Free Republic

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) security agenda has been boosted in recent years through promoting multilateral counter-terrorist cooperation. One important feature in this counter-terrorist cooperation is the staging of Peace Mission joint military exercises ostensibly designed to test and strengthen the capability of the SCO to respond to terrorist threats among member states requiring some type of joint operation. Skeptics within the SCO, such as Uzbekistan, regard the model and scenario of the Peace Mission exercises to be inconsistent with the official claims concerning the anti-terrorist dimension. Others ask what the nature of a crisis might prove to be that...

A new world order is coming and we are sleepwalking into it Posted By Richard Henley Davis On June 19, 2012 @ 8:00 pm For the past six years or so our leaders and economists have told us that no one could have seen this financial crisis coming, they were lying. There comes a point where you have to stick your neck out and say it as it is, regardless of what your peers and the media think about your conclusions and that is exactly what I am going to do today so here goes my reputation. Let’s start not...

The NGO Major Group Organizing Partners have finalized their key document for the Rio+20 Summit. “TheFutureWeWant” outlines the common vision for “sustainable development” throughout the planet sought by those nongovernmental organizations - mostly social and environmental activist groups. There are many noble sentiments in its 283 statements. There also is much that raises serious concerns. “Sustainable,” “sustainability” and “sustainable development” appear in the text an astounding 390 times. Like “abracadabra,” these amorphous words are supposed to transform even corrupt societies into Gardens of Eden under United Nations auspices. They will use less, pollute less, be sustainable, get along and save...

What is globalization? /snip In the article I extended one of the arguments I made in my book, The Volatility Machine, that the globalization process is driven primarily by monetary expansion and the consequent increase in risk appetite. What was new in this piece, because I hadn’t realized it when I wrote my book, is that every period of globalization coincided with a stage of the industrial revolution in which accompanying the expansion in international trade and capital flows is a major technological boom, driven also by monetary expansion. After re-reading the article I thought it might be useful to...

As the United Nations warns that Syria has descended into civil war, Russia continues to back President Bashar al-Assad in the face of growing international condemnation. Konstantin von Eggert, political commentator for Kommersant FM radio in Moscow, looks at why the Kremlin is steadfastly supporting the beleaguered Syrian government. Foreign policy analysts usually tend to explain Moscow's inflexible stance on Syria by evoking arms sales to Damascus (Bashar al-Assad's regime is said to have placed orders for Russian hardware to the tune of $3.5bn) and the Russian naval station in the Syrian port of Tartous. But this alone does not...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday he will boost military cooperation with China, including holding more joint exercises, after the United States announced plans to shift most of its warships to the Asia-Pacific by 2020. Putin referred to recent Sino-Russian joint navy exercises in the Yellow Sea as an example of military cooperation which, he said, would go on. "We will continue cooperation also between our military," he told Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping in Beijing, where he is attending a security summit and meeting his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao. "Recently joint navy exercises were held in the Yellow...

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of a summit in Beijing next week as tensions rise over Tehran's nuclear drive, a Kremlin official said. "Meeting Ahmadinejad will let Putin personally feel the tension around the Iranian issue and how it is perceived in Tehran," Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov told reporters last week in comments that were embargoed for release until Sunday. Putin and Ahmadinejad agreed to meet over the phone and the initiative came "from both sides," Ushakov said. The meeting will come as Russia prepares to host the latest...

NEW RUSSIAN ICBM IS NO SOLUTION Russian plans to upgrade their "Voyevoda R-36M2 Satan" intercontinental ballistic missile began in 2009, but are only now coming to fruition. Russian weapons maker NPO Mashinostroyeniya predicts the creation of a new liquid fueled ICBM will take a decade to design and deploy. And when it does do so, it won't be a panacea for current Kremlin concerns over European missile defenses; Russian experts fear that the missile, as currently designed, won't be capable of piercing the missile defense shield currently under construction by the United States and NATO. (RIA Novosti, May 8, 2012)...

Hardly more than a handful of experts in Moscow paid attention to the G8 summit in Camp-David last week-end, and President Vladimir Putin’s absence accentuated the impression that Russia does not really belong to this exclusive club. The seven leaders had to work hard to find answers to the escalating economic challenges; it is clear that Moscow has nothing to contribute to this joint effort though Russia has been affected by the economic crisis no less profoundly than France or Italy (Kommersant, May 19). Ironically, the only good news around the G8 table, where Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev sat in...

A proposed Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which has been signed by President Obama but not yet ratified by Congress, will subordinate U.S. naval and drilling operations beyond 200 miles of our coast to a newly established U.N. bureaucracy. If approved, it will grant a Kingston, Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority (ISA) the power to regulate deep-sea oil exploration, seabed mining, and fishing rights. As part of the deal, as much as 7% of U.S. government revenue that is collected from oil and gas companies operating off our coast will be forked over to ISA for redistribution to poorer, landlocked...

Aviation authorities are scratching their heads over a mysterious flying object in the skies above Colorado that almost caused a mid-air crash. The object was sighted by a commercial jet pilot, who claimed to air traffic controllers that some kind of flying craft got too close for comfort on Monday. In a transmission that appeared on LiveATC.net, the operator of the Cessna Citation 525 CJ1 says: 'A remote controlled aircraft, or what? ... 9News reported the Citation was about 8,000 feet above sea level, or about 2,800 feet above the ground, at the time the pilot reported the seeing the...

Russia and the United States will begin their controversial first joint anti-terror military exercises on American soil shortly at Ft. Carson in Colorado. A special unit of Russian paratroopers departed for the United States over the weekend and will be working alongside American land forces as part of the war games. The Russian and U.S. special units will engage in joint gun practice as well as ... The drills are scheduled to end on May 31

Amid heavy fog and strong winds the Chinese and Russian navies conducted five days of joint live-fire military exercises codenamed “Maritime Cooperation-2012” in the Yellow Sea. The joint exercises, which began on April 21 when a Russian ship formation arrived at Qingdao, Shandong, focused on underwater and airborne threats. During a night drill an “enemy” submarine sent divers to attach a mine to a “friendly” ship’s hull. Depth charges were fired and a team of divers removed the hostile object. Then 11 Chinese warships and the Russian squadron detected a hostile submarine “hiding.” Hostages were also rescued from a ship...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Russia Wants Obama Re-ElectedPosted By David Meir-Levi On May 11, 2012 @ 12:46 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments Well, now we know what the “hot mic” incident was all about. The Wall Street Journal’s “Moscow Raises Alarm over Missile-Defense Plan for Europe” (Friday, May 4, 2012), makes the connection.At an international conference on Thursday, May 3, organized at Russia’s initiative, the Russian delegates showed computer-generated images of a hypothetical Russian pre-emptive missile attack on segments of a missile defense shield and early warning system that the US and NATO want to put...

Bill Nye the Science Guy told the Daily Caller on Tuesday that climate change is a bigger problem than the economy or high unemployment. He also said that “this notion that government is inherently bad is new,” and after the November election, President Barack Obama will “have a freer hand.” Bill Nye, who was in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday speaking on behalf of the Planetary Society, said that he is “very concerned about climate change,” adding that, “you can talk about the economy and short-term jobs and so on — but there are much bigger problems.” On the president, who...

Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie, in a visit to the Pentagon on Monday, met with United States Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and called for the two sides to continue to build upon their military ties. After meeting with Panetta, Liang told a news conference that the two sides are committed to continue building a sound, stable and reliable military-to-military relationship through more communication. "Facing the complicated and serious security situation in Asia-Pacific, both of us agree that it is in line with our own interests to strengthen the cooperation between the two militaries in order to protect the peace...

Russia’s most senior military officer said Thursday that Moscow would preemptively strike and destroy U.S.-led NATO missile defense sites in Eastern Europe if talks with Washington about the developing system continue to stall. “A decision to use destructive force preemptively will be taken if the situation worsens,” Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov said at an international missile defense conference in Moscow attended by senior U.S. and NATO officials. The threat comes as talks about the missile defense system, which the U.S. and its allies insist is aimed at Iranian missiles, appear to have stalled. “We have not been...

When Congress returns after recess, the astronomical levels of spending included in President Obama’s budget will face a vicious show down in this election year, which will make the debt ceiling debate look tame. And while our Campaigner in Chief is busy making jokes about eating dogs and claiming credit for the death of Osama bin Laden, President Obama is facing intense scrutiny for his proposed changes to the military which will leave American vulnerable to future terrorist attacks. Last week in my leadership role at the Faith and Freedom Coalition of Ohio, I signed a letter along with...

Brave New World (is Here!) If Orwell’s “1984” is a cautionary tale about what we in the capitalist West largely avoided, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is largely about what we got — a consumerist, post-God happyland in which people readily stave off aging, jet away on exotic vacations and procreate via test tubes. They have access to “Feelies” similar to IMAX 3-D movies, no-strings-attached sex, anti-anxiety pills and abortion on demand. They also venerate a dead high-tech genius, saying “Ford help him” in honor of Henry Ford just as today we practically murmur “In Jobs We Trust.” In many...

Russian “Airborne Assault Forces” will be arriving in Colorado this May for joint terror-war exercises with U.S. soldiers, according to U.S. officials and Russian military personnel cited in media reports. The Kremlin’s Defense Ministry and the U.S. Department of Defense both said it would be the first time in history that American and Russian airborne special operations troops would be training together on U.S. soil. Analysts and commentators across the alternative media expressed alarm about the controversial announcement, likening it to a scene out of the movie Red Dawn or the predictions made by the late radio host Bill Cooper....