A breakdown in the entire Chinese political order might mean that going to war wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Historically, China has re-focused attention by going to war with its neighbors. Taiwan may be in their sights this time, or another war option may present itself.
From the article:
This unrest (As USA Today reported) is [...]

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“This is a whole new missile,” Uzi Rubin, former director of Israel’s Ballistic Missile Defence Organisation, told Jane’s . “Unlike other Iranian missiles, the Sajil bears no resemblance to any North Korean, Russian, Chinese or Pakistani [missile technology]. It demonstrates a significant leap in Iran’s missile capabilities.
“Regardless of the success of the test, this missile [...]

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‘The United States is not just a superpower. It is a super-dooper power,” I was told shortly after the end of the Cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was considerable truth in this claim. Never since the Roman Empire, under the Emperor Augustus 2,000 years ago, had one state appeared so [...]

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US intelligence’s amended estimate, that Iran will be ready to build its first bomb just one month after the next US president is sworn in, is disclosed by DEBKAfile’s Washington sources as having been relayed as a guideline to the Middle East teams of both presidential candidates, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama.
The information prompted [...]

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Russia’s enormous size, its lack of cultural cohesion, its sparse and fast shrinking population, its deficient infrastructure and lack of communication lines, are some of the factors that feed the disintegration pressures within Russia. Medvedev’s speech in Kamchatka showed just how worried the Kremlin is about the possibility of the country breaking apart.
It is paradoxical [...]

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Download English Version - Dictatorship to Democracy
In February, the Iranian government showed a fictionalized video on the dangers of foreign plots against the state. One of its stars: a mysterious American named Gene Sharp.
In June 2007, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez publicly accused Mr. Sharp of stirring unrest in Venezuela. Last year in Vietnam, authorities arrested [...]

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Defense Secretary Robert Gates has something in common with those on left, they’re both too smart to fall for something a Russian general has to say. The fact that this general is threatening Poland with a nuclear attack is really nothing that we should get worked up about. The general doesn’t mean it.
I, being not [...]

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AFTER decades of dispute, China and Russia have at last reached agreement on where the entire length of their common border lies. On July 21st the two countries signed an accord on the last small stretch that had yet to be formally settled, putting an end to a quarrel that once came close to war. [...]

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Full length National Geographic documentary on illicit diamond trafficing.
Long a symbol of love, affection, and faithfulness, the diamond is now increasingly linked with war, blood and brutality. In the diamond rich West African nation of Sierra Leone, rebels used the precious gems to bankroll a violent ten-year insurrection, leaving a terrorized population and a ravaged [...]

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Like Camus’ Oranians, who refused to believe in the plague, we are in grave danger of underestimating Iran
Have some commentators responded to the Iranian regime’s threat to the state of Israel in the same way as Oranians? The question is raised in a new study (PDF) by Joshua Teitelbaum, an academic who lays out exactly [...]

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Check out the fallout shelters from Safecastle. They make big metal boxes that are then buried several feet underground. This looks like an inexpensive way to to. Although, it’s still not cheap. I’ve listed information from their eBay ad further down the page.
Nuclear / Biological / Chemical Fallout Shelters

Exterior view of 6′ X 7′ X [...]

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Today the two leaders, often partners but sometimes rivals, offer starkly different paths toward development, and it is Brazil’s milder and more pragmatic approach that appears ascendant. Amid the decline of American influence in the region, the Brazilian president is discreetly outflanking Chávez at almost every turn in the struggle for leadership in South America.
Chávez [...]

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Corruption: Kiss-and-tell stories expose Chinese corruption
Mistresses can damage officials’ careers as well as their marriages, anti-corruption investigators in China have warned.
Pillow talk which is passed on in interviews is offering crucial details of illicit dealings, according to the deputy director of the anti-corruption bureau in Dongguan, a major industrial city in the south.
“At least 80% [...]

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The word “petrostate” typically conjures up images of Middle Eastern sheiks with fantastically wealthy lifestyles ruling politically repressive, oil-rich desert regions. Few realize that Russia actually leads the world in the production and export of natural gas and trails only Saudi Arabia in the production and export of oil. Even fewer know that Russia has [...]

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The North Pole may be briefly ice-free by September as global warming melts away Arctic sea ice, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.
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Video: North Pole May Melt In Total

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Russia’s record oil output is slipping, and major tax cuts are on the way. But massive investment is needed.
After climbing for years, Russia’s output has begun to drop: It was down by 0.7 percent in April. The problem is so serious that the new Prime Minister, former President Vladimir Putin, has said the issue is [...]

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Forest clearing to create more farmland has destroyed the precarious balance of a fragile ecosystem.
In the 1950s, the government built the Hongyashan reservoir on the Shiyang River and in the three decades that followed, residents dug more than 10,000 wells. The positive economic impact was immediate: Minqin County became the top producer of wheat and [...]

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Last September, a couple of Israeli army planes bombed a mysterious structure in Syria. Later it was officially confirmed that it was a Syrian nuclear reactor, built with assistance from North Korea. NTD Israel reporters interviewed two senior experts, who say that the Chinese regime also has a connection.
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The CCP and Syrian nukes: an [...]

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The Golan Heights, whose 1981 annexation by Israel remains unrecognized by the world, is widely considered the most gorgeous part of the country. Rising from the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee to Mount Hermon, it is about the size of Los Angeles but has only 40,000 residents—half Israeli settlers, half Druze Muslims who, [...]

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India is using groundwater so rapidly that some areas have already run out. In a village in Rajasthan, the state sends in water by train.
TEJA KA BAS, India — Bhanwar Lal Yadav, once a cultivator of cucumber and wheat, has all but given up growing food. No more suffering through drought and the scourge [...]

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PRISTINA, Kosovo | Days before the West begins one of the most ambitious nation-building experiments in modern history, profound questions remain about how the day-to-day governance of Kosovo will be handled.
Kosovo now has its own government. But the U.N. mission that effectively ruled the former province of Serbia since 1999 is still here.
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Video: Kosovo: [...]

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