THE Reserve Bank's project to introduce higher denominated bearer cheques yesterday got off to a disastrous start after the bank failed to deliver cash to financial institutions. Thousands of people were unable to get cash amid revelations that the central bank only started distributing the new bearer cheques to banks well after normal banking hours. By last night officials from banks were still at the central bank's cash office trying to get their allocations. "We only started getting cash at about 4pm," said a managing director with a local commercial bank.
The central bank introduced $250 000, $500 000 and $750 000 bearer cheques and demonetised the $200 000 note claiming it was being hoarded by cash barons. Some banks were yesterday still issuing the $200 000 bearer cheques which go out of circulation at the beginning of next year. Long queues were still evident yesterday with most banks turning away clients who wanted to withdraw cash.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/22/2007 00:00 ||
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Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh has decided to gradually reduce his consumption of the narcotic qat leaf after having medical tests in Germany, according to local press reports on Friday. The Al-Thawra and Al-Motamar dailies said Saleh would also stop attending the maqil, or circle of friends devoted to chewing qat, in favour of "meeting the people and personalities from the political and cultural worlds to hear their opinions on questions of national interest."
Saleh returned to Yemen on December 15 from Germany where he underwent medical tests. In 1999 he launched a campaign to stop civil servants, military and police from chewing the evergreen leaf, that goes by the Latin name of "catha edulis," while on duty. But that scheme, and another one during Yemen's Marxist rule which attempted to curtail chewing to the weekend, have been largely unsuccessful.
Qat contains cathin and cathinone, two chemical substances similar in effect to amphetamines, raising blood pressure and body temperature, as well as releasing adrenalin. In Yemen, considered one of the world's poorest countries with an average monthly salary of 120 dollars, both men and women chew the narcotic leaves.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/22/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
"Whoa dude! You mean the presdiential sash wasn't always green? Eeewwwwwww"
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/22/2007 7:07 Comments ||
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On a visit on December 2 to the Sino-Indian border, Union defence minister A.K. Antony gave voice to a concern that has been getting reiterated for long by his country's military. "It's an eye-opener," said a shocked Antony, as he toured forward posts in Nathu La. "There is no comparison between the two sides. Infrastructure on the Chinese side is far superior. They have gone far in developing their infrastructure," he told journalists who had flown in with him on the trip.
First you need logistics, then you need engineers. Only after that do you need an army.
Even as Antony was expressing his shock and dismay, the Indian army was putting the finishing touches to a new operational doctrine, also known as the conventional war-fighting doctrine, which has made a dramatic new assessment of Chinese capabilities.
Prepared by the military along with the Integrated Defence Headquarters in consultation with various institutes of the Indian army, the document gives a fair idea of how military India's posture needs to be shaped to take on the new Chinese challenge. A significant departure from earlier assessments has been made vis-a-vis China's military capabilities and its ability to mobilise troops. So far, Indian military planners were of the view that it would take the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) at least "two seasons" (three to four months) to fully mobilise for a war against India.
While this would mean a "high-intensity conflict" that could involve strategic weapons, the conventional wisdom was that India had the edge in terms of manpower on the border.
But moving away from the "two seasons" build-up theory, the new doctrine concludes that the Chinese could mobilise in just thirty days. This capability is the result of decades of meticulous planning and strategic perception of the Chinese leadership. It built roads and a strategic railway across the Tibetan plateau. The 1,140-km Qinghai-Tibet line, considered the highest railway in the world at 16,640 ft, has come as a wake-up call for military planners in Delhi. The Qinghai-Tibet link with its capacity to carry over 900 troopsthat's a battalion strengthin each train has reshaped the way the Indian military looks at Chinese capabilities.
India's planners have always based their estimate of the mobilisation time required by China on the Taiwan factor. China has all along concentrated the bulk of its forces against Taiwan and kept itself in readiness for any "superpower intervention" that is by the US.
Should there be any large-scale operation against India, it would have to divert its troops from Taiwan. The improved infrastructure roads and the railway line have rendered earlier Indian estimates outdated. The Chinese can deploy its troops faster than ever before.
Says Brigadier Arun Sahgal (retd), a long-time China-watcher and presently deputy director of research at Delhi's United Services Institution: "As per our estimates, the PLA has over 40 divisions, out of which seven are armoured divisions. Of these, we expect China will be in a position to deploy 20 to 22 divisions against India in quick time."
In addition, China has been building up its rapid reaction forces along with its airborne corps. "The greater strategic mobility capability of the Chinese in terms of rapid reaction forces as well as build-up of special forces is what we have to look at very closely," says Sahgal.
The Chinese military has traditionally divided its military into seven designated military regions (MRs), of which two are of concern for India. The Chengdu MR, which primarily faces Arunachal Pradesh, the sensitive Siliguri corridor, Nepal and Bhutan, has nearly 1,800,000 troops on the borders. In the west, the Lanzhou MR faces India's Jammu and Kashmir, and controls Aksai Chin, under Chinese occupation since 1962. This region has nearly 2,200,000 troops. Both MRs have been strengthened by the modernisation drive of the Chinese military and have added rapid reaction forces as well as specialised units known as the Quantou and Kuaisu units which can launch deep attacks into enemy territory.
Points out Srikant Kondapalli, a professor of China studies at jnu's School of International Studies: "So far India has managed to retain a conventional troop superiority that ranges from 5:1 in certain sectors to as high as a 10:1 ratio." He is quick to point out that this "conventional superiority" is mostly on paper and can be quickly nullified by quick troop mobilisation and with China's missile strength.
"The Chinese artillery has a considerable strategic as well as tactical arsenal. However, China does have a "No First Use' policy, and in the event of hostilities, it is likely to replace its nuclear warheads with conventional warheads. Either way, this could prove to be to our disadvantage," he feels.
However, with the coming of the new doctrine, Kondapalli feels that the Indian military has taken a significant step. "A decade ago, the Indian military's doctrine was built around deterring Pakistan and merely dissuading China.
With the new doctrine, it has taken a significant step towards deterring China. The success of the Agni-III missile programme has added to this new posture significantly and the sooner we operationalise the missile, the better," he says.
But while the Indian army has conventional superiority on paper, there are other worrying factors. Under the Calcutta-based Eastern Command, the army has three corps which are severely depleted of troops. Most fighting units have been moved to the Kashmir sector over the last 15 years. "In 1990," an army official told Outlook, "we had finalised the Dual Task and Relocation Plan for our fighting formations and decided that it would be relevant for only ten years. But it has been there for nearly two decades. This needs to change."
This means that the Kalimpong-based 33 Corps, Tezpur-based 4 Corps and the Dimapur-based 3 Corps will have to increase their troop strengths.
At present, most of 3 Corps is tied up in counter-insurgency operations, while the 27th Division is just returning to the 33 Corps. This division was moved out for Operation Parakram and has been in Jammu and Kashmir ever since. Similarly, the 8 Mountain Division that was moved out in early 1990 continues to be in Kargil as a part of the Leh-based 14 Corps.
While these deployments have to be reconsidered, the new doctrine is a critical update on where the army must position its firepower and its troops. On the whole, it is now left to the ministry of defence to operationalise the doctrine and ensure that India's borders with China are adequately fortified.
#1
building and repairing a rail facility at those altitudes is a herculean effort, destroying it and avalanching rocks and snow atop it....not so much
just saying
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/22/2007 11:04 Comments ||
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#2
This story reads like a preparatory money beg to the Indian Congress.
Posted by: Almost Anonymous5839 ||
12/22/2007 11:06 Comments ||
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#3
The Chinese infrastructure buildup and #2's comment are not mutually exclusive. Actions/response by India WILL require money and will on the part of India's leadership.
#4
Please note that this is already a numbers game, in so far as unit strength on both sides.
Hearkening back to my "demographic war" theory, if one side, probably China, decided to imbalance the equation by sending enormous numbers of poorly trained, supplied and equipped draftees to the front, the other side would have little recourse but to do the same.
But the *purpose* of doing this would not be military necessity, but the convenience of taking large numbers of "excess" men and "sending them away" to keep them out of the cities and from causing trouble. Men not wanted by their cities, villages, or even by their families.
In other words, initially at least, the border would act as a minimum security prison or institution, reducing the expense of these men to just a pound of rice a day for each, instead of the huge cost of allowing them to tear down society in a quest for employment or mates that didn't exist for them.
Tens of millions of men just sitting there on either side of the border, reinforcing their defensive positions.
Ironically, if any conflict broke out, both sides would try to keep it a "smoldering" conflict, not letting it escalate, even if it was at a huge scale. World War I sized fights using just rifles and machine guns. Kashmir writ large.
The conventional armies stay out of it for the most part, acting as a 2nd echelon to stop any enemy breakthroughs.
The men themselves wouldn't matter as long as they didn't return home. The front would be a one way ticket where they would either live or die. Disease or war, wouldn't matter.
#5
There are morons strategic thinkers in Delhi who argued against development of the border regions, believing that any transport infrastructure would be used by invading Chinese troops.
Posted by: john frum ||
12/22/2007 13:32 Comments ||
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#6
In 2007, mass casualties will not be tolerated by he Chinese and Indian populations.
TV is everywhere and when a family has just one son, (even Indian muslim families are having less children), or even just one child, losing him in a pointless war will not be tolerated.
Governments will fall.
The Kargil war was the first Indian media war and the footage of funerals did not go down too well.
Villagers were on TV asking why their sons were dying.
Posted by: john frum ||
12/22/2007 13:36 Comments ||
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#7
GANGTOK: The Kunming bonhomie notwithstanding, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China is undercutting Indian Army's efforts to strengthen its presence on the border. On November 23, a week before the visit of defence minister A K Antony and chief of army staff Gen Deepak Kapoor to Sikkim, PLA soldiers unloaded boulders in an effort to wreck the construction of a metalled road at Fingertips, a strategic spot near Gurudongmar in North Sikkim. The area is close to the Kangra La pass bordering south-west Tibet.
Indian troops, however, swung into action the next morning, and removed the obstruction. The road construction at an altitude of 18,500 feet was completed on November 27. Chinese representatives, however, did not speak about the offensive at Fingertips during a meeting between army representatives from both sides on November 23. They also kept quiet on the bunker dispute at the trijunction of Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet.
Significantly, prior to the Fingertips manoeuvre, Chinese troops had entered Indian territory and asked Indian Army personnel manning the border post there to stop construction of the road.
Posted by: john frum ||
12/22/2007 13:42 Comments ||
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#8
India-China border
Posted by: john frum ||
12/22/2007 13:43 Comments ||
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#9
Posted by: john frum ||
12/22/2007 13:46 Comments ||
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#10
Posted by: john frum ||
12/22/2007 13:51 Comments ||
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#11
Looks like maybe a 'Great Wall of India' is in order. Along with shaped charges, mines, trenches and anything else India can reasonably afford to defend with.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
12/22/2007 13:51 Comments ||
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#12
China is doomed. Note the guy in a military uniform with his hat on backwards!
Posted by: Mike N. ||
12/22/2007 13:55 Comments ||
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#13
and we can't even get a little fence between the US and Mexico....
#14
john frum: If done immediately, it wouldn't work, but as with everything else, it is a process.
The demographic imbalance these days means that there will be tens of millions of young men who are both unemployed and unmarried. This implies that they are on their own from the very beginning. That they do not have strong family bonds to support them. No family to object to their being drafted.
In other words, they are homeless men without jobs. Nobody wants them. They have to steal and worse just to survive.
From that point, recruitment is easy. They are offered a pittance wage and food, a uniform and a rifle, instead of starving to death. Maybe use just a little patriotism.
Remember also that they are not trying to recruit them "to fight and die" in an ongoing war, just to "join the army". It could be pitched like a public works program. They would probably think they are joining the regular army, not just being sent to an enormous border garrisons full of draftees to do drill and ceremonies for hours every day.
Part and parcel with this is that at NO point is it allowed to become a "media war". Journalists are not permitted anywhere near these isolated garrisons or near where any battles might happen.
Any news at all will carefully controlled and made boring and empty. For the longest time there *won't* be any war to report, anyway.
Because that is the bottom line, the real purpose to all of this. It is to get tens of millions of unemployed men off the streets. If they have *any* job, or even a family that supports them, they are not good candidates for this.
The vast majority are already on their own. They are the army of men with no place left to go.
#15
Moose, a couple points for conjecture:
1) Logistics for adequately feeding, housing, etc., for large garrisons in forbidding climates and geography would be difficult
2) Having a heavily armed underfed, underutilized, dissatisfied (see: sex and marriage opportunities) group of single men with no hope of improvement is also asking for them to turn on their masters (see: armed insurrection)
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/22/2007 15:32 Comments ||
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#16
Any thoughts on how those seven armored divisions would fair in the mountains?
#17
Frank G: Only when considering the alternative, that is, tens of millions of men scavenging on the countryside and in the cities. What I have suggested is really an involuntary and ugly alternative to something that could be a lot worse.
This many men are an army whether they realize it or not. And the Chinese have had several very bad experiences with the common man going on a rampage. It could turn into something like a cross between the Taiping Rebellion and the Cultural Revolution.
The situation in China itself would force such actions, such as an economic collapse, not some Machiavellian scheming. This would be done because they would feel they had to do it.
And if you put said millions in remote camps, it would be done in such a way that not only would they be unarmed, but if they did revolt, they would have to pass through many miles of regular army lines without food to get to any settlements.
And I was being literal about 1 pound of boiled rice a day per man. Though that would be generous rations in this case.
As far as keeping busy, the Chinese are also known for grandiose labor intensive projects. And in those circumstances, it would not be unrealistic to imagine many of those men put to work. Farming to feed themselves, if nothing else.
The bottom line is that this would be done to prevent chaos on a national scale. If this means that most of these men must die, circumstances may force that as well.
The same basic problem applies to India, as well as a possible solution. The big question is will they reach an understanding of sorts to solve their mutual problem?
WASHINGTON - The United States opposes Taiwans plan to hold a referendum on joining the United Nations, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday, calling Taipeis bid provocative and unhelpful. Taiwans ruling party plans to stage a referendum alongside presidential elections in March, ignoring warnings from Washington and threats from China, which claims sovereignty over the self-ruled island of 23 million.
We think that Taiwans referendum to apply to the United Nations under the name Taiwan is a provocative policy, Rice said, restating US opposition both to Taiwan independence and to the use of force by China to solve the dispute. It unnecessarily raises tensions in the Taiwan strait and it promises no real benefits for the people of Taiwan on the international stage -- that is why we oppose this referendum, she told a news conference in Washington.
Repeated attempts by Taiwan to join the United Nations under its formal name, the Republic of China, have failed, prompting the campaign to pursue membership under the name Taiwan.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/22/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
The vapors of Foggy Bottom... Resistance is futile, you will be diplomilated!
#2
The state department opposes anything that threatens the status quo. Including getting rid of petty dictators. I think there motto is, "Keep the world the way it is. We like it like this."
BERLIN: In a ceremony marking the final chapter in the unification of Eastern and Western Europe that began more than 18 years ago, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and the leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Portugal dismantled border-crossing points on a frontier that had symbolized the Cold War divide.
Merkel, a child of that division, stood in freezing temperatures with Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek of the Czech Republic and Prime Minister José Sócrates of Portugal, which holds the rotating European Union presidency.
Merkel's parents decided to leave West Germany for East Germany after World War II, and she had no opportunity to travel to the West until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. She called the dismantling of the border crossing a "truly historical moment." Interesting: Merkel, Germany's President, was an East German until Ronald Reagon told Gorbachev "Tear Down This Wall!". Congratulations America, you did this.
"We have one Europe, where passport controls from Sweden to Italy, from Portugal to the Baltic states no longer exist," she said. "That is a freedom, a freedom to travel. The schoolchildren of today can experience a normal Europe, something of which our parents and grandparents could only dream."
A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty.
Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons. Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to "protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage." The F.B.I would "apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous" to national security, Hoovers proposal said. The arrests would be carried out under "a master warrant attached to a list of names" provided by the bureau.
The names were part of an index that Hoover had been compiling for years. "The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven per cent are citizens of the United States," he wrote. In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the Writ of Habeas Corpus, it said.
Habeas corpus, the right to seek relief from illegal detention, has been a fundamental principle of law for seven centuries. The Bush administrations decision to hold suspects for years at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has made habeas corpus a contentious issue for Congress and the Supreme Court today.
The Constitution says habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it. The plan proposed by Hoover, the head of the F.B.I. from 1924 to 1972, stretched that clause to include threatened invasion or attack upon United States troops in legally occupied territory.
Hoovers plan was declassified Friday as part of a collection of cold-war documents concerning intelligence issues from 1950 to 1955. The collection makes up a new volume of The Foreign Relations of the United States, a series that by law has been published continuously by the State Department since the Civil War.
Hoovers plan called for the permanent detention of the roughly 12,000 suspects at military bases as well as in federal prisons. The F.B.I., he said, had found that the arrests it proposed in New York and California would cause the prisons there to overflow. So the bureau had arranged for detention in military facilities of the individuals apprehended in those states, he wrote.
The prisoners eventually would have had a right to a hearing under the Hoover plan. The hearing board would have been a panel made up of one judge and two citizens. But the hearings will not be bound by the rules of evidence, his letter noted.
The only modern precedent for Hoovers plan was the Palmer Raids of 1920, named after the attorney general at the time. The raids, executed in large part by Hoovers intelligence division, swept up thousands of people suspected of being communists and radicals.
Previously declassified documents show that the F.B.I.s security index of suspect Americans predated the cold war. In March 1946, Hoover sought the authority to detain Americans who might be dangerous if the United States went to war. In August 1948, Attorney General Tom Clark gave the F.B.I. the power to make a master list of such people.
Hoovers July 1950 letter was addressed to Sidney W. Souers, who had served as the first director of central intelligence and was then a special national-security assistant to Truman. The plan also was sent to the executive secretary of the National Security Council, whose members were the president, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state and the military chiefs.
In September 1950, Congress passed and the president signed a law authorizing the detention of dangerous radicals if the president declared a national emergency. Truman did declare such an emergency in December 1950, after China entered the Korean War. But no known evidence suggests he or any other president approved any part of Hoovers proposal.
Posted by: Abu do you love ||
12/22/2007 15:55 Comments ||
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#2
"Habeas corpus, the right to seek relief from illegal detention, has been a fundamental principle of law for seven centuries. The Bush administrations decision to hold suspects for years at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has made habeas corpus a contentious issue for Congress and the Supreme Court today.
The Constitution says habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it. The plan proposed by Hoover, the head of the F.B.I. from 1924 to 1972, stretched that clause to include threatened invasion or attack upon United States troops in legally occupied territory."
The constitution does NOT say a word about the rights of foreigners held outside the US who have actied illegally by international treaty (Illegal Combatants according to the Geneva Conventions).
More drivel attempting to give US constitutional rights to everyone on the planet.
#3
You have to appreciate the irony that if Truman had taken Hoover's advice, there would probably be a lot fewer raving anti-American Moonbats walking around today.
#4
Sorry, moose, after FDR got in office, the penetration of the government by FOSU (friends of the Soviet Union) was complete. Look at the reaction to McCarthy's accusations, which have been borne out over time. If he hadn't been such an amateur and dipso, things might have turned out differently, but I doubt it. It is going to take a long time to remove this poison from the body politic.
After months of discussion within her campaign over how heavily she should draw on her husband's legacy, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is closing out her Iowa and New Hampshire campaigns in a tight embrace of Bill Clinton's record, helping fuel a debate about the 1990s with Sen. Barack Obama that she thinks she can win.
As part of the Clinton strategy, the former president is playing an increasingly prominent public role as an advocate for his wife. He appears to have overcome concerns within the campaign over how closely she should associate her candidacy with his time in office and over whether his appearances could draw attention away from her.
Both Clintons are making the case that theirs was a co-presidency -- an echo of Bill Clinton's controversial statement during the 1992 campaign that voters would get "two for the price of one" if they elected him. At times, the former president has seemed to cast the current race as a referendum on his administration.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/22/2007 09:09 ||
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#1
they're desperate and they don't know what else to do - everything else has had blowback, particularly because she is a singularly unlikeable person, and her staff has the same old "personal destruction" impulses. I'm kind of sad she might get edged out early, the schadenfreude won't be as sweet or long-lasting.
Wonder who's taking the lamp-throwing and beatings with every poll downturn...
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/22/2007 11:10 Comments ||
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#2
Ah, the Cocksucker-in-Chief is heard from.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
12/22/2007 12:26 Comments ||
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#3
I saw the title and thought we'd be hearing from Monica...
#4
ahhhh, RJ, Cocksucker-in-Chief, doesn't appear to be one of her skillsets. Skid, Ima first thinking stained Blue Gap Dress too.... we're bad...
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/22/2007 18:56 Comments ||
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#5
My pruient intrest side has always wondered if Slick Willy (pun intended) was the first Prez to get a bl0wj0b in the White House.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/22/2007 19:11 Comments ||
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#6
Speaking of embracing records, when is PIAPS gonna let us take a peek at her White House papers so we can determine just what executive experience she accrued while First Lady?
Humiliating and destroying critics doesn't count.
China's intelligence service gained access to a secret National Security Agency listening post in Hawaii through a Chinese-language translation service, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
The spy penetration was discovered several years ago as part of a major counterintelligence probe by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) that revealed an extensive program by China's spy service to steal codes and other electronic intelligence secrets, and to recruit military and civilian personnel with access to them.
According to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, China's Ministry of State Security, the main civilian spy service, carried out the operations by setting up a Chinese translation service in Hawaii that represented itself as a U.S.-origin company. The ruse led to classified contracts with the Navy and NSA to translate some of the hundreds of thousands of intercepted communications gathered by NSA's network of listening posts, aircraft and ships.
NCIS agents discovered that the translation service, which officials did not identify by name, had conducted contract work for the National Security Agency facility at Kunia, an underground electronic intelligence post some 15 miles northwest of Honolulu that conducts some of the U.S. intelligence community's most sensitive work. Kunia is both a processing center and a collection point for large amounts of Chinese- and other Asian-language communications, which are translated and used in classified intelligence reports on military and political developments.
Naval intelligence officials familiar with the Chinese spy penetration said the access to both "raw" and analyzed intelligence at Kunia caused significant damage by giving China's government details on both the targets and the sources of U.S. spying operations. Such information would permit the Chinese to block the eavesdropping or to provide false and misleading "disinformation" to U.S. intelligence.
The officials did not say how long the Chinese operation lasted before being detected.
NCIS also discovered a major Chinese intelligence operation that sought to recruit Chinese Americans as spies, and to recruit Navy and civilian intelligence workers with access to Kunia's secrets. According to the officials, China's program to recruit intelligence workers was discovered in 2005 after a Navy cryptographic technician was caught accepting a no-cost visit to China, paid for by Beijing's government.
Brilliant. Just brilliant. Once again it takes abject stupidity for our counter-intel guys to find something.
The case led to an NCIS probe that discovered other intelligence personnel, many of them nearing the ends of their careers, who were targeted by Chinese intelligence for recruitment.
The ethnic recruitment effort involved similar tactics. China's intelligence service used intelligence officers and supporters to identify Chinese Americans with access to secrets who would be approached and offered free visits to China, often to meet relatives. The Chinese would then use the visit to attempt to recruit the Americans as spies.
Chinese-American ethnic groups in the past have denounced the U.S. government for singling out Asian Americans as spy targets, accusing counterintelligence officials of racism. But the Chinese recruitment program shows that Beijing actively seeks to develop spies through such ethnic targeting.
Anybody surprised by this? Anyone? Bueller?
NSA and NCIS spokesmen declined to comment when asked about the Chinese intelligence-gathering operations in Hawaii.
I.C. Smith, a former FBI special agent, said both China's civilian MSS and military spy service, known as "2 PLA" for the Second Department of the Chinese military, are targeting NSA. "There can be no higher target for an intelligence service, and that includes China's MSS and 2 PLA, than gaining access to an adversaries' codes and electronic intelligence," he said, because it is the ultimate in "foreknowledge" advocated by ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu.
Getting U.S. electronic intelligence and codes would give China specific information on what is known and allow Beijing to take defensive measures "based on knowledge, not supposition," Mr. Smith said, adding that "it also allows for disinformation to be done with confidence and it basically gives the intelligence service every advantage over the enemy."
The NSA Hawaii operations center employs several thousand people and was recently expanded at a cost of more than $350 million. An NSA press release in August stated the expansion is "one facet of the agency's efforts to evolve a global cryptologic enterprise that is resilient, agile and effective in prosecuting a dynamic threat environment." The facility was singled out for criticism in the past by intelligence reform advocates because of its restrictive policies on information-sharing.
#1
This is a major big deal. It has been going on for a while, and the chinese had full access to raw intel. They now know all our methods and agents. I can think of no greater intel advantage than to send out trial ballons and discover which channels are secure and which are tapped. This stinks big time and I know exactly who to blame.
Is it any big suprise that the chinese are spending so much on the elections. They obviously got their money worth in 2000.
Posted by: Abu do you love ||
12/22/2007 12:24 Comments ||
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#2
PIMF...
that should read
They obviously got their money worth in 1996.
oops
Posted by: Abu do you love ||
12/22/2007 12:32 Comments ||
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#3
If NCIS say they discovered this in 2005, how much false information does China have to worry about having been fed since then, and possibly earlier if they claimed date of discovery is not exactly accurate?
Because Mike Huckabee mentioned "the birth of Christ," he liberated the equivocal tentative finger-in-the-windy candidates and enabled them to utter the dread words "Merry Christmas." (Save, that is, for Sen. Clinton, whose message ends with "Happy Holidays.") Thus, in a small way, the governor shifted the goalposts. I can't say I care for the Huckster policy-wise, but his instincts are very shrewd. There's a big demographic out there (and certainly not confined to evangelical Protestants, or even believing Christians) that's sick of the insipid generalities of the liberal establishment's offensively inoffensive pseudo-religion. By declining to defer to it and suffering no ill effects, Huck demonstrated how weedy and insubstantial it is. A lot of cultural warriors will be heartened by that.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/22/2007 00:00 ||
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#3
The guy's a freaking nut, who's got one or two good positions amongst about 487 bad ones. Since his RonPaulbots are apparently originating outside the country, I'd suggest he run for President of another country...
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/22/2007 7:26 Comments ||
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#4
He'd make Kucinich a great running mate, or vice-versa.
Posted by: Mike ||
12/22/2007 8:19 Comments ||
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#5
Ima beginin' to worry that he's setting up for a third party run.
Why would that worry you? When the nutcases and loons are voting for your candidate it may be time for a little inner reflection.
#6
Ron Pual didnt mean to call Huckabee a fascist? That makes sense. IF Huckabee were a fascist, he would cost Ron Paul the fascists, supremacists, anti-semites and neo-nazis that are his biggest supporters.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
THE Reserve Bank's project to introduce higher denominated bearer cheques yesterday got off to a disastrous start after the bank failed to deliver cash to financial institutions. Thousands of people were unable to get cash amid revelations that the central bank only started distributing the new bearer cheques to banks well after normal banking hours. By last night officials from banks were still at the central bank's cash office trying to get their allocations. "We only started getting cash at about 4pm," said a managing director with a local commercial bank.
After months of discussion within her campaign over how heavily she should draw on her husband's legacy, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is closing out her Iowa and New Hampshire campaigns in a tight embrace of Bill Clinton's record, helping fuel a debate about the 1990s with Sen. Barack Obama that she thinks she can win. 
China's intelligence service gained access to a secret National Security Agency listening post in Hawaii through a Chinese-language translation service, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
