Pan de Sal Forum/Jusi-Silk Dialogues.
Several months ago a proposal to hold a symposium or colloquium on promoting Philippine-China bilateral talks was raised with the Huaren Society and later with Mr. George Siy and Mr. Wilson Lee Flores of the famous Kamuning Bakery Café “Pan de Sal Forum”. Preparations finally took off with the final initiative and pressing of Mr. George Siy at the end of October saying that it is imperative that a public discussion of the critical economic issues be conducted just prior to the APEC leaders’ summit slated for November 18-19 in Manila.
Today the event will finally be held, under the title of “The Philippines and AIIB, TPP, AEC and the Silk Road” with various speakers from business and the Philippine media to expound on the related issues. One of the objectives of this colloquium is to stress the fact that the Philippines will find infinite potentials for the good for the Filipino people in engaging China in constructive discussion over economic and financial cooperation, which requires going beyond the mode and tone that the “Amboys” like Justice Carpio and his entourage of anti-China voices have been corralling people in.
This blog will give its readers an update of the discussions as soon as it concludes by late this afternoon.
The ISIS is the U.S., and they killed Russian children.
The articles below, one which was delivered to us by e-mail from the Information Clearing House is one we consider a must-read for understanding the perilous times the “Great Satan” (Ayatollah Khomeini’s tag for the U.S.) is pushing the World to. The other article is from RealClearWorld wich publishes much of the West’s neo-con articles.
The first article makes the point that the downing of the Russian passenger jet over Sinai, Egypt, killing over 200 Russian civilians, men, women and children, is uncannily timely for the Western powers’ geopolitical interests.
http://www.
If the Sinai Crash Was Terrorism, Its Timing Was Perfect For The West
By Dan GlazebrookNovember 10, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "RT" - In the aftermath of the Russian airplane crash in Egypt last week, Britain in particular has been quick to claim that the crash was the result of a “terrorist bomb,” presumably planted by Islamic State (previously ISIS/ISIL). So what is it that makes Cameron so sure that the terrorist group created by his Syria policy has the necessary training, equipment and wherewithal to carry out that attack? Did he look at the receipt?
What is clear is that if the plane was brought down by a bomb, and that bomb was planted by ISIS, it marks a major development for the group.
According to Raffaello Pantucci, of the Royal United Services Institute, an attack of this kind by ISIS would “herald an unseen level of sophistication in their bomb-making, as well as the ability to smuggle a device on board.”
But as well as a new technical feat, such an attack would represent an alarming change in tactics. The Times argued: “If the plane crash did turn out to be the work of an Islamic State affiliate in Sinai, it would mark a significant departure for the jihadist group, which had yet to launch a large-scale attack against civilians.”
So, if the plane was indeed brought down by an ISIS-in-Sinai bomb, either the group have suddenly been blessed with some amazing new technology, or they have suddenly decided to change tactics to mass killings of civilians. If the latter, isn’t it a little odd that, after more than a year of Western airstrikes apparently targeting them, ISIS have failed to launch such an attack against Western civilians – yet are able to respond within weeks to a campaign of Russian airstrikes which, according to the West, are not even aimed at them?
Either way, the crash couldn’t have been timed more perfectly from the point of view of Western geopolitics. After four years of setbacks, the West’s Syrian “regime change” (that euphemism for wholesale state destruction) operation now faces the prospect of imminent total defeat courtesy of Russia’s intervention. And options for how to salvage that operation are very limited indeed.
Full scale occupation is a non-starter; following Iraq and Afghanistan, both the US and British armies are now officially incapable of mounting such ventures. The Libya option – supporting death squads on the ground with NATO air cover – has always come up against Russian opposition, but has now been effectively rendered impossible. And relying on anti-government death squads alone is simply very unlikely to succeed, however many TOWs and manpads are feverishly thrown into the fire; after all, there are only so many terrorists and mercenaries who can be shipped in, and, as Mike Whitney put it, the world may have already reached “peak terrorist.”
Forcing Russia out – and turning US and British airpower openly and decisively against the Syrian state – has thus become a key objective for Western planners. But how to do it? What would turn Russians against the intervention? The Times wrote: “So far the war in Syria has been quite popular….[but] if it turns out that the war prompts terrorists to wreak vengeance on ordinary Russians by secreting explosives on planes, that gung-ho attitude could change.” Or at least, that is presumably what the Times hopes.
And downing the plane on Egyptian soil just before Sisi’s first state visit to Britain?
Egypt is at a historical crossroads. Having moved from the socialist camp into the West’s “orbit” during the Sadat era in the 1970s, Egypt’s leadership has become ever less willing to be dictated to by Washington and London: a process that began in the latter part of Mubarak’s rule, and has continued under Sisi. Along with Russia, Egypt has played a leading “spoiler role,” as Sukant Chandan puts it, in the West’s regime change operation in Syria – and has not been forgiven for it.
In addition, Mubarak’s government had been dragging its feet on the privatization and “structural adjustment” demanded by the IMF: and tourism was and is a major source of income helping to reduce the country’s dependence on the international banksters. But since last Saturday, all that is now in the balance; as the Financial Times commented, suspicions that the crash was caused by a bomb “are likely to prove disastrous to the country’s struggling tourism industry.”
Britain’s foreign secretary, Philip Hammond agreed. “Of course, this will have a huge negative impact on Egypt,” he announced matter-of-factly, following Britain’s decision to stop British flights to Egypt - seemingly without an ounce of regret. The likely massive loss of tourist income will force the Egyptians to go back to the IMF, who will, of course, demand their pound of flesh in the form of mass privatizations and “austerity.”
But it is not only Egypt’s economic dependency on the West that will be deepened by the crash – Britain, in particular, appears to be using the crash as leverage to re-insinuate itself into Egypt’s military and security apparatus. Firstly, British officials have been taking every opportunity to humiliate Egypt, trying to convince the world that Egypt is perilously unstable, and that only by outsourcing security to the West can it be safe again. When Sisi arrived in the country this week, noted the Times, “Britain openly contradicted the Egyptian leader and suggested that he was not in full control of the Sinai peninsula,” whilst an Egyptian official “commented that the dispatch of six officials to check the security arrangements at Sharm el-Sheikh airport was ‘like treating us as children.’”
Finally, of course, the British government has not missed the opportunity to use the tragedy to push for deeper British involvement in Syria. Michael Fallon, Britain’s Defence Secretary, has been spending the last two days explaining how the case for bombing Syria would be strengthened if it were proven the plane was brought down by ISIS. Quite how more deeply insinuating one of the death squads’ leading state backers into Syria would somehow reduce the power of the death squads is, of course, not explained; such is the nature of imperialism.
In a world, then, where Western power is in steep decline, terrorism is fast becoming one of the last few viable options for extending its hegemony and undermining the rising power of the global South. If this attack does turn out to have been conducted by ISIS, how kind it will have been of them to take it upon themselves to act as the vanguard of Western imperial interests. And how obliging of the hundreds of Western agents in the organization not to do anything to stop them.
Dan Glazebrook is a freelance political writer. His first book “Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis” was published by Liberation Media in October 2013. It featured a collection of articles written from 2009 onwards examining the links between economic collapse, the rise of the BRICS, war on Libya and Syria and 'austerity'.
© Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2005–2015. All rights reserved.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/
U.S. Spies Root for an ISIS-Russia War
Six
U.S. intelligence and military officials tell The Daily Beast that they
hope an apparent ISIS attack on Metrojet Flight 9268 would force Putin
to finally take the gloves off.
In the days following the crash of Russian Metrojet Flight 9268,
which mounting evidence suggests was felled by an ISIS bomb, many U.S.
intelligence and security officials weren’t panicking about the
so-called Islamic State unleashing a new campaign of attacks on civilian
airliners. Instead, they were wondering how the bombing might hurt Vladimir Putin, and potentially help the United States.Ever since Putin started dropping bombs on militants in Syria, officials have privately been arguing that the Russian leader committed a major strategic blunder, and that his intervention in Syria would weaken both his military and his reputation and likely ignite a backlash from Islamist militants, who have attacked inside Russia in the past.
One U.S. intelligence official, speaking prior to the airliner crash, called the Russian campaign in Syria “Putin’s folly.”
Now, six U.S. intelligence and military officials told The Daily Beast that they hoped an ISIS attack on Russian civilians would force Putin to finally take the gloves off and attack the group, which the U.S. has been trying to dislodge from Iraq and Syria for more than a year, without success.
“Now maybe they will start attacking [ISIS],” one senior defense official smugly wondered last week. “And stop helping them,” referring to ISIS gains in Aleppo that came, in part, because the group took advantage of Russian strikes on other rebels and militant outfits.
Since the plane crashed, Russia has struck two ISIS-controlled areas in Syria: Raqqa and Palmyra.
“I suppose now he’ll really let ISIS have it. This should be fun,” one senior intelligence official told The Daily Beast.
Some in the U.S. government are also wondering, in undeniably hopeful tones, if a terrorist attack will compel Putin to commit more military forces to Syria and thus draw him deeper into what the Obama administration calls a “quagmire.” Indeed, some privately delighted in the news that Russia was made to pay for its intervention in Syria. (ISIS had vowed to attack Russia after it began its airstrike campaign on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.)
While the American officials weren’t blithe about the loss of life—224 people died in the crash, most of them Russian vacationers—they said it could change the calculus in Syria in ways that ultimately benefit the United States. All the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to comment publicly on the possible bombing.
President Obama has ordered 50 additional Special Forces personnel to Syria, to act in an advisory capacity. But Putin already has troops on the ground serving in combat positions. And Russia began a new round of airstrikes on ISIS positions in Raqqa on Friday, as officials in Moscow concluded that a bomb may have caused the Metrojet crash.
The U.S. officials’ focus on the geopolitics of the possible bombing, and less so the immediate threat to U.S. security, underscored the degree to which ISIS is still seen as a different kind of terrorist threat from al Qaeda.
For several years now, intelligence and security officials have been frantically trying to stop al Qaeda from bringing bombs onto airplanes. Now ISIS had apparently succeeded where America’s longtime terrorist enemy had failed. But alarms weren’t sounding across Washington—even as leaked intelligence suggested a bomb had taken down the doomed jet.
“This wasn’t an American airliner. If it were, we’d be having a different conversation,” one intelligence official said.While the American officials weren’t blithe about the loss of life—224 people died in the crash—they said it could change the calculus in Syria in ways that ultimately benefit the United States.
Another U.S. official echoed that sentiment.
“It is not the United States’ responsibility to secure Sharm el-Sheikh airport and the facilities there,” he said. “Why the muted response? Because that is the best one to have.”
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