จับตามอง สงคราม"นิวเคลียร์" โรงงานพลังงาน "นิวเคลียร์" การรั่วไหลของกัมมันตรังสี

<table style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(245, 246, 244); " border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td colspan="2" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; " valign="top" width="100%">2011-11-30 04:17:08 - Explosion - Iran

</td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; " width="100%">
</td></tr><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; " valign="top"><table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; " width="25%">EDIS Code:</td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">EX-20111130-33224-IRN</td></tr><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Date&Time:</td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">2011-11-30 04:17:08 [UTC]</td></tr><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Continent:</td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Middle-East</td></tr><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Country:</td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Iran</td></tr><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">State/Prov.:</td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Province of Isfahan,</td></tr><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Location:</td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Unnamed nuclear facility,</td></tr><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">City:</td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">City of Isfahan</td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Damage level: Moderate (Level 2)

Not confirmed information!
</td></tr></tbody></table></td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; " align="right" width="440"></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; " valign="top">Description:</td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; " valign="top">An iranian nuclear facility has been hit by a huge explosion, the second such blast in a month, prompting speculation that Tehran's military and atomic sites are under attack. Satellite imagery seen by The Times confirmed that a blast that rocked the city of Isfahan on Monday struck the uranium enrichment facility there, despite denials by Tehran. The images clearly showed billowing smoke and destruction, negating Iranian claims yesterday that no such explosion had taken place. Israeli intelligence officials told The Times that there was "no doubt" that the blast struck the nuclear facilities at Isfahan and that it was "no accident". The explosion at Iran's third-largest city came as satellite images emerged of the damage caused by one at a military base outside Tehran two weeks ago that killed about 30 members of the Revolutionary Guard, including General Hassan Moghaddam, the head of the Iranian missile defence program. Iran claimed that the Tehran explosion occurred during testing on a new weapons system designed to strike at Israel. But several Israeli officials have confirmed that the blast was intentional and part of an effort to target Iran's nuclear weapons program.

On Monday, Isfahan residents reported a blast that shook tower blocks in the city at about 2.40pm and seeing a cloud of smoke rising over the nuclear facility on the edge of the city. "This caused damage to the facilities in Isfahan, particularly to the elements we believe were involved in storage of raw materials," said one military intelligence source. He would not confirm or deny Israel's involvement in the blast, instead saying that there were "many different parties looking to sabotage, stop or coerce Iran into stopping its nuclear weapons program". Iran went into frantic denial yesterday as news of the explosion at Isfahan emerged. Alireza Zaker-Isfahani, the city's governor, claimed that the blast had been caused by a military exercise in the area but state-owned agencies in Tehran soon removed this story and issued a government denial that any explosion had taken place at all. On Monday, Dan Meridor. the Israeli Intelligence Minister, said: "There are countries who impose economic sanctions and there are countries who act in other ways in dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat." Major-General Giora Eiland, Israel's former director of national security, told Israel's army radio that the Isfahan blast was no accident. "There aren't many coincidences, and when there are so many events there is probably some sort of guiding hand, though perhaps it's the hand of God," he said.

A former Israeli intelligence official cited at least two other explosions that have "successfully neutralised" Iranian bases associated with the Shahab-3, the medium-range missile that could be adapted to carry a nuclear warhead. "This is something everyone in the West wanted to see happen," he added. Iran has repeatedly denied the existence of a nuclear weapons program, and strongly condemned the International Atomic Energy Agency's report last month that accused Iran of trying to build a nuclear weapon.
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29 November 2011 Last updated at 17:28 GMT Share this page

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Norway massacre: Breivik declared insane


Breivik has admitted the killings, insisting they were "necessary" Continue reading the main story Norway Attacks

• Assessing a killer's sanity
• The victims
• How attacks happened
• Breivik profile

Psychiatrists assessing self-confessed Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik have concluded that he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.


They believe he was in a psychotic state both during and after the twin attacks on 22 July that led to the deaths of 77 people and injured 151.
Their report must still be reviewed by a panel of forensic psychiatrists.
Breivik will still be tried in April but it seems likely he will be placed in psychiatric care rather than prison.
Breivik admits carrying out the attacks but has pleaded not guilty to charges, arguing that that the attacks were atrocious but necessary for his campaign to defend Europe against a Muslim invasion.
The two psychiatrists who interviewed him on 13 occasions concluded that he lived in his "own delusional universe where all his thoughts and acts are guided by his delusions", prosecutors told reporters.
Online manifesto The 243-page report will be reviewed by a panel from the Norwegian Board of Forensic Medicine.
Breivik, 32, is due to stand trial on 16 April for a hearing scheduled to last around 10 weeks.


Norwegian prosecutor Svein Holden: "The observed person was psychotic"

"If the final conclusion is that Breivik is insane, we will request that the court in the upcoming legal proceedings pass sentence by which Breivik is subjected to compulsory mental health care," prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh told reporters in Oslo.
She later told the BBC that the trial would be unaffected by the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia: the only difference was that the prosecution could not ask the judge for a jail sentence.
"It will go as a normal trial as if he had been sane. We will ask him questions and the defence will ask him questions and the judge will ask him questions and he will have his time to talk," she said.
Continue reading the main story Analysis

Liss Goril Anda Journalist, Norway
Norwegians have reacted with surprise and disbelief at the report stating that Breivik is criminally insane.
"I don't see how Behring Breivik's opinions set him apart from war criminals, who are tried in court as if they are sane," said one man.
Hours before the announcement, radio news reports were still saying that such a verdict would be highly unlikely.
The shock is heightened by the media portrayal of Breivik as carefully planning his actions as a functioning member of society. He does not match the public's idea of a paranoid schizophrenic.
Some see the verdict as Norwegian society's attempt to marginalise and silence extreme right-wing opinions. Clearly this would harm open debate concerning these ideas.
Norwegian courts tend to abide by forensic reports.
If people do not see Breivik receive what they consider due punishment, it could reduce public faith in the courts and the Norwegian legal system.

• Norwegian disbelief at Breivik 'insanity'

Breivik's defence lawyer, Geir Lippestad, said he was not surprised by the psychiatrists' findings, adding that his client was unlikely to be surprised either.
But the deputy leader of the opposition Progress Party, Per Sandberg, thought the conclusion that Breivik was criminally insane was "completely incomprehensible".
"How can someone who has planned this for such a long time... be considered insane," he told Norwegian TV.
Before the report was made public, a lawyer for the victims said it did not matter what the conclusion was as long as Breivik was not allowed to go free.
"What will happen in the case, no matter what the conclusion, is that he [Breivik] will of course be incarcerated," John Christian Elden said.
"And if the outcome is criminally sane or insane, that is, first and foremost a psychiatric question. The most important thing in our clients' opinion is that he will not be able to walk the streets."
On 22 July, Breivik disguised himself as a police officer to plant a car bomb that exploded close to government offices in the capital Oslo, killing eight people.
Still in uniform, he then drove to the island of Utoeya, where a summer youth camp of Norway's governing Labour Party was being held.
In a shooting spree that lasted more than an hour, he killed 69 people - mostly teenagers.
In a manifesto he published online, Breivik said he was fighting to defend Europe from a Muslim invasion, which was being enabled by what he called "cultural Marxists" in Norway's Labour Party, and the EU.



เห็นได้ยินมาว่า เคสนี้ เป็นหนึ่งใน Mind control ของพวกอิลลู :boo:

 

อ่านจาก insider ได้ที่นี่ http://www.enterprisemission.com/Norway-Message.htm

​

 

Sea alert: Russian warships head for Syria

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Published: 28 November, 2011, 15:19
Edited: 28 November, 2011, 21:44






Heavy aircraft-carrying missile cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov (image from Блог Pilot’а)

TRENDS: Syria unrest
TAGS: Arms, Military, NATO, Russia, Politics, USA, Syria

Moscow is deploying warships at its base in the Syrian port of Tartus. The long-planned mission comes, providentially, at the very moment when it could help prevent a potential conflict in the strategically important Middle Eastern country.
­The Russian battle group will consist of three vessels led by the heavy aircraft-carrying missile cruiser, Admiral Kuznetsov.
Russian military officials insist that the move has no connection with the ongoing crisis in the region and was planned a year ago, the Izvestia newspaper reports. Apart from Syria, the aircraft carrier and its escort ships are set to visit the Lebanese capital, Beirut, Genoa in Italy and Cyprus, says the former Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Viktor Kravchenko.


Nevertheless, he added that the presence of a military force other than NATO’s is very useful for this region, because “it will prevent the outbreak of an armed conflict,” Izvestia quoted Kravchenko as saying.
The Soviet Union, the Admiral recalled, created a special naval squadron to deter Western military forces in the Mediterranean Sea. To repair and supply its ships, Moscow needed its own maintenance base in the region, and that was how the base in Tartus came into being.
At present, the base is mostly used to support vessels of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Some 600 military and civilian personnel of the Defense Ministry serve there.
News of Russia’s naval deployment in Tartus came shortly after the US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush anchored off Syria, along with additional naval vessels. The US battle group is to remain in the Mediterranean, allegedly to conduct maritime security operations and support missions as part of Operations Enduring Freedom and New Dawn. The US 6th Fleet is also patrolling the area, Interfax reports.
“Of course, the Russian naval forces in the Mediterranean will be incommensurate with those of the US 6th Fleet, which includes one or two aircraft carriers and several escort ships,” Admiral Kravchenko explained. “But today, no one talks about possible military clashes, since an attack on any Russian ship would be regarded as a declaration of war with all the consequences.”
The mission is set to start in early December, when the Admiral Kuznetsov begins its journey in the Barents Sea, accompanied by another vessel of Russia’s Northern Fleet, the heavy ASW ship Admiral Chabanenko. The group will then skirt the European continent from the west and enter the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar.
Later, they will be joined by frigate Ladny of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. It will travel through the Bosphorus, with a stop-over in Malta’s Valletta.
Admiral Kuznetsov will be carrying eight Sukhoi Su-33 all-weather fighters, two Kamov Ka-27 anti-submarine helicopters and several brand new Mig-29K fighters. The Mig fighters were built for India’s air force and are supposed to be “tested” during their first assignment.
Military officials have stressed that all flights will be performed in open waters, away from the Syrian coast.
Unlike American aircraft carriers, designed largely as floating runways, Admiral Kuznetsov is a heavily-armed aircraft-carrying cruiser. Its primary armaments, among others, are 12 long-range surface-to-surface anti-ship Granit cruise missiles, a six-gun short-range surface-to-air missile system Kinzhal, eight close-in air defense Kashtan gun-missile systems and two UDAV-1 anti-submarine systems.
The Admiral Kuznetsov has already been twice to the port of Tartus during its assignments in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean in 1995 and 2007.

 

Posted at 02:16 PM ET, 11/28/2011 Image shows Iranian missile site was destroyed

By Jason Ukman


(Courtesy DigitalGlobe — Institute for Science and International Security) Two weeks after a mysterious explosion at an Iranian missile base, a Washington-based research group has released a satellite image showing extensive damage to the site.
The image of the compound, near the city of Malard, doesn’t provide any clues as to what caused the Nov. 12 explosion, which Iranian authorities described as an “accident” involving the transport of ammunition. But it does make clear that the facility has been effectively destroyed.
(For comparison’s sake, see below for a satellite image taken in September.)
Paul Brannan, a senior analyst for the Institute for Science and International Security, which specializes in the study of nuclear weapons programs, said it’s impossible to tell from the image whether the blast was caused by sabotage, as has has been speculated in this explosion and others at transport facilities, oil refineries and military bases in Iran.
When performing work with missiles, there are a variety of “volatile processes” that could cause an explosion, Brannan said.
Brannan said ISIS had recently learned from “knowledgable officials” that the blast had occurred just as Iran had achieved a milestone in the development of a new missile and may have been performing a “volatile procedure involving a missile engine at the site.”
As with the cause of the blast, the nature of that milestone is unclear.

(GeoEye via Google Earth)
Read more stories from around the world:
-Afghans say special ops mission preceded attack
-U.N. report condemns Syria
-Egyptians vote in droves as historic elections begin
-See our complete foreign coverage.

By Jason Ukman | 02:16 PM ET, 11/28/2011

 

Digging into China’s nuclear tunnels

<cite class="byline vcard">By William Wan | The Washington Post – <abbr title="2011-11-30T17:34:13+00:00">16 hrs ago</abbr></cite>

• Georgetown University's Professor Phillip A. Karber spent the Cold War as a top strategist reporting directly to the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (The Washington Post …more

The Chinese have called it their “Underground Great Wall” — a vast network of tunnels designed to hide their country’s increasingly sophisticated missile and nuclear arsenal.
For the past three years, a small band of obsessively dedicated students at Georgetown University has called it something else: homework.
Led by their hard-charging professor, a former top Pentagon official, they have translated hundreds of documents, combed through satellite imagery, obtained restricted Chinese military documents and waded through hundreds of gigabytes of online data.
The result of their effort? The largest body of public knowledge about thousands of miles of tunnels dug by the Second Artillery Corps, a secretive branch of the Chinese military in charge of protecting and deploying its ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads.
The study is yet to be released, but already it has sparked a congressional hearing and been circulated among top officials in the Pentagon, including the Air Force vice chief of staff.
Most of the attention has focused on the 363-page study’s provocative conclusion — that China’s nuclear arsenal could be many times larger than the well-established estimates of arms-control experts.

(Graphic: Evidence of China’s nuclear storage system)
“It’s not quite a bombshell, but those thoughts and estimates are being checked against what people think they know based on classified information,” said a Defense Department strategist who would discuss the study only on the condition of anonymity.
The study’s critics, however, have questioned the unorthodox Internet-based research of the students, who drew from sources as disparate as Google Earth, blogs, military journals and, perhaps most startlingly, a fictionalized TV docudrama about Chinese artillery soldiers — the rough equivalent of watching Fox’s TV show “24” for insights into U.S. counterterrorism efforts.
But the strongest condemnation has come from nonproliferation experts who worry that the study could fuel arguments for maintaining nuclear weapons in an era when efforts are being made to reduce the world’s post-Cold War stockpiles.
Beyond its impact in the policy world, the project has made a profound mark on the students — including some who have since graduated and taken research jobs with the Defense Department and Congress.
“I don’t even want to know how many hours I spent on it,” said Nick Yarosh, 22, an international politics senior at Georgetown. “But you ask people what they did in college, most just say I took this class, I was in this club. I can say I spent it reading Chinese nuclear strategy and Second Artillery manuals. For a nerd like me, that really means something.”
For students, an obsession
The students’ professor, Phillip A. Karber, 65, had spent the Cold War as a top strategist reporting directly to the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But it was his early work in defense that cemented his reputation, when he led an elite research team created by Henry Kissinger, who was then the national security adviser, to probe the weaknesses of Soviet forces.
Karber prided himself on recruiting the best intelligence analysts in the government. “You didn’t just want the highest-ranking or brightest guys, you wanted the ones who were hungry,” he said.
In 2008, Karber was volunteering on a committee for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a Pentagon agency charged with countering weapons of mass destruction.
After a devastating earthquake struck Sichuan province, the chairman of Karber’s committee noticed Chinese news accounts reporting that thousands of radiation technicians were rushing to the region. Then came pictures of strangely collapsed hills and speculation that the caved-in tunnels in the area had held nuclear weapons.
Find out what’s going on, the chairman asked Karber, who began looking for analysts again — this time among his students at Georgetown.
The first inductees came from his arms-control classes. Each semester, he set aside a day to show them tantalizing videos and documents he had begun gathering on the tunnels. Then he concluded with a simple question: What do you think it means?
“The fact that there were no answers to that really got to me,” said former student Dustin Walker, 22. “It started out like any other class, tests on this day or that, but people kept coming back, even after graduation. . . . We spent hours on our own outside of class on this stuff.”
The students worked in their dorms translating military texts. They skipped movie nights for marathon sessions reviewing TV clips of missiles being moved from one tunnel structure to another. While their friends read Shakespeare, they gathered in the library to war-game worst-case scenarios of a Chinese nuclear strike on the United States.
Over time, the team grew from a handful of contributors to roughly two dozen. Most spent their time studying the subterranean activities of the Second Artillery Corps.
While the tunnels’ existence was something of an open secret among the handful of experts studying China’s nuclear arms, almost no papers or public reports on the structures existed.
So the students turned to publicly available Chinese sources — military journals, local news reports and online photos posted by Chinese citizens. It helped that China’s famously secretive military was beginning to release more information, driven by its leaders’ eagerness to show off China’s growing power to its citizens.
The Internet also generated a raft of leads: new military forums, blogs and once-obscure local TV reports now posted on the Chinese equivalents of YouTube. Strategic string searches even allowed the students to get behind some military Web sites and download documents such as syllabuses taught at China’s military academies.
Drudgery and discoveries
The main problem was the sheer amount of translation required.
Each semester, Karber managed to recruit only one or two Chinese-speaking students. So the team assembled a makeshift system to scan images of the books and documents they found. Using text-capture software, they converted those pictures into Chinese characters, which were fed into translation software to produce crude English versions. From those, they highlighted key passages for finer translation by the Chinese speakers.
The downside was the drudgery — hours feeding pages into the scanner. The upside was that after three years, the students had compiled a searchable database of more than 1.4 million words on the Second Artillery and its tunnels.
By combining everything they found in the journals, video clips, satellite imagery and photos, they were able to triangulate the location of several tunnel structures, with a rough idea of what types of missiles were stored in each.
Their work also yielded smaller revelations: how the missiles were kept mobile and transported from structure to structure, as well as tantalizing images and accounts of a “missile train” and disguised passenger rail cars to move China’s long-range missiles.
To facilitate the work, Karber set up research rooms for the students at his home in Great Falls. He bought Apple computers and large flat-screen monitors for their video work and obtained small research grants for those who wanted to work through the summer. When work ran late, many crashed in his basement’s spare room.
“I got fat working on this thing because I didn’t go to the gym anymore. It was that intense,” said Yarosh, who has continued on the project this year not for credit but purely as a hobby. “It’s not the typical college course. Dr. Karber just tells you the objective and gives you total freedom to figure out how to get there. That level of trust can be liberating.”
Some of the biggest breakthroughs came after members of Karber’s team used personal connections in China to obtain a 400-page manual produced by the Second Artillery and usually available only to China’s military personnel.
Another source of insight was a pair of semi-fictionalized TV series chronicling the lives of Second Artillery soldiers.
The plots were often overwrought with melodrama — one series centers on a brigade commander who struggles to whip his slipshod unit into shape while juggling relationship problems with his glamorous Olympic-swim-coach girlfriend. But they also included surprisingly accurate depictions of artillery units’ procedures that lined up perfectly with the military manual and other documents.
“Until someone showed us on screen how exactly these missile deployments were done from the tunnels, we only had disparate pieces. The TV shows gave us the big picture of how it all worked together,” Karber said.
A bigger Chinese arsenal?
In December 2009, just as the students began making progress, the Chinese military admitted for the first time that the Second Artillery had indeed been building a network of tunnels. According to a report by state-run CCTV, China had more than 3,000 miles of tunnels — roughly the distance between Boston and San Francisco — including deep underground bases that could withstand multiple nuclear attacks.
The news shocked Karber and his team. It confirmed the direction of their research, but it also highlighted how little attention the tunnels were garnering outside East Asia.
The lack of interest, particularly in the U.S. media, demonstrated China’s unique position in the world of nuclear arms.
For decades, the focus has been on the two powers with the largest nuclear stockpiles by far — the United States, with 5,000 warheads available for deployment, and Russia, which has 8,000.
But of the five nuclear weapons states recognized by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, China has been the most secretive. While the United States and Russia are bound by bilateral treaties that require on-site inspections, disclosure of forces and bans on certain missiles, China is not.
The assumption for years has been that the Chinese arsenal is relatively small — anywhere from 80 to 400 warheads.
China has encouraged that perception. As the only one of the five original nuclear states with a no-first-use policy, it insists that it keeps a small stockpile only for “minimum deterrence.”
Given China’s lack of transparency, Karber argues, all the experts have to work with are assumptions, which can often be dead wrong. As an example, Karber often recounts to his students his experience of going to Russia with former defense secretary Frank C. Carlucci to discuss U.S. help in securing the Russian nuclear arsenal.
The United States had offered Russia about 20,000 canisters designed to safeguard warheads — a number based on U.S. estimates at the time.
The generals told Karber they needed 40,000.
Skepticism among analysts
At the end of the tunnel study, Karber cautions that the same could happen with China. Based on the number of tunnels the Second Artillery is digging and its increasing deployment of missiles, he argues, China’s nuclear warheads could number as many as 3,000.
It is an assertion that has provoked heated responses from the arms-control community.
Gregory Kulacki, a China nuclear analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, publicly condemned Karber’s report at a recent lecture in Washington. In an interview afterward, he called the 3,000 figure “ridiculous” and said the study’s methodology — especially its inclusion of posts from Chinese bloggers — was “incompetent and lazy.”
“The fact that they’re building tunnels could actually reinforce the exact opposite point,” he argued. “With more tunnels and a better chance of survivability, they may think they don’t need as many warheads to strike back.”
Reaction from others has been more moderate.
“Their research has value, but it also shows the danger of the Internet,” said Hans M. Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. Kristensen faulted some of the students’ interpretation of the satellite images.
“One thing his report accomplishes, I think, is it highlights the uncertainty about what China has,” said Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute, a think tank. “There’s no question China’s been investing in tunnels, and to look at those efforts and pose this question is worthwhile.”
This year, the Defense Department’s annual report on China’s military highlighted for the first time the Second Artillery’s work on new tunnels, partly a result of Karber’s report, according to some Pentagon officials. And in the spring, shortly before a visit to China, some in the office of then-Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates were briefed on the study.
“I think it’s fair to say senior officials here have keyed upon the importance of this work,” said one Pentagon officer who was not authorized to speak on the record.
For Karber, provoking such debate means that he and his small army of undergrads have succeeded.
“I don’t have the slightest idea how many nuclear weapons China really has, but neither does anyone else in the arms-control community,” he said. “That’s the problem with China — no one really knows except them.”


Digging into China’s nuclear tunnels - Yahoo! News

 

ท่านผู้นี้ไปเยี่ยมทางเอเชียเยอะมั๊กๆ ช่วงนี้
แถมใจดีมาช่วยซ่อมสนามบินดอนเมือง (และอู่ตะเภา) แปลกดีเน๊อะ

Clinton in Burma to Test Reforms; US Cautious but Encouraged

<hr class="hr_dot"> By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Thursday, December 1, 2011

<hr class="float_clear hr_dot"> <ins style="display:inline-table;border:none;height:60px;margin:0;padding:0;position:relative;visibility:visible;width:468px"><ins id="aswift_1_anchor" style="display:block;border:none;height:60px;margin:0;padding:0;position:relative;visibility:visible;width:468px"></ins></ins> <hr class="hr_dot"> <table cellpadding="1.8"><tbody><tr> <td> [SIZE=-2]COMMENTS (2)[/SIZE]</td> </tr><tr> <td> [SIZE=-2]RECOMMEND (15)[/SIZE]</td> </tr> <tr> </tr><tr> <td> [SIZE=-2]FACEBOOK[/SIZE] </td> </tr> <tr> <td> [SIZE=-2]TWITTER[/SIZE] </td> </tr> <tr><td> [SIZE=-2]PLUSONE[/SIZE] </td> </tr> <tr> <td>
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NAYPYIDAW— Looking to cement a foreign policy success and prod reform in one of the world’s most isolated and authoritarian nations, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Wednesday she was hopeful that “flickers of progress” would burst into flames of reform in Burma.
Clinton’s diplomatically risky trip to a nation that receives few outsiders and still heavily restricts what its people can see and read is meant to test whether new civilian leaders are truly ready to throw off 50 years of military dictatorship. US officials said she would also press the leadership on severing military and suspected nuclear ties with North Korea.
“I am obviously looking to determine for myself and on behalf of our government what is the intention of the current government with respect to continuing reforms both political and economic,” Clinton told reporters before her arrival here. It is the first trip by a secretary of state to the country also known as Burma in more than half a century.
<table style="WIDTH: 339px; HEIGHT: 380px" align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td style="PADDING-RIGHT: 15px"></td></tr><tr><td style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 5px; LINE-HEIGHT: 12px; PADDING-RIGHT: 15px">US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is greeted by Burmese Deputy Foreign Minister Myo Myint, right, upon her arrival in Naypyidaw on Nov 30. (Photo: Reuters) </td></tr></tbody></table>She is to meet senior Burmese officials including President Thein Sein in the capital Naypyidaw on Thursday before heading to the commercial capital of Rangoon. There she will see opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who is returning to the political scene after decades of detention and harassment.Successive military regimes canceled 1990 elections that Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won. She has said she plans to run in upcoming elections.
“We and many other nations are quite hopeful that these flickers of progress ... will be ignited into a movement for change that will benefit the people of the country,” she said. President Barack Obama used the same description — “flickers of progress” — when he announced he was sending Clinton to Burma.
Clinton declined to discuss specific steps that she would suggest to the military-backed government or say how the US might reciprocate for positive change.
Clinton was greeted at Naypyidaw’s small airfield by a deputy foreign minister, several other officials and a large contingent of international press who were granted rare visas to cover her visit. But her presence here appeared to take second stage to the expected arrival on Thursday of the prime minister of Belarus and his wife, to whom two large welcoming signs were erected at the airport and the road into the city. Belarus is often criticized for its poor human rights record and is subject to US sanctions similar to those Burma is under.
No signs welcoming Clinton were visible as her motorcade bounced from the airport to the city on a bumpy cement road that was largely devoid of vehicles, with traffic police stopping small and scattered groups of cars, trucks and motorbikes at intersections. Officials say Clinton will be seeking assurances from Burma’s leaders that they will sign an agreement with the U.N. nuclear watchdog that will permit unfettered access to suspected nuclear sites. The US and other Western nations suspect Burma has sought and received nuclear advice along with ballistic missile technology from North Korea in violation of UN sanctions. A US official said missiles and missile technology are of primary concern but signs of “nascent” nuclear activity are also worrying.
The Obama administration also hopes to loosen Chinese influence in a region where America and its allies are wary of China’s rise. Burma has historic ties with China, but has pulled back from a major dam project sought by China amid signs the new leaders are sensitive to criticism that China is taking unfair advantage of its much smaller but resource-rich neighbor.
US officials are cautious about what Clinton’s three-day visit can accomplish beyond being a symbolic stamp of approval for the small steps of political and social reform under way since elections last year. They are careful to point out that there are no immediate plans to lift heavy US sanctions on Burma imposed because of an abysmal human rights record.
That could come in time, if Burma proves serious about reform.






Clinton Meets Burmese President, Future Reforms Top Agenda

<hr class="hr_dot"> By BA KAUNG Thursday, December 1, 2011

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Burmese President Thein Sein meets with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the President's Office in Naypyidaw on Thursday, December 1, 2011. (Source: AFP)

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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Burmese President Thein Sein on Thursday morning in Naypyidaw in a meeting in which she was expected to discuss future reform steps that the US would like to see the Burmese government undertake and the possible US response if the reform process continues.
"I am here today because President Obama and myself are encouraged by the steps that you and your government have taken to provide for your people," Clinton told Thein Sein as the two sat down for talks in Burma's ornate presidential palace.
Speaking to reporters, a senior US State Department official said on Tuesday that the secretary of state comes to Naypyidaw with “a series of very specific steps that we would like to see in terms of the next phase of the process that is underway inside the country.”
“We expect this to be a very thorough review of not only the steps that they have taken, what we expect to see in the future, but the things that the United States is prepared to do in response not only to these preliminary steps, but what might be possible if the process of reform and openness continues,” the official said.
For example, Clinton was expected to seek clarification on what actions Burma's quasi-civilian government will take with respect to the release of political prisoners and the peaceful resolution of ethnic conflicts.
Prior to meeting with Thein Sein, Clinton met with Burmese Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin. According to the State Department official, her discussions with Wunna Maung Lwin were expected to focus on Naypyidaw’s military ties with Pyongyang, primarily reports that Burma has secretly imported missile technology from North Korea.
“I would say that the areas that we are primarily concerned with in terms of the relationship between North Korea and Burma are in the realm of missiles and other military equipment that are prohibited by UN Security Council Resolutions 1874 and others,” said the State Department official.

“And our discussions will be around seeking much stronger assurances and international codified assurances of a determination on the part of the government to discontinue activities that we believe are antithetical to the maintenance of peace and stability,” he added.
Clinton’s historic trip marked the first time a top US diplomat has visited Burma since 1962, when a military junta staged a coup against the country's last democratically-government.
The meeting between Clinton and Thein Sein is expected to be the beginning of a renewal in US-Burma relations and is the high-point to date of President Barack Obama's dual-track Burma policy of engagement and economic sanctions.
“This visit is the first in five decades. Your visit is historic and will be a new chapter in relations. I appreciate the atmosphere you have created for friendly relations," Thein Sein told Clinton in the meeting, according to an AFP report.
Obama's chief diplomatic envoy will also hold meetings with members of Burma’s Parliament and then head to Rangoon to pay a visit to the country's holiest Buddhist shrine, the Shwedagon Pagoda, and have a private dinner with Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

It will be Clinton’s first meeting with Suu Kyi and they are expected to talk about recent developments in the country and how best Burma can move forward to further democratic changes.

In his briefing to reporters, the State Department official said that when Obama spoke with Suu Kyi by phone before announcing Clinton’s visit, “She [Suu Kyi] was very encouraging of the trip, very supportive of efforts the United States has taken, thought that we had handled things exactly right, and has made some suggestions of some steps that she believes that we should take in order to support the reform effort, but also has suggested certain things that she thinks are still premature, which we agree with.”

Summarizing his comments to the reporters, the official said that Clinton’s message would be that the US welcomes the initial steps that have been taken in Burma, but “this is simply a first step and that several other things will need to take root and happen for the United States to be able to work closely to support this overall effort.”
The official reiterated that Clinton will have specific ideas that she will roll out in each of her meetings with the Burmese government, the parliamentarians, Suu Kyi, the ethnic groups and members of civil society.
“I think our overall desire is to be in listening mode, to do a fact-finding, as President Obama has indicated, and also to test the seriousness, particularly of the [Burmese] government, in terms of what it wants to accomplish in the period ahead,” the official said.



http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22576

 

Chinese and Burmese Army Chiefs Sign Defense Agreement

<hr class="hr_dot"> By BA KAUNG Wednesday, November 30, 2011

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Xu Caihou (R), vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission, shakes hands with Burma's Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Min Aung Hlaing at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on Nov. 29, 2011. (Photo: Xinhua/Wang Ye)

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The Chinese and Burmese army chiefs signed an agreement on defense cooperation in Beijing on Tuesday, a strong indication that the relationship between the two countries remains close despite an apparent thaw in Burma-US relations marked by the visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Naypyidaw this week.
The commander-in-chief of the Burmese armed forces, Gen Min Aung Hlaing, signed a memorandum of understanding on defense cooperation with the Chinese army and assured his counterpart from the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), Gen Chen Bingde, of continued friendly relations between the two countries “no matter how the international situation changes,” according to the Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency.
By raising the topic of changes on the international stage, the Burmese army chief made an obvious allusion to his country's improved relationship with the US, which is China's top political and economic rival, and his visit to China—which began on Sunday—served to counterbalance Clinton's visit to Burma.
In addition to his meeting with the PLA Chief, Min Aung Hlaing held talks with Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping, who is also the vice-chairman of the Chinese Central Military Commission, and both sides vowed to strengthen military ties between the two countries.
It is believed that Min Aung Hlaing’s agenda in Beijing includes seeking cooperation from China with respect to the ongoing armed clashes in Burma’s Kachin State, which is situated along China's western border. On Tuesday, the leaders of the Kachin Independence Organization, the political wing of the Kachin Independence Army, met with Burmese government officials in the Chinese border town of Ruili, but the discussions achieved no concrete results.
Despite some positive changes in Burma, the country's army chief remains a key stakeholder in Burma's nominal parliamentary democracy and under Burma’s 2008 Constitution has the ability to assume power in times of “national emergency.”
China has been a major ally of Burma since 1988, when the US-led Western bloc shunned Burma both diplomatically and economically following the military government's crackdown on democracy protests that year.
It is estimated that China has provided billions of dollars of military and economic assistance to Burmese rulers in the subsequent period of over two decades, in addition to giving them much-need diplomatic cover on the international stage with respect to human rights issues.
Despite the close relationship, Burma recently suspended a massive Chinese-backed hydroelectric dam in Kachin State, resulting in Chinese concerns regarding its many strategically important economic investments in Burma, particularly in the context of the renewed relationship between Burma and the US.
The Global Times, a mouthpiece for the Chinese government, wrote on Monday that China has no resistance toward Burma seeking improved relationship with the West, but it will not accept this “while seeing its interests stomped on.”
Analysts have said that Burma, with its strong nationalism, has never been a strategic pawn of China, that the relationship between the two countries is a marriage of convenience, and that Burma has often in the past attempted to counterbalance Chinese influence with other regional powers such as members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (Asean), its giant neighbor India and even Russia.
Through the 2000s, the Burmese authorities have increasingly been cognizant of Burma's strategic interests and managed to deftly maneuver its foreign policy when needed, according to Renaud Egreteau, Assistant Professor for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong, who focuses on China-Burma-India relations.
“Even if China has long remained a critical partner, [former Burmese dictator] Than Shwe had visited India twice and sent his diplomats to Russia, the ASEAN and several other key partners in the past years,” said Egreteau in an interview with The Irrawaddy.
“With the US potentially coming back, the Burmese can add one more arrow to their diplomatic bow. But only to the extent it suits their long-term strategy; and so far this lies in more cordial relations with Washington, and less games with Pyongyang,” he said.

 

<table style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(245, 246, 244); " width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2"><tbody><tr><td colspan="2" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; " valign="top" width="100%">2011-12-10 04:46:05 - Nuclear Event - Japan

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</td></tr><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; " valign="top"><table width="100%" align="left" border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1"><tbody><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; " width="25%">EDIS Code:</td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">NC-20111210-33341-JPN</td></tr><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Date&Time:</td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">2011-12-10 04:46:05 [UTC]</td></tr><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Continent:</td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Asia</td></tr><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Country:</td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Japan</td></tr><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">State/Prov.:</td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Saga Prefecture,</td></tr><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Location:</td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Genka Nuclear Power Plant (No. 3 reactor),</td></tr><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">City:</td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">
</td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; ">Damage level: Heavy (Level 3)

Not confirmed information!
</td></tr></tbody></table></td><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; " width="440" align="right"></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; " valign="top">Description:</td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; " valign="top">Radioactive water leaked inside a nuclear power plant in southwestern Japan but did not escape into the environment, the government said Saturday. The leak Friday at Kyushu Electric Power Co.'s Genkai plant occurred as Japan attempts to stabilize a tsunami-hit nuclear plant on its northeastern coast where three reactor cores melted and large amounts of radiation were released into the air and ocean. Tetsuya Saito, spokesman for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said 1.8 tons of radioactive water leaked from a pump in Genkai's No. 3 reactor, and the cause was still under investigation. The water was funneled into a storage area and posed no safety risk, he said. Kyushu Electric issued a statement Friday about a pump problem but did not mention the leak. Officials at the utility were not immediately available for comment Saturday. "There have been various problems at Genkai," Saito said. "But there is no safety problem as a result of what happened this time." He said it was up to Kyushu Electric to determine whether to announce the leak. Genkai Mayor Hideo Kishimoto complained that the utility has not been fully open with information. "The local government needs to know," Kyodo News agency quoted him as saying. "I have repeatedly demanded the utility change its ways."
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</td></tr><tr><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; " align="right">Posted:2011-12-10 04:46:05 [UTC]
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