By Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse It was a Christmas and a New Year from hell for American intelligence, that US$75 billion labyrinth of at least 16 major agencies and a handful of minor ones. As the old year was preparing to be rung out, so were the US’s intelligence agencies, which managed not to connect every obvious clue to a (literally) seat-of-the-pants al-Qaeda operation. It hardly mattered that the underwear bomber’s case – except for the placement of the bomb material – almost exactly, even outrageously, replicated the infamous, and equally inept, “shoe bomber” plot of eight years ago. … Continue reading The shadow war in Afghanistan

By Kosuke Takahashi TOKYO – With the world economy’s center of gravity shifting from the West to the East, led by China’s rising economic and corresponding political power, the year 2010 may witness a series of epoch-making events in Asia. A grand rapprochement between Japan and China could be one such happening, and the idea has been recently floated through the media by some anonymous diplomatic sources in Tokyo and/or Beijing, attracting a lot of attention among experts worldwide. The French newspaper Le Figaro reported from Tokyo last Wednesday that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had elivered to the ruling Democratic … Continue reading Hatoyama to Nanjing, Hu to Hiroshima?

By Kent Ewing HONG KONG – When, on New Year’s Eve, Chinese authorities announced that they had arrested three Shanghai dairy executives and seized the melamine-contaminated milk they were trying to sell to an unsuspecting public, it appeared China’s new food-regulatory regime was kicking in with impressive results. Perhaps the horrors of the tainted-milk scandal of 2008 – which left six children dead, 300,000 others sick and 22 dairies named and shamed – had shocked regulators into action. Maybe this marked the beginning of a more efficient and reliable product-safety ethos in China. Within days, however, the bottom dropped out … Continue reading More taint on China’s safety record

By Sebastian Strangio PHNOM PENH – A day after Cambodian authorities spirited 20 ethnic Uighur asylum seekers out of the country on an unmarked charter flight, China’s Vice President Xi Jinping touched down at Siem Reap International Airport. During his three-day visit in late December, the Chinese leader signed an unprecedented US$1.2 billion in economic aid agreements with the Phnom Penh government, while rights groups and Western governments howled condemnation over the sudden deportations. The deported Uighurs hailed from China’s restive northwest Xinjiang province and were part of a group of 22 who had drifted into Cambodia with the aid … Continue reading China’s soft power hardens in Cambodia

By Sami Moubayed DAMASCUS – An alarmed Iraqi Sunni community has cried foul play following last week’s mass arrests by Iraqi security forces within Sunni districts of the country. Hundreds of young people were arrested in Baghdad, Tikrit, Anbar and Mosul, all accused of illegal membership in the 170,000-man Awakening Councils. These councils were originally founded by the former United States administration to help combat al-Qaeda. They have since snowballed to become a nightmare for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who claims that once through with al-Qaeda, they will target their guns at Shi’ites. Meanwhile, the Judicial Council that The clampdown … Continue reading Maliki grasping at Shi’ite straws

By Ioannis Gatsiounis KUALA LUMPUR – With much of the Islamic world beset by violence, majority Muslim Malaysia had prided itself on its comparatively clean record of no major episodes of terrorism on its home soil. That badge of distinction was tarnished early on Friday when three Kuala Lumpur-based Christian churches were firebombed in apparent response to a New Year’s Eve court ruling that allowed “Allah”, an Arabic word meaning “one god”, predates Islam and is used by Christians in a number of other Muslim countries without controversy. Five more Christian churches were attacked over the weekend into Monday, leaving … Continue reading Bombs tarnish Malaysia’s terror record