Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia (1 viewing) (1) Guest
Favoured: 0
|
|
|
TOPIC: Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia
|
Jacques (Moderator)
Moderator
Posts: 2698
|
|
Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 1 Year ago
|
Karma: 30
|
8 FEBRUARY 2009
The clearing of Abdul Qadeer Khan : Shame on Pakistan
A court in Pakistan, on February 6, 2009, has ended the house arrest of Abdul Qadeer Khan, 72, considered the "father of Pakistan's atomic bomb," a scientist who admitted selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya. "The court has said as he was not involved in nuclear proliferation or criminal activity, there is no case against him, therefore, he is a free citizen," Ali Zafar, Khan's lawyer, told local television.
Khan's movements were restricted despite being pardoned by Pervez Musharraf, the former president of Pakistan, after his confession in 2004. At that time Khan confessed to providing Libya with enriched uranium and gas centrifuge parts. In a televised address, Dr Khan offered his "deepest regrets and unqualified apologies". Pakistan's minister for information and broadcasting says that A.Q. Khan, the country's leading nuclear scientist, provided Iran with centrifuges that could be used in the process of making nuclear weapons.
A jubilant Khan said "It's a matter of joy. The judgment, by the grace of Allah, is good," Khan told reporters outside his house in Islamabad, soon after news of the high court ruling broke. Khan said he was proud of what he had done for Pakistan, and that he had no need to answer to any foreign government.
There is the point where I deeply disagree. What Dr Khan did for his country to balance the Indian nuclear capacity is one point. To help foreign countries, and mainly the most dangerous ones in the world, is purely criminal. If he did that for money or by ideology is not the main problem, but when he said to the Pakistani journalists "I would be more worried about what you say about me, not what Bush says or what Dick Cheney says. I don't damn care."
No, Dr Khan, you have not to take care of Bush or Cheney, but of all the world that condemns your crimes and your no remorse. Shame to the court who denied all the wrong things you admitted you did 
|
|
|
|
 Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
Jacques (Moderator)
Moderator
Posts: 2698
|
|
Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 12 Months ago
|
Karma: 30
|
|
10 MARCH 2009
Beijing wants to destroy the Dalai Lama but without him there will be no peace in Tibet
That is the title of an article by The Italian journalist Bernado Cervellera, and I 100 per cent agree with him.
Fifty years after crushing the uprising in blood, Beijing re-imposes martial law on the Himalayan region so as to better control it. The Chinese accuse the Dalai Lama of trying to break up the nation. Their campaign to destroy the Tibetan leader finds secret supporters in the international community but he is the only one who could stop the violence.
Who belongs to Tibet? Despite its unique culture, language and religion Tibet was a vassal state of the Chinese Empire for centuries, but it has been the situation in the past of other countries as Vietnam or Korea now independent. It was during the Mongol invasion that Tibet asked for the protection of China. That do not means that Tibet is a part of China.
It was only under Mao Zedong that Tibet was defined as an integral part of China following its invasion in 1950. In the seventeen point agreement, signed in May 1951, in article 4, China recognized the religious and political power of the Dalai Lama. It is only after he fleed to India in March 1959, because his life was endered, that China changed the local rules.
For Beijing the Dalai Lama is a wolf in sheep’s clothing; a political leader, not the religious head of a minority; a globetrotting character who wants the world to support Tibet’s secession and independence. In reality for years the Dalai Lama has been calling for Tibet’s cultural and religious autonomy, leaving power and territory to China. Sure, if it was possible, the Dalai Lama should favor independence, but he knows that China will never agree and has the military means to crush any insurgency
China’s interest in Tibet is first of all geopolitical, with the Indian border, and economic. In addition to tourism, the Himalayan region is rich in minerals like copper, aluminum and uranium. But nationalism also plays a role because China’s Communist Party is concerned that if Tibet gets its autonomy, other regions might make the same demand, as Xinjiang, breaking the unity of the country and undermining the power of the party.
As foreign countries recognize that Tibet belongs to China when establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing, China has warned the rest of the world not to play host to the Dalai Lama, not even in his capacity as a religious leader or Nobel Prize laureate
Still desperation and impatience are driving many Tibetans, especially the young, to envisage armed struggle, and that is the main problem. Many young in India or the Tibetan diaspora in the world think that the peaceful way of the Dalai Lama got no result. So, after his dead, It is possible that Tibet could have an armed struggle as in Xinjiang, something as IRA in Ireland or ETA in Spain.
Only the Dalai lama who just ask for a large autonomy, could lead them back to the path of peace. Without him, and given Beijing’s totalitarian demands, only more blood and violence can be expected.
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
Jacques (Moderator)
Moderator
Posts: 2698
|
|
Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 10 Months, 3 Weeks ago
|
Karma: 30
|
19 April 2009
Velupillai Prabhakaran is a killer
Velupillai Prabhakaran, born November 26, 1954, also known informally as Thambi "Younger Brother", is the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a militant terrorist organization that seeks an independent Tamil state in part of the territory of Sri Lanka, and now in a desperate position
He early became heavily involved in the Tamil protest movement, and in 1975 was accused of being responsible for the murder of Alfred Duraiyappah, the mayor of Jaffna.
That assassination was one of the first killings carried out by the burgeoning Tamil nationalist movement. He was instrumental in the foundation of the Tamil Tigers around that time.
He founded the LTTE in 1976 and attracted many supporters among disenchanted Tamil youth. The LTTE carried out low-key attacks against various government targets, including policemen and local politicians. Initially the LTTE operated in cooperation with other Tamil militant groups which shared their same objectives.
On July 23, 1983, he ordered the Tigers to ambush a Sri Lankan Army convoy, killing 13 draftees, causing the start of the civil war and anti Tamil pogrom in the country.
In April 1984, the LTTE formally joined a common militant front, the Eelam National Liberation Front (ENLF), a union between itself, the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO), the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS), the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) and the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), but it quickly attacked all the others Tamil movements to secure, by terror, to be the only one leader of Tamil areas while, for the same purpose attacking and destroying the Muslim villages in the East Province
In 1987, India forced Colombo government to accept the sending of an India Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to protect the Tamil population. In exchange the armed Tamil movements had to give back their weapons. Everyone did except the LTTE. So they fought the Indian troops and for that, Velupillai Prabhakaran ordered the killing of Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991. He got an arrangement with Sri Lankan president Premadasa to force the Indian forces to leave Sri Lanka, getting weapons for that and eradicate pro-Indian Tamil movements in East Province. After that he ordered the killing of president Premadasa on May 1, 1993.
To his followers, he is a freedom fighter struggling for Tamil emancipation from Sinhala oppression. To his adversaries he is a megalomaniac with a brutal disregard for human life. But in fact he ordered the killing of thousands of civilians and not only army personnel or officials, including the 1996 Central Bank Bombing. He sends young Tamils to sacrify their life, but always keeps him safe. A judge found him guilty on 51 counts and sentenced him to 200 years in prison.
My problem is not only that Velupillai Prabhakaran waged a violent secessionist campaign to secede from the Sri Lankan state in order to create a separate Tamil state in the north and east of the island but the suicide bombing of thousands of innocent civilians, for instance when on April 17, 1987 Tamil separatists attack three buses and two lorries carrying women and children, killing 127 of them without speaking of his recruitment of child soldiers
When one month ago, a Sri Lankan newspaper said that LTTE was firing in the civilian population trying to escape the war zone under their control, I thank it was governmental propaganda, but that was quickly confirmed by NGO and United Nations organizations.
How some medias can follow the LTTE propaganda denouncing a Tamil genocide, as they are the ones who deny these poor people to leave the zone under their control (On April 18, 2009 India asked the LTTE to let them to go)
So, for me, Velupillai Prabhakaran, is only a paranoiac killer
.
. 
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
Jacques (Moderator)
Moderator
Posts: 2698
|
|
Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 9 Months, 2 Weeks ago
|
Karma: 30
|
[color=] 000]23 MAY 2009
Roh Moo-Hyun, I loved you
I cannot stop feeling shock and sorrow at the news of former president Roh's death
Roh worked his way up from a farming village to the presidency. Born to poor peasant parents in the south-eastern region of Kimhae, Mr Roh initially studied law as a means of escaping poverty. But in 1981 his work brought him in contact with a case of human rights abuse which he says changed his aspirations forever. He became the lawyer of students and trade unionists tortured by the military dictorship. He had been one of the leaders of the "June Struggle" in 1987, against the dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan. He served a three-week jail sentence that year for abetting striking workers.
In 1988, Roh was nominated by Unified Democratic Party and entered politics. He first made headlines soon after he entered politics in 1988, when he grilled top officials from the previous administration during a special parliamentary hearing on graft. In 2000, Roh was appointed as the Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries under Kim Dae-jung, and this position would constitute his only real government experience prior to the presidency. He won the presidency on 19 December 2002, by defeating Lee Hoi-chang with a narrow 2% margin of victory.
Roh and his supporters left the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) in 2003 to form a new party, the Uri Party and the MDP joined the Grand National Party to oppose him. Roh's popularity was rapidly declining by that point, principally on perceptions of mismanagement of the economy, his conciliatory North Korea policy and his decision to send troops to Iraq upon US request.
After a year in office, Roh became the first South Korean president to be impeached for an alleged breach of election laws by both MDP and GNP. In a press conference, asked by a journalist what a party he hoped the victory, he innocently replied : Uri, the only party supporting him. The opposition passed the impeachment because as president, he had to be neutral. It was shocking because no one of the prior corrupted presidents have been impeached. He survived the impeachment and propelled his party to a sweeping victory in general elections in 2004.
Roh sought a policy of "balanced diplomacy" by lessening dependence on long-time ally the United States. During his years in power Roh pursued closer ties with communist North Korea, leading to a summit in 2007 with leader Kim Jong-Il. Contrary to his predecessor Kim Dae-jung who has been Nobel laureate for the first inter-Korean summit in June 2000, he did not pay for this meeting
For me, Roh Moo-Hyun was a very honest man. Probably his wife and son were not. They are the responsible for his suicide
.
. 
.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8065101.stm |
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
Jacques (Moderator)
Moderator
Posts: 2698
|
|
Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 8 Months ago
|
Karma: 30
|
5 JULY 2009
Stupid Ban Ki-moon
The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed "deep disappointment" after Burma's top general Than Shwe rejected his request to meet with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi
How a reputed so seasoned diplomat, has he was reputed, could ask a such request without having rior discreet contacts on the issue of his request.
To have been snub is a slape in the face and a descredit for the U.N. General Secretary position
.
. 
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
Jacques (Moderator)
Moderator
Posts: 2698
|
|
Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 6 Months, 4 Weeks ago
|
Karma: 30
|
|
12 AUGUST 2009
Aung San Suu Kyi condemnation, just enough
Some months ago I received a demand from an Asia Oberver member to quit this website with proburman military junta active members. I refused, because every one is free to express his point of view on Asia Oberver, even when we desagree with him
Yesterday an A.O. member who seems to be an propaganda officer of the Myanmar military junta posted an forum called "San Suu Kyi condemnation, just enough". It is strange, because the first time I saw it i read "not enough"
"Not enough" is probably what the military on power are thiking. "just enough" is what they need to put her out of participating to the next free (?) general elections
How after fabricating a new constitution in their favor, could the military think that "free" election next year with the opposition leader denied to campain could convice the world that they are the true winners ?
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
Jacques (Moderator)
Moderator
Posts: 2698
|
|
Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 6 Months, 3 Weeks ago
|
Karma: 30
|
18 AUGUST 2009
My ambiguous feeling on Kim Dae-jung
Kim Dae-jung, South Korean president from 1998 to 2003 who led the fight for democracy in his country and championed the so-called "Sunshine Policy" of engagement with North Korea, died on August 18
I like him as a former political prisoner who survived beatings, kidnapping and an assassination attempt and restored democracy In South Korea. For his supporters, during his lifetime Kim dedicated himself to democracy, human rights and the development of relations between South and North Korea
He campaigned strenuously against the 1961-1979 rule of dictator Park Chung-Hee.
His image as a persecuted dissident expanded abroad in 1973, when agents from Mr. Park’s notorious spy agency, known at the time as the K.C.I.A., kidnapped him from a hotel room in Tokyo, where he was leading an exile movement for democracy in South Korea. He was taken to Seoul where it was rumoured that the American ambassador intervened to save his life. Instead, Kim spent the next few years under house arrest, in jail or in exile
As president from 1998 till 2003, Kim reshaped the economy by cleaning up debt-ridden banks and conglomerates. But he is best known for his historic embrace of Kim Jong-il, the North's reclusive leader, at the June 2000 summit between the leaders of North and South Korea. The meeting in Pyongyang was the first ever between the leaders of the rival Koreas and won Kim the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his struggle as a pro-democracy campaigner as well as his vision in overcoming five decades of mistrust and hostility to engineer the Korean summit meeting.
But what disappointed me is that even with an huge South financial help, the North Korean leader never kept his promise to make a return visit to Seoul, nor did he give up his nuclear program. Two of "Mr. Clean"’s sons were sent to prison for corruption. And, mainly, that a special investigator with a parliamentary mandate found that his government had helped funnel $500 million to North Korea in dubious business deals shortly before the 2000 summit meeting, fueling opposition charges that he had “bribed” the Communist leader and strengthened his chances to win the peace prize
.
. 
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
Jacques (Moderator)
Moderator
Posts: 2698
|
|
Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 5 Months, 2 Weeks ago
|
Karma: 30
|
To see my last blog, go to the bottom of this page
22 SEPTEMBER 2009
The Far Eastern Economic Review, is to be closed
The Far Eastern Economic Review was founded in 1946 in Hong Kong by Austrian immigrant Eric Halpern, a Jew from Vienna who had first come to Asia in 1932 with a commission from the League of Nations sent to investigate Japan's creation of Manchukuo (Manchuria). After the liberation of Shanghai from Japanese occupation but with civil war in the air, Halpern determined that Hong Kong would make the best location for a new business magazine.
The founders of the FEER did have a vision of the possibilities. The mission statement of the inaugural issue of October 16, 1946, defined the magazine's role in telling Asia's story: “To analyze and interpret financial, commercial, and industrial developments; to collect economic news; and to present views and opinions with the intent to improve existing conditions.”
For near 60 years, the FEER, the once cult-like news weekly had been the bible of Asia watchers. FEER regularly publishes re2ports that cover key topics in Asia. These reports are informative and important to the marketers, businessmen and also academics. It has been one of my main sources for 30 years, and I was closed with its Welsh senior-editor Derek Davies in the 80s when I was based in Hong Kong. He had been in charge of the review for 25 years. My attic is full of boxes with my FEER collections
But in 2004, the weekly news magazine said it could no longer compete with more immediate news outlets in the region and moved to a monthly format, blaming six years of losses. I was very sad and less interested in a monthly, but I maintained my subscription.
Unfortunately this courageous newspaper, which had a lot of problems with some Asian governments (Thailand, Bangladesh, Singapore…) and give to us a lot of scoops (the death of Pol Pot…) will definitively be dead in next December.
It is sad
The last issue of the weekly in 2004
.
. 
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
Jacques (Moderator)
Moderator
Posts: 2698
|
|
Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 5 Months, 1 Week ago
|
Karma: 30
|
1 OCTOBER 2009
On People’s Republic of China’s 60th anniversary
China has been marking the 60th anniversary of communist rule with a show of military might in the form of a massive parade through central Beijing. The parade - the biggest ever staged in China - formed the centerpiece of national celebrations marking the day in 1949 when Mao Zedong declared the foundation of the People's Republic of China. This show was to show to the world that China is strong and to be respected by the whole world. I could be also felt by some countries (Japan, USA…) as a threat or a challenge. That was a message for foreign countries of which no chief of state or government was invited to attend
For the Chinese, there was another message. Hu Jintao, was exceptionally dressed in a traditional Mao-style suit and spoke from the same spot where Mao had stood 60 years ago showing a strong symbol. As he said "The 60 years of new China have proved that only socialism can save China… We will unswervingly follow socialism with Chinese characteristics and comprehensively implement the ruling party's basic theory, basic line and basic program." So the CCP is in power for 60 years and don’t intend to share it.
Later, in Tiananmen Square, there was a spectacular fireworks show and a concert of patriotic songs and dancing. At the beginning, I was enchanted by the wonderful fireworks, drums and dancing. But quickly my feelings changed. All the songs were so patriotic chanting the grandiose fatherland and some sentences as “Only a strong country can give birth to a rich family” chocked me. It was too much, as brain washing and cultivating too much nationalistic feelings. Sure, the Chinese will be proud of this day, but for me it sound like some night parades in Nuremberg under Hitler Nazi power
.
. 
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
|
|
|
|
Forums 
