Is America Hooked on War?

he question is: What kind of country do we actually live in when the so-called U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) lists 16 intelligence services ranging from Air Force Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency to the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Security Agency? What could "intelligence" mean once spread over 16 sizeable, bureaucratic, often competing outfits with a cumulative 2009 budget estimated at more than $55 billion (a startling percentage of which is controlled by the Pentagon)? What exactly is so intelligent about all that? And why does no one think it even mildly strange or in any way out of the ordinary?

Read more

Medvedev jumps the gun on Iran

The Western perception that the famous Prime Minister Vladimir Putin-Medvedev "tandem" in Moscow would inevitably transform and the Russian president would incrementally create his own power center in the Kremlin received a boost.

During his visit to Moscow in July, United States President Barack Obama hinted at such a perception. As against eight hours that Obama clocked with Medvedev, he spared 90 minutes with Putin, whom he also made it a point to describe tendentiously as someone with one foot planted in the bygone


Cold War era. The implication was that Medvedev was open to engagement by the West.         

Read More         

The dollar is dead - long live the renminbi

 Sometimes it takes a crisis to restore reason and equilibrium to the world, and so it is with the trade and capital imbalances that were arguably the root cause of the financial collapse of the past two years.
To economic purists, the changes now under way in demand and trade are inevitable, necessary and even desirable. Even so, dollar supremacy and the geo-political dominance of the West are both likely long-term casualties.
....Current-account surpluses in China, Germany and Japan are narrowing, as are the deficits of the major consumer nations – primarily America, but also smaller profligates such as Britain and Spain.
The key question for G20 leaders as they meet in Pittsburgh is not bankers' bonuses, financial regulation and other issues of peripheral importance, but whether this correction in trade might be used as the basis for a permanently more balanced world economy.

Read More

SAUDIS WILL LET ISRAEL BOMB IRAN NUCLEAR SITE

INTELLIGENCE chief Sir John Scarlett has been told that Saudi Arabia is ready to allow Israel to bomb Iran’s new nuclear site.

The head of MI6 discussed the issue in London with Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Saudi officials after British intelligence officers helped to uncover the plant, in the side of a mountain near the ancient city of Qom.

The site is seen as a major threat by Tel Aviv and Riyadh. Details of the talks emerged after John Bolton, America’s former UN ambassador, told a meeting of intelligence analysts that “Riyadh certainly approves” of Israel’s use of Saudi airspace.

Read More

The perils of an Israeli airstrike on Iran

 American and Israeli military planners have been examining options for an attack on Iran for almost three decades. There is no shortage of possible targets: Iran has dozens of nuclear-related sites that are known to western officials.
Yet military experts in Washington and Tel Aviv acknowledge that a surprise airstrike would be likely to succeed only in delaying Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. It would also present daunting logistical and political challenges with no guarantee that even a sustained assault on known facilities would eradicate Tehran’s nuclear threat.

Read More

A Better Missile Defense for a Safer Europe

First, to be clear, there is now no strategic missile defense in Europe. In December 2006, just days after becoming secretary of defense, I recommended to President George W. Bush that the United States place 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland and an advanced radar in the Czech Republic. This system was designed to identify and destroy up to about five long-range missiles potentially armed with nuclear warheads fired from the Middle East — the greatest and most likely danger being from Iran. At the time, it was the best plan based on the technology and threat assessment available.

Read More

China Says Military Arsenal Comparable With West

China's military now possesses most of the sophisticated weapon systems found in the arsenals of developed Western nations, the country's defense minister said in comments published Monday.
Many of China's systems, including the J-10 fighter jet, latest-generation tanks, navy destroyers, and cruise and intercontinental ballistic missiles, match or are close to matching the capabilities of those in the West, Liang Guanglie said in a rare interview posted on the ministry's Web site.

Read More

China Sends Fuel to Iran as U.S. Sanctions Loom - Report

State-run Chinese companies have started supplying Iran with gasoline in a move that could undermine U.S. pressure on Iran to give up its nuclear programme, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
Iran is the world's fifth-largest crude exporter but imports up to 40 percent of its gasoline as it lacks the refining capacity to meet domestic demand.
The United States and its European allies may target Iran's fuel imports if it refuses to enter talks over its disputed nuclear programme by the end of this month.

Read More

U.S. Debt Crisis May Cause ‘Fall of Rome’ Scenario, Duncan Says

U.S. budget deficits will continue to pile up in the next decade, eventually reaching an unsustainable level that may result in an economic collapse, according to Richard Duncan, author of “The Dollar Crisis.”
The U.S. has little chance of resolving its deteriorating financial position because the manufacturing industry continues to shrink, leaving the nation with few goods to export, said Duncan, now at Singapore-based Blackhorse Asset Management.
In “The Dollar Crisis,” first published in 2003, Duncan argued that persistent current account deficits by the U.S. were creating an unsustainable boom in global credit that was destined to break down, resulting in a worldwide recession.    

Read More

HSBC bids farewell to dollar supremacy

 "The dollar looks awfully like sterling after the First World War," said David Bloom, the bank's currency chief.
"The whole picture of risk-reward for emerging market currencies has changed. It is not so much that they have risen to our standards, it is that we have fallen to theirs. It used to be that sovereign risk was mainly an emerging market issue but the events of the last year have shown that this is no longer the case. Look at the UK – debt is racing up to 100pc of GDP," he said

Read More

Britain:We're sleep walking into unilateral disarmament

If so, it will not be very much. It is estimated that the replacement of our four existing Trident submarines, which constitute our entire nuclear strike force, will cost around £20billion.
Cutting that number by one might save only £2-3billion, on the basis that by the time you have designed, planned and built three submarines, the fourth costs proportionately less.
Our annual defence expenditure is currently £34billion. Total government annual spending is £630billion and rising, so giving up one submarine would make only a tiny impact.
It might also jeopardise our effectiveness. With three submarines, Britain's nuclear deterrent would be less convincing.

Read More

China Hints At Unveiling Of New DF-41 ICBM

China will display five new missiles in its National Day Parade on Oct. 1, although the much-anticipated third generation Dongfeng 41 is not named directly.

Some Chinese media are quoting an unnamed military "leading missile expert" saying that the missiles will be second generation and already in use by the military. Other media are saying that the unveiling of the DF-41 is a possibility because it is not excluded by name.
"Military aficionados have been expecting to see the Dongfeng 41, known as the DF-41 or the CSS-X-10," but they will be disappointed, said the missile expert speaking to the Chinese-based news Web site Global Times. "The third generation is still under development and is unlikely to be displayed this time," said the source from the "Second Artillery Force."

Read More

Report: Chinese Develop Special "Kill Weapon" to Destroy U.S. Aircraft Carriers

With tensions already rising due to the Chinese navy becoming more aggressive in asserting its territorial claims in the South China Sea, the U.S. Navy seems to have yet another reason to be deeply concerned.
After years of conjecture, details have begun to emerge of a "kill weapon" developed by the Chinese to target and destroy U.S. aircraft carriers.
First posted on a Chinese blog viewed as credible by military analysts and then translated by the naval affairs blog Information Dissemination, a recent report provides a description of an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) that can strike carriers and other U.S. vessels at a range of 2000km.


Read More 

Iran's Nuclear Program: In Context - An Enlightenment

Iran's leaders have worked to pursue nuclear energy technology since the 1950s, spurred by the launch of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program. It made steady progress, with Western help, through the early 1970s. But concern over Iranian intentions followed by the upheaval of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 effectively ended outside assistance. Iran was known to be reviving its civilian nuclear programs during the 1990s, but revelations in 2002 and 2003 of clandestine research into fuel enrichment and conversion raised international concern that Iran's ambitions had metastasized beyond peaceful intent. Iran has consistently denied allegations it seeks to develop a bomb. Yet many in the international community remain skeptical.

Read More

India's nuclear power a 'myth'

He said the device had only "fizzled". The claims by the test director K Santhanam have provoked an outcry in India which treasures its nuclear status as a symbol of its power in Asia where it has been locked in an arms race with both Pakistan and China.
The Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh recently unveiled India's first nuclear submarine as a statement of its naval ambitions.
But according to K. Santhanam, who directed the secret detonations of five Shakt' nuclear devices at their nuclear test site at Pokhran, in the Rajasthan desert, the true test results were covered up and falsely hailed as a success by the Hindu nationalist BJP government.

Read More

Obama drops a missile bombshell

With his eight-month presidency seemingly weakening, United States President Barack Obama struck. A familiar pattern in his political career is repeating. His decision on Thursday to scrap the plans of his predecessor George W Bush to build a land-based anti-missile shield in the heart of Europe overlooking Russia's western borders may appear justifiable, but is nonetheless a stunning national security reversal.

It was to be a missile defense system of unproven technology, paid for with money that America could ill-afford to waste, and conceived against a threat that probably doesn't exist. Still, missile defense is a Republican obsession that goes back to Ronald Reagan and the "Star Wars" system.

Read More

Kremlin says Israel promised not to strike Iran

Israel promised Russia it would not launch an attack on Iran, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview aired on Sunday in which he described such an assault as "the worst thing that can be imagined."
Israel has hinted it could forcibly deny Iran the means to make an atomic bomb if it refuses to suspend uranium enrichment and has criticized Russia for agreeing to supply to Tehran S-300 anti-aircraft weapons that could complicate an attack.
In an interview with CNN recorded on Tuesday, Medvedev denied Moscow was backing Iran but said it had the right to supply defensive weapons and said sanctions against Tehran should only be used as a last resort.

Read More

China working on a military plan against India?

A day after India downplayed the China threat, calling it a media creation, CNN-IBN has access to a confidential intelligence note that suggests that Beijing is acting on a definite military plan on the border.

“There is no mutually agreed or delineated line of actual control between the two countries,” Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said underscoring why intrusions take place.

Read More

Netanyahu plays a Russian rope trick

The day-long public disappearance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 7 had his country's gossip-mongers salivating. Many went to work on speculative theories about just why he suddenly vanished from the media's eye and official records. The strange disappearance of a head of government is, after all, no small scoop.

The initial alibi from the prime minister's military secretary - that he was "visiting a security facility" within the country - attempted to avert prying eyes in a country where the press corps dutifully obey military censorship laws. Netanyahu's aides believed that spinning the story of his inspection of a top-secret Mossad installation inside Israel would be enough to satiate the curious.

Read More                

Taliban's bombs came from US, not Iran

ut the Taliban commander's claim is contradicted by evidence from the US Defense Department, Canadian forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban themselves that the increased damage to NATO tanks by Taliban forces has come from anti-tank mines provided by the United States to the jihadi movement against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Read More

Iran steps up to the nuclear table

After Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki submitted Tehran's new proposals to representatives of the "Iran Six" nations on Wednesday, he told the press, "We have provided a new opportunity for dialogue and bilateral cooperation and we hope we can arrange a new round of talks under the framework of this new package of proposals."

While the content of the package remains confidential, various Iranian officials, including Mottaki, have provided information that hints at a comprehensive approach that combines nuclear issues with other issues on Iran's foreign policy plate.

Read More

Arctic Sea ghost ship 'was carrying weapons to Iran'

 Russian officials have said the alleged pirates demanded a $1.5 million ransom but speculation has grown that the freighter was carrying contraband cargo.
Israeli and Russian security sources have questioned The Kremlin's official explanation, instead arguing that the ship was carrying S-300 missiles, Russia's most advanced anti-aircraft weapon, while undergoing repairs in the Russian port of Kaliningrad, a notorious Baltic smuggling base.
According to reports, Mossad is said to have briefed the Russian government that the shipment had been sold by former military officers linked to the black market, and Russia then dispatched a naval rescue mission. Those who believe Mossad was involved point to a visit to Moscow by Shimon Peres, Israel's president, the day after the Arctic Sea was recovered.

Read More  

Netanyahu secretly visited Russia: reports

Israeli media reports said on Wednesday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secretly visited Moscow on Monday in a bid to dissuade Russia from selling weapons to Iran.
In Moscow, a spokesman for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin denied the reports.
A spokesman for Netanyahu said he had visited a security installation in Israel, reiterating a statement issued by his office on Monday amid media speculation about his whereabouts.

Read More

Chavez visits Russia to discuss arms, energy deals

enezuelan President Hugo Chavez praised Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Wednesday for standing up to the United States, kicking off a visit to Moscow that the Kremlin said will focus on major energy and military agreements.
Cooperation between Russia, the world's No. 2 oil exporter, and OPEC member Venezuela has been dismissed by the United States as mostly talk but is watched with concern by Colombia, which has stormy ties with its Latin American neighbor.

Read More

Coming Soon to a Democracy Near You ...

Never heard of it? Not surprising - very few people saw it in the first place. But "Hillary: The Movie" - a no-holds-barred attack on the life and career of Hillary Clinton intended for viewing during her presidential campaign - could prove to have an impact on the political scene greater than even its producers could have dreamed.
    In the world of money and politics, "Hillary: The Movie" may turn out to be the sleeper hit of the year, a boffo blockbuster. Depending on the outcome of a special Supreme Court hearing on September 9, this little piece of propaganda could unleash a new torrent of cash flooding into campaigns from big business, unions and other special interests. "Hillary: The Movie" may turn out to be "Frankenstein: The Monster."

Read More

Holocaust Still a Political Football

Matthew Rothschild and I both thought of Edward Said when we read about two Hamas members of the Palestinian Legislative Council insisting that Gaza's schools should not teach the history of the Nazi Holocaust. Cleric Yunis al-Astal said this would be "marketing a lie" and a "war crime." Jamila al-Shanti commented, "Talk about the Holocaust and the execution of the Jews contradicts and is against our culture, our principles, our traditions, values, heritage, and religion."

Read More

U.S. Says Iran Could Expedite Nuclear Bomb

American intelligence agencies have concluded in recent months that Iran has created enough nuclear fuel to make a rapid, if risky, sprint for a nuclear weapon. But new intelligence reports delivered to the White House say that the country has deliberately stopped short of the critical last steps to make a bomb.
In the first public acknowledgment of the intelligence findings, the American ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency declared on Wednesday that Iran now had what he called a “possible breakout capacity” if it decided to enrich its stockpile of uranium, converting it to bomb-grade material.

Read More

Why are the Russians Digging Tunnels in Abkhazia?

ollowing Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit to the occupied Georgian province of Abkhazia in late August 2008, the Kremlin appears to be intensifying its military preparations in the South Caucasus.

On September 4, Georgian newspapers and TV channels reported that “the Russian occupation forces have been engaged for two months in constructing a one-kilometer-long tunnel deep in the Ochamchire district. Allegedly, the construction is highly secretive, only Russian military are employed and the local residents are not even allowed to approach the construction site. The Russians will use the tunnel to deploy military equipment and munitions.”

Read More

U.S. Stance Toward Russia Again Divides Europe

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, new fissures are emerging between Western and Eastern Europe this time over President Obama’s policy toward Russia, according to an international survey published Wednesday.

A German police officer watched President Obama’s helicopter arrive in Baden-Baden in April.

The survey, Transatlantic Trends, an annual poll of European and American public opinion conducted for the German Marshall Fund of the United States, found that Europeans, far from speaking with one voice on foreign policy issues, are divided over the role of the United States and how to respond to the growing assertiveness of Russia.

Read More

Why did the second world war begin?

Why did a second world war begin in Europe on 1 September 1939, little more than 20 years after peace had been concluded at the end of the first world war? The question has been posed repeatedly for seven decades now and answered in myriad ways. But it is the wrong question – one that is not merely too Eurocentric but too Anglocentric to make sense of the events that led to the bloodiest war in human history. Far more than the first world war, which was a genuinely European war, fought mainly in Europe by Europeans, the second world war was a truly global affair. Only by taking a world-historical view of events can we hope to grasp its true character.

Read More

This rewriting of history is spreading Europe's poison

That is until now. Fed by the revival of the nationalist right in eastern Europe and a creeping historical revisionism that tries to equate nazism and communism, some western historians and commentators have seized on the 70th anniversary of Hitler's invasion of Poland this month to claim the Soviet Union was equally to blame for the outbreak of war. Stalin was "Hitler's accomplice", the Economist insisted, after Russian and Polish politicians traded accusations over the events of the late 1930s.

Read More

Media war rages over Gaza conflict

Gone are the days when history was written solely by the victors. In today's democratised climate of instantly disseminated words and images, those on either side of a battlefield have the potential to feed facts and figures to media outlets around the world, or to pass on video footage and photographs that their opponents might prefer never saw the light of day.
Winning a media war is, often, as crucial to long-term success as victory in individual battles. A case in point is last winter's conflict between the IDF and Hamas; while the smoke has long cleared from the rubble of Gaza, supporters of either side continue to clash on a daily basis over the true extent of the devastation and loss of life, not to mention their opponents' motives and the overarching policies that led to the outbreak of hostilities.

Read More

UK says could cut warheads if U.S., Russia go further

Britain could look at further reductions in the number of nuclear warheads -- but only if the United States and Russia make deeper cuts in their arsenals than those already announced, the government said on Thursday. This month, the United States and Russia pledged to finalize a treaty by year-end to cut deployed nuclear warheads on each side to 1,500-1,675 from levels above 2,200, spurring hopes for a new wave of nuclear weapons cuts across the globe.

Read More

Putin's letter to the Poles

This is not the first time that a Russian politician has referred to controversial historic events of the second world war. Back in the 80s, former president Mikhail Gorbachev broke with the previous Soviet policy of refusing to make any reference to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and made a commitment that the "blank spaces" in Soviet history would be investigated. Why is it though that the Poles feel that not enough had been done and why has Putin's letter been greeted with bewilderment rather than being seen as an act of reconciliation?

Read More

Pact that set the scene for war

The 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact is controversial even today, with historians divided over its importance. In the first of a series of articles marking the outbreak of World War II 70 years ago, the BBC Russian Service's Artyom Krechetnikov and Steven Eke analyse the significance of a treaty that helped set the scene for war.

Signed on 23 August 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was accompanied by a secret protocol that detailed the reshaping of Europe's map.
Substantive talks on forming a political alliance between Nazi Germany and the USSR had begun that month.

Read More

Wizards and wives drive Afghan election

Slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud wouldn't think of losing him as his media manager and interpreter. Anyone who shook Abdullah's soft hands will at once discover he never held a Kalashnikov, although he would speak with great elan about the life and times of the mujahideen. That places Abdullah in a unique position to claim mujahideen pedigree, yet avoid being branded a "warlord".

Read More

End of Oil. Must Watch!

Russia and Poland trade insults on 70th anniversary of World War Two

In the days leading up to anniversary, Russian media has aired a string of accusations against Poland, claiming that Warsaw intended to collaborate with Hitler in an invasion of the Soviet Union, and that Jozef Beck, Poland's foreign minister in 1939, was a German agent. Moscow broadcasters have also claimed that there was a "German hand" in the 1940 Katyn massacre of thousands of Polish PoWs, an atrocity generally held to have been the exclusive work of Stalin's secret police.

Read More

Lockerbie: U.S. accuses Britain of breaking promise

Gordon Brown today categorically denied 'double dealing' over the Lockerbie bomber even as the U.S. claimed it was assured by Britain that he would be forced to serve out his sentence in Scotland.
Amid growing fears for the special relationship, the Prime Minister again insisted the decision to free Abdelbaset Al Megrahi was entirely Scotland's own and that the Government had not tried to influence it.

Read More

Poland and Russia row over second world war marks Gdansk day

European presidents and prime ministers gathered today on Poland's Baltic coast to mark 70 years since the first shots were fired in the second world war with Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland.
But as direct memory of the war recedes, the ceremonies in Gdansk were clouded by bitter recrimination over Russia and Stalinism in central and eastern Europe, feeding current tensions between Moscow and several of its former client states in the region.

Read More