PrairiePundit

 Epoch Times: The Chinese regime is reportedly building structures at its borders with  Vietnam  and  Burma , as an influx of its citizens are fleeing to southeast Asia in search of economic opportunities. ... China and Vietnam share a 1,281-kilometer (796 miles)-long border, which is separated by low partitions. In October, locals shared videos online,  reportedly showing  parts of the Chinese regime’s new wall structure at the border, which is more than two meters (6.56 feet) tall. Some Chinese and Taiwanese entrepreneurs said they believed the Chinese regime was building the structures to prevent Chinese from leaving the country in search of jobs, as more and more multinational firms have moved their production lines out of China and into Vietnam or other Southeast Asian countries. As Chinese wages increased and U.S. trade war tariffs loomed,  a manufacturing exodus  out of China and into Southeast Asia began last year. Guo Haiguang, head of a ...

Washington Post Editorial: This ethnic cleansing in Asia is the most brutal the world has seen in years I am not defending what is happening in Asia.  But it is more of a forced migration than the mass murders of ethnic groups and religions other than Islam that was used by ISIS.  It could be based on the fact that Islam does not play well with others because it is an intolerant sect.  

Reuters: China's military will take "decisive" measures if there is a repeat attack by Myanmar forces on its territory, a senior military officer said after a bomb from a Myanmar aircraft killed four people. Myanmar government forces have been battling rebels on the border with China since last month and China has urged Myanmar to "lower the temperature". But Myanmar denied that any bomb from its forces had fallen in China and said the rebels might have fired into China to create "misunderstanding". The rebels do not have aircraft. China's air force has dispatched planes to patrol the border and step up protection of its airspace. Beijing has also summoned Myanmar's ambassador to complain about the bombing. Fan Changlong, who is a deputy head of the powerful Central Military Commission, said Myanmar air force aircraft had crossed the border "many times" recently, China's defense ministry said in a statement late on Saturday. ...

NY Times: In Myanmar, Obama Affirms Support for Democracy President Obama met with the democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on Friday in a show of support for Myanmar’s reform process, despite evidence of backsliding in its transition from military dictatorship. It is pretty clear from his high handed treatment of the immigration issue that he does not believe in democracy in the US when it becomes difficult for him to get his way.  He acts more like a despot when he had difficulty persuading Congress.  After an election where voters clearly rejected his approach to immigration reform he is going to do it anyway in an unconstitutional way.  Liberals may like it now, but if it becomes a precedent they will rue the day when a more conservative President does the same thing.

Hindustan Times: Nine serial blasts in a coordinated terror attack rocked the Mahabodhi temple complex in south central Bihar's Buddhist pilgrimage town of Bodh Gaya early on Sunday, injuring two monks. "It is a terror attack," Union minister of state for home RPN Singh said about the blasts that took place between 5:30 and 5:58am. A Buddhist monk is carried on a stretcher for treatment after he was injured in a blast in Bodhgaya, about 140 kilometers southwest of Patna. AP Sources in the ministry of home affairs said there had been intelligence of a possible attack on the temple and Bihar was alerted last month. The Intelligence Bureau (IB) had alerted the state that two terrorists, brothers originally from Bihar but based abroad in recent years, had entered the state to carry out terror attacks, according to an official aware about the intelligence input. According to intelligence sources, Bodh Gaya has been in the crosshairs of Pakistan-based terrorists, wh...

NY Times: Hatred of Muslims Rises Among Burmese Buddhists Amid hate-filled speeches and violence in Myanmar, a fundamentalist movement has grown with an agenda that now includes boycotts of Muslim-made products. My speculation is that Muslims tend to be abusive when they are in the majority.  That is what is happening in North Africa right now as well as in the Arabian peninsula  where the few Christians that remain are subject to discrimination and worse.  You see the same thing in southern Thailand where non Muslims are the victims of a terror campaign.  There is also a strategic element by Muslims to claim victim status as they do in places like Israel.  They just are not tolerant of those with a different point of view and it loeads to a similar feeling when they become the minority.

Nile Gardiner: It is only two weeks since his re-election, and his second term remains two months away, but Barack Obama is already blundering again on the world stage, with the kind of gaffes that would have been plastered on the front page of  The New York Times  if they had been committed by George W. Bush when he was in the White House. Obama's first term was littered  with foreign policy gaffes , and there is every chance the second term will be more of the same. On his trip to Asia this week, President Obama struggled to pronounce the name of Aung San Suu Kyi, the most prominent human rights activist in the world. As  The Associated Press  reports  (hat tip:  Drudge Report ): As Obama stood next to the world's most recognized democracy icon, he mispronounced her name repeatedly. Ever gracious, Suu Kyi did not correct her American guest for calling her Aung YAN Suu Kyi multiple times during his statement to reporters after thei...

Image via Wikipedia NY Times: The United States Navy intercepted a North Korean ship it suspected of carrying missile technology to Myanmar two weeks ago and, after a standoff at sea and several days of diplomatic pressure from Washington and Asia nations, forced the vessel to return home, according to several senior American officials. Washington made no announcement about the operation, which paralleled a similar, far more public confrontation with North Korea two years ago. But in response to questions about what appears to be a growing trade in missiles and missile parts between North Korea and Myanmar — two of the world’s most isolated governments — American officials have described the episode as an example of how they can use a combination of naval power and diplomatic pressure to enforce United Nations sanctions imposed after the North’s last nuclear test, in 2009. It was a rare victory: a similar shipment of suspected missile parts made it to Myanmar last year before Ame...

Time: Why Did Burma's Leader Appear on TV in Women's Clothes?

Image via Wikipedia Washington Post: A batch of leaked U.S. diplomatic cables released this week lend details to long-suspected nuclear cooperation between North Korea and Burma , suggesting that hundreds of North Koreans were at one point working at a covert military site deep in the Burmese jungle. The cables from the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon , released Thursday by anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks , are hardly definitive, citing accounts from dockworkers, foreign businessmen and other observers. But they feed growing fears of a partnership between two of the world's most opaque countries, with cash-strapped North Korea selling its nuclear technology - which now includes a capacity for uranium enrichment - despite United Nations sanctions designed to clamp down on exactly that. Suspicions have swirled for several years about Burma's nuclear ambitions. As non-proliferation analysts see it, those ambitions would probably draw on help from Pyongyang . Secretary of State Hil...

Times: The Burmese Government is attempting to build nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, according to a military defector who smuggled photographs and documents of secret nuclear equipment out of the isolated dictatorship. Evidence presented by the former Burmese officer and weapons engineer suggests that the country is still a long way from creating usable nuclear weapons. But the fact that it has even a nascent nuclear programme will cause international alarm at a time when the West is struggling to contain the ambitions of Iran and North Korea. Jim Webb, the US senator, who in recent months has become an unofficial US envoy to Burma, yesterday cancelled a planned trip to Naypyidaw, the capital, because of concern about the reports of the defector’s testimony on the Norway-based news website, Democratic Voice of Burma. It comes after Kurt Campbell, the US assistant secretary of state, accused the Burmese junta of violating a UN resolution by allegedly buying ar...

From the Guardian: Thousands flee Burma for China Burma is ruled by some kooky generals who have made it an unpleasant place for normal people. When they would prefer to live with the Chicoms, that is a sign of real desperation.

Independent: Two of Asia's most oppressive regimes may have joined forces to develop a nuclear arsenal, according to strategic experts who have analysed information supplied by a pair of Burmese defectors. The men, who played key roles in helping the isolated military junta before defecting to Thailand, have provided evidence which suggests Burma has enlisted North Korean help to build its own nuclear bomb within the next five years. Details supplied by the pair, who were extensively interviewed over the past two years by Professor Desmond Ball of the Australian National University and Thai-based Irish-Australian journalist Phil Thornton, points to Burma building a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction facility with the assistance of North Korea. ... I suppose we should not be surprise to see kook tyrants collaborating. Both countries are run by paranoid delusional despots. At least North Korea's paranoid delusions are about outside rather than internal enemies....

Washington Post: Out of fear that history might repeat itself, the authoritarian governments of China , Cuba and Burma have been selectively censoring the news this month of Iranian crowds braving government militias on the streets of Tehran to demand democratic reforms. Between 1988 and 1990, amid a lesser global economic slump, pro-democracy protests that appeared to inspire and energize one another broke out in Eastern Europe, Burma, China and elsewhere. Not all evolved into full-fledged revolutions, but communist regimes fell in a broad swath of countries, and the global balance of power shifted. A similar infectiousness has shown up in subtle acts of defiance by democracy advocates around the world this week. In China, political commentators tinted their blogs and Twitters green to show their support for Iranians disputing President Ahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection. The deaths of at least 20 people in violent clashes in Tehran have drawn comparisons online to "June 4,...

From the NY Times story on delivering aid to Burma: ... “Even though aid is beginning to flow,” Mr. Gates said, “so many parts of the Irrawaddy Delta are cut off from any kind of transportation that it’s really going to require helicopters to get assistance to them.” The United States Navy vessels, led by the amphibious assault ship Essex, have on board 22 helicopters, medical equipment, relief supplies, water purification systems and Navy and Marine Corps personnel — all of which have been offered to the government of Myanmar to assist those affected by the cyclone. When asked whether the Myanmar government’s actions were tantamount to genocide, Mr. Gates stopped short of that accusation. “This is more akin, in my view, to criminal neglect,” he said. ... It is certainly not benign neglect. We are dealing with some rulers who just do not care about their people and there is little that can be done to make them.

Sunday Times: One April day in 1991 the world awoke to the news that a devastating cyclone and tidal wave had struck the coast of Bangladesh. As bodies washed ashore by the thousand and the death toll rose to 139,000, with millions homeless, a huge aid effort swung into action. Seven thousand American troops, diverted on their way home from the Gulf, boosted the relief effort. The American amphibious taskforce lifted 300 tons of relief materials in one day, matching the entire effort in the first two weeks of the Bangladesh government and its allies. In January 2005 another huge American military relief mission was estimated to have saved tens of thousands of lives in the tsunami-battered countries of southeast Asia. Marines with water-purifying equipment headed for Sri Lanka, giant cargo planes loaded with relief material landed at a former base for B-52 bombers in Thailand and helicopters ferried supplies to isolated survivors clinging to life in Aceh, Indonesia, where the wave h...

Observer /Guardian: Burma is still exporting rice even as it tries to curb the influx of international donations of food bound for the starving survivors of the cyclone that killed up to 116,000 people. Sacks of rice destined for Bangladesh were being loaded on to a ship at the Thilawa container port at the mouth of the Yangon River at the end of last week, even though Burma's 'rice bowl' region was devastated by the deadly storm a week ago. The Burmese regime, which has a monopoly on the country's rice exports, said it planned to meet all its contractual commitments. With rice prices hitting a record high after more than doubling since January, the exports are a valuable source of foreign revenue for the junta and its allies. The fear is that with the rice-growing area in the Irrawaddy delta inundated with salt water from the huge tidal wave, Burma may need to import greater amounts of rice this year. Alarm at the prospect fuelled another spurt in rice prices during th...

Washington Post: The number of dead and missing in the Burma cyclone soared past 60,000 Tuesday amid signs the toll will rise even higher, as much of the disaster zone remained flooded by seawater, threatened by disease and out of reach of an international relief operation that is taking shape. President Bush offered to send U.S. Navy units to help in the operation, and sharply criticized Burma's military-run government for delays in approving visas for emergency teams. Burmese dissident groups took issue with the timing of the administration's criticism, suggesting it could complicate the relief effort. .... The dissident groups appear to be as goofy as Gore, who blamed the storm on "climate change" the new euphemism for what he used to call global warming. I think it is really Gore's fault for not visiting there and brining with him the natural cooling effect that follows his travels. The record show storm he would cause would probably kill more people but it ...

Washington Post: For a repressive police state, Burma has borders that are curiously porous. Here along the eastern border with Thailand, legions of displaced farmers, smugglers and army deserters slip back and forth with little trouble and no paperwork. Quite unlike the control exerted by North Korea , the zippered-up and ethnically homogeneous police state far to the northeast, dictatorship Burmese-style is a dog's breakfast of ethnic insurrection, cross-border criminality and massive refugee flight. To halt peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in Burmese cities in September, the generals who run this country had only to order soldiers to club, shoot and detain Buddhist monks. Taming the mountainous eastern frontier has not been so brutally simple. The army periodically launches scorched-earth offensives, razing villages, enslaving farmers and raping women, according to human rights groups. Alternatively, it cuts lucrative deals with ethnic leaders, encouraging them to grow...

Con Coughlin: Is diplomacy dead? Given the perils of the modern age, this might seem an absurd question. The more threats and crises we face, the more we need our suave, smooth-talking diplomats to get us out of trouble. It is only when every possible diplomatic avenue has been exhausted that it is permissible to reach for the proverbial big stick. At least, so goes the theory. But does modern diplomacy actually work? Careful consideration does not make for comfortable reading. Kosovo, Darfur, North Korea and Iran suggest that more progress might have been made had a little more stick been employed than endless talk. All the main aid agencies estimate about two million innocent civilians have been the victims of the Sudanese Islamic militias that have waged a genocidal campaign against the Christian and Animist tribes that predominantly inhabit the south of the country. There are 700,000 people in refugee camps in the Darfur province of western Sudan and eastern Chad and it is universa...