In his speech to the Muslim world (Thursday, June 4) from Cairo, President Barack Obama called on Palestinians to renounce violence, stop firing rockets at Israelis and said Palestinians – as well as the Arab world – must recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Obama’s trip to the Middle East came a week after his meeting with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House, where Obama openly urged the Palestinian leader to end the culture of hate permeating Palestinian educational and religious institutions.
As recently as May 2009, Abbas rejected the idea of a Jewish State and met with Palestinian youth leaders in Ramallah where he held up a framed map of Palestine – clearly labeled in English - that covered all of Israel. “I say this clearly: I do not accept the Jewish State, call it what you will,” Abbas said during the meeting. A photo of Abbas holding the map appeared on the front pages of both Palestinian Authority daily newspapers.
In 2003, Israel agreed to implement the Roadmap to Peace, a performance-based document that provides a framework for a two-state solution and calls for an end to Palestinian violence and terrorism - including requiring all Palestinian institutions to end incitement against Israel. Despite the Palestinians' failure to end incitement, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon both have agreed to honor the Roadmap.
Since Obama’s inauguration on January 20, 2009, terrorists in Gaza have fired more than 200 rockets, mortars and missiles at Israel – and a total of more than 6,700 since Israel handed all of Gaza over to the Palestinians four years ago in hopes of paving the way for an independent Palestinian state living side by side in peace next to Israel. Since the start of 2009, Israel has been hit by at least 685 rockets and mortars. President Obama however directly chastises and scolds Israel for it's defense of it's nation and people.
On Wednesday( 3 June), Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once again repeated his denial of theHlocaust calling it a "big deception." Ahmadinejad told a gathering of 600 international scholars in Tehran on 3 June," The identity of the liberal democracy has been exposed to the world by it's protection of the most criminal regime in the history of humanity, the Zionist regime, by using the deception of the Holocaust.
Yet President Obama has taken a 180 stance from his campaign position publicly stating his belief that Iran has a right to nuclear materials for energy-despite the dangerous fact that some of those materials could get into the hands of terrorists- particularly including Iran's proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad. this is unacceptable
President Obama’s speech in Cairo did not convey a sense of urgency on stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons . It is not clear to this author that he shares the goal of preventing a weaponized nuclear Iran. We can’t forget that North Korea’s program started as an energy program and now they are actively testing nuclear weapons in defiance of the United States. We cannot afford for this to happen with Iran, the world’s largest state sponsor of terror.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Turkey - "The PKK in Iraq" (Oct.2006)
"An exclusive look at one PKK guerrilla base just across the Turkish border in Iraq. Dotted along the border bands of Kurdish separatists run their operations, just beyond Turkish reach.
The PKK gave reporter Karzan Sherabayani access to their Iraqi training camps. He came to ask the guerrillas why they are renewing the war against Turkey. Considered terrorists by Turkey, the PKK claim they "want to make peace and dialogue, but Turkey keeps refusing". Battle has waged on these borders for generations. Yet, with chaos in Iraq descending into ethnic conflict, this Turkish war has gained a new intensity. "I left my gun and went to Europe, to lobby for a peaceful solution. But our voices are ignored," Sozdar tells us. Thousands of Kurds have returned to these mountains; "You see injustice, you see oppression, and that drives you back to Kurdistan." Kurds believe they now have a chance to push for autonomy and Turkey looks to America for assistance. Without success, efforts to join the EU could be severely hampered. The PKK believe "Turkey should never be allowed to join the EU." Ankara is determined Kurdistan won't get in the way. As the well organised PKK camps show, it seems that both sides have a real fight on their hands." journeymanpictures
click here
Italian dinner shows lighter side of Rudy
Italian dinner shows lighter side of Giuliani
Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani showed off his sense of humor at the National Italian-American Foundation Gala in Washington. Giuliani was among those honored at the event. (Oct. 14)
click here
Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani showed off his sense of humor at the National Italian-American Foundation Gala in Washington. Giuliani was among those honored at the event. (Oct. 14)
click here
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Our soldiers like what they do. They want our respect, not pity.
Excerpt:
The media is but one example of the slow crumbling of the nation-state at the upper layers of the social crust--a process that because it is so gradual, is also deniable by those in the midst of it. It will take another event on the order of 9/11 or greater to change the direction we are headed. Contrary to popular belief, the events of 9/11--which are perceived as an isolated incident--did not fundamentally change our nation. They merely interrupted an ongoing trend toward the decay of nationalism and the devaluation of heroism.
note: I blame Bush for this as well.
Of course, Slick Willie did his best to denigrate our military as well as to cut $s and support for our military while on over at the Pentagon politicians infect the upper ranks and echelon, strutting around in military uniform.
But, basically, I blame Bush for everything going wrong with this nation now.
Impeach Bush-Commander-In-Defeat!
Impeach all top Pentagon brass for military incompetence!
Impeach this $-Congre$$!!
Psst: this same process of decay is also underway in Israel, but to a lesser extent.
Only the Arabic cockroaches know what they want, they just don't yet know how to fully achieve it.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010686
AT WAR
Modern Heroes
Our soldiers like what they do. They want our respect, not pity.
BY ROBERT D. KAPLAN
Thursday, October 4, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
I'm weary of seeing news stories about wounded soldiers and assertions of "support" for the troops mixed with suggestions of the futility of our military efforts in Iraq. Why aren't there more accounts of what the troops actually do? How about narrations of individual battles and skirmishes, of their ever-evolving interactions with Iraqi troops and locals in Baghdad and Anbar province, and of increasingly resourceful "patterning" of terrorist networks that goes on daily in tactical operations centers?
The sad and often unspoken truth of the matter is this: Americans have been conditioned less to understand Iraq's complex military reality than to feel sorry for those who are part of it.
The media struggles in good faith to respect our troops, but too often it merely pities them. I am generalizing, of course. Indeed, there are regular, stellar exceptions, quite often in the most prominent liberal publications, from our best military correspondents. But exceptions don't quite cut it amidst the barrage of "news," which too often descends into therapy for those who are not fighting, rather than matter-of-fact stories related by those who are.
As one battalion commander complained to me, in words repeated by other soldiers and marines: "Has anyone noticed that we now have a volunteer Army? I'm a warrior. It's my job to fight." Every journalist has a different network of military contacts. Mine come at me with the following theme: We want to be admired for our technical proficiency--for what we do, not for what we suffer. We are not victims. We are privileged.
The cult of victimhood in American history first flourished in the aftermath of the 1960s youth rebellion, in which, as University of Chicago Prof. Peter Novick writes, women, blacks, Jews, Native Americans and others fortified their identities with public references to past oppressions. The process was tied to Vietnam, a war in which the photographs of civilian victims "displaced traditional images of heroism." It appears that our troops have been made into the latest victims.
Heroes, according to the ancients, are those who do great deeds that have a lasting claim to our respect. To suffer is not necessarily to be heroic. Obviously, we have such heroes, who are too often ignored. Witness the low-key coverage accorded to winners of the Medal of Honor and of lesser decorations.
The first Medal of Honor in the global war on terror was awarded posthumously to Army Sgt. First Class Paul Ray Smith of Tampa, Fla., who was killed under withering gunfire protecting his wounded comrades outside Baghdad airport in April 2003.
According to LexisNexis, by June 2005, two months after his posthumous award, his stirring story had drawn only 90 media mentions, compared with 4,677 for the supposed Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay, and 5,159 for the court-martialed Abu Ghraib guard Lynndie England. While the exposure of wrongdoing by American troops is of the highest importance, it can become a tyranny of its own when taken to an extreme.
Media frenzies are ignited when American troops are either the perpetrators of acts resulting in victimhood, or are victims themselves. Meanwhile, individual soldiers daily performing complicated and heroic deeds barely fit within the strictures of news stories as they are presently defined. This is why the sporadic network and cable news features on heroic soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan comes across as so hokey. After all, the last time such reports were considered "news" was during World War II and the Korean War.
In particular, there is Fox News's occasional series on war heroes, whose apparent strangeness is a manifestation of the distance the media has traveled away from the nation-state in the intervening decades. Fox's war coverage is less right-wing than it is simply old-fashioned, antediluvian almost. Fox's commercial success may be less a factor of its ideological base than of something more primal: a yearning among a large segment of the public for a real national media once again--as opposed to an international one. Nationalism means patriotism, and patriotism requires heroes, not victims.
Let's review some recent history. From Sept. 11, 2001, until the middle of 2003, when events in Afghanistan and Iraq appeared to be going well, the media portrayed the troops in an uncomplicated, positive light. Young reporters who embedded early on became acquainted with men and women in uniform, by whom they were frankly impressed. But their older editors, children of the '60s often, were skeptical. Once these wars started going badly, skepticism turned to a feeling of having been duped, a sentiment amplified by the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
That led to a different news cycle, this time with the troops as war criminals. But that cycle could not be sustained by the facts beyond the specific scandal. So by the end of 2004, yet another news cycle set in, the one that is still with us: the troops as victims of an incompetent and evil administration. The irony is that the daily actions of the troops now, living among Iraqis, applying the doctrines of counterinsurgency, and engaged regularly in close-quarters combat, are likely more heroic than in the period immediately following 9/11.
Objectively speaking, the troops can be both victims and heroes--that is, if the current phase of the war does indeed turn out to be futile. My point is only to note how the media has embraced the former theme and downplayed the latter. The LexisNexis statistics reveal the extent to which the media is uncomfortable with traditional heroism, of the kind celebrated from Herodotus through World War II. If that's not the case, then why don't we read more accounts about the battlefield actions of Silver Star winners, Bronze Star winners and the like?
Feeling comfortable with heroes requires a lack of cynicism toward the cause for which they fight. In the 1990s, when exporting democracy and militarily responding to ethnic and religious carnage were looked up upon, U.S. Army engineering units in Bosnia were lionized merely for laying bridges across rivers. Those soldiers did not need to risk their lives or win medals in order to be glorified by the media. Indeed, the media afforded them more stature than it does today's Medal of Honor winners. When a war becomes unpopular, the troops are in a sense deserted. In the eyes of professional warriors, pity can be a form of debasement.
Rather than hated, like during Vietnam, now the troops are "loved." But the best units don't want love; they want respect. The dilemma is that the safer the administration keeps us at home, the more disconnected the citizenry is from its own military posted abroad. An army at war and a nation at the mall do not encounter each other except through the refractive medium of news and entertainment.
That medium is refractive because while the U.S. still has a national military, it no longer has a national media to quite the same extent. The media is increasingly representative of an international society, whose loyalty to a particular territory is more and more diluted. That international society has ideas to defend--ideas of universal justice--but little actual ground. And without ground to defend, it has little need of heroes. Thus, future news cycles will also be dominated by victims.
The media is but one example of the slow crumbling of the nation-state at the upper layers of the social crust--a process that because it is so gradual, is also deniable by those in the midst of it. It will take another event on the order of 9/11 or greater to change the direction we are headed. Contrary to popular belief, the events of 9/11--which are perceived as an isolated incident--did not fundamentally change our nation. They merely interrupted an ongoing trend toward the decay of nationalism and the devaluation of heroism.
Mr. Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic and a visiting professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, is the author of "Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground," just published by Random House.
The media is but one example of the slow crumbling of the nation-state at the upper layers of the social crust--a process that because it is so gradual, is also deniable by those in the midst of it. It will take another event on the order of 9/11 or greater to change the direction we are headed. Contrary to popular belief, the events of 9/11--which are perceived as an isolated incident--did not fundamentally change our nation. They merely interrupted an ongoing trend toward the decay of nationalism and the devaluation of heroism.
note: I blame Bush for this as well.
Of course, Slick Willie did his best to denigrate our military as well as to cut $s and support for our military while on over at the Pentagon politicians infect the upper ranks and echelon, strutting around in military uniform.
But, basically, I blame Bush for everything going wrong with this nation now.
Impeach Bush-Commander-In-Defeat!
Impeach all top Pentagon brass for military incompetence!
Impeach this $-Congre$$!!
Psst: this same process of decay is also underway in Israel, but to a lesser extent.
Only the Arabic cockroaches know what they want, they just don't yet know how to fully achieve it.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010686
AT WAR
Modern Heroes
Our soldiers like what they do. They want our respect, not pity.
BY ROBERT D. KAPLAN
Thursday, October 4, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
I'm weary of seeing news stories about wounded soldiers and assertions of "support" for the troops mixed with suggestions of the futility of our military efforts in Iraq. Why aren't there more accounts of what the troops actually do? How about narrations of individual battles and skirmishes, of their ever-evolving interactions with Iraqi troops and locals in Baghdad and Anbar province, and of increasingly resourceful "patterning" of terrorist networks that goes on daily in tactical operations centers?
The sad and often unspoken truth of the matter is this: Americans have been conditioned less to understand Iraq's complex military reality than to feel sorry for those who are part of it.
The media struggles in good faith to respect our troops, but too often it merely pities them. I am generalizing, of course. Indeed, there are regular, stellar exceptions, quite often in the most prominent liberal publications, from our best military correspondents. But exceptions don't quite cut it amidst the barrage of "news," which too often descends into therapy for those who are not fighting, rather than matter-of-fact stories related by those who are.
As one battalion commander complained to me, in words repeated by other soldiers and marines: "Has anyone noticed that we now have a volunteer Army? I'm a warrior. It's my job to fight." Every journalist has a different network of military contacts. Mine come at me with the following theme: We want to be admired for our technical proficiency--for what we do, not for what we suffer. We are not victims. We are privileged.
The cult of victimhood in American history first flourished in the aftermath of the 1960s youth rebellion, in which, as University of Chicago Prof. Peter Novick writes, women, blacks, Jews, Native Americans and others fortified their identities with public references to past oppressions. The process was tied to Vietnam, a war in which the photographs of civilian victims "displaced traditional images of heroism." It appears that our troops have been made into the latest victims.
Heroes, according to the ancients, are those who do great deeds that have a lasting claim to our respect. To suffer is not necessarily to be heroic. Obviously, we have such heroes, who are too often ignored. Witness the low-key coverage accorded to winners of the Medal of Honor and of lesser decorations.
The first Medal of Honor in the global war on terror was awarded posthumously to Army Sgt. First Class Paul Ray Smith of Tampa, Fla., who was killed under withering gunfire protecting his wounded comrades outside Baghdad airport in April 2003.
According to LexisNexis, by June 2005, two months after his posthumous award, his stirring story had drawn only 90 media mentions, compared with 4,677 for the supposed Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay, and 5,159 for the court-martialed Abu Ghraib guard Lynndie England. While the exposure of wrongdoing by American troops is of the highest importance, it can become a tyranny of its own when taken to an extreme.
Media frenzies are ignited when American troops are either the perpetrators of acts resulting in victimhood, or are victims themselves. Meanwhile, individual soldiers daily performing complicated and heroic deeds barely fit within the strictures of news stories as they are presently defined. This is why the sporadic network and cable news features on heroic soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan comes across as so hokey. After all, the last time such reports were considered "news" was during World War II and the Korean War.
In particular, there is Fox News's occasional series on war heroes, whose apparent strangeness is a manifestation of the distance the media has traveled away from the nation-state in the intervening decades. Fox's war coverage is less right-wing than it is simply old-fashioned, antediluvian almost. Fox's commercial success may be less a factor of its ideological base than of something more primal: a yearning among a large segment of the public for a real national media once again--as opposed to an international one. Nationalism means patriotism, and patriotism requires heroes, not victims.
Let's review some recent history. From Sept. 11, 2001, until the middle of 2003, when events in Afghanistan and Iraq appeared to be going well, the media portrayed the troops in an uncomplicated, positive light. Young reporters who embedded early on became acquainted with men and women in uniform, by whom they were frankly impressed. But their older editors, children of the '60s often, were skeptical. Once these wars started going badly, skepticism turned to a feeling of having been duped, a sentiment amplified by the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
That led to a different news cycle, this time with the troops as war criminals. But that cycle could not be sustained by the facts beyond the specific scandal. So by the end of 2004, yet another news cycle set in, the one that is still with us: the troops as victims of an incompetent and evil administration. The irony is that the daily actions of the troops now, living among Iraqis, applying the doctrines of counterinsurgency, and engaged regularly in close-quarters combat, are likely more heroic than in the period immediately following 9/11.
Objectively speaking, the troops can be both victims and heroes--that is, if the current phase of the war does indeed turn out to be futile. My point is only to note how the media has embraced the former theme and downplayed the latter. The LexisNexis statistics reveal the extent to which the media is uncomfortable with traditional heroism, of the kind celebrated from Herodotus through World War II. If that's not the case, then why don't we read more accounts about the battlefield actions of Silver Star winners, Bronze Star winners and the like?
Feeling comfortable with heroes requires a lack of cynicism toward the cause for which they fight. In the 1990s, when exporting democracy and militarily responding to ethnic and religious carnage were looked up upon, U.S. Army engineering units in Bosnia were lionized merely for laying bridges across rivers. Those soldiers did not need to risk their lives or win medals in order to be glorified by the media. Indeed, the media afforded them more stature than it does today's Medal of Honor winners. When a war becomes unpopular, the troops are in a sense deserted. In the eyes of professional warriors, pity can be a form of debasement.
Rather than hated, like during Vietnam, now the troops are "loved." But the best units don't want love; they want respect. The dilemma is that the safer the administration keeps us at home, the more disconnected the citizenry is from its own military posted abroad. An army at war and a nation at the mall do not encounter each other except through the refractive medium of news and entertainment.
That medium is refractive because while the U.S. still has a national military, it no longer has a national media to quite the same extent. The media is increasingly representative of an international society, whose loyalty to a particular territory is more and more diluted. That international society has ideas to defend--ideas of universal justice--but little actual ground. And without ground to defend, it has little need of heroes. Thus, future news cycles will also be dominated by victims.
The media is but one example of the slow crumbling of the nation-state at the upper layers of the social crust--a process that because it is so gradual, is also deniable by those in the midst of it. It will take another event on the order of 9/11 or greater to change the direction we are headed. Contrary to popular belief, the events of 9/11--which are perceived as an isolated incident--did not fundamentally change our nation. They merely interrupted an ongoing trend toward the decay of nationalism and the devaluation of heroism.
Mr. Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic and a visiting professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, is the author of "Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground," just published by Random House.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Merger opens U.S. defense to China
You see, it's happening all around you.
And our US politicians are happy with this!
Well, most of them.
Not all, but the vast, vast majority of Dems and Reps and, of course, our Happy Commander-In-Defeat who loses not only 1 war but actually 2 simultaneously.
What a guy, Bush, what a guy!
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071003/NATION/110030088/1001
Merger opens U.S. defense to China
By Bill Gertz
October 3, 2007
A Chinese company with ties to Beijing's military and past links to Saddam Hussein's army in Iraq and the Taliban will gain access to U.S. defense-network technology under a proposed merger, Pentagon officials say.
Huawei Technologies will merge with the Massachusetts-based 3Com network-equipment manufacturer [ my note: Pittsfield, Mass I believe --- just up the road a bit -- to work helping the commie Chinks defeat us in every area of production and technology. Ha! Ha, ha -- the joke's on this country! ] in a deal announced last week. Huawei has been linked to the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, which involved millions of dollars in payoffs to Saddam's regime during a time of U.N. sanctions.
The announced merger follows a July computer attack on the Pentagon that U.S. intelligence officials say involved Chinese military hackers. The hackers were detected breaking into Pentagon computers, including an e-mail system close to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
"Huawei is up to its eyeballs with the Chinese military," said a defense official concerned about the deal. Huawei was founded in 1988 by a Chinese military officer and got its start building military communications networks.
A second official said the deal comes as the Pentagon has mounted an aggressive effort to thwart large numbers of computer intrusions from Chinese hackers and spies.
"And now we are proposing to sell the PLA a key to our front door. This is a very dangerous trend," the official said, referring to the People's Liberation Army, as the Chinese military is called.
3Com announced Friday the $2.2 billion merger with Bain Capital Partners LLC and noted in a statement that Huawei Technologies will acquire a minority interest and "become a commercial and strategic partner of 3Com."
Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he is worried the deal will lead to the loss of sensitive technology to China.
"Specifically, I have some concerns surrounding the minority position of Huawei Technologies and what control the Chinese company might have over America's sensitive information," Mr. Hunter said. "In addition to encouraging the Pentagon to review how this deal may affect any of its classified contracts, I would encourage the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to conduct a thorough review."
A Pentagon spokesman said he is not aware that anyone in the Defense Department has asked Treasury's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to investigate the merger. A Treasury spokesman had no comment.
3Com, through a subsidiary, provides the Pentagon and the Army with intrusion-detection equipment, and the merger potentially will provide Huawei access to strategic computer-network vulnerabilities, said defense officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Spokesmen for 3Com did not return phone calls or e-mails seeking comment. A spokesman for Bain had no immediate comment. A Huawei spokesman could not be reached for comment.
Defense officials said Huawei's past is the main cause for concern. Huawei technicians were involved in violating U.N. sanctions against Iraq in the early 2000s by illegally providing a fiber-optic network in Iraq that linked the Iraqi military's air-defense network.
The CIA-led Iraq Survey Group stated in its final report that Huawei and two other Chinese firms "illicitly provided transmission switches" for fiber-optic communications in Iraq from 1999 to 2002.
U.S. and British warplanes bombed the Chinese-made fiber-optic network in August 2001 after it was found to be part of Iraqi air-defense missile sites that were firing at U.S. and allied aircraft enforcing a no-fly zone.
Huawei also was involved in building a telephone-switching system in Kabul, Afghanistan, for the ruling Taliban militia prior to its ouster in 2001, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
The defense officials said it is unlikely that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States would block the deal because 3Com is being advised on the merger by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., whose former chairman is Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten also is a former Goldman Sachs executive.
Gary Milhollin, an arms-proliferation specialist with the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, said Huawei was founded by a Chinese military officer and got its start with U.S. technology exports.
"In the past, Huawei has shown it's willing to help America's enemies after importing U.S. technology," he said. "And it has done so in defiance of U.N. regulations. So before we make more U.S. high technology available to Huawei, we should make sure it has changed its ways."
And our US politicians are happy with this!
Well, most of them.
Not all, but the vast, vast majority of Dems and Reps and, of course, our Happy Commander-In-Defeat who loses not only 1 war but actually 2 simultaneously.
What a guy, Bush, what a guy!
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071003/NATION/110030088/1001
Merger opens U.S. defense to China
By Bill Gertz
October 3, 2007
A Chinese company with ties to Beijing's military and past links to Saddam Hussein's army in Iraq and the Taliban will gain access to U.S. defense-network technology under a proposed merger, Pentagon officials say.
Huawei Technologies will merge with the Massachusetts-based 3Com network-equipment manufacturer [ my note: Pittsfield, Mass I believe --- just up the road a bit -- to work helping the commie Chinks defeat us in every area of production and technology. Ha! Ha, ha -- the joke's on this country! ] in a deal announced last week. Huawei has been linked to the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, which involved millions of dollars in payoffs to Saddam's regime during a time of U.N. sanctions.
The announced merger follows a July computer attack on the Pentagon that U.S. intelligence officials say involved Chinese military hackers. The hackers were detected breaking into Pentagon computers, including an e-mail system close to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
"Huawei is up to its eyeballs with the Chinese military," said a defense official concerned about the deal. Huawei was founded in 1988 by a Chinese military officer and got its start building military communications networks.
A second official said the deal comes as the Pentagon has mounted an aggressive effort to thwart large numbers of computer intrusions from Chinese hackers and spies.
"And now we are proposing to sell the PLA a key to our front door. This is a very dangerous trend," the official said, referring to the People's Liberation Army, as the Chinese military is called.
3Com announced Friday the $2.2 billion merger with Bain Capital Partners LLC and noted in a statement that Huawei Technologies will acquire a minority interest and "become a commercial and strategic partner of 3Com."
Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he is worried the deal will lead to the loss of sensitive technology to China.
"Specifically, I have some concerns surrounding the minority position of Huawei Technologies and what control the Chinese company might have over America's sensitive information," Mr. Hunter said. "In addition to encouraging the Pentagon to review how this deal may affect any of its classified contracts, I would encourage the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to conduct a thorough review."
A Pentagon spokesman said he is not aware that anyone in the Defense Department has asked Treasury's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to investigate the merger. A Treasury spokesman had no comment.
3Com, through a subsidiary, provides the Pentagon and the Army with intrusion-detection equipment, and the merger potentially will provide Huawei access to strategic computer-network vulnerabilities, said defense officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Spokesmen for 3Com did not return phone calls or e-mails seeking comment. A spokesman for Bain had no immediate comment. A Huawei spokesman could not be reached for comment.
Defense officials said Huawei's past is the main cause for concern. Huawei technicians were involved in violating U.N. sanctions against Iraq in the early 2000s by illegally providing a fiber-optic network in Iraq that linked the Iraqi military's air-defense network.
The CIA-led Iraq Survey Group stated in its final report that Huawei and two other Chinese firms "illicitly provided transmission switches" for fiber-optic communications in Iraq from 1999 to 2002.
U.S. and British warplanes bombed the Chinese-made fiber-optic network in August 2001 after it was found to be part of Iraqi air-defense missile sites that were firing at U.S. and allied aircraft enforcing a no-fly zone.
Huawei also was involved in building a telephone-switching system in Kabul, Afghanistan, for the ruling Taliban militia prior to its ouster in 2001, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
The defense officials said it is unlikely that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States would block the deal because 3Com is being advised on the merger by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., whose former chairman is Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten also is a former Goldman Sachs executive.
Gary Milhollin, an arms-proliferation specialist with the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, said Huawei was founded by a Chinese military officer and got its start with U.S. technology exports.
"In the past, Huawei has shown it's willing to help America's enemies after importing U.S. technology," he said. "And it has done so in defiance of U.N. regulations. So before we make more U.S. high technology available to Huawei, we should make sure it has changed its ways."
Weak dollar prompts record foreign buyouts of U.S. companies
Soon, Americans will be working for foreigners in America.
Look, go to Wal-Mart's and see what's being made in America.
Ok, so try Sears.
The local hardware store.
Etc. and etc. ...
Practically nothing.
This cannot go on forever without consequences.
Not "Made In America".
But "Slaves in America".
Ha!
Ha, ha!
Psst: Did I forget to say thank you Dems, Reps, thank you Slick Willie for NAFTA, WTO and Most Favored Nation Treatment for the Chinks and Indian Rag Heads?
Well, thank you all!
Especially presidents Bush and Slick Willie!
http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=7720834
Weak dollar prompts record foreign buyouts of U.S. companies
By Robert Weisman
The Boston Globe
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
BOSTON: European, Asian and Canadian companies are taking advantage of the weaker dollar to buy their U.S. counterparts at a record pace, increasing investment in the United States but also raising fears about a potential loss of jobs and autonomy.
"We could be looking at the world's largest tag sale if we continue to see declines in the dollar," said Donald Klepper-Smith, chief economist at DataCore Partners.
In the latest large deal aided by a weak dollar, Commerce Bancorp, which is based in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, agreed Tuesday to be acquired by Toronto-Dominion Bank of Canada in a cash-and-shares deal valued at $8.5 billion.
Nationally, the value of purchases of companies by non-U.S. buyers so far this year totaled $257.4 billion - more than in any full year since 2000, the height of the technology boom, according to Thomson Financial, a research firm in New York.
The buyouts are sparking anxiety in the United States, though their impact is complex. Foreign owners typically use acquisitions as an entry into the U.S. market and thus may be more willing than American buyers to invest in their new holdings, some economists say. But the risk is that they might also be quicker to cut back or consolidate U.S. operations when times get tough.
"Quite naturally, foreign companies want to play in this market," said Alan Tonelson, a research fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a trade group for small and midsize manufacturers. "They want leading-edge technology, and the United States is still the technology leader. But when they buy these companies, they're acquiring control over the most dynamic pieces of the American economy, and they're acquiring control over America's future."
Corporate deals are just one way the dollar's falling value is having an impact. The weaker dollar has also drawn European, Asian and Canadian tourists, made it more expensive for Americans to travel abroad, and bolstered the exports of U.S. companies that sell high-technology equipment or medical gear overseas. But foreign acquisitions could become the sagging dollar's most lasting legacy.
In New England, one of the regions heavily affected, 69 companies have been sold to foreign buyers in the first nine months of 2007 for a total of $30.8 billion - also a seven-year high.
In June, Philips Electronics of the Netherlands snapped up Color Kinetics, a maker of lighting systems, for $714 million. Last month, Analog Devices agreed to sell a pair of cellular product lines to MediaTek of Taiwan for $350 million. And last week, United Group of Australia completed a $411 million purchase of Unicco Service, which sells cleaning services for office buildings.
Some see the takeovers as inevitable in a global economy where geographic borders are no match for increasingly multinational companies.
"It's part of the overall global economic climate," said Brian Bethune, an economist for Global Insight, who said the acquisitions should be judged case by case. "Foreign companies are trying to get access to the U.S. market, and generally that's positive. European and Asian companies tend to take a longer view and could be more patient investors than U.S. hedge funds."
For now, many of the overseas buyers are promising to invest in their acquired properties. The new management team at Sabic Innovative Plastics, the former GE Plastics, plans to add 75 to 100 employees to its 425-person work force in New England.
"We're really lucky it wasn't bought by a Dow or a DuPont, because they might have moved the work from here to another one of their U.S. facilities," said Alfred Shogry, president of the Berkshire Central Labor Council in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
A spokeswoman at Color Kinetics said, "Philips is looking at us to be their global research and development center for LED-based lighting fixtures," referring to the company's patented light-emitting diode technology. "We're absolutely hiring and growing right now."
But that is not always the case with foreign takeovers. The French telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel, which bought its U.S. rival, Lucent Technologies, last year, said last month that it would cut thousands of jobs. The outsourcing provider Caritor, which has corporate offices in California but almost all its employees and operations in India, recently said it planned to eliminate more than a quarter of the 350 jobs at the Boston headquarters of the technology services company Keane, which it purchased in June.
Klepper-Smith said he feared the effect of foreign deals on workers and communities if decisions on jobs and plant locations are made in Europe, Asia or the Middle East. "It raises some red flags and some real questions about our independence," he said.
Look, go to Wal-Mart's and see what's being made in America.
Ok, so try Sears.
The local hardware store.
Etc. and etc. ...
Practically nothing.
This cannot go on forever without consequences.
Not "Made In America".
But "Slaves in America".
Ha!
Ha, ha!
Psst: Did I forget to say thank you Dems, Reps, thank you Slick Willie for NAFTA, WTO and Most Favored Nation Treatment for the Chinks and Indian Rag Heads?
Well, thank you all!
Especially presidents Bush and Slick Willie!
http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=7720834
Weak dollar prompts record foreign buyouts of U.S. companies
By Robert Weisman
The Boston Globe
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
BOSTON: European, Asian and Canadian companies are taking advantage of the weaker dollar to buy their U.S. counterparts at a record pace, increasing investment in the United States but also raising fears about a potential loss of jobs and autonomy.
"We could be looking at the world's largest tag sale if we continue to see declines in the dollar," said Donald Klepper-Smith, chief economist at DataCore Partners.
In the latest large deal aided by a weak dollar, Commerce Bancorp, which is based in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, agreed Tuesday to be acquired by Toronto-Dominion Bank of Canada in a cash-and-shares deal valued at $8.5 billion.
Nationally, the value of purchases of companies by non-U.S. buyers so far this year totaled $257.4 billion - more than in any full year since 2000, the height of the technology boom, according to Thomson Financial, a research firm in New York.
The buyouts are sparking anxiety in the United States, though their impact is complex. Foreign owners typically use acquisitions as an entry into the U.S. market and thus may be more willing than American buyers to invest in their new holdings, some economists say. But the risk is that they might also be quicker to cut back or consolidate U.S. operations when times get tough.
"Quite naturally, foreign companies want to play in this market," said Alan Tonelson, a research fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a trade group for small and midsize manufacturers. "They want leading-edge technology, and the United States is still the technology leader. But when they buy these companies, they're acquiring control over the most dynamic pieces of the American economy, and they're acquiring control over America's future."
Corporate deals are just one way the dollar's falling value is having an impact. The weaker dollar has also drawn European, Asian and Canadian tourists, made it more expensive for Americans to travel abroad, and bolstered the exports of U.S. companies that sell high-technology equipment or medical gear overseas. But foreign acquisitions could become the sagging dollar's most lasting legacy.
In New England, one of the regions heavily affected, 69 companies have been sold to foreign buyers in the first nine months of 2007 for a total of $30.8 billion - also a seven-year high.
In June, Philips Electronics of the Netherlands snapped up Color Kinetics, a maker of lighting systems, for $714 million. Last month, Analog Devices agreed to sell a pair of cellular product lines to MediaTek of Taiwan for $350 million. And last week, United Group of Australia completed a $411 million purchase of Unicco Service, which sells cleaning services for office buildings.
Some see the takeovers as inevitable in a global economy where geographic borders are no match for increasingly multinational companies.
"It's part of the overall global economic climate," said Brian Bethune, an economist for Global Insight, who said the acquisitions should be judged case by case. "Foreign companies are trying to get access to the U.S. market, and generally that's positive. European and Asian companies tend to take a longer view and could be more patient investors than U.S. hedge funds."
For now, many of the overseas buyers are promising to invest in their acquired properties. The new management team at Sabic Innovative Plastics, the former GE Plastics, plans to add 75 to 100 employees to its 425-person work force in New England.
"We're really lucky it wasn't bought by a Dow or a DuPont, because they might have moved the work from here to another one of their U.S. facilities," said Alfred Shogry, president of the Berkshire Central Labor Council in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
A spokeswoman at Color Kinetics said, "Philips is looking at us to be their global research and development center for LED-based lighting fixtures," referring to the company's patented light-emitting diode technology. "We're absolutely hiring and growing right now."
But that is not always the case with foreign takeovers. The French telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel, which bought its U.S. rival, Lucent Technologies, last year, said last month that it would cut thousands of jobs. The outsourcing provider Caritor, which has corporate offices in California but almost all its employees and operations in India, recently said it planned to eliminate more than a quarter of the 350 jobs at the Boston headquarters of the technology services company Keane, which it purchased in June.
Klepper-Smith said he feared the effect of foreign deals on workers and communities if decisions on jobs and plant locations are made in Europe, Asia or the Middle East. "It raises some red flags and some real questions about our independence," he said.
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