The Great Hall of American Hatred, otherwise known as United Nations headquarters, is getting a face lift. It began earlier this month when UN officials gathered to break ground on what just might be the world’s most expensive fixer upper. Shoveling more than ceremonial dirt, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the ground breaking, “today [...]

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The West might be alarmed at the prospect of the mullahs arming themselves with nuclear weapons, but it is the Arabs who are first in their direct line of fire.
Relations between Tehran and the Saudis have been strained ever since Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were implicated in the 1996 bombing of the US Marine base in [...]

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The US Air Force Association, which includes past and present US air force generals, has just posted an assessment entitled Threats to Air Supremacy on its web site.
In short, the air force generals are explaining to US residents and the world that America is about to lose air superiority to the Russians and Chinese [...]

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“After decades of considering Pakistan their principal enemy, Indian defence officials are beginning to see China as a more serious long-term threat, and they don’t want to be caught unprepared again. Washington is embracing India as a rising power that can be a valuable ally to stand with this country, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and [...]

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A leading global energy monitor fears there may not be enough oil to slake the world’s thirst — and is preparing a landmark forecast that could reverberate through the global economy even as major companies announce fuel-related cutbacks.
The International Energy Agency is studying depletion rates at about 400 oil fields in a first-of-its-kind study of [...]

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The growing thirst for oil in China and India is well known. However, this global surge in demand is being led by oil producers that are emerging as significant consumers, too, undermining their capacity to export when global supplies are tightening.
“Consumption is cannibalising their export capacity,” Jeff Rubin, an oil analyst for CIBC World Markets [...]

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There are three explanations for the oil price’s muffled impact. The first is that nowadays developed economies are more efficient in their use of energy, thanks partly to the increased importance of service industries and the diminished role of manufacturing. According to the Energy Information Administration, the energy intensity of America’s GDP fell by 42% [...]

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The world’s premier energy monitor is preparing a sharp downward revision of its oil-supply forecast, a shift that reflects deepening pessimism over whether oil companies can keep abreast of booming demand.
The Paris-based International Energy Agency is in the middle of its first attempt to comprehensively assess the condition of the world’s top 400 oil fields. [...]

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The long military standoff in Abkhazia, where a separatist dispute has risked escalating this year to a renewed war, has entered a phase of quiet diplomacy aimed at easing tensions and urging negotiations, according to officials on both sides of the conflict.
No agreement to negotiate has been reached, and the differences between the Abkhaz and [...]

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The fact that both Israel and Syria have publicly acknowledged their indirect talks using Turkish mediation is of significance in itself.
This brings into the open a process that has been under way behind the scenes for some months and it promises the first serious attempt at an Israel-Syrian peace deal since US-brokered efforts failed eight [...]

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A new film about Nazi-Soviet links
BEING burnt in effigy on the streets of Moscow by nationalist hoodlums must count as a kind of Oscar if you are a Latvian filmmaker whose aim is to expose modern Russia’s blindness to the criminal history of the Soviet Union. The ire of Young Russia’s protest outside the Latvian [...]

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Lebanon’s factions appear to have halted a nascent civil war — at least temporarily — with an agreement struck Wednesday in Qatar between the Western-backed government of Fouad Siniora and the Syrian-backed Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah. But the peace deal cannot fairly be called a compromise. Hezbollah won That’s the result of its stunning military [...]

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Yet, even though it has an economy comparable with America’s, it stands as a political dwarf in responding to the rapidly changing geopolitical environment. The combination of slavishly following the US lead (with the possible exception of the invasion of Iraq), its reluctance to contemplate badly needed strategic initiatives (as in the Middle East) or [...]

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The spread of long-range ballistic missiles took a step forward on May 7 with India’s successful flight test of its Agni-III missile that can carry a nuclear warhead as far as Beijing.
But the difference between this and other missile developments is that India’s missiles — like those of the United States, Britain, France and Israel [...]

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