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Posted on 07/28/2006 9:47:18 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
World briefing
Irresistible rise of the dictators' club
Simon Tisdall Tuesday June 6, 2006
Guardian
Tony Blair's promotion of shared global values and inclusive institutions in his Georgetown speech last month took little account of the rise and rise of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Few may yet have heard of it. But out of the east comes a radically different paradigm for 21st-century international organisation, short on idealism and long on hard-headed self-interest. The "universal" principles of "liberty, democracy and justice" lauded by Mr Blair are hardly its driving force.
Founded by China, the five-year-old SCO groups together like-minded authoritarian leaderships in Russia and four central Asian republics - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Pakistan, Mongolia and India are observer members. So too is Iran.
In terms of total population, area and resources, the SCO is far bigger than Nato or the EU. It dwarfs older regional organisations. It is not yet a mutual defence pact but it is heading that way as Sino-Russian military ties deepen. Its charter pledges "non-interference and non-alignment" while seeking to create "a new international political and economic order". David Wall of Chatham House's Asia programme calls it "a club for autocrats and dictators".
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
ping
Kings of the East?
And so it begins... fueled by US dollars.
If they adopt a computer operating system as a standard, would that then be SCO Linux?
==Kings of the East?...And so it begins... fueled by US dollars
Yep and yep.
Where's the Groklaw link....oops, wrong SCO, sorry!
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