China news reports on Iran-iraq trade; Western news doesn't

This news report is interesting mainly because it suggests that China is interested in Iran-Iraq trade.

FYI, Xinhua, per Wikipedia,

The Xinhua News Agency (English pronunciation: /ˌʃɪnˈhwɑː/[1]) is the official press agency of the People's Republic of China. Xinhua is a ministry-level department subordinate to the Chinese central government. Its president is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

No comparable story has made an appearance in Western new outlets.  Presumably Western political and business interests aren't interested Chinese are.

News |In-Depth
Business

Iran-Iraq trade value reaches 12 billion USD: official
English.news.    2015-01-18 21:50:24 

TEHRAN, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The bilateral trade value of Iran and Iraq has reached 12 billion U.S. dollars, Head of Iran-Iraq Joint Chamber of Commerce Yahya Al-e Eshaq said here on Sunday, according to semi-official Fars news agency.

"An Iranian delegation to be headed by Iran's First Vice-President Eshaq Jahanghiri will soon visit Iraq to discuss further expansion of trade ties between the two countries," Al-e Eshaq said addressing a conference of economic and trade opportunities between two countries.

Iran is seeking a 25-percent share in Iraq's market, he was quoted as saying.

Iranian officials have stressed that development of economic cooperation is the most important priority in the relations between Tehran and Baghdad.

Iran will begin supplying natural gas to neighboring Iraq on a regular basis by May 2015, the director of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) for international affairs announced on Saturday.

Currently, about six to seven kilometers of the pipeline supplying Iraq with Iranian natural gas has yet to be laid on the Iraqi side of the border, Azizollah Ramezani said, according to Tasnim news agency.

Ramezani pointed to the security challenges facing the pipeline on the Iraqi soil, saying that the Iraqi officials have already pledged to take necessary measures in this regard.

Iranian and Iraqi oil ministers on July 21, 2013, signed the first deal to transfer Iran's natural gas to two Iraqi power plants. The project is aimed at supplying Al-Baghdad and Al-Mansouriyah power plants in Iraq with 25 million cubic meters per day of natural gas.

Iraq's imports from Iran include cars, construction materials, medicine, fruits and spices, fish, air conditioners, office furniture, carpets and apparel.

Each month, more than 40,000 Iranians visit Shiite holy sites such as Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, buying religious souvenirs and supporting Iraq's economy through tourism.

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Trade ana pipeline

A reason why Syria is so important to Iran and the Saudi.  

Rumbles on the Rim of China’s Empire

Published: July 11, 2009
(Page 2 of 2)

The Chinese empire did not exercise full political control over the territory in its current shape until the Qing Dynasty, ruled by ethnic Manchus, annexed the region in 1760 and later gave it the name Xinjiang, according to the scholars James A. Millward and Peter C. Perdue.

Multimedia
 Ethnic Violence in Xinjiang, China
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Ethnic Violence in Xinjiang, China
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Map of Xinjiang Province
Related
China Raises Death Toll in Ethnic Clashes to 184 (July 11, 2009)
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Room for Debate: What Should China Do About the Uighurs? (July 8, 2009)
Times Topics: China | Uighurs
“By first establishing military and civil administrations and then promoting immigration and agricultural settlements, it went far toward ensuring the continued presence of China-based power in the region,” the two professors wrote in a 2004 volume of essays by 16 scholars, “Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland.”

Mr. Millward wrote in an e-mail message that the emperor Qianlong had conquered Xinjiang because efforts to rule it through Mongolian and Uighur proxies had failed.

Xinjiang’s location, bordering the nomadic areas of Central Asia, had already made it a strategic place for military garrisons during earlier periods when the Chinese empire had tentative control. Each time, the military would reclaim land for farming and build irrigation works, according to Calla Wiemer, another of the 16 essayists.

But the Qing dynasty brought the practice to a new level, greatly expanding the region’s economy. More than 50,000 demobilized troops were offered benefits if they stayed and farmed, and free land and seeds were given to Chinese willing to move here from the interior, Ms. Wiemer wrote.

It was a precursor to the policies of the Communist Party, the ones that have modernized Xinjiang but also contributed to its fractious ethnic landscape. In the early 1950s, the central government established the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, an enterprise to manage large farms and construction projects called bingtuan and provide jobs for demobilized soldiers.

The bingtuan are hugely profitable, and an estimated one out of every six Han in Xinjiang — about 1.3 million people — belongs to one. But Uighurs rarely get work there.

Government incentives as well as market forces have spurred a flood of Han migration, and the Han now make up at least 40 percent of the population, compared with 6 percent in 1949. Most of the settlers are from poor rural areas.

“We were farmers in Henan, and we wanted to make a better living,” said Lu Sifeng, 47, a street fruit vendor whose son was killed by a Uighur mob on July 5.

Uighurs resent not only the increased competition for jobs, but also the tightening of cultural policies since the 1990s, implemented partly because the Chinese government feared that the collapse of the Soviet Union would lead Uighurs to identify with Turkic nationalist causes or Islamic fundamentalism. The result, many Uighurs say, is a set of problems that shred their dignity: a lack of jobs for non-Han; strict limits on the practice of Islam; a need to subsume their own language to Mandarin in order to get ahead economically.

“Real colonization only started with Mao after the liberation,” said Nicholas Bequelin, an Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch.

The Chinese government points to the fact that the gross domestic product of Xinjiang doubled from $28 billion in 2004 to $60 billion in 2008. With that has come a rise in living standards and more jobs overall, and better education for every ethnic group, including the Uighurs. Officials say there is no need to change policies, no need for true autonomy, and that Xinjiang is an example of the future in borderlands of China, with ethnic minorities and the Han prospering side by side.

It is, they say, the best that one can hope for from a new frontier.

I'm old and am accustomed to spending time alone; even so, I'd be hard pressed to choose between the Saudi barbarism of canning and he US barbarism os indefinite solitary confinement.

It's no good joining Mercutio  in saying "a pox[?] on both your houses"; curses are no longer effective; urge kindness whenever you can.  Urge Governor Jerry Brown to abolish solitary confinement in the Pelican Bay prison.  Close all prisons; use creative alternatives.

Saudi Arabia

Global outrage at Saudi Arabia as jailed blogger receives public flogging

Kingdom stays silent as protesters contrast its opposition to Paris attacks on free speech with its own attacks on free speech

 US secretary of state John Kerry attends a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Jeddah. Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally of the US and UK. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Ian Black, Middle East editor

Sunday 11 January 2015 14.24 EST

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Saudi Arabia is remaining silent in the face of global outrage at the public flogging of the jailed blogger Raif Badawi, who received the first 50 of 1,000 lashes on Friday, part of his punishment for running a liberal website devoted to freedom of speech in the conservative kingdom.

Anger at the flogging – carried out as the world watched the bloody denouement of the Charlie Hebdo and Jewish supermarket jihadi killings in Paris – focused on a country that is a strategic ally, oil supplier and lucrative market for the US, Britain and other western countries but does not tolerate criticism at home.

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Badawi was shown on a YouTube video being beaten in a square outside a mosque in Jeddah, watched by a crowd of several hundred who shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and clapped and whistled after the flogging ended. Badawi made no sound during the flogging and was able to walk back unaided afterwards.

“Raif was escorted from a bus and placed in the middle of the crowd, guarded by eight or nine officers,” a witness told Amnesty International.

“He was handcuffed and shackled but his face was not covered. A security officer approached him from behind with a huge cane and started beating him.

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“Raif raised his head towards the sky, closing his eyes and arching his back. He was silent, but you could tell from his face and his body that he was in real pain.”

Badawi’s wife, Ensaf Haidar, told the Guardian from Montreal on Sunday: “Many governments around the world have protested about my husband’s case. I was optimistic until the last minute before the flogging. But the Saudi government is behaving like Daesh [a derogatory Arabic name for Islamic State or Isis].”

Saudi Arabia joined other Arab and Muslim countries in condemning the murder of 12 people at the Paris satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo but angry comments highlighted its double standard in meting out a cruel punishment to a man who was accused of insulting Islam.

One cartoon circulating on social media showed a man resembling Badawi being flogged alongside the words: “Saudi Arabia condemns the terrorist attack on freedom of expression in Paris …” Another image showed a pencil being flayed by whips.

One woman at Sunday’s Paris solidarity rally carried a placard declaring: “I am Raif Badawi, the Saudi journalist who was flogged.” Others protested at the presence of the Saudi foreign minister.

Badawi was sentenced last May to 10 years’ imprisonment and 1,000 lashes – 50 at a time over 20 weeks – and fined 1m Saudi riyals (£175,000). He has been held since mid-2012, and his Free Saudi Liberals website, established to encourage debate on religious and political matters in Saudi Arabia, is closed.

He is expected to receive another 50 lashes this Friday.

Arabic Twitter users condemned Saudi Arabia for behaving like Isis – part of the argument that the fundamental values promoted by the Saudi state do not differ from those that are carried to a brutal extreme by the jihadi group that controls parts of Syria and Iraq.

“Just a reminder,” tweeted one Tunisian woman. “Those who criticise Isis, which beheads and flogs people, and lines up children to watch, are the ones who are making excuses for the flogging of a man in Saudi Arabia. They are all Isis.”

Saudi Arabia is one of five Arab countries in the US-led coalition fighting Isis. It has arrested hundreds of people for alleged links to terrorism and imposed penalties on those travelling abroad to fight – though it still wants the overthrow of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.

About 2,500 Saudis have fought with Isis.

The US, EU and others publicly urged Riyadh not to go ahead with the flogging. Britain’s Foreign Office said: “The UK condemns the use of cruel and degrading punishment in all circumstances.”

A spokesman said on Sunday that concerns about the case continued to be expressed “at all levels”. There is no sign that the Saudis’ western allies will take any punitive action to back up their protests.

“The Saudis have a policy for inside the country where they want to show that they are pious and protect the faith,” said Ali al-Ahmed, of the Washington-based Institute for Gulf Affairs.

“Outside they project the opposite impression, that they are liberals and that it’s ordinary people who are savage and conservative.

“That’s why the west says: ‘Yes, we need to protect the Saudi royals because the alternative is Osama bin Laden.’

“It’s worked for the Saudis and it gives the west an excuse not to support any kind of change or reform.”

Badawi’s punishment is part of a wider campaign against domestic dissent. His lawyer, Waleed Abu al-Khair, was sentenced to 15 years in prison last July because of criticism of human rights abuses.

His case resumes on Monday, with the government reportedly seeking an even harsher sentence.

Fadhil al-Manasif is facing 14 years in prison on charges stemming from his assistance to journalists covering protests over the treatment of Shia Muslims in the Sunni-dominated country.

Meaning, based on your own experience or on canons of belief from others

John Gardner, quoted with approval by David Brooks in the article reprinted here, was born in 1933 as I was, and who died in 1982, before he found out how being old might have modified his beliefs..

Brooks quotes Gardner as saying, 61 years ago when Gardner was a young sprout:

“Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you. ... You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life.”

Gardner’s quotation is a standard — and correct — Existentialist statement of meaning;  it grew out of the experiences of those Continental theologians and philosophers who survived the destruction of all systems of governance, political and theological, that Westerners had  traditionally believed in.   

Existentialist thought is comparable with some Buddhist thought, and perhaps with thoughts of other peoples who have witnesses great destruction.  It is opposed by Han thought, which is outwardly-directed, and by Muslim thought, which is deductive and doomed. 

Brooks quotes Gardner with approval, then implicitly urges us to reject him, substituting deductive systems in its place.  Brooks would have us adopt  "objective and eternally true standards of justice and injustice”.

Brooks does this often in his opinion pages.  I wonder why canons of belief are so important to him.  Do you feel the need for outside authority to validate your life?

And Brooks is fun to shoot at.

THE OPINION PAGES | OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Problem With MeaningJAN. 5, 2015

David Brooks 

Not long ago, a friend sent me a speech that the great civic leader John Gardner gave to the Stanford Alumni Association 61 years after he graduated from that college. The speech is chock-full of practical wisdom. I especially liked this passage:
“The things you learn in maturity aren’t simple things such as acquiring information and skills. You learn not to engage in self-destructive behavior. You learn not to burn up energy in anxiety. You discover how to manage your tensions. You learn that self-pity and resentment are among the most toxic of drugs. You find that the world loves talent but pays off on character.
“You come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against you; they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how hard you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you, a lesson that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing.”
Gardner goes on in this wise way. And then, at the end, he goes into a peroration about leading a meaningful life. “Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you. ... You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life.”
Gardner puts “meaning” at the apogee of human existence. His speech reminded me how often we’ve heard that word over the past decades. As my Times colleague April Lawson puts it, “meaning” has become the stand-in concept for everything the soul yearns for and seeks. It is one of the few phrases acceptable in modern parlance to describe a fundamentally spiritual need.
Yet what do we mean when we use the word meaning?
The first thing we mean is that life should be about more than material success. The person leading a meaningful life has found some way of serving others that leads to a feeling of significance.
Second, a meaningful life is more satisfying than a merely happy life. Happiness is about enjoying the present; meaning is about dedicating oneself to the future. Happiness is about receiving; meaningfulness is about giving. Happiness is about upbeat moods and nice experiences. People leading meaningful lives experience a deeper sense of satisfaction.
In this way, meaning is an uplifting state of consciousness. It’s what you feel when you’re serving things beyond self.
Yet it has to be said, as commonly used today, the word is flabby and vacuous, the product of a culture that has grown inarticulate about inner life.
Let me put it this way: If we look at the people in history who achieved great things — like Nelson Mandela or Albert Schweitzer or Abraham Lincoln — it wasn’t because they wanted to bathe luxuriously in their own sense of meaningfulness. They had objective and eternally true standards of justice and injustice. They were indignant when those eternal standards were violated. They subscribed to moral systems — whether secular or religious — that recommended specific ways of being, and had specific structures of what is right and wrong, and had specific disciplines about how you might get better over time.
Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyMeaningfulness tries to replace structures, standards and disciplines with self-regarding emotion. The ultimate authority of meaningful is the warm tingling we get when we feel significant and meaningful. Meaningfulness tries to replace moral systems with the emotional corona that surrounds acts of charity.

Because it’s based solely on sentiment, it is useless. There are no criteria to determine what kind of meaningfulness is higher. There’s no practical manual that would help guide each of us as we move from shallower forms of service to deeper ones. There is no hierarchy of values that would help us select, from among all the things we might do, that activity which is highest and best to do.
Because it’s based solely on emotion, it’s fleeting. When the sensations of meaningful go away then the cause that once aroused them gets dropped, too. Ennui floods in. Personal crisis follows. There’s no reliable ground.
The philosophy of meaningfulness emerges in a culture in which there is no common moral vocabulary or framework. It emerges amid radical pluralism, when people don’t want to judge each other. Meaningfulness emerges when the fundamental question is, do we feel good?
Real moral systems are based on a balance of intellectual rigor and aroused moral sentiments. Meaningfulness is pure and self-regarding feeling, the NutraSweet of the Soul. 

Uzbek mitiants and Palistan dron striked.

Today's Guardian as an article with new new and old news:

The new news:

Two Pakistani intelligence officials said US drone-fired missiles had struck a militant compound in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan early on Sunday, killing seven militants and wounding four. The compound, around 300 metres from the Afghan border, was used by fighters loyal to the Pakistani Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur as well as Uzbek militants.

First I had heard of Uzbek militants in Pakistan.
Up to no good, no doubt. For more detailed information see The Economist:  The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan: Here comes trouble | The Economist and the accompanying map:

Also see The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace article about likely jihadist activity in Central Asia, discussed in this blog here. 

The old news in today's Guardian is this:

The covert US drone programme has eliminated several top militants but has also resulted in civilian casualties, making it extremely unpopular among Pakistanis, who condemn it as violation of their country’s sovereignty.

Have we written off Pakistan as an ally in the struggle against the Islamic State?  There is no substantial difference between militant Islamics in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and Pakistan has The Bomb.  Droning Pakistan seems counter-productive, when viewed from the Middle of the Pacific Ocean.  

Here are some militants.  Can you tell what country they are from?

Netanyahu and the coming election in Israel

The following Brooks' opinion piece is an interesting literary conceit.

Brooks is more optimistic about the future of a civil society that has millions of prisoners and no visible plan for change; but that doesn't fit Brooks' romantic vision.

This observation is central, and wrong:

Like Churchill, he is wisest when things are going wrong. He has been a pessimist about the Arab world. As the Arab Spring has deteriorated, as Palestinian democracy led to Hamas, as run of the mill extremists have lost ground to the Islamic State, Bibi’s instincts have basically been proved correct. 

Tiny examples:

Camden - Abu Dis Friendship Association

Gazan children still suffering from anxiety - Ikhwanweb

1,200 Palestinian prisoners begin hunger strike - Telegraph

  See what you think.  What you and the World thinks about Israel's present and future is important.

The Opinion Pages | OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Age of Bibi
David Brooks
Politics, culture and the social sciences.
JAN. 1, 2015
METULA, Israel — If I were a political novelist, I’d try to write a novel about Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel.
The story would be partly Nixonian. Netanyahu is surpassingly brilliant, as even his opponents here concede. He knows the minute guts of Israeli politics and has read deeply into big history and grand strategy. He is also said to be suspicious, solitary and insular. It is hard to stay on good terms with him, whether you are on his staff, or his nation’s closest ally.
The story would be partly Kennedyesque. The Netanyahu clan was presided over by Benjamin’s brilliant father Benzion, the great medieval historian. The eldest brother Jonathan was the golden child. When Jonathan died in the raid on Entebbe in 1976, hopes shifted to Benjamin, who is known as Bibi. Political analysts have spent decades psychoanalyzing the family dynamic, with mixed results, but a novelist who studied Sophocles or Tolstoy might be able to make some sense of it.

The story would be partly Churchillian. Netanyahu sees himself in world historical terms, and admires Theodor Herzl and Winston Churchill — two men who saw dangers ahead of other people. Netanyahu obviously lacks many of Churchill’s qualities, like playful charm, but he has a profound nationalist passion and a consuming historical consciousness.
Like Churchill, he is wisest when things are going wrong. He has been a pessimist about the Arab world. As the Arab Spring has deteriorated, as Palestinian democracy led to Hamas, as run of the mill extremists have lost ground to the Islamic State, Bibi’s instincts have basically been proved correct.
The story would be part Shakespearean. Nearly every political leader has one close friend or spouse, often female, who is widely hated. People can’t blame the leader for slights, so they blame her. In Israel, the role is played by Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, who has been the subject of fascination and scorn for decades: She is often described as Lady Macbeth. Few know her exact role, but, it is said, she exiles the disloyal, shapes his politics, mistreats servants and distracts him when he is supposed to be running the country. Obviously, any novel about Netanyahu and modern Israel would have to be told from her vantage point. The narrative voice would be electric.
The story would be part “Citizen Kane.” Netanyahu rose to fame via CNN. His rise and survival are intertwined with changes in media, with the decline of old newspapers that are generally hostile, and the rise of new cable networks and outlets that are often his allies. Ferociously tending his image, his wars with his foes in the Israeli press have been epic.
Finally, the story would be part Machiavelli. The great Renaissance philosopher argued that it is best to be both loved and feared, but if you have to choose one, it is better to be feared. Netanyahu is not loved, especially by those in his party. But he is feared and acknowledged, the way any large, effective object is feared and respected.
I’m visiting Israel for the 18th or 19th time (my son is currently a member of the Lone Soldiers Program, which allows people from around the world to serve in the Israeli military). I asked a couple of smart Israelis what their coming elections are about. They said that the elections are about one thing: What do you think of Netanyahu? Such is the outsized role he plays in the consciousness of this nation.
No one has a simple view of him. To some, he is a monster who has expanded the settlements on the West Bank, which are a moral stain and do calamitous damage to Israel’s efforts to win support around the world. To some, he is the necessary man in hard times, the vigilant guardian as the rest of the Middle East goes berserk.
Both viewpoints have some truth. To me, his caution is most fascinating. For all his soaring rhetoric and bellicosity, he has been a defensive leader. He seems to understand that, in his country’s situation, the lows are lower than the highs are high. The costs of a mistake are bigger than the benefits of an accomplishment. So he is loath to take risks. He doesn’t do some smart things, like improve life for Palestinians on the West Bank, but he doesn’t do unpredictable dumb things, like prematurely bomb Iran. He talks everything through, and his decisions shift and flip as the discussions evolve.
If you think trends in the Middle East will doom Israel unless it acts, then this defensiveness is a disaster. If you think, as I do, that Israel has to wait out the current spasm of Islamist radicalism, then this caution has its uses.
Israeli voters haven’t warmed to Netanyahu over the past quarter-century. But they have come to think more like him, accepting that this conflict will endure, digging in for a dogged struggle. For good and ill, he has refashioned the national mind.