The New War Against America

The Claremont Institute has a fine post about our changing world and our place in it, outlining strategic imperatives. In a nutshell it deals with a new axis intent upon diminishing our place in the world. Well worth a read.

Obama Wants To Share U.S. Missile Defense Secrets With Vladimir Putin's Russia

From: Washington Times

President Obama signaled Congress this week that he is prepared to share U.S. missile defense secrets with Russia.

In the president’s signing statement issued Saturday in passing into law the fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill, Mr. Obama said restrictions aimed at protecting top-secret technical data on U.S. Standard Missile-3 velocity burnout parameters might impinge on his constitutional foreign policy authority.

As first disclosed in this space several weeks ago, U.S. officials are planning to provide Moscow with the SM-3 data, despite reservations from security officials who say that doing so could compromise the effectiveness of the system by allowing Russian weapons technicians to counter the missile. The weapons are considered some of the most effective high-speed interceptors in the U.S. missile defense arsenal.

There are also concerns that Russia could share the secret data with China and rogue states such as Iran and North Korea to help their missile programs defeat U.S. missile defenses.

Officials from the State Department and Missile Defense Agency have discussed the idea of providing the SM-3 data to the Russians as part of the so-far fruitless missile-defense talks with Moscow, headed in part of by Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher, who defense officials say is a critic of U.S. missile defenses.

Their thinking is that if the Russians know the technical data, it will help allay Moscow’s fears that the planned missile defenses in Europe would be used against Russian ICBMs. Officials said current SM-3s are not fast enough to catch long-range Russian missiles, but a future variant may have some anti-ICBM capabilities.

Ms. Tauscher has repeatedly denied that her talks with the Russians are secret. However, the administration has provided almost no briefings about the talks to Congress, which prompted critics of the talks to include language in the new defense spending law limiting data-sharing.

Section 1227 of the defense law prohibits spending any funds that would be used to give Russian officials access to sensitive missile-defense technology, as part of a cooperation agreement without first sending Congress a report identifying the specific secrets, how they would be used and steps to protect the data from compromise.

The president also must certify to Congress that Russia will not share the secrets with other states and that it will not help Russia “to develop countermeasures” to U.S. defenses.

The certification also must show whether Russia is providing equal access to its missile defense technologies, which are mainly nuclear-tipped anti-missile interceptors.

Mr. Obama said in the signing statement that he would treat the legal restrictions as “non-binding.”

“While my administration intends to keep the Congress fully informed of the status of U.S. efforts to cooperate with the Russian Federation on ballistic missile defense, my administration will also interpret and implement section 1244 in a manner that does not interfere with the president’s constitutional authority to conduct foreign affairs and avoids the undue disclosure of sensitive diplomatic communications,” Mr. Obama said, incorrectly identifying the section of the law containing the restrictions.

Israel Has Dumped 46 Percent of Its U.S. Treasury Bills; Russia 95 Percent

From: CNSnews.com

Foreign ownership of U.S. government debt declined in July for the second straight month, according to Treasury Department data released Friday.

Overall, foreign holdings of U.S. debt dropped from an all-time high of $4.5115 trillion in May to 4.4956 trillion in June and then to $4.478 trillion in July.

In June and July, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders were negotiating legislation to increase the legal limit on the U.S. government’s debt. In August, Obama signed legislation that will permit the Treasury to borrow up to another $2.4 trillion.

Among major foreign creditors of the U.S. government, entities in Russia led the way in divesting from U.S. Treasury securities, with Russian holdings of U.S. debt dropping by $9.6 billion from June to July.

In fact, Russian-based owners of U.S. debt have dropped about 43 percent of their overall U.S. debt holdings over the past year. Those holdings peaked at $176.3 billion in October 2010, according to Treasury Department data, and dropped to $100.2 billion by July.

More dramatically, since March 2009, according to historical Treasury Department data, the Russians have dumped about 95 percent (94.94 percent) of their holdings in Treasury bills, which are short-term U.S.

Treasury securities that mature in periods of one-year or less.

Russian ownership of U.S. Treasury bills peaked at $73.15 billion in March 2009 and had declined to $3.7 billion by July.

Israelis have also been decreasing their ownership of U.S. government debt.

Total Israeli holdings of U.S. Treasury securities peaked at $22.0 billion in April 2010. That had dropped to $17.2 billion by this July, a decline of about 22 percent.

Like the Russians, the Israelis have dramatically decreased their ownership of short-term Treasury bills, according to Treasury Department data. Israeli ownership of Treasury bills peaked at $15.638 billion in March 2009 and declined to $8.375 billion in July, a drop of about 46 percent.

Entities in mainland China countered the worldwide trend, and reversed their own previous trend, by increasing their holdings of U.S. government debt in recent months.

From October 2010 through March 2011, Chinese holdings of U.S. debt had dropped from an all-time peak of 1.1753 trillion to $1.1449 trillion. But in April, May, June and July, overall Chinese holdings of U.S. debt increased, reaching $1.1735 trillion in July--nearly back to their peak of the previous October.

In June and July, the Chinese also started increasing their ownership of short-term U.S. Treasury bills--after having dramatically drawn them down between May 2009 and May of this year.

Chinese ownership of short-term U.S. Treasury bills hit an all-time peak of $210.417 billion in May 2009. It then dropped to a low of $2.978 billion in May 2011—a decline of almost 99 percent over two years. This June, however, the Chinese increased their ownership of Treasury bills to $4.546 billion; and, in July, they increased them again to $10.122 billion.

PUTIN vs. MEDVEDEV

From: National Review Online

President Medvedev chose the futuristic Skolkovo Business School campus outside of Moscow for his first-ever televised question-and-answer session last Wednesday. He was greeted by applause from the eight hundred journalists in attendance. They were hoping for the announcement. It did not come, but Medvedev did not pass up the opportunity to indirectly advance the case that he should be reelected president in 2012.

Putin’s camp was less subtle. Over the weekend, “sources close to Putin” disclosed that he intended to run in the 2012 presidential election.

Over the past half year, Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin have “announced” competing platforms for the presidential “campaign.” It’s a bit different from an American political campaign. Russia’s 2012 presidential election will be resolved behind closed doors in a byzantine process that no outsider can understand. There will emerge one candidate, who will run against token opposition, and who will be Russia’s president for the next four years.

Neither Medvedev nor Putin has declared his candidacy or openly presented his political platform. Both instead use imagery, veiled language, and other indirect communications with the public, their supporters and their opponents alike. Both Putin and Medvedev transmit symbolic messages. Putin pilots helicopters, treks through rugged terrain, hurls judo opponents to the floor, and generally shows that he is a tough guy despite his Napoleonic height. Medvedev wears business suits, travels to Silicon Valley, and speaks in lawyerly tones about the rule of law and increasing foreign investment. In one respect, though, Medvedev has become rather brazen: He has taken to wearing a bomber jacket emblazoned with the words “Russia’s Commander-in-Chief.” Among the commander-in-chief’s powers is the power to fire the prime minister.

The Islamization of Chechnya

From: American Thinker

A recent report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), entitled "You Dress According To Their Rules," should highlight the growing need for policymakers in Moscow to counter the increasing entrenchment of Shair'a in Chechen society.

HRW's analysis documents extensively the enforcement of Islamic law vis-à-vis women's rights in Chechnya, as part of Chechen President Ramzan Akhmadovich Kadyrov's "Campaign for Female Virtue." In fact, Kadyrov, who was first appointed president of the Chechen Republic by the Kremlin in February 2007, has never disguised his advocacy for Shari'a. Soon after becoming president, he defended polygamy as part of Chechen tradition, and in 2009, he praised the male relatives of seven young women, whom they shot in the head and dumped by a roadside as part of a series of honor killings. Speaking to journalists on a Friday afternoon outside a mosque in Grozny, the capital of the Chechen Republic, Kadyrov said that the women had "loose morals," thereby deserving death, and that "no one can tell us not to be Muslims." Even so, polygamy and honor killings are unambiguously prohibited according to Article 14 of the third chapter of the Family Code of the Russian Federation.

Soviet Union lied about 1961 Yuri Gagarin space mission

From: The Telegraph

Soviet officials lied about the success of Yuri Gagarin's historic 1961 flight into space and covered up the fact that he had landed more than 200 miles away from where they were expecting him, a new book discloses.

A new book revealed that scientists twice miscalculated where Yuri Gagarin would land Photo: AFP/GETTY

Andrew Osborn in Moscow 4:37PM BST 30 Mar 2011

The Soviet Union held up his mission, the first manned flight into space, as a major Cold War propaganda coup, portraying it as a glitch-free triumph of Communist ideology.