We need to stop Iran from killing some of our troops. From a recent article:

US forces on Friday detained four members of a gang suspected of smuggling armour-piercing bombs from Iran to Iraq and sending back militants for “terrorist training”, the military said.
A statement from US command in Iraq said the suspects were picked up in an early morning raid on the east Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, a known stronghold of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.

“The individuals targeted during the raid are suspected members of a secret cell terrorist network known for facilitating the transport of weapons and explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, from Iran to Iraq,” it said.

The EFP is a form of roadside bomb in which the detonation of an explosive charge inside a steel tube causes a copper disk to deform into a fist-sized chunk of supersonic molten metal that can scythe through armoured vehicles.

The New York Times reports:

50% Good News Is the Bad News in Russian Radio
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
MOSCOW, April 21 — At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia’s largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be “positive.”

In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of the Kremlin.

How would they know what constituted positive news?

“When we talk of death, violence or poverty, for example, this is not positive,” said one editor at the station who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. “If the stock market is up, that is positive. The weather can also be positive.”

In a darkening media landscape, radio news had been a rare bright spot. Now, the implementation of the “50 percent positive” rule at the Russian News Service leaves an increasingly small number of news outlets that are not managed by the Kremlin, directly or through the state national gas company, Gazprom, a major owner of media assets.

The three national television networks are already state controlled, though small-circulation newspapers generally remain independent.

This month alone, a bank loyal to President Vladimir V. Putin tightened its control of an independent television station, Parliament passed a measure banning “extremism” in politics and prosecutors have gone after individuals who post critical comments on Web chat rooms.

Parliament is also considering extending state control to Internet sites that report news, reflecting the growing importance of Web news as the country becomes more affluent and growing numbers of middle-class Russians acquire computers.

On Tuesday, the police raided the Educated Media Foundation, a nongovernmental group sponsored by United States and European donors that helps foster an independent news media. The police carried away documents and computers that were used as servers for the Web sites of similar groups. That brought down a Web site run by the Glasnost Defense Foundation, a media rights group, which published bulletins on violations of press freedoms.

“Russia is dropping off the list of countries that respect press freedoms,” said Boris Timoshenko, a spokesman for the foundation. “We have propaganda, not information.”

Meanwhile, we’re considering letting them in our missile defense system? The Soviets are moving against press freedom, religious freedom, and freedom of association.  Sadly, they are turning back to their old evil ways.  We need to keep track of their aging arsenal of nuclear weapons so they don’t get into the hands of terrorists, and we also need to pressure them to respect freedoms.

Imagine black oil washing up onto the shore of Key West and other beaches in South Florida, choking and killing thousands of birds, fish and other wildlife. It would be the Exxon Valdez all over again, but this time instead of off the Alaskan coast, it would be on the beautiful beaches of South Florida. Florida would then lose billions of dollars in tourism dollars and would need federal dollars to help clean up this mess.

That’s what could happen if China gets its way and begins drilling north of Cuba, just 45 miles from Key West and an accident occurred. It’s bad enough that China wants to drill for oil just miles from the the United States.

While some politicians want to drill off the Florida coast, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida rightly points out that a Cuban oil spill could devastate Florida’s environment and $50-billion tourism industry. He wants to block drilling north of Cuba:

“Any oil spill 45 miles from Key West is going to absolutely devastate all those delicate coral reefs, the fragile Florida Keys, and would endanger pristine beaches all the way up to Fort Pierce,” said Nelson, a Democrat.

Cuba pumps about 80,000 barrels of oil a day in Havana and Matanzas provinces, but it is of poor quality and meets less than half of the country’s needs.

Thus there has been considerable excitement about fields off the northwest Cuban coast that could contain 4.5-billion to 9-billion barrels of oil – almost as much as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

In February 2005, Castro announced that huge Chinese drilling rigs would be used to further explore areas in which a Spanish company had reported promising results. The Cuban government also signed a contract with China’s oil and gas company, Sinopec, to work in areas around the island thought to contain oil deposits.

We should prevent them from drilling anywhere near the U.S. Coast, with military ships if neccessary. Why not? It threatens billions of dollars in tourism revenue, plus I don’t want anything Chinese that close to our shores.

Source: St. Pete Times

Three alleged Chinese spies accused of trying to smuggle a disc containing highly-sensitive data from a computer owned by Paragon, “a US military contractor developing secret stealth technology for US warships” and the Chinese-born engineer’s Chi Mak’s employer, are getting more serious charges:

US prosecutors warned they plan to seek harsher charges against an engineer and two kin accused of plotting to steal sensitive US Navy warship technology and trying to smuggle it to China.

The plans to beef up charges against Chinese-born engineer Chi Mak, 65, his wife, Rebecca Chiu Lai-wah, 62; and Mak’s brother, former television director Mak Tai-wing, 56, came at a pre-trial hearing in Los Angeles.

Assistant US Attorney Greg Staples confirmed to US District Judge Cormac Carney that prosecutors intend to upgrade the charges from the current counts of acting as agents for the Beijing government without being registered to do so, a much lesser charge than espionage.

Good. It would be ridiculous to just charge them with “acting as agents” instead of what they were realling doing if found guilty: spying for another country. If they are guilty of trying to send the Chinese our secret stealth technology, then they should go away to jail for the rest of their lives. China is trying to become a super power by having many spies over here, AND they’re pretty crazy.

Iraq’s Interior Ministry, comprised of mostly Shiite Muslims, runs a few detention centers in Iraq. When U.S. soldiers inspected some of the centers, many of the detainees showed Signs of abuse and torture, according to a Washington Post article.

Recent inspections by joint U.S.-Iraqi forces found more evidence of torture. It would be nice if the Shiites and Sunnis could get past their religious differences and stop killing and torturing each other.

A joint U.S.-Iraqi inspection team photographed the Iraqi men being held at an Interior Ministry detention center in Baghdad Feb. 16, 2006. Photograph provided to the Washington Post.

Emily Messner of the Washington Post reports that Australia decided to sell uranium to the China’s Hu regime. She also has some helpful information about radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.

The same can be said of nuclear technologies — and it’s a dilemma for the United States. Is it wise for the United States to provide technologies to developing countries that want to pursue civilian nuclear power generation? Such an approach could help ensure that Americans have vital knowledge of those emerging energy programs.

On the other hand, proliferation concerns, waste issues and many of the other drawbacks we’ve discussed this week must be considered. Should U.S. policy be to refuse to provide nuclear technologies, even though that runs the risk that developing nations will procure them from other countries instead, potentially leaving Americans in the dark about those new nuclear capabilities.

Big tech companies like Google and Yahoo! help the Chinese Communist regime censor political speech about democracy and persecute and jail?dissidents in China. China continues to sell more goods to Americans than America sells goods to the Chinese, giving them more money to build more nukes to point at us. Big companies invest in China because they worship money and betray what’s right: standing up for human rights, including freedom of speech, religion and the press. What’s even stranger is that Hu met up with Bill Gates before meeting with President Bush. This is one example of how greed can make people sell out any idea of ethics. Bill Gates toasted with Hu. Hu called Gates a “friend of China.” On the other hand, Gates did say that government surveillance of the Internet should be balanced Internet users’ rights:

It is my belief that industry and government around the world should work even more closely to protect the privacy and security of Internet users, and promote the exchange of ideas, while respecting legitimate government considerations.

Falun Gong, the outlawed group in China, protested the meeting. One Falun Gong woman even showed up at the Bush/Hu press conference on the White House lawn, saying, according to a Drudge Report posting,

“President Bush, stop him from killing”… “Stop persecuting the Falun Gong,” she yelled… She also shouted in Chinese, “President Hu, your days are numbered, No more time for China’s ruling party.”

Speaking of China, Reuters reports that

A Chinese national living in Southern California admitted on Wednesday trying to arrange the sale from China to the United States of 200 shoulder-fired missiles that can be used to bring down airplanes.

Chao Tung Wu, 51, pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court to conspiring to import the missiles for a buyer who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent.

When Wu was indicted in November along with another man, Yi Qing Chen, they became the first people charged under a 2004 U.S. law forbidding the import of aircraft-destroying missile systems into the United States, officials said.

Yikes. I’m glad they caught this guy.

Surprise, surprise, the Chinese military was involved in the smuggling:

Court papers made public yesterday in the case of a California man who pleaded guilty to trying to smuggle anti-aircraft missiles into the United States show that a Chinese general and state-run manufacturer are linked to the crime.

Chao Tung Wu, 51, of La Puente, Calif., pleaded guilty yesterday at U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to conspiracy to smuggle Chinese QW-2 anti-aircraft missiles into the United States. It was the first conviction under a 2004 anti-terrorism law aimed at preventing the spread of shoulder-fired and portable anti-aircraft missiles.

Wu and a second defendant who is awaiting trial, Yi Qing Chen, met an undercover FBI agent and sought to sell 200 QW-2s, as well as launcher and operational hardware for the missiles, according to court papers. A statement of facts read in court yesterday revealed that Wu had offered to provide enough missiles “for a regiment” of soldiers.

Wu told the undercover agent that the plan for getting the missiles out of China involved the help of a “corrupt customs broker” in China and falsified export papers, the statement said. The deal involved a “Gen. Wang” in China who was to supply the weapons.

China’s military has been linked to past illicit arms deals, including the attempted sale of AK-47 assault rifles to Los Angeles street gangs.

What do Google, Yahoo and Bill Gates have to say about that?