnap campaign scheduled for Passover. A fourth Palestinian was seriously injured by the airborne missile which struck their car between Khan Younes and Deir el Balakh.

The Hamas Brigades warned Israel its “dangerous escalation” would have “consequences.” …

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security