Category: News

Southeast Asia’s new best friend

Southeast Asia’s new best friend – Los Angeles Times
THE MAPS SPREAD ACROSS the desk of senior Thai trade official Pisanu Rienmahasarn show an important piece of Southeast Asia’s future: a highway that, when it opens next year, will run more than 1,000 miles from Kunming in southwestern China, through Laos, to the ports of southern Thailand and beyond.

Beijing’s diplomatic message to Asia is fundamentally reassuring: Let’s get rich together. China’s modernization can only succeed if its neighbors also grow prosperous. That’s a far cry from the ideological clashes of a generation ago, when from behind its bamboo curtain, China bankrolled leftist groups to foment revolution in the capitalist Asian nations.

The Race for Iran

The Race for Iran – New York Times
Unfortunately, by refusing to consider a “grand bargain” with Iran — that is, resolution of Washington’s concerns about Tehran’s weapons of mass destruction and support for terrorism in return for American security guarantees, an end to sanctions and normalization of diplomatic relations — the Bush administration is courting failure in its nuclear diplomacy and paving the way for Russia and China to win the larger strategic contest.

Iran has the world’s second-largest proven reserves of conventional crude oil, after Saudi Arabia, and the second-largest reserves of natural gas, after Russia. Its relatively low production levels make it one of the few states with the potential to greatly increase its exports of both oil and gas over the next two decades. Continue reading “The Race for Iran”

Army called to fight toad invasion in Australia

– Army called to fight toad invasion in Australia

An Australian state government called for the army to be deployed against an invasion of toxic toads.

Battalions of imported cane toads are marching relentlessly across northern Australia and the West Australian government wants soldiers to intercept the environmental barbarians. Continue reading “Army called to fight toad invasion in Australia”

Ayatollah’s grandson calls for US overthrow of Iran

Telegraph | News | Ayatollah’s grandson calls for US overthrow of Iran
The grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, the inspiration of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, has broken a three-year silence to back the United States military to overthrow the country’s clerical regime.

Hossein Khomeini’s call is all the more startling as he made it from Qom, the spiritual home of Iran’s Shia strand of Islam, during an interview to mark the 17th anniversary of the ayatollah’s death.

“My grandfather’s revolution has devoured its children and has strayed from its course,” he told Al-Arabiya, an Arabic-language television station. “I lived through the revolution and it called for freedom and democracy – but it has persecuted its leaders.”

Time is on our side in the Long War

KnoxNews: Columnists
Americans are routinely accused of lacking strategic patience. We want our wars finished by the next major holiday or certainly by the next election. Given that mindset, we’re forced to subsist on current events for encouragement – e.g., al-Zarqawi’s death rescues us from the chilling revelations surrounding the Haditha killings.

But if you subscribe to the Long War, you look for trends and not individual events to drive your strategic calculations.

Gen. John Abizaid, current CENTCOM commander, calls Iraq the first war of globalization. Ultimately, we’re trying to connect the Middle East to the global economy on the basis of something besides oil, turning all those idle young males into stakeholders instead of bomb-throwers. Meanwhile, the radical Salafi jihadists seek to disconnect the region from what they see as the corrupting – and growing – influence of globalization.

Here’s the good news: Time is on our side.

Seal found in Anegada BVI

TCPalm: Local News
Plug the name of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution’s Greg Bossart into Google’s Internet search screen, and information about his work on dolphins, manatees and whales will pop up.

So Bossart, the director of marine mammal research and conservation, wasn’t surprised when he got a call from a biologist from the British Virgin Islands, asking for help with a beached animal. But he was surprised by the animal.

It seems a hooded seal — a marine mammal that lives on and around packed ice off the coast of Newfoundland — somehow found its way to the tiny island of Anegada in the Caribbean Sea.

“This is a very unusual occurrence,” Bossart said Friday. “They live on off-shore packed ice. They’re migratory, but the Caribbean is a little ridiculous.” (Thanks to Natalia Collier)

A Shift Among the Evangelicals

A Shift Among the Evangelicals
When the Southern Baptist Convention elected the Rev. Frank Page as the group’s president at its meeting this week in Greensboro, N.C., the news appeared on the back pages of most secular newspapers — or it didn’t appear at all.

But Page’s upset victory could be very significant, both to the nation’s religious life and to politics. He defeated candidates supported by the convention’s staunchly conservative establishment, which has dominated the organization since the mid-1980s. His triumph is one of many signs that new breezes are blowing through the broader evangelical Christian world.

Religious movements stay vibrant thanks to the complicated interaction of fidelity, reflection and reform. The evangelical world is going through a quiet evolution as believers reflect on the perils of partisanship and ideology and their reasons for being Christian.

Daring rescue of whale off Farallones / Humpback nuzzled her saviors in thanks after they untangled her from crab lines, diver says

Daring rescue of whale off Farallones / Humpback nuzzled her saviors in thanks after they untangled her from crab lines, diver says

This story has been circulating around the net for awhile. Thanks to Randy Marks for this link to the original new article and pictures.

China Easing Its Stance On Taiwan

China Easing Its Stance On Taiwan
China’s adjustment was decided at senior levels of the Communist Party in the summer of 2004, shortly after Chen was reelected to a second four-year term and Beijing realized its policy was going nowhere, officials said. The Chinese decided that talk of conquering Taiwan within a short time was not fruitful and that the real answer lay in the longer-term strategy, based on making China more attractive to Taiwan’s 23 million inhabitants through economic and political development,