A New Cold war in the Caribbean?
The significance of the Izvestia bluster isn’t that the Russians could be coming again — Moscow’s Defense Minister later said any air force arrangement in Cuba would most likely involve stops for fuel rather than actual bases — but that they’ve returned to the idea of using the Caribbean [...]

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Greece has the same Russian S-300 ground-to-air radar systems as Iran. A June 2008 exercise with Israel may be preparation for strike.
While the Israeli-Greek air tactics were amply reported in the world’s media after initial reports in the New York Times, the pivotal information from Greece’s S-300 batteries has remained below the radar. By swarming [...]

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The truth is that Israel might invade Iran, but only when there is no other alternative, only if the international community falls down on its job and allows Iran to achieve independent nuclear capability. That time is not now. And should that time come, Israel will not announce it anywhere, not in the Israeli press, [...]

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Poland is balking at further negotiations with the United States over plans to deploy an anti-ballistic missile shield, prompting Washington to seek out Lithuania, formerly part of the Soviet Union, as a possible location for the interceptors, officials said Wednesday.
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‘Anxiety’ in Moscow over US-Lithuania missile base talks Financial Times
US talks missile defense with Vilnius [...]

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“U.S. officials are downplaying reports in the New York Times and Washington Post that Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan may have given Iran–and other nations–blueprints for a miniature nuclear warhead first developed for his country’s program.”
Oh really! The same network that provided Iran and North Korea with the technology to enrich uranium has plans for a miniturized [...]

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An international smuggling ring may have secretly shared blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon with Iran, North Korea and other rogue countries, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
The now-defunct ring led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan is previously known to have sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea. A draft report by former [...]

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The United Nations report, the global agriculture outlook through 2017, said prices for farm crops will remain substantially higher over the next decade because of fundamental changes in demand, though they will gradually decline from current highs.
Because the recent spike in crop and food prices has been caused in part by temporary factors like drought, [...]

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by Barry Rubin
Exaggerations of Israel’s demise are greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase Mark Twain.
The question is: why is this suddenly happening now and–even more important–what is the impact of this fad going to be? The answer to the second question is very surprising so keep reading.
The suddenness of this trend is illustrated by a telling anecdote. [...]

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Still, it is worth recalling a time when a little openness flew out of control.
As a correspondent and bureau chief for The New York Times in Moscow in the late 1980s, I had a ringside seat to observe the slow disintegration of the Soviet Union under Mr. Gorbachev. The collapse of the Soviet empire and [...]

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In a globalization manifesto, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman declared that the Internet and other planet-spanning technologies were erasing national boundaries. The world, he said in a 2005 best seller, was flat.
No longer. The global economy appears to be entering an epoch in which governments are reasserting their role in the lives of individuals [...]

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