Pakistan's security state: Reading the Taliban. Le réajustement chinois en Asie. Xi Jinping à la manœuvre. - Informations et actualité de la Chine. [29 janvier 2012] • François Danjou La diplomatie chinoise devra déployer tout son talent pour faire pièce à l’épaisseur nouvelle de l’influence américaine en Asie et désamorcer les tensions avec Washington imbriquées dans les controverses entre Pékin, Hanoi et Manille autour de la Mer de Chine, nées des récentes échauffourées avec les patrouilleurs chinois dans les eaux contestées.
Elle a déjà dépêché au Myanmar Dai Bingguo, le n°1 des affaires stratégiques du Waijiaobu, pour contrôler l’ébranlement par l’Amérique de l’un de ses plus anciens alliés, tandis que le Vice-président Xi Jinping s’est rendu au Vietnam et en Thaïlande. Le mois prochain il se rendra à Washington à l’invitation du Joe Biden. L’analyse qui suit examine d’abord les tensions à l’œuvre, attisées pas des postures militaires en Asie du Sud-est, entre Pékin et Washington. Jaipur festival cancels Salman Rushdie video link. The organisers of Asia's biggest literary festival have been forced to cancel a video-linked appearance by British author Salman Rushdie after owners of the venue in the north-west Indian city of Jaipur decided it would be unsafe to allow it.
Following chaotic scenes inside and outside the Diggi Palace, a heritage hotel in the centre of the city, thousands of waiting festivalgoers were told shortly before 4pm the 64-year-old novelist would not appear as planned. "The police commissioner told us there would be violence in the venue and a riot outside where thousands were gathering if we continued," British writer and historian William Dalrymple, one of the festival's directors, said. Rushdie’s Lit Festival No-Show: A Defeat for Free Expression in India. Salman Rushdie cancelled his scheduled appearance at the Jaipur Literary Festival on Friday with an explanation worthy of one of his own improbable plotlines: “I have now been informed by intelligence sources in Maharashtra and Rajasthan that paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld may be on their way to eliminate me.”
Would that it were fiction. In Thailand, A Rare Peek At His Majesty's Balance Sheet. Facebook, Google argue against Web censorship in India. Facebook and Google told the Delhi High Court today that they cannot block offensive content that appears on their services.
The two Internet giants are among 21 companies that have been asked to develop a mechanism to block objectionable material in India, and the Indian government has given the green light for their prosecution. Although India is democratic (in fact, it's the world's largest democracy), many fear the country will resort to censorship. Last year, India passed a law that makes companies responsible for user content posted on their websites, requiring them to take it down within 36 hours in case of a complaint. Civil rights groups are opposed to the law but politicians argue posting offensive images in the socially conservative country with a history of violence between religious groups presents a danger to the public as Internet use grows. In Search of the Indian in English Indian Literature. There will be great, joyful crowds that will baffle writers from countries where there are not so many people.
There will be parties in ancient palaces against the backdrop of illuminated forts. Passionate fans will meet some of the finest literary figures in the world, writers will meet other writers, and some lips will meet some posteriors. In the last two years there has been a boom in literature festivals in India, but nothing has diminished the lure and glamour of the Jaipur carnival, which began in 2006 as a modest event but has now grown in size and fame. Among the speakers this year are Oprah Winfrey, Annie Proulx and Michael Ondaatje. An invitation to Salman Rushdie has met with protests from conservative Muslim groups that have not forgiven him for “The Satanic Verses.” Daily chart: Going to town. Bangkok Is on Edge After U.S. Terrorism Alert and Arrests.
Last Friday, just hours after the U.S. embassy in Bangkok warned on its website of a "possible terrorist threat" in tourist areas of the Thai capital, Thai security officials arrested a Lebanese man suspected of being a member of Hizballah, the Iranian-backed militant group.
After three days of interrogations, police seized more than 8,800 lb. (4,000 kg) of bombmaking materials from the townhouse he rented in a Bangkok suburb. But instead of receiving praise for their police work, Thailand's government and security officials are being roundly criticized. The scorn-filled and suspicious responses are the result of mistrust of the U.S. concern over lost tourism earnings, and the conflicting statements and shifting narrative of events by various government officials, all of whom are insisting tourists and locals have nothing to fear because they have the situation "under control. " Review of A Life’s Work. Nicholas Grossman and Dominic Faulder, eds., King Bhumibol Adulyadej, A Life’s Work: Thailand’s Monarchy in Perspective.
Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2011. Pp. 383; ills., map, notes, bib., index, picture credits. Reviewed by Paul M. For King Bhumibol’s fiftieth anniversary on the throne in 1996, the palace put forth a large-format book on his life and works that offered a new rendering of the Ninth Reign. Hence Thailand’s Guiding Light (1), published by the Bangkok Post, but clearly with the palace’s imprimatur. Anand, who had risen to the status of statesman with one foot inside the palace, described Bhumibol as an accountable constitutionalist: