China Confidential
Foreign Reporting and Analysis Since April 2005
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Russia Considering Closer Arab Ties
As if to confirm its critics' worst suspicions, resurgent Russia seems to be playing the Arab card. Haaretz reports:Syrian President Bashar Assad is scheduled to leave for Russia on Thursday for a two-day visit that has been described by analysts as important at a time when Moscow may be considering closer ties with the Arab world.
Syrian media have described Assad's visit to Moscow as "a working visit" to discuss closer ties in a variety of unspecified areas.
A number of reports in recent months have mentioned large arms deals between Russia and Syria, including advanced anti-aircraft missile systems.
Russian and Syrian analysts have said that Israel's military assistance to Georgia has paved the way for a particularly successful visit for the Syrian president, whose country has taken a clear stance on the side of Moscow in the recent conflict in the Caucasus.
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IBD: China Will Destabilize World Economy
China's economy is now only a fourth the size of the $14 trillion U.S. economy. But given plausible growth rates in both countries, China's output will exceed America's in the 2020s, projects Goldman Sachs.
But this is the wrong worry. By itself, a richer China does not make America poorer. Indeed, because there are so many more Chinese than Americans, average Chinese living standards may lag behind ours indefinitely. By Goldman's projections, average American incomes will still be twice Chinese incomes in 2050.
The real threat from China lies elsewhere. It is that China will destabilize the world economy. It will distort trade, foster huge financial imbalances and trigger a contentious competition for scarce raw materials.
Click here to read the IBD editorial.Jordan and China Sign Nuclear Deal
Under the agreement, the official Chinese news agency said, the two sides will conduct cooperation and exchange on basic and applied researches, nuclear plant designing, constructing and operating, mineral exploration and processing among other areas.
The pact was signed by China's ambassador to Jordan Gong Xiaosheng and Chairman of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission Khaled Touqan.
Unlike its oil-rich, Arab neighbors, Jordan lacks energy resources. It depends on imports for 95 percent of its energy consumption, which annually costs nearly a quarter of its revenue, according to official data.
Jordan's King Abdullah II announced a civil nuclear energy program in January 2007, saying the country was seeking an alternative energy to generate electricity and desalinate seawater.
Under the strategy, a nuclear plant will be set up by 2015 and nuclear power is expected to make up 30 percent of its energy production by 2030.Russia's Cooperation on Iran
Russia’s military incursion into the sovereign nation of Georgia, which began on August 8th, has strained relations between Russia and the United States. Observers speculate the strain could damage attempts to work together to confront the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program--a threat which faces Russia as well as the United States.
The United Nations Security Council, whose permanent members include Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, has adopted three resolutions imposing legally binding sanctions on Iran for its refusal to fully suspend its proliferation sensitive nuclear activities.
After Iran this month failed to provide a clear, positive response to the refreshed package of incentives offered to it by the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany, the so called P-5+1 countries agreed to begin discussions on a fourth round of UN sanctions.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Russia’s involvement in trying to stop Iran from procuring the technologies necessary for a nuclear weapon is in Russia’s own interest:
“If indeed Russia is interested in a Middle East that is stable, if indeed Russia is interested in a Middle East in which the kinds of activities that we have promoted together in the Quartet [Russia, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations] are going to have any chance, then clearly, it’s not going to be a Middle East in which there’s an Iran with a nuclear weapon. And I think that’s why Russia is involved in efforts to stop Iran from violating the Security Council resolutions that have been passed.”
“Let’s be very clear whose interests are being served by the partnership that Russia and the United States have engaged in on Iran,” said Secretary of State Rice. “It’s not a favor to the United States.”US Downplaying Iranian Satellite Launch
Just as the FBI for many years denied the existence of organized crime, some US officials are downplaying the significance of the Iranian satellite launch.
US credibility in this regard is at an all-time low after the attempts to minimize and ridicule North Korea's atomic and rocketry achievements. There is a bureaucratic rationale to denial; admitting an enemy's success is tantamount to admitting failure.
Reuters reports:Iran's attempted satellite launch was a failure that fell far short of claimed successes, U.S. security officials said on Tuesday, but an analyst said the test still marked progress toward a potential weapon.
"The attempted launch failed," a U.S. intelligence official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"The vehicle failed shortly after liftoff and in no way reached its intended position," the official said. "It could be characterized as a dramatic failure."
A U.S. defense official gave a similar characterization of the test as unsuccessful.
But Charles Vick, a senior analyst for GlobalSecurity.org research group, said Iran appeared to have succeeded in igniting the second stage of its booster rocket and gained data that will help it perfect its launch system. The technology could also be used to develop a rocket capable of carrying nuclear weapons that could strike Europe or China, he said.
He based his assessments of the test on photographs, public reporting and earlier analyses.
"They're not there yet and that's to be expected but this is a step forward that has implications strategically," Vick said.
Meanwhile, the Indo-Asian News Service reported Tuesday that Iran has asked its energy companies to look for potential sites to set up more nuclear power plants in the country.
The news service quoted Ahmad Fayyazbakhsh, deputy chief of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation and head of a state-owned nuclear energy production company, as saying that his company has signed an agreement with six local companies to set up nuclear power plants.
These companies were asked to look for potential sites within a year for setting up new nuclear power plants, Iran's state run IRNA news agency Tuesday quoted the official as saying.
The construction of the power plants would begin after finalising the sites, Fayyazbakhsh said.
Earlier, 62 foreign and 58 Iranian companies had applied for the work, but the six Iranian companies won the bid, he added.
Russia is helping Iran to build its first nuclear power plant in the country's southern port of Bushehr. The plant was expected to start its operation early this year, but was postponed due to disputes over payment.Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Fascinated by Nazi Achievements and Mistakes, Iranian Leader Seeks Nuclear Missiles to Attack US
Foreign Confidential....
Iranian emigre sources say Iran's Hitler-admiring, Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made a point of studying the history of World War II in preparation for the war he plans to fight with the United States and Israel.
The Iranian maniac-in-chief has supposedly concluded that Nazi Germany made two fatal errors: (1) it invaded Russia, and (2) it started WW II before developing its missile and atomic technologies to the point of being able to accurately fire rockets at the US. Had Hitler waited several years, Ahmadinejad reasons, the Nazi leader could have conquered the world.
So Ahmadinejad has no intention of ever attacking Russia; and he will make every effort possible to play for time until he has achieved his goal of developing nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of wiping out Washington, DC. The Islamist lunatic has mobilized his oil-rich country's resources for this purpose. The nuclear ICBM program is monstrously huge complex, and costly.
That said, Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs he answers to should know that there are serious people in important positions of power in both the US and Israel who have begun to consider a critical question: how many innocent lives would have been saved had the US been in possession of atomic bombs in 1941, instead of 1945, and had dropped one on Berlin right after Pearl Harbor? The answer, of course, is tens of millions, including millions of Jews murdered by Germany's massive, industrialized genocide program.
Today's ... nuclear armed ... democratic allies are under no moral obligation to repeat history. Americans and Israelis should not be sacrificed out of fear of crushing (to use a favorite Russian term) an enemy that is already armed with enough ballistic missiles and chemical and biological weapons to destroy every Israeli city and town and every US base in the Middle East.
The Talmud teaches us that "he who is kind to the cruel is destined to be cruel to the kind." The time has come to put an end to Tehran's turbaned tyranny--before it ends us.Obama Takes Aim at US Gun Owners
Dateline USA....
The influential National Rifle Association (NRA) is alerting its members to Barack Hussein Obama's plan to disarm Americans. Click here to read how The Candidate of (Radical) Change plans to change the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.
The NRA says that among other measures, Obama would ban the use of firearms for self-defense, ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns, and close down 90% of US gun shops. He would also increase federal taxes on guns and ammunition by 500%, and mandate a federal government-issued license to purchase a firearm.
The fiercely multicultural, presumptive Democratic candidate for President, who was educated in overwhelmingly Muslim Indonesia as a child--and may actually hold Indonesian citizenship--has made no secret of his utter disdain, bordering on outright hatred, for ordinary, hard-working, law-abiding, Americans in general and responsible gun owners in particular.
Every recreational hunter, shooting-range shooter, gun club member, and gun collector--in fact, every American who owns or plans to buy a gun, or believes in the right to self-defense--should familiarize himself or herself with BHO's menacing 10-point plan.
Wednesday, 20 August 2008
Foreign Confidential....
Investor's Business Daily comments on the change in the balance of economic power between China and the United States.
Xinhua reported Tuesday that Jordan and China signed a nuclear agreement, "paving ways for future cooperation on peaceful uses of nuclear energy, especially on electricity generation and water desalination."
Voice of America (VOA) has published the following editorial, which, VOA says, reflects the views of the US government.
Foreign Confidential....
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