Southeast Asia

CNN is reporting that U.S. President Barack Obama will attend the 17th APEC summit in Singapore on November 14 and 15 of this year.  No further travel details have yet been released.

– The Thai courts refused a request to extradite Viktor Bout (aka The Merchant of Death) to the United States.   Bout, an notorious global arms dealer, is accused by the U.S.  of  attempting to sell more than 700 surface-to-air missiles, a massive cache of automatic weapons, and airplanes and helicopters to the Revolutionary Armed Forces […]

– South East Asia Times is reporting that the man killed in the Indonesian government’s  raid in central Java is not Noordin Mohammed Top.  The government will compare the DNA of the corpses of the man suspected of being Top to one of Top’s children, which may take up to two weeks.  This may be […]

Most wanted Malaysian Islamic terrorist, Noordin Mohammad Top, 40, member of the Jemaah Islaymiyah splinter group Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad, is being reported dead, although it has not yet been confirmed by the Indonesian government.  He was reportedly killed in a  duel raid, one on a house in Beji village, Temanggung, Central Java and another in […]

Asia Times Online is running an article that touches on Australian PM Kevin Rudd’s desire for a Asia-Pacific Union similar to the European Union by 2020.   This union would include all of ASEAN, China, Japan, India, and the United States.   As fantastic as the proposal is, he is not the first Australian PM […]

It seems Cambodia’s ruling party, the People’s Party (KPK),  might be learning the art of soft authoritarianism – by legal manipulation from Singapore’s PAP (People’s Action Party).  Despite the fact, the KPK won 90 of 123 seats in the last election, the party still feel vulnerable  to the press and opposition, because their criticism centers on […]

American President Barack Obama’s first meeting with Filipino President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo , which is also his first meeting with a Southeast Asian head of state, was overshadowed in the American press by the domestic melodrama, known as “Gates-Gate” or the “Beer Summit”.

– Former Filipino President Corazon Aquino, the nations first female president, died at age 76 from colon cancer.  Current president, Gloria Magapacal-Arroyo, who was a protege of Aquino, before a split with her over corruption charges, has declared a 10 day period of national mourning.  Aquino is best known for being the widow of Benigno […]

ct82hpgjq6 Singapore’s People’s Action Party (PAP) has long been the institutional embodiment of Lee Family Power.  Using the PAP, Lee family patriarch, Lee Kuan-Yew created a political monopoly,  in the nation of  4.6 million people, that has lasted its entire 50 years of independence.   This monopoly allowed the establishment of a dynasty with the ascension […]

– Two of the runner-ups in July’s Indonesian presidential election, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Jusuf Kall, will challenge the election results before the nine judges of the Constitutional Court of Indonesia.  They claim the voter list contained up to 23 million duplicate names, but neither has provided any evidence to support their claims.   Although there […]

At the recent ASEAN Regional Forum in Thailand, U.S. Secretary of State Clinton, before the the 25 nations present, officially confirmed a substantial shift in U.S. foreign policy when she stated: ‘On behalf of our country and the Obama administration, I want to send a very clear message that the United States is back, that we […]

I wrote before that – Future political integration is dependent on ASEAN resolving its many territorial disputes. There is still a high level of nationalism in the region; member-countries are suspicious of each other due to centuries of conflict, followed by colonial isolation. These disputes were recently surveyed on Capital Hill, by Richard P. Cronin, […]