Geopolitical thread

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 29 Mar 2013 13:21

China calls for easing of tensions on Korean peninsula

(Reuters) - China called for an easing of tensions on Friday as North Korea put its missile units on standby to attack U.S. military bases in South Korea and the Pacific after the United States flew two nuclear-capable stealth bombers over the Korean peninsula.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 30 Mar 2013 09:24

Boris Berezovsky, 1946-2013

After Mandela: There will never be another Nelson Mandela, but maybe that’s just what South Africa needs to save itself from ruin.

What Mao and Stalin’s first awkward meeting tells us about Xi Jinping’s confident trip to see Vladimir Putin.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 30 Mar 2013 09:37

^^ from the link posted above

Conversation between I. V. Stalin and Mao Zedong

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 30 Mar 2013 14:00

abhishek_sharma wrote:
THE MINER’S DAUGHTER: Gina Rinehart is Australia’s richest—and most controversial—billionaire.

^^ good article about how Australians are becoming rich on the back of China's demand for raw materials.

We are doing so too. A lot of raw iron ore from India goes to China. I wonder what else we could sell them? IT? Probably not...they have many young engineers like we do.

English enabled IT? Maybe.

The Legend of Chris Kyle

The deadliest sniper in U.S. history performed near miracles on the battlefield. Then he had to come home.

1. Typical Texan.
Heroic. Old school brothers in arms thing. Shooter. Kind of guy that will keep the gun control lobby away from taking away any guns from American hands.

I wonder how desis in the US deal with the guns there?

habal · Post by **habal** » 30 Mar 2013 15:00

Good thing he was served his just desserts, such people should keep a low profile, because of the dissonance they spread everywhere. However way he tries to justify himself, he still killed 126 or 200 or whatever sentient beings who were protecting their motherland. When a bad guy tries to do good, he quickly meets his karma. Always the case.
Bad people should keep doing bad stuff to survive.

In any ways, however you spin. These are not people like us. No dharma.
dharmic man would have still made these 126 or whatever kills but not boasted about it.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 30 Mar 2013 19:41

How life of spy Ben Zygier unravelled

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 31 Mar 2013 11:12

FUTURE powers.
Unless Europe unites then those nations will count, other then that India as nation will become more powerful due to man power and growth globally, where corporation will take advantage of the labor and boy is it a gold mine of labor over there. Besides they need help so let our (US) corporations help them. Indians have done tremendous for US in the past (taxi, liquor shops etc.).
Those european nations are **** compared to India or Brazil.

Comment section

AbhiJ · Post by **AbhiJ** » 31 Mar 2013 13:22

The influential intellectual Irving Kristol, one of the godfathers of contemporary conservatism, observed that “insignificant nations, like insignificant people, can quickly experience delusions of significance,” which must be driven from their primitive minds by force: “In truth,” he explained, “the days of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ are never over. ... Gunboats are as necessary for international order as police cars are for domestic order,” thoughts widely echoed.

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/marc ... y-said.php

Gerard · Post by **Gerard** » 31 Mar 2013 19:29

India as a great power: Know your own strength

India is poised to become one of the four largest military powers in the world by the end of the decade. It needs to think about what that means

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 31 Mar 2013 21:14

'Our Mothers, Our Fathers': Next-Generation WWII Atonement

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 04 Apr 2013 02:20

Japan Gas, Technip of France in Russia LNG project
http://www.seattlepi.com/business/energ ... z2PR91K2Ti

( Japani Roosi approachment is good for India)

TOKYO (AP) — JCG Corp., a Japanese engineering company, and French oilfield services company Technip S.A. have won a contract for a liquefied natural gas plant in central Russia, the companies said Wednesday.The consortium between JCG and Technip will provide cost estimates and engineering services for an LNG plant in central Russia's Yamal Peninsula that is being built by JSC Yamal, a joint venture between Russia's Novatek and Total of France.The value of the deal was not disclosed. It is JCG's first in Russia and a first step in entering Russia's LNG industry as Japan and Russia put a decades old territorial dispute aside for the sake of economic cooperation, especially in energy.Japan is keen to expand its access to lower-cost natural gas to meet rising demand due to the suspension of almost all its nuclear power generation following the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant disaster.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 05 Apr 2013 07:22

The Jew in a Box: What does it say about Germany today that in order to see some Jews you’ve got to go to a museum?

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 06 Apr 2013 08:36

Al Qaeda Wants Africa: Are the French In Over Their Heads in Mali?

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 06 Apr 2013 08:45

Gaddis, John Lewis . The Cold War: A New History Penguin Group

If the victorious nations could hardly have been more different, the same was true of the wars they had fought from 1941 to 1945. The United States waged separate wars simultaneously—against the Japanese in the Pacific and the Germans in Europe—but suffered remarkably few casualties: just under 300,000 Americans died in all combat theaters. Geographically distant from where the fighting was taking place, their country experienced no significant attacks apart from the initial one at Pearl Harbor. With its ally Great Britain (which suffered about 357,000 war deaths), the United States was able to choose where, when, and in what circumstances it would fight, a fact that greatly minimized the costs and risks of fighting. But unlike the British, the Americans emerged from the war with their economy thriving: wartime spending had caused their gross domestic product almost to double in less than four years. If there could ever be such a thing as a “good” war, then this one, for the United States, came close.

The Soviet Union enjoyed no such advantages. It waged only one war, but it was arguably the most terrible one in all of history. With its cities, towns, and countryside ravaged, its industries ruined or hurriedly relocated beyond the Urals, the only option apart from surrender was desperate resistance, on terrain and in circumstances chosen by its enemy. Estimates of casualties, civilian and military, are notoriously inexact, but it is likely that some 27 million Soviet citizens died as a direct result of the war—roughly 90 times the number of Americans who died. Victory could hardly have been purchased at greater cost: the U.S.S.R. in 1945 was a shattered state, fortunate to have survived. The war, a contemporary observer recalled, was “both the most fearful and the proudest memory of the Russian people.”2

...

The Soviet Union had one other advantage as well, which was that it alone among the victors emerged from the war with tested leadership. Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945, had catapulted his inexperienced and ill-informed vice president, Harry S. Truman, into the White House. Three months later, Churchill’s unexpected defeat in the British general election made the far less formidable Labour Party leader, Clement Attlee, prime minister. The Soviet Union, in contrast, had Stalin, its unchallenged ruler since 1929, the man who remade his country and then led it to victory in World War II. Crafty, formidable, and to all appearances calmly purposeful, the Kremlin dictator knew what he wanted in the postwar era. Truman, Attlee, and the nations they led seemed much less certain.

...

SO WHAT did Stalin want? It makes sense to start with him, because only he of the three postwar leaders had had the time, while retaining the authority, to consider and rank his priorities. Sixty-five at the end of the war, the man who ran the Soviet Union was physically exhausted, surrounded by sycophants, personally lonely—but still firmly, even terrifyingly, in control. His scrawny mustache, discolored teeth, pock-marked face, and yellow eyes, an American diplomat recalled, “gave him the aspect of an old battle-scarred tiger. . . . An unforewarned visitor would never have guessed what depths of calculation, ambition, love of power, jealousy, cruelty, and sly vindictiveness lurked behind this unpretentious façade.”4 Through a series of purges during the 1930s, Stalin had long since eliminated all his rivals. The raising of an eyebrow or the flick of a finger, subordinates knew, could mean the difference between life and death. Strikingly short—only five feet four inches—this paunchy little old man was nonetheless a colossus, bestriding a colossal state.

Stalin’s postwar goals were security for himself, his regime, his country, and his ideology, in precisely that order. He sought to make sure that no internal challenges could ever again endanger his personal rule, and that no external threats would ever again place his country at risk. The interests of communists elsewhere in the world, admirable though those might be, would never outweigh the priorities of the Soviet state as he had determined them. Narcissism, paranoia, and absolute power came together in Stalin:5 he was, within the Soviet Union and the international communist movement, enormously feared—but also widely worshipped.

Wartime expenditures in blood and treasure, Stalin believed, should largely determine who got what after the war: the Soviet Union, therefore, would get a lot.6 Not only would it regain the territories it had lost to the Germans during World War II; it would also retain the territories it had taken as a result of the opportunistic but shortsighted “nonaggression” pact Stalin had concluded with Hitler in August, 1939—portions of Finland, Poland, and Romania, all of the Baltic States. It would require that states beyond these expanded borders remain within Moscow’s sphere of influence. It would seek territorial concessions at the expense of Iran and Turkey (including control of the Turkish Straits), as well as naval bases in the Mediterranean. Finally, it would punish a defeated and devastated Germany through military occupation, property expropriations, reparations payments, and ideological transformation.

Herein there lay, however, a painful dilemma for Stalin. Disproportionate losses during the war may well have entitled the Soviet Union to disproportionate postwar gains, but they had also robbed that country of the power required to secure those benefits unilaterally. The U.S.S.R. needed peace, economic assistance, and the diplomatic acquiescence of its former allies. There was no choice for the moment, then, but to continue to seek the cooperation of the Americans and the British: just as they had depended on Stalin to defeat Hitler, so Stalin now depended on continued Anglo-American goodwill if he was to obtain his postwar objectives at a reasonable cost. He therefore wanted neither a hot war nor a cold war.7 Whether he would be skillful enough to avoid these alternatives, however, was quite a different matter.

For Stalin’s understanding of his wartime allies and their postwar objectives was based more on wishful thinking than on an accurate assessment of priorities as seen from Washington and London. It was here that Marxist-Leninist ideology influenced Stalin, because his illusions arose from it. The most important one was the belief, which went back to Lenin, that capitalists would never be able to cooperate with one another for very long. Their inherent greediness—the irresistible urge to place profits above politics—would sooner or later prevail, leaving communists with the need only for patience as they awaited their adversaries’ self-destruction. “The alliance between ourselves and the democratic faction of the capitalists succeeds because the latter had an interest in preventing Hitler’s domination,” Stalin commented as the war was coming to a close. “n the future we shall be against this faction of the capitalists as well.”8 This idea of a crisis within capitalism did have some plausibility. World War I, after all, had been a war among capitalists; it thereby provided the opportunity for the world’s first communist state to emerge. The Great Depression left the remaining capitalist states scrambling to save themselves rather than cooperating to rescue the global economy or to maintain the postwar settlement: Nazi Germany arose as a result. With the end of World War II, Stalin believed, the economic crisis was bound to return. Capitalists would then need the Soviet Union, rather than the other way around. That is why he fully expected the United States to lend the Soviet Union several billion dollars for re-construction: because the Americans would otherwise be unable to find markets for their products during the coming global crash.9

It followed as well that the other capitalist superpower, Great Britain—whose weakness Stalin consistently underestimated—would sooner or later break with its American ally over economic rivalries: “[T]he inevitability of wars between capitalist countries remains in force,” he insisted, as late as 1952.10 From Stalin’s perspective, then, the long-term forces of history would compensate for the catastrophe World War II had inflicted upon the Soviet Union. It would not be necessary to confront the Americans and British directly in order to achieve his objectives. He could simply wait for the capitalists to begin quarreling with one another, and for the disgusted Europeans to embrace communism as an alternative.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 07 Apr 2013 07:29

Southern Europe lies prostrate before the German imperium: Cyprus is only the first victim of a one-size-must-fit-all policy that is made in Berlin

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 08 Apr 2013 21:41

Check the map in this article

http://philebersole.wordpress.com/tag/a ... hlstetter/

The weakness of domination
March 26, 2013
ALBERT WOHLSTETTER’S PRECEPTS

1. Liberal internationalism is an illusion

2. The system that replaces liberal internationalism must address the ever-present (and growing) danger posed by catastrophic surprise.

3. The key to averting or at least minimizing surprise is to act preventively.

4. The ultimate in preventive action is domination

5. Information technology brings outright supremacy within reach.

Double click to enlarge
The late Albert Wohlstetter was an influential “defense intellectual,” a scholar little known to the public but highly influential in shaping U.S. military policy. His philosophy was summarized in these five precepts by Andrew J. Bacevich in an article in the March issue of Harper’s magazine, which was about the efforts of Paul Wolfowitz, one of Wohlstetter’s chief disciples, to turn these precepts into U.S. government policy.

Wolfowitz, serving as an adviser to the Pentagon in 1992, drafted the controversial Defense Planning Guidance document. According to Basevich, it said the “first objective” of U.S. policy is to maintain unquestioned military supremacy and “prevent the emergence of a new rival, by, if necessary, employing force unilaterally with an eye to “deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” Unfortunately for Wolfowitz, the document was leaked before the White House had a chance to review it, President George H.W. Bush disavowed it, and Wolfowitz left the government.

He served on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University until he returned to government in 2001 as deputy to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He advocated preventive war against Iraq. “We cannot wait until the threat is imminent,” he wrote. This policy failed. But why did it fail? The answer is that domination does not make you stronger. Rather the effort to maintain domination saps your strength.

I’ve written posts about the ideas of Nassim Nicholas Taleb on fragility and antifragility. The high-technology U.S. military is fragile, according to Taleb’s definition. U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan depended on a long supply chain and complex technologies which could fail at any point. The insurgency, by Taleb’s definition, was antifragile. The insurgents fought on their home ground, used simple technologies (explosives set off by garage door openers and TV remotes) and were embedded in the population of the country, not in walled outposts. Every U.S. victory in battle or drone attack raised up more insurgents for every one that was killed.

The Roman Empire was strong as long as Roman citizens throughout the empire thought it was worth defending. When the empire came to rest on mere domination, the very extent of the empire made it harder to defend. Every attack in the West made it necessary to weaken defenses in the East, and vice versa. Eventually it became necessary to create co-emperors, for West and East, and this made it possible for the eastern half to survive after the western half fell.

Double click to enlarge
Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers wrote about how strong nations have been weakened by “imperial overstretch.” Great Britain in World War Two was weakened, not strengthened, by the need to keep troops in India. The British Empire’s strength was came from Canada, Australia and other territories that did not rest on domination.

By occupying Afghanistan, the United States has made its forces vulnerable to attacks from the tribal areas of Pakistan, which would otherwise be of no concern. To safeguard the new government in Libya, U.S. policy-makers now seek to prevent unfriendly forces from controlling Mali. Rather than creating security, our government has created a wider circle of threats. And in so doing, it has sapped American strength and left us less able to cope with urgent problems at home.

Very important for Desi people to think and understand

Lilo · Post by **Lilo** » 09 Apr 2013 01:42

Manu Pubby ‏@manupubby
'Russian doctrine permits it to respond with nuke weapons if its strategic assets are targeted by cyber/space weapons' - Rogov #nukefest2013

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 14 Apr 2013 00:51

What if we all died at forty?

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 19 Apr 2013 09:07

What essays affected international relations?

1) George Kennan, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct,"

2) Jeane Kirkpatrick, "Dictatorship and Double Standards,"

3) Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History?"

4) Samuel Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?"

5) Zheng Bijian, "China's 'Peaceful Rise' to Great Power Status,"

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 19 Apr 2013 13:00

6) Jim O'Neill, "Building Better Global Economic BRICs"

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 24 Apr 2013 06:19

The Rise of Big Data: How It's Changing the Way We Think About the World

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 25 Apr 2013 19:36

X-Posted from OT thread

habal wrote:from whatever I could gather from google sir, Chechens and Circassians are not the same people, though they both are mountain people from Caucasus. Does it matter ? Really don't know. But nevertheless for those who like to nitpick, it may.

when they were driven out of the Caucasus, all of them didn't end up in Ottoman Turkey, some also went from there to Iraq, Syria & Jordan. In Jordan the Chechen community and the Circassian community have seperate flags.

In this example both have been merged under the Jordan crown:

topmost is the Jordanian crown
below is the Circassian flag
bottom is the Chechen flag.

now if they were the same people why would they have different flags ?

Some examples of circassians:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Circa ... Israel.Jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... y_Flag.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... lothes.jpg

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 30 Apr 2013 00:20

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/20 ... oportions/
Will The 21st Century Be A Horror Show Of Epic Proportions?
(Epic proprotion =My kind of Bhasha is now used)

In 2006, Mark Steyn reached two conclusions from his study of anemic Western demographics in his book America Alone. The post World War II global order led by the United States is literally dying, and the future belongs to Islam.
David Goldman, Spengler at Asia Times Online, dismisses those contentions as bogus. “The fastest demographic decline ever registered in recorded history is taking place today in Muslim countries.” World fertility fell from 4.5 to 2.5 children per woman over the past half-century, but “two or three times faster” in Islamic nations. Moreover, the severity of this drop is exacerbated by the “lapsed time” in which it is occurring. Europe spent two centuries descending to its present demographic nadir. Islamic societies are “attempting it [collapsed fertility] in twenty.”But, this rush towards demographic oblivion is still cause for alarm. It “makes radical Islam more dangerous” because of “Spengler’s Universal Law #1 – A man or a nation at the brink of death does not have a rational self-interest.” As Islamic societies choose de-population, their rational calculus changes. The radicals’ boast that “you love life and we love death” is revealing in this regard. Radical Islamists have chosen to die fighting, rather than watch their societies self-terminate. As Goldman quips, “the flip side of suicide by infertility is jihad.” And, he marshals statistics, history, and philosophy to offer chilling predictions and disturbing recommendations.Goldman draws on mounds of data to diagnose the Islamic world’s ills, and he dismisses Steyn’s thesis with the qualification of poverty. Old people are an existential threat to Islamic nations because they possess a fraction of Europe’s $30,000 GDP per capita circa 2009. The Middle East’s elderly “rely on their children to care for them.” But today’s bulge of young people will find that neither wealth nor descendants will exist to support them in their old age. The first signs of looming ruin are already apparent in states suffering drastic demographic drop-offs such as Iran (six children per woman), Turkey (five) and Egypt (four).

President Ahmadinejad started sounding the alarm back in 2006. His pronouncements have ranged from factual assertions that Iran faces “a tidal wave of elderly” to outlandish claims that Iran’s low birthrate is the result of a Western conspiracy. Yet, his anxiety is not misplaced. Iran’s $4,400 GDP per capita is primarily derived from oil exports. Furthermore, “today there are more Iranians in their mid-twenties than in any other age bracket. But they are not reproducing.” With a European birthrate of 1.7, and an economy dependent on exporting oil, the abyss seems inescapable.And, demographic decay coupled with poverty is yielding a third problem. Beneath the façade of theocracy is social rot. Young women, even educated ones, are increasingly selling themselves as a means to make money and escape unemployment: “90% of Tehran’s prostitutes have passed the university entrance exam.” Others, five million by one estimate, use drugs. Stiff penalties, “a third conviction for alcohol possession merits the death penalty,” are not deterring this behavior. It seems that “on its own terms, Iran’s Islamist experiment has failed.”The oil poor nations of Arab Spring fame are arguably in worse shape. Decades of economic underdevelopment, particularly in agriculture, have left these states dependent on importing half of their caloric consumption. The result is a merciless subjection to market volatility. Indeed, one trigger for the uprisings was the doubling of the price of wheat after a 2.4% drop in supply in 2009 and 2010. The reason for the price spike is cold economics: the increased wealth of Asian consumers has made food prices more inelastic. Stated succinctly, “Chinese and Indian demand has priced food staples out of the Arab budget.” Of course, an arguably bigger driver of nosebleed food prices is not scarcity, or rising demand from India and China, but the global run on paper currencies driven by policies in the U.S. to cheapen the dollar since 2001.Egypt is a microcosm of the economic disaster wrought by the Arab Spring. Despite half the population living on two dollars a day, foreign aid and revenue from tourism kept Egypt afloat under Mubarak. But since the revolution in 2011, the economy has imploded. Unemployment has soared as key industries shrivel, and capital flight is causing foreign exchange reserves to plummet. And, the latter is lethal. Egypt, with five percent arable land and eighty million souls, is running out of money to buy bread. The prospective starvation may become “a catastrophe of, well, biblical proportions.”. Falling fertility is symptomatic of a society encountering modernity; education, urbanization, and women’s emancipation. The onset of modernity has already begun in the Muslim world as demonstrated by the impact of literacy, particularly female literacy, on its birthrates.Increasing education is negatively correlated with decreasing fertility. This is a fact that Iran’s mullahs are painfully learning. Before his overthrow, the Shah launched a program to modernize Iran by eradicating illiteracy. The program was a smashing success. Iran now has literate and highly educated women with respect to the rest of the Muslim world. The result is “university-educated Iranian women had a fertility rate of 1.3.” It appears that Persian females are voting against the theocrats with their wombs.Turkey faces an identical problem. Its strong economy, rooted in a good education system, has yielded women bearing few Turkish children. Perhaps in a moment of distress, Prime Minister Ergodan ranted in 2008: “they want to eradicate the Turkish nation.” Add in the long oppressed Kurds’ fecundity, and Ergodan is probably right. “If we continue the existing trend, 2038 will mark disaster for us.”
Nothing is more dangerous than a civilization that has only just discovered it is dying.” This begs the questions of dangerous to whom and how much so? Certainly weak states cannot effectively project conventional force against industrialized powers. No one expects Libya to invade Britain, let alone succeed. Moreover, even a repeat of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is dangerous. It would invite massive retaliation.Goldman’s response is dying nations make suicidal decisions, consequences be damned. He cites the Ludendorff Offensive of 1918, among others, as proof that suicide occurs when hope of victory is lost. However, the German example is particularly problematic. His claim that “Germany knew it had lost the First World War by 1918” is erroneous. The Germans nearly won. After Russia surrendered in March 1918, German troops out east transferred west and nearly beat the American relief army to Paris. Indeed, a decisive victory before the Americans arrived was Germany’s best hope of ending the war on favorable terms. The offensive’s failure makes the decision wrong, not suicidal.
Moreover, it is difficult to name any state that willingly killed itself. Not even Red China at its revolutionary worst, Mao welcoming nuclear war and killing millions during the Cultural Revolution, self-liquidated. Those who argue that some regimes are irrational seemingly overlook that violence is employed purposefully and, yes, rationally. On the subject of irrationality, Goldman’s lethal logic invariably turns to Iran. Its demographic and economic bind will compel it to undertake one final action of glory: seizing oilfields in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. To secure this scenario, “Iran cannot do without nuclear capability.” Add in its “apocalyptic eschatology” and the U.S. has a mess on its hands: a terminally ill society led by religious fanatics seeking to wound the Great Satan with nuclear martyrdom. The answer is, of course, preemptive war. As Goldman explains:
“The lessons of the First World War, the Civil War, and the Cold War point to the same conclusion: preemption with overwhelming force is the appropriate means to contain an adversary who knows that he has nothing to lose. The strategy most likely to avoid war in the Middle East is not to reach out to Iran but to humiliate it.”This is extraordinary threat inflation. The U.S. has no hostile and powerful neighbors or comparable military challengers at present. The previous opponent, the USSR, had an equally disturbing ideology (violent world revolution) as radical Islamists, but collapsed without a nuclear holocaust occurring. What makes impoverished Iran different? And even if it acquires a nuke, it lacks the delivery capacity of a warhead and faces annihilation from a retaliatory attack. It is also worth remembering that a suicide is only such if the despairing individual or nation pulls the trigger.In the final chapter entitled “The Morality of Self-Interest”, Goldman argues for “Augustinian Realism.” He claims “America’s self-interest lies in alliances with countries that share our common love.” He clarifies his meaning this way: “Israel is the example par excellence of a state with a moral claim on American friendship [italics added].” It is a liberal democracy and a hub of economic activity. The same applies for India and South Korea other capitalist democracies.This conflation of values with interests is beyond erroneous. It is dangerous. Alliances, if they have any meaning, force U.S. engagement in conflicts that do not, by themselves, imperil Americans. The Korean Peninsula and the Middle East are two excellent examples.
Goldman’s book is paradoxical. It is an economics tour de force and a set of disturbing policy prescriptions. He brilliantly demystifies Islamic demographics, yet counsels preemptive war against terminally ill Iran. He stylishly suggests a new strategic way forward for U.S. foreign policy that smells of early 2000s neo-conservatism.At bottom, Goldman’s book is an apocalyptic prophecy. He spins a terrifying tale of a world on the cusp of radical change as civilizations fail. His goal is to horrify the reader, and he succeeds. One might even say upon finishing his book, mission accomplished.

Neshant · Post by **Neshant** » 30 Apr 2013 10:39

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 30 Apr 2013 14:38

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ap ... corruption

CIA and MI6 ghost money may fuel Afghan corruption, say diplomats
Failure of peace initiatives raises questions over whether British eagerness for political settlement may have been exploited

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 02 May 2013 08:40

The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi: Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Lilo · Post by **Lilo** » 03 May 2013 23:50

X-post

Jhujar wrote:Tokyo-Moscow thaw to hurt Mideast oil exporters

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tokyo- ... 2013-05-03
( Aappne ko Benefit Milega)

JERUSALEM (MarketWatch) — The Kurils are a windswept and mostly empty chain of islands off of northern Japan and eastern Russia, the largest of them smaller than Luxembourg, but the archipelago has been clouding relations between Tokyo and Moscow ever since the Red Army grabbed it in World War II’s last days. Now, following Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Russian President Vladimir Putin this week, the two powers seem finally ready to remove the territorial obstacle from their trade relations, a generally positive development from the international system’s viewpoint, but a very negative one for Japan’s Middle Eastern oil suppliers . Prime Minister Shinzo Abe signals that he won’t let a territorial dispute with Russia stop Japan from obtaining more oil and gas from Siberia. Abe’s soothing statements in Saudi Arabia, where he emerged the day he left Moscow, only enhance the conclusion that the Japanese oil tanker is in the process of U-turning from Arabia to Siberia. The Kremlin summit did not resolve the 68-year-old conflict, which prevents to this day the signing of a Russo-Japanese peace agreement. Moreover, the islands, which Stalin emptied of their Japanese inhabitants and repopulated with Soviets, will remain disputed well after talks concerning their future commence. However, agreements signed this week to jointly prospect the Russian Far East conceal a Japanese strategic choice to treat Russia the way Taiwan treats China, namely to let bilateral trade thrive regardless of diplomatic disputes. Indeed, Russian oil and Japanese industry have been begging to meet for generations, yet they hardly did. First, when Imperial Japan modernized, Czarist Russia had yet to seriously mine its Far East; then, in 1905, the two countries fought a war; and then came the 1945 conquest and the Cold War, all of which delayed the economically pre-destined meeting of Russian supply and Japanese demand.
It was a commercial absurdity that should have vanished with the Berlin Wall. Instead, for nearly a quarter of a century the two neighbors thought they could ignore the laws of supply and demand indefinitely — the Russians by leading their barrels and pipelines westward, to Europe, and the Japanese by leading their tankers south, to the Middle East. Now this defiance of economic gravity is coming to an end. Russia, faced with its European clients’ slumping economies, came to realize it must find new markets for its raw materials, which in the Putin era became its economy’s main engine. Lastly, Moscow and Tokyo are uneasy about their mutual neighbor China’s rise to global dominance. It follows that the pair’s economically driven affinity also has a diplomatic engine, one that will increasingly offset the Kuril Islands’ role as a diplomatic wedge. Hence the new thinking, which will now see Japanese investments pouring into Siberian and other Russian mineral deposits, while Russian gas will start flowing later this decade into Japan through new installations in Vladivostok. Regardless of this, the Japanese decision is not only about where to buy its power, but also where to no longer seek it.

Lilo wrote:
Toyota cuts cost of hydrogen-fuel cell cars

The cost of making a hydrogen fuel cell-powered car has fallen so dramatically that the same vehicle that cost about $1 million in past year can now be made for as little as $50,000 when it goes on sale in the U.S. in 2015, a top Toyota engineer says.

That means that customers probably will see sticker prices of up to $100,000 for cars so clean that they produce no more than water vapor from the tailpipe, Automotive News quotes Chris Hostetter, a group vice president for Toyota, as telling a conference.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 05 May 2013 18:40

A couple of years ago we debated the rise in Europe of the far right,as crony capitalism started beggaring ordinary people,with the outright theft of life savings as we've just seen in Cyprus. From an unexpected region of Europe,Hungary, a new far right party has emerged which should be seen in the context of the rise of the anti-EU right wing UKIP party in Britain.One should not really be surprised as anti-Semitism saw Hungarian Jews sent to the Nazi gas chambers.This happened to the family of a Hungarian friend of mine.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... uture.html

Inside the far-Right stronghold where Hungarian Jews fear for the future
As the World Jewish Congress opens in Budapest amid a rise in anti-Semitism in Hungary, Colin Freeman visits the town of Tiszavasvári, twinned with Iran and the stronghold of the far-Right Jobbik party.

By Colin Freeman, Tiszavasvári
04 May 2013

As the self-declared "capital" of the ultra-nationalist Jobbik Party, the town of Tiszavasvári prides itself on being a showcase for how the whole of Hungary might one day look.

Since winning control of Tiszavasvári's local council three years ago on a pledge to fight "Gipsy crime", the party has been on a vigorous clean-up campaign, banning prostitution, tidying the streets, and keeping a watchful eye on the shabby Roma districts at the edge of town. It even swore in its own Jobbik "security force" to work alongside the police, only for the uniformed militia, which drew comparisons with Hitler's brown-shirts, to be banned by Hungary's national government.

Yet Gipsies are not the only bogeyman that Jobbik has in its sights, as a sign on the well-trimmed green opposite the Communist-era mayoralty building suggests. Written in both Hungarian and Persian, it proudly announces that Tiszavasvári is twinned with Ardabil, a town in the rugged mountains of north-west Iran.

Gabor Vona delivers a speech during a rally against the World Jewish Congress Plenary Assembly in Budapest (Reuters)

On the face of it, there is no obvious reason why a drab rustbelt town in Hungary's former mining area should seek links to a city in a hardline Islamic Republic 2,000 miles away. But this is no ordinary cultural exchange programme, and friendship has very little to do with it. Instead, the real purpose of Jobbik's links to Iran is to show their mutual loathing of the Jewish state of Israel, which the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, notoriously declared should be "wiped from the pages of history".
Related Articles

Budapest witnesses anti-semitic rally
04 May 2013

Hungarian town names park after Hitler ally
06 Jan 2013

Hungary condemns far-Right MP over 'Jewish list' idea
27 Nov 2012

"The Persian people and their leaders are considered pariahs in the eyes of the West, which serves Israeli interests," said Marton Gyongyosi, a Jobbik MP and its leading foreign policy voice. "This is why we have solidarity with the peaceful nation of Iran and turn to her with an open heart."

In many other countries in Europe, such a scheme might be dismissed as just petty town hall posturing, a Far right version of the "Loony Left" gesture politics practised in British town halls in the 1980s. But it is particularly sensitive in Hungarian towns like Tiszavasvári, where anti-semitism has seen Jews wiped from the pages of history once before.

Inquiries by The Sunday Telegraph via official Holocaust archives show a dozen names of Jewish victims from Tiszavasvári, part of the mass extermination programme that gave Jews in the Hungarian countryside only a one in ten chance of survival in 1944, Some simply disappeared, while others like Andor Krausz, a 30-year-old bookbinder, and Rozsi Gruenweld, a 48-year-old shoe merchant, were murdered in Auschwitz, along with among more than 400,000 other Hungarian Jews.

A Jobbik supporter, the tattoo reads 'My Honor is Loyalty' (Reuters)

It was one of the most intensive anti-Jewish campaigns of Holocaust, and while it was conducted during Hungary's period of Nazi occupation, it was done with the active connivance of the Hungarian state.

" You can see Jobbik's true nature through this," said Peter Feldmajer, the President of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities, which today represents an estimated 100,000 Hungarian Jews, nearly 90 per cent of whom still refuse to disclose their Jewishness publicly. "They hate the Jewish people, and so does the Iranian government, and that is why they have formed this allegiance. It is a shame for Tiszavasvári, and it hurts the memories of those Jewish people who lived there."

Such concerns will loom large in the minds of delegates of the World Jewish Congress, which opens amid tight security today at the Soviet-era Budapest Intercontinental Hotel overlooking the Danube.

You need to have the Adobe Flash Player to view this content.
Please click here to continue.

Normally the Congress meets in Jerusalem, but this year it has deliberately chosen to convene in the Hungarian capital to highlight what its president, the billionaire philanthropist and cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, describes as a "dramatic" rise in anti-Semitism in Hungary.

Much of the blame for that is attributed to the Jobbik party, which was founded just ten years ago yet now represents the third-largest faction in politics, with 47 of 386 parliamentary seats.

Also in Mr Lauder's sights, though, is the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, whose ruling centre-right Fidesz Party competes for many of the votes that Jobbik now vies for, and who has been criticised for not taking a firm enough stance against anti-Semitism.

"The number of anti-Semitic and racist incidents has risen dramatically in Hungary in recent years," Mr Lauder said last week. "This hatred manifests itself on the streets, in parliament, in the media. The Hungarian government must do more to fight this phenomenon."

The Congress meeting adds to a growing sense of political isolation in Hungary, where earlier this year, the European Union said that Mr Orban's party was placing too many curbs on the judiciary and media, measures it said could ultimately disqualify the country from EU membership.

While Mr Orban insists the measures have been necessary to end decades of corruption and inefficient government under his predecessors, the fear is that such measures are making it all the easier for groups like Jobbik to gain a foothold. A ban on the Jobbik party holding a counter-demonstration at the World Jewish Congress's presence in town has only added to their sense of grievance.

Roughly translated as "the Movement for a Better Hungary", Jobbik's success has far outstripped similar movements in neighbouring former Communist states. Its appeal in towns like Tiszavasvári has been based partly on confronting problems associated with the country's half-million strong Roma community, whom many Hungarians see as crime-prone and welfare-dependent.

But as the global banking crisis has hit Hungary hard, leaving more than 1 in 10 jobless, Jobbik has also revived a folk devil at the opposite end of social spectrum - the wealthy, all-controlling Jews, who were traditionally influential in the finance world.

Barely a month now passes in Hungary without a fresh furore over some anti-Semitic incident. Jewish community leaders have been attacked in the street and Jewish cemeteries desecrated. Far-Right biker gangs have also held ugly counter demonstrations to anti-Semitism rallies, entitled "Step on the Gas" days. Mr Gyongyosi, the Jobbik MP, was castigated recently for saying that a "security" register should be created of Hungarian MPs and civil servants who were of "Jewish origin".

The Hungarian national football association, meanwhile, was recently fined after fans shouted anti-Semitic slogans during a recent World Cup qualifier. And only last week, the leader of the Raoul Wallenberg Association, a charity named after a businessman who rescued many Jews from Nazi-occupied Hungary, was beaten up after telling skinhead thugs to stop chanting "Seig Heil" at a soccer match.

"They called me a Jewish Communist," said Ferenc Orosz - who is actually a Protestant - in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph. "Anti-Semitism is definitely getting worse. Jobbik speaks about it openly in parliament, and when their supporters see that, they follow suit."

True, while verbal abuse has apparently increased, incidents of actual violence are still relatively rare in Hungary: Mr Feldmajer recollects only around 50 physical attacks in 20 years. And it is fair to say that the bootboy image by no means fits all of Jobbik's supporters, many of whom are respectable working people whose motivations sound little different to the average UKIP supporter. The talk is of frustration with politically correct attitudes to crime and immigration, of children no longer being taught Hungarian history in schools properly, and of a loss of faith in mainstream political parties, whose economic record since communism's collapse is patchy at best.

Typical is Sipos Ibolya, 55, a cheerful schoolteacher who is Jobbik's deputy mayoress in Tiszavasvári. The twinning arrangement with Iran, she insists, is not borne of anti-semitism, but simple national self-interest.

"Economically, the Israelis do have too much power in Hungary," she said.

"But it's not that we're against Jews specifically. If German or Chinese firms became powerful here, we would be against that too."

There was a similarly mixed picture at a Jobbik May Day fair last week, which combined elements of Glastonbury festival with a historical re-enactment society. In front of an open-air stage, burly men tattooed with skulls, crossbones and the odd swastika sat listening to bands play right-wing folk music, whose choruses of "we are all one blood" had them singing along. The sideshows, meanwhile, were devoted to displays of swordsmanship, archery and whipcracking, skill practised by the ancient Hungarian tribes whom many Jobbik supporters see as the country's true forefathers.

But what was billed as a day of harmless, Far-Right family fun also had its darker side. At least one book stall had Hitler's Mein Kampf on sale, and when it caught the attention of the Sunday Telegraph's photographer, a youth was overheard was overheard saying "What are these Jews doing here?" What alarms Hungarian liberals, though, is the way that under Mr Orban's government, such events have become part of the political mainstream. Songs by Far Right bands now do well in the charts, with one group, Carpatia, even receiving an official award, and last year, Hungary's state-funded New Theatre planned to stage a play about a group of powerful Jews who plot the country's downfall. Although it was eventually pulled after an outcry from anti-racism activists, it is hard to imagine such a production getting anywhere near a theatre in many other European countries.

Nonetheless, after the trauma of the Holocaust, most of Hungary's remaining Jews have an all too well-developed sense of perspective about Jobbik. In the old Jewish quarter of Budapest, a maze of cobbled streets, synagogues and smart restaurants, few are planning to take to the streets to mount their counter-Jobbik protests. For one thing, Jews here have learned the hard way to keep a low-profile, and for another, the feeling is that while anti-Semitism comes and goes, it never disappears entirely.

"We do have occasional incidents, and Jews and Gypsies will always be scapegoats in society as long as it exists," said restaurateur Sallai Tunde, 45, whose family were spared Auschwitz by pretending to be Catholics. "But if you talk to those people in their 90s, who survived the camps, then you realise things are not that bad by comparison."

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 09 May 2013 09:56

Niall Ferguson’s Latest Gay Bashing is the Least of His Problems

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 09 May 2013 10:55

My father, the good Nazi

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 11 May 2013 21:52

A House Divided: Why the integration of a South African university didn't last.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 15 May 2013 05:53

One stop solution for many currnet Petroblems
What If Oil Lasts Forever?

The solution, Churchill told Parliament in 1913, was for Britons to become “the owners, or at any rate, the controllers at the source of at least a proportion of the supply of natural oil which we require.” Spurred by the Admiralty, the U.K. soon bought 51 percent of what is now British Petroleum, which had rights to oil “at the source”: Iran (then known as Persia). The concessions’ terms were so unpopular in Iran that they helped spark a revolution. London worked to suppress it. Then, to prevent further disruptions, Britain enmeshed itself ever more deeply in the Middle East, working to install new shahs in Iran and carve Iraq out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire. Churchill fired the starting gun, but all of the Western powers joined the race to control Middle Eastern oil. Britain clawed past France, Germany, and the Netherlands, only to be overtaken by the United States, which secured oil concessions in Turkey, Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. The struggle created a long-lasting intercontinental snarl of need and resentment. Even as oil-consuming nations intervened in the affairs of oil-producing nations, they seethed at their powerlessness; oil producers exacted huge sums from oil consumers but chafed at having to submit to them. Decades of turmoil—oil shocks in 1973 and 1979, failed programs for “energy independence,” two wars in Iraq—have left unchanged this fundamental, Churchillian dynamic, a toxic mash of anger and dependence that often seems as basic to global relations as the rotation of the sun.

All of this was called into question by the voyage of the Chikyu (“Earth”), a $540 million Japanese deep-sea drilling vessel that looks like a billionaire’s yacht with a 30-story oil derrick screwed into its back. The Chikyu, a floating barrage of superlatives, is the biggest, glitziest, most sophisticated research vessel ever constructed, and surely the only one with a landing pad for a 30-person helicopter. The central derr"ick houses an enormous floating drill with a six-mile “string” that has let the Chikyu delve deeper beneath the ocean floor than any other ship. Its present undertaking was, if possible, of even greater importance: trying to develop an energy source that could free not just Japan but much of the world from the dependence on Middle Eastern oil that has bedeviled politicians since Churchill’s day.Nowhere has the interest been more serious than Japan. Unlike Britain and the United States, the Japanese failed to become “the owners, or at any rate, the controllers” of any significant amount of oil. (Not that Tokyo didn’t try: it bombed Pearl Harbor mainly to prevent the U.S. from blocking its attempted conquest of the oil-rich Dutch East Indies.) Today, Churchill’s nightmare has come true for Japan: it is a military and industrial power almost wholly dependent on foreign energy. It is the world’s third-biggest net importer of crude oil, the second-biggest importer of coal, and the biggest importer of liquefied natural gas. Not once has a Japanese politician expressed happiness at this state of affairs.
JOGMEC hadn’t figured out the best way to mine hydrate, or how to ship the resultant natural gas to shore. Costs needed to be brought down. “It will not be ready for 10 years,” Yamamoto said. “But I believe it will be ready.” What would happen then, he allowed, would be “interestingFracking has been attacked as an environmental menace to underground water supplies, and may eventually be greatly restricted. But it has also unleashed so much petroleum in North America that the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based consortium of energy-consuming nations, predicted in November that by 2035, the United States will become “all but self-sufficient in net terms.” If the Chikyu researchers are successful, methane hydrate could have similar effects in Japan. And not just in Japan: China, India, Korea, Taiwan, and Norway are looking to unlock these crystal cages, as are Canada and the United States.Not everyone thinks JOGMEC will succeed. But methane hydrate is being developed in much the same methodical way that shale gas was developed before it, except by a bigger, more international group of researchers. Shale gas, too, was subject to skepticism wide and loud. The egg on naysayers’ faces suggests that it would be foolish to ignore the prospects for methane hydrate—and more foolish still not to consider the potential consequences.If methane hydrate allows much of the world to switch from oil to gas, the conversion would undermine governments that depend on oil revenues, especially petro-autocracies like Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Unless oil states are exceptionally well run, a gush of petroleum revenues can actually weaken their economies by crowding out other business. Worse, most oil nations are so corrupt that social scientists argue over whether there is an inherent bond—a “resource curse”—between big petroleum deposits and political malfeasance. It seems safe to say that few Americans would be upset if a plunge in demand eliminated these countries’ hold over the U.S. economy. But those same people might not relish the global instability—a belt of financial and political turmoil from Venezuela to Turkmenistan—that their collapse could well unleash.
When will the world’s supply of oil be exhausted?” the MIT economist Morris Adelman has written. “The best one-word answer: never.”Nations like Japan, China, and India will still be stuck in that world, as will much of Europe and Southeast Asia. Many of these nations do not have shale deposits to frack, the requisite technological base, or, even if they have both the shale and the technology, the entrepreneurial infrastructure to finance such sweeping changes. Nonetheless, they want to be freed from their abrasive reliance on OPEC. The United States and Canada, mindful that the good times will not last forever, are also hunting for new supplies. All have been looking with ever-increasing interest at a still-larger energy source: methane hydrate.Japan, which has spent about $700 million on methane-hydrate R&D over the past decade, has the world’s biggest hydrate-research program—or perhaps that should be programs, because provincial governments on Japan’s west coast formed a second hydrate-research consortium last year. (Several researchers told me that the current towel-snapping between Beijing and Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea is due less to nationalistic posturing than to nearby petroleum deposits.) In mid-March, Japan’s Chikyu test ended a week early, after sand got in the well mechanism. But by then the researchers had already retrieved about 4 million cubic feet of natural gas from methane hydrate, at double the expected rate. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry is eager to create a domestic oil industry; at present, the nation produces just one one-thousandth of its own needs. Perhaps overoptimistically, the ministry set 2018 as a target date for commercializing methane hydrate. India and South Korea are following along, each spending as much as $30 million a year on hydrate experiments; the Korean program is growing especially aggressively.U.S.-style energy independence, or something like it, may become a reality in much of Asia and West Africa, parts of Europe, most of the Americas. The results in other nations would be turbulent. If natural gas from methane hydrate becomes plentiful and cheap enough to encourage nations to switch from oil, as the Japanese hope, the risk pool will expand to include Brunei, Iraq, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, and other petro-statesShortfalls in oil revenues thus kick away the sole, unsteady support of the state—a cataclysmic event, especially if it happens suddenly. “Think of Saudi Arabia,” says Daron Acemoglu, the MIT economist and a co-author of Why Nations Fail. “How will the royal family contain both the mullahs and the unemployed youth without a slush fund?” And

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 15 May 2013 22:14

Arctic states open council to China, India, SKorea
http://news.yahoo.com/arctic-states-ope ... 26578.html

KIRUNA, Sweden (AP) — Arctic states agreed Wednesday to let nations that are located nowhere near the Earth's north to become observers to their diplomatic council, boosting rising superpowers China, India and South Korea that are seeking to mine the region for its untapped energy and other natural resources.
Widespread thawing of Arctic ice, which keeps the rest of the world cooler, has alarmed environmentalists but has become an economic lure to nations seeking to ship cargo across once-frozen seas. The global warming is making the Arctic's elusive supply of oil, gas, minerals and precious metals available — in some areas, for the first time ever — as ever-expanding counties like China and India hunt for additional energy supplies.Officials estimate the Arctic holds 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil reserves, and 30 percent of undiscovered gas deposits.Ministers suggested the inclusion of the energy-hungry nations at the Arctic Council will force them to uphold the diplomatic panel's core goals of safeguarding the region."There is no such thing as a free lunch," said Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide. "By becoming an observer you're also signing up to the principles embodied by this organization, and that is why we have been working hard to make that happen."In all, six nations — China, India, Italy, Japan, Korea and Singapore — were granted observer status to the council, joining several previously-accepted counties from Europe. The eight states that are permanent members of the non-binding panel all touch the Arctic Circle, including the United States, through Alaska. Denmark is connected to the Arctic Circle through its relationship with Greenland, which is a semi-autonomous territory.Canada's minister to the council, Leona Aglukkaq, voiced mild but restrained discomfort with the new observers to the council, which she said was created "by northerners, for northerners, before the Arctic was of interest to the rest of the world." Canada will chair of the council for the next two years.The ministers' short meeting, which is held only every two years, also attracted a scattering of protesters form the environmental group Greenpeace, who held banners outside Kiruna's small city hall urging "No Arctic oil." A hulking black mountain, from which iron ore is mined, served as the backdrop for the meeting in the small Arctic town where snow had melted to slush.U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, sporting a blue suit coat amid the ski sweaters and tribal costumes at the meeting, said the world must crack down on polluting emissions that endanger the Arctic. He said the U.S. and China are two of the globe's largest contributors to emissions."No one nation can solve this," Kerry said. "No one is doing enough. The problem is that everything we do, or everything that another nation does, is going to be wiped out by China or another nation if they continue with coal-fired power at the rate we are seeing. So the warning signals are there."

Kati · Post by **Kati** » 15 May 2013 22:22

Moscow spy incident related to Boston

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... m/2161113/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... pying.html

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 18 May 2013 01:44

China, India to be largest investors among developing nations
GEOECONOMIC SHIFT

Bashington: India and China are expected to be the largest investors among developing countries by 2030, with the two Asian giants accounting for 38 percent of global gross investment, a World Bank report said on Friday."Among the developing countries, China and India are expected to be the largest investors, with the two countries together accounting for 38 per cent of the global gross investment in 2030. All this will change the landscape of the global economy, and GDH analyzes how," said Kaushik Basu, World Bank's Senior Vice President and Chief Economist.According to the latest edition of the World Bank's Global Development Horizons (GDH) report, by 2030 half the global stock of capital, totaling USD 158 trillion, will reside in the developing world, compared to less than one-third today, with countries in East Asia and Latin America accounting for the largest shares of this stock."GDH is one of the finest efforts at peering into the distant future. It does this by marshaling an amazing amount of statistical information," Basu said."We know from the experience of countries as diverse as South Korea, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey and South Africa the pivotal role investment plays in driving long-term growth," he added. According to the report, in absolute terms saving will continue to be dominated by Asia and the Middle East.
"In the gradual convergence scenario, in 2030, China will save far more than any other developing country - USD 9 trillion in 2010 dollars - with India a distant second with USD 1.7 trillion, surpassing the levels of Japan and the United States in the 2020s," it said.As a result, under the gradual convergence scenario, China will account for 30 percent of global investment in 2030, with Brazil, India and Russia together accounting for another 13 percent.In terms of volumes, investment in the developing world will reach USD 15 trillion, versus USD 10 trillion in high-income economies.China and India will account for almost half of all global manufacturing investment.
The World Bank said Sooth Asia will remain one of the highest saving and highest investing regions until 2030.However, with the scope for rapid economic growth and financial development, results for saving, investment, and capital flows will vary significantly: in a scenario of more rapid economic growth and financial market development, high investment rates will be sustained while saving falls significantly, implying large current account deficits.South Asia is a young region, and by about 2035 is likely to have the highest ratio of working- to non-working-age people of any region in the world.The general shift in investment away from agriculture towards manufacturing and service sectors is likely to be especially pronounced in South Asia, with the region's share of total investment in manufacturing expected to nearly double, and investment in the service sector to increase by more than 8 percentage points, to over two-thirds of total investment, the report said.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 18 May 2013 02:22

Britain's MI6 has its "Agent Bond",the CIA has its "Agent Blond"!

The spy spat between Russia and the US,over the alleged CIA spy caught redhanded by Russian security,has escalated with Russia revealing the name of the CIA station chief in Moscow,which by agreement,nations do not disclose.Russia is protesting the agressive espionage activities of the CIA in trying to recruit spies.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... S-spy.html

Russia names CIA's Moscow station chief after capture of alleged U.S. spy

Russia identifies U.S. embassy diplomat as head of intelligence in Moscow
Revelation follows capture of Agent Blond - undercover diplomat Ryan Fogle
Letter allegedly found on Ryan Fogle offers agent $1million per year to defect
U.S. ambassador was summoned to Russian foreign ministry to explain
Photos of his belongings show Fogle was in possession of two wigs, three pairs of sunglasses, a microphone, a knife and plenty of money
By Will Stewart
PUBLISHED: 16:54 GMT, 17 May 2013 |

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ma ... scow-chief
Russia reveals identity of CIA Moscow chief following Ryan Fogle's expulsion

Federal Security Service spokesman breaches protocol as he accuses US agency of crossing 'red line' in its recruitment efforts

Miriam Elder Moscow
The Guardian, Friday 17 May 2013 18.24 BST

Ryan Fogle
The US has not reacted to the expulsion of Ryan Fogle, who was caught in a sting operation while allegedly attempting to recruit an FSB agent. Photograph: AP

The Federal Security Service in Russia has revealed the identity of the CIA's station chief in Moscow in a breach of protocol.

The revelation, made by an FSB spokesman who accused the US agency of crossing a "red line" in its attempt to recruit turncoats among Russian spy agencies, will up the ante in the unfolding spy scandal that emerged earlier this week when Russia detained and expelled an alleged CIA agent working undercover as third secretary at the US embassy in Moscow.

Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin's foreign policy advisor, have taken pains to say they believe the scandal will blow over quickly.

Publicly revealing the CIA station chief proves that some inside the Russian government believe otherwise and is likely to prompt an angry response from Washington.

Speaking to Russia's Interfax news agency, the FSB spokesman said his agency had complained to the CIA station chief as far back as October 2011 "that if they [the Americans] continue their provocative recruitment efforts regarding employees of the Russian secret services, the FSB will take 'mirror' actions against CIA agents". In that statement, the spokesman included the station chief's name.

The US embassy declined to comment . Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general turned Kremlin critic now living in the US, said: "This is a deliberate attempt to make the situation worse than it is. It's an invitation to the US to do the same and they probably will – and no one will gain."

The US has not reacted to the expulsion of Ryan Fogle, who Russia said was caught in a sting operation last week while allegedly attempting to recruit an FSB agent focused on anti-terrorism efforts in Russia's North Caucasus. Russia widely publicised the case, parading Fogle on state-run television alongside collection of alleged spy gear, including wigs, a map and compass, a poorly written recruitment letter and the recording of a phone call with his alleged target.

The FSB spokesman said the case came after several warnings to the CIA, including the direct appeal to the station chief.

In December, Russia expelled – less publicly – another suspected CIA agent working undercover as third secretary at the US embassy. The FSB spokesman said the man was declared persona non grata on 11 January and expelled four days later.

"In the case with Fogle, the CIA crossed 'the red line' and we were forced to react, observing official procedures," the spokesman said.

His comments were widely published in Russian media and on state-run television, including the Kremlin's English-language channel, Russia Today.

"Basically, the FSB got sick of American spies and demonstratively and publicly slapped one of them," wrote the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda. "Like a cockroach who thought he was master of the crumbs in the kitchen."

Kalugin said he believed Russia designed the scandal in order to heighten general fear about Americans inside the country, while stepping up pressure on the US as Moscow and Washington tussle over Syria.

"As Hillary Clinton, the former [US] secretary of state, put it just a few months ago: we are watching the process of re-Sovietisation of Russia," he said. "I think this is precisely what has been happening."

Russian officials, including Putin, have accused the US of fomenting discontent against him in Russia, as well as orchestrating the uprisings around the Middle East.

The spy scandal unfolds as the US and Russia have sought to boost co-operation between their respective security services over the investigation of the Boston Marathon bombing. Yet the two countries remain at odds over Syria.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, reiterated on Friday that Russia was delivering its S-300 missiles to Syria, despite US and Israeli attempts to convince Moscow to halt arms shipments to the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 18 May 2013 02:47

More hilarious details of caught spy,"Ryan Blond",the CIA's version of "James Bond"!

http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/crime ... gle_spy-0/

Ryan Fogle, vodka, bears and gypsies
15.05.2013

Exposing a CIA agent, who was trying to recruit an agent of Russia's FSB (Federal Security Bureau), has become the talk of the day in Russia. Some experts say that in addition to the wig, Ryan Fogle should have brought bears and gypsies. Others seriously say that the FSB excelled in detaining the spy.

Three years have passed since the last spy scandal between Russia and the United States. The main character of the previous scandal was a native of Russia's Volgograd, Anna Chapman. Another spy story unfolded in Moscow on May 14. Intelligence agencies reported the detention of Ryan Christopher Fogle, an employee of the U.S. Embassy. According to Russian intelligence services, Fogle tried to recruit a FSB agent for the CIA. Fogle has repeatedly contacted the security officer on a cell phone and offered him to meet to discuss further cooperation. The FSB employee was responsible for the struggle against terrorism in the North Caucasus. The CIA was reportedly prepared to pay its new recruit up to one million dollars a year.

In pictures: American spy caught in Moscow

Fogle managed to convince the Russian officer to meet near the Vorontsovsky Park, where the US diplomat handed over written instructions to the FSB officer. The letter start with "Dear Friend." In addition, Fogle brought $100,000 of advance payment. Having handed over the cash and papers to the Russian officer, Fogle was detained by FSB agents.

The pictures from the place of detention show that the US agent came to the meeting wearing a strange blonde wig and a baseball cap. Other photos that were taken in the department of special services caused a storm of debate about the qualification of the spy and the level of his readiness for the operation. Russian agents seized a large amount of money, a small folding knife, a flashlight, two ladies' wigs, three pairs of glasses, a very old cell phone, a map of Moscow and a compass.

"It should be understood that this spy is young, apparently not a very well trained one, so this detention should be categorized as quite an amusing incident," General Director of the Center for Political Information, Alexei Mukhin said. "Of course, the story does not honor the United States. Frankly, such a spy should have been taken to the embassy in a caravan of bears and gypsies to be released afterwards. This recruitment does nothing but puts a smile on your face. Perhaps, the detention occurred at quite an appropriate moment, during Mr. Kerry's visit to Moscow. But it does not look like a well-planned action - this is all very strange. A similar incident occurred in the past during the visit of a Russian delegation to the United States, and the Americans took advantage of the situation to embarrass the Russians. However, I am certain that Fogle's detention is not a symmetrical response to the States," the expert told Pravda.Ru

Retired Major-General of State Security, Valery Malevanny, does not see anything funny and ironic in the detention of Ryan Fogle. On the contrary, the expert does not want to joke about the operation of Russian security services at all.

"Let's start with saying that it was an officer of CIA intelligence, who was arrested. He is a professional. The things that were withdrawn from him comply with the recommendations that special services give to their employees," he told Pravda.Ru. "This is a systematic training program, on which such experts work, and they try not to violate those recommendations. One shouldn't forget the fact that Fogle served as the third secretary of the embassy. This is a serious post, the activity of which is classified. I would point out the excellent work of FSB's counter-intelligence: it is very difficult to catch a person red-handed during recruitment, especially such a professional as the third secretary of the embassy."

On the day of Fogle's detention, US Ambassador to Russia strongly refused to comment on the incident. Responding to a request for post a message on Twitter, McFaul only said "no."

However, experts do not believe that the most recent spy scandal will undermine the ties between Russia and the United States.

"Intelligence services have always worked, and intelligence officers, including ours, work in all countries of the world," retired KGB General Valery Malevanny said. "Let us remember the scandal when our general fled to the West and delivered ten Russian spies to special services. Among them, there were people who had been working illegally for 25 years, as well as other officers, including Anna Chapman. So I think that there will be no tensions between Moscow and Washington. But I am certain that the US may "shoot back" and arrest some of our diplomats in the West. This will be indolent opposition, which will not affect big politics at all."

Russia's FSB in its reports on the detention of Fogle is clearly proud of the actions of its employees: "The U.S. intelligence has repeatedly attempted to recruit employees of Russian law enforcement bodies and special departments. Those attempts were recorded and conducted under the control of Counterintelligence of the Russian Federal Security Bureau."

Anton Frolov

Pravda.Ru

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 28 May 2013 00:14

Kenneth N. Waltz, 1924-2013

Kenneth Waltz and His Legacy

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 28 May 2013 04:14

Globalisation isn't just about profits. It's about taxes too

habal · Post by **habal** » 03 Jun 2013 17:41

A very dangerous trend, as exhibited in turkey, of an administration working for western interests and maybe saudi interests is developing as contrary to popular national mood of helping out regimes like Assad against a few mercenary death-squads roaming the countrysides. These death-squads are not pro-anybody as they have been allowed by their high-priests to even take wives and captors from sunnis (supposed to be fighting 'for' them apparently). Also moderate sunni pro-hezbollah leaders are also being targeted in Lebanon by this same group. This is just like what happened when the pakistanis created trouble in bangladesh and Kashmir. We are seeing various copies of such events around the world. These events in west-asia have also been meticulously planned well in advance and recruitments done from mad houses posing as mad-rasas and jailed inmates for radicalism being let loose to fight some religious wars with free supply of drugs like LSD, cannabis etc to keep them going.

Now the worrying trend here for the govts to cozy into western arms especially after rigorously moving around the western wining,dining,conference,hotel,cocktail circuits, they are sucked into western gameplan and are very forgetful of their national interests and what their people's interests are. The frequent western trips happen at behest of western interests because they can see somebody pliable whom they feel is amenable to subversion from their core responsibilities and who can betray their national mandates. Thus turkish prime minister is not bothered when his people are out throwing molotov cocktails on the streets, but still can't get their wits in order and smell the coffee. This is deep level of brainwash. Wikileaks also helped us know how the Indian politicians felt so free in confiding to their american counterparts as if they were opening hearts to deep friends who could never betray.

That they, the deep friends i.e. previously had deeper friends like Gaddafi, Mubarak, Saleh, & even Saddam before Kuwait war et al are forgotten by our Chidambaram's, Rahul Gandhi's, Milind Deora (sic) clique. Basically we have a system wherein the political administration who is on western cocktail circuit has been made suitably oblivious to Indian interests and respective national interests when it comes to the case of other countries. This is the most important national security challenge at the moment. There should not be a free pass given to bureaucrats and politicians to meet western counterparts and a strict ring fence established before sundry developing countries are totally subverted.