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“We won’t let any foreign boats come in,” Tan Kok Kwee, first admiral of Malaysia’s maritime enforcement agency, said Tuesday. Unless they’re unseaworthy and sinking, he said, the navy will provide “provisions and send them away.” Hours earlier, Indonesia pushed back a boat packed with hundreds of Rohingya and Bangladeshis, saying they were given food, water and directions to Malaysia — their original destination.

Perplexity in spirit comes when you question My ability to proceed in your life and it is then total surrender is not only Warranted but served for truly as your Judge and Advocate I "Declare" The Truth for your future for the past is just that. So be as Lot not his wife and take My hand into Zion for only as you believe You "Are" and I "AM" ! Habakkuk 2:2-3 Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, That he may run who reads it. 3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time; But at...

I had a vision of a tiny Asian country being used by two large countries to attack Taiwan unless they repent Jonah 3 3 And the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach and cry out to it the preaching that I tell you. 3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city of three days’ journey [sixty miles in circumference]. 4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey,...

Benjina, Indonesia ___ The Burmese slaves sat on the floor and stared through the rusty bars of their locked cage, hidden on a tiny tropical island thousands of miles from home. Just a few yards away, other workers loaded cargo ships with slave-caught seafood that clouds the supply networks of major supermarkets, restaurants and even pet stores in the United States. Here, in the Indonesian island village of Benjina and the surrounding waters, hundreds of trapped men represent one of the most desperate links criss-crossing between companies and countries in the seafood industry. This intricate web of connections separates the...

Myanmar's constitution guarantees religious freedom. But some radical Buddhists have been railing against Muslims – a tendency which has reached the lawmakers by now.Everything seems normal as children in red clothes play football on a dusty patch. However, this patch is the courtyard of a monastery and the young players with their rolled-up shirts and bare arms are Buddhist novices. Their teacher, U Nayaka, laughs at the notion that a monastery is supposed to be a place of meditation. "It is never quiet here, my students always make noise," said Phaung Daw Oo, director of the monastery school, who is...

Driving through Naypyidaw, the purpose-built capital of Burma, it could be easy to forget that you’re in the middle of one of south-east Asia’s poorest countries. On either side of the street, a seemingly endless series of giant detached buildings, villa-style hotels and shopping malls look like they have fallen from the sky, all painted in soft pastel colours: light pink, baby blue, beige. The roads are newly paved and lined with flowers and carefully pruned shrubbery. Meticulously landscaped roundabouts boast large sculptures of flowers. The scale of this surreal city is difficult to describe: it extends an estimated 4,800...

Myanmar's ultra-nationalist Buddhist monk Wirathu has called the UN's special rapporteur for human rights in Burma a "whore" during a public address in Yangon. The leader of the controversial 969 nationalist movement hit back at Yanghee Lee for an earlier comment in defence of the stateless Rohingya Muslims, who are persecuted in the country's western Rakhine state. "We have already made public our Race Protection Law, but without even studying it, this bitch [kaungma in Burmese] keeps on complaining about how it is against human rights!" Wirathu shouted. "Can this whore really be from a respectable family background?" he asked...

Hopefully, Russians realize that our House of Representatives often passes thunderous resolutions to pander to special interests, which have no bearing on the thinking or actions of the U.S. government. Last week, the House passed such a resolution 411-10. As ex-Rep. Ron Paul writes, House Resolution 758 is so "full of war propaganda that it rivals the rhetoric from the chilliest era of the Cold War." H. R. 758 is a Russophobic rant full of falsehoods and steeped in superpower hypocrisy. Among the 43 particulars in the House indictment is this gem: "The Russian Federation invaded the Republic of Georgia...

After a productive trip abroad, President Barack Obama headed home Sunday on a collision course with Republicans on immigration and an oil pipeline project, showdowns that threaten prospects for cooperation over his remaining two years in office. Given his faltering political support in the U.S. and his party's recent election losses, his trip to China, Myanmar and Australia appeared to offer respite. The president, who was due to arrive in Washington late Sunday, basked in policy breakthroughs with China and warm welcomes in Myanmar and Australia. "I intend to build on that momentum when I return home," Obama said at...

Myanmar’s minority Rohingya Muslims are among the most persecuted people on earth, and advocates of their cause were hoping President Barack Obama would not only press the issue during his visit this week—they were hoping he would simply say their name. On Friday, the last day of his trip, he finally did—uttering the word publicly for the first time on his three-day visit at a news conference with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. “Discrimination against the Rohingya or any other religious minority does not express the kind of country that Burma over the long term wants to be,” Obama...

Now that he has moved on to Burma shall we discuss Big Guy’s triumphant Chinese trip? How can I call it “triumphant” you ask? Bo in Burma: give that boy a cup of hot cocoa and we’ve got our next pajama boyWell, wouldn’t you consider it a triumph when you’ve finally accomplished your prime objective of fundamentally transforming America? You may recall that Barry has always ascribed to the theory that America is too powerful, too assertive and too advantaged by it’s military capabilities and economic might. So when the handiwork of his past 6 years - overseeing the decline in...

SITTWE, Myanmar — The Myanmar government has given the estimated one million Rohingya people in this coastal region of the country a dispiriting choice: Prove your family has lived here for more than 60 years and qualify for second-class citizenship, or be placed in camps and face deportation. The policy, accompanied by a wave of decrees and legislation, has made life for the Rohingya, a long-persecuted Muslim minority, ever more desperate, spurring the biggest flow of Rohingya refugees since a major exodus two years ago. The crisis has become an embarrassment to the White House ahead of a scheduled visit...

San Francisco politicians, eager to showcase their democratic credentials in their liberty-loving city, traditionally have not shied from taking stances on human rights, checking in on everything from apartheid in South Africa to Burma’s military junta. But on Wednesday, as tens of thousands of peaceful democracy demonstrators who had already been tear-gassed marched in Hong Kong, Mayor Ed Lee was on his City Hall balcony hoisting the flag of the target of those protests — the autocratic government of China.

Born just over a year ago, Dosmeda Bibi has spent her entire short life confined to a camp for one of the world’s most persecuted religious minorities. And like a growing number of other Muslim Rohingya children who are going hungry, she’s showing the first signs of severe malnutrition. […] Myanmar’s child malnutrition rate was already among the region’s highest, but it’s an increasingly familiar sight in the country’s westernmost state of Rakhine, which is home to almost all of the country’s 1.3 million Rohingya Muslims. More than 140,000 have been trapped in crowded, dirty camps since extremist Buddhist mobs...

In Burma, an ultranationalist Buddhist militia is training to "defend the fatherland" against Rohingya Muslims.I Was a monk. Most of us used to be," says a heavily armed soldier in the rugged mountains of northern Burma's Kachin state. "When I heard about this army, I really wanted to join. You know, in Rakhine state, we need to defend Buddhism." The soldier fights for the little-known militia of Buddhist nationalists referred to as the Arakan Army. In his khaki uniform, a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, he is far from the peaceful Buddhist monk of the Western imagination. Yet some officials...

China 'won't seek hegemony' says President Xi by Staff Writers Beijing June 28, 2014 Beijing June 27, 2014 - Chinese President Xi Jinping and Myanmar's leader Thein Sein held talks Friday as the relationship between the Asian giant and the longtime international pariah adapts to dramatic political changes. The two shook hands outside Beijing's Great Hall of the People and inspected an honour guard as Thein Sein -- a former general -- was given full military honours, before the pair went inside to begin their talks. Xi noted the four-day trip is Thein Sein's fifth visit to China and third...

While his government’s focus remains squarely on domestic issues, Mr Modi is also charting a rather ambitious foreign policy course. He has already visited Bhutan and his future destinations over the next few months are likely to include Japan, Brazil, Southeast Asia, Australia and Nepal. Meanwhile, the Chinese foreign minister has saluted the new Modi government for injecting “new vitality into an ancient civilisation”.

Victims of land grabs in Myanmar have eagerly tested new-found freedoms by protesting and sending petitions to the president and parliament, to no avail. Now some are turning to old ways: Curses and black magic. Coffins marked with the names of those who seized property have been set ablaze. In rugged central regions of the country, aggrieved villagers have prayed for mountain gods to unleash their wrath. […] Land seizures by the military, the government and private companies linked to junta cronies have long been commonplace in this Southeast Asian country, whether for development or the extraction of natural resources....

A large number of People’s Liberation Army troops have reportedly been spotted heading towards the China-Vietnam border as tensions between the two countries continue to escalate, reports Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily. Sing Tao Daily is generally considered to be aligned to Chinese state media. Thousands of Chinese nationals living or on business in Vietnam have already fled the country amid anti-China riots, which were sparked by a tense standoff between Chinese and Vietnamese naval ships near a Chinese oil rig in disputed waters off the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on May 4. The Chinese foreign ministry...

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Sunday that the rights of Myanmar’s minority Muslim population were not being fully protected and warned that the Southeast Asian country would not succeed if Muslims there were oppressed. On a visit to Malaysia, Obama praised political reforms under way in once-isolated Myanmar, but said the danger of democratization was that it could unleash religious and ethnic conflicts and that such developments could move Myanmar in a bad direction. …