Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com WASHINGTON – Credit someone in North Korea with a sense of historical irony. Who would have thought anyone up there would have dreamed of writing an imaginary letter from Abraham Lincoln to President Obama berating him for endorsing harsh UN sanctions and failing to halt the U.S. nuclear […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Honest Abe has a message for the current occupant of the White House: President Barack Obama should rethink economic sanctions against North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. At least, that’s what North Korea’s propaganda machine said in a bizarre open letter, written in what it said was the voice of Abraham Lincoln. “Hi […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — A new dawn has come to Burma. At long last the political pariah state, also known as Myanmar, has ushered in a new civilian government in which Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has a strong if not formal hand at the democratic […]
Special to WorldTribune.com The Panama Papers have impacted officials at the top of China’s hierarchy which has spent the past year purging top rivals of President Xi Jinping on charges of corruption. At least three of the seven people on the Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee, the Chinese Communist Party’s most powerful committee, including Xi […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com WASHINGTON ― Here’s a question people here keep asking: Is North Korea a terrorist state? Forget about the missile shots. They’ve all landed in the sea and harmed no one. What about the nuclear tests? They dislocated some rocks deep underground but were otherwise harmless. So what does […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, EastAsiaIntel.com Remember the “One Belt One Road” (OBOR), a multi-trillion-dollar intercontinental project that underpins President Xi Jinping’s ambition to catapult China to super-power status? The “Silk Road Economic Belt” links China with Central Asia, Turkey and all the way to Eastern Europe through a series of high-speed railways, highways […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Vietnam’s coast guard seized a Chinese vessel in the South China Sea on April 2, Vietnamese state media said. An April 4 report by Thanh Nien News said the crew of the vessel “admitted that they had entered deep [into] Vietnamese waters to refuel several other Chinese boats which were fishing illegally […]
Special to WorldTribune.com by Geostrategy-Direct Chinese PLA’s chief of staff has officially proposed a Central Asia military alliance that excludes Russia. The proposal was advanced by Gen. Fang Fenghui last month in Kabul, Afghanistan. President Ashraf Ghani spoke positively about the proposal after Gen. Fang promised $70 million in military aid. Beside China and Afghanistan, […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Indonesia’s defense minister called China’s intruding coast guard vessels “thieves” and vowed to deploy U.S. F-16 fighter jets to the Natuna islands. “Natuna is a door, if the door is not guarded then thieves will come inside,” said Ryamizard Ryacudu, a former army chief of staff. “There has been all this fuss […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Japan on March 28 switched on a new radar station near disputed islands in the East China Sea that drew an instant rebuke from China. The new Japan Self-Defense Forces base is on the island of Yonaguni, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) south of the disputed islands known as the Senkaku islands […]