Gary McKinnon, a British hacker accused of breaking into US mil computers right after 9/11 will find out tomorrow if he's about to be thrown into the thresher of mean American justice. The US media has had virtually no interest in him. But this is...
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Over the past decade it has become obvious that the world is warming - Arctic and Antarctic ice is shrinking steadily and glaciers are retreating worldwide. Climate models predict a significant increase in global temperature this century, raising concerns that global climate will reach "tipping...
"Only you can prevent terrorism!" -- Cinders the Bear, mascot of the new, improved Department of Homeland Security That's one way to interpret DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano's message on national counter-terror strategy. "Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called on Americans on Wednesday to join a...
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National leadership in Iran continues to make national headlines here. According to the Voice of America, "Iranian media report that Iran's supreme leader told President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to has dismiss his chosen top deputy, after the selection angered conservative Iranians." In addition to ongoing political...
U.S. military primacy built nearly a generation ago has guaranteed freedom of the seas and threat-free skies for U.S. ground forces in current operations. These tremendous capabilities are being taken for granted as investment in maintaining superior and technologically-advanced equipment in sufficient quantities is...
With the surge of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, Western policymakers have intensified their efforts for alternative routes through the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Is Central Asia a viable alternative to Pakistan? Ryan Clarke and Khuram Iqbal of the...
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The Obama administration has made no secret of its desire to move Iraq down its list of priorities, behind Afghanistan, Iran, and a host of domestic issues. President Barack Obama's latest meeting in Washington with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, occurring in the midst of a...
The bane of North Korea watchers is the seemingly endless media speculation based on the latest rumors over which of the Kim boys is in favor with their father, Kim Jong Il. This analysis tends to bypass North Korea's domestic politics, which have undergone a...
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"[An electromagnetic pulse attack is] a giant time machine that would move us back in technology a century," opined Congressman Roscoe Bartlett before the House Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology yesterday. It was part of a long meeting convened to discuss...
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IntroductionIranian authorities have reinforced controls on major domestic media following the upheaval over contested presidential election results in June 2009. One month after the disputed vote, nearly forty journalists remained in Iranian prisons. Yet Iran's media landscape, like many aspects of the theocratic regime, is...
IntroductionChina is North Korea's most important ally, biggest trading partner, and main source of food, arms, and fuel. China has helped sustain Kim Jong-Il's regime and opposed harsh international economic sanctions in the hope of avoiding regime collapse and an uncontrolled influx of refugees across...
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's visit to India continued to point toward a strengthening of ties after a series of official and nontraditional diplomatic contacts. Clinton, the most senior Obama administration official to visit India, delivered a July 20 speech at Delhi University stressing...
Secretary Gates made news last week taking Congress to task for pushing to add more F-22 fighter aircraft to the Pentagon's budget. Public opinion on who is right is covers the spectrum. The USA Today editorial page opines, "Let's see if we have this right:...
Imagined sigint from the front lines: North Korea: We'll make a handful of your websites load slow! South Korea: Just wait! Once we get our electromagnetic pulse bomb to work at a range of greater than ten yards ... North Korea: Your EMP-bomb building scientists...
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The premise underlying the question of what do we do if North Korea says no to renewed diplomacy over North Korea's nuclear program is that we are still waiting for an answer. But the North Koreans have already delivered an answer. Particularly following the UNSC...
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IntroductionMilitancy in the disputed region of Kashmir has been major fuel for discord between India and Pakistan since the 1980s. Attacks in the region began to increase in scale and intensity following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when foreign insurgents flooded the region to join...
The first day of the summit between Presidents Obama and Medvedev went as well as could be expected. The two young chief executives touted all the right buzz words at their joint press conference: openness, frankness, even the vaunted "reset" of relations. That was the...
IntroductionThe Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR), a territory in western China, accounts for one-sixth of China's land and is home to about 20 million people from thirteen major ethnic groups. The largest of these groups is the Uighurs [PRON: WEE-gurs], a predominantly Muslim community with...
In April the metaphor was "reset," a reminder that U.S.-Russia relations had sunk to new lows during the final years of the Bush administration. But with President Barack Obama in Moscow for two days of meetings with Russian leaders, the focus is more on policy...
Today's cant on cybersecurity is news on 'Einstein,' the security system to be installed on all government computers in order to protect them from cyberspies. "It is supposed to detect known types of cyberattacks and immediately alert the cybersecurity center," reports the Wall Street Journal....
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Given North Korea's history of crisis escalation, it should have been apparent that the "Dear Leader"--Kim Jong Il--would not abide the prospect of being ignored by a new American President who has pursued a strategy of continuity, containment, and incrementalism. In fact, North Korean never...
IntroductionThe Jackson-Vanik Amendment, an addition to the U.S. Trade Act of 1974, was crafted to put pressure on the Soviet Union for human rights abuses but has become a symbol of lingering tensions in the U.S.-Russia relationship. In order to receive the benefits of normal...
Unless dramatically reformed, entitlement programs will soon choke out funding for even the most basic and fundamental nation defense capabilities, according a recent report from The Heritage Foundation. The year 1973 saw mandatory government spending (Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare) outpace defense spending for the...
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IntroductionThe Six-Party Talks are aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear program through a negotiating process involving China, the United States, North and South Korea, Japan, and Russia. Since the talks began in August 2003, the negotiations have been bedeviled by diplomatic standoffs among individual Six-Party...
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Celebratory fireworks marked the withdrawal of U.S. troops from urban areas this week in Iraq, but mingling with the high spirits was unease in many quarters over the road ahead. As a number of analysts have noted, tensions between Sunni Arabs and Kurds in Iraq's...
