The sick man of Europe has risen from his death bed. Will he now recover to be the strong man of old? Last week the European Union’s statistical service reported that Germany was the fastest-growing economy among the leading industrialised countries, expanding by 3.7 per cent in the year to December, compared with Britain (3 [...]

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SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney said Friday that China’s recent anti-satellite weapons test and a rapid military buildup were “not consistent” with its stated aim of a peaceful rise as a global power.
In a speech during a visit to Australia, Cheney praised China for playing an “especially important” role in six-nation negotiations [...]

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TEL AVIV, Israel, Feb. 22 (UPI) — Syria could soon receive thousands of advanced anti-tank missiles from Russia that could find their way into the hands of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Ha’aretz, which did not disclose it’s sources, said Thursday the new sale of Kornet AT-14 and Metis AT-13 missiles was close to completion despite Israeli [...]

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Five distortions turn the Non-Proliferation Treaty into a suicide pact. It seems to be safer having the bomb than not having it.
Recognizing “the devastation that would be visited upon all mankind by a nuclear war, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The NPT, [...]

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By Lt. Col. Oliver North at Fox News
Washington, D.C. — “The lion and the bear are hunting the eagle.” That’s how a refugee from Tehran’s reigning ayatollahs put it when he called me this week about recent developments in his homeland. The lion to which my friend referred was on the coat of arms [...]

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Iran failed to meet a sixty-day deadline set by the UN Security Council to suspend its nuclear program, according to a new report (NYT) by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In fact, the UN nuclear agency said Iran was expanding its enrichment work, with close to 1,000 centrifuges in operation at its Natanz facility. [...]

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The Syrian navy, after years of neglect, is also being reinforced with an Iranian version of a Chinese anti-ship missile, similar to the one used by Hezbollah during the second Lebanon war to strike the Israeli destroyer INS Hanit.
In addition to the overall strengthening of the armed forces in Syria, there has been a [...]

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A laser developed for military use is a few steps away from hitting a power threshold thought necessary to turn it into a battlefield weapon.
The Solid State Heat Capacity Laser (SSHCL) has achieved 67 kilowatts (kW) of average power in the laboratory.
It could take only a further six to eight months to break [...]

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India needs ‘long-range missile systems in less than ten years with proper warheads taking into account possible conflict zones’, Indian President Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam said.
Besides these missiles, India would also need hypersonic cruise missile on long range, nuclear submarines and pilotless supersonic aircraft as also multi-role stealth fighters, Kalam said here [...]

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It may not have been Churchill’s Fulton speech, but President Putin’s harsh rebuke to “Pax America” in Munich on February 10, seems to have struck a raw nerve in Washington.
Said the Russian President: “It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day, this is pernicious [...]

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JERUSALEM - Syria has embarked on an “unprecedented” effort to bolster its armed forces with Iranian and Russian help, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported Thursday.
Damascus has large numbers of surface-based missiles and long-range rockets, including the Scud-D, capable of reaching nearly any target in Israel, the report said, and the Syrian navy has received [...]

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Gen. Solovtsov said that this year, two regiments of Topol RS-12M ground-based missile systems in the Kannskaya missile division (which has sixteen launchers for SS-25 Sickle missiles) will be trimmed down, along with a missile regiment in the Kozelskaya division, stationed in the Kaluga Region. There are six regiments of UR-100 NUTTKh silo-based missile systems [...]

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The American misadventure in Iraq, which has exposed the limitations of its military power, has had far-reaching global consequences. Sensing global aversion to American unilateralism and its propensity to describe regimes it dislikes as “rogue states”, Russia and China are now challenging the US on its policies in Iran, North Korea and Myanmar.
Russia and China [...]

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SEOUL, Feb. 22 (Yonhap) — North Korea’s nuclear envoy suggested the communist country has the ability to mount nuclear warheads on medium-range ballistic missiles in a recent meeting with high-profile U.S. visitors, a Washington-based radio station reported Thursday.
Link to this article.

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From a strategic perspective, Russia realises that on its own it is not strong enough to challenge the West, specifically the US. China and India are the only countries that are large enough players and sufficiently independent-minded to be potential partners in this strategic balancing act.
Russia may also have felt that a triangular relationship involving [...]

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Karl Marx’s solutions haven’t worked, but he was right about the global reach and potential unsustainability of capitalism.
WHAT is the elephant in all our rooms? The global triumph of capitalism. Democracy is fiercely disputed. Freedom is under threat, even in old democracies like Britain. Western supremacy is on the skids. But everyone does capitalism.
Americans and [...]

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Russia has warned Poland and the Czech Republic against hosting elements of a US anti-missile defence shield. For the former Soviet satellites Moscow’s sabre rattling underlines the need to forge strong military links with the US.
“Considering the relative weakness of the EU’s common foreign and defence policies, it comes down to a single question, ‘Do [...]

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The SCO is a potential threat to America and the west. Here’s some background material on this organization.
Organization official website.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is an intergovernmental organization which was founded on June 14, 2001 by leaders of the China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Except for Uzbekistan, the other countries had been members [...]

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