Tuesday, September 22, 2009
china confidential
Chinese Foreign Aid Comes with a Catch
The New York Times reports:
From Pakistan to Angola to Kyrgyzstan, China is using its enormous pool of foreign currency savings to cement diplomatic alliances, secure access to natural resources and drum up business for its flagship companies. Foreign aid — typically cut-rate loans, sometimes bundled with more commercial lines of credit — is central to this effort.
Leaders of developing nations have embraced China’s sales pitch of easy credit, without Western-style demands for political or economic reform, for a host of unmet needs. The results can be clearly seen in new roads, power plants, and telecommunications networks across the African continent — more than 200 projects since 2001, many financed with preferential loans from the Chinese government’s Exim Bank.
Increasingly, though, experts argue that China’s aid comes with a major catch: It must be used to buy goods or services from companies, many of them state-controlled, that Chinese officials select themselves. Competitive bidding by the borrowing nation is discouraged, and China pulls a veil over vital data like project costs, loan terms and repayment conditions. Even the dollar amount of loans offered as foreign aid is treated as a state secret.
Click here to read the article.
Obama Warns Climate Catastrophe Looms
Addressing the United Nations General Assembly today, U.S. President Barack Obama said there is still time to reverse manmade climate change. He also claimed credit for clean energy progress in the United States, saying his country has in the past been slow to recognize the looming catastrophe. Click below for the video.
Shortly after Obama spoke, Chinese President Hu Jintao committed China to carbon cutting. Click here for the story.
Shortly after Obama spoke, Chinese President Hu Jintao committed China to carbon cutting. Click here for the story.
# posted by Confidential Reporter @ 1:38 PM links to this post 
Guest Editorial: the Iranian Threat to Israel
The National Post editorial board:
Israel has not, and must not, give up its right to defend itself -- even by means of a pre-emptive military strike -- against the possibility of an Iranian nuclear attack, no matter how much pressure the United Nations Security Council, the United States or the international media may bring to bear.
Israel's government has said it will do all it can to avoid taking "the military option" against Iran's nuclear program. Ehud Barak, the dovish former prime minister who now serves as Defence Minister, even went so far over the weekend as to say he was not worried about an Iranian bomb destroying Israel. Hawkish current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu added that he saw "eye-to-eye" with his Defence Minister, apparently signalling that he, too, believes Israel could defend itself against a nuclear attack.
This would mark a significant shift in Israeli rhetoric. Successive Israeli governments of the left and right have for nearly three decades warned that a bomb in the hands of the mad mullahs who run Tehran -- or any other Muslim power hostile to Israel's existence -- posed the threat of annihilation for Israel. The claim that the Jewish state could not survive even a single Islamic bomb has, since the 1970s, underpinned Israel's claim that it was justified in using any and all means to preserve its security, even blowing up its belligerent neighbours' nuclear reactors and laboratories before they become operational.
Israel has twice done just that, blowing up a nuclear facility in Iraq in 1981 and another in Syria in 2007.
Still, after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev claimed, also on the weekend, that his Israeli counterpart, Shimon Peres, had promised Israel would not attack Iranian nuclear facilities, the Israel government felt it necessary to correct the record. On Sunday, both Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and Armed Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi insisted "all options are [still] on the table," including military ones.
The combined message is: Israel would like to avoid having to attack Iran to end the Islamic republic's drive for atomic weaponry. It has already done what it can to de-escalate tensions in advance of high-level talks between the White House and Tehran in the coming weeks. Nonetheless, if it feels itself in danger of becoming a nuclear target, it will act decisively.
This would be entirely justifiable. Israel lives in one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods on the planet. Its enemies literally encircle it and have repeatedly claimed they will not rest until Israel is pushed into the sea.
Iran is the worst of all. The Islamic Republic and its leaders have never relented in their promises to obliterate Israel.
Continue here.
Iran Hints at First Strike on Israel, US Forces
Islamonazi Iran's maniac-in -chief, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has raised the specter of an Iranian first strike on Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East. Reuters reports:
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a military parade in Tehran on Tuesday Iran would "cut off the hands" of anyone who attacked the country.
"Iranian armed forces will cut off the hands of any attackers before they pull the trigger," he said in an address at a parade broadcast on state television to mark the start of the Iran-Iraq war in September 1980.
"No power in the world is daring enough to attack Iran as we are more experienced and powerful than ever," Ahmadinejad said.
Hundreds of troops marched past the official podium packed with top officials, followed by military hardware including Ghadr, Sejil and Shahab-3 long-range missiles which are made in Iran.
Television commentators said the Shahab-3 missile had a range of 2,000 km (1,250 miles), putting Israel within striking distance.
Continue here. Notice the phrase "before they pull the trigger." It is significant.
This reporter hopes Israel and the United States are not asleep at the switch. Iran has repeatedly vowed to annihilate the Jewish State--to "burn Tel Aviv" and bombard Israeli nuclear installations--and to shut down Persian Gulf oil shipping. Iranian missiles can hit Israel and U.S. forces in the region. Its terrorist squads and sleeper cells--Iranian and Hezbollah units under the command of the elite Qods unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps--are positioned to attack in Europe and Latin America.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Pathetic Lack of Progress on North Korea
Click here. The United States is again appealing to North Korea to return to six-nation nuclear negotiations ... and counting on China for hep that never seems to materialize.
Retired AF Officer Accused of Spying for China
A convicted spy who sold U.S. military secrets to China told jurors Monday how he recruited a retired Air Force officer to betray his country. Click here for the story.
Rights Groups Want UN Action on Iran
Human rights groups are focusing attention on Iran's mass rape and torture of political prisoners. Click here for the story.
Analysis Confirmed: Iran Helping Taliban
China Confidential has long maintained that Islamist Iran is aiding the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. U.S. government agencies agree, as reported here.
Appeasement Fans Flames of Fascist Aggression; Ahmadinejad Calls Holocaust Denial Source of Pride
Iran's Islamonazi president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is again highlighting his denial of the Holocaust, saying the anger his comments provoke is a source of pride.
Ahmadinejad's comments Monday come shortly before he heads to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Last week, he said the Holocaust is a lie created by Western nations to justify the creation of Israel.
U.S. and European officials denounced those remarks as hateful. Despite Ahmadinejad's celebration of the controversy, a spokesman for the president said he is bringing a message of peace when he heads to New York.
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