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Hong Kong Protesters Eye Beijing Summit
People take pictures behind a cutout of Chinese President Xi Jinping on which pro-democracy protesters put goggles and a yellow ribbon, their symbols, in the part of Mongkok shopping district protesters are occupying in Hong Kong, Oct. 31, 2014.
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William Gallo
October 31, 2014 6:54 AM
Hong Kong student protest leaders are considering attending next month's conference of regional leaders in Beijing to make their case for democratic reforms in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.
Alex Chow with the Federation of Students said during a rally late Thursday that organizers are discussing trying to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, which begins November 5.
The conference, which lasts until November 12, is being attended by world leaders, including President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
It is unclear whether the protest organizers would be permitted to visit the mainland. But Chow said that if they were not allowed to pass, it would be proof Beijing does not care about the opinions of Hong Kongers.
For the past month, protesters have camped out in the streets and held a series of massive rallies to protest Beijing's decision to screen candidates running for chief executive in the territory's 2017 elections.
Beijing, along with the mainland-friendly Hong Kong government, has declared the protests to be illegal and have refused to meet the protesters' demands.
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Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .
conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
01112014
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là ĐỒNG LÕA với TỘI ÁC
The Washington Post
Hong Kong politician likens protesters to American slaves
By Ishaan Tharoor
October 31 at 1:28 PM
Pro-democracy protesters spread a yellow banner with the words reading: "I want genuine universal suffrage" at a rally Tuesday in the occupied areas outside government headquarters in Hong Kong's Admiralty. (Kin Cheung/AP)
A leading Hong Kong businesswoman and member of the city's Executive Council, which deliberates policy, compared the struggle of pro-democracy protesters to that of slaves in the American South in the 19th century. The remarks, which ran in a local English-language daily, have triggered an angry response from many in the Chinese territory.
Laura Cha, who is also a board member at the prominent bank HSBC, urged that protesters seeking further democratic reforms be more patient. "American slaves were liberated in 1861 but did not get voting rights until 107 years later," she was quoted as saying by the Standard newspaper. "So why can't Hong Kong wait for a while?"
She was speaking at a Hong Kong trade roadshow in Paris.
Aside from the historical inaccuracies, it is very bizarre and inflammatory to link the former British colony's population to the brutal historical experience of slavery in America and the miseries that followed for the country's repressed and marginalized black communities. Many Hong Kongers who have taken to the streets fear that China is trying to rein back the city's unique freedoms and that Beijing's future policies may amount to a kind of voter suppression.
Cha's comment seemed to echo the tone deafness of Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying, who earlier this month told foreign reporters that full democracy would give the city's poor people too much a say.
A petition, which has gathered thousands of signatures, circulated online calling on Cha to apologize for the statement and HSBC to take action.
We, the Hong Kong public, will not stand these remarks likening our rights to slavery, nor will we stand the kind of voter disenfranchisement her and her associates attempt to perpetrate on the Hong Kong public.
On Friday, Cha issued a statement, saying what she meant was that "every country’s path to democracy was evolved in its own historical context. She did not mean any disrespect and regrets that her comment has caused concerns."
Hong Kong's protests were triggered by news earlier this year that elections in 2017 for the city's next leader would only involve candidates vetted by Beijing. They have struck a chord particularly among the city's youth, many of whom have no experience of life under British colonial rule, which ended with the city's handover to China in 1997.
Part of the anger of the protesters is directed at the city's political and business elites, who many see as acting in collusion with the status quo in Beijing. Cha's patronizing statements further stoke the fires.
Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He previously was a senior editor at TIME, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.
***
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .
conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
01112014
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là ĐỒNG LÕA với TỘI ÁC
Yahoo!7
Commando who killed Bin Laden on TV
AFP
October 30, 2014, 8:58 am
Osama Bin Laden is shown addressing a news conference in Afghanistan in this May 26, 1998 file photo. Al Qaeda released a posthumous audio recording by bin Laden posted on Jihadi websites, in which the Islamist group's ex-leader praised revolutions sweeping the Arab world. The SITE monitoring service reported on May 19, 2011 that the audio by bin Laden, who was killed in a U.S. raid on May 2 in Pakistan, was included in an Internet video lasting more than 12 minutes. REUTERS/Stringer/Files (AFGHANISTAN - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST)
The US Navy SEAL commando who fired the shots that killed al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden is to reveal his identity in a Fox News television documentary in November, the network says.
The Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden will air in the US in two segments on November 11 and 12, with the commando recounting his role in the raid that killed Bin Laden at a Pakistani compound in 2011.
The Navy SEAL "will share his story of training to be a member of America's elite fighting force and explain his involvement in Operation Neptune Spear, the mission that killed Bin Laden", the network said in a press release on Wednesday.
"Offering never before shared details, the presentation will include the shooter's experience in confronting Bin Laden, his description of the terrorist leader's final moments as well as what happened when he took his last breath," it said.
The program also shows a "secret" ceremony in which the commando donated the shirt he was wearing during the mission to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City.
The daring night-time raid on May 2, 2011, saw a team of Navy SEALs in Blackhawk helicopters swooping on Bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan. There were no casualties among US forces, who killed Bin Laden and four others at the compound.
The operation was ordered by President Barack Obama after the CIA traced Bin Laden's courier to the high-walled compound.
Fox News Channel is owned by Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox.
***
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .
conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
01112014
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là ĐỒNG LÕA với TỘI ÁC
The Washington Post
Airstrikes against Islamic State do not seen to have affected flow of fighters to Syria
Battle for Kobane continues
The United States has stepped up airstrikes against Islamic State fighters massed around the embattled Syrian town.
Oct. 28, 2014 A picture taken from the Turkish border near the southeastern village of Mursitpinar, in the province of Sanliurfa, shows smoke billowing after a fighter jet hit Kobane in Syria. AFP/Getty Images
By Greg Miller October 30
More than 1,000 foreign fighters are streaming into Syria each month, a rate that has so far been unchanged by airstrikes against the Islamic State and efforts by other countries to stem the flow of departures, according to U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials.
The magnitude of the ongoing migration suggests that the U.S.-led air campaign has neither deterred significant numbers of militants from traveling to the region nor triggered such outrage that even more are flocking to the fight because of American intervention.
“The flow of fighters making their way to Syria remains constant, so the overall number continues to rise,” a U.S. intelligence official said. U.S. officials cautioned, however, that there is a lag in the intelligence being examined by the CIA and other spy agencies, meaning it could be weeks before a change becomes apparent.
The trend line established over the past year would mean that the total number of foreign fighters in Syria exceeds 16,000, and the pace eclipses that of any comparable conflict in recent decades, including the 1980s war in Afghanistan.
U.S. officials have attributed the flows to a range of factors, including the sophisticated recruiting campaigns orchestrated by groups in Syria such as the Islamic State and the relative ease with which militants from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe can make their way to that country.
Map: Flow of foreign fighters to Syria
American officials stressed that the stability of the flow is not seen as a measure of the effectiveness of an air campaign that expanded beyond Iraq and into Syria late last month. The latest estimates indicate that strikes in Syria alone have killed about 460 members of the Islamic State — the group that has beheaded two American journalists and two British aid workers — as well as about 60 fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate.
The United States and its allies have carried out more than 600 strikes so far in Syria and Iraq, bombings aimed primarily at slowing the Islamic State’s advances and allowing the Iraqi military and moderate opposition forces in Syria to regroup. Rear Adm. John Kirby, spokesman for the Pentagon, said this week that the strikes are “disrupting” the Islamic State’s operations but acknowledged that any major offensive against the group “may still be a ways off.”
Experts said the foreign fighter population is likely to grow significantly larger as the three-year-old conflict drags on.
“I don’t think 15,000 really scratches the surface yet,” said Andrew Liepman, a counterterrorism expert at Rand Corp. who formerly was the deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
Since the start of the U.S.-led air campaign, analysts have sought to track whether the bombings would discourage would-be fighters or serve as a rallying cry for Islamists. Liepman said the steady numbers could mean that neither has occurred or, more likely, that both have happened to degrees that offset one another.
The air campaign “has probably discouraged some people and encouraged others,” Liepman said.
He and others cautioned, however, that there are significant gaps in U.S. intelligence on the conflict in Syria, making it difficult to have a clear understanding of the scale and composition of the swelling population of foreign fighters.
The vast majority of those militants have come from other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Tunisia has sent more fighters to Syria than any other nation.
More than 2,000 fighters have come from countries in Europe, carrying passports that would enable them to travel relatively freely in Western countries.
Many went to fight the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and may pose no security threat beyond that country’s civil war. But security officials have expressed mounting concern over more recent arrivals who have fought with the Islamic State or al-Nusra, which has a cell near Aleppo that was established to plot attacks against Western nations.
Britain, France, Germany and other European nations have taken increasingly aggressive measures over the past year to stem the flow of fighters to Syria, seizing passports, passing new antiterrorism measures and targeting suspects with stepped-up surveillance and arrests. U.S. officials have said that about 130 Americans have traveled to Syria or tried to do so.
Most militants entering Syria have done so through Turkey, a country that has recently sought to tighten control over its borders and root out Islamist networks that serve as pipelines for fighter.
U.S. officials said it could be too soon to see clear indications that such measures are working.
“The Europeans and other allies are taking steps upstream to stem the flow of their citizens to Syria, while at the downstream end, the Turks are taking action to keep their borders from being exploited by jihadists,” the U.S. intelligence official said. “It could take some time for the dampening effect of these measures to start showing up in the foreign-fighter intelligence estimates.”
Although U.S. officials have not made public estimates of the rate at which foreign fighters are flowing into Syria, they have provided totals that trace a clear trajectory. The 15,000 figure cited by the White House last month was up sharply from an estimate of 12,000 in July and 7,000 in March.
Missy Ryan contributed to this report.
Greg Miller covers the intelligence beat for The Washington Post.
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Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .
conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
01112014
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là ĐỒNG LÕA với TỘI ÁC
