Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Six In The Morning Tuesday January 4

4 February 2014 Last updated at 06:33

Cancer 'tidal wave' on horizon, warns WHO

The globe is facing a "tidal wave" of cancer, and restrictions on alcohol and sugar need to be considered, say World Health Organization scientists.

It predicts the number of cancer cases will reach 24 million a year by 2035, but half could be prevented.

The WHO said there was now a "real need" to focus on cancer prevention by tackling smoking, obesity and drinking.

The World Cancer Research Fund said there was an "alarming" level of naivety about diet's role in cancer.

Fourteen million people a year are diagnosed with cancer, but that is predicted to increase to 19 million by 2025, 22 million by 2030 and 24 million by 2035.

Syria conflict: Clashes between rebels and army edge near to iconic Crusader castle Krak des Chevaliers

The rebels hold the castle and the two nearby villages of al-Zara and al-Hosn while much of the rest of this area, 25 miles west of Homs city and just north of the Lebanese border, is inhabited by Christians who support the government. The 13th century castle was damaged by a Syrian air force attack and mortars last year and the Syrian government says it is eager to prevent further damage.

“We launched an operation to retake this area last week,” the governor of Homs, Talal al Barazi, told The Independent. He said that so far the army had taken 50 per cent of al-Zara “and we think the rest of it will be in our hands within a week.” Syrian army officers on the spot were more cautious on how long the fighting was going to last, saying it might be a week or two.

‘French-style Tea Party’ takes to streets

Catholics, Muslims and the extreme right have united to protest at social policies including teaching of ‘gender theory’

Lara Marlowe

An eclectic assortment of extreme right-wing groups, French Catholics and Muslims has shifted the focus of opposition to President François Hollande from economic to social issues in mass demonstrations over the last two Sundays.

Last Sunday, up to several hundred thousand people marched in Paris and Lyon against what they called the government’s “familiphobia”. It was the largest demonstration since protests at the legalisation of same-sex marriage early last year.

Alleged plans by the education ministry to teach “gender theory” in public schools are the demonstrators’ main grievance. According to gender theory, sexuality is a social construct. Many parents appear to believe their children will be taught they are free to change their gender. Education minister Vincent Peillon has repeatedly denied the rumours but opponents refuse to believe him.

Kenya arrests 129 al Shebaab insurgents after mosque raid

AFP | 04 February, 2014 09:38

More than 100 people arrested after deadly rioting following a police raid on a Kenyan mosque were charged Monday for being members of Somalia's al Qaeda linked al Shebaab insurgents.

"We received information that there was a jihad convention in the mosque and that's when we moved in," said local police chief Robert Kitur.

The men in the mosque then "turned violent and attacked our officers".

Judge James Ombura ordered the 129 men be held in prison until Friday to allow prosecutors to finish their investigations, when the accused are expected to enter a plea.

Four of those charged were not in court as they were receiving treatment for injuries sustained during Sunday's clashes, in which three people, including a police officer, died.

Costa Rica's surprise presidential election outcome (+video)

Solís, who proposed cracking down on corruption and improving infrastructure, came from behind to win 31 percent of votes in Costa Rica's election over the weekend. He's now a frontrunner in the April runoff.

By Zach Dyer, Contributor

SAN JOSÉ, COSTA RICA

An unexpected candidate in Costa Rica’s presidential race surprised voters and the ruling National Liberation Party (PLN) last night, sprinting to the front of a crowded field of 13 presidential hopefuls, and forcing the country into its second ever runoff election, the first since 2002.

Luis Guillermo Solís of the progressive Citizen Action Party (PAC), was still in a distant fourth place in the polls at the beginning of January, but support surged over the past few weeks following a strong debate performance. Mr. Solís has promised to focus on alleviating inequality, improving public

performance. Mr. Solís has promised to focus on alleviating inequality, improving public infrastructure, and fighting corruption.

“We started this election with 5 percent and we ended with 31 percent of the public’s support,” says Robert Tomás, a Solís supporter at a campaign rally Sunday night.

Olympics controversies mount, from terrorist fears to stray dogs

BY WILLIAM DOUGLAS

McClatchy Foreign Staff

SOCHI, RUSSIA — Amid concerns about terrorism, complaints of unfinished hotels rooms, controversy over Russia’s law targeting gays and reports of a last-minute roundup and killing of stray dogs, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach on Monday proclaimed the 2014 Winter Olympics ready for competition.

Bach, presiding over his first Olympic Games, said “the Olympic stage is set for the athletes. The Olympic stage is ready for the best winter athletes in the world.”

“We can see it in the Olympic villages, which are all of very high quality and offer excellent conditions for the athletes,” he said.

Monday, February 3, 2014

'Japan is back.' Can Shinzo Abe stay the course? or Where Will the Nationalism of Shinzo Abe Really lead Japan?

In September 2007, Shinzo Abe must have thought he had blown his chance to alter the course of Japan's postwar politics.
A year earlier, he had become the country's youngest prime minister and the first to be born after the end of World War II. But after just 12 months, he was forced to step down.

At the time of his resignation Abe had been pushing really hard for a revision of Japan's pacifist constitution which is widely unpopular and speaking of a beautiful Japan, whatever that was supposed to mean. Many saw it not only as a return to Japan's militaristic past but a promotion of Abe's ideology of historical revisionism and war crimes denial.

During his campaign to regain the Premiership Abe tempered his beliefs so that voters wouldn't view him as driven by his nationalist conservative leanings. That's all changed in the last several months as he's once again began to push hard for changes in the constitution that he believes will drag Japan into the top tier of nations on world policy and influence. At the same time he seems intent on antagonizing North and South Korea along with China with various statements he's made but especially with his visit to Yasukuni Shrine in December where 14 convicted Class A War Criminals are enshrined.

Abe, they say, is a product of the postwar era of growth and optimism whose time, after a false start seven years ago, has finally arrived. His agenda is driven by a desire to recapture the spirit of national pride that spurred the country's transformation from pariah to global economic power.
His goal, they add, is not to see a return to the dark days of 1930s militarism, but for Japan to finally join the club of "normal" democratic states – able to defend its interests at home and abroad, with force if necessary.

How is he a product of optimism when his actions seek out a nationalism that led to Japan's eventual defeat in World War II. He wants to reform Japan's education system so that it instills patriotism and removes from junior and senior high school history textbooks any references to Japan's imperialist policies from 1910 to 1945.

Abe's worldview develops

It was in that early postwar period, too, that a young Abe formed a view of his country's relationship with the world that he has carried through to this day.
A black-and-white photograph from the era shows Abe, then a kindergartner, seated on the lap of his maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, whose beliefs about Japan's place in the postwar world order would have a profound influence on his grandson – more so than those of Abe's own father, Shintaro Abe, who served as foreign minister from 1982 to 1986.

Nobusuke Kishi who served as Prime Minister was a member of Tojo's War Cabinet was like Shinzo Abe unabashed nationalist given that he considers this man to be his mentor is it any wonder Abe holds these beliefs.

Mr. Kishi, who served in the wartime cabinet of Gen. Hideki Tojo, was arrested by the Allied Occupation forces for suspected war crimes but was never charged. He went on to become Japan's prime minister in 1957.
In Abe's eyes, his grandfather remained a misunderstood figure, particularly among those angered by his decision to strengthen the military alliance with the US in 1960 with revisions to their bilateral security treaty. Others railed against Kishi's plans to begin what his grandson hopes to finish – revision of the postwar Constitution.

Six In The Morning Monday February 3

Al-Qaida denies links to ISIL in Syria

Statement denying any relationship with the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) seen as a bid to reassert authority over rebels

Reuters in Beirut
theguardian.com, Monday 3 February 2014 08.45 GMT

Al-Qaida's general command has said it has no links with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), in an apparent attempt to assert authority over the Islamist militant groups involved in Syria's civil war.

The small but powerful ISIL has been caught up in battles with other Islamist insurgents often triggered by disputes over authority and territory, and has also clashed with secular rebels.

The internecine fighting - among the bloodiest in the three-year conflict - has undermined the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad and dismayed western powers pushing for peace talks.

Rebel-on-rebel violence in Syria has killed at least 1,800 this year alone.

ISIL follows al-Qaida's hard-line ideology and, until now, the two groups were widely believed to be linked.

Is this the face of the French right? ‘We are witnessing a union of extremes never before seen in France’

Calls for a return to traditional, conservative family values are being hijacked by anti-Semites and homophobic nationalists, prompting fears that the ‘disturbing’ politics of the 1930s are back

The stark warning by the interior minister, Manuel Valls, jarred with the prosperous, well-behaved ranks of most of yesterday’s marchers, including thousands of elderly people and families with children in push-chairs.

However, two groups of hard-right thugs were arrested as they attempted to join the protest. Scuffles broke out on the Avenue Raspail last night between riot police and about 200 hard-right youths giving Hitler salutes. They threw beer bottles at the police, who responded with tear gas.

Century of Violence: What World War I Did to the Middle East

By Bernhard Zand

World War I may have ended in 1918, but the violence it triggered in the Middle East still hasn't come to an end. Arbitrary borders drawn by self-interested imperial powers have left a legacy that the region has not been able to overcome.

Damascus, year three of the civil war: The 4th Division of the Syrian army has entrenched itself on Kassioun Mountain, the place where Cain is said to have slain his brother Abel. United Nations ballistics experts say the poison gas projectiles that landed in the Damascus suburbs of Muadamiya and Ain Tarma in the morning hours of Aug. 21, 2013 were fired from somewhere up on the mountain. Some 1,400 people died in the attack -- 1,400 of the more than 100,000 people who have lost their lives since the beginning of the conflict.

Baghdad, in the former palace quarter behind the Assassin's Gate: Two years after the American withdrawal, Iraqis are once again in full control of the so-called Green Zone, located on a sharp bend in the Tigris River.

Nigerian Muslim cleric opposed to Boko Haram shot dead

KADUNA, Nigeria Mon Feb 3, 2014 3:58am EST

A Nigerian Muslim cleric who openly criticized Islamist sect Boko Haram has been killed in Zaria, hundreds of miles from where the military is fighting insurgents, police said on Monday.

Gunmen opened fire on Sheik Adam Albani's car on Saturday evening as he drove home from preaching in a mosque, also killing his wife and young son, police spokesman Aminu Lawan said.

Western governments see prominent leaders like Sheik Albani playing a role in the long-term fight against Boko Haram and other al Qaeda-linked groups, in a deeply religious country of 170 million people.

El Salvador election: Is 'democratic revolution' fading? (+video)

As Salvadorans go to the polls to elect their next president, the leading FMLN remains torn between its guerrilla heritage and the need to play politics and win votes.

By Seth Robbins, Correspondent

SAN SALVADOR

Tomás Minero joined the Farabundo Martí Liberation Front (FMLN) as a teen in the 1980s, just as this country’s bloody civil war was getting underway.

For the next 11 years he fought for the Marxist guerrilla group: running offensives, escaping prison, and getting shot twice.

After the FMLN signed peace accords, disarmed, and

became a leftist political party in 1992, Mr. Minero and many other former fighters followed. Minero is now mayor of Ciudad Delgado, a crowded, working-class municipality just northeast ofEl Salvador’s capital.

“It’s a thousand times harder to be a mayor than a guerrilla,” he says, sitting in his sparsely decorated office. “As a guerrilla you need only to fight, to plan, and to have a strong conscience. To be a mayor you’re not dreaming, but resolving.”

3 February 2014 Last updated at 08:53

Tributes paid to actor Philip Seymour Hoffman

Tributes are pouring in following the death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman at his home in New York on Sunday.

The Oscar-winning actor, 46, was found by a friend who called emergency services. He was declared dead at the scene.

A police spokesman said investigators found two small plastic bags and a substance suspected of being heroin.

In a statement, his family said: "We are devastated by the loss of our beloved Phil."

Hoffman is survived by his partner Mimi O'Donnell, and their three children.

Robert De Niro was among many fellow actors expressing their sorrow. "I'm very, very saddened by the passing of Phil. He was a wonderful actor. This is one of those times where you say: 'This just shouldn't be'," he said.

"He was so young and gifted and had so much going, so much to live for. My family and I send our deepest condolences to his family," he added.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Russia's media Olympics

Ahead of Sochi's Olympics, we ask how the Kremlin will handle the news coverage that comes with hosting the games.

While the majority of Russia's news media have not even waited for the torch to get lit to declare the Sochi Winter Olympic Games a triumph, other journalists in Sochi have different news pegs in mind.

Among these is the contentious gay propaganda law, the environmental impact of the Sochi development projects and, of course, the enormous cost to the taxpayer.

But step-by-step, through the Vladimir Putin years, the Russian media - particularly on the broadcast side - have been brought to heel. The president and his inner circle can, directly or indirectly, manage the state's message through the media.

Journalism can be a dangerous game in Russia. Pushing the boundaries can get foreign reporters expelled and it can get Russian reporters killed.

Six In The Morning Sunday February 2

Thailand elections: Politics of crisis

By Peter Shadbolt, for CNN
February 2, 2014 -- Updated 0531 GMT
A state of emergency, streets paralyzed with protesters, the fatal shooting of a leading pro-government activist and an election campaign teetering on chaos may not sound like the script from a rising Southeast Asian economic powerhouse.
But for Thailand -- which manages to combine economic success and political mayhem in equal measure -- this weekend's elections are just another page in an eight-year struggle between supporters and opponents of Thaksin Shinawatra.

Thailand: hundreds of polling stations closed, but voting begins peacefully
Relatively little violence in early stages of anxiously-awaited election day as PM's supporters insist on right to vote
Associated Press in Bangkok
theguardian.com, Sunday 2 February 2014 07.23 GMT
Protesters trying to derail Thailand's national elections forced the closure of hundreds of polling stations in a highly contentious vote that has become the latest flashpoint in the country's deepening political crisis.

Around the country, the vast majority of voting stations were open and polling proceeded relatively peacefully, but the risk of violence remained high a day after gun battles in Bangkok left seven people wounded.

The national focus was riveted to the capital, where 488 of the capital's 6,600 polling stations were shut and several skirmishes broke out between protesters intent on disrupting the vote and frustrated would-be voters

Lebanon simmers by Syria's side: Terror attacks drag Lebanese communities into neighbour's civil war

FERNANDE VAN TETS Sunday 02 February 2014
The arched façade of the shopping centre is still blackened with soot and piles of debris, and building material marks the spot where a suicide bomber detonated his belt, and his car, two weeks ago.

The explosion killed five people; among the 40 more wounded was Ali Shaheen, a pharmacist, who was making coffee at the time of the blast. "Everything collapsed around us," he recalls. The attack has made residents of Hermel, a "100 per cent Shia" town where Hezbollah reigns supreme, resigned and fearful of a new threat that seems impossible to stop. "When it comes to suicide bombers, neither Hezbollah nor the Lebanese army can prevent such an act," said Shaheen, a father of three.

Greece's far-right Golden Dawn party vows to contest May elections
Greece's Golden Dawn party has vowed to partake in local and European elections next May despite the looming threat of a government crackdown. Thousands of the party's supporters rallied in Athens for the announcement.

Ilias Kassidiaris, a lawmaker and spokesman for the party, told around 3,000 of Golden Dawn's supporters (pictured) in the center of the Greek capital on Saturday night that he would find a way to contest the upcoming vote.
"We will participate in the elections, one way or another," said Kassidiaris, who has been the most prominent member of the party since its leader was arrested.
He told the crowd that if the Golden Dawn party is banned, the National Dawn party has been founded as a backup of sorts.
"Patriots will have a party to vote for in the next election if [authorities] go ahead with the coup to ban Golden Dawn," Kassidiaris said.

African Union unites against ICC trials
The African Union has closed ranks in demanding that the ICC drop criminal proceedings against sitting presidents.
02 FEB 2014 07:05 SAPA-AP
The African Union urged its members to "speak with one voice" to prevent criminal proceedings at the International Criminal court against sitting presidents, according to a statement on Saturday.

The 54-nation organisation said it was disappointed that a request to the UN Security Council to defer the trials of Kenya's leaders "has not yielded the positive result expected". The African Union also has sought the deferral of criminal proceedings against Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, who has been charged with genocide in Darfur.

Only Botswana has opposed the stand taken by the African Union, made in a statement received on Saturday after a summit in Ethiopia attended by 34 leaders.

Decriminalizing marijuana: Could Mexico City be next to light up?
Mexico City is considering the decriminalization of possession of marijuana, and other jurisdictions may follow suit in a nation wracked by drug-related violence.
By Karl Baker, Correspondent
MEXICO CITY
Mexico’s capital is often thought of as a secular bubble inside a Catholic nation. In 2007, city authorities legalized abortion; in 2010, gay marriage was allowed; and next month the city’s lawmakers are poised to rethink its policy on marijuana possession.

But as the city inches toward decriminalizing pot, the impact of such a move has major implications that go beyond its nine million residents. Other states, including Morelos, Veracruz, and Oaxaca, could follow Mexico City's lead, presenting a challenge to President Enrique Peña Nieto who has argued against the legalization of marijuana as his country continues its war against drug traffickers.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

In many ways, the PLA is weaker than it looks – and more dangerous.

In April 2003, the Chinese Navy decided to put a large group of its best submarine talent on the same boat as part of an experiment to synergize its naval elite. The result? Within hours of leaving port, the Type 035 Ming III class submarine sank with all hands lost. Never having fully recovered from this maritime disaster, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is still the only permanent member of the United Nations Security Council never to have conducted an operational patrol with a nuclear missile submarine.

While recent years have witnessed a tremendous Chinese propaganda effort aimed at convincing the world that the PRC is a serious military player that is owed respect, outsiders often forget that China does not even have a professional military. The PLA, unlike the armed forces of the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other regional heavyweights, is by definition not a professional fighting force. Rather, it is a “party army,” the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Indeed, all career officers in the PLA are members of the CCP and all units at the company level and above have political officers assigned to enforce party control. Likewise, all important decisions in the PLA are made by Communist Party committees that are dominated by political officers, not by operators. This system ensures that the interests of the party’s civilian and military leaders are merged, and for this reason new Chinese soldiers entering into the PLA swear their allegiance to the CCP, not to the PRC constitution or the people of China.

Given the state of modern military hardware and training undertaken in those countries China might come into conflict with you'd think that they not would have developed a professional military but had moved away from Soviet era military doctrine of political officers and centralized command and control.

Intense and realistic training is dangerous business, and the American maxim that the more you bleed during training the less you bleed during combat doesn’t translate well in a Leninist military system. Just the opposite. China’s military is intentionally organized to bureaucratically enforce risk-averse behavior, because an army that spends too much time training is an army that is not engaging in enough political indoctrination.Beijing’s worst nightmare is that the PLA could one day forget that its number one mission is protecting the Communist Party’s civilian leaders against all its enemies – especially when the CCP’s “enemies” are domestic student or religious groups campaigning for democratic rights, as happened in 1989 and 1999, respectively.

What's implied is that the Chinese Communist Party and its leaders fear a military which is not only professional but has the ability think strategically and act independently of the central government. Lacking those qualities how would China's military react to an actual armed conflict?

For that reason, the PLA has to engage in constant “political work” at the expense of training for combat. This means that 30 to 40 percent of an officer’s career (or roughly 15 hours per 40-hour work week) is wasted studying CCP propaganda, singing patriotic songs, and conducting small group discussions on Marxist-Leninist theory. And when PLA officers do train, it is almost always a cautious affair that rarely involves risky (i.e., realistic) training scenarios.

Yet none of this should be comforting to China’s potential military adversaries. It is precisely China’s military weakness that makes it so dangerous. Take the PLA’s lack of combat experience, for example. A few minor border scraps aside, the PLA hasn’t seen real combat since the Korean War. This appears to be a major factor leading it to act so brazenly in the East and South China Seas. Indeed, China’s navy now appears to be itching for a fight anywhere it can find one. Experienced combat veterans almost never act this way. Indeed, history shows that military commanders that have gone to war are significantly less hawkish than their inexperienced counterparts. Lacking the somber wisdom that comes from combat experience, today’s PLA is all hawk and no dove.

Six In The Morning Saturday February 1

1 February 2014 Last updated at 08:28

Mohammed Morsi trial over Egypt protesters' deaths to resume

Ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has arrived in court in the capital, Cairo, for the resumption of one of the four trials against him.

Mr Morsi and 14 other figures from the Muslim Brotherhood are charged with inciting the killing of protesters near the presidential palace in 2012.

At a hearing in another trial four days ago, a defiant Mr Morsi shouted that he was still the legitimate president.

He was deposed by the army last year after huge crowds rallied against him.

He is now facing four separate criminal trials on various charges.

They are:

Inciting supporters to commit violence and murder as they tried to break up an opposition protest in Cairo in December 2012
Conspiring with foreign organisations to commit terrorist acts, with prosecutors accusing Mr Morsi of forming an alliance with the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah
Murdering prison officers in a jailbreak in 2011 during the uprising against the then-President Hosni Mubarak
Insulting the judiciary

Catholic priest who ran right-wing death squad arrested in Colombia

The Rev Oscar Albeiro Ortiz was convicted in absentia last year for organising ruthless militia made up of former paramilitaries

Associated Press in Bogotá
theguardian.com, Saturday 1 February 2014 03.15 GMT

Colombian officials have announced the capture of a fugitive Catholic priest who was convicted in absentia last year of organising a killer far-right militia made up of members of a dismantled paramilitary bloc.

For nearly a decade from 2003, the Rev Oscar Albeiro Ortiz formed and ran an organisation engaged in murder, extortion and forced displacement, according to his sentencing document.

From his pulpit in San Antonio de Prado, a village near Medellín, Ortiz had accompanied members of the paramilitary bloc, then recruited them after the bloc was ostensibly disbanded under a peace pact brokered by the government of then-president Alvaro Uribe.

'We have been here longer than a thousand years': Kurdistan's fight for nationhood

West ‘appalled’ by Ukraine violence as military urges action

Police seek to arrest activist who was “beaten and tortured”

Daniel McLaughlin

Members of Ukraine’s armed forces have called on President Viktor Yanukovich to take “urgent measures to stabilise the situation in the country”, as the European Union and United States said they were “appalled” by the apparent kidnapping and torture of a prominent opposition activist.

“Servicemen and employees of Ukraine’s armed forces . . . have called on the commander-in-chief to take urgent measures within the limits of existing legislation to stabilise the situation,” the defence ministry said in a statement yesterday.

The armed forces “regard as unacceptable the seizure of state offices”, the statement said, adding that “further escalation of the confrontation threatens the country’s territorial integrity.”

UNESCO to help restore Islamic museum in Cairo

01 FEB 2014 10:18 SAPA-AP

Unesco has expressed shock and concern after seeing the destruction caused by a bomb blast at a Cairo-based museum dedicated to Islamic history.

UNESCO pledged Friday to help restore a renowned museum dedicated to Islamic history in Cairo that was devastated by a bomb last week, with officials expressing "shock" at the scale of the damage.

The Museum of Islamic Art was across the street from the truck bomb that targeted the Egyptian capital's security headquarters on January 24. It killed four people and caused damage to buildings for hundreds of meters around, smashing the museum's facade and sending debris crashing onto exhibits.

Egypt's Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said that 164 of the 1,471 items on display were damaged, of which 90 could be reassembled or restored. Most of the 74 irreparably damaged items were glass and porcelain, smashed to powder.

How Choco Pie infiltrated North Korea's sweet tooth

By Madison Park, Frances Cha and Evelio Contreras, CNN

The first time the South Korean factory owner watched his North Korean employees nibble on a Choco Pie, they appeared shocked -- even overwhelmed.

He summed up their reaction to the South Korean snack in one word: "Ecstasy."

Much like what Twinkies are to Americans, South Korea's Choco Pies -- two disc-shaped, chocolate-covered cakes, sandwiching a rubbery layer of marshmallow cream -- are ubiquitous, cost less than 50 cents and are full of empty calories.

But on the other side of the Korean border, the snacks are viewed as exotic, highly prized treats, selling on North Korea's black markets for as much as $10, according to analysts. Their rising popularity in the north reveals an unexpected common ground between the two Koreas, despite their fractious relationship -- a shared sweet tooth.

Ignoring Asia