IV. International
(05-16-08)
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While poverty rates in
South Asia
have decreased in recent years, more than million people
remain below the poverty line and account for nearly 40%
of the world’s poor, according to the UN. Most of the
workforce, from fruit vendors, brick layers or day
laborers are among the most vulnerable when there is
spike in prices.
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With prices soaring for
staples, e.g., cooking oils, wheat, lentils, milk and
rice across the globe, Hindu priests are seeing the
consequences in their neighborhood temples, where even
the poorest of the poor have long made donations to
honor their faith. Imams from local mosques report the
same thing.
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With 30 million tons
traded annually, government export curbs, such as those
from India and Vietnam, have spooked importers,
such as Bangladesh and RP at a time when global
stocks have halved from 2001.
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As
China
scrambles to fuel its
galloping economy, it has already scoured the world for
mining and logging concessions. Now it is turning to
crops to feed its people and industries. Chinese
enterprises are snapping up vast tracts of land abroad
and forging contract farming deals.
. Briefly in
Nov, Petro China became the world’s first
$1-trillion company by some measures of its market
value. But by the end of April, shares of Petro China
had plummeted below its IPO price for the first time.
. A speeding
express train derailed and crashed into an oncoming
regional train in E. China killing at least 70 people,
and more than 20k recently died 5/12 from a 7.9
magnitude earthquake in Central China.
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As China embraces
Capitalism, its athletic teams are cashing in.
Commercialization of sorts is unavoidable. Attitudes
about sport have undergone a dramatic shift from the
days when the government focused on collective gain
rather than individual accomplishment.
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The door for Chinese
Pres. Hu Jintao’s visit to Japan swung open last
fall when Japanese Premier Tasuo Fukuda announced he
wanted better relations with China. He signaled
he had no intention of maintaining the stridently
nationalist tone of his 2 most recent predecessors.
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He distanced himself from Shinzo Abe, his predecessor,
and played down the role of Japanese military in
recruiting sex slaves for its soldiers during the war.
He also said he would not visit Yasukumi, a Tokyo shrine
that honors convicted war criminals along with 2.5
million of the county’s war dead. PM Junichiro Koizumi
who left office in 2006 visited the shrine on several
occasions.
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For all the high-level
warmth surrounding Hu’s visit, there remains an undertow
of noisy nationalism in Japan that perceives a
threat in all things Chinese. The discovery in February
of insecticide-tainted Chinese dumplings triggered
boycott of food from China. Media coverage and some
public reaction bordered on hysteria.
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A Chinese court in
Tibet
sentenced 30 people to prison for their role in
anti-China riots that broke out in Lhasa in March, the
official Xinhua News Agency reported. The riots
and subsequent crackdown left scores of people deal and
earned China international criticism of its human rights
record.
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The Dalai Lama has denied any involvement in the
unrest and he has long “insisted he is seeking greater
autonomy for Tibetan parts of W. China, not an
independent Tibet. His senior envoy urged an end for
aggression in Tibet, release of Tibetan prisoners and
suspension of patriotic education in which Buddhist
monks are required to disown the Dalai Lama, in recent
resumption of talks with China.
. If the
sentences issued are any guide, the Chinese government
has no intention of softening its position on
Tibet
or on those who had a hand in the rioting that has
deeply shaken Beijing. The violence was directed at Han
immigrants (majority Chinese group), long encouraged by
Beijing to migrate to the Tibetan Autonomous Region in a
policy Tibetans deeply resent.
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The price of rice in
international markets has nearly doubled since January,
to about $1k a ton. But it remains an absolute steal
compared with rice grown in
Japan,
which costs more $2,300 a ton.
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As a long-term social policy, the government has largely
protected rice farmers from imports, while keeping them
on small farms with the help of subsidies. As the cities
boomed after WW II, the high price of rice helped send
some of the wealth generated there to rural areas.
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Japanese farmers produced 2.2 million tons of rice last
year but exported only 1k tons. Thailand sold 9.4
million tons last year. US imported just 128 tons,
nearly all of which was purchased by Japanese
restaurants.
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Human rights advocates
are on a collision course with lawyers on the
Korean
Peninsula.
South Korea
has yet to dispatch
large shipments of free food and fertilizer that over
the past decade have become an essential item for North
Korea’s economy helping millions to avoid famine. The
delay is hurting the average North Korean, and tension
has increased on both sides of the border.
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Inside NK, food runs short every year, even in areas
where crops are good. SK’s decade-old aid program this
year: 500k tons of various kinds of food and
enough fertilizer to grow about 900k tons of grain has
become a building block in hunger prevention,
international food experts say.
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The problem is exacerbated by doubling of staple food
prices in the past twelve months as a result of
flood-damaged local harvest, soaring world food prices
and an unexpected drop in aid from China.
. North Korea
mobilized tens of thousands of citizens to celebrate the
Olympic torch relay in
Pyongyang,
the first such event in the authoritarian nation. NK’s
main ally is China, and a key aid provider. Pyongyang
has condemned disruptions of the torch relay elsewhere
and supported
Beijing in its crackdown on Tibet.
. North
Korea exhorted its hunger-stricken population to
redouble efforts to increase grain production, saying
that nothing is more urgent for the nation than
addressing food shortages.
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The
Philippines’
population has jumped from 60 million in 1990 to 92.5
million today. The attention has become drastic with
this year’s global food crisis. With the price of rice
soaring, the poorest of Filipinos are faced with
spending more of their meager incomes on food, or go
hungry.
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The Catholic Church does not have a reasonable policy in
controlling population growth. It is
irresponsible to bring
children to the world that the parents cannot feed,
clothe or educate. God would not be part of this
irresponsible policy. There is nothing worse than a
piercing cry of a hungry child at nighttime.
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Tropical cyclone Nargis
hit a delicate time (100,000 killed; 41,000 missing;
more than one million were
displaced) for the
Military Junta in
Myanmar
with a crucial referendum on a new Constitution. If they
fail the disaster victims, victims who already blame the
regime ruining the economy and squashing democracy could
out their frustrations at the ballot box.
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Military leaders of
Myanmar seized a shipment of UN food last Friday
intended for victims of a devastating cyclone, declaring
that they would accept donations of food and medicine
but not the foreign aid workers, international groups
say are in equally short supply there.
. GWB froze
the assets of state-owned companies in Burma that prop
up the nation’s military junta, long condemned by the
international community for its suppression of
pro-democracy dissidents.
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In
New Delhi, the price of
rice rose by 20% and the price of lentils by 18% in the
past year. Cooking oil prices have climbed 40% over the
same period. The price of milk, which is essential in
both diet and religious ritual, rose more11% in the past
year. Many Indians are vegetarians who depend on
milk and its byproducts.
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Indian tourist arrival
has decreased by 19% in April as compared to the same
period last year, resulting in 1% decrease in the
overall tourist arrival in Nepal.
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The few
China critics who turned
out in Hong
Kong during
the Olympic torch relay were heckled by large groups of
supporters, including visitors from the mainland who
handed insults in Mandarin rather than the local
Cantonese dialect.
. Indonesia
is moving to develop bio-fuel plantations with the
Chinese National Overseas Oil Corp. The
Environmental Investigation Agency (in London)
believes other deals are in the works, often through
proxy companies because of long-running anti-Chinese
sentiment in the country. The group says the project
would destroy natural forest.
. Thailand
is projected to produce about 15 million tons of milled
rice in 2008, with 7 to 8 million tons for local
consumption and the rest for export and stock, its
agricultural ministry said.
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A Chinese-Cambodian
joint venture converted land of the Phong tribal people
into a tree plantation 20x larger than allowed by law in
Cambodia,
according to Global Witness. The group says the
concession in Mondulkiri province encroached on grazing
grounds, destroyed sacred sites, and used toxic
herbicides.
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Entire hills in
N. Laos
have been scalped of green cones and rubber trees
penetrate into the tangled natural forests. Also being
cleared are the secondary forests, sources of medicinal
herbs and edible plants that tribal people have depended
on for generations.
. US Army’s
chief liaison to Pakistan (Major Gen Jay Wood)
was pulled out from the assignment partly because of
controversy in that country over his past command of the
US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a US
military official confirmed..
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Separatist rebels destroyed a Navy cargo ship in
Sri Lanka
earlier this month in the eastern port town of
Trincomalee, just hours after a bomb explosion in a café
killed 11 people. Both incidents were blamed on
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
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Allegations of fraud voter intimidation and sporadic
violence marred provincial elections in E. Sri Lanka
despite the government’s claim they would be a
celebration of democracy for the region recently
liberated from Tamil Tiger rebels.
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According to US & European intelligence officials and
diplomats, NCG (Namchongang Trading) provided the
critical link between
Pyongyang
and Damascus, acquiring key materials from vendors in
China and probably Europe, and secretly transferring
them to a desert construction site near the Syrian town
of Al Kibar.
