BANGKOK, Feb 3, 2010 (IPS) - A Thai national habit of openly speculating if this South-east Asian kingdom is on the verge of its next coup d'etat is in full flight.

Newspaper reports and commentaries are feeding this guessing game of the country's powerful military mounting the 19th putsch. It comes three and a half years after the army successfully staged the last one, on Sept. 19 2006, to oust the elected government of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The 18th coup, in fact, began with a similar political script as the one currently unfolding. The press began speculating about a looming coup in early 2006, the military commanders denied it, till the tanks rumbled through Bangkok's streets.

`COUP DEBATE REFUSES TO DIE,' screamed the headline in Monday's edition of `The Nation', an English-language daily. The story that followed pointed to the inevitable. "To many observers, a military coup still looms on the horizon, and the question tilts towards when it would happen rather than if it would occur," wrote managing editor Thanong Khanthong.

The military, for its part, has helped fan the flames by a series of recent incidents. On the night of Jan. 25, 22 armoured personnel carriers (APCs) were spotted driving through the streets of Bangkok, resembling the scene that had played out on the night of Sept. 19, 2006.

This time, though, the APCs were on the streets for a more mundane mission: maintenance and repair work. Yet the apologies offered by the military brass for causing panic in politically jittery Thailand did little to slow down the rumour mill.

SILWAN, Occupied East Jerusalem, Feb 3, 2010 (IPS) - Backed by armed security men, the municipal inspectors race their jeeps through the narrow alleyways and up a hillside crowded with buildings.

Some of the homes are well-faced with stone; the naked concrete of others gives off something of a temporary air.

One block of flats stands out for its unusual seven-storey height in an area of the city where two or three storied buildings are the norm. And then there is the giant, blue-and-white Israeli national flag draped demonstratively over the front of the building, from the roof down to the ground.

This is the so-called `Beit Yehonatan', the House of Yehonatan, where religious Jews have put down a nationalist marker in the heart of this Palestinian neighbourhood, part of a major effort to change the face of Arab East Jerusalem that has been under Israeli occupation since 1967.

The inspectors' mission is to deliver demolition orders to owners of illegally-built homes, almost all of them Palestinians.

Beit Yehonatan is also exceptional in this respect. In July 2008, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered that it too was built "illegally" by the settlers and should be evacuated and sealed off.

When, for the umpteenth time, the inspectors arrive at the settlers' building they find it shuttered. They are unable to gain access. It is not clear whether anybody is at home. Shrugging their shoulders the inspectors move on to deliver demolition orders on more accessible targets - Palestinian families.

Washington's continued efforts to build a missile defense shield in Europe have complicated nuclear arms reduction talks with Russia, Russia's deputy prime minister said on Saturday.

"It is impossible to talk seriously about the reduction of nuclear capabilities when a nuclear power is working to deploy protective systems against vehicles to deliver nuclear warheads possessed by other countries," Sergei Ivanov said at an international security conference in Munich.

Russia and the United States are in talks to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START 1), the cornerstone of post-Cold War arms control, which expired in December with a new deal.

Russia on Friday expressed concerns about Romania's decision to host missiles as part of a U.S. missile defense shield to protect European allies from possible Iranian attacks, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov demanded "clarifications."

The planned deployment in Romania comes after President Barack Obama scrapped plans for a radar and interceptor missiles in the Czech Republic and Poland, which Russia fiercely opposed as a national security threat and a blow on its nuclear deterrent. Moscow threatened retaliatory measures.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Saturday that Iran still had to prove to the rest of the world that it was willing to make meaningful concessions regarding its nuclear program.

"Our hand is still reaching out towards [Iran]," Westerwelle said on Saturday, February 6. "But so far it's reaching out into a void. And I've seen nothing since yesterday that makes me want to change that view."

These comments came 12 hours after Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki - a surprise visitor at this year's Munich Security Conference - said that he expected a deal between his country and Western powers "in the not very distant future."

Westerwelle called for combined efforts world-wide to reduce both conventional and nuclear weapons and stressed that the international community could not accept a nuclear-armed Iran.

The United States plans to unveil later this decade a new conventional "Prompt Global Strike" (C-PGS) system. It will enable the US to instantly carry out a massive conventional attack anywhere in the world in an hour or less.
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"The US cannot take its current dominance for granted and needs to invest in the programs, platforms, and personnel that will ensure that dominance's persistence," wrote US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in a commentary accompanying the 2010 QDR entitled, "A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon For a New Age".