In this issue:

Thailand Thumbs Nose at CIA

China Gets Tough on Neo-Con Ops in North Korea

Philippines Delivers Rice Through School Kids

Philippine Economist Warns of Fascism Under Bush

China Plans 6,000 MW of Nuclear Power

Chinese Reject Wal-Mart's Cut-Throat Pricing

U.S., Thailand Near Trade War Over Shrimp Duties

Islamic Committee To Undertake Its Own Investigation

Thai Academics Demand PM Take Blame for Deaths

Asahi: Americans Have Chosen War

Peoples Daily Sees Toughened U.S. Foreign Policy

From Volume 3, Issue Number 46 of EIR Online, Published Nov. 16, 2004
Asia News Digest

Thailand Thumbs Nose at CIA

Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister, former army chief Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, has rejected the CIA's offer of funding for its counterterrorism program. "We don't want any country, ally or not, to interfere with our internal affairs," Chavalit said.

The CIA's offer to fund counterterrorism was made after a small-scale, but potentially dangerous insurgency movement emerged recently in southern Thailand. The insurgents are Muslims, who for decades, have been agitating for a separate state. Following 9/11, and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the same anti-Bangkok Islamic movement has shown new life. According to reports, a section of al-Qaeda had made an attempt to make inroads among the Muslims there, ostensibly to make it at least a safehouse. It seems the CIA would like to seize on that as an excuse to get a permanent foothold inside Thailand.

China Gets Tough on Neo-Con Ops in North Korea

Seventy North Korean refugees, arrested by Chinese police, were returned to North Korea, where they face capital punishment, Beijing sources told the Korea Times Nov. 8. It is estimated that there are over 300,000 North Korean refugees in northeast China; until now, many who have made it all the way to Beijing, have been allowed to enter South Korean or other embassies, then leave China safely. Two South Korean human rights activists. arrested during the raids, remain in Chinese police custody and are likely to face punishment for assisting the defectors, the Times said.

While it's terrible that starving North Koreans have to suffer for it, "China is reacting against the Bush neo-cons' new 'North Korea Human Rights Bill,' which allocates over $20 million to these neo-con human-rights groups in the U.S. and South Korea, to agitate inside China and North Korea for 'regime change,'" a Korean diplomat told EIR. "The neo-cons believe they can overthrow the North Korean government by sparking a refugee flood, but it's against the national security interests of China to allow it."

Neo-con groups, on cue, set up a demonstration outside the Chinese embassy in Seoul, saying Beijing can't host the 2008 Olympics unless it stops violating human rights.

Philippines Delivers Rice Through School Kids

The Philippines Department of Social Welfare and Development on Nov. 8 kicked off its five-month Food for School program, in which some 50,000 children will serve as rice couriers for their impoverished families in metro Manila and three neighboring provinces. The program will measure the results, in part, by weighing the children monthly.

"We're not yet in that situation of [widespread] hunger, but we're already taking this affirmative action so we will not get there," Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman told reporters.

Starting Nov. 8 and until the current school year ends on March 25, 2005, Grade 1 and 2 pupils in the selected schools will each be bringing home a kilo of rice each day that they attend class, Soliman told the Philippines Inquirer.

Philippine Economist Warns of Fascism Under Bush

The Philippine economist Ding Lichauco warned of the possibility of fascism under the Bush Administration, and said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo must, and might, break from the United States. "The religious factor proved decisive in the reelection of George W. Bush," writes Lichauco in the Nov. 11 Daily Tribune, and adds: "In George W's America, we see a fascist-imperialism—fascism at home and imperialism abroad—clothed with religious zealotry on the rise, and all it would take to bring its real face and iron fist in the open is another 9/11."

As to the fate of the Philippines, he notes that "this country has been officially categorized as a country of terrorists. The New People's Army (NPA) has been singled out as a terrorist organization along with the Islamic secessionists and Mindanao has been pinpointed as training ground for bin Laden's recruits." Thus, "if Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo should entertain the notion—as she sometimes appears to do—of declaring emergency rule, or reexamining the terms of this nation's membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), or of entering into a peace pact with the NPA and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), then she should simply forget it if she wants America to keep faith with her."

China Plans 6,000 MW of Nuclear Power

China will build nuclear power plants with installed capacity of 6,000 megawatts in the northeastern province of Liaoning to ease power shortages, Xinhua reported Nov. 10. The first phase of the Hongyanhe nuclear power plant in the city of Wafangdian, would have two 1,000 MW nuclear reactors. The estimated cost of these two nuclear power plants will be close to 26 billion yuan ($3.14 billion).

China is expanding its nuclear power generation capabilities to meet growing electrical power needs. Last year, a heat wave caused a major brownout across half of the country, prodding Beijing to hasten development of its nuclear sector.

Chinese Reject Wal-Mart's Cut-Throat Pricing

"Wal-Mart is only price, price, price" said the director of the world's largest microwave-oven manufacturer, in Guangdong, China, the Wall Street Journal reported Nov. 8. Guangdong Galanz Enterprise can no longer profit from selling their wares to Wal-Mart, he explained. While they are still shipping 700,000 units to Wal-Mart (of a total 14 million units for export), they gain nothing from them. The Chinese, squeezed by the global inflation, can no longer meet Wal-Mart's demands. The Journal's spin is that China will now be exporting inflation to the United States.

U.S., Thailand Near Trade War Over Shrimp Duties

The U.S. shrimp industry has almost succeeded in getting the government to impose anti-dumping duties on Thai and other shrimp producers (Ecuador, China, Vietnam, Brazil, and India), according to The Nation Nov. 10. The Thais have responded by threatening to end all soy purchases from the U.S., forcing the American Soybean Association to call on the Bush Administration to reconsider the shrimp duties.

There is already a battle between U.S. shrimp buyers and the U.S. shrimp producers. The buyers' representative Wally Stevens said that the Commerce Department claim of shrimp dumping is based on the same methods that were ruled illegal by the WTO in other cases.

Islamic Committee To Undertake Its Own Investigation

The Islamic Committee of Thailand has set up a special body to investigate the Tak Bai crackdown, and the "unusual" circumstances surrounding the brutal deaths of 78 protesters during transportation to a detention center.

Paisarn Promyong, deputy secretary-general of the ICT, said panel members do not believe that the government's investigative committee would tell the entire truth.

"We will conduct our own investigation," Paisarn said. "We will support the government-established committee if its findings are identical to ours." The government's Tak Bai committee is chaired by former Ombudsman Pitchet Soonthornpipit.

Thai Academics Demand PM Take Blame for Deaths

Academics from 18 Thai universities said Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra should take responsibility for the 87 deaths in the Muslim-majority village of Tak Bai, following a riot two weeks ago in the insurgency-wracked south of Thailand. Thaksin has said the deaths should not have happened, but stopped short of a full apology. On Nov. 8, he said he could apologize if he thought it would help the situation. "I am ready to do anything if it helps to stop the problem. I could apologize if it will help, I can walk to every single house if it helps," he told reporters.

Asahi: Americans Have Chosen War

"If the Bush Administration imposes its own ideology on other countries in disregard of their cultures and histories, it will naturally arouse resentment. Indeed, the attitude of the Bush Administration is one of the key reasons for the mess in Iraq," the Tokyo daily Asahi editorialized Nov. 5. The neo-con policy of "preemptive strikes is responsible for further fanning anti-Americanism in the Arab and Islamic world," they added Nov. 8. Iraq "continues to spiral out of control," and across the Islamic world, "etched into the hearts and minds of viewers, is the utter despair of the civilian population."

"This is an ominous prophecy; if the Bush regime holds to its confrontation with the Islamic world, further conflicts will be unavoidable," Asahi wrote. Instead, the key to it all, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, must be resolved by "finding an acceptable balance with the peaceful use of atomic energy worldwide.... If the Bush Administration continues to espouse its preemptive strike doctrine," while allowing Israel to be "de facto a nuclear power," then a lasting solution "is doomed" because every nation in the region will want nuclear weapons.

Peoples Daily Sees Toughened U.S. Foreign Policy

"The tough 'unilateral' foreign policy consistently adopted by the Bush Administration in the past ... will become tougher," warned a signed commentary by Peoples Daily Nov. 11, by U.S. correspondent Liu Aicheng.

"It is not hard to see that the Bush Administration's future foreign policy, far from having any intended change on 'essential' issues, will be upgraded," Liu wrote. "As long as Vice President Cheney continues to serve as U.S. diplomatic 'military counsellor,' whether Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense is to be changed or not, the foreign policy foundation of the White House and the Republican Party will not be changed."

Bush's neo-con policy will continue in Iraq, Liu wrote. On Iran, while the Bush Administration wants to use European intervention to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Republican neo-cons are dissatisfied with European "gentleness," and will try to get sanctions against Iran at the UN.

He concluded: "Along with the toughening U.S. foreign policy, the rift between it and its allies will doubtlessly become increasingly large."

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