The Agonist - Asia

China condemns US trade action

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:51:55 -0800

Beijing | November 6

Al Jazeera - China has described as protectionist new US anti-dumping duties on steel pipes and demanded Washington's recognition that it is a market economy.

The reaction came a day after the US imposed preliminary anti-dumping duties ranging up to 99 per cent on $2.63bn in Chinese-made pipes used in the oil and gas industry.

The Chinese commerce department issued its preliminary decision on Friday, a week before Barack Obama, the US president, heads to Asia on a trip that includes stops in Shanghai and Beijing.

"China resolutely opposes the abuse of protectionist measures, and will take measures to protect the interests of our domestic industry," the ministry said on its website.

Scant details on reaction to U.S. envoys' Burma visit

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:07:20 -0800

Tim Johnston | Bangkok | November 6

WaPo - After a rare trip by high-level U.S. diplomats to Burma, there was little indication from either nation Thursday about how the Obama administration's overture of engagment had been received.

Burmese state media merely noted that Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific Kurt Campbell and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Scot Marciel met with Prime Minister Thein Sein during the visit on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The pair are the highest-level U.S. officials to visit Burma, also known as Myanmar, in 14 years. Marciel declined to say how the government, the opposition or Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader they also met with, received their visit.

"The main purpose of the visit was to explain to the key parties there -- the government, political parties, the opposition, ethnic minorities -- the context of our recently completed policy review, but also to hear from them their views and their ideas," Marciel told a seminar on his return to Thailand.

The policy review left U.S. sanctions in place while promoting engagement with the prospect that progress toward democratic principles would be rewarded.

China plans for humanoid Olympics

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:28:31 -0800

Nov 6

BBC -
China is planning to hold a robot Olympics in 2010.

The international event will be held in the city of Harbin and will see robots take part in 16 different events.

Robots will be able to compete in familiar Olympic sports such as athletics as well as those more suited to machines such as cleaning.

Entry to the competition will be restricted to robots resembling humans. They must possess two arms and legs. Wheels are banned.

The organisers of the games expect from more than 100 universities from around the world to send competitors to the event.

Another Outspoken Kyrgyz Journalist Attacked

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:14:30 -0800

Ryskeldi Satke | Bishkek,Kyrgyz Republic

http://english.ohmynews.com - Kyrgyz journalist Kubanych Djoldoshev suffered multiple injuries after being assaulted by unknown attackers at about 2 a.m. on November 1 in the southern city of Osh in Kyrgyzstan.
As Djoldoshev recalls, three men approached and beat him, resulting in a concussion and broken ribs.
The emergency staff at the local hospital described his condition as critical.
This is the latest incident in a series of hostile actions against freelance journalists and reporters in the country.
Djoldoshev has been working for the Kyrgyz branch of the RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) prior to his current assignment with a newspaper. The paper, Osh Shamy, has been critical of local authorities in the country's southern region.
The paper's chief editor, Turgunbai Aldakulov, said the beating was directly connected to material published by Osh Shamy on recent university student protests.
Aldakulov also said newspaper staff were threatened by associates of Osh city officials.
Colleagues of Djoldoshev -- fellow journalists from Osh Shamy and other news outlets -- gathered in front of the hospital where he was treated. They expressed their solidarity with injured reporter and voiced concern over current free-speech and safety issues in the Kyrgyz Republic.
There have been 58 registered cases of attacks against journalists since 2005 including two high profile murders of outspoken reporters and six who escaped Kyrgyzstan seeking asylum in Western Europe.

US, North Korea agree to hold bilateral meetings

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:32:31 -0800

Seoul | Nov 4

AFP - The United States and North Korea have agreed to hold two rounds of bilateral meetings before the North returns to multilateral nuclear disarmament talks, a US news report said.

The agreement was reached at last month's meetings in New York and San Diego between officials from the two sides, Foreign Policy magazine said on its website, in a report seen Wednesday.

The communist state, putting further pressure on the United States to start direct talks, announced Tuesday it has completed reprocessing spent fuel rods to produce more plutonium for its atomic weapons programme.

The US State Department responded that the plutonium production "runs counter" to the North's disarmament commitments and violates UN Security Council resolutions.

It said it has not decided when and where to hold bilateral talks involving the US special envoy to North Korea, Stephen Bosworth.

Cambodia appoints Thailand's Thaksin as economic adviser

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:24:01 -0800

Phnom Penh | Nov 4

AFP - Cambodia said on Wednesday it had appointed fugitive former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra economic adviser to premier Hun Sen in a move that adds to tensions between the countries.

The appointment was announced on state television almost two weeks after Hun Sen first riled Thailand by offering safe haven to Thaksin, who was ousted in a coup in 2006 and is living abroad to avoid a jail term for corruption.

"Thaksin has already been appointed by royal decree... as personal adviser to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and the adviser to the Cambodian government in charge of economy," said a government statement read on television.

"Allowing Thaksin to stay in Cambodia is virtuous behaviour...good friends need to help each other in difficult circumstances," it added.

The statement went on to call charges against Thaksin "politically motivated" and vowed not to extradite him if he "decides to stay in Cambodia or travels in and out of Cambodia in order to fulfill his duties".

WOW

Who is seeing the real Afghanistan?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:20:48 -0800

Last week the Washington Post printed two letters from different sources who had spent time on the ground in Afghanistan that came to very different conclusions about the American presence there.

First, there is the letter from Matthew Hoh, the former Marine captain who had fought in Iraq and had recently taken a temporary foreign service assignment in Zabul province. One State department official referred to this area as, “one of the five or six provinces always vying for the most difficult and neglected.” Hoh had developed great misgivings about the war and had become so disillusioned that he chose to resign. Hoh wote in his resignation letter,

I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditure of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war…. The United States presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency.

Matthew Hoh has served his country bravely in combat and he has responded to a policy with which he disagreed by making the honorable choice to resign. His observations about the situation in Zabul province merit serious consideration. I wish that many others in the previous administration who had serious misgivings about policy but waited to reveal them until after leaving office had, instead, followed Hoh’s example.

Several days later, a letter to the editor appeared in the Washington Post from Benjamin Joseloff, an American serving as a fellow at the Afghanistan Legal Education Project. This initiative, started by Stanford Law students, is devoted to a helping Afghan universities improve the quality of their legal education. Joseloff writes....

continue reading Brian Vogt's post at http://blog.psaonline.org/2009/11/03/who-is-seeing-the-real-afghanistan/

A Little More On That India Meme, Or The Not-So-Miraculous Indian Economic Miracle

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:34:58 -0800

It's obvious by what I've written in the past (here and here as well.) that I don't think highly of India's economic prowess, writ large and I don't believe any of the hype when it comes to India's economic miracle. But Quax makes a point about Kerala that deserves further comment.

Quax brings up the point about the matrifocal ethnicity in Southern India, namely the state of Kerala. And he's right: Kerala is different from the rest of India. I'm not sure what makes Kerala different: the prevalence of Christianity, the relative freedom of women in the state, years of Communist rule, and the forward looking and commercial character of Muslims there? Perhaps it's a combination of all four. Needless to say, Kerala was the cleanest, least intimidating and most upwardly mobile of Indian states, even more so than the miracle city of Bangalore. And I found the Muslims in Calicut to be the most forward looking of any Muslims I've ever encountered, outside of pockets in Turkey and those in North Tehran.

Their daughters were educated, free to pursue a love match--not an arranged marriage and not relegated to a very real purdah extant in many places in India. It's the sort of place where a young Indian woman can have lunch with a strange foreign man and no one raises an eyebrow. I'm not sure how much of this is due to the fact that the area around Calicut has been integral to the global economy for two thousand years--ships have plied the monsoons from East Africa to the Malabar Coast since very early Roman times, bringing pepper an other spices to the West in exchange for gold, or how much of it is due to the tolerance between Hindus, Christians and Muslims. There is much more history to this area than meets the eye.

More after the jump.

The Communist party has also run the state off and on since the fifties. Literacy rates are the highest in India. And basic health services deliverables are the highest in India, as well. When the state assumes the risk of healthcare and provides a very good basic education people are free to pursue other productive endeavors instead of grinding away in subsistence poverty and farming. The Dalits in the state, as well, have it better than anywhere in India. This makes a huge difference in upward mobility.

But even Kerala is beset by all the huge problems that India has. The infrastructure is crumbling. The rail system is overwhelmed, although the trains in Kerala were the best in India outside of the Delhi-Agra tourist trains. And the pollution wasn't nearly as pervasive as the rest of India. Overpopulation is a serious issue and so is gendercide. And as impressive as the quality of life is for women in the state is, it's still a man's state, run by men, for men. All that being said, were I ever to return to India--which is doubtful--the only place I would visit is Kerala.

Yes, I was a tourist in India. I've never claimed to be anything other than that. But the eyes don't lie. What I saw was a very poor, under-devoloped and socially backwards country--moreso than even Cambodia and in many places as backwards as Africa. What makes it worse is this: it's a horribly underdeveloped country with a very well-educated elite. An elite that sits atop a millenia old social structure. An elite that literally lives off the backs of those below it. And it's the elite that buys the very minimal goods and services that India imports. One of the reasons India weathered the most recent economic crisis is that it's imports are negligible. It relies on an internal market that deals in goods and services at a level of quality from the 50s, if not earlier in some cases.

If that's a choice the Indians want to make, I'm all for it. I'm all about tEh noninterference. There is a queer element of genius to India's social structure--institutionalizing as deviance any form of societal innovation. But let's not build up a fantasy around the country. India has some emergent technology. But it's at the elite level. There are few things that resemble a mall in India, something we Westerners take for granted. And the malls have security guards that prevent lower classes from entering. Seriously, I've seen it with my own eyes. That's not economic freedom for the masses.

India has a problem-set of gargantuan proportions and is one of the most militarized countries I've ever seen--all the Gandhiesque posturing notwithstanding. That's just reality.

If the rest of India could learn from Kerala it would be a vastly more impressive country than it now is. But I don't see that happening any time soon.

Two senior US officials have begun a fact-finding visit to Burma.

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:46:58 -0800

Nov 3

BBC - Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and deputy Scot Marciel hope to hold talks with the ruling junta and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mr Campbell, the top US diplomat for East Asia, is the highest ranking US official to visit Burma since 1995.

The visit is being seen as the latest move by President Barack Obama's administration to find ways to engage with the military regime.

The US diplomats are unlikely to see the reclusive chief of the junta, Than Shwe, but will instead meet Prime Minister Thein Sein in the remote jungle capital of Naypyidaw on Tuesday, according to Burmese officials.

They will then travel to Rangoon on Wednesday to meet Nobel Peace laureate Ms Suu Kyi, whose house arrest was extended by 18 months this year, provoking international outrage.

India As Rising Power Meme, Needs To Be Squashed

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:46:52 -0800

People love to talk about how India is a rising power in Asia:

Upshot: America is done. Our once-great empire is cooked. Not only is China (and India, fast behind) about to stomp all over everyone in economic power and resource abuse, they already own a huge chunk of our debt, manufacture most of our holidays and build almost everything we like to buy. And that includes the device you are reading this on right now. Oh well. We'll always have football.

I'd submit to any writer who just looks at the raw statistics on Indian growth rates to actually visit the place. Take a look at the crumbling infrastructure. Reality looks a lot different on the ground.

Yes, I realize it is only a throwaway sentence by the writer, but still, it's propagating a meme that doesn't represent reality.

Now, there is a case to be made about China. I've seen a great deal of the country and there is a very real energy to succeed and get ahead there. And while many Chinese are mired in poverty, it isn't the kind of nasty, pervasive, grinding poverty to be found in India. In India if you are born poor there is virtually no chance you can rise in society. Not so in China. (Not to idealize the life of the poor in China, mind you. It's still extremely difficult to find real upward mobility in China. In India on the other? For all intents and purposes, such a concept doesn't even exist.)

Furthermore, culturally speaking the Chinese are much better when it comes to cultural or societal innovations than India is. For example: arranged marriages are still the norm in India. And the place of woman is rotten. In China? Not likely. Especially as the idea of romantic love spreads among young female factory workers with a disposable income. (Again, not to idealize often gruesome working conditions for these young women, and yet.)

India when it comes to culture, is probably the most extremely conservative place I have ever visited. Indians like to think they can compete with the Chinese, but they cannot. And we shouldn't buy the tripe that India is an emerging economic power. The only reason we do business with India is wage-arbitrage. It's cheaper to pay an Indian twenty five cents an hour for something a well-educated American would ask fifteen dollars or more for.

And yes, I realize I am a white, post-Colonial man of European descent making cultural judgments. Having visited both countries multiple times I am quite comfortable doing so.

Khmer Rouge trial judges accused of bias

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:28:14 -0800

David Boyle | October 31

ABC News (AU)/Radio Australia - The beleaguered Khmer Rouge trials in Cambodia have hit another obstacle.

Two pre-trial judges, including Australian Rowan Downing QC, have been accused of taking instruction from their respective governments in a motion filed last week.

The Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia were created to try the leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime, which is accused of killing more than 2 million people in the 1970s.

The Khmer Rouge tribunal has endured considerable controversy in its four years of existence and now many people believe it has become entrenched in its own politics.

The lawyers of accused war criminal, Ieng Sary, have filed a motion requesting that two pre trial judges, including Mr Downing, be removed from the court due to a public perception of bias.

Maoist Rebels Widen Deadly Reach Across India

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:28:57 -0700

Jim Yardley | Barsur, India | October 31

NYT - At the edge of the Indravati River, hundreds of miles from the nearest international border, India effectively ends. Indian paramilitary officers point machine guns across the water. The dense jungles and mountains on the other side belong to Maoist rebels dedicated to overthrowing the government.

“That is their liberated zone,” said P. Bhojak, one of the officers stationed at the river’s edge in this town in the eastern state of Chattisgarh.

Or one piece of it. India’s Maoist rebels are now present in 20 states and have evolved into a potent and lethal insurgency. In the last four years, the Maoists have killed more than 900 Indian security officers, a figure almost as high as the more than 1,100 members of the coalition forces killed in Afghanistan during the same period.

If the Maoists were once dismissed as a ragtag band of outdated ideologues, Indian leaders are now preparing to deploy nearly 70,000 paramilitary officers for a prolonged counterinsurgency campaign to hunt down the guerrillas in some of the country’s most rugged, isolated terrain.

Europe stoops to conquer the Uzbeks

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:17:11 -0700

M K Bhadrakumar | Oct 30

Asia Times - The worsening Afghan war has brought some good news for Uzbekistan. On Tuesday, the European Union announced it was lifting a four-year old arms embargo against Uzbekistan. The EU imposed wide-ranging sanctions in 2005 after Uzbek troops fired on civilians during an uprising in the city of Andizhan in Ferghana Valley, and Tashkent rejected calls by Western countries for an international inquiry into those killings.

Tuesday's decision completes an incremental process stretched over the past year or so on the EU's part to kiss and make up with Tashkent. The EU officials justified their decision with Tashkent's recently release of some political prisoners and abolishment of the death penalty. Amnesty International has promptly contradicted the claim with facts and figures.

Aside from the veracity of the EU claim, the reality is that Europe not only blinked first, it also bent its knees while doing so. Brussels kept a straight face, though, assuring the world audience that it would "closely and continuously observe the human-rights situation in Uzbekistan … [and] assess progress made by the Uzbek authorities."

All the same, the EU decision is a good thing. It underscores a new degree of realism often lacking in Western policy towards the strategic Central Asian region. The West has been far too prescriptive towards a region whose civilization dates back several centuries further than Europe's. Besides, the dogma regarding democracy and "regime change" was alien to the steppes and somewhat irrelevant at this point in time.

Are we seeing the end of the "regime change" ideology? The signals are tentative. Statements made by United States Vice President Joseph Biden during his tour this month of Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania, hark back to the former president George W Bush era. But then, Biden was grandstanding in front of people upset over President Barack Obama's reversal on the Anti-Ballistic Missile system deployment in Central Europe.

....The fact that EU was making an exception that it isn't ready to contemplate yet for China should drive home the fact that the Afghan war is hitting the European capitals where it hurts.

As one Moscow commentator put it, Biden's mission was to "provide comfort to the distressed ... to heal the wounds of upset allies", by explaining "that the US would abandon neither its defense commitments ... nor the strong friendship … there will just be a political order in which Russia's interests hold more weight than under the Bush administration".

Indeed, the first detailed articulation of the Obama administration's Central Asia policy, as available from the major speech made by the US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns in Washington, DC, a fortnight ago, all but threw the "Great Central Asia strategy" that the Bush administration proclaimed out of the window. Burns's speech almost made Tuesday's decision on Uzbekistan at Brussels inevitable.

Burns paid no attention to "regime change" or democratization and instead the emphasis was on "a focus on mutual interests" with the Central Asian states "in a spirit of mutual respect, which means that we [the US] won't pretend to have a monopoly on wisdom, or seek to impose our system or to preach or patronize".

He explained this "blend of mutual interest and mutual respect" in terms of energy cooperation, increased trade and security ties and "practical cooperation" was based on the recognition that the countries of the region are "unique, independent, sovereign states, each with its own distinctive national cultures, experiences, people and economies".

All the same, Burns stressed the high priority the Obama administration attaches to the region and revealed that Washington has initiated "an effort to construct high-level mechanisms with each Central Asian country, featuring a structured, annual dialogue." True, he sidestepped Biden's combative tone toward Russia but then he implicitly suggested that the Obama administration wouldn't accept the thesis of "sphere of influence". Burns made not a single reference to Russia in his entire speech.

Arguably, therefore, the EU's decision on Uzbekistan has been taken in a holistic spirit taking into account many factors such as the Obama administration's new approach to the region, the promise of "reseting" US-Russia relations, energy security, trade and investment, and China's surge in Central Asia.

All the same, it should be traced first and foremost to the imperatives of the Afghan war, and only reminds us how far the war has transformed as a "bleeding wound" - to borrow former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev's unforgiving words.

... as Afghan war beckons

Pakistan strikes deep into al-Qa'ida territory

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:26:54 -0700

Omar Waraich | Sherwangai | Oct 30

The Independent - In the mountains of Waziristan, the army claims to have recovered passports of extremists with links to the September 11 and Madrid attackers. Does this mean they are finally closing in on Osama bin Laden himself?

After a sweep of a militant stronghold in the lawless tribal region of South Waziristan, the Pakistani army has recovered passports purportedly belonging to two leading al-Qa'ida figures, including a member of the notorious Hamburg cell that orchestrated September 11.

Among a pile of documents, photographs, weapons and computers seen by The Independent yesterday in Waziristan, is a German passport belonging to Said Bahaji, the logistical expert of the notorious German terror cell that orchestrated the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Bahaji, 34, who is of Moroccan descent, obtained the passport just days before September 11 and used it to travel to Pakistan according to the information stamped in the document.

It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the passports, nor to establish the fate of their apparent holders. If they are authentic, the documents would prove that South Waziristan, a bastion of the Pakistani Taliban, has also been a sanctuary for foreign Jihadists and key al-Qa'ida figures in Pakistan. Major General Athar Abbas, the military's chief spokesman said the documents were being made public to demonstrate the presence of foreign militants in South Waziristan which borders Afghanistan.

A Spanish passport, also recovered, purportedly belonged to Raquel Burgos Garcia. According to a student card, she is the wife of Amir Azizi, a Moroccan terrorist suspect who has been linked to both the September 11 attacks and the Madrid bombings.

The documents were apparently found after the capture of the village of Sherwangai on 20 October. The take- over came after three days of intense fighting in the dusty, barren and expansive Waziristan wilderness, at the start of an anti-Taliban offensive launched under intense political pressure from the United States. "We moved in as a battalion at night to take the terrorists by surprise," Lieutenant Colonel Inam Tarar said yesterday. As he spoke, mortar shells were being blasted into a village across a gorge nearby.

The Pakistan army would not say whether the apparent holders of the passports had been killed in the current offensive, had died earlier, or escaped. The German passport, number L 8642163, was issued in Hamburg on 2 August 2001. It matches that on an Interpol-United Nations Security Council Special notice with the exception of the first digit. The photograph in the passport matches that on the notice as well, but was not laminated.

Hillary Clinton tells Pakistan it's doing too little against Al Qaeda

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:36:09 -0700

Paul Richter | Washington DC | October 30

LA Times - On a fence-mending visit, the secretary of State turns blunt, saying she finds it 'hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to.'

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, visiting Pakistan on a fence-mending tour, turned unusually blunt Thursday, accusing the government of failing to do all it could to track down Al Qaeda.

Clinton told a group of journalists in Lahore that she found it "hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to." Al Qaeda, she said, "has had a safe haven in Pakistan since 2002."

Clinton's three-day visit is her first to Pakistan since she became secretary of State, and its principal goal is to improve strained relations. On the first day of her visit, in Islamabad, she declared that she wanted to "turn a page" in the U.S.-Pakistani relationship.

But on the second day, frustration seemed to surface as Clinton, a former U.S. senator from New York, confronted the long-standing strains between the countries.

Discussing Al Qaeda, she raised the issue of Pakistan's powerful military intelligence arm, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which has been accused of secretly supporting militant groups in Afghanistan.

"There are issues that, not just the U.S., but others have with your government and with your military security establishment," she said.

Her comments came on a day when she took questions from students at Government College University in Lahore who made it clear that they are deeply suspicious of the United States' intentions in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Speaking to a group of business executives, Clinton also criticized Pakistan for its low rate of tax collection, which reflects rampant tax evasion and, critics say, undermines the country's efforts to address poverty.

"At the risk of sounding undiplomatic, Pakistan has to have internal investment in your public services and your business opportunities," she told the executives. The U.S. government taxes "everything that moves and everything that doesn't, and that's not what we see in Pakistan."

The U.S.-Pakistani relationship has recently been under strain. Many Pakistanis believe U.S. strikes by drone aircraft in the western tribal areas are an infringement of Pakistani sovereignty, and there has been an outcry over U.S. legislation providing $7.5 billion in new aid, which many Pakistanis see as American meddling in their government.

A U.S. official said Clinton's comments about Al Qaeda were not part of a prepared message she had intended to deliver, but reflected her own heartfelt views.

"She has very deeply held views about Al Qaeda," said the official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. "You've got to remember, she was a senator from New York on 9/11."

Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations said he was surprised that Clinton would raise the issue of Pakistan's efforts on Al Qaeda, given the current fragility of the civilian government.

"It seems like an odd time to come in and send this one across the bow," said Markey, a former State Department official just returned from a trip to Pakistan. "It's a little bit surprising."

Clinton's comments on Al Qaeda could ruffle feathers in Pakistan, where the army is engaged in a ground offensive in the militant haven of South Waziristan, begun at the strong urging of the United States.

A Pakistani official predicted that Clinton's comments would make some people in Pakistan angry, "some perhaps violently so." But he said that in his view, Clinton's candor was a sign that the relationship was maturing.

Clinton has earned a reputation for sometimes speaking with candor more closely associated with senators than chief diplomats.

On her first trip to Asia, early this year, she upset human rights advocates by saying China's intransigence on human rights should not affect the Washington-Beijing relationship on other issues.

Last spring, when insurgents invaded Pakistan's Swat Valley and appeared headed for the capital, Islamabad, she bluntly warned leaders that they might be risking the country's existence by failing to act against the insurgents.

Pakistani media have been skeptical about the earnestness of Clinton's trip. This morning, an editorial in the Nation newspaper called the visit "a PR exercise aimed at winning over hearts and minds. But with what? A few sanitized meetings with selected media people, students and the 'right' civil society members?"