Headlines 09/12/2015

Headlines

• Nuclear Fusion in Bangkok?

• Obama under Pressure

• Donald Trump: “Muslims should be banned”

Details

Nuclear Fusion in Bangkok?

Pakistan's national security advisor, Nasir Khan Janjua and his Indian Counterpart, Ajit Doval met in Bangkok in an unannounced meeting on the 6th of December. The meeting took place following an announcement on Wednesday the same week, that India's foreign minister Sushma Swaraj would be arriving in Islamabad to hold talks with Pakistani officials, the first visit of its kind in three years. A joint statement issued after the meeting said, "discussions covered peace and security, terrorism, Jammu and Kashmir, and other issues, including tranquillity along the LoC [Line of Control - the de facto Kashmir border]”. A meeting in August between Pakistan and India had been scheduled but cancelled by India due to Pakistan's insistence on Kashmir being a part of the agenda, a territory that both parties claim as part of their own country, fighting two of the three wars over the land in their history. The meeting should go down well with Washington and London, for whom peace between the two nuclear armed nations of South Asia will facilitate peace in Afghanistan and a united fight against so called "Islamic extremism", a conflict that Pakistan has been involved in for over a decade, with it spilling on to its own borders in the form of Zarb-e-Azb, a campaign launched by Pakistan's Military in North Waziristan in response to the June 2014 attack on Jinnah International Airport in Karachi.

Obama under Pressure

US President Barack Obama has come out in light of the recent shooting of 14 people by a couple allegedly linked to ISIS has defended his current strategy in the Middle East. He explained the need to engage Muslim communities within the US and tackle the issue of radicalisation. He explained that sending ground troops will create insurgencies which will drain the US of troops and resources, citing Afghanistan and Iraq as examples. But as other political opponents have pointed out, that even the existing airstrikes give rise to the same problem and have proven to do nothing to destroy ISIS. The Obama administration is deeply unpopular in the US as many consider it to have weakened the US position abroad. As the US regime has struggled to build a loyal alternative Syria it has delayed armed different rebels groups and given al-Assad political cover in order to continue the struggle in Syria until it has an alternative ready. This makes Obama look extremely weak, but no one ever imagined the Syrian struggle would last 5 years.

Donald Trump: “Muslims should be banned”

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump provoked anger by saying Muslims should be banned from entering the US. He said they should be banned "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." Whilst many have condemned Trump for such a suggestion, it just confirms the climate in the world against the Muslims has reached fever pitch, as a presidential candidate feels confident enough to make such claims on a public platform. Already we have seen European leaders propose mass deportations after the attacks in Paris with refugees coming to Europe seeking asylum. We also see many western leaders blaming immigration as the source of their problems, with many also stating the presence of Muslims as a fifth column that cannot be trusted. Some have even suggested Muslims should be forced to carry special ID’s like the Jews were required before the Holocaust. The climate in the west is such that politicians and leaders of all persuasions openly attack Islam and Muslims, as was seen with the caricatures of the prophet (saw). The west has a history of massacring minorities, Muslims were massacred in the Balkans in 1994 and the Jews were also massacred on European shores in WW2. Today similar acts are taking place against the Muslims in the West