From Syria to Burma?

Voltairenet.org
Thierry Meyssan

The Pentagon is preparing a new war in South East Asia - this time against Myanmar. Till now, the jihadists in Syria, which have the support of several countries that form part of the Middle East, have been waging war between themselves. But now they have a new vision: fighting together with the Pentagon against the Burmese army and the Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Aung San Suu Kyi.

Since 2001, the United States has been systematically destroying the whole of the expanded Middle East. For some days now, it has been preparing a new war against Iraq and Syria. Its conduit? The Kurds of the Barzani and Muslim families.

It seems that all of a sudden, the US has been struck by a new vision: Burma as the new theatre of operation. In this case, all the jihadists plus several countries in the region would be mobilized to go to fight in South East Asia.

For a month now, the international press has been denouncing the plight of the Rohingyas and have been presenting Burma as some sort of hell, using just as many lies as it did to savage Syria.

While in 2013 Saudi Arabia had prepared an army in Jordan and funded jihadists in Syria, it had also created in Mecca, “the Movement for Faith” which then became the “Army for the Safety of the Rohingyas in Arakan”. Just as it did in Syria, it blended a toxic cocktail of authentic Burmese with the floating mercenaries that it habitually deploys all over world. Thus the leader of this group is a Pakistani who brought his arms to Bin Laden’s side when he was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

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Corporate Exploitation of Global Refugee Crisis Masked as Humanitarianism

Project Censored

According to a June 2015 United Nations report, sixty million people worldwide are now refugees due to conflict in their home nations. The UN report indicated that during 2014 one out of every 122 people was a refugee, internally displaced, or an asylum seeker; and over half of these refugees were children. (For previous Project Censored coverage of the global refugee crisis, see “Global Forced Displacement Tops Fifty Million,” Censored story #14 in Censored 2016: Media Freedom on the Line.)

While Syrian refugees account for the largest number (an estimated 11.5 million people), other places such as Colombia, parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia have large refugee populations that remain largely unreported. According António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees at the time of the report, “We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before.”

Although the extent of the global refugee crisis has been covered in the corporate media (including, for example, the New York Times and the Washington Post), the exploitation of refugees has been less well covered. In February 2016, Sarah Lazare published an article on AlterNet that warned of the World Bank’s private enterprise solution to the Syrian displacement crisis. “Under the guise of humanitarian aid,” Lazare wrote, “the World Bank is enticing Western companies to launch ‘new investments’ in Jordan in order to profit from the labor of stranded Syrian refugees. In a country where migrant workers have faced forced servitude, torture and wage theft, there is reason to be concerned that this capital-intensive ‘solution’ to the mounting crisis of displacement will establish sweatshops that specifically target war refugees for hyper-exploitation.”

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The Oil Coup

Mike Whitney
Global Research

“John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, allegedly struck a deal with King Abdullah in September under which the Saudis would sell crude at below the prevailing market price. That would help explain why the price has been falling at a time when, given the turmoil in Iraq and Syria caused by Islamic State, it would normally have been rising.” (Stakes are high as US plays the oil card against Iran and Russia, Larry Eliot, Guardian)

U.S. powerbrokers have put the country at risk of another financial crisis to intensify their economic war on Moscow and to move ahead with their plan to “pivot to Asia”.

Here’s what’s happening: Washington has persuaded the Saudis to flood the market with oil to push down prices, decimate Russia’s economy, and reduce Moscow’s resistance to further NATO encirclement and the spreading of US military bases across Central Asia. The US-Saudi scheme has slashed oil prices by nearly a half since they hit their peak in June. The sharp decline in prices has burst the bubble in high-yield debt which has increased the turbulence in the credit markets while pushing global equities into a tailspin. Even so, the roiled markets and spreading contagion have not deterred Washington from pursuing its reckless plan, a plan which uses Riyadh’s stooge-regime to prosecute Washington’s global resource war. Here’s a brief summary from an article by F. William Engdahl titled “The Secret Stupid Saudi-US Deal on Syria”:

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E-commerce in Asia – Statistics and Trends

Go Globe

E-commerce sales in Asia are going up; the latest stats indicate that nearly 42% of the entire world’s internet users live in Asia. More than more and more people are using smartphones and smart mobile devices to buy goods online. Given these stats, it’s no wonder that a large percentage of the global B2C e-commerce sales comes from the Asia-Pacific sector. The percentages will only go up, even as smart device technologies improve. If you’re wondering exactly what percentage of people are smart online shoppers in Asia, we’ve got the facts for you in our infographic, “E-commerce in Asia – Statistics and Trends”.

Drug routes expanding in Asian region

ANN

Drug syndicates are expanding regionally, hence countries should hold discussions with each other to tackle drug-related issues, said Singapore’s Central Narcotics Bureau Director Ng Ser Long on Wednesday.

“One of the big trends we have seen in the past, is the movement of drugs from the Golden Triangle to other parts of the world. Now we are seeing drugs from other parts of the world moving to our (Asean) region,” he told The Brunei Times.

Ng led a six-member delegation from Singapore to Brunei for the 6th Bilateral Meeting between Brunei’s Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and Singapore’s Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB).

Ng believes the drug movement trend is a reflection of the region’s economic growth.

“Countries in the region are doing well, their economies are growing, therefore there is larger consumption. So in some way, you see drug movement increasing in the region. The way forward for all of us is good cooperation and sharing of intelligence,” he said.

“At one point, we were all worried about a certain African drug gang making use of local ladies as drug mules/couriers. Three countries (Brunei, Singapore and Malaysia) organised joint operations and shared intelligence, and through that, we managed to bring them (the gang) down,” he said.

Brunei and Singapore have a long history of bilateral cooperation.

The CNB team also visited Al-Islah Rehabilitation Centre in Kg Kupang, Tutong, which began operations on Feb 1, 2010.

The director lauded the centre’s success, and said that knowledge gained from their visit will be used to increase their own standards of quality.

NCB Director Hj Jasmin Hj Jamudin described the working visit as beneficial for both parties, noting the CNB’s legal and investigative aspects as key areas of interest for Brunei.

“Brunei and Singapore share similarities in our approaches and practises in curbing drug abuse. We are also looking forward to implementing some of the new technology used by Singapore (such as using hair to test for drug abuse),” he said.

Concerns over border control at immigration posts was also among the issue brought up during the meeting.