President Donald Trump is sending Christmas greetings to U.S. troops stationed around the world.

 

From the Florida estate where Trump is spending the holidays, he spoke by video hook-up on Christmas Eve to members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, stationed in Qatar, Kuwait and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

 

Trump told the troops that Americans are thankful for them and their families. He says they’re “the greatest people on earth.”

 

He offered renewed praise to the Coast Guard for saving thousands of lives during a series of deadly U.S. hurricanes.

 

Trump told the troops that “every American heart” is thankful for them and is asking God to watch over them and their families.

 

 
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In his newly unveiled National Security Strategy, U.S. President Donald Trump vows to “ensure the balance of power remains in America’s favor in key regions of the world.” 

The Indo-Pacific led the list of “key regions” identified by the White House, followed by Europe and the Middle East. How Washington will accomplish this strategic goal is being closely watched, as China, identified as a rival, shows no sign of lessening its interest in a region that is witnessing dramatic power shifts.

“The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy is remarkably critical of China,” but “they have yet to explain how this approach will apply to and be implemented in the South China Sea,” two American scholars recently wrote, referring to a contentious issue considered reflective of American and Chinese strategic intentions.

While power politics unfolds, at least one country in the region appears willing to downplay territorial disputes, for now, in favor of strengthening its economic muscle.

​‘No new construction’ in South China Sea

In a year-end speech, Jose Manuel G. Romualdez, the Philippines’ ambassador to the U.S., focused the audience’s attention on his country’s economic growth, citing “a massive redevelopment of the country’s physical infrastructure” as a top priority for the Filipino government, led by Rodrigo Duterte.

Asked if the urgency concerning the South China Sea has receded, Romualdez gave a qualified yes: The situation has “calmed down in the sense that we’re now working with China on how to resolve the issues,” he told VOA. “There’s no new construction going on; if that’s how you describe ‘calm down,’ that’s what it is.”

His government, he says, is talking with China both bilaterally and through the regional platform facilitated by ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations with 10 member states.

Earlier, China’s construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea, where several Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines, contest sovereignty, was widely criticized as acts that deliberately changed the status quo.

China insists that the vast majority of the waters comprising the South China Sea has belonged to China since time immemorial.

​Worries of China’s global investments

Since Duterte became president of the Philippines in June 2016, bilateral discussions between Manila and Beijing appear to be leaning toward trade and investments, and away from competing sovereignty claims.

China is now seen as bankrolling much of the Philippines’ ambitious infrastructure projects, and Washington has taken notice.

“China is investing billions of dollars in infrastructure across the globe,” the newly unveiled National Security Strategy pointed out.

To Washington, this could be worrisome. 

“China and Russia target their investments in the developing world to expand influence and gain competitive advantages against the United States,” the security strategy asserted.

Romualdez, the Philippines envoy, defended his country’s broadening approach: “With a view in diversifying our markets, we have strengthened our economic development and relationships with other major trading partners,” he said.

​China and Japan ‘competing with each other’

Romualdez singled out agreements signed between his country and Japan, another regional power, to illustrate this multipronged approach, part and parcel of the Philippines’ “independent foreign policy” put forth by President Duterte.

Tokyo has agreed to fund a subway system in Manila as well as flood mitigation projects, he added.

Japan and China are “competing with each other” to be the No. 1 investor in the Philippines, Romualdez later told VOA.

“We would like to see more from the United States; they’re our allies and our friends,” he added.

While Manila’s chief diplomat in Washington spoke of multilateral ties through the lens of economics and investments, scholars are less hesitant to point out the inherent strategic factor.

In a paper published on the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) website dedicated to issues surrounding the South China Sea, a researcher at the Philippines’ National Defense College describes the current Filipino government’s approach as “less ground-breaking” but “more of a return to the hedging strategy habitually employed by many countries in Southeast Asia.”

Manila’s strategic partnership with Tokyo, in Mico A. Galang’s opinion, “forms a crucial component to the hedging approach.”

US must compete for positive relationships

Manila’s overtures to Beijing and Tokyo aside, U.S.-Philippines relations remain important to both, said Hank Hendrickson, a former U.S. diplomat and current executive director of the US-Philippines Society.

“A strategic partnership with the Philippines has been integral to America’s engagement in the Indo-Pacific region,” Hendrickson told VOA. “From a Southeast Asian perspective, the United States continues to play a stabilizing role as the balancer of choice.’”

The former diplomat says he is also encouraged by continued high-level engagement between Washington and Manila under the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) and Bilateral Strategic Dialogue (BSD). In addition, he points to both sides’ willingness to explore a potential free trade agreement following the Trump-Duterte meeting in Manila as among “concrete and positive measures” which, in his opinion, should encourage greater trade and investment between the U.S. and the Philippines.

The newly unveiled National Security Strategy indicates that Washington is waking up to an increasingly complex and competitive global environment.

“Today, the United States must compete for positive relationships around the world,” the document said.
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A group that helps young residents of the inner city develop job skills is sharing the holiday spirit with the young people who are turning their lives around. Mike O’Sullivan has more from Los Angeles.
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Two recent incidents have bolstered the Trump administration’s stance against the United States’ family-based immigration system, which the president says threatens national security.

Tyler Houlton, acting press secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement Saturday that his agency could “confirm the suspect involved in a terror attack in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and another suspect arrested on terror-related money-laundering charges were both beneficiaries of extended family chain migration.”

He said both cases “highlight the Trump administration’s concerns with extended family chain migration.”

Pennsylvania case

On Friday, a gunman in Harrisburg, who was an immigrant from Egypt, fired at police and state troopers in several locations before they shot and killed him.

Ahmed Aminamin El-Mofty shot one state trooper, but officials say she is expected to make a full recovery.

A relative of El-Mofty said the family is perplexed by his actions. Ahmed Soweilam told the media that his sister had been married to El-Mofty, but they separated six years ago. He said his brother-in-law had worked as a security guard and had moved back to Egypt, but returned to the U.S. a few months ago.

“He’s not the perfect guy, but he’s not an aggressive person,” Soweilam said.

“The long chain of migration” that led to El-Mofty’s “admission into the United States was initiated years ago by a distant relative of the suspect,” said Homeland Security’s Houlton.

Pakistani woman charged

In a separate incident, a Pakistani woman who entered the U.S. through the family-based immigration system has been accused of laundering bitcoin and wiring money to Islamic State jihadists. Zoobia Shahnaz’s lawyer says her client was trying to help Syrian refugees.

Houlton said family-based migration has “been exploited by terrorists to attack our country.” He said the family-based system makes it “more difficult to keep dangerous people out of the United States and to protect the safety of every American.” He said a merit-based immigration system is “used by nearly all other countries.”

​Merit-based immigration

Proponents of merit-based immigration say the current system lowers wages and discourages assimilation.

Supporters say a merit-based system also would help lower immigration rates and ensure that the immigrants who do come are highly skilled and less likely to need public assistance.

Earlier this year, President Trump said, “For decades, the United States was operated and has operated a very low-skill immigration system, issuing record numbers of green cards to low-wage immigrants.”

“This (family-based) policy has placed substantial pressure on American workers, taxpayers and community resources,” Trump added.

Critics of merit-based system

But critics say the American economy also needs low-skilled workers and a merit-based system would hurt industries that rely on them.

A merit-based system would also cost the government more because the government would have to review the applications and pay resettlement costs that are currently covered by sponsoring families.

Critics also see the merit-based system as un-American.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has said the merit-based system “abandons the fundamental respect for family, at the heart of our faith, at the heart of who we are as Americans.” 
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Quietly, Bonna Neang Weinstein wept. Her husband, Howard Weinstein, sitting next to her, held her hand, comforting her.

“It reminded me of everything and myself,” she said of a December 15 performance of “Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia” at the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). The first major symphonic work to remember the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians under the rule of the Khmer Rouge regime undid Weinstein, a survivor, who arrived in the U.S. in 1984.

“I could not believe that I lived through that,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

The production is the first collaboration between composer Him Sophy and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Rithy Panh, who directed and designed the production.

Both artists survived the Khmer Rouge, which by some estimates killed 90 percent of Cambodia’s artists.

The two are in the forefront of Cambodia’s cultural renaissance, a movement to revive and preserve the ancient arts that were nearly excised, while educating new generations about their cultural heritage. Because of the Khmer Rouge genocide from 1975-1979, half of Cambodia’s population is younger than 25.

The production presented in New York is also aimed at the Cambodian diaspora. It has played on tour in Australia, where the Sydney Morning Herald described it as “light after utter darkness, a promise of resurgence…” and, after sold-out performances in Boston, it is headed to the Philharmonie de Paris next year before opening in Cambodia in 2019, the 40th anniversary of the end of the Khmer Rouge era.

Named after ceremony

“Bangsokol” is named after a ceremony performed at Cambodian funerals. A bangsokol is both the white cloth placed over the body of the deceased and the act of its removal, which signified the passage into the next life, where the spirits of the dead find rest. Bangsokol is also remembering the dead at a watt, the Buddhist temple, with prayer and offerings.

Each audience member found a bangsokol draped across their seat with a note: “We invite you to place this shroud around your shoulders for the duration of the performance.”

“Bangsokol” weaves Khmer traditional music enhanced by a Western orchestra and a Taiwanese chorus performing the libretto by Trent Walker.

Throughout the one-hour production, archival footage — the faces of Cambodian refugees and Khmer Rouge victims, black-clad Cambodians working in fields — flickered across three flat screens hung high behind the performers. Footage of aerial bombings was followed by a clip of then-U.S. President Richard Nixon saying, “Cambodia is the Nixon Doctrine in its purest form.”

“Whatever the film showed, it took me there,” Bonna Neang Weinstein said. “It has been more than 30 years, almost 40 years, but I still dream that I am in the Pol Pot regime.”

For many in the audience, the power of the past showed as quick swipes with damp tissues wiping away silent tears.

“If I’d know this was about the Khmer Rouge, I would not have come,” said a weeping To Voeun, 79, of Alexandria, Virginia. The Khmer Rouge killed her husband, leaving her to raise seven children alone, two of whom remain in Cambodia.

For Bonna Neang Weinstein, the owner of the Khmer Art Gallery in Philadelphia who attended “Bangsokol” with her husband and her three children, the Nixon clip hit home.

She explained: “I cried because I am hurt that the U.S. government bombed my country,” an event that many believe gave rise to the Khmer Rouge.

‘I cannot let it go’

“The U.S. has not admitted anything and not even apologized to us,” said Weinstein, who lost eight family members to the Khmer Rouge. “It mentions at the end ‘Let it all go.’ But I cannot let it go because the perpetrators have not acknowledged their guilt and apologized.”

Sophy Him, who composed the rock opera Where Elephants Weep, told VOA Khmer that his requiem does more than commemorate those who died under the Khmer Rouge.

“We remember the deaths, but also wish and encourage people in the world to have hope and love each other,” said Sophy Him, who lost two older brothers to the regime.

“This performance is for all people in the world who have suffered from genocides and wars,” he said. “This performance is also a warning to the world about the impact of war and genocide.”

That warning was not lost on Jonathan Hulland, a senior program officer at the American Jewish World Service in New York City, who told VOA after the performance that by putting on the white shroud, he felt he was part of the performance.

Hulland, who has been to Cambodia four times, most recently in October, appreciated the warning implicit in the performance. 

“I felt some shame and some guilt,” said Hulland, who was born in the United Kingdom and is now an American citizen. “I am an American now, and I do feel like this country has such a responsibility for what happened.”

Joseph Melillo, BAM’s executive producer, said, “BAM plays a very significant role, not only here in New York City, but in this country of introducing to our culture, the work of other cultures.”

Melillo, who has been to Cambodia twice, said he decided to bring “Bangsokol” to BAM because of Phloeun Prim, the executive director of Cambodian Living Arts (CLA), “who has a clear vision of what he wants for his country.”

The performance was commissioned by CLA, a nonprofit group that works to support the revival of traditional art forms.

Mary Read, who serves on the CLA board of directors, said, “Bangsokol” showed “that there is compassion.”

“Art comes to the heart,” said Read, an Australian known internationally for her Sydney fashion boutique and online store. “By healing the heart, you can heal the spirit of the country.”

The performance ends with Chhay Yam, a joy-filled Cambodian dance accompanied by singing. Two Cambodian-American children of the production’s volunteer helpers participated, learning the steps and how to play traditional musical instruments.

Hollywood luminary Angelina Jolie, who holds Cambodian citizenship and directed First They Killed My Father ​with Rithy Panh, recently saw the performance with her children Maddox Jolie-Pitt, whom she adopted as a baby in Cambodia, and Shiloh Jolie-Pitt. They all wore white shirts and black pants, traditional Khmer funeral dress.

Jolie told VOA after the performance, “I think this was a deeply moving performance. I think it is brilliantly done. I think it is very powerful. It put you into a meditation. It’s like an hourlong prayer to pay respect, to remember, and to help us think of Cambodia the past, the ancient past, the more recent past, the present, and take us forward into a more hopeful future.”
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The U.S. is providing Ukraine with lethal weapons, in an effort to help the country with its fight against Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country.   

The U.S. State Department said in a statement Friday that the decision to provide Ukraine with “enhanced defensive capabilities” is in keeping with the “effort to help Ukraine build its long-term defense capacity, to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

The statement added that the “U.S. assistance is entirely defensive in nature.”

An ABC-TV news report issued before the announcement said the “The total defense package of $47 million includes the sale of 210 anti-tank missiles and 35 launchers.”  The State Department did not confirm that those weapons would be among those supplied.

U.S. President Donald Trump has called for better relations with Moscow, but the arms deal with Kyiv is seen as a likely threat to efforts toward improving ties.

Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned Russia that the stand-off over Ukraine was the single most important obstacle to warmer ties between the two countries.

 
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A reused SpaceX rocket carried 10 satellites into orbit from California on Friday, leaving behind a trail of mystery and wonder as it soared into space.

The Falcon 9 booster lifted off from coastal Vandenberg Air Force Base, carrying the latest batch of satellites for Iridium Communications.

The launch in the setting sun created a shining, billowing streak that was widely seen throughout Southern California and as far away as Phoenix.

Calls came in to TV stations as far afield as San Diego, more than 200 miles south of the launch site.

Cars stopped on freeways in Los Angeles so drivers and passengers could take pictures and video.

The Los Angeles Fire Department issued an advisory that the “mysterious light in the sky” was from the rocket launch.

Jimmy Golen, a sports writer for The Associated Press in Boston who was in Southern California for the holidays, said he and other tourists saw the long, glowing contrail while touring Warner Bros. studio in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank.

“People were wondering if it had something to do with movies, or TV or a UFO,” he said. “It was very cool.”

The same rocket carried Iridium satellites into orbit in June. That time, the first stage landed on a floating platform in the Pacific Ocean. This time, the rocket was allowed to plunge into the sea.

It was the 18th and final launch of 2017 for SpaceX, which has contracted to replace Iridium’s system with 75 updated satellites. SpaceX has made four launches and expects to make several more to complete the job by mid-2018.

The satellites also carry payloads for global real-time aircraft tracking and a ship-tracking service.
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