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United States Marine Corps. Sgt. Shamar Thomas from Roosevelt, NY went toe to toe with the New York Police Department. An activist in the Occupy Wall Street movement, Thomas voiced his opinions of the NYPD police brutality that had and has been plaguing the #OWS movement. 

Thomas is a 24-year-old Marine Veteran (2 tours in Iraq), he currently plays amateur football and is in college.

Thomas comes from a long line of people who sacrifice for their country: Mother, Army Veteran (Iraq), Step father, Army, active duty (Afghanistan), Grand father, Air Force veteran (Vietnam), Great Grand Father Navy veteran (World War II).

How can I be proud of my China if we are a nation of 1.4bn cold hearts?

The death of the two-year-old run over as passersby ignored her is symptomatic of a deepening moral crisis

guardian.co.uk, Lijia Zhang, Saturday 22 October 2011

Yueyue’s mother after she was called to where her daughter was found.
Photograph: China Foto Press / Barcroft Medi

Shame on us Chinese! Last Thursday a two-year-old girl was run over twice, about 100 metres from her home in a hardware market district of Foshan, a prosperous city in southern China. As she lay on the ground, writhing in pain, before being hit by the second vehicle, 18 people, on their bicycles, in cars or on foot, passed by but chose to ignore her. Among them a young woman with her own child.

Finally, a 58-year-old female rubbish collector came to the girl's rescue, but it was too late. By the time she was brought to the hospital, the girl Yueyue, (whose name translates as Little Joy), was brain dead. She was declared dead early on Friday morning. She was a good girl, full of life, her mother said a few days ago in an interview. She said she had just brought Yueyue back from her kindergarten. She popped out to collect the dry clothes and returned to find Yueyue gone – probably trying to look for her elder brother.

It might have been a different story if one of the 18 people had lent Yueyue a hand. None even bothered to call for emergency services. Later, when interviewed by a journalist, one of the passersby, a middle-aged man riding a scooter, said with an uncomfortable smile on his face: "That wasn't my child. Why should I bother?"

Before giving himself up to the police, the driver of the second vehicle, a van, told the media why he had run away. "If she is dead, I may pay only about 20,000 yuan (£2,000). But if she is injured, it may cost me hundreds of thousands of yuan." What's wrong with these people? How could they be so cold-hearted? The horrific scene was caught by a surveillance camera and has been watched by millions of viewers since it was posted on Youku, China's equivalent of YouTube.

This is only the latest incident where tragedy has struck as a result of the callous inactivity of onlookers. Last month an 88-year-old man fell over face down at the entrance of a vegetable market near his home. For almost 90 minutes, he was ignored by people in the busy market. After his daughter found him and called an ambulance, the old man died "because of a respiratory tract clogged by a nosebleed". If anyone had turned him over, he might have survived.

Both cases, the death of Yueyue in particular, have provoked much public outrage and a nationwide discussion about morality in today's China. From Shanghai, someone with the cybername 60sunsetred wrote: "The Chinese people have arrived at their most morality-free moment!" There was plenty of condemnation of the cold-heartedness of the passersby. But, astonishingly, a large percentage of posters said they understood why the onlookers did not lend a helping hand. Some admitted they would do the same – for fear of getting into trouble and fear of facing another "Nanjing judge".

Let me explain the story of the muddle-headed Nanjing judge. In 2006, in the capital of Jiangsu province, a young man named Peng Yu helped an old woman who had fallen on the street and took her to a hospital and waited to see if the old woman was all right. Later, however, the woman and her family accused Peng of causing her fall. A judge decided in favour of the woman, based on the assumption that "Peng must be at fault. Otherwise why would he want to help?", saying that Peng acted against "common sense". The outcry from the public in support of Peng forced the court to adjust its verdict and resulted in Peng paying 10% of the costs instead of the total. Since that incident Peng has become a national cautionary tale: the Good Samaritan being framed by the beneficiary of their compassion.

It's true that in China you can get into trouble when you try to help. Weeks ago I spotted an accident on the fourth ring road in Beijing as I returned home one night. A man was hit by a "black car", an "illegal taxi", and his face was all bloody. Watched over by a crowd, the injured man behaved aggressively towards the driver. I got off my scooter. As I tried to pull the two men apart, I was struck myself. When I asked if anyone had reported this to the police, the driver said no. I couldn't believe that people just stared as if enjoying a free show, without doing anything. I called the helpline and the policemen turned up soon after.

The fundamental problem, in my view, lies in one word that describes a state of mind: shaoguanxianshi, meaning don't get involved if it's not your business. In our culture, there's a lack of willingness to show compassion to strangers. We are brought up to show kindness to people in our network of guanxi, family and friends and business associates, but not particularly to strangers, especially if such kindness may potentially damage your interest.

Fei Xiaotong, China's first sociologist, described Chinese people's moral and ethical characteristics in his book, From the Soil, in the middle of the last century. He pointed out that selfishness is the most serious shortcoming of the Chinese. "When we think of selfishness, we think of the proverb 'Each person should sweep the snow from his own doorsteps and should not fret about the frost on his neighbour's roof,'" wrote Fei. He offered the example of how the Chinese of that period threw rubbish out of their windows without the slightest public concern. Things are much the same today.

Under Mao, citizens were forced to behave themselves in both public and private spheres. Every March, people were obliged to go into the street to do good deeds: cleaning buses, fixing bicycles and offering haircuts. Now relaxed social control and commercialisation over the past three decades have led people to behave more selfishly again.

People are enjoying, and sometimes abusing, the vast personal freedoms that didn't exist before. To start with, it is now safe to be "naughty". Back in the early 1980s, when I worked at a rocket factory in Nanjing, one of my colleagues, a married man, was caught having an affair with an unmarried woman. He was given a three-year sentence in a labour camp and the girl was disgraced. In today's society, having extramarital affairs or keeping an ernai – second wife or concubine – is as common as "cow hair", as the Chinese would say. For a novel I am writing on prostitution, I have interviewed many prostitutes and ernai. Many see their profession as a way to gather wealth quickly, feeling few moral qualms.

China's moral crisis doesn't just manifest itself in personal life but also in business practice and many other areas. The high-profile "poisoned milk powder" case and the scandal of using "gutter oil" as cooking oil have shocked and disgusted people around the world. Last year an article, "Why have Chinese lost their sense of morality?", in which the author tried to find an explanation, was widely read. He reasoned that China has introduced the concept of a market economy from the west but failed to import the corresponding ethics, while the traditional moral principles of China no longer fit the market economy model.

There's a lot of sense in that. I believe that the lack of a value system is also deepening the moral crisis. Before Mao, the indifference towards others once so accurately described by Fei existed but was mitigated by a traditional moral and religious system. That system was then almost destroyed by the communists, especially during the 10 mad years of the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. Nowadays communism, the ideology that dominated Chinese people's lives like a religion, has also more or less collapsed. As a result, there's a spiritual vacuum that cannot be filled by the mere opportunity of money-making.

To drag China out of its moral crisis will be a long battle. The pressing question is how to make people act in cases of emergency and the solution is law. After the "Nanjing case", there have been discussions about introducing a law that imposes a "duty of rescue" as exists in many European countries. I am all for it, because that's probably the only way to propel action for a people who do not see a moral obligation in rescuing others.

The Yueyue incident revealed an ugly side of China. I hope the entire nation will take the opportunity to take a hard look at ourselves and ask ourselves what's wrong with society. There's at least hope in the action of the rubbish collector who rushed to Yueyue's side without hesitation.

China's economy is galloping like a horse without a rein and its position in the world is rising. We Chinese have every reason to feel proud about what we've achieved. Now we demand respect. But how can we possibly win respect and play the role of a world leader if this is a nation with 1.4 billion cold hearts?

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The incident was captured on surveillance cameras

Exclusive: China to step up ASEAN yuan trade settlement

Reuters, by Benjamin Kang Lim and Koh Gui Qing, BEIJING, Thu Oct 20, 2011

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(Reuters) - China plans to sign an agreement with the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to settle trade in yuan, said two independent sources, another step in China's long campaign to make its currency one widely used beyond its borders.

The framework agreement with ASEAN -- which as a block is China's third-biggest trading partner -- will pave the way for banks in China and the ASEAN countries to start exchanging yuan for ASEAN currencies, said the sources, both of whom have direct knowledge of the planned agreement.

"This will lay the foundation for the yuan to become a regional currency," the first source told Reuters, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

China, the world's second-biggest economy, is keen to give the yuan a bigger international role and diversify its foreign exchange reserves -- the world's largest stockpile -- which rose by $4.2 billion in the third quarter to $3.2 trillion.

Once the deal is signed, China would then negotiate individually with ASEAN member countries and sign currency swap agreements, said the sources, allowing non-Chinese companies to settle their yuan-denominated transactions with banks in their own countries, rather than doing so through Hong Kong.

China already has swap agreements with three of the ASEAN countries: Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Thailand could be the next to establish a swap line, one source said.

It was not clear when the China-ASEAN agreement would be signed, but the sources said that the date would likely be late this year or early next year.

The People's Bank of China, or central bank, and the Commerce Ministry, which regulates trade, declined immediate comment when reached by telephone.

MORE YUAN SETTLEMENT

In 2009, China launched a pilot program allowing companies in some provinces to settle imports and exports in yuan, meaning that Chinese companies can in principle use renminbi for their transactions with counterparties in any country.

The program, which was also trialed between ASEAN and Yunnan and Guangxi in south China in 2009, has since been expanded nationwide.

But the latest deal would formalize the arrangement and possibly offer more support to firms and banks in ASEAN countries to conduct commerce in renminbi.

Renminbi, or people's currency, is another name for the yuan.

Since then, yuan-denominated trade has swelled -- it accounted for 8.9 percent, or 957.57 billion yuan, of China's total trade volume in the first half of 2011.

Except for companies in the handful of countries that have swap agreements with China, however, trade must be settled through banks in Hong Kong, adding cost and risk to the transactions.

By setting the stage for more swap deals to be signed, the agreement should mean a steady rise in the use of the yuan around the region.

"China-ASEAN trade will not be settled in yuan overnight. Trade can still be conducted in U.S. dollars. This is just the beginning," said the first source.

The agreement between China and its neighbors could also add momentum to China's effort to promote the renminbi as a global reserve currency. Since China runs a trade deficit with the ASEAN countries, at least some of those countries will accumulate yuan.

"This will mean ASEAN central banks will hold yuan as part of their foreign exchange reserves," the second source said.

China is ASEAN's biggest trading partner. Bilaterial trade rose 26.4 percent in the first nine months of 2011 to $267 billion with an $18.9 billion surplus in favor of the bloc, Chinese customs data shows.

A China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement came into effect in January 2010. Trade between China and ASEAN nations would grow by 20-30 percent over the next three years, said Wang Rujun, a Chinese economist.

ASEAN, ranging from resource-rich Indonesia to impoverished Laos and financial center Singapore, is planning a union by 2015 to become a single market and production base to compete with rising Asian powerhouses China and India.

Home to 600 million people and a combined GDP of $2 trillion, the region is angling for foreign investment.

China is keen to boost ties with ASEAN economies it relies on for its supply of commodities such as natural gas and crude palm oil to buoy the Chinese economy.

"It makes sense to me because trade settlement within the region is easier to be promoted compared to the internationalization of the yuan," said Zhang Zhiwei, an economist at Nomura.

"Intra-regional trade is picking up as a share of China's trade. It makes sense for policymakers to push for a regionalization of the RMB," the economist said.

(Additional reporting by Kevin Yao; in BEIJING and Saikat Chatterjee in HONG KONG; Editing by Don Durfee and Neil Fullick)

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North Korea and US agree new search for US war dead

BBC News, 22 October 2011

Inside North Korea 

• Profile: Kim Jong-un
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The United States has reached agreement with North Korea to resume searching for the remains of American soldiers killed during the Korean War after a six-year halt.

The search for US Korean war dead stopped
because of North Korea's nuclear ambitions

The US said searches would start again next year in an area north of the North Korean capital Pyongyang.

Recovery operations stopped amid tension over North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

Between 1996 and 2005, remains have been found of more than 200 Americans.

US teams are due to start recovery efforts next year in an area around 100km (60 miles) north of Pyongyang where more than 2,000 soldiers and marines are believed to have gone missing during the 1950-53 war, the US Department of Defense said.

The US insisted that accounting for missing soldiers is "a stand-alone humanitarian matter, not tied to any other issue between the two countries".

The department said it had concluded arrangements with North Korea that will "ensure the effectiveness and safety" of teams heading into the isolated and impoverished country.

Stalled talks

North Korea said last month it would restart talks, and officials met in the Thai capital Bangkok for three days.

The move comes amid some signs the two sides are looking to re-engage.

US and North Korean negotiators plan to meet in Geneva next week to discuss reviving stalled international talks on ending North Korea's nuclear programme.

The two sides last met in July, in New York, to discuss a resumption of the six-party talks, which also include South Korea, Japan, Russia and China.

The talks broke down in April 2009, just before Pyongyang carried out its second nuclear test.

Just under 8,000 US service personnel remain classified as missing more than half a century after the Korean War, which ended in a truce.

But work was called off in 2005 as ties between the two nations deteriorated, with North Korea conducting its first nuclear test a year later.

Disaster warning issued for Bangkok

The Jakarta Post, The Nation, The Asia News Network | Fri, 10/21/2011

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on Friday issued the disaster warning for Bangkok, consolidating power for flood control and drainage.

Yingluck invoked the 2007 Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Act to oversee flood control in lieu of declaring the state of emergency.

Under her instruction, the topmost priority for flood control is to speed up the drainage of run-off into the sea via East Bangkok.

The government is to coordinate with the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to operate all sluice gates in the capital in order to rein in the water flow.

The armed forces would be in charge of maintaining and defending the royal-initated dykes and levees.

The military would also be responsible for protecting key installations, including the Grand Palace, Siriraj Hospital, the tap water system, Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang airports.

The Transport Ministry would take charge of ensuring road traffic in the capital.

Relevant agencies would map out plans for evacuation and setting up shelters.

Interview with Eustace Mullins 2005

The Neo-Zionist Order - Who rules your rulers?

Most Americans would agree that there is something desperately wrong with the political and judicial system in the United States, but as many unsuspecting Americans point fingers at each other (Republicans and Democrats) what they don’t realize is that this suits the Zionist purpose.

This interview is with the man who exposed the rulers who dictate policies. They hand down these policies to our so called leaders to advance the Neo-Zionist plot for total control over world affairs. Only a clear picture of what’s going on behind the facade of this so called ‘war on terror’ can one truly understand that this is a ‘war of terror’ designed for killing people and destroying property to stir up conflict to advance their agenda.

Incredibly, the DC Zionist agents sent a huge American armada across the great seas to unleash a devastating military force against a people that never fired a shot at her, not even across her bow as they approached with their invading Christian army. As this invasion spreads throughout the Middle East and Asia, it will continue to be sold as a war on terror when in actuality it is a calculated plot.

As a few unsuspecting Jews, a lot of Christians and Muslims are led to the slaughter, the Neo-Zionist and their agents will continue to enslave and rob us of our national treasures and many will cheer their own demise.

Eustace Mullins was once labeled ‘the most dangerous man in America’ by war criminal Henry Kissinger. Mullins may be one of the most plagiarized authors in the world and has authored many books that are now hard to find. Although tens of thousand of copies have been printed, mysteriously many of them seem to disappear overnight.

Eustace Mullins, who died in February 2010, was one of America’s foremost historian/researchers exposing facts over the last 50+ years that everyone in the world should know. However, these facts have been furiously suppressed by Zionists and their Neo-Con agents and the results have been (and will continue to be) devastating for the world.

Mullins has been vilified by the Zionist powers that be for his supposed anti-Semitism, but as you contemplate the hard facts he has compiled, you see something much more important and frightening than some allegation about verbal insults. You see in Mullins’ voluminous scholarship a clear and terrifying picture of the forces that control the world, and don’t care a whit about real people.

In the complete interview Eustace Mullins talks about the conspiracy of the Federal Reserve, The World Order, George Bush, Zionists, Israel, Mossad, Neo-Cons, CIA, FBI, 9/11, and the Zionists design for a Christian Muslim war.

Online books of Eustace Mullins:

Secrets of the Federal Reserve - modernhistoryproject.org/​mhp/​ArticleDisplay.php?Article=FedReserve

The World Order - modernhistoryproject.org/​mhp/​ArticleDisplay.php?Article=WorldOrder

Eustace Mullins - Who Rules Your Rulers? from Ritchy_Niburu_2 on Vimeo.


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Palestinians to push for UN membership Nov. 11

The Jakarta Post, Thu, 10/20/2011

A senior Palestinian envoy says diplomats are trying to muster support for a U.N. Security Council vote Nov. 11 on Palestinian membership of the global body.

The Palestinian envoy to the U.N. in Geneva, Ibrahim Khraishi, says he is hopeful of getting the necessary backing of nine of the Security Council's 15 members.

Khraishi told The Associated Press on Thursday that "several parties are working" to secure the votes, but declined to elaborate.

Diplomats said earlier this week that a Security Council committee considering the membership bid would produce a report for ambassadors on Nov. 11 and they would then decide on next steps.

The United States, Israel's closest ally, has pledged to use its veto if a majority of Security Council members back Palestinian membership.

Time for China to dump U.S. debt?

English.news.cn   2011-10-20 

BEIJING, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Although China trimmed its U.S. government securities in August by a hefty 36.5 billion U.S. dollars, the country remains the United States' largest foreign lender.

The cut in August, the biggest move in at least two years, reflected concerns over safety of the Treasuries as the U.S. was stripped of its AAA credit rating, according to analysts.

The move may suggest that policymakers in the world's fastest-growing major economy are mulling over safer ways, amid the global market turmoil and the depreciating dollar, to invest its gigantic foreign exchange reserves.

LARGEST DEBT DUMPING

The last time China dumped U.S. debt was in June, 2009, when it pared 25.1 billion U.S. dollars of Treasuries. Every month, the country will buy or sell a certain, usually moderate, amount of the U.S. government bonds.

"It's a normal investing action in the market, though it's definitely related to the fluctuation caused by the S&P's downgrade on the U.S. in August," said Guo Tianyong, economics professor with the Central University of Finance and Economics.

In August, credit rating company Standard & Poor's (S&P) lowered the United State's top-tier AAA rating for the first time since granting it. The safety of the U.S. Treasuries has thus been put in doubt, and the greenback started to fall.

Other analysts deemed the move as a natural outcome of the country's optimizing the investment structure of its foreign assets.

In recent years, China usually sold short-term Treasury bills to swap long-term bonds. The reduction of holdings this time might partly result from an array of short-term bills having matured, said Zhang Ming, deputy director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

"DOLLAR TRAP"

Despite being a regular market move, the record drop of China's holdings of U.S. Treasuries may still add to market woes, as it revealed market concerns over the "dollar trap," economists noted.

"China has run a current account surplus and a capital account surplus uninterruptedly for more than two decades. Inevitably this has led to an accumulation of foreign reserves," Yu Yongding, an economist with the CASS, wrote in an article published recently.

He declared that China was caught in a "dollar trap" as it had to amass the dollar-denominated assets, despite the fact that risk of a depreciating dollar kept rising.

When China decided to slash a sizable amount of U.S. Treasuries in June 2009, the greenback had been losing value for months. The reading of U.S. dollar Index, a gauge of the dollar performance against a basket of currencies, tumbled to 75 points at the end of 2009 from 85 in the first few months of the year. The weak dollar eroded the value of dollar-denominated assets of many investors.

Loaded with an excess of dollars, the world's largest exporter is facing a quandary: on the one hand, a weaker dollar could mean a big capital loss for China. On the other hand, the dollar is still deemed as a flight-to-safety compared with other investments. Thus the country seems stuck in the "dollar trap."

"There is no clear evident that we are reducing our holdings of the U.S. Treasuries systemically and unremittingly," said Zhang. "But whenever the dollar is depreciating, our foreign assets, with such a large portion being dollar-denominated, can hardly stay immune from the loss."

WAYS TO PULL OUT

Economists agree that as the United States' largest foreign creditor, China should contemplate ways to pull itself out of the "dollar trap," as the U.S. economy is faltering with its debt piling up and its currency on the brink to depreciate.

China must make fuller use of the non-financial assets in its foreign reserves, as well as speed up the diversification of investing channels to resist a possible long-term weakening of the dollar, said Xia Bing, director of the Finance Research Institutes of the Development Research Center under the State Council.

Zheng Xinli, permanent vice chairman of China Center for International Economic Exchanges, has suggested that Chinese companies boost overseas investment as a way to absorb trade surpluses and fend off the dollar risk.

The dependency on the U.S. Treasuries partly revealed the country's incapability to invest overseas, Zheng said.  "Why did Germany and Japan not buy such a large amount of foreign bonds when they were running huge trade surpluses? That was because of their strong capability to invest overseas, which helped digest the excessive trade surpluses," Zheng said.

But the fundamental way out may lie in adjusting the country's macro-economic policies.

"China has tried various measures to slow down the growth of the foreign reserves and protect the value of its existing stock. Sadly, none has worked. With large capital inflows and a current account surplus, China's foreign exchange reserves have continued to rise rapidly," Yu said in his article.

The country must adjust or even annul those macro-economic policies that result in further accumulation of foreign exchange reserves. Only by doing this can China free itself from the "dollar trap," Yu said.

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Chinese province debates law after hit-and-run outcry

BBC News, By Michael Bristow, Beijing, 20 October 2011

The incident was captured on surveillance cameras

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A Chinese province is debating the introduction of a law to force people to help others in obvious distress.

It comes after a two-year-old girl was left for dead after being run over by a van - and then ignored by 18 passers-by.

She is currently in hospital fighting for her life.

The law might never be enacted - but even discussing such a measure shows the level of anger generated in China by this case.

The fallout from this incident, which happened in the city of Foshan in southern Guangdong Province, continues.

'Promoting morals'

Provincial groups from the ruling Communist Party, government departments and associations are talking about a new law.

This could make it illegal for people to ignore those in need of help.

"Many laws, including forbidding drunken driving, in China have been passed after high-profile individual cases," said lawyer Zhu Yongping, according to a report in the English-language China Daily.

Other media outlets report that the introduction of a law will be debated at a meeting of lawyers next month.

Initial online polls, though, suggest most people are against it.

"Talk about being civilised first. Is anyone paying attention to that?" read one posting.

Organisations in Guangdong are also looking at other ways to encourage people to act with compassion when faced with an emergency.

The provincial government's political and legal affairs committee is using its micro-blog site to gather opinions about how to "guide brave acts for just causes" and promote "socialist morals".

This debate has been sparked by an accident last week involving the toddler Wang Yue.

She was knocked down by a van while wandering through a market, where her parents run a shop. The driver sped off without checking on the girl's condition.

Over the following minutes, 18 people went past the bleeding toddler - and another van ran over her legs - but no one stopped to help.

It was all recorded by a surveillance camera, with the distressing footage shown on television.

There have been millions of internet comments about how to encourage good Samaritans - and many more expressing outrage that so many people refused to help.

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RI told to delay ASEAN decision on Myanmar chair bid

Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, Wed, 10/19/2011

The ASEAN Inter-parliamentary Myanmar Caucus (AIPMC) called on current ASEAN chair Indonesia to delay agreeing on Myanmar becoming ASEAN chair in 2014 until the country showed real progress in democratization.

Observers and stakeholders are speculating that during the ASEAN summit in Bali next month, ASEAN leaders will agree to grant Myanmar the grouping’s chair.

The AIPMC said in a press conference in Jakarta on Tuesday that it supported a call from the Burma Partnership, which represents Myanmarese civil society, that Indonesia should play a more active role in encouraging further reform in Myanmar.

“The AIPMC and the Indonesian House of Representatives’ foreign affairs commission will ask Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa to lobby other ASEAN countries to suspend the decision during the upcoming ASEAN meeting to give time to the ruling government in Myanmar to make more progress at home,” AIPMC executive director Agung Putri Astrid said.

During the press conference, Burma Partnership coordinator Khin Ohmar said the pro-democracy movement was still running in place, as Myanmar, under President Thein Sein’s democratically elected government, had yet to achieve significant progress in democracy.

She said civil society had not seen continued progress in Myanmar, and the recent release of 220 political prisoners was perceived as “lipstick” to attract attention from ASEAN and the rest of the world.

“The government has to work hard to promote better democracy at home because the real power is held not by the elected president but is in the hands of the eight-member National Security Council, which is controlled by the former military junta leader, Tan Shwe, and several other Army generals.

“The government also has to release more than 18,000 political prisoners and stop the atrocities against minorities such as Kareen and Katchin,” she said.

Eva Kusuma Sundari, a caucus member and legislator of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, said suspending the decision would give Myanmar two years to show its political commitment to developing a true democracy and for ASEAN to assess the country’s progress.

According to her, ASEAN should not abruptly make the decision despite the fact that Myanmar was gradually distancing from its patron country, China.

“Myanmar should be given time to show ASEAN and the international world its sincerity in running a democratic government.”

She added that the foreign minister should meet all the stakeholders in Myanmar, including ethnic leaders, in his next visit to assess the Myanmarese government’s democratic progress.

Lily Chadidjah Wahid, another caucus member, said the AIPMC would bring the Burma Partnership’s report and recommendations to the hearing between House’s Commission I on information, defense and foreign affairs and the foreign minister on Tuesday afternoon.

Burmese President Thein Sein, left, meets his Indonesian
 counterpart Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Jakarta in May

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Related Video

United States Marine Corps. Sgt. Shamar Thomas from Roosevelt, NY went toe to toe with the New York Police Department. An activist in the Occupy Wall Street movement, Thomas voiced his opinions of the NYPD police brutality that had and has been plaguing the #OWS movement. 

Thomas is a 24-year-old Marine Veteran (2 tours in Iraq), he currently plays amateur football and is in college.

Thomas comes from a long line of people who sacrifice for their country: Mother, Army Veteran (Iraq), Step father, Army, active duty (Afghanistan), Grand father, Air Force veteran (Vietnam), Great Grand Father Navy veteran (World War II).

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Ahmadinejad likens claims of Iranian assassination plot to Iraq WMD

Iranian president says US claims of Iranian involvement in an alleged plot to kill Saudi ambassador will prove false

guardian.co.uk, Reuters in Tehran, Tuesday 18 October 2011

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said the US wants a rift
between Tehran and the Saudis. Photograph: AY/SIPA /Rex Features

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said US allegations of an Iranian assassination plot resemble its claims about weapons of mass destruction that formed the basis for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and would prove to be equally untrue.

The Iranian president suggested that the US aimed to cause a rift between Tehran and Saudi Arabia that would help Washington dominate the oil-rich Gulf and had fabricated the plot of an Iranian seeking to kill the Saudi ambassador to America.

"In the past the US administration claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They said it so strongly, they offered and presented documentations and everyone said: 'Yes, we believe in you. We buy it,'" Ahmadinejad said in a live interview on al-Jazeera television on Monday evening.

"Now is everyone asking them, were those claims true? Did they find any weapon of mass destruction in Iraq? They fabricated a bunch of papers. Is that a difficult thing to do?

"The truth will be revealed ultimately and there will be no problem for us at that time," he added.

Barack Obama hopes the alleged foiled plot will lead to tighter sanctions against Iran – already under several rounds of UN measures over its nuclear programme. The Us president has repeatedly said that all options were on the table to deal with the Islamic republic, a tacit threat of possible military action.

When asked whether he thought Iran and the US were on an inevitable "collision course" towards military conflict, Ahmadinejad replied: "I don't think so. I think that there are some people in the US administration who want this to happen but I think there are wise people in the US administration who know they shouldn't do such a thing."

Nevertheless, Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, commander of Iranian ground forces, said his troops were "fully prepared and ready to give a quick response to any aggression on Iran's soil".

"Today America is too unsteady to even think about launching an attack on Iran," he told the semi-official Fars news agency.

Saudi Arabia, Iran's main rival in the Gulf and which has close ties with Washington, requested the United Nations look into what it called the "heinous conspiracy". On Monday the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said he had passed correspondence about the affair to the security council.

Ahmadinejad called on Saudis not to fall for a US strategy which he said aimed to divide and conquer the Gulf.

"If the US administration is under the impression that by doing this it can create conflict between us and Saudi Arabia then I have to say the US administration is sorely mistaken.

"The US administration is not interested in Iran or in Saudi Arabia. They see their interests in having a dispute between Iran and Saudi Arabia – they want to dominate our region," he said.

The events of the Arab spring have strained Iran's relations with Saudi Arabia, as each tries to assert its position in the region amid a welter of sectarian and geopolitical rivalries.

Even before the uprisings began, a leaked US cable published on WikiLeaks said Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah had urged the US to "cut off the head of the snake" by launching military strikes to destroy Iran's nuclear programme.

The furore over the alleged assassination plot appears to have killed any chance of a quick return to talks between Tehran and world powers concerned about its nuclear programme, but the foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, said Iran would examine the allegations.

"We are prepared to examine any issue, even if fabricated, seriously and patiently, and we have called on America to submit to us any information in regard to this scenario," the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.