Fethullah Gülen: Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan's Biggest Rival. The prime minister of Turkey, Tayyip Erdogan, has spent the last week caught in a corruption scandal that may take down his government—yesterday he replaced ten ministers in his cabinet, one of whom called for Erdogan himself to resign. Erdogan is blaming the bribery and corruption investigation on the supporters of a rival Islamist leader, who doesn't even live in Turkey: Fethullah Gulen.
In 2010, journalist Suzy Hansen visited Gulen on his Pennsylvania farm and investigated the reach of his movement inside the United States and beyond. The leader of what is arguably the world’s most successful Islamic movement lives in a tiny Pennsylvania town called Saylorsburg, at the Golden Generation Worship and Retreat Center, otherwise known as “the Camp.” The Camp consists of a series of houses, a community center, a pond, and some tranquil, woodsy space for strolling. Last spring, I visited the center and was warmly shepherded around by Bekir Aksoy, the president of the Camp. They’re Taking Over! by Tim Flannery. Stung! On Jellyfish Blooms and the Future of the Ocean by Lisa-ann Gershwin, with a foreword by Sylvia Earle University of Chicago Press, 424 pp., $27.50 It’s become fashionable to keep jellyfish in aquariums. Behind glass they can be hypnotically beautiful and immensely relaxing to watch. Box jellyfish have bells (the disc-shaped “head”) around a foot across, behind which trail up to 550 feet of tentacles.
In 2000 a somewhat less venomous species of box jellyfish, which lives further south, threatened the Sydney Olympics. Most jellyfish are little more than gelatinous bags containing digestive organs and gonads, drifting at the whim of the current. The Irukandjis are diminutive relatives of the box jellies. It’s now known that the brush of a single tentacle is enough to induce “Irukandji syndrome.” It’s difficult to know how many victims the Irukandji have claimed. Jellyfish are among the oldest animal fossils ever found. Even nations can be affected by the power of the jellies. Central Asia's Most Important City Is ... Not in Central Asia - Alexandros Petersen.
It's in China. Welcome to Urumqi. Urumqi's mixture of cultures is unique in China. (DPerstin/Flickr) Central Asia's beating heart, the commercial hub of the region that cultivated the old Silk Road, is neither of the fabled Thousand and One Nights cities of Samarkand or Bukhara. In fact, the center of this region is not even really in Central Asia. It's in China. Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, the autonomous region that together with Tibet makes up China's western edge, is a bubbling, gritty metropolis, and probably the most cosmopolitan place between Shanghai and Istanbul.
On the street, in the immense electronics, clothes, and kitchenware markets, and in the 24-hour all-inclusive spas used by traders as cheap hotels, the signs of Urumqi's variety are everywhere. They are all here for one reason: to do business. The official population of Urumqi is around 3 million, and the majority of these people are Han Chinese, not Uighur. Interview: Lee Kuan Yew on the Future of U.S.- China Relations - Graham Allison and Robert Blackwill. In this book excerpt, one of Asia's greatest statesmen says competition is inevitable between China and the U.S., but conflict is not.
Former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) gestures as he answers a question from the floor during the LKY School of Public Policy 7th anniversary dialogue session in Singapore September 14, 2011. (Tim Chong/Reuters) Few individuals have had as consequential a role in their nation's history as Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister of Singapore. During Lee's three-decade long tenure in office, he helped transform Singapore from an impoverished British colony lacking natural resources into one of Asia's wealthiest and most developed countries. Over the years, Lee has also become one of Asia's most prominent public intellectuals, one whose unique experience and perspective gives him tremendous insight into trends shaping the continent.
How likely is a major confrontation between the United States and China? There will be a struggle for influence. China is the elephant in the situation room | Ian Bremmer. Earlier this month the National Intelligence Council released its Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds report — a document that comes out once per presidential administration — mapping out likely geopolitical trends over the next two decades or so. As usual, it’s a must-read, offering comprehensive analysis of the disparate factors that will drive global politics through 2030. Further, the NIC took bold steps to correct some previous weaknesses in past reports.
In the past the report nailed the “what” more often than the “when.” That is particularly the case with its treatment of the United States, for which “past works assumed U.S. centrality.” This multipolar world is the foundation for the rest of the NIC’s predictions. In my opinion, when it comes to probabilities for the future global order, the single biggest variable — both in terms of its importance and its potential variance — is China’s rise or lack thereof. Megatrends 1. 2. This is spot on. 3. 4. Food is a similar story. 4. If you want to understand Kyrgyzstan, read this - Kyrgyzstan New. Change in Russia's Far East: China's Growing Interests in Siberia - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International. Chinese investors have already bought a former tank factory in Chita, where they are now producing trucks. They already control the markets in Russian border towns, where they are the richest private business owners.
"China invests more in the Russian Far East than our own government does," writes the Moscow newspaper Niezawisimaja Gazieta. The people in Mirnaya also complain that the Kremlin has forgotten them. The poet Maxim Gorky described the region, where Moscow's former rulers frequently exiled opponents, as nothing but a "land of chains and ice. " But the Moscow elite is only too aware of its failures in the region -- and the gradual expansion of the Chinese generates fear in the corridors of the Kremlin. New Balance of Power Years ago Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's eloquent NATO ambassador, said half-jokingly that the Chinese would soon be "crossing the border in small groups of five million.
" Russian Raw Materials for Chinese Growth Sergeyeva's bus comes to a stop in no-man's-land. # What's happening? Inspired by the recent protests that led to the fall of the Tunisian government and the ousting of longtime Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Egyptians have joined other protesters across the Arab world (in Algeria, notably) in protesting their autocratic governments, high levels of corruption, and grinding poverty. In Egypt, tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets. Here's a photo of one of the protests in Cairo, the capital (via Twitter): How did this all start? This particular round of protests started with the protests in Tunisia. But like their Tunisian counterparts, Egyptian protesters have pointed to a specific incident as inspiration for the unrest.
Why is this more complicated for the US than Tunisia was? How do I follow what's happening in real-time? Twitter, as is always the case with breaking news and live events, is a great resource. What's the latest? This is the beginning of an uprising. UPDATE 4, Tuesday 6:00 p.m. AJE.
Wael Ghonim: Inside the Egyptian revolution. What's Happening in Libya Explained.