RWC Unfiltered Jan 15, 2012

• Obama Puts 15,000 Troops Into Kuwait                                                                                                      
  

· U.S. Sets Persian Gulf Strategy

· Joran van der Sloot has been sentenced to 28 years

· Mercedez Benz Uses Che To Sell Luxury Cars

· U. S. Warns Iran About Hormuz

· China Tests SLBM

Obama is busy aligning Middle East allies with the next US steps on Iran. Contributing to the mounting sense in Washington of an approaching US-Iranian confrontation, the Pentagon is substantially building up its combat power around Iran, stationing nearly 15,000 troops in Kuwait - two Army infantry brigades and a helicopter unit – and keeping two aircraft carriers the region. The USS Carl Vinson, the USS John Stennis which was to have returned to home base and their strike groups will stay in the Arabian Sea.

Iran is caught up in the same pre-war swirl of activity. Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani spent two days in Ankara this week. But Turkish leaders failed in their bid to sell their good offices as brokers for averting the expected collision between Tehran and the West. Before flying out of Ankara Friday, Jan. 13, Larijani commented: “We have different ways of doing things.”

Iranian sources quote the Iranian official as telling his hosts that his country is prepared to take on any military aggressors. One of the responses weighed in Tehran to meet the rising military pressure might be an open declaration of Iran as a nuclear power. By accepting a visit by IAEA inspectors on Jan. 28 - to investigate charges that Iran is running a clandestine nuclear bomb program - Tehran may be moving toward that irreversible admission - or possibly its first nuclear test.

It was disclosed exclusively on Nov. 25, 2011 that Iran may soon publicize its attainment of a nuclear weapon, a step still being debated intensely at the highest levels of the Islamic regime in Tehran. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who will make the ultimate decision, is very much in favor of facing the world as a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic. He calculates that this fait accompli has a good change of warding off a Western and/or Israeli military attack.

Thursday night, Jan. 12, President Obama put in a call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss coordinating US and Israeli moves for a military operation against Iran, which many US media believe to be imminent.
The New York Times wrote Friday under the caption: Dangerous Tension with Iran, “Many officials, experts and commentators increasingly expect some kind of military confrontation.”

Obama had similar conversations with other Middle East leaders this week. The and Saudi and Qatari foreign ministers, Prince Saud al-Faisal and Sheikh Hamad al-Thani, spent two days on Jan. 10-11 in Washington talking to the US president. The contents of their talks were kept under tight wraps. Friday, British premier David Cameron suddenly turned up in Riyadh for talks with Saudi King Abdullah and Crown Prince Nayef.

Discussions on military preparations centering on Iran inevitably concern the need for urgent action to halt the unending carnage in Syria, Iran’s close ally.

Thursday, the Russian National Security Adviser Nikolai Patrushev, one of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s closest advisers, said ominously: “We are receiving information that NATO members and some Persian Gulf States working under the ‘Libyan scenario’ intend to move from indirect intervention in Syria to direct military intervention.”

Moscow has consistently spoken out against any foreign intervention in the Syrian conflict – or even tough UN sanctions.

Russia’s NATO ambassador Dmitry Rogozin has suggested more than once that the West would use a military adventure in Syria as the jumping-off point for an attack on Iran.

Another sign that Syria is under the military eye of the West came from an indiscreet comment Israel’s Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz made Tuesday, Jan. 10 in a briefing to a Knesset panel. Israel, he said, is preparing to absorb members of Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect after his downfall.

He later detracted his words. disclose that the context of the general’s comment was Israeli preparations to establish a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the Golan border to shelter Alawites fleeing the vengeance of their compatriots.

Turkey too has gone back to talking about setting up in northern Syria a Turkish buffer zone for refugees and anti-Assad dissidents.

Further fueling the war scare, two helmeted bombers on a motorbike assassinated the Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, deputy director of the Natanz uranium enrichment center, in central Tehran Wednesday. Friday, Ayatollah Khamenei accused the United States and Israel of a CIA-Mossad master plan, which Iranian sources claimed bore the title “Red Windows” and focused on training Iranian dissidents for hit and sabotage operations in Iran.

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.

The U.S. Navy has made the growing Iranian military presence in the Gulf a top priority. Officials said the U.S. Navy has been devising strategies to maintain operations in the Gulf, including the Strait of Hormuz, amid Iranian threats. They acknowledged that Iran was capable of blocking the strait for a short period.

“If you ask me what keeps me awake at night, it’s the Strait of Hormuz and the business going on in the Arabian Gulf,” U.S. Navy operations chief Adm. Jonathan Greenert said.In a Jan. 10 address to the Center for New American Security, Greenert said the Navy was focused on requirements in the Middle East. The operations chief said Hormuz, which contains 40 percent of global oil shipments, marked the top of his concerns.

“There won’t be a taking of my eye off the ball,” Greenert said.The U.S. Navy has deployed at least two carrier groups to protect shipping lanes in the Gulf. The Navy’s Fifth Fleet, responsible for the Gulf, maintains its headquarters in Bahrain.

Iran ended a 10-day exercise earlier this month that practiced the closure of the strait. During the exercise, Velayet-90, Iran, reporting the presence of an American aircraft carrier, warned the U.S. Navy against deployment in Hormuz.

In his address, Greenert said the Navy was supplying such equipment as self-protection and anti-submarine systems to American warships in the Gulf.The officer said U.S. Navy ships were also provided with systems to stop any swarm attack by scores of Iranian speedboats against aircraft carriers, frigates and destroyers.

“It’s something I mull over again and again,” Greenert said. “Our folks that transit in and around that area, I want to make sure that they’re able to deal with the things that they need to deal with.”

Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute.

Joran van der Sloot has been sentenced to 28 years in prison after pleading guilty to the 2010 murder of a 21-year-old Peruvian woman he had met at a casino in Lima.

Van der Sloot was also ordered to pay $75,000 in reparations by a three-judge panel in Lima for the “cruel” and “ferocious” murder that took place exactly five years to the day after the disappearance of American teen Natalee Holloway in Aruba. He showed no emotion as the court clerk read the sentence, describing how he elbowed Flores in the face then beat and strangled her with his bloodied shirt.

Van der Sloot told the court he reserves the right to appeal the conviction and sentence.

Due to time already served, the judges said van der Sloot’s sentence would end in June 2038. But under Peru’s penal system, Van der Sloot could become eligible for parole after serving half of the sentence with good behavior, including work and study. Van der Sloot could be freed sometime in his late 30s if paroled after serving half of his 28-year sentence.

Van der sloot — who appeared in court wearing a green T-shirt while sweating profusely as he appeared to frequently wipe tears from his eyes — said he was “truly sorry” for the killing of Stephany Flores. He said he had “wanted from the first moment to confess sincerely” to the killing. His lawyer told the court that van der Sloot killed Flores as a result of “extreme psychological trauma” he had suffered from the fallout over the Holloway case.

Prosecutors said van der Sloot killed Flores with “ferocity” and “cruelty,” concealing the crime before fleeing to Chile, where he was caught two days after Flores’ decaying body was found.

He took more than $200 in cash plus credit cards from the victim and made his initial getaway in her car, leaving it in another part of Lima, prosecutors say.

The 24-year-old Dutchman frequently hung his head as the lengthy charges were read in court. He drank several glasses of water prior to sentencing and appeared to be listening intently to the charges being read by a judge.

Van der Sloot remains the main suspect in that case and Holloway’s parents want him extradited to the United States to be tried on related charges. He has been indicted in extortion charges there for allegedly offering to lead a lawyer for Holloway’s mother to her daughter’s remains.

Natalee Holloway disappeared on May 30, 2005, during a high school graduation trip to the Dutch Caribbean island where van der Sloot grew up. Her body was never found and repeated searches turned up nothing as intense media coverage brought the case worldwide attention.

Van der Sloot had faced up to 30 years in prison in the killing, though the guilty plea was aimed at winning a lighter sentence. The defense had claimed the killing was manslaughter, which carries a minimum sentence of five years. He can get out in 14 years.

In a confession, he had said he killed her in a fit of rage after she discovered on his laptop that he’d been linked to the Holloway disappearance.

The victim’s father, Ricardo Flores, complained after the verdict that Van der Sloot was enjoying favorable conditions in a Lima prison, where he has been living apart from the general population and foreigners with money can buy superior treatment.

“A jail isn’t a 5-star hotel,” Ricardo Flores told reporters. “Let’s hope the authorities take that into account and not just in our case.”

“Since the first day we’ve been complaining about the excessive privileges” that Van der Sloot allegedly enjoyed in jail, he said.

Flores said he would present evidence of this at a news conference on Monday. Unconfirmed news reports denied by penal authorities say Van der Sloot has also had a television and video gaming console

Charles Lindbergh took only four sandwiches with him on his famous transatlantic flight. The flight lasted 33 hours, 30 minutes, 29.8 seconds. Charles Lindbergh had not slept in 55 hours.

The image appeared briefly Tuesday during a promotional presentation for Mercedes-Benz at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The photo of Guevara — the Argentine revolutionary who helped bring Fidel Castro to power — has outraged Cuban exiles in South Florida, many of whom regard Guevara as an “evil figure” who took pleasure in mass killings.

Guevara played a critical role in the 1959 overthrow of U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, the culmination of a two-year guerilla campaign during which Guevara allegedly ordered executions of Batista loyalists as well as Castro deserters and accused spies.

“This is a guy who was a mass murderer and enjoyed killing,” Miguel Perez, a Cuban American and nationally syndicated columnist, said in an interview with FoxNews.com.

“In Latin America, the people who love Guevara are usually the same people who hate the United States. But in this county, most of the people wearing his image on their shirts don’t even know who he was. Young people think it’s a fashion statement, when in fact it’s extremely offensive,” he said.

Perez compared Guevara to infamous figures like Adolf Hitler and Usama bin Laden.

“To us, it’s the equivalent to how Jewish Americans would feel if they saw someone wearing the image of Hitler,” he said. “He had hundreds of people killed by Castro’s firing squad. And he would force people to watch executions.”

In a statement sent to FoxNews.com, Daimler said it “was not condoning the life or actions of this historical figure or the political philosophy he espoused.”

“In his keynote speech at CES, Dr. Zetsche addressed the revolution in automobility enabled by new technologies, in particular those associated with connectivity. To illustrate this point, the company briefly used a photo of revolutionary Che Guevara (it was one of many images and videos in the presentation) …We sincerely apologize to those who took offense,” the statement said.

When further pressed on the matter, Daimler spokesman Han Tjan said the image appeared for “only a few seconds” during the 45-minute “Power Point” presentation.

“It was very thoughtless not to realize that by doing that, it would offend a large number of people,” Tjan said.

“Unfortunately, the word ‘revolutionary’ triggered a picture of Che Guevara … which may indicate the age of the person who did it,” he said. “That fell between the cracks … It was absolutely stupid that somebody did it.”

Felix Rodriguez, a Cuban American who assisted Bolivian soldiers in capturing Guevara before his execution in 1967, also denounced the use of the guerilla’s image, the Miami Herald reported.

“I know who Che Guevara was and he was a criminal, a murderer and a person who hated the United States of America,” Rodriguez wrote in a posting on the Mercedes-Benz website, according to the newspaper.

Rodriguez, who has owned three Mercedes-Benz cars, reportedly said he will replace his current Mercedes and vowed to never purchase a vehicle from the luxury car company again.

Obama announced Friday he wants to merge the commerce department with other agencies At the same time he called on Congress to increase the national debt by $1.3 trillion.

The Obama administration warned Iran’s supreme political-religious authority closing the Strait of Hormuz would trigger a U.S. response, U.S. officials said.

The administration, using a secret communications channel officials would not describe, warned Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that closing the narrow, strategically important strait between the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf would be considered crossing a “red line” that would not be tolerated, the officials told The New York Times.

The officials would not say if Khamenei or any other Iranian official had replied to the unusual contact between the two countries, the Times said.

Senior Obama administration officials have publicly said Iran would cross a red line if it made good on recent threats to close the strait, which 16 million barrels of oil — about a fifth of the world’s daily oil trade — flow through every day

Standard and Poors down graded France, Spain,Italy and, others jerking their coveting AAA credit ratings, and same from the U.S, a year ago saying what they propose is insufficient.

Political ideology in the U.S. held steady in 2011, with 40% of Americans continuing to describe their views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This marks the third straight year that conservatives have outnumbered moderates, after more than a decade in which moderates mainly tied or outnumbered conservatives.

The percentage of Americans calling themselves “moderate” has gradually diminished in the U.S. since it was 43% in 1992. That is the year Gallup started routinely measuring ideology with the current question. It fell to 39% in 2002 and has been 35% since 2010. At the same time, the country became more politically polarized, with the percentages of Americans calling themselves either “conservative” or “liberal” each increasing.

Gallup measures political ideology by asking Americans to say whether their political views are very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal, or very liberal. Relatively few Americans identify with either extreme on this scale, although 2 in 10 Republicans self-identify as very conservative — double the proportion of Democrats calling themselves very liberal.

The majority of Republicans say they are either very conservative or conservative, but the total proportion of conservatives grew 10 percentage points between 2002 and 2010, from 62% to 72%. At the same time, the percentage of moderates fell from 31% to 23%. Relatively few Republicans say they are liberal — just 4% in 2011. Republicans’ ideology largely held at the 2010 levels in 2011.

Four U.S, Marines could face military prosecution because of a videotape showing them urinating onTaleban corpses. The Taleban said it will make no difference to the peacetalks. That means they believe thay have already won.

Al Qaida has focused recruitment efforts through the social media on the Internet, a report said.

Haifa University has issued a study that asserted that Al Qaida significantly increased its use of Facebook and other social media to find recruits. The report, authored by professor Gabriel Weinmann, said Al Qaida and Hizbullah were using Facebook to find supporters, upload propaganda and learn about Western and Israeli military officers.

“Today, about 90 percent of organized terrorism on the Internet is being carried out through the social media,” said Weinmann, who for the last decade researched the insurgency use of the Internet. “By using these tools, the organizations are able to be active in recruiting new friends without geographical limitations.”

Weinmann said the use of the social media has replaced the need for Al Qaida, Hamas and Hizbullah to establish websites. Instead, the insurgents are now able to approach Israeli and Western officers under the guise of Facebook “friends.”

“Facebook has become a great place to obtain intelligence,” Weinmann said. “Many users don’t even bother finding out who they are confirming as ‘friend’ and to whom they are providing access to a large amount of information on their personal life. The terrorists themselves, in parallel, are able to create false profiles that enable them to get into highly visible groups.”

Several militaries, including those from Britain, Canada, Israel and the United States, have ordered soldiers to remove all identifying marks from their social networks. The orders came amid an assessment that insurgency groups were searching Facebook for soldiers who served in such countries as Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and Lebanon.

The study cited a Hamas request on the social media for a bomb. In one correspondence, somebody asked for a kilogram of acetone to make a bomb to destroy a military jeep. Soon, a forum member responded with instructions.

140 million square miles or nearly 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water to an average depth: 12,200 feet.

U.S. officials confirmed that Beijing conducted multiple flight tests of its newest submarine-launched missile, the JL-2.

The tests were carried out from a submarine near the port of Dalian. The missiles flew several thousand miles to an impact range in western China sometime between Dec. 30 and 31, officials said.

The flight tests first were reported on Chinese military Internet bulletin boards.

U.S. intelligence agencies were tipped off about the tests on Dec. 27 when the official website of the Liaoning Maritime Safety Bureau (LMSB) issued a navigation warning declaring a no-sail zone in the Bohai Strait from Dec. 30 to 31 for military exercises, and a Dec. 27 closure area for military exercises in another part of the Bohai Sea. Both areas are near submarine and naval facilities.

Richard Fisher, a China military-affairs specialist, said the reports indicate that China conducted six JL-2 launches from waters near the major northern military port of Dalian, where China has at least two ballistic-missile submarines at the Northern Fleet base at Xiaopingdao.

“I can’t confirm these reports, but they are plausible, especially if you assume that two submarines were used: two Type 094 SSBNs or one Type 094 and one test submarine, either the single Golf-class non-nuclear-powered SLBM test sub, or its possible replacement launched in September 2010,” Fisher said.

Another scenario is that a single missile submarine fired all six of the JL-2s because each submarine can be outfitted with 12 of the missiles, a variant of the DF-31 land-mobile ICBM.

Concerning the multiple launches, Fisher said China’s military “would clearly want to demonstrate that, after years of protracted development, they can launch submarine-based ballistic missiles at a near wartime frequency.”

“If these reports are true, then the 094 submarine is ready for the PLA version of deterrence patrols, which could commence this year,” Fisher said, referring to China’s People’s Liberation Army.

“This number of successful tests would also indicate that the PLA has, at long last, resolved whatever issues were preventing this missile from achieving operational status.”

Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby said: “We have been monitoring JL-2 developments for some years. It has had challenges resulting in delays in completing the system.”

Kirby said the Pentagon’s annual report on China’s military noted that Beijing needs to conduct additional tests for the new JL-2, but “once complete and deployed, the JL-2/Jin combo would constitute China’s first real sea-based deterrent.” The Jin-class submarine is also known as the Type 094 missile submarine.

Roger Cliff, a China military specialist with the Project 2049 Institute, wrote in Defense News recently that China was likely to conduct a major military test on Wednesday, perhaps its new DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile. That day is the “one-one-one” anniversary of a Chinese anti-satellite missile tests in 2007 and the first flight of a J-20 stealth jet last year.

Some type of saber-rattling test also would be timed to upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in Taiwan, a key target of the Chinese military, which conducted missile tests north and south of the island in 1996 in an attempt to intimidate voters prior to an election that year.

For the last 4,000 years China has been the oldest continuous civilization on Earth. China’s early warlords often fought each other and the country was not united as a single empire until 221 BCE with the birth of the Qin dynasty (221-207 BCE).

Vice President Joseph R. Biden has taken control of U.S. policy toward China in what some analysts say is an effort by pro-China political officials to remove the strategic policy portfolio from more hawkish officials in the Pentagon and State Department.

The Atlantic Monthly reported Jan. 2 that a senior White House official said Biden is now “the lead” for the administration’s next phase China policy.

“While the Departments of State and Treasury have held important functional roles in conducting the China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue meetings, raising the bilateral status of U.S.-China relations with ongoing meetings between two senior U.S. executive branch officials with two of China’s most senior leaders, Vice Premier Li Keqiang and State Counselor Dai Bingguo, there has been a general sense that neither Timothy Geithner nor Hillary Clinton and her team were comprehensively driving U.S.-China policy,” the report said.

The White House official claimed that Biden’s control of China policy was not a critique of Clinton or Geithner but the result of the expected shift in leadership next fall from Hu Jintao to current Vice President Xi Jinping. The report said Biden is better positioned to deal with the vice president than are other senior U.S. officials.

A U.S. defense official said the policy grab is related to pro-China officials at the White House, namely National Security Adviser Thomas Donilan and National Security staff director Evan Medeiros seeking to marginalize the hawkish officials and counter the Pentagon from pursuing its new Air Sea Battle Concept.

Military sources call it ill-considered, counter productive.and dangerous.

Early Chinese inventions include paper, printing, silk, kites, umbrellas, the abacus, porcelain and gunpowder. One in five people on earth now is Chinese.