In these two articles, AEI’s Danielle Pletka and John R. Bolton bring us up to date and discuss the larger implications of developments since Kim Jong Il pledged to give up his nuclear ambitions in exchange for diplomatic recognition and foreign aid. Pletka reminds readers that since North Korea signed the 1994 accord, it has detonated a nuclear weapon, exported a reactor to Syria, aided Libya’s incipient (and since dismantled) nuclear program, aided Hezbollah, provided sophisticated missiles to Iran, masterminded the counterfeiting of U.S. dollar bills, laundered development aid, and allowed hundreds of thousands of its citizens to starve. Yet the Bush administration “appears intent on the rehabilitation of North Korea and a broad lifting of sanctions,” she says. Bolton argues that North Korea’s proliferation is “quite likely more than a series of one-time transactions.” The underlying reality of the North’s activities, he says, “will haunt Bush’s successor and threaten international peace.”

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A more plausible explanation of Russia’s propaganda offensive and increase in the numbers of both regular and irregular forces in Abkhazia is not fear of a Georgian attack, but plans for the opposite: an attempt to retake the Kodori Gorge. This would humiliate, perhaps topple, Georgia’s pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili. Russia would see it as giving a firm response to the deplorable precedent of Western recognition of Kosovo’s independence. If you use your muscle to separate Kosovo from Serbia, the Kremlin would grunt, then just watch what we can do to a would-be ally of yours.

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China’s Communist Party leaders now face another stern test: to show its citizens and the world that the government can cope with a horrific disaster. Keenly aware of the opprobrium heaped on Burma’s rulers for their callous and incompetent handling of the killer cyclone earlier this month, Beijing will want to demonstrate that it has “the capability and readiness to handle an emergency like this,” says Huang Jing, a China scholar at the National University of Singapore. Swift and transparent handling of the tragedy would also mark another step in Beijing’s evolution from an unfeeling regime that suppressed bad news–as it tried to do with the SARS outbreak in 2003–to one more responsive to the needs of its people.

President Hu Jintao called for an “all-out” response, and the government rallied some 100,000 relief workers, including military, police and medical teams. Premier Wen Jiabao flew to Sichuan, and state-owned television showed him rallying rescue forces, even venturing into the ruins to urge victims still trapped in the rubble to “hold on a little longer.” It’s hard to know how much the tragedy will change China, but this much is certain: with the media allowed unprecedented freedom to report the humanitarian effort, the Chinese will be able to judge their leaders’ performance as never before.

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It looks like India is the intended target for these missiles located in central China. I guess China’s rise is peaceful until the day that it isn’t.

From Article:

Analysis of new commercial satellite photos has identified an extensive deployment area with nearly 60 launch pads for medium-range nuclear ballistic missiles in Central China near Delingha and Da Qaidam.

The region has long been rumored to house nuclear missiles and I have previously described some of the facilities in a report and a blog. But the new analysis reveals a significantly larger deployment area than previously known, different types of launch pads, command and control facilities, and missile deployment equipment at a large facility in downtown Delingha.

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Satellite reveals extensive missile site in China: analyst

“From these launch pads DF-21 missiles would be within range of southern Russia and northern India (including New Delhi), but not Japan, Taiwan or Guam,” he wrote. DF-21s are medium range solid fuel missiles that have been replacing China’s older DF-3 and DF-4 liquid fuel missiles.

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Finally, Denmark gets a clue. Not only is multiculturalism a bad thing, it is a death sentence for any country that practices it.

From the article:

This haven of tolerance and openness has opted for survival and rationality. For citizenship, the country now requires of new immigrants:

- 3 years of language classes
- tests on Denmark’s history, culture and language
- 7 years of residency prior to application
- proven job opportunities and commitment to work

New mosques will not be allowed to be built in Copenhagen. Assimilation will be actively promoted. The country that once courageously and righteously saved their 7,000 Jews from the Nazi death camps now is accused of racism.

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Geert Wilders Danish TV 11th Hour Part 1

Geert Wilders Danish TV 11th Hour Part 2
Geert Wilders Danish TV 11th Hour Part 3

What about stop trading with China? Wait, that would be inconvenient. Plus it would lower my standard of living.

Wouldn’t war and death lower your standard of living even more?

From the article:

The US would like to prevent China from developing certain offensive military capabilities. A dissuasion strategy has its charms, but it lacks a political context and can be very expensive.

Commentary by Peter Buxbaum in Washington, DC for ISN Security Watch (15/05/08)

Of all the world’s actors, the US security establishment is perhaps most concerned with China as a future rival. Each year the Pentagon submits to Congress an annual report addressing the military power of the People’s Republic of China.

This year’s report warned that “the pace and scope of China’s military transformation have increased in recent years, fueled by acquisition of advanced foreign weapons, continued high rates of investment in its domestic defense and science and technology industries, and far reaching organizational and doctrinal reforms of the armed forces. China’s expanding and improving military capabilities are changing East Asian military balances.”

Another significant strategic document, the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review, released in 2006, pinpointed China as having “the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive technologies that could over time offset traditional US military advantages absent US countermeasures.”

The ‘pre-deterrent’

But what countermeasures should the US employ?

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I have serious doubts that the West will look anything like it does today in 60 years. I mean demographically it will be significantly reduced in size due to war. First think about the rise of China and the re-emergence of Russia. Next think about the rise of Islam. These are the storm clouds forming in the horizon.

From the article:

But I insist, that Israel’s survival is tied to that of the West. She is our front line, an embodiment of unambiguously Western values. The enemies we have are common enemies — Left-fascist ideology (formerly expressed as Communism, but now reorganizing around the “scientific materialism” of the environmentalist cause), and Islamo-fascist ideology (now called “Islamism,” to distinguish political from religious Islam, on the assumption that this can be done).

These are the two great contemporary Sirens, and each calls upon constituencies lodged deep in the West itself. The appeal of simplistic ideological movements spreads in the spiritual vacuum left by the recession of Christianity.

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FP: What potential disasters keep you up at night?

ALL: We’re all concerned about major, disastrous earthquakes. In particular, I’m worried about disastrous earthquakes in Asia. Large cities are built near faults, and there are cities that haven’t seen earthquakes in 500 years but are due. It is entirely conceivable that we could see an earthquake kill a million people this century. It would not surprise seismologists.

On a more persistent basis, I am very worried about tropical cyclones—Myanmar just being the latest example. I think there’s inadequate preparation for them, especially given the technology available to track them and give people prior warning. And the thing that my climate-scientist colleagues are worried about is the long-term climate trends that are going to lead to increasing drought. Drought is so intimately linked to the success of agriculture, and we already have a world food crisis. I worry about the potential for exacerbated drought, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

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As the death toll soars from the powerful earthquake that ravaged central China’s Sichuan province, the scale of the devastation is raising questions about the quality of China’s recent construction boom.

“This building is just a piece of junk,” one newly homeless resident of Dujiangyan yelled today, her body quivering with rage. Her family salvaged clothing and mementos from their wrecked apartment, built when their older home was razed 10 years ago.

“The government tricked us.

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When the Colombian military made its controversial incursion into neighboring Ecuador two months ago, it may well have removed more than just a camp full of leftist Colombian guerrillas. The raid may wind up taking out a $70 million U.S. Air Force base as well. On Monday, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said he’s “convinced” the U.S. aided Colombia in the March 1 attack and reiterated his suspicions that U.S. intelligence agencies had infiltrated Ecuador’s armed forces and police — remarks that seem to all but assure that the small South American nation will not renew the lease for the U.S. antinarcotics surveillance base at Manta on Ecuador’s Pacific coast. For Correa, “the political costs” of letting the base stay “outweigh the benefits,” says Freddy Rivera, a security expert at the Latin American Social Sciences Faculty University in Quito.

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Israel is dying and that its 60th anniversary celebrations are an attempt to prevent its “annihilation.”

He spoke hours after President Bush arrived in Israel for the anniversary celebrations.

“The Zionist (Israeli) regime is dying,” said Ahmadinejad during a speech in northern Iran. “The criminals assume that by holding celebrations … they can save the sinister Zionist regime from death and annihilation.”

Ahmadinejad used an Arabic word, ismihlal, that can also be translated as destruction, death and collapse.

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Analysts are actively debating the possible outcomes of an armed conflict between Georgia and the self-proclaimed republic of Abkhazia, which seceded from Georgia in 1992.

Without looking into the most pessimistic scenarios envisioning a nuclear conflict between Russia and NATO, let’s try to predict the possible outcomes of a Georgian-Abkhazian conflict.

In late 2007 the Georgian armed forces had about 33,000 officers and men, including a 22,000-strong army that comprised five brigades and eight detached battalions.

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Are the BRIC countries an emerging threat?

From the article:

The concept of the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — was coined five years ago in a research paper from the Goldman Sachs investment bank.

This week, reality takes over from theory as the foreign ministers of the BRIC countries hold their first formal meeting in the Russian city of Ekaterinburg. They convene with an agenda that includes the issue of biofuels, food security, global financial trends and the impact of the slowdown of the U.S. economy.

They also want to discuss the way in which the global economy is governed, which seems to mean that they understandably want a much bigger role in the key institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and so on.

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Russian economy: safe haven or oil bubble?

Bryce considers himself an optimist but his book throws cold water on the current rush to embrace alternative energy sources.

As his title suggests, he believes that arguments for swift curtailment of oil consumption on the premise that it will enable America to achieve “energy independence” are grossly misinformed or deliberately deceptive.

Readers who think they know a cure for oil addiction, be they neoconservatives or liberals, will find this book maddening. Bryce’s line of argument, however, is not one that can be easily dismissed. Indeed, his treatise ought to be required for not only members of Congress, but environmentalists, military commanders, CEOs, and investors betting the farm on ethanol.

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Are you good with maps? Can you mentally unfold a box? If so, then you too might be candidate for the new computer game called Foldit. This is a protein folding game that could lead to medical breakthoughs. It’s free so check it out.

Dear Protein Folders:

The response to Foldit in the media and blogsphere has been beyond our wildest expectations and our servers have not been able to keep up. We apologize to all folders who have had trouble getting into the game or posting scores. Please bear with us as we upgrade to new hardware. We’re working to ensure smooth experience for everyone as soon as possible. Thank you for your interest in Foldit.

The Team.

Is there any end to Chinese ambitions in Asia? China wishes to dominate Asia with blockades, blockages, military diplomacy and political Machiavellism.

China’s building of the port of Gwadar at the mouth of the Persian Gulf in fact is meant to blockade the oil supplies of the world. Its military diplomacy is on display at the Tibet-India border, where for the last ten years it has strengthened its military infrastructure to intimidate India. In its blockage diplomacy, it is planning to divert the flow of the River Brahmaputra, also called the Tsandpo in Tibet, toward China’s northeast, hence in the process starve 100 million people in India.

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“This is a major change in Japanese space policy,” says space policy expert John Logsdon of George Washington University in Washington, DC, US.

For many years, scientists and engineers have run the country’s space programme for their own purposes. Logsdon told New Scientist that the change will “allow Japan to carry out military programmes as long as they are non-aggressive, and raise the profile of space within Japanese government”.

Ideally that would allow Japan to develop a more ambitious and more coherent space programme. But will that really work? And in the long term, might efforts to improve the country’s defences lead Japan to consider putting interceptors in orbit? Where will this “defensive” strategy end?

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Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has warned of “extremist structures” within the Left Party. A new report lists a number of left-wing extremist factions within the party, including the Communist Platform, the Marxist Forum and a pro-Cuba group. more…

• Letter from Berlin: Germany’s Social Democrats and their Far Left Migraine
• Letter from Berlin: Demagogues, Communists, and Germany’s New Left-Wing Heavyweight

In the aftermath of China’s devastating earthquake, Prime Minsister Wen Jiabao is running around the earthquake zone like a fireman, introducing himself as “Grandpa.” The Communist Party is seeking a PR coup that will help end China’s international isolation over Tibet. By Wieland Wagner in Shanghai more…

• Photo Gallery: Destruction, Shock and Fear after the Quake
• Earthquake Aftermath: China Rushes to Rescue Trapped Survivors
• Photo Gallery: The Aftermath of China’s Earthquake
• SPIEGEL 360: Our Full Coverage of China

Edgar Millan Gomez was shot dead in his own home in Mexico City on May 8. Millan Gomez was the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in Mexico, responsible for overseeing most of Mexico’s counternarcotics efforts. He orchestrated the January arrest of one of the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, Alfredo Beltran Leyva. (Several Sinaloa members have been arrested in Mexico City since the beginning of the year.) The week before, Roberto Velasco Bravo died when he was shot in the head at close range by two armed men near his home in Mexico City. He was the director of organized criminal investigations in a tactical analysis unit of the federal police. The Mexican government believes the Sinaloa drug cartel ordered the assassinations of Velasco Bravo and Millan Gomez. Combined with the assassination of other federal police officials in Mexico City, we now see a pattern of intensifying warfare in Mexico City.

The fighting also extended to the killing of the son of the Sinaloa cartel leader, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, who was killed outside a shopping center in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state. Also killed was the son of reputed top Sinaloa money launderer Blanca Margarita Cazares Salazar in an attack carried out by 40 gunmen. According to sources, Los Zetas, the enforcement arm of the rival Gulf cartel, carried out the attack. Reports also indicate a split between Sinaloa and a resurgent Juarez cartel, which also could have been behind the Millan Gomez killing.

Spiraling Violence

Violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has been intensifying for several years, and there have been attacks in Mexico City. But last week was noteworthy not so much for the body count, but for the type of people being killed. Very senior government police officials in Mexico City were killed along with senior Sinaloa cartel operatives in Sinaloa state. In other words, the killings are extending from low-level operatives to higher-ranking ones, and the attacks are reaching into enemy territory, so to speak. Mexican government officials are being killed in Mexico City, Sinaloan operatives in Sinaloa. The conflict is becoming more intense and placing senior officials at risk.

Video: Bulletproof Fashion - Mexico

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