Iran is beginning to feel the effects of U.S.-led financial pressure aimed at blocking foreign banks from dealing with Iranian financial institutions and companies linked to terrorism or weapons proliferation. The effort coincides with a UN Security Council resolution that imposes limited sanctions, including asset freezes against Iranian firms and travel bans against individuals connected [...]

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Iran’s energy sector is slowly collapsing under the weight of subsidized gas prices and poor development of its aging oil fields, according to a number of Western economists. Despite boasting the world’s second-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia, Iran has resorted to rationing its gasoline. As global energy prices slide downward, some analysts predict Iran’s [...]

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The immediate issue that has stirred up the Kremlin is the revival of US plans for its ballistic missile defence system, to include radar installations in the Czech republic and interceptor missiles in Poland. Russia sees the move as offensive. But there is more. The Russian president feels much more self-confident, thanks to the healthy [...]

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STOCKHOLM/VILNIUS – Lithuania and Sweden said on Monday they wanted the planners of a Baltic Sea gas pipeline from Russia to Germany to look at alternative routes to address their concerns about the environment and security.
The five billion euro ($6.57 billion) pipeline, planned to run from Vyborg in Russia under the sea 1,200 km to [...]

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The economy could also be devastated by the electromagnetic pulse generated by a high-altitude nuclear explosion. The resulting electromagnetic shock would fry transformers within regional electrical power grids.8 The interdependent telecommunications (including computers), transportation, and banking and financial infrastructures that people and businesses rely on would be significantly damaged. Such an event would leave us, [...]

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The Naval Network Warfare Command pointed to attacks coming from China as the most significant problem for the United States’ military network defenders, according to an article published last week in Federal Computer Weekly.
Chinese attackers “exploit anything and everything,” an unnamed Netwarcomm official told the publication.
Link to this article.

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U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney will travel to Japan, Australia and Guam on Feb. 20-27 for discussions on Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea and regional security (as well as a little fishing). This is Cheney’s first official visit to the region since April 2004. While publicly the discussions will focus on current events, the vice president [...]

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Venezuela is spending $3 billion to build nine submarines, a fleet of undersea craft that would be the largest in the region — and ready to be used against the U.S. in event of a conflict between the two countries.
The submarines will be the “diesel-electric variety,” according to a communique issued by Vice Adm. Armband [...]

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MOSCOW — Poland and the Czech Republic risk being targeted by Russian missiles if they agree to host elements of the proposed U.S. missile defense system, a top Russian general warned Monday in the latest in a series of increasingly bellicose statements from Moscow.
President Vladimir Putin has said he does not trust U.S. claims [...]

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The specter of a new military rivalry between Moscow and Washington has been looming since Vladimir Putin delivered a speech highly critical of the United States at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month. Is it the birth of a new arms race between the former arch-enemies?
Western guests who visited the Kremlin in Moscow in [...]

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2006 was the year that Boeing’s GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) became an operational weapons system, and started a modern revolution in miniaturised munitions.
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control has broken cover on studies for a next generation very long range cruise missile for the USAF and US Navy. Lockheed Martin’s concept is known as [...]

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Before closing for the week-long Chinese New Year holiday, the composite index for the Shanghai Stock Exchange briefly broke through the 3,000-point mark for the first time in history. On February 16, the index closed slightly below the psychologically important mark, but the unprecedented rise in Shanghai’s exchange is increasingly becoming a cause for concern [...]

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Beijing, Feb. 19 (PTI): A Chinese naval fleet left for Pakistan today to participate for the first time in a multi-national maritime military exercise against terrorism to be staged by its ‘all-weather’ ally.
The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) fleet consisting of two frigates, namely, “Lianyungang” and “Sanming” left Ningbo port in East China’s Zhejiang [...]

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In addition, you were offered the opportunity to suggest other threats that you perceive as more dangerous. That opened up a floodgate of write-ins… but one in particular was cited constantly, so much so that it made its way up to the number two spot in our final results. As a result, I’m providing the [...]

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Will Hutton in The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century asks: “Is the baton of global leadership going to pass from Anglo-Saxon hands, which held so many values in common, to Chinese hands? If so, the implications could not be more profound. The world would have to accommodate a [...]

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MIAMI — Venezuela says it is beefing up its military capabilities — including plans to develop the region’s largest submarine fleet — in preparation for any “asymmetrical conflict” with the United States.
The buildup, which also includes small arms, jet fighters and potentially air-defense missiles, is being carried out in compliance with all international and regional [...]

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(IsraelNN.com) Brig.-Gen. Yossi Beiditz, head of the IDF’s Intelligence Wing Research Division, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Hizbullah has “returned to its pre-war capabilities, and has even become stronger.”
Beiditz was asked more than once by committee members if he meant that Hizbullah was now stronger, and he responded in the affirmative [...]

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The Russians are using billions of dollars of oil profits to rearm, just as British defence chiefs prepare for cuts in the summer’s Government spending review, the Conservatives have warned.
Liam Fox, the party’s defence spokesman, sounded the alarm about “the growing and accelerating rearmament in Russia” in a House of Commons debate.
He claimed that President [...]

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International and American media rushed to declare the return of the Cold war following Putin’s Munich statements, while Russian media rushed in saying the opposite. RIA Novosti, the official news agency of the Russian government, reacted to the international buzz on Putin’s speech by publishing declarations from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, making it clear [...]

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(CNSNews.com) - Declaring that the United States faces an “existential threat,” a former senator said Friday the military should be expanded and its funding increased so that the nation’s defense forces can be prepared.
Jim Talent, a former U.S. senator from Missouri, said in a speech at the Heritage Foundation that the United States must [...]

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Misspent your country’s wealth? Waged war against an ethnic minority? Or just tired of those pesky good governance requirements attached to foreign aid by most Western governments and multilateral institutions?
If you run an African country and have some natural resources to put in long-term hock, you’ve got a friend in Beijing ready to write big [...]

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