My sense of an unusually gloomy mood in the industrialized nations after the sour, feckless, routine G8 flop, moves me to my memory and this starkly credible Twilight Zone episode, Season 1, No. 14, "Third Planet from the Sun." First aired, January 22, 1960 (with Ike in the White House, JFK, Humphrey, Johnson preparing to run), and it has stayed with me this half-century, and it comes back to me now as a warning. During the First Cold War, there was a general, fashionable dread of the future. Smart folk asserted that the US and Soviets were determined to exchange nukes. War would come, holocaust would descend, and then we would fall to anarchy. The Soviets went away, yet the weapons remain deployed;and now there are desperate, stupid rogues who have small nukes and big appetites. The Second Cold War is far less imaginable than the first. Anything negative is possible.
Second Cold War.
What happened in Moscow was not promising. POTUS sat across from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and listened. The meeting lasted longer than planned. I am told that Putin did much of the talking. Sunday 12 am speaking with Steve Cohen, NYU, re the Moscow version of the dialogue. The topics were certainly not limited to the bric-a-brac of nuclear arms. They discussed Ukraine, Georgia, Afghanistan, trade, but mostly they talked about how Russia does not need the US and yet the US needs Russia. Russia can help on Iran, on Afghanistan, on the jihadists. Also implicit was that POTUS believes he is a new Reagan on nuclear disarmament, believes he can talk and barter to disarm both nuke powers. John Bolton publishes a warning on what he learned of the POTUS and Putin dialogue.
"Obama's inability to do so is not surprising, because he made these commitments without waiting for an up-to-date "nuclear posture review," the definitive mechanism for assessing America's strategic needs. Avoiding this authoritative process, coupled with the administration's hell-for-leather insistence on ratifying a new treaty by December, and its proposed cuts in missile-defense expenditures and critical weapons systems such as the F-22, demonstrate just how ideologically committed Obama is to a less robust U.S. defense posture. Not only are the proposed cuts in nuclear weapons levels dangerous, but the reductions in delivery systems are even more reckless, as the United States now significantly relies on such systems to deliver conventional warheads. Russia does not. Obama's approach weakens our nuclear and conventional capabilities, while leaving Russia exactly at levels to which it would otherwise be driven by its own bleak economic realities. Moreover, Russia still insists on linking reductions in U.S. missile defenses to offensive cuts, and Obama hasn't unequivocally rejected this dangerous connection."
The Gloom.
What occurs to me is that history is not logical, nor does it repeat itself. But it does, according to Mark Twain, rhyme sometime. The English and the French fought world wars with each other from 1740 until 1945, and the last phase from the massacres of the First War to the Vichy disgrace included terror, tyranny, extreme cruelty and finally the atomic bombs. The Americans and the Russian have only been at odds since 1920. I favor the Russians as allies. George Friedman regards them as unstable, and leans toward an alliance with a reinvigorated Poland over the next half century. Since I began this sober speculation with a look back 50 years to what frightened American audiences in 1960, "Third Planet from the Sun," I can try to look out 50 years to 2059. The Russians are threatened by the jihad, by the nuke mullahs, by the American aggression in the Black Sea. China is a helpless, pitiless giant. Japan will not surrender. India must focus on projected power, not just patrolling the Line of Control. The US has lost its naval superiority in the Pacific basin. Europe is compliant, undergunned, timid. That's all I can see. Third planet in an unusual summer. One hundred years ago, King Edward died, all the crowns arrived for the funeral in London with TR representing the US. The Astor House was the right address on Times Square.
(1)
From Times Online
July 10, 2009
China closes Urumqi mosques on day of prayer
Jane Macartney in Urumqi
Padlocks secured the iron grill gates to mosques across the city of Urumqi this morning as Muslim Uighurs were told to stay home and pray.
Officials have notified all mosques in the city, where 156 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured when minority Muslim Uighurs rampaged through the streets baying for the blood of Han Chinese last weekend, that today's noon prayers must be cancelled.
At the Say Bag District Mosque, security officials sat in the shaded entrance behind the locked gates, some had electric truncheons on the table in front of them in case of renewed violence. A notice on an entrance pillar asked people to worship at home today and to stay away.
Prayers were cancelled, it said: “Because of the complicated situation at the moment and to safeguard the security of the Muslim masses and to protect the property of the mosque and so as to give no opportunity to violent terrorists.”
TIMES ARCHIVE
'100 killed' in China border town, 1967
Muslim religion still a living force in western China, 1978
The cinema comes to Kashgar, 1955
RELATED LINKS
Death penalty for rioters as calm returns
Han Chinese family beheaded and burnt
Defiant Uighur protester: I did it for my husband
It concluded: “We hope the Muslim masses will understand this and will notify each other.”
Outside, a group of young men sat around a table snacking on naan bread. One said: “Of course we will go to prayers at midday. Our faith requires that we go the mosque on Friday. It is not good enough to pray at home.”
Mehmet Ali said: “If I can’t get into this mosque then I will go somewhere else. There are plenty of mosques. But this is my faith, I have to attend prayers on Friday.”
He said he could see no reason why holding Friday prayers would spark more violence. “I am a good citizen of China. I have done nothing wrong. The riot was all by bad people. We are good people.”
In the mainly Uighur district, a few Han sat in the shade chatting with the Uighur neighbours, easily identified by their strong Turkic features and square, embroidered skull caps. One Han Chinese man squatted on the pavement. “We need ethnic unity.” His Uighur neighbour agreed: “I will just pray at home today.”
An elder Han Chinese woman supported the closure of the mosques. “Of course, the mosque should be closed. Just look at all the damage that has been done. This is a patriotic move for the sake of the wellbeing of all the ethnic groups.”
The violence in Urumqi erupted on Sunday when Uighurs clashed with police while protesting the deaths of Uighur factory workers in a brawl in southern China. Mobs then scattered throughout Urumqi, attacking Han Chinese, burning cars and smashing windows.
Riot police tried to restore order, and officials said 156 people were killed and more than 1,100 were injured. Police say more than 2,000 people have now been arrested. The ruling Communist Party has said ending the ethnic feuding was “the most urgent task”.
Thousands of security forces patrolled. One long column of army trucks, loaded with soldiers and supplies clogged a road just a few hundred metres from the Say Bag mosque. Their deployment is not only to prevent Uighurs from renewing their attacks but to keep vengeful Han Chinese mobs from hunting down Uighurs.
RELATIVE NORMALCY IN URUMQI: UIGHURS' PSYWAR BOOMERANGS
B.RAMAN
In a report carried on July 10,2009, the "China Daily" has projected the situation in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang province of China, as a "relative state of normalcy" after two days of violent rioting by the Uighurs followed by two days of communal tension due to retaliatory attacks by sections of the Han Chinese.
2. No major incident of violence or protest was reported on July 9,2009. Most shops have re-opened, the Government servants have reported back to work and the public transport system which was very badly damaged during the initial rioting by the Uighurs is functioning again.
3. However, there have been complaints from Uighurs that shops owned by Han Chinese are not selling them provisions and that Han drivers of buses and taxis are not prepared to take them. The public transport system in Urumqi is dominated by the Han Chinese. Practically all taxi-drivers are Han Chinese. While there are no more reports of protests by the Han Chinese, reports indicate a kind of undeclared social boycott of the Uighurs being observed by many Han Chinese residents of the city. While administrative normalcy might have been restored, it might take a long time to restore social normalcy.
4. "Restoration of stability"-----that has been the key theme of a statement issued after a meeting of the nine-member Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party held on the evening of July 8 under the chairmanship of President Hu Jintao. That has also been the theme of discourses by other Chinese leaders and editorials and comments in the Government-controlled media.
5. The policy of transparency continues. Chinese journalists say that the Chinese authorities have allowed about 400 journalists to go to Urumqi. However, they do not specify how many of them are foreign journalists.
6. The Chinese have kept up the focus of their psywar on the World Uighur Congress (WUC), allegedly funded by the National Endowment For Democracy of the US and helped by the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) of Holland. The Munich-based WUC and its US-based President Ms.Rebiya Kadeer have played into the hands of the Chinese authorities by making exaggerated statements about the fatalities and by unwittingly disseminating or using documents and alleged pictures of the Chinese security forces using force against the Uighurs. In at least two instances, the Chinese authorities have been able to prove them to be fake.
7. For example, during an interview with Al Jazeera on July 7 , Rebiya Kadeer showed a picture of what she claimed was Chinese security forces massed against peaceful protesters in Urumqi. The Chinese have claimed that the picture which she said was taken in Urumqi was actually carried by the "Nanfang Weekly" in its online edition on June 26. According to the Chinese authorities, the picture had been taken by the weekly during a public demonstration at Shishou in the Hubei province.
8. According to the Chinese, the Uighur American Association had also disseminated a photograph purporting to be of a scene of the riots in Urumqi. According to them, it was actually a photograph taken when sections of the public in Hangzhou in the Zhejiang province had protested on May 15,2009, after a traffic accident.
9. The WUC had initially alleged that 600 Uighurs were killed during the use of force by the security forces on July 5 and 6. They subsequently changed the figure of Uighur fatalities to over 800. These figures have not been corroborated so far. Similarly, the WUC's claims of violent incidents in Kashgar have not been corroborated.
10. Till now all Uighur reactions have come from the WUC, its leaders and spokesmen. There have been no reactions from the Islamic Movement of Eastern Turkestan (IMET) headed by Sheikh Abdul Haq, which operates from the Waziristan area of Pakistan and is allied to Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda in the International Islamic Front (IIF).
11.The CBS News of the US had reported on April 15,2009, that the media wing of the IMET called Sawt al Islam had recently disseminated a 43-minute video entitled “Persistence and preparation for Jihad”. To quote the CBS:" It includes a statement by the group’s current leader Sheikh Abul Haq, as well as its late leader Hassan Makhdum, whose alias is Abu Mohammed al Turkistani. Abul Haq said “jihad” was a duty that falls on all Muslims just like any other religious duty. He also pledged more attacks against Chinese forces.”
11. While the Chinese are not yet openly talking of any role of the IMET in the Urumqi riots, they are reported to have reiterated once again to the Pakistani authorities the need to act against its terrorist infrastructure in Pakistani territory. Neither Al Qaeda nor the Afghan or Pakistani Taliban nor any of the Pakistani jihadi oranisations have so far commented on the Urumqi uprising.
12.However,the only comment in Pakistan has come from the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI),which has many members from the Uighur diaspora in Pakistan. It had in the past protested against the refusal of the Saudi Embassy in Islamabad to issue Haj and Umra visas to Uighurs living in Pakistan. The Saudis were insisting that they should apply for the visas to the Saudi Embassy in Beijing.
13. "The News" carried the following report on July 9: " LAHORE: Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Syed Munawwar Hasan has expressed deep concern over the bloody riots in China’s largest Muslim population province Xinjiang, and urged the Chinese government to show magnanimity towards its Muslim minority. He cited reports saying around 3,000 Chinese Muslims were tortured in the Urumqi city when they were demanding a probe into the clashes between the Muslim Uighurs and the Han Chinese that left hundreds killed. He said though it was China’s internal affair yet it was painful to hear about so many Muslim deaths. He said he would like to assert that violence and inflexible attitude could make things worse. He suggested the Chinese authorities to consider the genuine demands of the Muslims with an open mind and be large-hearted in respect of their religious rights. He said there were reports of the US involvement in the incident. In that case, he said the Chinese authorities should create an atmosphere in which the US did not get an opportunity to interfere."
14. The web site of the NED of the US gives details of the following grants given by it to Uighur organisations during 2008:
International Uyghur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation
$134,805.To advance the human rights of ethnic Uyghur women and children. The Foundation will maintain an English- and Uyghur-language website, publish a report on the human rights situation of Uyghur women and children and conduct a civic-education workshop for Uyghur women.
International Uyghur PEN Club $20,300. To promote freedom of expression for writers creating work in the Uyghur language. The International Uyghur PEN Club will maintain a website publishing banned writings and the works of persecuted poets, historians, journalists, and others, and will conduct international advocacy campaigns on behalf of imprisoned writers.
Uyghur American Association (UAA) $269,000. To raise awareness of Uyghur human rights issues and advance Uyghurs’ religious freedom and human rights. The UAA’s Uyghur Human
Rights Project will research, document and bring to international attention, independent and accurate information about human rights violations affecting the Turkic populations of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
World Uyghur Congress $146,000 . To strengthen advocacy on behalf of Uyghur human rights and democracy. The World Uyghur Congress will solicit its members to prepare strategy papers and will organize a major conference bringing together pro-democracy Uyghur leaders to discuss priorities for the Uyghur movement in the areas of advocacy, outreach, and democracy education.
15. After Hu's return from Italy, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party has tried to project a picture of unity in order to dispel speculation about possible differences over the handling of the situation. This does not mean that differences do not exist. These might come out in the open subsequenly. A report disseminated by the Xinhua news agency on the meeting of the Standing Committee of the Politburo held after Hu's return from Italy is annexed. (10-7-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt.of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
ANNEXURE
Xinhua report on the meeting of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party chaired by Hu Jintao
------------------------------
Chinese President Hu Jintao on Wednesday night convened a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to discuss issues relating to the Xinjiang riot.
The meeting was told that stability in Xinjiang is the "most important and pressing task," according to a statement issued Thursday. The
meeting also vowed "severe punishment" on culprits in accordance with the law.
The government will "firmly crack down on serious crimes including assaults, vandalism, looting and arson" to maintain social stability and
safeguard people's fundamental interests in Xinjiang, according to the statement.
The Standing Committee told relevant authorities to "isolate and crack down on the tiny few" and "unify and educate the majority of
masses".
"Instigators, organizers, culprits and violent criminals in the unrest shall be severely punished in accordance with the law," it said. "Those
taking part in the riot due to provocation and deceit from by separatists, should be given education."
The deadly July 5 unrest in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, has "profound" political background, the
statement said.
It was a serious violent crime which was masterminded and organized by the "three forces" of terrorism, separatism and extremism at home
and abroad, it said. The unrest has resulted in great losses to people and done great harm to local order and stability, it said.
The Standing Committee asked local government to visit bereaved families, innocent people injured, and those with property losses, to offer
necessary support and aid.
The chaos of war is so untenable, so unimaginable, so repulsive, so frightening to the human mind, most simply refuse to see it coming. Those who do understand something about the volatile cocktail that can trigger all-out conflagration, go about shoring up defenses. This has been the prudent way of guarding populations throughout the ages.
A new (so far, untested) template has captured the imagination of Americans with the election of Barack Obama, the underlying principle of which can be summarized by three words: appeasement, submission and (public) atonement (groveling) for past (real or imagined) sins. This, it is thought, will remove us as a threat to anyone who might be contemplating aggression.
Wars, for most, always begin unexpectedly. Perhaps this is why we don't pay much attention to the saber rattling of the likes of Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-Il. What does rattle us is an attack like the one on Pearl Harbor and the one on the WTC. Such attacks are not easy to ignore and protocol demands a response. From then on, the narrative becomes entirely predictable. Strike back, but keep the chaos away from mother.
Equally devastating (if not more so) is civil strife. It means that the leadership has failed. The only exception is if the leadership is deliberately trying to instigate civil strife for its own nefarious reasons.
Civil strife also flares unexpectedly. Suddenly there's a Trojan horse inside the gates - wonderful to look at. Once the wall has been breached, the fine art of defense becomes meaningless. That's why it was so critical for Frank Sinatra to find and neutralize the assassin, Lawrence Harvey, before he could set into motion the plot to install the Manchurian candidate as POTUS. (There's a twist at the end, but you get the point.)
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
I began to write about technology and the phenomenon of a few imaginations that guessed and speculated about the shape of things to come (sic) at a given time during their existence. You know, those who looked upon the trends of their days and linked those days with a fantastic future based in a time of their choosing. It's not a new thing to do and it still happens in our days with regularity. If not familiar with the works, I assume most everyone with some degree of education knows of the names and maybe, just maybe, have reviewed and speculated the projections of the visionaries. But, this is not the direction I'm going with my comment.
My reason? It is my frustration with the inability of our most thoughtful and distinguished minds to develop an effective way to combat the use of the IED against our freedom fighters in theater. The enemy proclaimed their use as an offensive tactic. The IED has developed into the cowards weapon of choice that is comparable to ambush. Always in the mind and feared more than any point to point confrontation, the hidden bomb lies in wait at every step or turn of the wheel.
I know there is some way to protect our good people from suffering the devastation (psychologically and physically) of these phantoms.
I know that there once were heavily armored machines that had a revolving drum on the front to which were attached a series of iron balls connected by chains that would roll like a harvester through mine fields and pound the ground and create a safe pathway for ground troops to follow.
Could we build a glorified version with a swath of say 30 feet; move up to a village and exhort the people to come out while we conduct urban renewal; and then move these monster into the neighborhoods and slowly pulverize any suspect compound or abode where the enemy might have planted IEDs or are known to be fighting from; once made safe from explosives, we then can send in our clean up crews?
I'm thinking huge here. A huge Caterpillar type piece of equipment.
I know some of the combatants might escape with the civilians as they move out of the way, but, we have to make adjustments and eventually have some method of checking everyone wearing burqas to make sure they are really women.
Pulver Alpha XRay PAX or Delta Oscar Geronimo Sierra DOGS
>The IED has developed into the cowards weapon of choice that is comparable to ambush.
As opposed to the Predator drone, a real he-man's weapon. Why, every time of one of our Hellfire-equipped vehicles passes over the heads of those martial tribesmen whom the ever-mellifluous Necons refer to as AfPaks, their regard for America's courage and honor doubtless only grows.
C'mon Kenneth, you know they won't stand and fight, unless they are trapped. Then they die. So, they flee in women's clothing if they have to, to avoid the death they say they want so bad.
You also know that the Predator is the least of the their worries and is mostly used for recon ops... or don't you know that? I wish there was some truth to what you say and that we could use these hi- tech, he- man weapons (you got that right) to do all the dirty work, but, what you wrote is only folly with no basis in fact and is only meant to be confrontational.
And this is just an outright, uh, untruth:
Kenneth says: "As opposed to the Predator drone, a real he-man's weapon. Why, every time of one of our Hellfire-equipped vehicles passes over the heads of those martial tribesmen whom the ever-mellifluous Necons refer to as AfPaks, their regard for America's courage and honor doubtless only grows."
I can steer you to some videos where those mean old AC130 gunships are watching the enemy moving at night in packs and the good guys want to shoot the bad guys, but, they can't because the directors say the bad guys might be close to some innocent people, so, they wait and wait for like 30 -40 minutes to let the bad guys move far enough away and then they get told to shoot once, report, shoot again, report, once more, report, OK go get them and they go get them good... an hour after they see the bad guys.
It's kewl to watch... sobering to consider
>what you wrote is only folly with no basis in fact and is only meant to be confrontational
Right you are. I just made all that stuff up. Truth be told, 'roided-out Neocons, their grimly determined faces painted black, carbon steel KA-BAR knives clenched between their straightened and capped teeth, parachute out of the night sky to go at it mano-a-mano with Pushtun tribesmen. Predator drones simply don't exist. And neither do you, Spencer, any more than David does. Say hi to Prester John for me. Prosit!
>I favor the Russians as allies.
You are not alone in this, although perhaps not for reasons either of us would expect or even much like.
In 1960, while the rest of America was watching the Twilight Zone episode you reference, George Friedman’s intellectual godfather, futurist Herman Kahn, wrote, “The most important fact of the first half of the Twentieth Century is that the United States and England both speak English. The most important fact of the second half will be that the dominant race in both the United States and the Soviet Union is white.” Questions of timing and nomenclature aside, his point seems a valid one.
And in his excellent “Scientist as Rebel” Freeman Dyson recounts the following: “When Prime Minister James Callahan made his state visit to Moscow he had two amicable meetings with Chairman Leonid Brezhnev. At the end of the second day he remarked that he was happy to discover that there were no urgent problems threatening to bring the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union into conflict. Brezhnev then replied with some emphatic words in Russian. Callahan’s interpreter hesitated, and instead of translating Brezhnev’s remark asked him to repeat it. Brezhnev repeated it and the interpreter translated: ‘Mr. Prime Minister, there is only one important question facing us, and that is the question whether the white race will survive.’ Callahan was so taken aback that he did not venture either to agree or to disagree with this sentiment. He made his exit without further comment.”
Even Gore Vidal has made the same point here and there, in his characteristically puckish way.
Communism disappeared not because of Reagan’s mythical SDI but simply because it didn’t pay. Feminism is dying because it adherents are too busy practicing what they preach to reproduce themselves.
Multiculturalism will be the next god to fail. The liberals don't believe it, any more than do the clueless Neocons, but you can count on it. As sociologist Robert Putnam's work demonstrates, there is nothing like a borderless world to make different ethnicities realize just how little they have in common with one another. Rwanda. Nine-eleven. Han versus Uyghur. La Reconquista. Eurabia.
Yes, we will be getting very chummy indeed with the Russians.
That realization does not make me particularly happy--especially not when I imagine what awaits humanity by the middle of this crowded century, an age likely to be riven by ethnonationalism and with unimaginably deadly weapons—everything from nukes to genetically engineered race-specific plagues—hanging on the wall and just waiting to be used in the second act.
ho hum... Kenneth admits "Right you are. I just made all that stuff up."
Thank you
Interesting take, Kenneth. I can't say I ever thought of that. Could be right. I still think we'll likely be at the mercy of outside forces for some time to come. Too many of our people have abandoned rational thought and are following the pied piper off the cliff.
Race is definitely a factor that will play a role, especially should the center of gravity shift. I wonder if the Chinese are as race conscious as the Indians are? But, again, it's not what you would expect. Indians are said to be able to distinguish between 700 shades of brown. I'm not sure just how this would shake out; though, there are clues: watching TV here (in Chennai) you constantly see commercials for skin whitening creme.
The hits keep on coming here.
Bombing with Pakistan with drones is against international law. The US drones have killed 145 plus civilivans with their drone attacks. It's ok to kill them because they are brown. The drone attacks will continue to destabilize Pakistan which is part of Obama's master plan to circle Russia/China.
Yes there is footage of US gunships gunning down civilians during the Gulf and Iraq Occupation. It's some video game, makes me sick.
Pk>"Indians are said to be able to distinguish between 700 shades of brown. I'm not sure just how this would shake out; though, there are clues: watching TV here (in Chennai) you constantly see commercials for skin whitening creme."
They are doing the same thing in Japan. Japanese are trying to widen their eyes to look like Westerners.
Africans want to whiten their skin like the Indians. People should be proud of their culture and hertitage then become part of the homogenized, sythetic, materialistic, decandance of Western culture predominating today.
>Indians are said to be able to distinguish between 700 shades of brown.
That wouldn’t surprise me. Some years ago, in the interest of comity between nations I kept company with an Indian statistician, a brilliant and breathtakingly lovely Marathi girl of eclectic tastes. I remember well my first visit to her apartment, delightfully filled not only with books, pottery, and paintings, but which also housed the largest collection of Barbie dolls I expect ever to see in this life or the next--miniskirted go-go Barbies, surfer Barbies, prom queen Barbies, stewardess Barbies, mountain climber Barbies, ski bunny Barbies, nurse Barbies, and dozens more.
She explained to me Barbie's scandalous origin as Lilli, a once-popular German sex toy, and also showed me various ethnic Barbies. "This one's actually from here in the States," she said, and pointed to some sort of light-hued Indian princess Barbie. "It's not authentic, I'm afraid, but I plan to get a real Indian Barbie my next trip home."
"I suppose the ones over there have darker skin," I said.
"No, not at all,” she explained. “Ours are much lighter-skinned than this one. Little girls in India would never settle for a dark-skinned Barbie."