Special to WorldTribune.com By Backgrounder, Geostrategy-Direct.com Djibouti, a former French colony, is a country of searing heat (summer temperatures average over 100 degrees) and little rain (17 days a year on average). The population of the East African state is 900,000, which ranks 159th in the world. But the tiny state on the Horn of […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — Not one week into the New Year, the North Koreans jolted global concerns as well as the Richter scale with a nuclear weapons test. While the underground blast shook the remote Punggye-ri region near the Russian border, the political reverberations of the bomb have been […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler NEW YORK — It’s time to consult the crystal snow globe for a look at both the likely and unexpected events which will shape the New Year. Serious strife both in the Middle East, and Africa to a lesser extent, have expanded leading to a culture of conflict […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com The Koreans are using art to upset the Japanese. That’s in the form of statues of innocent young girls ― reminders of the suffering of Korean and other Asian women in the service of Japanese soldiers in World War II. They’ve got these statues in New Jersey, California […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Dr. Willy Lam, EastAsiaIntel.com Efforts by the Xi Jinping administration to suppress embarrassing stories about his career in Fujian Province in the late 1980s and 1990s were behind two of the most brazen overseas acts of Chinese state-security agents. In October this year, four Chinese state-security agents kidnapped Hong Kong-based publisher […]
Special to WorldTribune.com China passed a new anti-terrorism law on Dec. 27 that critics say exploits fears of terrorism in order to extract sensitive information from technology companies. Tech firms strenuously objected to the law that was unanimously passed by Beijing’s rubber-stamp parliament. The new law states that telecom operators and Internet service providers must […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Norman Bailey Israel has no choice but to deal with unsavory regimes but it might be a mistake to renew ties with Turkey. The communist leadership of China; President Putin of Russia; Turkey’s Erdogan, King Salman of Saudi Arabia. Should Israel deal with such regimes? They are all wholesale violators of […]
Special to WorldTribune.com China’s military buildup, including the construction of several airstrips on artificial islands, could lead to an arms race in the South China Sea, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet said. “My concern is that, after many decades of peace and prosperity, we may be seeing the leading edge of a return […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, EastAsiaIntel.com A series of internal speeches has confirmed President Xi Jinping’s arch-conservative view that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will choose its own survival over “subversive” reforms. A 10,000-word story in the Friday edition of the reformist Chinese newspaper Southern Metropolitan Daily has revealed the psychology behind Xi’s refusal […]