Mitt Romney, Republican hopeful for the 2012 American Presidential election, arrived on Wednesday in London. This will open his European and Middle East tour for the next several days. Mr. Romney is scheduled to spend several days in London, for the opening of the Olympic games, then fly to Poland, and conclude his foreign trip […]
“We talk about smart defence as if we’d done stupid defense before. I’d like to believe we had smart defense all the time,” said one of our guest speakers during the Young Atlanticists Summit in Chicago couple of months ago. We were giggling awhile as for the first time we, as Young Atlanticists, received a direct answer to […]
The roster of countries agreeing to forgo enrichment and reprocessing technologies has risen to two. As the time ticks down to expiration of its bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement with the U.S., the government of Taiwan has announced that it is prepared to renounce any right to enrich or reprocess nuclear fuel. Despite the fact that […]
Been off the blogosphere for the last month because of a project I was working on. Thought I’d get back into the saddle by looking into the latest on Afghanistan. On July 10th in response to a reporter’s question, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said the surge had been a success. In response to some […]
After the shooting down of a Turkish F4, supposedly unarmed, last Friday, Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently declared that Turkey considers Syria as a “clear and present danger.” However, he went further and claimed that “we [Turkey] won’t be trapped into a war of provocation, but we won’t be silent and do nothing […]
After prolonged controversy, Science magazine has published in its current issue the second of the bird flu papers detailing how a human-transmissible virus could spontaneously arise in nature. This one, by a team lead by Ron Fouchier in Rotterdam (see photo), identified five mutations in the H5N1 virus itself that could render it transmissible through […]
On May 18th, the House of Representatives voted on the National Defense Authorization Bill (NDAA), or H.R. 4310. The bill passed 299-120. The NDAA contains language which would seriously damage the Administration’s ability to continue to negotiate reductions in its and Russia’s nuclear arsenals. It would also impinge upon the Administration’s ability to implement the […]
Following up on the controversial Guenther Grass poem discussed in a previous post, Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine published last week a very long article addressing the question of whether the six sophisticated submarines Germany supplied Israel are being equipped with nuclear weapons. Co-reported and co-written by eight people, the very long article contains a lot […]
How things have changed! Thirty years ago, on June 12, 1982, one million people gathered in New York City’s Central Park to rally in favor of nuclear disarmament and an end to the Cold War. As the largest peace demonstration in U.S. history, it was the culmination of a movement that had gathered improbably around […]
2012 has been the year of elections and ideological divisions. France is no exception to the rule. On May 15th, 2012, François Hollande officially became the President of France. His first action was to fly to Berlin, despite the weather, in order to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. This strategic move is important for […]
In my last blog, I ended with a quote from a 2011 Foreign Affairs magazine article written by former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III. In the article he stated the Department of Defense has a five pillar strategy for operating in cyberspace: “…treating cyberspace as an operational domain, like land, air, […]
Grumbles have been filtering out lately, from the CIA and other agencies running covert ops, that The Rule is lately being violated, sacrificed to the needs of self-promoting administration officials (Leon Panetta? 60 Minutes?) who simply cannot keep their mouths shut, cheerleaders jazzed by pre-election jitters who rush to claim kudos for their boss via contacts with the mainstream press–oblivious to the blowback suffered by US intelligence or the foreign nationals who do risk, despite the financial benefits, prison sentences or execution on their own turf.
Such is the case with Shakil Afridi, the 48 year old Pakistani physician recruited and paid (well, no doubt) by the CIA to help in the identification of Osama bin Laden prior to the assault on the dictator’s compound by US special forces. Clearly, Afridi did the US a great service. And the mainstream press recognizes this, all, without exception, on fire with righteous indignation about Pakistan’s decision to allow Afridi to be tried in Pakistan for treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison.
Isn’t Pakistan our friend?
Grow up…
In the March/April 2012 issue of Foreign Policy Magazine, Thomas Rid wrote an article called Think Again: Cyberwar. The subtitle was: Don’t Fear the Digital Bogeyman Virtual Conflict is Still More Hype Than Reality. He states his premise up front: “Time for a reality check: Cyberwar is still more hype than hazard. Consider the definition […]
Scientific American Executive Editor Fred Guterl has a superb short article in the June issue of the magazine laying out the basics of the H5N1 virus scare: • how it is that bird flus represent a “natural reservoir” of influenzas that jump to human populations • how under natural conditions such viruses can mutate and […]
Earlier this week I had the opportunity to sit down with Jim Oberg to discuss the trip he and 130 other foreign journalists made to North Korea to witness—or so they thought—the attempted launch into space of a small weather satellite. Oberg, a former space mission controller trained in aerospace engineering, went as a member […]