While Donald Trump shocked the world by admitting that he is entertaining purchasing the world’s largest island, Greenland, from Denmark, regardless of the fact that it is not for sale, there are other island moves taking place in the Middle East, Indian Ocean, South Pacific, and elsewhere. What makes Trump’s obsession unique is that Trump appears to think that an island like Greenland that is under duress from global warming is prime for a hostile takeover bid. While that may be a business strategy in Trump’s cut-throat world of high-end real estate, it is not acceptable in the world of diplomacy and international relations.

When a Manhattan hotel is sold, the purchase agreement does not include all of the hotel’s occupants. Greenland’s population is 57,000, 88 percent of whom are native Inuit. There is little chance that the Inuit citizens of Greenland would want to become part of a country whose president repeatedly calls a US senator “Pocahontas” and disparages the treaty rights of Native American tribal nations. Nor would the Inuit, as well as the ethnic Danish minority, want to sacrifice their top-notch national health care system for one of the worst in the industrialized world.

Another strategic island, Socotra, which lies in an important shipping channel in the Gulf of Aden, is currently a highly-contested prize between the United Arab Emirates, the internationally-recognized government of the Yemen Arab Republic – exiled in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the South Yemeni secessionist Southern Transition Council (STC) – which is backed by the UAE and seeks restoral of South Yemen’s former independent status, and the British colonial era Mahra State of Qishn and Socotra, which is supported by Oman, where the pretender to the throne of Qishn and Socotra, Sheikh Abdullah Al Afrar, is headquartered when he is not present in Socotra. Socotrans have grown tired of the presence of Emirati and Saudi troops on their pristine island, called the “Galapagos of the Indian Ocean” due to the presence of flora and fauna not found anywhere else in the world. During the final 75 years of the Mahra State, the Mahra sultans ruled their British protectorate from Hadiboh, the capital city of Socotra.

There are significant historical links between the Mahra and Omani sultans and Omani Sultan Qaboos bin Said has avoided participation in the Saudi-led coalition that is battling Houthi-led rebels who have taken control of much of North Yemen. The UAE, which took over control of Socotra’s airport and seaport, views Socotra as a key link between the UAE, the Horn of Africa, and the Red Sea. There has been some talk of the UAE leasing Socotra for 99 years. However, just as Greenland and Denmark have told Washington that Greenland is not for sale, the Socotrans and Mahra State, backed by Oman, have told Abu Dhabi that Socotra is not for lease.

To the south in the Indian Ocean, the UN General Assembly voted on May 22, 2019 to set a six-month deadline for the United Kingdom to withdraw from the Chagos Archipelago, which is claimed by Mauritius. In 1967, the British expelled the native Chagossians from the archipelago to make way for a major US military base on Diego Garcia. Mauritius, which became home to many Chagossian refugees, wants the original inhabitants resettled on their islands. London and Washington are balking at any such notion.

While Borneo, the world’s third largest island after Greenland and New Guinea, is part of Indonesia, the announcement by Indonesian President Joko Widodo that Indonesia will move its capital city from Jakarta to the northeastern part of Borneo will forever change the nature of Borneo. Half of Jakarta is currently below sea-level, a situation that has been caused by a combination of depletion of ground water and rising sea levels due to climate change. Current plans are to move Indonesia’s capital to a forested area between the East Kalimantan province cities of Balikpapan and Samarinda.

The new capital will be close to Eastern Malaysia’s states of Sabah and Sarawak and the Sultanate of Brunei. Like the Amazon Basin, East Kalimantan province’s rain forests have also earned it the title of “lungs of the world.” Environmentalists are concerned about the effect the new capital city will have on forest destruction, an issue that currently plagues the Malaysian state of Sarawak. Borneo is home to three secessionist movements. The Kalimantan Dayaks and Malays favor independence or unification with Malaysia. However, there are also nascent secessionist movements in Sarawak and Sabah that seek a complete break with Peninsular Malaysia. It remains to be seen how Indonesia’s new capital will be viewed by Kalimantan secessionists.

Two uninhabited islands in the Red Sea between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Tiran and Sanafir, have been the subject of a virtual tug-of-war between the Saudis and Egyptians. In 2016, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said during a press conference with visiting Saudi King Salman, that the two islands would be transferred to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis insisted that they only temporarily transferred administration of Tiran and Sanafir to Egypt in 1950 in order to protect the islands from being occupied by Israel. In 1956, Israel did occupy the islands, but they were transferred back to Egypt following the 1978 Camp David accord between Israel and Egypt.

In response to the transfer of the islands, Egyptian protesters demanded that the Egyptian government not go through with the deal because it violated the terms of the Egyptian Constitution, which requires a national referendum is required before any change to Egypt’s borders. The Saudis plan to build a causeway via the two islands linking Saudi Arabia to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Many Egyptians are keenly aware that the Saudi military crossed the Saudi causeway with Bahrain to help brutally put down a popular revolt by Bahraini citizens. They fear the same will occur with the Saudi causeway to Egypt.

Global climate change also resulted in one government, that of the rising sea level threatened South Pacific nation of Kiribati, to purchase land on the Fijian island of Vanua Levu that in the future would become the home to Kiribati’s climate change refugees and become an ex-situ seat of government for Kiribati. The 6,000 acres bought in 2014 by Kiribati’s then-president, Anote Tong, was seen as a model for how other threatened nations, including Tuvalu, Nauru, and Maldives, might maintain their identity and independence long after they disappeared beneath the waves. Tong called the project “migration with dignity.” Tong’s successor, Taneti Mamau, changed Tong’s plans. Rather than move to higher ground on Vanua Levu, Mamau now favors dealing with climate change effects in Kiribati. He said he favors leaving the future of Kiribati and the I-Kiribati people in God’s hands. That comes as little comfort to the people of the crowded Kiribati capital in South Tarawa, Abaiang, and other islands dealing with the effects of saltwater contamination of fresh ground water, ruined crops, and inundated houses.

From Washington and Jakarta to Copenhagen and Abu Dhabi island fever has taken hold with new real estate development plans at the forefront of major political and financial decisions.

Schultz and those like him who have or are harboring political ambitions want governments to serve the neo-mercantilist elites, not the common folk. The historical precedent for this behavior is the British East India Company, also known as the “Honorable East India Company.” This London-based company controlled a vast monopoly on trade, extending from India and Southeast Asia, China, and Japan to the wharves of Boston in the British colony of Massachusetts Bay in North America.

The famous “Boston Tea Party” of 1773 was a rebellion by American colonial merchants over the imposition of the Stamp Tax on tea and other goods imported to North America from India by the British East India Company. However, the rebels of Boston were more interested in their bottom line than in political fervor to break from the British Crown. In fact, the thirteen red and white stripes on the flag of the British East India Company, with the British Union Jack in the canton, became the basis for the design of the American flag, with a field of white stars replacing the Union Jack. When Americans fight over respect for “the flag,” few realize that what they are being forced to respect is a modified form of the standard for one of the largest mercantilist contrivances in history. In effect, the British East India Company, which had its own army and navy, ruled over India and British colonies in Malaya, China, Burma, Mauritius, and Reunion.

The same mercantilist notions of trade expansion and control of commodities exists today with companies like Starbuck’s. The coffee chain distinguishes itself from its competitors by offering coffee choices with exotic-sounding names like “Sulawesi Dark Roast,” “Rwanda Blue Bourbon,” “Sumatra Dark Roast,” and “Guatemala Antigua,” and menus featuring choices written in a bastardized version of Esperanto. Schultz prides himself on being an enlightened entrepreneur, however, a close look at the Brooklyn-born mega-merchant of Seattle, yields the company he formed far from advocating any notions of progressive capitalism. As with other “new age” global corporations, including Apple, Amazon, Ikea, Microsoft, Starbuck’s has ridden the wave of corporations becoming more powerful than many countries, just as was the case with the old British East India Company and British South Africa Company, the latter founded by uber-capitalist and colonialist Cecil Rhodes.

When it came to buying coffee from some of the world's worst human rights violators and child labor practitioners, Schultz led the pack.

Starbucks enjoyed a very cozy relationship with the Indonesian military-backed coffee-growing colonists who ran East Timor's large plantations, during the Indonesian occupation of the former Portuguese colony. In 1999, protestors highlighted Starbucks' practices in East Timor and other countries during the anti-World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, Starbuck's headquarters. Starbuck’s, a company that prided itself as being progressive, turned out to be no different from than Shell, British Petroleum, Nike, Chiquita Brands, and other companies that exploit workers in poor developing nations.

In 1994, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) officially took control of East Timorese coffee plantations from the Indonesian armed forces. One of the Indonesian military bigwigs in on the deal was former Indonesian armed force commander General Benni Murdani, a favorite of the Central Intelligence Agency. Although Murdani was forced to resign as commander in 1993, his influence over East Timor's coffee production remained significant. Operating through a local super-cooperative called the Timor Coffee Project, which acted like a modern-day British East India Company, USAID and the US National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA) administered the coffee plantations and arranged for most of the organically-grown reddish-hued Arabica bean crop to be sold to none other than Starbuck's.

In East Timor, many of the local officials of the coffee cooperative were not even native Timorese, but migrants from Java and Bali who wanted to turn a quick profit on the backs of underpaid East Timorese farm workers.

Rather than be caught selling East Timorese coffee at its stores, Starbuck's cleverly re-named the coffee as being from Sulawesi or Sumatra.

To deal with the public relations debacle caused by its exposure in East Timor, Starbuck’s agreed to place "Fair Trade" labels on its products as proof that it was paying coffee farmers a fair price for their coffee. The Fair Trade labels were the brainchild of Trans Fair USA, the American branch of a self-regulatory international industry watchdog group that guarantees coffee, tea, chocolate, and banana growers receive a fair price without the markup of middlemen, and that farm laborers work under safe conditions.

Starbucks, as the first company to adopt the Fair Trade labeling scheme for coffee, offered its "fair trade" coffee free to passers-by during the World Bank protests in Washington, DC in 2000. Although Starbucks wanted to get ahead in the public relations contest, fair trade labels were not found on most of the company's products. Also, there has never been a real way for determining how much of Starbucks' business is really conducted through "fair trade" entities, or if only a small percentage of its wholesale coffee purchases are "greenwashed" for public relations reasons. Many have argued that such “mercantile activism” is nothing more than a corporate smokescreen designed to hide more unsavory business practices.

As East Timor slowly drifted toward independence from Indonesia, Washington, DC lobbyists, some employed by Starbuck’s, went to work. Following East Timor's overwhelming vote for independence in a 1999 referendum, every statement issued by the US State Department concerning the Indonesian genocide against the people of East Timor was tainted by assertions that any United Nations relief operation would have to be worked out with the authorities in Jakarta. Oddly, no such preconditions concerning Belgrade's acquiescence were ever attached to NATO's invasion of Kosovo taking place at the same time. Starbucks’ lobbyists were clearly trying to buy time for the status quo in East Timor.

One place where Starbuck’s phoniness on fair trade coffee was exposed was in the rebellious Mexican state of Chiapas. There, a Starbuck’s "greenwashing" effort was in full operation. In an attempt to drive independent squatters off of the sensitive rain forest land in Montes Azules, where farmers slash and burn for agricultural land, groups such as Conservation International and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), as well as the always suspect USAID, began a campaign to protect the land for 66 surviving Lacandon Mayan families. However, it was discovered that the non-governmental organizations and their USAID partners had other motives, which included gaining access to the Montes Azules rainforest for the exploitation of coffee, fruit, oil, and pharmaceutical precursors. Leading the parade of the firms wanting to exploit Montes Azules was Starbuck’s, with ExxonMobil, Chiquita Brands, and Coca Cola in tow. The Zapatista National Liberation Front, which is active in Chipas, said it would fight any attempt to remove any villagers from Montes Azules, once again pitting Starbuck’s and its agents of influence against the poorest of the poor.

Starbucks' support for unsavory regimes did not end with the Indonesian military occupiers of East Timor. After Rwandan President Paul Kagame transformed his country into a virtual one-party state, Starbuck’s announced it was interested in buying Rwandan coffee. In April 2004, Kagame made a pilgrimage to Seattle, the home of Starbucks, with his trade and agriculture ministers in tow. Rwanda's coffee industry received financial support from the Bush administration, anxious to bolster its client in Kigali. The “Assistance a la Dynamisation de l'Agribusiness au Rwanda” (ADAR), a Rwandan enterprise designed to spur entrepreneurship in the coffee industry, received US government funding.

In an appearance in Seattle to promote his movie, "Hotel Rwanda," director Terry George, used the occasion to promote Rwandan coffee: "If Starbuck's would carry Rwandan coffee—which is extremely good, by the way—that alone could save the country from economic disaster."

Under Brazil's new far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, the nation's child labor laws are being rolled back, with companies like Starbuck's at the ready to take advantage of the situation to purchase cheaper coffee beans.

Howard Schultz, like other mercantilists of today and yesteryear, made his billions on the backs of others, including, in some cases, children as young as five-years old. It does not help Schultz’s political case to have signed on to his nascent exploratory campaign staff, Steve Schmidt, the former Republican Party strategist who convinced 2008 Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, to select Alaska’s Governor, Sarah Palin, as his running mate. The United States has already experienced the ravages brought about by a self-seeking billionaire currently occupying the Oval Office and it can ill-afford to replace him with another.

Mohammad Hamdan is the spiritual caretaker of Mesjid Raya Al Mashun, the largest mosque in the Indonesian city of Medan on the island of North Sumatra. One of his top responsibilities is to help parents name their new born children.

Names are full of meaning in Indonesia, meaning parents take great care to give their offspring the possible start in life. “As Muslims, we believe that a name is like a prayer to god. If we give our child a good name, it’s like our wish for them for the future,” said Hamdan

Academics Joel Kuipers and Askuri noted in a 2017 article entitled ‘Islamization and Identity in Indonesia: The Case of Arabic Names in Java’ that surveyed over three million names across three regencies a “growing popularity of bestowing Arabic names on Javanese children.”

In Java’s Bantul region, for example, “There were far fewer pure Arabic, or even Javanese–Arabic hybrid names until the mid 1980s. By the 1990s, however, about half of the children born have at least one Arabic name.

“During this same period … the number of children who have “pure” Javanese names — i.e., a name not mixed with either a Western or Arabic name—has dramatically declined, and by 2000, such names are a distinct minority.”

The origins of names are now a hot topic of national debate. In January, the Karanganyar Legislative Council (DPRD) in Central Java announced plans to issue a bylaw which will prohibit parents from naming their child using a ‘Western’ name.

According to the council’s speaker, Sumanto, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name, “It will take quite a long time for the council to pass the bylaw. But in principal, the bylaw aims to protect local cultures that have begun to disappear.”

He pointed to a rise in the use of Western names in Indonesia, saying that he was “concerned about the condition” and thinks that local names should be protected as “part of the nation’s noble historical inheritance.”

It is not immediately clear from Sumanto’s comments what differentiates a ‘Western’ from a ‘local’ name, or if the law would potentially be enforced retroactively, forcing Indonesians with Western-sounding names to pick new ones.

As Kuipers and Askuri’s research shows, however, many Indonesians in Java use Arabic names, so the law could cause a new surge in the Arabization of Indonesia’s naming culture.

Hamdan says for examples Indonesians who choose to name their children ‘David’ would in future need to use the Arabic version, which is ‘Daud.’ He says he supports the law as he feels that it is “better to give your child a Muslim name if you can” to show your Muslim identity.

Others, however, are gravely concerned about the proposed law’s implication for religious and other freedoms. Speaking to Asia Times, Indonesian human rights lawyer Veronica Koman describes the proposed law as “unnecessary and over-reaching into citizens’ private lives.”

From a legal perspective, Koman also urges caution because “the law could be discriminatory and could potentially violate parents’ right to freedom of cultural expression.”

Religious leaders already exercise a strong power of persuasion. Hamdan explains one of the ways that parents end up with Arabic names for their children. “When they are babies their parents take them to a Tuan Sheikh (an Islamic expert). The Tuan Sheikh asks questions, such as the day and time of birth and gives the child a good name accordingly.”

He also says that name choices are now increasingly being discussed publicly thanks to the rise of social media. The name you use on Twitter or Facebook forms part of your whole online persona, and people are now more mindful of their overall image, says Hamdan.

He suggests this is less a sign of Islamization and more an element of ‘showing off’ that comes with social media, with parents wanting to demonstrate that they have chosen a name with strong religious connotations. With the rise of shared online information, people are more aware that names matter, he says.

Hamdan also points to how names fall in and out of fashion depending on geopolitical events. At the time of the US-Iraq War in 2003, Hamdan says that a number of his friends named their children ‘Saddam Hussein.’

“Many of them wanted to show their support for Islam versus the West, which is how they saw the Iraq War,” Hamdan said. “To do this they did the most obvious thing they could think of – name their child after Saddam Hussein.”

Intan Veranica, an ethnic Batak Mandailing from Sumatra, says her name is not of Arab origin. Nor is her husband Wahyu Hidayat, a Javanese whose name is a Malay-Arabic hybrid.

Yet the couple recently chose to name their one-year-old son Abizar Al Ghani, one of the 99 names of Allah, because his father wanted him to have a name that “sounded more Arab than Indonesian to show that we are good Muslims,” she said. “Abizar means gold mine so we hope he will have a lot of money in his life.”

Naming a child after a religious or high-profile Muslim figure is common practice in Indonesia, but Hamdan says that this tends to come and go in cycles, as with the previous example of Saddam Hussein, which apparently is no longer popular.

He says that one of the biggest religious and political issues in Indonesia today is the struggle between Israel and Palestine, which is spelled ‘Palestina’ in the local Indonesian language.

Strung across the street of his mosque is a colorful banner urging support for the Palestinians in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s recent controversial decision to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Hamdan notes that he observed a large rally in Medan several weeks ago in support of Palestine. “I walked through the crowd and people were saying that they would do anything they could to pledge their support to the Palestinian cause. Who knows? Maybe we will see more and more Indonesians naming their children ‘Palestina’ in the future,” he says.

atimes.com

The Indonesian military is beefing up security along the nation’s sea border with the Philippines, where Islamic State-inspired militants are engaged in combat with Filipino security forces in the southern city of Marawi located in Mindanao – the island, which could potentially become a focal point for regional fighters.

According to Indonesian Armed Forces Commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo, «Almost in all Indonesian provinces, except for Papua, there are ISIS sleeper cells». A strategic plan of defense has been presented to Indonesian President Joko «Jokowi» Widodo. Military facilities are being built in outermost northern islands to counter terrorists invading from the Philippines. Indonesia has deployed submarines off Marore and Miangas islands along the northern end of Sulawesi Island. Military presence will be bolstered presence around the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea, Biak Island in Papua and Saumlaki Islands in Maluku.

Army Major General Ganip Warsito, a territorial military commander overseeing Sulawesi and the border with the Philippines, said, «If the Philippines wins, Indonesia would get a spill-over effect from the retreating militants, but if the Philippines loses, Mindanao would be a strong regional ISIS base that threatens Indonesia among others». So, whatever the outcome is, Indonesia will have to be combat ready.

Meanwhile, Indonesia and Malaysia are holding talks on joint actions to be taken to repel the common enemy. Indonesia has called for a conference with the Philippines and Malaysia to discuss events in Marawi. The three countries, with Singapore's assistance, will begin joint air surveillance over the Sulu Sea, using reconnaissance planes and drones, and enhance joint naval patrols. The joint maritime operations would begin on June 19. The emerging alliance of these states is a new trend shaping the security landscape in the Asia-Pacific.

There are other states of the region affected. Islamist attacks have also taken place in China and Thailand.

At the last year’s East Asia Summit (EAS) in Vientiane, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov clearly stated that signing of a comprehensive document on Asia-Pacific security is Russia’s long-term goal. According to him, «the region has no ‘umbrella structure’ that would unite all without exception, the Asia-Pacific Region states, and develop, unified for all, rules of conduct, on a non-bloc basis, of an equal and indivisible security». The EAS includes all 10 ASEAN members plus Russia, Australia, India, China, New Zealand, South Korea, the United States and Japan. Today, the regional security agenda is more focused on territorial disputes than combating international terrorism.

The 12th East Asian Summit will take place in the Philippines in November. Escalation of hostilities in the region demonstrates the need for serious discussions of the Russia-launched initiative.

Speaking at the ASEAN meeting on June 6, Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Cayetano said agreements on security cooperation with China and Russia are being worked out. Last month, Russia and the Philippines forged a number of security and intelligence agreements delving in security issues. During the visit, a total of 10 deals were signed, including a defense agreement and a deal to share intelligence. The defense agreement will pave the way for more exchanges between military experts and top officials. Russian President Putin discussed with President Duterte the planned cooperation on security matters at the recent Belt and Road leaders’ summit in Beijing.

Last May, Russia and Indonesia signed an intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in defense, including transfer of technologies and joint manufacturing. The parties also agreed to expand intelligence exchange to address the terrorist threat. A contract on Indonesia purchasing Russian Su-35 fighters is being discussed.

On April 3, 2017, the Russian Federation and Malaysia celebrated an important date — the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. The meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak in May last year in Sochi on the sidelines of the Russia–ASEAN summit gave strong impetus to cooperation in all spheres. The Malaysian Air Force uses modern Russian Su-30MKM warplanes.

Russia is fighting ISIS in Syria, while the countries of Southeast Asia are gearing up to repel a massive terrorist offensive as the IS loses ground in the Middle East. They have a common enemy. Russia has vast experience of fighting terrorism to share and weapons battle-tested in Syria to offer. The growing threat puts to the fore the Russia’s proposals on creating regional security organization in the region.

In the run-up to identifying Mr Duterte as the object of its disapproval, the Times observed that «for the most part American presidents, Republican and Democratic, have believed that the United States should provide a moral compass to the world».

A moral compass? That rang a bell, because one person who used this phrase recently was the US Ambassador to the United Nations, the egregious Nikki Haley, who declared at her confirmation hearing that she will «speak up against anything that goes against American values», because «we have always been the moral compass of the world». What nonsense.

Many Americans have been horrified at the way in which their leaders have spun America’s moral compass over the years, and it is barely credible that anyone could utter such a phrase with sincerity.

Past presidents may have paid lip-service to such ideals, but few have pursued policies that would in any way indicate that the United States of America was providing a global moral compass. Post World War II, Washington’s ethics were blasted into pieces by the Pentagon’s evil fandangos in Vietnam and surrounding countries, where the effects of its massacres, bombings of cities and towns, and use of the chemical Agent Orange are still being suffered.

Ironically, the New York Times carried a piece in 2014 titled Agent Orange’s Long Legacy, for Vietnam and Veterans, which stated that «the war has not ended for many of the 2.8 million [US] servicemen and women who went to Vietnam. These ailing veterans are convinced that their cancers and nervous disorders and skin diseases — not to mention congenital maladies afflicting some of their children — are a result of their contact with Agent Orange». The writer claimed that «Often enough, that linkage has not been established incontrovertibly», which is a contemptible get-out, but the swinging moral compass went off the wall when he averred that the «Vietnamese accept almost as an article of faith that America’s aerial and ground spraying poisoned their environment, perhaps for decades to come, and is to blame for severe birth defects that afflict hundreds of thousands of their children. Whether that is indeed a reality has not been definitively established».

The poison of Agent Orange has indeed continued, as evidenced by many reports, one of the latest being on 4 April 2017 that «on a hill above his home, former soldier Do Duc Diu showed me the cemetery he built for his twelve children, who all died soon after being born disabled. There are a few extra plots next to the existing graves for where his daughters, who are still alive but very sick, will be buried». And it was Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon who bore responsibility for the vile despoliation of a region and the deaths of so many of its innocent citizens.

Moral compass? You’ve got to be joking.

Then the Editorial Board excelled itself by pronouncing that the Presidents of the United States have been «encouraging people to pursue their right to self-government and human dignity and rebuking foreign leaders who fall short».

The list of countries whose people have been actively discouraged by US Administrations from «pursuing their right to self-government» is long and depressing, and when there was movement to support people who want democracy the usual result was catastrophe. That this statement was made during Press Freedom Week was indeed ironic, because it was also reported that «Washington is working to push through contracts for tens of billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia, some new, others in the pipeline, ahead of President Donald Trump's trip to the kingdom this month». He is visiting a dictatorship where, as his own State Department acknowledges, «civil law does not protect human rights, including freedoms of speech and of the press». Moral compass, anyone?

President Duterte is a gross violator of human rights and entirely without any moral sense. As noted on CNN, he is «the thug President of the Philippines — our ally. Here’s a man who has bragged about committing murder . . . and who just happens to be presiding over an anti-drug operation that by some estimates has involved the extrajudicial killing of some 7,000 people».

But there have been and continue to be many similar despots around the world whom the United States and the New York Times have supported for years. Take the truly evil Park Chung-Hee of South Korea with whom President Kennedy «reaffirmed the strong bonds of friendship traditionally existing between the two countries» and who lasted through Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford and even the faintly morally-conscious Carter, until Park’s assassination in 1979. Where was the moral compass in these hideous years in which Park was a valued ally of the United States?

Then there was the brutal Suharto of Indonesia (1967 to 1998; Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush the First, Clinton) about whom in 2015, fifty years after Suharto’s most appalling massacres, the New York Times carried a piece acknowledging that «with American support, more than 500,000 people were murdered by the Indonesian Army and its civilian death squads. At least 750,000 more were tortured and sent to concentration camps, many for decades». Reagan liked Suharto and in a speech went so far as to spin his moral compass back-to-front and say that «tonight we welcome good friends back to the White House» because he considered his dictator guest to have «clear-sighted recognition of where the interests of both our nations lie».

Of course Suharto recognised American interests — just as present-day dictators recognise them and know that although Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the Tweeter-in Chief, Donald Trump, should, as Haley proudly announced, «speak up against anything that goes against American values», they’ll do that selectively. They adopt this approach because although US values are Constitutionally and morally at variance with those of all the Gulf dictatorships, for example, they are subject to modification in interpretation as they go up the gently-sloped moral ladders of the Congress and the Administration.

There are never any public rebukes for the Gulf dictators, in spite of the State Department recording that they are intolerant bigots with no regard for human rights.

Washington declares Saudi Arabia to be «a strong partner» in spite of it being noted in the report on human rights that its citizens have no «ability and legal means to choose their government» while there are «restrictions on universal rights, such as freedom of expression, including on the internet, and the freedoms of assembly, association, movement, and religion; and pervasive gender discrimination and lack of equal rights that affected most aspects of women’s lives».

It would be refreshing if the New York Times Editorial Board were to get hold of America’s moral compass and encourage the President to rebuke the monarchy of Saudi Arabia for its long-standing, embedded and comprehensive contempt for the rights of Saudi citizens.

By all means criticize Trump for cosying up to the savage Duterte — but spare us the claptrap about moral compasses.

The Saudi power projection into Southeast Asia and the trip of the Saudi king to Indonesia, the first such visit by a Saudi monarch since 1970, when Saudi King Faisal visited the country, comes as U.S. President Donald Trump indicates that the United States will place its own interests ahead of those of other countries. In a speech before a joint session of the U.S. Congress, Trump also stated that it his policy that the United States «will respect the sovereign rights of nations» and that his administration will «respect the right of all nations to chart their own path».

Trump also signaled that while he will «respect historic institutions» – a clear reference to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United Nations, and the European Union, all of which he has criticized in the past – he expects U.S. allies in NATO, in the Middle East, and the Pacific «to take a direct and meaningful role in both strategic and military operations, and pay their fair share of the cost».

Trump has congratulated the United Kingdom on the results of the Brexit referendum and the decision to depart the EU. Trump, furthermore, hopes that France, the Netherlands, and other EU members will go their own separate ways from the «Eurocracy» establishment in Brussels.

While Trump has called for huge increases in military spending by the Pentagon, there is clearly a shift taking place in global alignments owing to America’s new policy of bilateralism as opposed to multilateralism. Because of what appears to be an end of the «coalition of the willing» constructs adopted by President George W. Bush and continued by President Barack Obama, nations like Saudi Arabia and others are looking to creating new strategic relationships. 

Salman’s immediate and disconcerting goal for visiting predominantly Muslim Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and Maldives seems to boost the already-strict Muslim societies in Brunei and Maldives and encourage the Islamic radicalization of Indonesia and Malaysia, both of which have sizeable minorities of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and other religious groups. Recently, Saudi-financed clerics have encouraged Islamic proselytizing among non-Muslims students attending public schools in Malaysia; the firebombing of churches in Indonesia and Malaysia; adoption of strict Sharia law in certain fundamentalist regions like Aceh province on Sumatra in Indonesia and the Malaysian states of Kelantan and Terengganu; complete with flogging and amputation of limbs; and severe restrictions on Christian missionaries.

Beyond spreading radical Wahhabism, the Saudis are adopting a «look east» strategic policy. Salman and his entourage are also visiting Japan and China. In Beijing, Salman may get an earful about Saudi support for Muslim Uighurs fighting in China’s western Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) for an independent Islamic «East Turkestan» state.

The fact that a Saudi king is involving himself in a region, where there is a potential military conflict between China and various South East Asian nations over the control of islands and waters in the South China Sea, serves as but one example of how various nations are beginning to fill the void left by the U.S. disengagement from various geo-politically important regions of the world. It was not too long ago that President Obama was heralding his economic and military «pivot to Asia», which was predicated upon the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the reinforcing of U.S. military relationships with Australia, Philippines, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea. With Trump’s withdrawal from the TPP, Australia is looking toward China for closer economic ties, the Philippines wants to end the presence of U.S. troops in the country, and, as seen with the visit of King Salman, Indonesia and Malaysia are hammering out new strategic partnerships in the Middle East.

The United Arab Emirates is also extending its influence beyond the Gulf. It recently announced it was building a military base in Berbera on the Gulf of Aden in the breakaway and internationally-unrecognized Republic of Somaliland. Somaliland declared independence from civil war-torn Somalia in 1991. The Somaliland base joins a UAE base already in operation in Assab in Eritrea. 

The UAE’s Berbera base was criticized by neighboring Djibouti, which hosts a Chinese naval base at the port of Obock and an American base at Camp Lemonier, next to Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport. There was a time when it was only the United States and France that maintained military bases in the Horn of Africa. With global strategic realignment, that is no longer the case. France continues to maintain a military presence in Djibouti and Japan established its first military base abroad in a 12-hectare site adjoining the U.S. base at Camp Lemonier. In addition, the Saudis are planning on a military base in Djibouti to support its genocidal campaign against anti-Saudi forces in Yemen. Turkey also established its first military base in Africa in the Somali capital of Mogadishu.

The United States once enjoyed the distinction of having one of the largest bases in the Indian Ocean on the island of Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territory. However, the Americans now have company, in addition to the sudden appearance of military bases in the Horn of Africa. India has built naval bases on Assumption island in the Seychelles and in the Agalega archipelago, a territory of Mauritius that lies 1000 kilometers north of Mauritius. India also maintains a radar and signals intelligence facility in northern Madagascar, near Ambilobe, and a naval depot in Muscat, Oman.

As what can be called the «Trump Doctrine» takes effect, similar «force projections» by nations that have traditionally not operated militarily from their own local regions will become more commonplace. France has, for some time, maintained an Abu Dhabi military base, which is known Camp de la Paix. 

Singapore is negotiating for air base rights, to be used mostly for training Singaporean Air Force pilots, at the Ohakea Air Base in New Zealand and at Anderson Air Force Base in the U.S. territory of Guam. Singapore also maintains training bases in Townsville and Shoalwater Bay in Queensland, Australia. The recent seizure by Hong Kong Customs of nine Terrex armored vehicles returning by sea from joint Singaporean-Taiwanese military exercises in Taiwan, maneuvers that have been held since 1975, pointed to the possibility of a permanent Singaporean military presence in Taiwan, although Singapore recognizes only the People’s Republic of China as the sole government of China.

The South Pacific may soon join the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in seeing a scramble for foreign naval and air bases. China is known to be interested in such bases in nations that are major recipients of Chinese aid, including Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu. The United States considers the South Pacific as an «American lake,» but as its regional surrogates, Australia and New Zealand, seek their own new strategic relationships, other state players, including Japan, India, Russia, Germany, and Canada, may establish their own military presence in the region. 

The Trump Doctrine is bringing about a new world construct; however, it is not the «new world order» envisaged by the globalist majordomos in Washington, Brussels, London, Frankfurt, and New York.

Today, it remains illegal to display any Communist symbols in Indonesia, a leftover from the Central Intelligence Agency’s coup and subsequent purge and execution of Communists. In addition, selling books on Communism and screening films sympathetic to labor rights and socialism are also banned. The defunct PKI remains illegal in Indonesia. Therefore, it appears incongruent that the government of President Joko «Jokowi» Widodo is backing public discussions of the events of 1965, which involve survivors of the massacres of the 1960s, while also permitting the police and violent Islamist gangs to harass anyone favoring a national dialogue on the anti-Communist purges of the past.

At the center of the right-wing opposition to a public dialogue on 1965 and the coup is Jokowi’s defense minister, Ryamizard Ryacudu, who has been covertly working with Islamist groups to re-stoke the flames of anti-Communism. Under Ryacudu, Indonesia’s armed forces have gone from a position of neutrality in the US-Chinese military standoff over disputed maritime territory in the South China Sea to one of militarily confronting Chinese fishing vessels and Coast Guard patrol craft in waters claimed as Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone. There have been three clashes between the Indonesian navy and Chinese vessels since March of this year in waters surrounding Indonesia’s Natuna islands.

In March, a Chinese Coast Guard vessel tried to prevent the Indonesian Navy from towing away a Chinese fishing boat. In May, the Indonesian Navy opened fire on a Chinese fishing boat as it was fleeing the area. The boat was captured and its crew continues to be detained in Ranai, the capital of the Natuna islands. On June 17, the Indonesian Navy opened fire on another Chinese fishing boat, injuring one crewman.

Ryacudu’s bellicose stance with China, with all of its reminders of the 1960s genocide of the PKI and ethnic Chinese, is music to the ears of the war hawks at the US Pacific Command in Hawaii and the Obama White House.

Barack Obama, in particular, does not want to see a public investigation and rehashing of the events in Indonesia in the 1960s lest they expose the roles that his mother, Javanese expert Ann Dunham Soetoro, and stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, played during those horrific times. With Obama preparing to leave office, his legacy and that of his family are planned to be forever enshrined in the Obama Library and Museum in Chicago. Any information that calls into question Obama’s mother’s role in Indonesia as a CIA snitch masquerading as a US Agency for International Development (USAID) village social worker or his father’s stint as a brutal enforcer of Suharto’s genocide will not only be unwelcome as the museum opens but will be suppressed at any costs. And the cost of making common cause with Indonesian militant Muslim groups and the Indonesian military is one that Obama and his cohorts are willing to pay in order to keep the Soetoro family’s role in the genocide of the 1960s forever secret.

Protests against an investigation of the 1965 coup are publicly being led by Saudi-influenced Islamists in Indonesia. The ringleaders of the protests are the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) and the Islamic People’s Forum (FUI), both groups financed by Wahhabist financiers based in Saudi Arabia, and which have been active in targeting Christians in Indonesia with violent action. In addition, the sons and daughters of the coup plotters and enforcers, some of whom likely grew up with Obama in the Menteng district of Jakarta, who operate under the banner of the Communication Forum on Indonesian Veterans’ Children (FKPPI), have joined the Islamists in rejecting an investigation of the coup and bloody purge.

It is more than certain that Obama told Jokowi exactly what he thought about the Indonesian president’s plans to investigate the events of 1965 at their meeting at the US-ASEAN Summit in February of this year in Sunnylands, California.

In return for helping the United States in joining the phalanx of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan in confronting China over the South China Sea, Obama is able to mobilize the CIA station at the US embassy in Jakarta to assist the radical Muslims, as well as the military, in opposing the public’s desire to re-examine 1965. This hardline stance by Washington and its Indonesian military allies flies in the face of the Obama administration’s oft-stated commitment to human rights elsewhere in the world.

Washington, which has deployed special forces and military units to the Philippines, Brunei, Singapore, and the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo to help those nations deal with China in the South China Sea, has done the same with Indonesia.

US special operations teams have reportedly deployed with Indonesian naval forces in patrolling the waters of the South China Sea and are assisting with the interdiction of Chinese fishing vessels and Coast Guard patrol boats. This comes on the heels of first-ever joint US-Indonesian submarine exercises in Indonesia waters. For many years, CIA personnel have worked with some Indonesian fishermen, who supplement their incomes by also engaging in piracy, in interdicting and boarding vessels of interest transiting the seas around the Natuna islands. A number of North Korean-flagged, as well as «flag of convenience», merchant ships, have been boarded by joint teams of Indonesian fishermen/pirates and US special operations personnel. The US teams locate and seize military items from North Korea, including missiles and their components, and nuclear components heading to North Korea, while the moonlighting Indonesian fishermen are welcome to take all the Chinese-made televisions, laptop computers, and other consumer goods they can haul away. Some of these same fishermen have now been pressed into service to keep an eye out for alleged Chinese poachers in disputed waters and call in the Indonesian navy and their American friends for assistance.

The close relationship between Obama, who was declared an Indonesian citizen by his stepfather, and Jokowi, makes any serious introspection of the Indonesian genocide dead-on-arrival. In 2015, Obama dangled the Trans-Pacific Partnership carrot in front of Jokowi during a summit meeting at the White House. Jokowi responded by saying, «Indonesia intends to join the TPP». With that statement, Jokowi signed on to the Obama agenda, which will not permit any sort of «truth and reconciliation» program in Indonesia or, if Obama were not so eager and personally committed to protect the legacy of his parents, a full-blown criminal tribunal on the scale of that conducted against the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.

Obama told Jokowi, «Obviously I have a very personal interest in Indonesia, given the fact that I spent a bit of time there as a child and have relatives who are Indonesian». It is true that Obama has a personal interest in Indonesia. However, his interest is in protecting a CIA-installed and CIA-supported regime that committed one of the worst genocides ever experienced in history and a mother and stepfather who avidly supported a deluge of blood and human corpses in the canals of Jakarta and in the rivers throughout the Indonesian archipelago.

Now that the Indonesian government has officially opened a probe into what the CIA called “one of the worst mass murders of the 20thcentury,” it’s time for the U.S. government to come clean about its own involvement in the orchestrated killing of hundreds of thousands of Communists, ethnic Chinese, intellectuals, union activists and other victims during the mid-1960s.

President Joko Widodo this week instructed one of his senior ministers to begin investigating mass graves that could shed light on the slaughter of more than half a million innocents by soldiers, paramilitary forces and anti-Communist gangs.

That orgy of violence followed the killing of six generals on Sept. 30, 1965, which the Indonesian military blamed on an attempted coup by the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). It marked the beginning of several decades of military dictatorship and further mass murders in East Timor and West Papua.

The PKI, which had some three million members, and millions more sympathizers, was by the early 1960s the strongest political force in the country aside from the military and the revered father of Indonesia’s independence, President Sukarno.

As one CIA adviser warned in 1963, “If the PKI is able to maintain its legal existence… Indonesia may be the first Southeast Asia country to be taken over by a popularly based, legally elected communist government.” Two years later, the military-led bloodbath put an end to that threat.

Indonesia’s government, whose leaders include military veterans of that era, still refuses to open criminal investigations into the mass murder, as called for in 2012 by Indonesia’s National Commission on Human Rights.

But some survivors nonetheless welcome the chance to expose truths that have been vigorously suppressed over the years by mass political arrests, press censorship, and pervasive indoctrination programs in the country’s schools.

Hiding Secrets

To help tell the whole story, Indonesia’s human rights commission and major international human rights organizations have called on the Obama administration to declassify U.S. government documents related to the massacres, as it did recently with respect to Argentina’s “dirty war” from 1976-83.

But President Obama, like his predecessors, has so far been reluctant to shed light on tragic events in Indonesia more than half a century ago.

“The extent of America’s role remains hidden behind a wall of secrecy,” complained Joshua Oppenheimer, maker of two acclaimed documentaries about the massacres: “The Act of Killing” and “The Look of Silence.”

“C.I.A. documents and U.S. defense attaché papers remain classified. Numerous Freedom of Information Act requests for these documents have been denied,” he observed. “If the U.S. government recognizes the genocide publicly, acknowledges its role in the crimes, and releases all documents pertaining to the issue, it will encourage the Indonesian government to do the same.”

It’s easy to guess why Washington is so reluctant to bare the truth. The limited number of documents that have been released suggest that U.S. officials goaded Indonesia’s military into seizing power in 1965 and then liquidating PKI supporters throughout the archipelago. The full record could look even uglier.

Indonesia became a focus of U.S. strategic concerns as far back as 1940, when Imperial Japan threatened its immensely valuable rubber plantations, tin mines, and oil wells. President Franklin Roosevelt’s showdown with Tokyo, which culminated in the Pearl Harbor attack, stemmed from his determination to resist the loss of the islands’ strategic resources. Years later, Richard Nixon would call Indonesia “by far the greatest prize in the South-East Asian area.”

Prompted by its appreciation of Indonesia’s value, the Eisenhower administration financed a full-scale but unsuccessful military rebellion in 1958 against the neutralist Sukarno government. The Kennedy administration tried to patch up relations, but President Lyndon Johnson — angered at the regime’s threat to U.S. rubber and oil companies as well as Sukarno’s friendly relations with the PKI — cut off economic aid while continuing training and assistance to the anti-Communist military.

As one senior State Department official testified in executive session before Congress just a few months before the 1965 coup, explaining the administration’s proposal to increase military aid, “When Sukarno leaves the scene, the military will probably take over. We want to keep the door open.”

Prompting the Slaughter

To prompt the army to act against Sukarno, U.S., British, and Australian intelligence operatives planted phony stories about PKI plots to assassinate army leaders and import weapons from Communist China to launch a revolt — elements of a “strategy of tension” that would later be used in Chile.

According to former CIA officer Ralph McGehee, the CIA “was extremely proud” of its campaign and “recommended it as a model for future operations.”

Months after the bloodbath began, the well-connected associate editor of the New York Times, James Reston, would write, “Washington is being careful not to claim any credit” for the coup “but this does not mean that Washington had nothing to do with it.”

The events that triggered the military takeover remain murky even today, thanks to the regime’s systematic suppression of evidence. What seems clear, however, is that the PKI was largely caught unprepared when a group of junior officers — acting either on their own or as part of a “false flag” operation mounted by the anti-Communist General Suharto — killed six generals in the name of stopping a right-wing coup against Sukarno.

Suharto and his colleagues quickly arrested the killers, blamed the PKI for the atrocity, and aroused popular outrage by spreading false stories that the murdered generals had been sexually mutilated.

They also charged that Indonesia’s Communists were targeting Islamic leaders. In response, the country’s largest Muslim organization issued an order to “eliminate all Communists.”

On Oct. 5, 1965, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Marshall Green informed Washington that Muslin groups were “lined up behind” the army, which “now has opportunity to move against PKI if it acts quickly. . . Momentum is now at peak with discovery of bodies of murdered army leaders. In short, it’s now or never.”

Green was hopeful: “Much remains in doubt, but it seems almost certain that agony of ridding Indonesia of effects of Sukarno… has begun.” To help make sure that came to pass, Green advised telling coup leaders of “our desire to be of assistance where we can,” while remaining in the shadows.

Fanning Flames

Green proposed fanning the flames of popular anger through covert propaganda: “Spread the story of PKI’s guilt, treachery and brutality (this priority effort is perhaps most-needed immediate assistance we can give army if we can find way to do it without identifying it as solely or largely US effort).”

To that end, he later instructed to U.S. Information Agency to use all its resources to “link this horror and tragedy with Peking and its brand of communism; associate diabolical murder and mutilation of the generals with similar methods used against village headmen in Vietnam.”

By mid-October, Green reported that the embassy had discussed strategy with Army and Muslim contacts for a “step-by-step campaign not only against PKI but against whole communist/Sukarno clique.”

Soon he was reporting the good news: the army had executed hundreds of Communists and arrested thousands of PKI cadre, with help from Muslim death squads.

“I, for one, have increasing respect for [the army’s] determination and organization in carrying out this crucial assignment,” he wrote.

To help the army succeed, Green endorsed Washington’s decision to bankroll the military’s clean-up operations against the PKI, adding that “the chances of detection or subsequent revelation of our support… are as minimal as any blackbag operation can be.”

In addition, by December 1965 the U.S. embassy began sending the Indonesian military lists of PKI leaders — facilitating their liquidation.

“It really was a big help to the army,” said Robert J. Martens, a former member of the U.S. Embassy’s political section. “They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad. There’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.”

In a December 1965 story, Time magazine offered the first significant account in the American media of the scope of the killing:

“Communists, red sympathizers and their families are being massacred by the thousands. Backlands army units are reported to have executed thousands of Communists after interrogation in remote jails. Armed with wide-bladed knives called ‘parangs,’ Moslem bands crept at night into the homes of Communists, killing entire families and burying the bodies in shallow graves.

“The murder campaign became so brazen in parts of rural East Java, that Moslem bands placed the heads of victims on poles and paraded them through villages. The killings have been on such a scale that the disposal of the corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in East Java and Northern Sumatra where the humid air bears the reek of decaying flesh.

“Travelers from these areas tell of small rivers and streams that have been literally clogged with bodies. River transportation has at places been seriously impeded.”

By February 1996, the U.S. embassy was estimating that at least 400,000 people had already been killed across the country — more than died from the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Media Approval

C.L. Sulzberger of The New York Times remarked in April that “the killing attained a volume impressive even in violent Asia, where life is cheap.”

Speaking for official Washington, in a column titled “A Gleam of Light in Asia,” the New York Times’ James Reston called this bloodbath one of “the more hopeful political developments” in Asia, one that could not have “been sustained without the clandestine aid it has received indirectly from here.”

The full extent of that clandestine aid remains a contested question, but historian Bradley Simpson, in a 2008 study of U.S. relations with Indonesia in the 1960s, observed that “declassification of just a fraction of the CIA’s records demonstrates that the agency’s covert operations in Indonesia were more widespread and insidious than previous acknowledged. These records also reveal that the Johnson administration was a direct and willing accomplice to one of the great bloodbaths of twentieth-century history.”

New Mexico’s Tom Udall declared last year as he introduced a Senate resolution to promote reconciliation on the 50th anniversary of the Indonesian massacres, “the United States and Indonesia must work to close this terrible chapter by declassifying information and officially recognizing the atrocities that occurred. . .

“The United States should stand in favor of continued democratic progress for our vital ally Indonesia and allow these historical documents to be disclosed. Only by recognizing the past can we continue to work to improve human rights across the globe.”

The world is still waiting on President Obama to heed that call.

consortiumnews

The author cites defense officials as a source. According to the article, Beijing is said to be concerned about the growing number of Chinese-origin terrorists who have joined the Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS.

«The real question is whose side will they be on», said one defense official familiar with internal discussion of the Chinese military role.

Rather than cooperating with the US-led military coalition, the Chinese military is more likely to join forces with Russia’s military, currently engaged in a large-scale bombing campaign in Syria, the article says. China is said to be concerned that the Islamic State is moving into western China, specifically Xinjiang province, where Muslim Uighurs in the past have joined Islamist terrorist groups like Islamic State rival al-Qaeda.

Islamic State militants issued a digital recording last December calling on China’s Uighurs to take up arms and join the Islamic State in the territory under ISIS control in Syria and Iraq.

Before that, the Islamic State’s leader, the cleric Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, released a recording in July 2014 in which he named China as one of many countries in which «Muslims’ rights are forcibly seized».

Speaking of the Syrian crisis, China's foreign minister Wang Yi said at the UN Security Council session in November, 2015: «The world cannot afford to stand by and look on with folded arms, but must also not arbitrarily interfere».

He added that nations should stand united against "violent extremist ideology". China has also shown solidarity with Syria, joining Russia in vetoing UN proposals against Bashar al-Assad.

Beijing announced new counterterrorism regulations in December that permit overseas activities. On January 13, China released a government paper (The Arab Policy Paper) calling for closer defense and military cooperation against terrorism in the Arab world.

In theory, China can launch J-15 warplanes from an aircraft carrier for attacks on Islamic State militants.

The news makes spring to mind the meeting of the Deputy Secretaries of Security Councils of the Collective Security Treaty Organization member states, with the participation of the representative of China that took place on October 14. It was decided to concentrate on preventive methods of fighting with Islamic fundamentalists. «There was expressed general concern about the activities in the Middle East of the so-called Islamic State and it trying to extend its influence in the direction of the southern borders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the People’s Republic of China, as well as Afghanistan», the press-service of CSTO reported.

«First of all, we agreed on a coordinated cutting of recruitment channels and routes of movement of foreign fighters, terrorists, who go to the conflict zone», the press release said.

Meanwhile the threat keeps on spreading into the Asia-Pacific, the region of vital interest to China, Russia and the USA.

On Jan. 14, bomb attacks took place in the heart of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta – a major attack in the country since 2009. Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo classified the explosions as terrorist acts. The Islamic State has recently identified Indonesia as a location of its interest. Up to 700 Indonesians have travelled to Syria in recent years to fight with anti-regime forces, with the majority allying themselves with the Islamic State, according to the Indonesian government. Indonesia fighters have also appeared in ISIS propaganda. The country has the world's largest Muslim population; the vast majority of the believers practice a moderate form of the religion. The country saw a spate of militant attacks in the 2000s.

The Jakarta tragedy makes recall the recent events in late 2015. In an online video masked gunmen were standing in front of the Islamic State flag, threatening an imminent attack on the Philippines hours after the deadly attacks in Paris on Nov. 13. The country was set to host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) on Nov.18. The video, which was addressed to the Philippine government, warned that an attack would happen «soon». In 2014 the terror group Abu Sayyaf and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters in Mindanao pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group. Even before the rise of the Islamic State in 2014, the southern Philippine region of Mindanao had been on the radar of international security observers due to a series of bomb attacks and kidnappings committed by the groups.

The Islamic State warned in a video on Nov. 16, 2015 that countries taking part in air strikes against Syria would suffer the same fate as France, and threatened to attack in Washington.

On Jan.13 Russia President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with US President Obama to reiterate the need to create a broad international coalition against the Islamic State, as well as all of the terrorist organizations operating in Syria, as soon as possible.

Globalization is not just a bed of roses with fresh fruits of all kinds at the supermarket in heavy mid-winter snow, easy air travel to all corners of the planet and the world interconnected by Internet. Terror gets global too. At any given minute militants are taught, trained and armed thousands of miles away to kill innocent people in all parts of the world sparing no one. International terror requires an international response. Emphasizing the divisions between the West and Russia when we should be united plays into the hands of the terrorists. Beijing joining the coalition with Russia will get Washington on the ropes, but it’s not the goal. The divisions among those who oppose the Islamic State should not hamper united efforts. We must also face up to the fact that we will not defeat the Islamic State without a broader, more effective and much better coordinated military effort. We must join together driving the terrorists out of their self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Otherwise, the territory they control will continue to be a haven and a training ground for murderers.

Russia and China have made clear that the destruction of Islamic State is their fight. All those men and women cut down in Paris, Istanbul, Jakarta and other places must be avenged. Their deaths should challenge us to do away with the evil that threatens to overwhelm the world.