December 20th, 2007
MOSCOW, Dec. 11 (UPI) — Russia must increase investment in oil and gas exploration and production, and save its energy resources, say German scientists.
“At the current level of production, (Russia’s) reserves will have been used up in around 22 years,” says a report by the Berlin-based German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) released Dec. 4.
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Monday, April 9, 2007. Issue 3632. Page 6. Oil and Gas Reserves Shrinking. Reuters. The country’s oil reserves shrank by 7.3 billion barrels from 1994 to …
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EU facing uncertainty over Russian energy supplies, study says
Europe faces uncertainty over future energy supplies from Russia, with Russian oil and gas reserves likely to run out if Moscow does not invest more in the sector and boost energy efficiency at home, a fresh study has warned.
A report by the Berlin-based German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) released on Tuesday (4 December) questions Moscow’s ability to keep up with growing world demand for oil and gas.
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December 20th, 2007
Robots have stepped out of the science fiction pages and onto the battlefield. Thousands are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, supporting military operations on land, at sea, and in the air. Some robots cost as little as several thousand dollars each. Controlled remotely by soldiers, sailors, and airmen, they perform tasks such as disarming roadside bombs, scouting dangerous territory, and patrolling the sky.
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December 20th, 2007
The Russians, led by President Putin, have increasingly rattled the saber, opposing almost anything that America supports. Except for their nuclear arsenal, Russia is nearly toothless right now – but they are planning to change that by funneling their increasing oil wealth into their military. In 20 or 25 years, when Russia has burned through its oil wealth, it won’t matter much what they think or do. But in the interim oil money, coupled with a belligerent attitude, may mean trouble. Not in the sense of U.S. v. Russia on the physical battlefield; but a near continuous attempt by the Russians to thwart every U.S. positive act on the Eurasian continent. The Russian leadership still believes it’s a zero-sum game where any positive accrued on one side of the international ledger is a negative in the account of the other side.
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December 20th, 2007
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s residence is being outfitted with a bunker that can withstand a nuclear or chemical attack, an Israeli newspaper reported Thursday.
Workers at Olmert’s official Jerusalem residence are thickening walls, digging and installing air-purification equipment capable of countering chemical agents, said the report in Yediot Ahronot.
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Israel prepares for Iranian missiles Israel Today
Report: Nuclear bunker built for Olmert’s residence Xinhua
Rabin’s bodyguard to accompany Bush on Holyland visit Ynetnews
all 25 news articles »
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December 20th, 2007
SUPPLYING WEAPONS. Since 1996, Beijing has been Khartoum’s primary supplier of weapons, military supplies, and weapons technology. Using Chinese-generated oil revenues (and anticipated oil revenues), Khartoum has purchased large quantities of military aircraft, heavy artillery, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and much else that fills the deadly arsenal destined for Darfur. China also helped to improve the regime’s production capacity, with the effect that Khartoum is now largely self-sufficient in building small- and medium-sized weapons.
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December 20th, 2007
Commenting on media claims that Russian bombers had severely worn-out engines, Major-General Pavel Androsov said: “The pilots and technicians’ training, as well as the condition of the aircraft, permit us to carry out our assigned tasks in full.”
Russia’s strategic bombers have carried out since August more than 70 patrol flights over the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic oceans, as well as the Black Sea.
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December 20th, 2007
China’s economy is smaller than was thought.
AMERICANS may well be delighted by new figures that show China’s GDP is 40% smaller than previously thought. Has the devious Beijing government been massaging the numbers, as communist planners are wont to do? Hardly. China’s GDP in yuan terms remains unchanged. What has happened is that the World Bank has changed the calculations it uses to make international comparisons of the size of economies.
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December 20th, 2007
Over five years ago, in August 2002, I penned these words: “We must act quickly in opposition to those countries that would constitute a new Russian sphere of influence: Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria and others. We cannot allow Moscow to ally with these countries, creating a new Russian satellite system.” That warning went unheeded. We cannot continue to ignore Russia’s rogue nationalism. There is a bear in the woods again.
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December 20th, 2007
The website of China’s new anti-graft bureau crashed shortly after going online due to the huge volume of messages from the public complaining about rampant corruption, state media said Wednesday.
The website (yfj.mos.gov.cn) of the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention, which was set up to collect information on corrupt activities, was so popular it crashed on Tuesday, just one day after it was launched.
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December 19th, 2007
On Dec. 16, al Qaeda’s As-Sahab media branch released a 97-minute video message from al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri. In the message, titled “A Review of Events,” al-Zawahiri readdressed a number of his favorite topics at length.
This video appeared just two days after As-Sahab released a 20-minute al-Zawahiri message titled “Annapolis — The Treason.” In that message, al-Zawahiri speaks on audio tape while a still photograph of him is displayed over a montage of photos from the peace conference in Annapolis, Md. As the title implies, al-Zawahiri criticizes the conference.
Although the Dec. 14 release appeared first, it obviously was recorded after the Dec. 16 video. Given the content of the Dec. 14 message, it most likely was recorded shortly after the Nov. 27 Annapolis conference and before the Dec. 11 twin bombings in Algeria. The two latest releases are interrelated, however, given that the still photo of al-Zawahiri used in the Dec. 14 message appears to have been captured from the video released two days later.
After having been subjected to two hours of al-Zawahiri opinions in just two days, we cannot help but wonder whether anyone else is listening to this guy — and, if so, why? This question is particularly appropriate now, as we come to the time of the year when we traditionally prepare our annual forecast on al Qaeda. As we look ahead to 2008, the core al Qaeda leadership clearly is struggling to remain relevant in the ideological realm, a daunting task for an organization that has been rendered geopolitically and strategically impotent on the physical battlefield.
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December 19th, 2007
Tiny copper structures with pores at both the nanometer and micron size scales could play a key role in the next generation of detonators used to improve the reliability, reduce the size and lower the cost of certain military munitions. Developed by a team of scientists from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and the Indian Head Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, the hig … read more
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December 19th, 2007
Pakistan has pardoned atomic guru Dr Abdul Khan for trading nuclear secrets, but Khan’s Dutch business partner is under investigation in the Netherlands. What exactly was the Dutch connection? Aaron Gray-Block reports.
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December 19th, 2007
“I have no doubt that the most senior Iranian leadership, with the help of Hezbollah, is responsible for the attacks in Buenos Aires against AMIA [the community center in 1994] and the Israeli Embassy [in 1992],” Nisman said Tuesday night at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.
While investigating the two attacks, Nisman found the necessary legal evidence pointing directly to former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani and his chief of intelligence, Ali Falahian, for their role in the decision to target the community center.
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December 19th, 2007
What do the Russians see in him?
Order, prosperity, and a reminder of Russia’s glory days. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russians were thrilled with their new freedoms. But the elation soon gave way to frustration over rampant corruption, soaring crime and poverty, and the dramatic diminishment of Russia’s status as a world power. Putin, elected seven years ago, has presided over a sharp reduction in crime and an economic boom, powered by Russia’s oil and gas industries. He also has aggressively reasserted Russia’s power on the world stage. “Putin has earned his popularity by bringing Russians what they most craved,” said Mary Dejevsky, a British expert on Russia: “a more predictable and comfortable life after two decades of the most extreme social upheaval.”
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December 19th, 2007
Russia will operate 48 fixed-site Topol-M (NATO reporting name SS-27) ballistic missiles by the start of 2008, a Strategic Missile Forces spokesman said on Monday.
The missile forces said previously that the system will be equipped with MIRV in the next two or three years, and that the new system will help penetrate missile defenses more effectively.
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December 19th, 2007
They are superpowers past and present, sharing a common border as well as a wariness of the U.S. But they have long skirmished with each other over trade and territory. Even today big questions remain unresolved: Should the two giants stand against the U.S. together? How long can Russia control nearly one-third of the Asian continent while its population dwindles? Here’s a look at 2000 years of dreamers and despots who have lead the dragon and the bear.
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December 19th, 2007
Time’s person of the year.
No one is born with a stare like Vladimir Putin’s. The Russian President’s pale blue eyes are so cool, so devoid of emotion that the stare must have begun as an affect, the gesture of someone who understood that power might be achieved by the suppression of ordinary needs, like blinking. The affect is now seamless, which makes talking to the Russian President not just exhausting but often chilling. It’s a gaze that says, I’m in charge.
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Runners-Up
Hu Jintao
Right now, China, the most populous, economically dynamic and politically intriguing nation in the world, is on everybody’s mind. As the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing draw nearer, China’s role as industrial park to the world has been highlighted, brought into focus by product-safety scandals, environmental disasters and trade disputes. How can this infinitely complex nation be led? And what do we know about the man who leads it, Hu Jintao?
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December 19th, 2007
But “Dragon Days” is a different.
Poole’s work includes two studies — first, how a rising superpower such as China may be encouraging Islamic insurgency to screen its own Maoist expansion; and secondly, what America must do to curtail the threat.
“Ostensibly, that power (China) also provides foreign aid to the affected countries,” he said. “But, the corporations involved are little more than extensions of its army. Thus, those countries are obviously at risk. The U.S. military is ill-prepared for so subtle a confrontation.”
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Book Description
Within Dragon Days are two studies: (1) how a rising superpower may be hiding its Maoist expansion behind Islamic insurgency; and (2) what America’s armed forces must do to curtail either. Ostensibly, that power also provides foreign aid to the regions affected. But, the “corporations” involved are little more than extensions of its army. Thus, much of the Free World may be at risk. The U.S. military is ill-prepared for so subtle and widespread a confrontation. Instead of blatantly occupying countries or training their armies, it must start to deploy tiny teams of “foreign-aid workers in the law enforcement sector.” Then, by the thousands, specially trained U.S. infantry and special-operations squads could anchor widely dispersed “Combined Action Platoons.” Their mission would be to help sister squads of indigenous police and soldiers to reestablish local security. Without that local security in contested areas, there can be no viable counterinsurgency effort or operating democracy. Part Two of the book shows what participating GIs must know about criminal investigative procedure. Part Three contains the unconventional warfare (UW) “tactical techniques” (like football plays) they will need. The latter are new to the literature and not covered by any U.S. manual. They should allow tiny contingents of Americans to slip away unhurt whenever they get cut off or surrounded. Without this new capability, their only hope would be massive bombardment in, or forceful extraction from, a heavily populated area. Such things do little to win the hearts and minds of a population. This book provides the training and operations blueprint for winning an unconventionally fought world war. It also points to a hidden adversary.
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