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POPSNow Bush Is Appeasing Iran joined envoys from France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany in talks with Saeed Jalili -- Iran's nuclear negotiator and an Ahmadinejad confidant -- about incentives to give to Tehran. ven with record oil prices, mismanagement has driven the Iranian economy into the ground. On July 14, the Ministry of Housing reported an "historical" 125% rise in housing prices. The same day, Tabnak, a news Web site run by a former head of the IRGC, admitted foodstuff inflation had reached 50% annually. On July 8, 2008, a National Iranian Oil Company executive acknowledged in the Iranian press that, without significant investment in infrastructure, Iranian oil production would decline each year by 300,000 barrels a day. In the past month alone, Iranian workers have struck for unpaid wages at the Khodro automotive plant (which assembles Peugeots), the Alburz Tire Company, and the Haft Tapeh Sugar Cane factory.
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POPSFalun Gong Targeted Ahead Of Beijing Olympics authorities have instead been using the Olympics as a pretext to escalate persecutions of religious and political dissidents. Chinese authorities fear that Falun Gong, along with Tibetans, Uighurs, and other dissidents, may use the international media presence during the games to draw attention to their causes. "It is now imperative that the international community leverage real pressure and stop these deplorable actions, lest the legacy of the 2008 Olympics be hundreds of Beijing residents languishing in labor camps," Zhang said. The apparent animosity towards Falun Gong on the part of the Beijing Olympics organizer is hardly new. In 2004, the head of the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee, Liu Qi, was found liable in a U.S. federal court for his role in the torture of Falun Gong practitioners while he was serving as mayor of Beijing.
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POPSBeijings Iconic Landmarks' Very Western Look
The eye-catching building, which is nearly finished, will be the headquarters of China Central Television, the staid propaganda arm of China's ruling Communist Party, and it's perhaps the boldest and most daring of several new buildings that have given Beijing a stunning new appearance for the upcoming Summer Olympic Games. The last of them is the new television building, the CCTV headquarters, and it can nearly make one dizzy standing on the ground and looking up at its odd, teetering 49-story towers connected by a multistory, cantilevered, jagged cross section over open space at a vertiginous 36 stories up in the air. Designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, the building has been called an "angular marvel" and a "dazzling reinvention of the skyscraper." Its engineering is so complex that the designers say such a building couldn't have been built a few years ago. That's because it took immense computing power. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/264/story/44618.html
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POPSBeijing Olympic Opening Ceremony Rehearsal Check out these explosive photos. The 2008 summer Olympic games are less than one month away and the people in China want things to smoothly. To that end, they rehearsed part of the opening ceremony.
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POPSIran Announces Bid For UN Security Council Seat Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki announced his country's bid today for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, a candidacy that U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad immediately rejected. U.S. opposition would be based on the unwritten rule at the UN that nations under Security Council sanctions aren't elected to the panel. The council has adopted three resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment as part of its nuclear program.
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POPSPut A Stop To Cut-Rate Gas: International Monetary Fund Governments that try to create a false economy for oil are not revealing the truth to their people. About half of humanity, from India to Chile, now benefits from cut-rate petroleum prices. In 2008, these countries will account for all the growth in world oil demand, or an additional one million barrels a day, according to Deutsche Bank. Their consumption will be the highest in eight years. In China, oil demand is estimated to rise 5 to 10 percent this year, but the government has resisted calls to end price controls. A few other countries – Chile and South Korea – are now moving toward subsidies to appease political pressures. In Congress, bills to combat global warming would raise costs for oil users, even possibly adding a dollar to gasoline prices. But proposals by lawmakers to relieve those costs with subsidies to consumers would only defeat the purpose of reducing oil demand.
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POPSIraq Opens 8 Oil, Gas Fields To International Bidding He said even the longer-term contracts would include cash compensation and not a share of oil production. "We don't see a need to allow anyone to share our oil," al-Shahristani said. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Monday that there is no American influence on the Iraqi government's oil decisions. "Politics does not come into this," al-Dabbagh said. "There is no preferential treatment for anyone, no matter who." State Department spokesman Tom Casey confirmed a small number of U.S. advisers were providing "technical support" to the Iraqi Oil Ministry. But he said "they are not there to try and give the Iraqis any kind of specific requests or to make decisions or to even push in an individual direction." Casey said the decision by the Iraqis not to announce contracts for several Western firms Monday was their own and not influenced by Washington.
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POPSThe Global Warming Bubble Finally, there's the global-cooling spell. The world hasn't been warming since 1998, and an article in the journal Nature says warming won't pick up again until 2015. Since global warming is a long-term trend, a decade-long or more stall in temperatures doesn't mean much -- except that environmentalists have banked so much politically on whipping up hysteria based on imminent catastrophe. The stall in temperatures shows how little we know about global warming. No matter what the price of gas is, the most sensible policy in the U.S. is to avoid costly schemes to fight global warming. If our economy keeps growing, we will be better positioned -- richer, and more technologically proficient -- to help others mitigate its effects decades from now. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid huffs that global warming is "the most critical issue of our time." Really? More critical than energy prices? Than health care? Than wages? Than terrorism? Than nuclear proliferation?
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POPSForeign Firms Investing In Iraq Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, in Washington on an official visit, said Monday that larger U.S. firms were waiting for more security before entering the market. Zebari noted that Turkish and Russian companies were already active in Iraq. "They take risks," he told USA TODAY in an interview. "No pain, no gain." Many of the companies active in Iraq now are from countries, including France, Russia and Turkey, that did not send combat troops to back the U.S.-led invasion. Some U.S. and Iraqi officials say American companies risk losing an early opportunity to establish long-term strategic ties with Iraq. "My question is, 'Where are you guys in terms of investment, in terms of economic engagement?' " said Naufel al-Hassan, Iraq's commercial counselor in Washington. "Iraqis need your support. Why let someone else do that?" http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2008-06-16-iraqinvestment_N.htm?csp=34
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POPS"Cap and Trade" NO GOOD In these turbulent economic times, Democrats are proposing to increase the price of gas, outsource millions of jobs to overseas providers, and create a massive new bureaucracy funded by your (additional) tax dollars. The World Resources Institute reports that, "air pollution in some Chinese cities is among the highest ever recorded, averaging more than ten times the standard proposed by the World Health Organization... In Beijing, 40 percent of autos surveyed and 70 percent of taxis failed to meet the most basic emission standards." USA Today reports that, " ecades of... pollution have allowed industrial poisons to leach into groundwater, contaminating drinking supplies and leading to a rash of cancers, residents say. In this village, where the air has a distinctive sour odor, the rate of cancer is more than 18 times the national average. Meanwhile, the world's worst polluters continue choking the atmosphere with toxic fumes and poisons.
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POPSOrigami: 15 Most Amazing Paper Sculptures History: Origami originated in China as "Zhe Zhi" in the first or second century AD, and it reached Japan in the sixth century. Over the next few hundred years, origami became familiar in many aspects of Japanese culture. By the Heian period of Japanese history, origami was a significant aspect of Japanese ceremony. Samurai warriors would exchange gifts adorned with noshi, a sort of good luck token made of folded strips of paper. Origami butterflies were used during the celebration of Shinto weddings to represent the bride and groom. In the 1960's the art of origami began to spread out, first with modular origami and then with various movements developing, including the kirikomi. http://www.answers.com/topic/origami?cat=technology thanks to alanocu and einbar>
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POPSGore Shamelessly Exploits Burma's Disaster PROBLEM #4 HE PROFITS PERSONALLY FROM CARBON TRADING SCHEMES The Green Growth Fund will provide its portfolio companies with both global perspective and global reach, which includes the benefit of KPCB’s Asian presence through its KPCB China Fund. The KPCB Green Growth Fund will also enable the firm to extend its existing collaboration with the London-based Generation Investment Management, whose chairman Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States and Nobel Laureate, joined KPCB as Partner last year. Through their alliance, the firms actively work together to find, fund and accelerate green solutions with the greatest potential to help solve the climate crisis. Generation co-founder and Managing Partner David Blood said, “There is a significant gap between the capital needed and the capital currently deployed to create enduring solutions to the climate crisis. http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2008/05/al-gore-continues-his-brazen-efforts-to.html
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POPS Analyst Warns of $200/Barrel Oil* *One barrel of crude oil is 42 gallons (or $4.76 per gallon) In the Cato-at-Liberty blog post "Is There an Oil Price Bubble?" Cato senior fellow Jerry Taylor writes: "The most recent Fed actions to combat the deteriorating state of the macroeconomy added even more fuel to the oil price fire. With market actors increasingly convinced that the Fed is willing to entertain inflation in the course of injecting liquidity into the market, investors are looking for investments to hedge against inflation. And what do you know? Returns on commodities have historically been better during inflationary periods than during non-inflationary periods. Ben Bernanke thus sent another strong infusion of cash into commodity futures -- again, largely into oil and gas futures.
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POPSChinese Nuclear Submarines Prompt 'New Cold War' Warning ”The main source of friction is Taiwan and you cannot rule out a nationalistic military faction coming to power to taking a punt to have a quick go.” Chinese defence expenditure is estimated by the Pentagon to be $50 billion (£25 billion) but analysts believe large chunks of the budget are “squirreled away” and it could be as high as $200 billion making it the second largest in the world after America.
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POPSChina from Above with rare photo of snow-covered Great Wall Incredible photography by George Steinmetz for National Geographic http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/05/china/aerials/steinmetz-photography 1. The terraced farms of the Lisu people, one one of China's minority groups, create a patchwork on mountains near Weixi in Yunnan Province. 2. The Great Wall of China 3. In Guangxi, limestone pinnacles line the Li River. 4. Blooming fields of rapeseed plants weave around hills near Luoping in Yunnan Province. 5. sand dunes in the Kumtag Desert located in the Xinjiang region 6. Taklimakan oil field in the Xinjiang region 7. Guandong Province toulou, the traditional dwellings of the Hakka minority group 8. a new suburban development in Shenyang (thanks, openthink)
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POPSChina Sentences 17 For Alleged Involvement In Tibet Riots "Monks have been taught legal knowledge in recent days and the monastery has resumed normal religious activities," Tenzin Namgyal, deputy director of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee, was quoted as saying. Other monasteries that were closed will be reopened soon, he said.
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POPSBush Raises Temp On Global Warming Granted, President Bush doesn't intend for his simple decision to offer legislation to regulate carbon emissions to have such catastrophic consequences. But then, by this point, he should be quite familiar with the concept of unintended consequences. And he needs to recognize that he cannot pass "sensible" legislation. (I have serious doubts that any legislation on this topic could be sensible.) All he can do is set the stage for next year's legislation by giving away the rhetorical store and weakening the already modest backbone of Republican legislators. The liberal world order will not let go of their global warming assault on free economies until hell freezes over -- by which point, obviously, the global warming theory will be visibly disproved.
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POPSAn Angry China Is Lashing Out At Foreign Critics Internet demands for boycotts have unnerved some foreign companies. Following the Olympic flame's troubled passage through Paris on April 7, activists called on Chinese citizens to boycott Carrefour, a French supermarket chain that is the largest foreign retailer in China, starting on May 1. Anonymous mobile phone text messages accuse the retailer of backing the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing blames for instigating unrest in Tibet, a charge the retailer denies. Many Chinese are incensed that a pro-Tibet protester in Paris lunged to snatch the torch from Chinese athlete Jin Jing, who was in a wheelchair. State television in China has portrayed Jin as a hero for hanging onto the torch.
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POPSA Coup For The Kiwis Forced to adjust to new economic realities, New Zealand farmers cut costs, diversified their land use, sought non-farm income opportunities and altered production as market signals advised — for example, by reducing sheep numbers and boosting cattle ranching. Farmers were aided on the cost side as input prices fell, because suppliers could no longer count on subsidies to inflate demand.
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POPS“Journey of Harmony” of the Olympic Torch Of Shame (continued) wretched political environs. Handling the politics of the Olympics will clearly be a matter of some delicacy. The Chinese ambassador in London may yet absent herself from today’s event. Gordon Brown and his cabinet should do likewise. The British, led by Tessa Jowell, the ensnared Olympics minister, periodically intone their “concern for civil rights in China” as if it were a Buddhist mantra. It makes no difference. From the moment the Games were awarded to Beijing, all involved knew they risked becoming quislings to the Chinese cause. China last week welcomed the British government as a member of something called the Olympic family. If this is a family, I hope that for the next four months it is an intensely unhappy one.
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POPSChina Has Provided IAEA With Intel On Iran's Nuke Program VIENNA, Austria — China, an opponent of harsh U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran, has nonetheless recently provided the International Atomic Energy Agency with intelligence linked to Tehran's alleged attempts to make nuclear arms, diplomats have told The Associated Press. In a summary recently forwarded to the AP, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group that claims to have informants inside the Iranian government, identified three others as Revolutionary Guard commander Fereydoon Abbasi, Seyed Jaber Safdari and Mohammed Mehdi Nejad-Nouri. It said the three and others are involved in clandestine nuclear weapons-related research at three Iranian universities: Beheshti; Malek Ahstar and Imam Hossein. Asked for verification, a senior diplomat of an IAEA member state said that a fact check run by his country's relevant agency showed the claims to be generally accurate. Another senior diplomat also said the information appeared to be fairly reliabl
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POPSSecurity Concerns Block China’s 3Com Deal The withdrawal of the bid by Dubai Ports World occurred not because the foreign investment committee rejected it but because of a torrent of criticism from Capitol Hill, around the same time that similar criticism of a deal by the Chinese state energy company to buy Unocal also led China to withdraw. Meanwhile, the problems of the 3Com deal are sure to aggravate tensions with China. This month, federal officials charged a Defense Department official with passing classified documents to China. In a separate case, the Justice Department arrested a former Boeing engineer in California on charges of economic espionage for the Chinese. The Treasury Department adamantly opposes extending the curbs on foreign investments into areas that affect economic security as opposed to national security, though it says it will monitor growing foreign investments in whole sectors of the economy, even in the financial sector.
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POPSWhy do Palestinians get more attention than Tibetans? Prager: "The first reason is terror. The Palestinian leadership decided, with the support of the Palestinian people, that murdering as many innocent people was the fastest way to garner world attention. They were right. On the other hand, as The Economist notes in its March 28, 2008 issue, "Tibetan nationalists have hardly ever resorted to terrorist tactics…" It is interesting to speculate how the world would have reacted had Tibetans hijacked international flights, slaughtered Chinese citizens in Chinese restaurants and temples, on Chinese buses and trains, and massacred Chinese schoolchildren." The second reason is oil and support from Arabs. The Palestinians have the unqualified support of all Middle Eastern oil-producing nations and the support of the Muslim world. The Tibetans are poor and have the support of no nations, let alone oil-producing ones.
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POPSTop British Scientist Warns Against Biofuels This now threatens to reverse a half century of gains not only against world hunger, but also in holding the line against conversion of undeveloped land. This is partly due to the diversion of corn to biofuels. ... Meanwhile, European demand for biofuels to replace gasoline is fueling plans for massive clearing of rainforests for palm-oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia. ... Ironically, much of the hysteria over global warming is itself fueled by concerns that it may drive numerous species to extinction and increase hunger worldwide, especially in developing countries. Yet the biofuel solution would only make bad matters worse on both counts."
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POPSChinese Man Sentenced In Aegis Secrets Case Investigators said they found three encrypted CDs in the couple’s luggage that contained documents on a submarine propulsion system, a solid-state power switch for ships and a PowerPoint presentation on the future of power electronics. Mak’s wife, Rebecca Laiwah Chiu, pleaded guilty last year on the eve of her trial to one count of acting as a foreign agent without registering with the U.S. government. She is serving three years in federal prison and will be deported upon release. His brother, Tai Mak, pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to violate export control laws in exchange for a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. Tai Mak’s wife, Fuk Li, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the violation of export control laws and received three years of probation. Yui “Billy” Mak, the son of Tai Mak and Fuk Li, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the violation of export control laws and was sentenced to time already served. The three will also be deported.
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POPSEU To Consider Beijing Olympics Boycott Attempts to link unrest in Tibet to the Olympics is likely to enrage the Chinese government, which had hoped the games would be a showcase for the country’s economic progress rather than a lightening rod for criticisms of its political system. Taiwan’s President-elect Ma Ying-jeou said on Sunday after his landslide election victory that the Dalai Lama would be welcome to visit the island and repeated comments that Taiwanese athletes might not participate in the Olympics if the situation in Tibet worsens. Meanwhile, Cardinal Joseph Zen, the highest ranking Chinese cleric in the Roman Catholic Church, called on China to avoid acts of violence that might spoil its hosting of the Olympics.
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POPSChinese Dissidents Urge Beijing Talks With Dalai Lama China is damaging its own international credibility by prohibiting journalists from entering its Tibetan regions, the dissidents added. Yesterday the official Chinese media alleged that the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, was manipulating the protests in a bid to take the Beijing Olympics “hostage.” The administrative leader of Tibet, Qiangba Puncog, was quoted as saying that China must completely defeat “secessionist forces” to “ensure a successful Olympic Games.”
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POPS Obama Eyes Active Role In Oil Markets Grumet said Obama supported a global carbon market and would seek to link a U.S. emissions trading system with the established European one "as soon as possible," though he would make establishing a U.S. program to fight warming and agreeing an international climate change treaty his top priorities. Grumet said Obama would push the biofuel industry to move into second-generation fuels made from waste and advance beyond ethanol produced by corn to avoid the "food or fuel" debate. "For this to really be a significant contribution to increasing our energy security, we're going to have to move beyond corn," he said. Grumet, head of the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center in addition to advising the Obama campaign, said the oil industry had "concentrated incredible market power in a small number of companies" in a way that caused alarm.
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POPSA Ravenous Dragon Chinese companies will inevitably find themselves in fierce competition with Western ones for natural resources, as they must if global markets are to work efficiently. For the most part, however, they do not operate very differently from their peers. To the extent that the Chinese government does subsidise oil production, it helps to bring down the price for everyone else (its subsidies for oil consumption are another matter). As the world's biggest consumer of many commodities, China naturally wants to ensure a steady supply of them to keep its economy going. But markets for commodities are global, and the risk of any one consumer cornering supplies, or securing them at a lower price, is negligible. this special report will argue that concerns about the dire consequences of China's quest for natural resources are overblown. China does indeed treat some dictators with kid gloves, but it is hardly alone in that. Its companies do not always uphold the highest standards, but many...
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POPSFoiled Terror Plot Targeted Beijing Summer Olympics Games Terrorism experts say it has become influential among extremist groups using the Internet to raise funds and find recruits. Chinese forces reported raiding an ETIM training camp last year and killing 18 militants allegedly linked to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Wang said security forces would take pro-active measures to crush terrorism, religious extremism, and separatism. «From what we presently know, this was an attempt to crash the plane,» Bekri said. «Because this incident just occurred, questions as to who these people were, where they came from what their goal was, what kind of background, we are currently investigating. Once we've investigated clearly, I believe you will then know,» Bekri said. He said the crew responded and the plane made an emergency landing in the western city of Lanzhou with no damage or injuries. He said it continued to its original destination, Beijing, after about one hour. A man who answered the phone said the incident was under investigation,
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POPSChina's Missiles Other new weapons that are part of the precision-guided missile arsenal are advanced cruise missiles, medium-range ballistic missiles, the direct ascent anti-satellite missiles, like the one tested in January 2007.
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POPSChinese Hackers:"We Hack Into The Pentagon" "These young hackers are tolerated by the regime provided that they do not conduct attacks inside of China", he adds. One of the biggest problems experts say is trying to prove where a cyber attack originates from, and that they say allows hackers like Xiao Chen to operate in a virtual world of deniability. And across China, there could be thousands just like him, all trying to prove themselves against some of the most secure Web sites in the world. At a congressional hearing in Washington last week, administration officials testified that the government's cyber initiative has fallen far short of what is required. Most alarming, the officials said, there has never been a full At a congressional hearing in Washington last week, administration officials testified that the government's cyber initiative has fallen far short of what is required. Most alarming, the officials said, there has never been a full damage assessment of federal agency networks.
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POPSTime For America To Extricate Itself From Such A Potentially Disastrous Predicament "It would be unwise for the United States to risk war with an emerging great power like China to defend a small client state that is merely a peripheral interest. That would be true even if that client state were making a serious effort to provide for its own defense. But Taiwan is not willing to make a serious defense effort. It is time for America to extricate itself from such a potentially disastrous predicament."
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POPSChina's Army Builds For Reach Past Taiwan, U.S. Says Other Contingencies The report concludes that China is thinking beyond Taiwan. ``Analysis of China's military acquisitions and strategic thinking suggests Beijing is also developing capabilities for use in other contingencies, such as conflict over resources or disputed territories,'' it says. Cyber Warfare The report also says that China is increasing its capabilities in space and cyberwarfare. ``In both those areas there's reason for concern,'' said David Sedney, assistant secretary of defense for East Asia. The system will be operational in the next two to three weeks, he said. He noted that no one in China ``picked up the phone'' when U.S. officials called after a B-2 bomber accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in May 1999.
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