Dhaka, Istanbul, Fallujah - mapping a caliphate of Islamic State terror
July 3, 2016 - 2:35PMPaul McGeough
Chief foreign correspondent
It's a long way from the Turkish city of Istanbul to Fallujah in the west of Iraq or to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh – but in the dark geography of Islamic State, the three are strongly connected.
Tuesday's triple suicide-bomb assault on Ataturk Airport, one of the world's busiest and a symbol of Turkey's faltering economic and regional ambitions, is assumed to be the work of the so-called Islamic State, and IS is claiming the butchery in a Dhaka restaurant on Saturday – the latest attacks in an expansive global terror campaign, as the turf that is the Islamist movement's supposed caliphate shrinks, most notably with this week's liberation of the Iraqi city of Fallujahby US-backed Iraqi forces.
The impending loss of Fallujah meant that IS needed to make a powerful statement to the world on the reach of its terrorism – yes, it was losing significant turf and the whole caliphate thing was starting to look a bit shaky; but, as it had already demonstrated in Paris and Brussels, terror strikes beyond the immediate theatre of its war would mark out a virtual caliphate. Dhaka is a blood-soaked exclamation point.South China Sea: Beijing plans military drills running up to court ruling
Tensions rise ahead of verdict due on 12 July on territorial dispute between China and Philippines
China will hold military drills around the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, the country’s maritime safety administration has said, ahead of a decision by an international court in Beijing’s dispute with the Philippines.
China regularly holds exercises in the area, where its territorial claims overlapwith Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
Tensions have been rising ahead of a ruling due on 12 July from the arbitration court in The Hague, Netherlands, that is hearing the dispute.
In a brief statement the Chinese said the drills would take place from 5 to 11 July and gave coordinates covering an area from the east of China’s Hainan island down to and including the Paracels.
The Chilcot report: on Wednesday the myth of wicked Blair meets the reality of a huge account of a complex war
The word ‘Chilcot’ will, at 11am on Wednesday, change its meaning: having been shorthand for ‘I hate Tony Blair’ for seven years, it will henceforth mean ‘whitewash’
Myth meets reality on Wednesday. The common view that Tony Blair is a lying warmonger will collide with one of the most thorough investigations of recent history.
I don’t know what is in the Chilcot report, but I do know what it won’t say. It won’t say that Blair made up claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction to justify military action. It won’t say that he lied. And it won’t say that he is a war criminal.
The reason it won’t say those things is that they are not true, as anyone who had paid any attention to the Hutton report, the Butler report and the Chilcot hearings would know.
Myanmar mob burns down mosque as Buddhist-Muslim tensions rise
A mob has burnt down a mosque in northern Myanmar, the second such attack in just over a week. The rising tensions between the majority Buddhist community and the Muslim minority pose a challenge to the new government.
Villagers in the town of Hpakant in Myanmar's northern Kachin state ransacked a mosque on Friday before setting it on fire, according to the state-run "Global New Light of Myanmar" newspaper.
Some 500 people gathered outside the mosque late Friday, many of them welding sticks, knives and other weapons and demanding that the security forces allow them to raze the Muslims' place of worship.
According to local officials, the mosque administration failed to meet a June 30 deadline to raze the structure to make way for a bridge.
"Some parts of the mosque were set on fire by the mob," a local police officer said on condition of anonymity.
"When about 150 people forcibly entered the mosque compound, we could no longer control the situation," he added.
3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake
Updated by Dylan Matthews
This July 4, let's not mince words: American independence in 1776 was a monumental mistake. We should be mourning the fact that we left the United Kingdom, not cheering it.
Of course, evaluating the wisdom of the American Revolution means dealing with counterfactuals. As any historian would tell you, this is a messy business. We obviously can't be entirely sure how America would have fared if it had stayed in the British Empire longer, perhaps gaining independence a century or so later, along with Canada.
But I'm reasonably confident a world in which the revolution never happened would be better than the one we live in now, for three main reasons: Slavery would've been abolished earlier, American Indians would've faced rampant persecution but not the outright ethnic cleansing Andrew Jackson and other American leaders perpetrated, and America would have a parliamentary system of government that makes policymaking easier and lessens the risk of democratic collapse.
This African Country Is Cracking Down On Illegal Ivory, But Its Chinese Smugglers Complicate Things
A look at how Namibia’s Chinese ivory smugglers operate.
Namibia is the rare country in Africa that seems to be holding its own against ivory poachers. Whereas in most other southern African countries the elephant population is being decimated, in Namibia, according to the government, the number of elephants has actually increased by 20 percent since 2005, to 20,000. Namibia’s zero-tolerance policy for poachers may explain in part why the country has been able to succeed where so many other states have failed. Yet despite its best efforts, the illegal ivory trade remains a serious problem, particularly among Namibia’s immigrant Chinese community.
Independent Chinese journalist Shi Yi traveled to Namibia to report on how some of the Chinese population there is involved in the illicit ivory trade. During her investigation, she discovered that a lot of the ivory trade is done by small-scale Chinese merchants, neighborhood shop owners and individuals rather than theorganized crime syndicates that traffic ivory in other African countries.
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