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« on: August 24, 2007, 08:13:30 PM »
henny you may find this interesting
i can not source this info
so take it as you will
China & Iran Targeted
US Turns to Cold War Tactics
The old Cold War tactics employed against the Soviet Union assume new guises in the era of the global economy and the new giants it has thrown up.
China?s international trade relations, for instance, are its Achilles heel.
In this day and age, therefore, discrediting the Made in China label worldwide becomes a Cold War tactic par excellence.
The campaign branding Chinese products marketed in the West as unsafe and harmful to health reached a new climax this week, threatening China?s gigantic textile exports.
Thursday, Aug. 23, Australia and New Zealand started the new outcry when they hastily recalled Chinese-made clothes discovered to contain dangerous levels of formaldehyde, a chemical preservative, in woolen and cotton clothes made in China, after tests were performed on imported blankets.
Earlier, toys containing lead and other hazardous substances, unhygienic toothpaste and harmful human and pet foods, were highlighted in warnings to Western consumers. The convention planted in the minds of consumers worldwide that buying Chinese is dangerous to health, especially of infants, will be hard to erase in the long term. Tens of thousands of Chinese export industries, medium and small, face hard times and many millions of workers stand to lose their jobs.
In a desperate bid to halt the made-in-China scare, Chinese officials raided a Beijing factory suspected of recycling 100,000 chopsticks a day and putting them back on the market unsterilized. Half a million pairs were confiscated.
Even more than air pollution, this sort of scare will keep visitors away from the Chinese capital, where eating out is seen to be a health hazard, and most likely hit ticket sales for the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics.
A trade war is launched
Far East sources report that Chinese officials are deeply suspicious of the verbal offensive on their economy. They are asking why in mid-2007, Western consumers have been suddenly alerted to the unsafe standards of Chinese products, after they have swamped the world?s markets for twenty years.
And why are the products of other Asian countries not subjected to the same systematic scrutiny?
Those sources say that the powers-that-be in Beijing suspect that the administration headed by George W. Bush has embarked on a trade war not only against Iran but also the governments which befriend the Islamic Republic, although China has never been singled out before.
This suspicion ties in with the leak to the media of the administration?s plan to blacklist Iran?s Revolutionary Guards Corps as global terrorists in September, when the US Security Council is also scheduled to discuss harsher sanctions against the Iran for refusing to give up uranium enrichment.
This decision would resonate harshly outside the US-Iranian conflict, given the close military ties the Revolutionary Guards Corps maintains with Russia, India, Turkey and, most of all, China.
This week, too, US undersecretary of state Nicholas Burns made a complaint heavy with warning when he said that UN sanctions are undercut when America?s allies make lucrative trade deals with Iran. At a meeting at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Burns named those allies as Europe, Turkey, India, Japan and South Korea.
Some, he said, even offer credit to businesses trading with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Even countries that support UN sanctions continue to do business with Iran in other fields, particularly in the energy sector ? a veiled reference to China.
Financial warfare and containment
A State Department official admitted that the Iranian threat was now being treated in similar terms to the Soviet Union in the Cold War, which left the United Nations on the sidelines and the brunt of confronting Soviet Russia to the United States.
Washington?s tactic will be to turn the heat on countries such as Turkey, India and China continuing to do business with Iran.
Washington?s cold war tactics are hurting Iran?s financial sector, with more to come.
Last week Alianz?s Dresdner Bank discontinued business relations with Iran, the third German bank to do so after Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank in recent months.
A furious response came from Vice Governor Jafar Mojarrad of Iran?s Central Bank.
He said there was no guarantee for their return in good times, and banks from Asia, Russia and the Gulf Region were prepared to take over the German banks? business.
Power plays, Cold War style, are in the works for Iran?s containment. Setting aside its earlier demands for allies to embrace democratic reforms, Washington is strengthening its military relations with Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Cooperation Council members with the accent on stability.
Washington is also in mid-drive for influence in the parts of the world targeted by Iran.
President Bush?s senior military adviser General Peter Pace visited some African countries this month.
On Aug. 14, he was in Djibouti to address members of Combined Joint Task Force ? Horn of Africa mission at a "Town Hall meeting" in the Thunder Dome at Camp Lemonier, Djibouti. He told them that through a humanitarian mission of capacity building and military training to help Africans help themselves, their project will be a model ?as the US military sets up its African command.?
China & Iran in Secret Harness
Beijing Nourishes Tehran?s Military Industry, Colludes in Central Asia and Africa
Outside intelligence circles, the depth of Sino-Iranian friendship is a well-kept secret.
It draws strength from a chip on the shoulder they share as two of the world?s most under-appreciated civilizations. They see their bond as a lever to be used to make the West, the Russians and fellow Asians give them the respect which is their due as ancient cultures and contemporary global powers.
Iran and China try to guard the true extent of their collaboration as a cherished secret, according intelligence sources. Beijing silently applauds Tehran?s troublemaking in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Afghanistan as a bid to weaken the United States; both promote the impression that Russia is Iran?s senior strategic partner.
In fact, it is China which has for the last five years been quietly transferring to Iran nuclear know-how and sophisticated missile technology, oblivious to protests from Washington.
Assuming US intelligence is alive to these goings-on, it would appear that the Bush administration has decided to stay mum while, at the same time, hitting China in its pocket.
According to intelligence sources, the Chinese are feeding Iran technology for most of its military industries, including the sensitive elements of military aircraft production. With help from Beijing and technical information from Russia and Ukraine, Iran has been able to go into production of two fighter aircraft designated Saegheh and Azarkhsh and a two-seater training craft.
From China, Iran?s aviation industry has learned techniques for making engine components, electronics and aircraft design.
It is possible that China may even have passed to Iran vital elements of electronic technology and equipment purchased in the past from Israel.
The two governments are in the final stages of drafting a multi-annual contract for the sale of Iranian gas and oil to China. Washington leaned hard on Bejing to stop the transaction, to no effect.
China?s inside track with the clerical rulers of Tehran is enhanced at the same time as Iran goes sour on Moscow, chiefly over Russia?s procrastination in releasing fuel for the Bushehr reactor and completing its construction.
Putting down clandestine roots in Africa together
Iran and China have a flourishing partnership going to put down clandestine roots in Africa. In the teeth of US disapproval, China will be setting up in Khartoum, Sudan, an intelligence and administrative station for organizing its operations across the continent. Iran?s side of the deal is investment in Sudan?s infrastructure including roads, while working with the Sudanese government to expand an Islamist network of terrorists across Africa. Subversive agents are to be planted in Somalia and the Horn of Africa, and sanctuary provided for terrorists on the run from pro-Western governments.
The Chinese-Iranian collaboration was confirmed when General Peter Pace, military adviser to President George W. Bush, visited the Horn of Africa and other parts of the continent earlier this month.
Watchful eyes in Washington did not miss Iran?s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hobnobbing at length with Chinese president Hu Jintao at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization?s summit in Bishbek on Aug. 16.
Sources also reveal that the summit in the capital of Kyrgyzstan also occasioned the secret venue for the first known private conference between Presidents Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
One of the consequences of that encounter was the decision to step hard into the hot arena of Central Asia to challenge the US military presence and its investments in the gas and energy resources of the region.
The Russian president believes he can get away with a double game. By keeping a foot in both camps, he hopes to qualify as honest broker for smoothing differences between his two Asian colleagues and Washington.
This will not wash. Putin?s visit with the Bush clan in Maine was far from a roaring success. The US president?s strategic advisers are leery of the Russian president?s pose athwart the West and the radical Muslim camp and see him as part of the opposition.
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