Internet, Space, Politics, and War: How Western government-business collaborations and connections is spurring other countries to develop their own

Internet, Space, Politics, and War: How Western government-business collaborations and connections is spurring other countries to develop their own

    Friday, January 13, 2023   No comments

The US administration has used connections between private businesses in China and the Chinese government as a reason for banning Chinese companies from operating within the country. They argued that data collected by these businesses may end up in the hands of foreign governments. When some European governments joined the US government and put restrictions or bans on China-based businesses, it made this problem a global one. At the same time, it brought to the forefront the relationship between the private sector and governments. The media coverage may suggest that the problem with governmental use of data, information, or technology owned by businesses applies only to businesses operating out of China, implying that Western governments do not use tools from businesses or collaborate with businesses to achieve national political and economic advantages. The Recent and ongoing events around the world, however, are confirming that there is not a divide between private and government entities. All governments end up leaning on companies and businesses operating from their territory to use their resources and assets to protect and further what they see as their national interest. The connections and relations between business-government was revealed clearly during the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

During the pandemic, drug companies received government funds to develop vaccines and anti-viral drugs. And that private-government partnership extended to the control of the production and distribution of drugs according to government priorities, not market forces or public good conditions. For example, EU governments prohibited European vaccine makers from selling their products outside Europe to prioritize the vaccination of Europeans over the rest of the world.

Also, with the start of the war in Ukraine, US-based social media, Internet companies, and media outlets all fell in line with policies and guidelines developed by Western governments to control the narrative about the war, which consisted of filtering out any coverage or information that may appear to be sympathetic to the Russian point of view.

Also, with the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, the then-richest person on earth and the majority owner of SpaceX, the company behind the Starlink project which deliverers high-speed internet from space, Elon Musk, announced that he will allow the government of Ukraine to use the service. Similarly, when demonstrations broke out in Iran the fall of 2022, Musk told Iranians that he will make Starlink services available to the anti-government protesters.

With China facing similar pressure related to its claim over Taiwan, the ban on Chinese technology companies and the willingness of US-based companies to support US positions on global conflicts, it was not hard for the Chinese leaders to build or strengthen alternative to US- and EU-based companies so that they cannot be used against them the way they have been used against Russia and Iran. We also anticipate Russia and Iran to allocate resources to developing similar structures to address these issues. The recent revelation about the emergence of a Chinese competitor to Starlink and SpaceX bolster this conclusion. The media coverage, blow, should provide more context.

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The Algerian president Inaugurates Nelson Mandela stadium in Algeria and discusses what he said to the most senior officials of the International and African Football Federations

The Algerian president Inaugurates Nelson Mandela stadium in Algeria and discusses what he said to the most senior officials of the International and African Football Federations

    Friday, January 13, 2023   No comments

Algeria was the first to support Nelson Mandela when he was in prison and placed in terrorist list in Wester countries and now memorializes Mandela by dedicating a soccer stadium in his name. 

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said in a press interview at the “Nelson Mandela” stadium in the Algerian capital, that he informed the top official in “FIFA”, Gianni Anfontino, that Algeria is capable of hosting major international football events and will be committed to providing all the capabilities required to organize high-level competitions.

He added, "Algeria is also ready to be the scene of football competitions at the level of the brown continent, and that CAF President Motsepe can count on our country regarding this matter."

The Algerian president concluded by saying: “The modern, luxurious and international stadiums that were built in Oran, Baraki, Douira, Tizi Ouzou, also belong to Algerian youth and local competitions,” referring to the construction of three other stadiums in Waqla, Constantine and Bechar in the near future.

Erdogan's advisor: Turkiye needs full control over Syria's Aleppo to solve refugee issue

Erdogan's advisor: Turkiye needs full control over Syria's Aleppo to solve refugee issue

    Thursday, January 12, 2023   No comments

Erdogan’s desire to unload Syrian refugees and address the emerging autonomous Kurdish state along its border with Syria is forcing him to rush for a solution that would involve reconciliation with the Syrian government.

In the past few weeks alone, the Turkish leader sent out his defense minister and head of intelligence to meet their Syrian counterparts in Russia. Turkish leaders then announced plans to for the foreign ministers to meet soon to pave the way for a historical summit between Erdogan and Assad. All these changes are driven by Erdogan’s fear that economic hardships, volatile border with Syria, and large Syrian population in Turkey will limit his chances of winning another term and derail his party’s ambitions to keep a decisive plurality in the parliament.

However, given the role Erdogan played in supporting the Syrian armed factions who wanted, and still want, to overthrow the Syrian government, neither Assad is eager to meet him and many of his party leaders and advisors are unwilling to give up their dream of Syria controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies. This split among Turkey’s Islamists is reminding observers of their ideology-driven campaign to fuel a war in Syria designed to overthrow the government no matter what the human and economic costs. Nothing more telling of this ideological and sectarian impulse than the chain of events that lead to the recent revelations that Turkey should aim to control Aleppo and use it to resettle Syrian refugees instead of rebuilding the Syrian-Turkish relations to what it was before the so-called Arab Spring.

Immediately after the announcement of the expected meeting between the Syrian and Turkish foreign ministers, Qatar’s Aljazeera publishes a long piece by an Islamist commentator and professor at Qatar university floating the idea of Turkey’s control over Aleppo and rejecting Turkish reconciliation with the Syrian government. The article was picked by a long time advisor the Erdogan and his party and he made the same point an interview with a Turkish outlet. Given how skeptical the Syrian government is from this about-face from Erdogan, it can easily use this statement to cancel the proposed meeting and reject Erdogan’s courting of Assad.

Aware of the problem, it was revealed that the Turkish foreign minister was very upset with the advisor’s statements and perhaps that is what forced the advisor to appear on Arab media outlets and explain that what he said was a personal opinion based on an article that he read in the media (a clear reference to aljazeera’s piece).

These events revisit the events and actors that promoted and benefited the so-called Arab Spring, including the role of the Qatari government and its media influencer, Aljazeera, the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafism, and Turkey who wanted to create a middle east to their liking that resulted in destroyed communities in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Iraq and the displacement of millions of people—in addition to the nearly one million people killed in these countries as a result of the geopolitical ambitions of Turkey, Qatar, UAE, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

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Here are the background stories for this event:

With the opposition accusing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of not being serious in dealing with the Syrian file and developing an urgent plan for reconciliation with Damascus to return Syrian refugees to their country, Yasin Aktay's proposal, Erdogan's advisor, came to confirm the validity of doubts about the latter's intentions and accounts for Syria.

 

Aktay, who was a very close friend of the late Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, said, "To ensure the safe return of Syrian refugees to their country, the city of Aleppo must be placed under Turkish administration for a transitional period."

 

Aktay pointed out, in his interview with the pro-President Erdogan channel, "Olca", to "the importance of dialogue between Turkey and the Syrian regime." But thanks to the Iranian and Russian support, the Assad regime was able to control it, after carrying out very large massacres. And had it not been for Turkey's intervention at the time, the regime would have carried out bloody massacres greater than it."

 

He added, "Therefore, Turkey must have a role in achieving security in the city and its environs, so that we can return one and a half million, or even two million, refugees to the city voluntarily, which will not be achieved unless a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis is reached with the participation of the people." Syrian".

 

Aktay's speech aroused the interest of the media and social networks, which said that he revealed the true intentions of President Erdogan by inviting President Putin to bring him together with President Assad after the recent meeting of the Syrian and Turkish defense ministers in Moscow, in the presence of the Russian defense minister.

 

Some saw his words as a message from Ankara to the Syrian opposition with all its factions, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, after the information that talked about Ankara's efforts to convince it of the feasibility of a possible reconciliation with Damascus, which is what this opposition started after meeting its leaders, Foreign Minister Mouloud Jawish. oglu last week.

 

Journalist Muhammad Ali Gullar recalled "the slogan raised by nationalist circles at the beginning of the Turkish intervention in northern Syria, when they talked about annexing this region to Turkey, as it was part of the map of the National Pact of 1920, just as Aleppo declared the 82nd state of present-day Turkey."

 

It seems that Aktay's statements and the media's interaction with them will remain the talk of the Turkish street during the next stage, as long as the Syrian file, with all its main and subheadings, will be the semi-main topic of the upcoming election campaigns, after it became clear that this file, especially the issue of Syrian refugees in Turkey, will affect the decision of the Turkish voter when He will vote for President Erdogan or his potential rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

 

This explains why the security authorities raided a gathering center for Syrian refugees in a suburb of Istanbul, whom the Republican People's Party was preparing to deport to Syria with their consent, and the aforementioned authorities transferred them to an unknown location so that Kilicdaroglu would not meet them before they left Istanbul towards the Syrian border.

 

All this while betting on information that was reported a while ago about Syrian President Assad's hesitation in reconciliation with Erdogan before the upcoming elections, which may be in mid-May, at a time when Russian and Gulf pressures continue on the two sides to achieve this reconciliation as quickly as possible.

 Journalist Omar Odamish predicted, "The image that will gather Erdogan and President Assad will affect the psyche of the voter, as the Turkish president will tell him that reconciliation with Damascus is necessary to eliminate terrorism, by which he means the PKK and its Syrian arm, the People's Protection Units, without mentioning the Syrian opposition militants." They are terrorists for Damascus."

 Opposition circles ruled out that Erdogan would meet the Syrian demands, and said that this would be after the elections and not before, given that it would constitute a security crisis in northern Syria and the Turkish interior, especially if Ankara failed to convince Jabhat Tahrir al-Sham of the importance and necessity of this reconciliation, including the war together against the militias. Kurdish forces east of the Euphrates, in exchange for advantages and privileges that Turkey recognizes for HTS fighters and leaders, which the media has been talking about for some time about its heated dialogue with Washington.

 The information talks about Washington increasing its military support for the Kurdish People's Protection Units to face any upcoming war in the region and against the Syrian and Turkish armies in the event of a joint reconciliation.

 President Erdogan seeks to justify this reconciliation to his followers and supporters by talking about the need to eliminate terrorism in Turkey and northern Syria, by which he means the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and its Syrian arm, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, which in turn entered the line of domestic politics in Turkey when it announced the co-chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party , the political wing of the PKK, the party's decision to participate in the upcoming elections with its own candidate, which puts the opposition "Nation Alliance" face to face with a new crisis in competition with Erdogan, who may prevail over the opposition candidate unless he has the support of the Kurds.

 

This account did not prevent the Supreme Constitutional Court from considering the issue of banning the activity of the Peoples’ Democratic Party before the end of this week, after it froze 3 days ago the aid provided by the treasury, according to the election law, which orders it to support the electoral campaigns of all political parties that have parliamentary blocs, i.e. on At least 20 seats.

 

All these complex data suggest the next stage in Turkish domestic politics, as long as it is affected by the future of the relationship with Damascus, for many surprises in terms of Turkish-Syrian relations, which will be under direct influence from Moscow, Tehran and the Gulf capitals represented by Abu Dhabi, which the Turkish media says is " It is ready to pay billions of dollars to the Syrian and Turkish sides in exchange for their agreement to the final reconciliation, according to its mood and the mood of its allies, who are many and contradictory.

 

The Uk’s 83 Military Interventions Around The World Since 1945

The Uk’s 83 Military Interventions Around The World Since 1945

    Wednesday, January 11, 2023   No comments

Britain has deployed its armed forces for combat over 80 times in 47 countries since the end of the Second World War, in episodes ranging from brutal colonial wars and covert operations to efforts to prop up favoured governments or to deter civil unrest)

The British military has used or threatened to use military force much more in the postwar world than is conventionally remembered or believed. Declassified has documented 83 interventions by the UK armed forces since 1945, in 47 different countries.

The most striking of the British uses of force have been the overt invasions or armed attempts to overthrow governments such as in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1953, Egypt in the 1950s, Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011. 

The brutal colonial counter-insurgency wars of the 1950s and 1960s – in Kenya, Malaya, Aden and Cyprus – involved the widespread use of torture and, often, pernicious operations to displace large numbers of people to control the local population. 

In Malaya between 1948 and 1960, British forces herded hundreds of thousands of people into fortified camps, heavily bombed rural areas and resorted to extensive propaganda to win the conflict. 

British brutality fighting ‘Mau Mau’ forces in Kenya demanding independence from the UK resulted in tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of deaths, often from starvation in concentration camps. 

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Muslim scholars and officials from 14 Muslims majority countries visited China to take a closer look at the situation in Xinjiang region

Muslim scholars and officials from 14 Muslims majority countries visited China to take a closer look at the situation in Xinjiang region

    Monday, January 09, 2023   No comments

Muslim scholars and officials from 14 Muslims majority countries visited China to take a closer look at the situation in Xinjiang region, where a sizeable Muslim population reside. The event was covered by the organization of the leader of the delegation and Chinese media. 

Here is what English language Chinese media reported:

Visiting the exhibition on the fight against terrorism and extremism, talking with religion groups, and interacting with local residents at the bazaar… a group of Islamic figures and scholars are paying a visit to Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to get a clear and better understanding of the region in contrast to the US-led smear campaign.

 Led by Ali Rashid Abudula Ali Alnuaimi, chairman of the World Muslim Communities Council, the delegation consists of more than 30 Islamic figures and scholars from 14 countries, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Tunisia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, who began their Xinjiang visit on Sunday. 

Ma Xingrui, Party chief of the Xinjiang region, welcomed the delegation - the first foreign delegation to the region in 2023 - at a meeting in Urumqi on Monday, acknowledging their support for China's stance on Xinjiang-related issues, as the US and some Western countries continuously spread rumors, throwing mud at China and attempting to sow discord between China and Islamic countries. 

However, righteous people in the Islamic world have never bent to the pressure from some Western countries, nor have they been fooled by lies about the Xinjiang region, Ma said. Instead of following a few Western countries in using Xinjiang-related issues to interfere with China's internal affairs, these people have affirmed the development of the Xinjiang region, exposed the political practices of the US and some Western countries, and defended international fairness and justice, he said.  source: GT

And here what the head of the World Muslim Communities Council reported:

HE Dr Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi, Chairman of The World Muslim Communities Council, met with officials from China’s Xinjiang region on the sidelines of his visit to China.

HE Dr Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi headed the Council's delegation, which included clerics and intellectuals from various countries worldwide, including UAE, Egypt, Syria, Bosnia, Serbia, Tunisia, Albania, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and South Sudan.

HE hailed the efforts of the Chinese authorities in combating terrorism in Xinjiang and praised the interest and determination of the Chinese leadership to serve all people in the region.

The Chairman of TWMCC added that the relationship between Islamic civilisation and China is historical and characterised by friendship, cooperation and alliance. HE pointed out that wise people all over the world need a safe, stable and prosperous China, especially since China's security and stability are not only a national interest but a global interest.

HE Dr Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi emphasized that caring for Muslims in China is a great necessity, and we must make it clear to the world that ethnic, religious and national affiliations do not conflict but complement each other.

The Chairman of TWMCC stressed the necessity for a national framework to be comprehensive and brings together all identities, and pride in identity, religion and belonging must be reinforced by the educational curriculum.

HE pointed out that Uygur youth need persuasive speech to win their minds to not fall prey to terrorist groups... Source: TWMCC

About 300 fighters of the AKHMAT-1 riot police of the National Guard of the Chechen Republic left Grozny International Airport to join the war in Ukraine

About 300 fighters of the AKHMAT-1 riot police of the National Guard of the Chechen Republic left Grozny International Airport to join the war in Ukraine

    Sunday, January 08, 2023   No comments

Another video released today showing about 300 fighters of the AKHMAT-1 riot police of the National Guard of the Chechen Republic left Grozny International Airport to join the war in Ukraine.