News Review 18/06/2022

China Unveils First Indigenous Aircraft Carrier

According to The Washington Post:

China unveiled its first homegrown aircraft carrier on Friday, a vessel with advanced aircraft launch technology similar to its U.S. counterparts, in an event designed to symbolize the country’s expanding military might…

China’s first two carriers include a retrofit of an old Soviet model, the Liaoning, bought from Ukraine in 1998, and the Shandong, which was built in China but based on the Liaoning model and commissioned in 2019.

The Fujian represents a big step forward in technology and capabilities, analysts say.

Even though the aircraft carrier will not be fully operational for at least a couple of years, it is already raising concerns. Ridzwan Rahmat, an analyst at Janes, a defence intelligence company, told AP:

“This shows that Chinese engineers are now able to indigenously manufacture the full suite of surface combatants associated with modern naval warfare, including corvettes, frigates, destroyers, amphibious assault ships, and now an aircraft carrier.

This ability to construct a very complex warship from the ground up will inevitably result in various spin-offs and benefits for the Chinese shipbuilding industry.”

China’s ascendancy carries important lessons for those who are aware amongst the Muslim Ummah. Chinese economic growth was never a challenge for the West, as long as the Chinese economy was built on an export model serving Western consumer demand. Numerous American companies simply relocated their manufacturing to China. The West exploited China for cheap factory labour just as it has continued to exploit its former colonies across the world. Economic strength cannot be built on an export-oriented model, serving the needs of others while ignoring our own needs. Chinese ascendancy is only now becoming a threat to the West because they have begun to rebuild their economy on indigenous, military requirements.

Muslim countries today remain trapped in the colonial economic model even though it has been multiple decades since formal colonialism ended. Instead of the West forcefully extracting goods, resources and labour, we voluntarily export all these to them thinking that all this benefits us.

With Allah’s permission, the Muslim Ummah shall soon arise and overthrow the legacy of colonial rule in our lands, re-establishing the Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State on the method of the Prophet (saw), which shall reunify Muslim lands, liberate its occupied territories, implement the Islamic Sharia, restore the Islamic way of life and carry the light of Islam to the entire world. The Khilafah State shall, almost from its inception, join the ranks of the great powers due to its great size, immense population, vast resources, unparalleled geography and unique Islamic ideology. The Khilafah State shall soundly build its economy on indigenous needs, particularly military requirements, thus accelerating its ascendancy as a great power.

Biden under Pressure over Saudi Visit

According to Reuters:

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Friday he was not traveling to Saudi Arabia's explicitly to meet de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman during a trip next month and said he was seeing the Saudi crown prince as part of a broader "international meeting".

Biden's plans to see the crown prince, known as MBS, are part of his first trip to the Gulf region as president. He has been criticized by U.S. lawmakers, including some from his own Democratic party and human rights advocates, who say the visit is at odds with his promise to put human rights at the heart of U.S. foreign policy.

"I'm not going to meet with MBS. I'm going to an international meeting, and he's going to be part of it," Biden told reporters on Friday when asked how during his Saudi Arabia trip he will handle the topic of the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident and critic of the crown prince.

The president is traveling to Saudi Arabia at the invitation of King Salman along with eight additional heads of state for the GCC+3 Summit, a spokesperson for the National Security Council said.

Biden began his presidential term by distancing himself from the policies of his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump. It was on this basis that Americans voted overwhelmingly to elect Biden in preference to the re-election of Trump. But of course, Western ‘representative’ democracy is really just a managed democracy; it doesn’t matter which individual is elected, they all follow essentially the same approach to advancing American interests; ‘real’ democracy, does not exist anywhere, the idea of democracy, where the people rule themselves, is as fanciful as saying that schoolchildren should educate themselves, or that soldiers should command themselves, or that company staff should manage themselves.

American presidents only try to publicly distance themselves from leaders such as Mohammad bin Salman because of the domestic political reaction within America. But the reality is that such leaders as fully American agents, executing only the American agenda. Biden knew full well that he would have to, at some point, visit Saudi Arabia and meet with its rulers. For some months, he has been trying to use rising oil prices as an excuse to do so. Now he has an additional excuse of participation in an ‘international meeting’.

Biden is the most experienced US president in three decades. Where most presidents leave major foreign policy initiatives to the second half of their term, Biden has accomplished an enormous amount within his first 18 months: the pull-out from Afghanistan, embroiling Russia in Ukraine, and concentrating attention on China. But because America’s odious foreign policy goals have to be hidden from its own public, the American people are largely unaware of Biden’s successes, and he is seen as having very low popular support.

With Allah’s permission, the Khilafah State shall soon be established and its foreign policy goals will be fully aligned with the expectations of the Ummah in accordance with the Islamic Sharia, enabling the Khalifah to act with full confidence and strength. The Prophet (saw) has said in a noble hadeeth narrated by Abu Hurayrah (ra): «إِنَّمَا الْإِمَامُ جُنَّةٌ يُقَاتَلُ مِنْ وَرَائِهِ وَيُتَّقَى بِهِ»“The Imam is a shield from behind which they fight and which protects them.”[Sahih Muslim: 1841].