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Tabassum Zakaria, US Wants to Talk Outer Space With China. Reuters, July 19, 2011.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/19/us-usa-china-space-idUSTRE76I6F320110719
(to set the rules)
----------------------------------Separately
(1) Jeremy Page, China to Dive for Buried Treasures; Submersible is set to hunt for valuable minerals in Pacific. Wall Street Journal, July 20, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304567604576455930556290432.html
(US "in 1960 sent two men to the bottom of the Mariana Trench—at 11,033 meters the deepest point in the world's oceans—in the now-retired Trieste bathyscaphe")
Note: Trieste I. Navsource, undated
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08554.htm
Quote:
"Bathyscaph. L/B/D: Des[igned]: Auguste Piccard. Built: Navelmeccanica, Naples, Italy; [launched]1953.
"On 23 Jan. 1960, Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard became the first people to reach the bottom of Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench. This spot, 35,797 feet below the surface, is the deepest surveyed point of Earth’s oceans.
"The Trieste was the creation of Auguste Piccard, a Swiss physicist who invented a pressurized aluminum gondola that set a balloon altitude record of 51,775 feet in 1931. He then shifted his attention downward, realizing that his gondola might also take humans into the depths of the sea.
His first bathyscaph — a word Piccard coined from the Greek "baths," meaning deep, and "scaphe," meaning ship — was built and sold to the French navy. Piccard used the proceeds to construct and launch the Trieste in 1953. The vessel was named after the Italian city where much of it was built.
"By today’s standards, the Trieste technologies were relatively crude. * * * To descend, the crew flooded air-filled ballast tanks. To ascend, internal hoppers released tons of iron pellets. A cash-strapped Piccard sold the Trieste to the U.S. Office of Naval Research in 1958 for $250,000.
* Don Walsh (1931- ; then US Navy submarine lieutenant)
* Jacques Piccard (1922-2008; Swiss oceanographer ; son of Auguste Piccard)
* Trieste
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trieste
(section 1 Name)
* DSV Alvin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSV_Alvin
(owned by the United States Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts; Named to honor the prime mover and creative inspiration for the vehicle, Allyn Vine, Alvin was commissioned on 5 June 1964)
Alvin is also an English given name, composed of alf (elf; same as "alf" in "Alfred") + wine friend.
* Mir (the submersible or nternational space station) is Russian for peace or world.
(2) Joseph S Nye Jr, Another Overhyped Challenge to U.S. Power; It takes more than a catchy acronym to be an effective political bloc. Wall Street Journal, July 20, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304584004576418231616299112.html
Quote: "When one looks closely at the numbers, China's growing economy and vast resources are the heart of the BRICS acronym, though the role of democratic Brazil is a pleasant surprise. When the BRIC acronym was first invented, some argued that a country with a growth rate as skimpy as its bikinis, and chronic political instability, did not belong. Now, as the Economist notes, 'in some ways, Brazil outclasses the other BRICs. Unlike China, it is a democracy. Unlike India, it has no insurgents, no ethnic and religious conflicts nor hostile neighbors. Unlike Russia, it exports more than oil and arms and treats foreign investors with respect.' With good growth and a series of democratic elections, the key now will be whether Brazil can continue to keep inflation under control.
(3) Patrick Barta, US, Vietnam in Exercises Anid Tensions With China. Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2011.
Quote:
"The [US-Vietnam] exercises, which are confined to noncombat training, fall short of the kinds of advanced military exercises that occur between the US and the longer-term allies in the region, such as the philippines and Australia.
"The US strategy includes an expansion of training exercise \s in the region to include newer parcipants, such as Cambodia and Malaysia, in some programs, as well as the deployment of new hardware, including littoral combat ships in Singapore.
My comment; There is no need to read the rest.
(4) Gregory Kulacki, China’s Newest Missiliers. All Things Nuclear, July 20, 2011.
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/7841388155/chinas-newest-missiliers
, which points to
梁蓬飞 and 李永飞, 解放军第一代女子导弹操作号手首次实弹发射(图). 解放军报, July 15, 2011.
http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2011/07-15/3184045.shtml
Note: The noun "missilier" is misspelled. It shoud be "missileer"--just like mountaineer or racketeer.
(5) 吳明杰, 電磁脈衝彈 兩岸祕密較勁. 中國時報, July 20, 2011.
http://news.chinatimes.com/mainland/11050506/112011072000180.html
My comment:
(a) I never trust China Times or United Daily News. Since a few weeks ago, I occasionally brought reports from these two media outlets to your attention. I do this for no reason other than that Central News Agency (CNA) carries English reports about them. Today is the same. For 電磁脈衝彈, CNA uses "electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons." See
electromagnetic pulse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse
(b) The China Times report cites
2011國防報告書. Ministry of National Defense (MND), July 19, 2011
, which can be downloaded from the MND home page.
www.mnd.gov.tw
Which is in Adobe PDF (8.0 or above) format. I am using a computer in a library. I can not access teh file. I donot know if it because the file is in hot demand, or if the computer can not read the file (often Taiwanese files are in TRADITIONAL Chinese PDF format that few computers in US can read).
(6) Kathrin Hille, Demetri Sevastopulo and Roel Landingin, Beijing Warned Over S China Sea. Financial Times, July 20, 2011, at page 2
(US senators John Kerry and John McCain wrote a letter to Dai Bingguo, warning China that "recent clashes with its neighbors in the South China Sea could jeopardize US'national interests' inthe region"--I am quoting from the summary of front page)
(7) Ramachandra Guha, India Is Too Corrupt to Become a Superpower. FT, July 20, 2011 (op-ed).
http://blogs.ft.com/the-a-list/2011/07/19/india-is-too-corrupt-to-become-a-superpower/
Quote:
"The sociologist Ashis Nandy once noted that 'in India the choice could never be between chaos and stability, but between manageable and unmanageable chaos.' He wrote this in the 1980s, a decade marked by ethnic and caste violence, and bloody religious riots. It applies even more to the India of today, however
"If nothing else, the current wave of corruption scandals will put at least a temporary halt to premature talk of India’s imminent rise to superstardom. Such fancies are characteristic of editors in New Delhi and businessmen in Mumbai, who dream often of catching up with and even surpassing China. Yet the truth is that India is in no position to become a superpower. It is not a rising power, nor even an emerging power. It is merely a fascinating, complex, and perhaps unique experiment in nationhood and democracy, whose leaders need still to attend to the fault lines within, rather than presume to take on the world without.
Note:
(a) The author is an Indian.
(b) This is an op-ed, not a blog (as the URL indicates).
(c) There is no need to read the rest (other than the quotation).
(8) Aatish Taseer, Why My Father Hated India; Aatish Taseer, the son of an assassinated Pakistani leader, explains the history and hysteria behhind a deadly relationship. Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2011.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304911104576445862242908294.html
Four consecutive paragraphs:
"Pakistan's existential confusion made itself apparent in the political turmoil of the decades after partition. The state failed to perform a single legal transfer of power; coups were commonplace. And yet, in 1980, my father would still have felt that the partition had not been a mistake, for one critical reason: India, for all its democracy and pluralism, was an economic disaster.
"Pakistan had better roads, better cars; Pakistani businesses were thriving; its citizens could take foreign currency abroad. Compared with starving, socialist India, they were on much surer ground. So what if India had democracy? It had brought nothing but drought and famine.
"But in the early 1990s, a reversal began to occur in the fortunes of the two countries. The advantage that Pakistan had seemed to enjoy in the years after independence evaporated, as it became clear that the quest to rid itself of its Indian identity had come at a price: the emergence of a new and dangerous brand of Islam.
"As India rose, thanks to economic liberalization, Pakistan withered.
My comment: This article is worth reading, not least explaining subcontinent partition and why the half-Indian son (whose mother is Indian) repudiated Pakistan and had not talked to his father for three yeasr prior to the assassination. It does not mention China.
(9) 菲议员亮相中业岛 南中国海局势费思量. VOA Chinese, July 20, 2011.
http://www.voanews.com/chinese/news/asia/20110720-South-China-Sea-Dispute-125882313.html
(10) 布鲁克, 白俄国库捉襟见肘 中国大量注资不含糊. VOA Chinese, July 19, 2011.
http://www.voanews.com/chinese/news/20110719-China-Ex-Soviet-125859293.html
, which is translated from
James Brooke, China Moves Into Russia's Zone - Former Soviet Union. VOA, July 19, 2011.
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/China-Moves-Into-Russias-Zone-the-Former-Soviet-Union-125839873.html
Quote:
Russian political columnist Konstantin von Eggert says, "The Russians are not very pleased with that, but at the same time they are keeping their mouths shut, because there is nothing they can do about that. Russia is losing its pool in the former Soviet republics, in the post-Soviet space" * * * "Russia does not have enough political, economic, or for that matter military power, to send off this Chinese incursion into what used to be 'the zone of privileged interests of Russia' as President Medvedev once called it. It is yet another sign of Russia's post imperial decline," noted Von Eggert.
"Belarus is just the latest new frontier for Chinese investment in the 14 former Soviet republics that once were economic colonies of Russia. * * * Only 20 years ago, Nursultan Nazarbayev, then the head of the Kazakhs Soviet Socialist Republic, was fighting to keep Kazakhstan in the Soviet Union. But last month, Nazarbayev, now president of independent Kazakhstan joined China's president in signing a 'strategic partnership' agreement.
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