China Confidential

"It's getting cold out there," writes Deborah Saunders.

No wonder skeptics consider the left's belief in man-made global warming as akin to a fad religion -- last week in Italy, G8 leaders pledged to not allow the Earth's temperature to rise more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

For its next act, the G8 can part the Red Sea. The worst part is: These are the brainy swells who think of themselves as -- all bow -- Men of Science.

The funny part is: G8 leaders can't even decide the year from which emissions must be reduced. 1990? 2005? "This question is a mystery for everyone," an aide to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said.

And while President Obama led the charge for the G8 nations to agree to an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in industrial nations by 2050, the same Russian aide dissed the standard as "likely unattainable."

No worries, the language was non-binding. Global-warming believers say that they are all about science, but their emphasis is not on results so much as declarations of belief.

Continue here.

Al-Shabab terrorists in the south-central Somali town of Baidoa have beheaded seven people in what is believed to the largest mass execution carried out in Somalia by the Al Qaeda-linked group since 2006.

According to relatives of the victims, the charges against the seven Somalis ranged from being Christians to spying for the Transitional Federal Government.

The victims were not tried before the executions were carried out on Friday.

The executions have shocked the people of Baidoa, which was once the base of Somalia's transitional parliament. The town fell to al-Shabab insurgents in January, following the pull-out of Ethiopian troops from Somalia.

Al-Shabab follows the Saudi Arabian Wahabi tenet of Islam. Its terrorists have backed and benefitted from piracy, and imposed barbaric Islamic laws in areas they control. They have forced women to cover their faces, segregated men and women in public places, and have banned music and all forms of entertainment.


Stoning Women

They have also punished thieves by cutting off limbs and have stoned women accused of adultery. Beheadings have been relatively rare, but their numbers have been increasing. Last month, al-Shabab beheaded three people in the same region.

On Friday, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said carrying out such punishments without due process violated Somali and international laws and could be considered as war crimes.

Al-Shabab and an allied opposition group called Hisbul Islam already control large areas of southern Somalia and parts of the capital Mogadishu. In a bid to topple the U.N.-backed government, the insurgents launched an attack on government forces in early May. Two months of fighting in Mogadishu has killed hundreds of people and uprooted more than 200,000 others from their homes.

The Somali government says it needs international help to ensure the government does not collapse. Earlier this week, Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke told local reporters that al-Shabab is a transnational jihadist group, determined to wipe Somalia off the map.

The al-Shabab-led insurgency has attracted hundreds of foreign fighters to Somalia in recent months. Many of them have been seen fighting alongside al-Shabab in Mogadishu streets. Al-Shabab's ranks are also believed to be growing from new recruits trained at various camps set up by al-Shabab in southern Somalia.


EDITOR'S NOTE: Al Qaeda and the Taliban, except for so-called reconcilable Taliban elments, are still beyond the pale of the Obama administrations direct diplomacy drive.

Contrary to the lies and myths promoted by both Barack Obama and George W. Bush, organized Islam is not peaceful and beautiful. It is inherently intolerant, violent, and repressive--a hopelessly reactionary creed that has been taken over by and made synonymous with its most extreme elements.

One example: the horrific culture of cruelty toward animals across the so-called Muslim world, which President Obama has elevated to the level of a rival global power. Muslims are especially cruel toward dogs because barbaric Islam (which Obama demands that we "respect") regards dogs as dirty. In fact, the life of any normal dog is far more precious than the life of any Islamist or fundamentalist Muslim fanatic.

With the above in mind, the following article is referenced and linked to as a public service:

Osama Bin Laden's son Omar first realized the depth of his father's evil when his beloved dogs were taken away and gassed in a chemical warfare experiment, he says in a new memoir.

Omar also confirms what U.S. officials have long believed - that his father was tipped off to a 1998 U.S. attempt to kill him.

He writes that Bin Laden got a secret communication and fled his Afghan camp two hours before cruise missiles struck it.
He does not identify the source of the tip, which the U.S. suspects was Pakistani intelligence.

Omar's book, "Growing Up Bin Laden," written with his mother, Najwa - the Al Qaeda leader's first wife - describes the ultimate dysfunctional family.

Continue here.

Gen. Sayyed Hassan Firouzabadi, who heads Iran's regular armed forces, says his troops are ready to die for the Islamist regime, prepared to crush the protests at any cost. Click here for the story.

Firouzabadi is a regime stooge--a puppet, really, of maniac-in-chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. China Confidential analysts say his comments reflect the regime's concern that secretly secular elements of the regular armed forces could be plotting to intervene on the side of the opposition and the pro-democracy movement.

The regular armed forces vastly outnumbers Islamist Iran's parallel military, the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which controls the nuclear and missile sites and relations with Hamas, Hezbollah, and other foreign terrorist organizations. But the IRGC can count on an estimated one million members of the dreaded Basij militia, as well as thousands of foreign mercenaries, in a showdown with pro-democracy forces.

While most regular armed forces commanders are almost certain to stand with the regime, key defectors--and their weapons--could tilt the odds in favor of a mass uprising.

By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton


EDITOR'S NOTE: The following article was provided by Stratfor, the global intelligence news service.


On June 26, the small Mexican town of Apaseo el Alto, in Guanajuato state, was the scene of a deadly firefight between members of Los Zetas and federal and local security forces. The engagement began when a joint patrol of Mexican soldiers and police officers responded to a report of heavily armed men at a suspected drug safe house. When the patrol arrived, a 20-minute firefight erupted between the security forces and gunmen in the house as well as several suspects in two vehicles who threw fragmentation grenades as they tried to escape.

When the shooting ended, 12 gunmen lay dead, 12 had been taken into custody and several soldiers and police officers had been wounded. At least half of the detained suspects admitted to being members of Los Zetas, a highly trained Mexican cartel group known for its use of military weapons and tactics.

When authorities examined the safe house they discovered a mass grave that contained the remains of an undetermined number of people (perhaps 14 or 15) who are believed to have been executed and then burned beyond recognition by Los Zetas. The house also contained a large cache of weapons, including assault rifles and fragmentation grenades. Such military ordnance is frequently used by Los Zetas and the enforcers who work for their rival cartels.

STRATFOR has been closely following the cartel violence in Mexico for several years now, and the events that transpired in Apaseo el Alto are by no means unique. It is not uncommon for the Mexican authorities to engage in large firefights with cartel groups, encounter mass graves or recover large caches of arms. However, the recovery of the weapons in Apaseo el Alto does provide an opportunity to once again focus on the dynamics of Mexico’s arms trade.


White, Black and Shades of Gray

Before we get down into the weeds of Mexico’s arms trade, let’s do something a little different and first take a brief look at how arms trafficking works on a regional and global scale. Doing so will help illustrate how arms trafficking in Mexico fits into these broader patterns.

When analysts examine arms sales they look at three general categories: the white arms market, the gray arms market and the black arms market. The white arms market is the legal, aboveboard transfer of weapons in accordance with the national laws of the parties involved and international treaties or restrictions. The parties in a white arms deal will file the proper paperwork, including end-user certificates, noting what is being sold, who is selling it and to whom it is being sold. There is an understanding that the receiving party does not intend to transfer the weapons to a third party. So, for example, if the Mexican army wants to buy assault rifles from German arms maker Heckler & Koch, it places the order with the company and fills out all the required paperwork, including forms for obtaining permission for the sale from the German government.

Now, the white arms market can be deceived and manipulated, and when this happens, we get the gray market — literally, white arms that are shifted into the hands of someone other than the purported recipient. One of the classic ways to do this is to either falsify an end-user certificate, or bribe an official in a third country to sign an end-user certificate but then allow a shipment of arms to pass through a country en route to a third location. This type of transaction is frequently used in cases where there are international arms embargoes against a particular country (like Liberia) or where it is illegal to sell arms to a militant group (such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish acronym, FARC). One example of this would be Ukrainian small arms that, on paper, were supposed to go to Cote d’Ivoire but were really transferred in violation of U.N. arms embargoes to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Another example of this would be the government of Peru purchasing thousands of surplus East German assault rifles from Jordan on the white arms market, ostensibly for the Peruvian military, only to have those rifles slip into the gray arms world and be dropped at airstrips in the jungles of Colombia for use by the FARC.

At the far end of the spectrum is the black arms market where the guns are contraband from the get-go and all the business is conducted under the table. There are no end-user certificates and the weapons are smuggled covertly. Examples of this would be the smuggling of arms from the former Soviet Union (FSU) and Afghanistan into Europe through places like Kosovo and Slovenia, or the smuggling of arms into South America from Asia, the FSU and Middle East by Hezbollah and criminal gangs in the Tri-Border Region.

Nation-states will often use the gray and black arms markets in order to deniably support allies, undermine opponents or otherwise pursue their national interests. This was clearly revealed in the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s, but Iran-Contra only scratched the surface of the arms smuggling that occurred during the Cold War. Untold tons of military ordnance were delivered by the United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba to their respective allies in Latin America during the Cold War.

This quantity of materiel shipped into Latin America during the Cold War brings up another very important point pertaining to weapons. Unlike drugs, which are consumable goods, firearms are durable goods. This means that they can be useful for decades and are frequently shipped from conflict zone to conflict zone. East German MPiKMS and MPiKM assault rifles are still floating around the world’s arms markets years after the German Democratic Republic ceased to exist. In fact, visiting an arms bazaar in a place like Yemen is like visiting an arms museum. One can encounter century-old, still-functional Lee-Enfield and Springfield rifles in a rack next to a modern U.S. M4 rifle or German HK93, and those next to brand-new Chinese Type 56 and 81 assault rifles.

There is often a correlation between arms and drug smuggling. In many instances, the same routes used to smuggle drugs are also used to smuggle arms. In some instances, like the smuggling routes from Central Asia to Europe, the flow of guns and drugs goes in the same direction, and they are both sold in Western Europe for cash. In the case of Latin American cocaine, the drugs tend to flow in one direction (toward the United States and Europe) while guns from U.S. and Russian organized-crime groups flow in the other direction, and often these guns are used as whole or partial payment for the drugs.

Illegal drugs are not the only thing traded for guns. During the Cold War, a robust arms-for-sugar trade transpired between the Cubans and Vietnamese. As a result, Marxist groups all over Latin America were furnished with U.S. materiel either captured or left behind when the Americans withdrew from Vietnam. LAW rockets traced to U.S. military stocks sent to Vietnam were used in several attacks by Latin American Marxist groups. These Vietnam War-vintage weapons still crop up with some frequency in Mexico, Colombia and other parts of the region. Cold War-era weapons furnished to the likes of the Contras, Sandinistas, Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity movement in the 1980s are also frequently encountered in the region.

After the civil wars ended in places like El Salvador and Guatemala, the governments and the international community attempted to institute arms buy-back programs, but those programs were not very successful and most of the guns turned in were very old — the better arms were cached by groups or kept by individuals. Some of these guns have dribbled back into the black arms market, and Central and South America are still awash in Cold War weapons.

But Cold War shipments are not the only reason that Latin America is flooded with guns. In addition to the indigenous arms industries in countries like Brazil and Argentina, Venezuela has purchased hundreds of thousands of AK assault rifles in recent years to replace its aging FN-FAL rifles and has even purchased the equipment to open a factory to produce AK-103 rifles under license inside Venezuela. The Colombian government has accused the Venezuelans of arming the FARC, and evidence obtained by the Colombians during raids on FARC camps and provided to the public appears to support those assertions.


More than 90 Percent?

For several years now, Mexican officials have been making public statements that more than 90 percent of the arms used by criminals in Mexico come from the United States. That number was echoed last month in a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on U.S. efforts to combat arms trafficking to Mexico (see external link).

According to the report, some 30,000 firearms were seized from criminals by Mexican officials in 2008. Out of these 30,000 firearms, information pertaining to 7,200 of them, (24 percent) was submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for tracing. Of these 7,200 guns, only about 4,000 could be traced by the ATF, and of these 4,000, some 3,480 (87 percent) were shown to have come from the United States.

This means that the 87 percent figure comes from the number of weapons submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF that could be successfully traced and not from the total number of weapons seized by the Mexicans or even from the total number of weapons submitted to the ATF for tracing. The 3,480 guns positively traced to the United States equals less than 12 percent of the total arms seized in 2008 and less than 48 percent of all those submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing.

In a response to the GAO report, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wrote a letter to the GAO (published as an appendix to the report) calling the GAO’s use of the 87 percent statistic “misleading.” The DHS further noted, “Numerous problems with the data collection and sample population render this assertion as unreliable.”

Trying to get a reliable idea about where the drug cartels are getting their weapons can be difficult because the statistics on firearms seized in Mexico are very confusing. For example, while the GAO report says that 30,000 guns were seized in 2008 alone, the Mexican Prosecutor General’s office has reported that between Dec. 1, 2005, and Jan. 22, 2009, Mexican authorities seized 31,512 weapons from the cartels.

Furthermore, it is not prudent to rely exclusively on weapons submitted to the ATF for tracing as a representative sample of the overall Mexican arms market. This is because there are some classes of weapons, such as RPG-7s and South Korean hand grenades, which make very little sense for the Mexicans to pass to the ATF for tracing since they obviously are not from the United States. The ATF is limited in its ability to trace weapons that did not pass through the United States, though there are offices at the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency that maintain extensive international arms-trafficking databases.

Mexican authorities are also unlikely to ask the ATF to trace weapons that can be tracked through the Mexican government’s own databases such as the one maintained by the Mexican Defense Department’s Arms and Ammunition Marketing Division (UCAM), which is the only outlet through which Mexican citizens can legally buy guns. If they can trace a gun through UCAM there is simply no need to submit it to ATF.

The United States has criticized Mexico for decades over its inability to stop the flow of narcotics into U.S. territory, and for the past several years Mexico has responded by blaming the guns coming from the United States for its inability to stop the drug trafficking. In this context, there is a lot of incentive for the Mexicans to politicize and play up the issue of guns coming from the United States, and north of the border there are U.S. gun-control advocates who have a vested interest in adding fuel to the fire and gun-rights advocates who have an interest in playing down the number.

Clearly, the issue of U.S. guns being sent south of the border is a serious one, but STRATFOR does not believe that there is sufficient evidence to support the claim that 90 percent (or more) of the cartels’ weaponry comes from the United States. The data at present is inclusive — the 90 percent figure appears to be a subsample of a sample, so that number cannot be applied with confidence to the entire country. Indeed, the percentage of U.S. arms appears to be far lower than 90 percent in specific classes of arms such as fully automatic assault rifles, machine guns, rifle grenades, fragmentation grenades and RPG-7s. Even items such as the handful of U.S.-manufactured LAW rockets encountered in Mexico have come from third countries and not directly from the United States.

However, while the 90 percent figure appears to be unsubstantiated by documentable evidence, this fact does not necessarily prove that the converse is true, even if it may be a logical conclusion. The bottom line is that, until there is a comprehensive, scientific study conducted on the arms seized by the Mexican authorities, much will be left to conjecture, and it will be very difficult to determine exactly how many of the cartels’ weapons have come from the United States, and to map out precisely how the black, white and gray arms markets have interacted to bring weapons to Mexico and Mexican cartels.

More research needs to be done on both sides of the border in order to understand this important issue.


Four Trends

In spite of the historical ambiguity, there are four trends that are likely to shape the future flow of arms into Mexico. The first of these is militarization. Since 2006 there has been a steady trend toward the use of heavy military ordnance by the cartels. This process was begun in earnest when the Gulf Cartel first recruited Los Zetas, but in order to counter Los Zetas, all the other cartels have had to recruit and train hard-core enforcer units and outfit them with similar weaponry. Prior to 2007, attacks involving fragmentation hand grenades, 40 mm grenades and RPGs were somewhat rare and immediately attracted a lot of attention. Such incidents are now quite common, and it is not unusual to see firefights like the June 26 incident in Apaseo el Alto in which dozens of grenades are employed.

Another trend in recent years has been the steady movement of Mexican cartels south into Central and South America. As noted above, the region is awash in guns, and the growing presence of Mexican cartel members puts them in contact with people who have access to Cold War weapons, international arms merchants doing business with groups like the FARC and corrupt officials who can obtain weapons from military sources in the region. We have already seen seizures of weapons coming into Mexico from the south. One notable seizure occurred in March 2009, when Guatemalan authorities raided a training camp in northern Guatemala near the Mexican border that they claim belonged to Los Zetas. In the raid they recovered 563 40 mm grenades and 11 M60 machine guns that had been stolen from the Guatemalan military and sold to Los Zetas.

The third trend is the current firearm and ammunition market in the United States. Since the election of Barack Obama, arms sales have gone through the roof due to fears (so far unfounded) that the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress will attempt to restrict or ban certain weapons. Additionally, ammunition companies are busy filling military orders for the U.S. war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. As anyone who has attempted to buy an assault rifle (or even a brick of .22 cartridges) will tell you, it is no longer cheap or easy to buy guns and ammunition. In fact, due to this surge in demand, it is downright difficult to locate many types of assault rifles and certain calibers of ammunition, though a lucky buyer might be able to find a basic stripped-down AR-15 for $850 to $1,100, or a semiautomatic AK-47 for $650 to $850. Of course, such a gun purchased in the United States and smuggled into Mexico will be sold to the cartels at a hefty premium above the purchase price.

By way of comparison, in places where weapons are abundant, such as Yemen, a surplus fully automatic assault rifle can be purchased for under $100 on the white arms market and for about the same price on the black arms market. This difference in price provides a powerful economic incentive to buy low elsewhere and sell high in Mexico, as does the inability to get certain classes of weapons such as RPGs and fragmentation grenades in the United States. Indeed, we have seen reports of international arms merchants from places like Israel and Belgium selling weapons to the cartels and bringing that ordnance into Mexico through routes other than over the U.S. border. Additionally, in South America, a number of arms smugglers, including Hezbollah and Russian organized-crime groups, have made a considerable amount of money supplying arms to groups in the region like the FARC.

The fourth trend is the increasing effort by the U.S. government to stanch the flow of weapons from the United States into Mexico. A recent increase in the number of ATF special agents and inspectors pursuing gun dealers who knowingly sell to the cartels or straw-purchase buyers who obtain guns from honest dealers is going to increase the chances of such individuals being caught. This stepped-up enforcement will have an impact as the risk of being caught illegally buying or smuggling guns begins to outweigh the profit that can be made by selling guns to the cartels. We believe that these two factors — supply problems and enforcement — will work together to help reduce the flow of U.S. guns to Mexico.

While there has been a long and well-documented history of arms smuggling across the U.S.-Mexican border, it is important to recognize that, while the United States is a significant source of certain classes of weapons, it is by no means the only source of illegal weapons in Mexico. As STRATFOR has previously noted, even if it were possible to hermetically seal the U.S.-Mexican border, the Mexican cartels would still be able to obtain weapons from non-U.S. sources (just as drugs would continue to flow into the United States). The law of supply and demand will ensure that the Mexican cartels will get their ordnance, but it is highly likely that an increasing percentage of that supply will begin to come from outside the United States via the gray and black arms markets.

An Australian government official says China's detention of a Rio Tinto Group executive is bad for "business certainty." Click here.

Abraham Miller's article, "For Liberal Jews, Obama is the Messiah," is brilliant. An excerpt:

To support Obama, liberal Jews had to engage in a set of incredible mental gymnastics. They had to ignore his twenty-year relationship with the anti-Semitic minister Reverend Jeremiah Wright. They had to ignore his strong personal relationship with the virulent anti-Zionist Rashid Khalidi. They had to ignore his statement to the Iowa caucuses that no one has suffered more than the Palestinian people. They had to ignore his support of his Kenyan cousin and genocidal strongman Raila Odinga, an advocate of Sharia. They had to ignore Obama’s own Muslim heritage. They had to ignore that anti-Israel policy experts such as Samantha Power (who now has her own special seat on the National Security Council), Susan Rice, and General James Jones had the real inside tract on advising Obama on the Middle East.

Since the election, Obama’s policies toward Israel have been treacherous, and the reaction of the liberal Jewish community can only be described as inconceivable....

Read the entire essay here.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Thank you, Israpundit, for distributing the piece and for bringing it to our attention. Well done, as always!

Thousands of Chinese are camping in tents following Thursday's magnitude 6.0 earthquake. Click here for the story.

The turbaned tyranny is playing for time....

Reuters reports:

Iran is preparing a new package of "political, security and international" issues to put to the West, its foreign minister said Saturday.

"The package can be a good basis for talks with the West. The package will contain Iran's stances on political, security and international issues," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference.

Continue here.

The Internet warfare unit is called Lab 110. It is alleged to have been ordered to destroy South Korea's communication networks--an act of war. Click here for the story.

The time has come--in fact, it is long overdue--to impose a maritime blockade that would end exports of gasoline and other refined oil products to Iran and exports of unrefined oil from Iran.

The United Arab Emirates supplies about three-fourths of Iran’s gasoline. India, Turkey, the Netherlands, and France are among its other suppliers.

Iran, which is one of OPEC's founding members, holds the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves and the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves.

Shutting Iran down would force the Islamist regime to choose between persisting in its pursuit of nuclear weapons and economic survival. Should the regime respond with military attacks, the Western response should be obliteration of the regime--meaning, utter destruction of all known and suspected nuclear and missile installations and annihilation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Two innocent reporters were kidnapped on Chinese territory by North Korean soldiers and taken across the border. They face years of imprisonment at hard labor in a Hitlerian concentration camp. The United States, led by President Barack Obama, is reduced to begging and bowing ... crawling on hands and knees ... to the Stalinist/Kimist/criminal regime.

Click here for the latest on this disgusting affair.

Abandoned by the world, incredibly brave, young Iranians are defying the fascist scum (with whom the Obama administration still seeks "engagement") and chanting, "Death to turbans!" Click here for the story.

The useful idiots of the West are totally out of touch; regime change is the only way forward.

This just in....

AP reports:

A Paris court on Friday convicted a gang leader of the brutal 2006 killing of a young man prosecutors said was targeted because he was Jewish.

Youssouf Fofana, 28, was sentenced to life in prison. He was one of 27 people on trial in the kidnapping, torture and murder of Ilan Halimi, who was 23 years old.

Halimi was found naked, handcuffed and covered with burn marks near railroad tracks in the Essonne region south of Paris on Feb. 13, 2006. He died on the way to the hospital after being held captive for more than three weeks. The horrific death revived worries in France about lingering anti-Semitism and led to deep anxiety in France's Jewish community, the largest in western Europe.

As the verdict was announced, Fofana, who headed the self-styled "gang of barbarians," mimicked applause. Fofana's sentence means he will have no possibility of parole for 22 years.

His two main accomplices, Samir Ait Abdelmalek and Jean-Christophe Soumbou, were given sentences of 15 and 18 years, respectively. Another man who was a minor at the time also received a 15-year prison term, while Emma, a young girl used to attract Halimi, was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Two people, a man and a woman, were acquitted.

Click here to continue reading.

Click here for the up-to-the-minute news on the cyber attack.

Predominantly Muslim Turkey, a country with a genocidal past, has effectively accused China of aiding and abetting genocide against Muslims in Xinjiang. Click here.

China's hypersensitive Communist Party leaders are likely to suspect an American hand in this.... U.S. President Barack Obama backs Turkey's Islamist-leaning and -rooted government, to the point of pushing its bid for EU membership, even though the United States is itself not an EU member.

Obama has also spoken out in defense of Muslim headscarves, veils, and burqas, and has criticized staunchly secular and democratic France for restricting the barbaric gear and garments.

Reuters reports:

Muslim Turkey shares linguistic and religious links with Uighurs, and Turkish nationalists see Xinjiang as the easternmost frontier of Turkic ethnicity. Thousands of Uighur immigrants live in Turkey.

Turkey has sought to boost ties with China, the world's third-biggest economy. President Abdullah Gul last month became the first Turkish president to visit China in 15 years, signing $1.5 billion worth of trade deals, according to Turkish media.

Turkey's Industry Minister Thursday called on Turks to boycott Chinese goods to protest the violence in Xinjiang, but a spokesman said this was the minister's personal view and not government policy.

The leader of Pakistan--a country defined entirely by its Islamic religion and allegiance--has admitted that his predecessors viewed terrorist groups as strategic assets, and supported them accordingly. Click here for the story. An excerpt that leaps off the screen appears below:

"Let us be truthful to ourselves and make a candid admission of the realities," he said. "The terrorists of today were the heroes of yesteryears until 9/11 occurred and they began to haunt us as well."

He acknowledged the groups did not develop because of a weak central government, but from strategic decisions, noting they were "created and nurtured" to provide immediate gains in the region.

Must reading....

An exclusive weekend magazine interview with one of Israel's greatest strategic thinkers--Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's national security advisor, Dr. Uzi Arad. Click here.

At a time when the United States most needs China's cooperation with regard to nuclear-armed North Korea and nuclear-arming Iran, Washington appears to be going out of its way to fuel traditional Chinese fears--that the U.S. aims to use separatist movements in Xinjiang and Tibet to destabilize and dismember China.

Reuters reports:

Chinese riot police broke up a small demonstration by Uighurs leaving Friday prayers in a Muslim Uighur neighborhood of Urumqi, arresting several who were taken away with hands above their heads.

The action came as the United States urged Chinese leaders to act with restraint in tackling the unrest in the Xinjiang region.

Continue here.

The turbaned tyranny is playing the Appeaser-in-Chief like a violin as it develops nuclear weapons and the means of delivering the weapons to Israel ... and Europe ... and the United States itself (with North Korean help).

Click here for the news. Surely, the monstrous mullahocracy is shaking in its robes ... not!

China Confidential repeatedly warned during the 2008 Presidential campaign that Obama's ascent to the White House would assure the Islamist regime of at least a year's time for achieving its strategic objectives. Tragically, we were right about that. The President came to power determined to appease and align with Islamism in general--and Islamist Iran, in particular--in order to pacify Pakistan and Afghanistan, isolate Al Qaeda and the Taliban (except for its so-called reconcilable elements), and ... yes ... counter ... China's rise and Russia's resurgence. The hoary policy of trying to ride the Islamist/Islamic tiger without being eaten by it ... a strategy that dates to the Great Game of imperial rivalry between Britain and Czarist Russia ... has been revived and revamped under cover of "engagement" and "tough, principled diplomacy" with fascistic foes who muse openly about a "world without America and Israel."

And foolish liberals--Stalinism's useful idiots--for whom dialogue and diplomacy are ends, not means, have fallen for the whole perfidious package. Even in the aftermath of Iran's rigged, Islamist election, the dumbbell Democrats are embracing Obama's dance with the devil.

Click here for Q&A on the case that is sending chills across an entire industry, threatening to ruin relations between Beijing and Canberra, and reminding foreigners of the risks of doing business in rising China.

Read about it here. A U.S. panel on religious freedom is demanding their release--innocent people held in a horrific prison, facing trial on trumped-up charges of espionage simply because they practice their religion. If convicted, they could be sentenced to death.

And the United States still aims to "engage" (code for appease and align with) ... instead of remove ... the nuclear-arming, Islamist regime. Incredible.

Click here for background information on the persecution of Baha'is in Iran.

American and Israeli sources say the Islamist regime could--but probably won't--build a nuclear bomb within a year. Click here for the article.

China Confidential analysts disagree with the assessment. They assert Iran's turbaned tyranny will build a bomb as soon as possible ... and keep on building bombs ... and ballistic missiles to deliver the bombs.

Iran is gripped by a monstrous menace bent on destroying Israel, driving the United States from the Middle East, and, eventually, bombing the U.S. homeland itself in order to bring about "a world without America and Israel," in the infamous words of the regime's maniac-in-chief, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

BREAKING NEWS....

Click here for the report.

Thousands ... not hundreds ... of incredibly courageous Iranians ... may God protect and direct them and lead them to victory ... defied the fascist scum. Click here for the story.

"And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality."

- U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama, Cairo, June 4, 2009.

Click here and here for the sickening story.

Abandoned by America's Appeaser-in-Chief, two beautiful, innocent, Iranian Christian women are being held in a notorious Iranian prison simply because of their religious faith. Our prayers are with them and their families.

Inherently intolerant, violent, and repressive fundamentalist Islam is the despicable creed that America's first Muslim-born President--according to barbaric Islamic religious law, which traces religion through one's father--is actively promoting and attempting to appease and, worse, align with.

Perfidy!

Click here for the latest on the controversy over renaming Moscow's historic Leningrad railway station. The Communist revolutionary leader would roll in his grave ... if he had one. His embalmed body still lies under view in glass in his Red Square tomb.

Click here for the up-to-the-minute news. Hundreds of students defied the Iranian regime's vow to crush street protests.

Click below to watch a video of a student protest that was held on July 3 at Kashan University in Tehran.

No need for UN interference, China tells Turkey. Click here for the story.

AP reports:

China's top communist leaders vowed to maintain stability in the west of the country in their first public comments Thursday on the ethnic riots that killed more than 150 people, and accused overseas forces of orchestrating the violence.

An urgent nine-member Politburo Standing Committee meeting, led by President Hu Jintao, called on Communist Party members and officials at all levels to mobilize to restore order, and promised punishment to rioters and leniency to participants who were misled by agitators.

"Preserving and maintaining the overall stability of Xinjiang is currently the most urgent task," the Politburo said, according to an account carried by the official Xinhua News Agency.

Security forces kept a firm grip on the tense Xinjiang capital, Urumqi (pronounced uh-ROOM-chee), after the region's worst ethnic violence in decades as residents tentatively emerged to go about daily life.

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Amid new warnings that it aims to crush dissent, Iran's Islamist regime defiantly vows to continue its suspect nuclear program. An adviser to the Supreme (Clerical Fascist) Leader says Iran won't back down even "one step."

Click here for the report.

Attempts to appease Tehran's turbaned tyrants--the atomic ayatollahs and the missile-mad mullahs--have failed. Regime change through real revolution or war is the only viable option, apart from allowing an apocalyptic, imperialist power to forever change the international status quo.

BBC reports:

A third wave of attacks is now reported to be underway, slowing down or paralysing the internet operations of large organisations including a bank, a national newspaper and the South Korean spy agency.

The agency is reportedly the source of the speculation that the operation may have been instigated by North Korea or its sympathisers.

The United States is the only other country to have been affected by the cyber attacks, where the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department are all said to have been targeted.

While undoubtedly causing inconvenience for the organisations, and their customers, the attacks affect only their public websites, and present no other security threat.

Despite the speculation, no evidence has been produced to prove a link with North Korea.

But some reports suggest it has a long-established military unit, employing up to 1,000 skilled computer hackers.

Click here to read the whole story.

Click here. In Russia, Obama is no star.

"T" is out. So, who is in?

Haaretz reports on the search for Israel's next spy boss. Click here.

Did an unintentional scream by a 19-year-old woman spark deadly ethnic violence in Xinjiang? Click here for the story.

The fascist regime vows to crush silent, peaceful protests. Click here for the story.

Click here for the story. It is ... bizarre.

Click here for the report. While U.S. President Barack Obama lectures and tours the world, a war rages just across the border.

The plot thickens. Click here. Turkey, led by an Islamist-leaning and -rooted party, is meddling in China's affairs on the side of Muslim extremists.

China--and Russia--will surely see an American hand behind Ankara's menacing move.

Click here. The Annointed One can't stop snubbing, lecturing, meddling, pressuring....

Click here for the President's incredible affirmation of his determination to engage in direct diplomacy--code for appeasement--with nuclear-armed North Korea and nuclear-arming Iran.

Both enemies of the United States--and civilized humanity--are pursuing imperialist foreign policies. They aim to overthrow the status quo--the power relations among nations--regionally and globally. But Obama is apparently indifferent to the threat; his appeasement and attempt to align with Islamist Iran and Islamism in general (in order to contain and dismember rising China and contain and counter resurgent Russia) will fail to prevent wars and instead make them inevitable--on enemy terms.

Not since Jimmy Carter has a U.S. President pursued policies this catastrophic.

Click here for the analysis. The administration's appeasement policy toward nuclear-armed North Korea and nuclear-arming Iran is putting the U.S. and its allies at risk.

Obama looks more like a one-termer--another Jimmy Carter--every day.

If North Korea is responsible for launching a massive cyber-attack on U.S. and South Korean government websites--click here for the story--the assault is just a prelude for more serious provocations, including a third nuclear test and military strikes on South Korean targets. The coming weeks will probably see dramatic escalations on Pyongyang's part.

July 27, anniversary of the Korean War armistice, is an important date to watch, according to China Confidential analysts. North Korea has renounced the armistice and is thus already technically at war with the United States.

Another observation: it is unlikely that North Korea could have accomplished its first-ever, massive cyber-attack without outside help and training. China is a chief suspect in this regard, along with Iran, and, also, possibly, rogue hacker gangs in Russia.

Washington should not expect any meaningful cooperation from China in tracking down the culprits and reining in its nuclear-armed vassal. Beijing believes the Obama administration aims to destabilize and dismantle China by supporting separatist movements in Tibet and Xinjiang.

The idiotic, Islamist-leaning U.S. House Speaker is interfering in China's internal affairs--on the side of Muslim separatists and extremists--at precisely the time when the United States most needs China's cooperation with respect to nuclear-arming, Islamist Iran.

Has Washington lost its mind?

Has the U.S. Democratic Party become an arm of Islamist world conquest?

Click here for the nauseating news.

Readers have asked if China Confidential intentionally ignored remarks by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden that seemed to indicate that the Obama administration had given Israel a green light to attack Islamist Iran's nuclear facilities. The answer is yes for several reasons, including the following:

1. Biden is a notorious blowhard and a blabbermouth who suffers from incurable foot-in-mouth disease. His statements are usually about as meaningful as a dog's urine (no insult intended to dogs, our favorite animals).

2. At most, Biden's words were meant to rattle the Iranian regime--which perceives U.S. President Barack Obama to be weak and ineffective.

3. We knew it was only a matter of a day or so before Obama or his spokesman would correct or clarify--as in retract--the Vice President's remarks.

We were right--again--as shown by this report. Click here.

The Obama administration is still bent on appeasing--and, worse, aligning with--Islamist Iran. Nothing has changed in that regard; Obama came to power believing that Islamism is a force that can be manipulated, managed, and effectively exploited. The only off-limits Islamists are Al Qaeda and the Taliban, except for the latter group's so-called reconcilable elements.

Off limits for the time being, that is.... At the rate things are going, it is only a matter of time--say, two years--before an administration stooge starts to make a case for reconcilable Al Qaeda elements.

Click here. The BRC countries--BRIC minus India--are aggressively seeking to end the age of the dollar.

Another sign of how the world sees America's new President--as an appeaser and a weakling presiding over and actually facilitating his country's decline.

Iranian exile sources say the regime has imported some 15,000 mercenaries to lethally suppress pro-opposition protesters, senior clerics, democracy-seekers, and other dissidents. Iran's Lebanese Islamist proxy, Hezbollah, has supplied most of the mercenaries; but Hamas and Venezuela have also provided units.

Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Supreme (Clerical Fascist) Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is in charge of the mercenary operation.

Aircraft carrying the mercenaries have been seen landing at the Southern port of Mahshahr.


Hezbollah Terrorist Leading Street Patrols

The bearded man pictured above in a green shirt, holding a walkie-talkie while patrolling the streets of Tehran, is Hussein Monif Ashmar, a leading Hezbollah operative, whose responsibilities allegedly include organizing suicide attacks. His photograph was identified by a now exiled former member of Quds (islamic iran's Special Forces), Amir Farshad Ebrahimi.

Protesters have reportedly captured, identified and released Arabic speaking mercenaries from Somalia; Sudan; Oman; Syria; Yemen; and Hamas-ruled Gaza.

And China Confidential has learned that Venezuelan security experts have been assigned to provide personal protection services to the Supreme Leader and maniac-in-chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.


Venezuelan Bomb-Sniffing Dogs

Ahmadinejad recently spent over $1 million on two, specially trained, Venezuelan bomb-sniffing dogs to guard his office--to the horror of visitors. Believers in barbaric Islam (which U.S. President Barack Obama urges Americans to "respect") regard dogs as utterly unclean. Hence, the Muslim world's well known cruelty toward dogs--wonderfully noble, intelligent, and loyal animals, with which human beings have developed a unique and inspiring bond dating to prehistoric times. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Clearly, the life of any normal dog is far more precious and worthy of respect than the life of any Islamist.]

Islamist Iran has a long history of using Palestinian thugs and killers. PLO chief Yasser Arafat had militias flown in to help in the street killings of the Islamic revolution and to carry out executions in the prisons.

Arafat received staggering sums--some sources say billions of dollars--from Ayatollah Khomeini following the turbaned tyrant's overthrow of Iran's pro-U.S., modernizing monarch, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (betrayed by the catastrophic Carter administration).

Li Ching-Yuen or Li,Ching-Yun (traditional Chinese: 李清雲; pinyin: Lǐ Qīngyún; born 1677 or after died May 6, 1933) was a Chinese herbalist, martial artist and tactical advisor. He claimed to be born in 1734, while disputed records suggest 1677. Both alleged lifespans of 199 and 256 years far exceed the longest confirmed lifespan of 122 years and 164 days.

Li Ching-Yuen was supposedly born in 1677 in Qi Jiang Xian, Szechuan province and is alleged to have spent most of his life in the hills gathering herbs and knowledge of longevity methods. In 1749, when he was 71 years old, he moved to Kai Xian to join the Chinese army as a teacher of the martial arts and as a tactical advisor.

In 1927, Li Ching Yuen was invited by General Yang Sen to visit him in Wan Xian, Szechuan. The general was fascinated by his youthfulness, strength and prowess in spite of his advanced age. His famous portrait was photographed there. Returning home, he died a year later, some say of natural causes; others claim that he told friends that "I have done all I have to do in this world. I will now go home."

After Li's death, General Yang Sen investigated the truth about his claimed background and age. He wrote a report that was later published. In 1933, people interviewed from his home province remembered seeing him when they were children, and that he hadn't aged much during their lifetime. Others reported that he had been friends with their grandfathers.

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday demanded that Iran release a French woman held on charges of spying.

Sarkozy described the accusations of espionage levied against 23-year-old student Clotilde Reiss as "pure fantasy."

French officials say Reiss was detained at Tehran airport last week on her way home to France after five months of study. Iranian authorities accuse her of taking part in opposition protests and sending an e-mail to a friend that contained information on the rallies.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says the charges were related to pictures of the protests that she took with her mobile phone and sent via text message.

A new survey shows 25% of nuclear-armed Pakistan in support of Al Qaeda attacks on Americans. Click here.

Click here for an up-to-date report on China's investments in Canadian mining and energy companies.

The ethnic violence is continuing....

Reuters Reports:

Riot police on Tuesday fired tear gas to try to break up rock-throwing Han and Uighur protesters who clashed in the capital of China's Muslim region of Xinjiang two days after bloody clashes killed 156 and wounded more than 1,000.

Hundreds of protesters from China's predominant Han ethnic group, many clutching meat cleavers, metal pipes and wooden clubs, smashed shops owned by Uighurs, a Turkic largely Islamic people who share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia.

Some Han Chinese protesters shouted "attack Uighurs" as both sides hurled rocks at each other.

Police used tear gas to try to disperse the crowd, but it only emboldened the demonstrators, caught between two sets of anti-riot police 600 meters apart.

Some used water to wash the gas out of their eyes as they pressed toward police at the mainly Uighur end of the street.

"They attacked us. Now it's our turn to attack them," a man in the crowd told Reuters. He refused to give his name

Click here for the in-depth analysis. Beijing's PR response to the Muslim riots in Xinjiang reflects an appreciation of the power of social networking sites and other new media to shape and influence world opinion.

Read about it here. The opposition leader is still speaking out amid a government crackdown that has crushed street protests. Hundreds of demonstrators are being detained in inhuman conditions.

Click here for an expose of the piracy problem. Among the revelations: more than half the attacks go unreported; piracy is rampant in Nigeria, rising in Peru.

As for Somalia, Islamist-backed pirates there are smuggling Al Qaeda fighters into the failed state. Click here for the story.

Click here for the sickening story. The rampage was triggered by a Christian who allegedly dared to pass a Muslim on the road, recalling times when Jews were forbidden to ride on horses or mules in Muslim lands lest they appear higher than Muslims.

Click here for the story. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps says it is in charge of state security.

The IRGC is also in charge of the nuclear and missile programs--and relations with terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah.

An apocalyptic atomic cult, led by maniac-in-chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--a former professional terrorist--has taken over the clerical fascist regime. The top turbaned tyrant, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is Ahmadinejad's puppet.

Read about it here.