Tarpley-US strategic position crumbling worldwide
Posted by seumasach on April 3, 2010
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: Chinese diplomacy, End of empire | Leave a Comment »
Putin, Chavez, Morales to Meet on Energy, Military Cooperation
Posted by seumasach on April 3, 2010
2nd April, 2010
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is set to meet the presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia in Caracas Friday to sign military and energy deals.
Russian officials, including deputy prime minister Igor Sechin, arrived in Caracas Wednesday to prepare for Putin’s visit.
Putin and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will sign “accords taking us to the next phase of cooperation with Russia, which no longer will be limited to energy and military matters, but now also includes social, cultural and health issues,” Vice President Elias Jaua said Thursday on state-run VTV television.
Topping the list is an agreement to set up a Russian-Venezuelan development bank to finance a joint venture for oil and gas exploration in eastern Venezuela’s oil-rich Orinoco river basin.
The enterprise — 60 percent owned by Venezuela, 40 percent by a consortium of Russian companies — hopes to extract up to 450,000 barrels of oil per day from the Amazon region.
Putin and Chavez will also sign cooperation deals in agriculture, transportation, and the prevention of natural catastrophes, according to the meeting agenda.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited Venezuela in November 2008 during joint naval exercises. Chavez visited Moscow in September.
Russia and Venezuela in 2005 and 2007 signed 12 military agreements worth some 4.4 billion dollars that have raised some concern in Washington.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro on Thursday said Russian-Venezuelan cooperation was based on “mutual trust in matters of security and defense… that has allowed us to upgrade all technology and equipment in our armed forces.”
Chavez last week thanked Russia for helping Venezuela “bolster its defensive potential” in the face of “threats” from the United States as he announced Putin’s visit.
Bolivian President Evo Morales is expected to seek a 100-million dollar loan from Russia to purchase military hardware, including an Antonov aircraft for the president’s use, officials in La Paz said.
The head of Russia’s military cooperation service, Mikhail Dmitriyev, said that Moscow was ready to grant Bolivia a loan for buying Russian military hardware. That loan, is expected to be confirmed during Friday’s summit.
Morales and Putin, meanwhile, are expected to discuss their own joint venture for gas and oil exploration in Bolivia, which has the second largest natural gas reserves in Latin America.
While his visit to Moscow in February, Morales and Medvedev signed a memorandum on energy cooperation to develop a gas pipeline network in the land-locked South American nation.
Medvedev at the time also told Morales he hoped Russia would soon deliver a batch of military helicopters, its first defense hardware for the Andean republic.
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: Russian diplomacy | Leave a Comment »
California Banks: Who Are They Working For?
Posted by seumasach on April 2, 2010
Laura Flanders
1st April, 2010
Does it seem right to you that a state’s ability to stay afloat should be the stuff of secretive betting pools? That’s just what’s happening. While states like California struggle to pay their teachers, librarians and cops, traders are gambling — by buying credit default swaps — on the fate of our biggest state. And that’s just half the story.
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: california goes bankrupt | Leave a Comment »
Headley Saga: Mumbai attack was a joint IB-CIA-Mossad-RSS project
Posted by seumasach on April 2, 2010
Amaresh Misra
28th March, 2010
With the row over India getting access to David Headley growing acrimonious each day, the CIA’s double agent saga seems all set to open up a can of incredible worms.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: "War on Terror", david headley, Terror in Mumbai | Leave a Comment »
US Policy Elites and Chechnya
Posted by seumasach on April 2, 2010
Mark Hackard
31st March, 2010
It is highly likely that the March 29th terrorist strikes in Moscow were carried out by Chechen female suicide bombers, also known as “black widows.” After six years, Chechen jihadist cells have pulled off another successful attack against innocent Russians only minutes from the Kremlin.
The official U.S. response to the bombings has been to condemn the violence and “stand with” Russia, though support in these matters rarely extends beyond statements for the press. Beyond public diplomacy, what policy line does Washington actually pursue in relation to the Caucasus?
Posted in New Cold War | Leave a Comment »
Russia’s Metro Bombings- Monsters from the American id?
Posted by seumasach on April 2, 2010
Justin Raimondo
31st March, 2010
Those behind the bombing in Moscow’s Metro system, which took 39 lives – and shook the building that houses Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB) – must be “scraped from the bottom of the sewers” and exposed, said Vladimir Putin. But what if that particular sewer leads all the way back to Washington and London?
Posted in New Cold War | Tagged: Chechnya | 2 Comments »
New studies on effects of EM radiation
Posted by seumasach on April 1, 2010
31st March, 2010
The following is a quick summary of another twenty papers that have come out over the last few months related to effects of electromagnetic radiation. Some of the papers are notable papers that have been published very recently, others are papers that were published a few months ago that have not yet made it to one of the Science Updates. From this point onwards, to catch up with the large quantity of papers being published, we will be simply posting the abstract, with our comments interspersed in italicised bold where appropriate.
View studies here
Posted in Ecological and Public Health Crisis, Studies and statements showing mobile phone health risk | Tagged: EM radiation health hazard | Leave a Comment »
China Must Reduce Reliance on Treasury Bills, China Daily Says
Posted by seumasach on April 1, 2010
1st April, 2010
China should be cautious about investing in or selling U.S. Treasury Bills because of the risks they present, the China Daily quoted Cheng Siwei, former vice- chairman of the standing committee in the National People’s Congress, as saying.
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: China, dollar collapse | Leave a Comment »
WHO to launch study into Fallujah birth defects
Posted by seumasach on April 1, 2010
If the spirit of the notorious Dr Repacholi still haunts the ICRP at the WHO then not much hope can be held out for this investigation. In his view, depleted uranium “is basically safe’, just as are virtually all exposures to radiation, ionising or non-ionising. There can be little doubt as to the tragic effects of DU which is already being investigated by the Iraqi authorities: it’s time now to launch an investigation into the WHO itself.
1st April, 2010
The World Health Organization (WHO) says it will conduct an independent study into the high level of birth defects in the Iraqi city of Fallujah.
Posted in Ecological and Public Health Crisis, Iraq | Tagged: depleted uranium | Leave a Comment »
Will China re-define great power politics?
Posted by seumasach on April 1, 2010
21st February, 2010
China is presenting its ascent not as a power shift, but as a paradigm shift. It claims that its rise will be different from other powers in the past and sets an example for a fundamental revision of the nature of great power politics. Instead of tragic rivalry for hegemony, it expects to develop strategic relationships that allow all countries to gain and build a stable and prosperous world order. This could herald the end of a history that has been characterized by hegemonic wars and hostile balancing strategies. It could pave the way for stronger institutionalized international cooperation on economic, environmental, and security affairs. In the next three months, New Europe and the Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies (BICCS) will analyze how China is affecting global politics, starting with an introductory essay this week.
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: Chinese diplomacy | 1 Comment »
U.S. exchange rate hegemony should come to halt
Posted by seumasach on March 31, 2010
23rd March, 2010
The hubbub of calls for Renminbi (RMB) appreciation has been increasingly clamorous in the United States. Of late, some U.S. senators have jointly initiated a bill moved forward by Senator Charles Schumer aimed at stopping China from “manipulating” its currency. The bill urged the Obama government to go on pressurizing China and threaten to list it as a “currency manipulator”.
Posted in Multipolar world | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 