Wednesday, June 15 (early edition)

[Guest]

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/144940
IDF to Conduct Home Front War Drill Next Week
The IDF is set to conduct a wide ranging war drill on Israel’s home front next week. The drill, called “Turning Point 5” will begin on Sunday and continue for five days until Thursday.

http://www.debka.com/article/21026/
US naval movements around Syria. Hizballah moves rockets
Debkafile's military and intelligence sources report that Monday, June 13, the US deployed the USS Bataan amphibian air carrier strike vessel opposite Syria's Mediterranean coast with 2,000 marines, 6 war planes, 15 attack helicopters, including new V-22 Ospreys, and 27 choppers for landing forces aboard. Also this week, US naval units went operational in the Aegean, Adriatic and Black Seas as part of the joint US-Ukrainian Sea Breeze 2011 exercise.

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtri...0729_06_14.asp
'Arab Spring' bad news for Russian arms industry
MOSCOW — Russia could lose up to $10 billion in arms sales amid the "Arab Spring" uprisings throughout the Middle East. Russian industry sources and officials said the Kremlin was bracing for the loss of major defense markets in the Middle East.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a9bbb06e-9...44feab49a.html
China’s rise pushes old enemies together
Nguyen Duc De knows at first hand how alliances can change. The former Vietnamese soldier was stationed on the disputed Spratly Islands in the 1980s, when tensions with China were high following their 1979 border war, and he used to take pot shots at the Chinese marines who approached his base, pretending to be fishermen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/wo...ef=global-home
China Navy Reaches Far, Unsettling the Region
QINGDAO, China — The photographs of Chinese warships speeding between Japanese islands in the Pacific for drills circulated quickly last week, raising what Japan’s defense minister called “serious concern.” Vietnam, with little forewarning, then began live-fire naval exercises off its coast — a show of bravado in the face of rising tensions with China over rival claims to the oil- and gas-rich South China Sea.

[Guest]

Wednesday, June 15

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/irans-presi...115943400.html
Iran's president calls for post-Soviet security alliance to unite in alliance against West
ASTANA, Kazakhstan - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Wednesday for a security alliance of several former Soviet nations and China to form a united front against the West. Ahmadinejad's address to fellow heads of state at the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Kazakhstan will likely deepen suspicions that the bloc is intended as a counterweight to the United States across the region.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...090de182f4.641
Ahmadinejad joins China, Russia leaders at summit
ASTANA — Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday joined the Chinese and Russian leaders in a rare encounter at a summit in Kazakhstan, where he launched a new attack on the "slavers and colonisers" of the West. Host Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev urged the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a security group regarded as a NATO rival founded in 2001, to take a more active role in ensuring regional security.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english201...c_13929632.htm
Russia has no plan to reconsider relations with Iran
MOSCOW, June 14 (Xinhua) -- Moscow has no plan to reconsider its stance on Iran in order to please the U.S. and NATO, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Tuesday. He told local military reporters that Russia doesn't agree that Iran is its enemy.

http://en.apa.az/news.php?id=149494
Iran FM hails strategic ties with China
Baku-APA. Iran’s foreign minister has expressed optimism about the future of the Islamic Republic’s relations with China and has hailed the close stances of the two allies on global issues, APA reports quoting Press TV. “Tehran-Beijing ties are strategic and their prospects are bright,” Ali Akbar Salehi told reporters on Thursday in the Kazakh capital Astana, IRNA reported.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/710032ee-9...44feab49a.html
The global order fractures as American power declines
Harold Macmillan, the prime minister who watched US power rise as the British empire crumbled, used to say that Britain would play ancient Greece to America’s Rome. These days it looks as if Rome is declining too.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/144928
Police Training to Stop Mass Invasion of Arab Protesters
Police are conducting a large-scale training exercise in preparation for a possible massive Arab from Judea and Samaria in September. Hundreds of police, Border Police and special forces are participating in the exercise that police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld is a “regular standard exercise on a large scale,” according to the French news agency AFP.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomac...passe-1.367821
Netanyahu: Unilateral declaration of Palestinian state will create negotiation impasse
Prime Minister Benjamin meets with President of EU Parliament Jerzy Buzek in Jerusalem; Buzek calls on Natanyahu to renew talks with Palestinians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the President of the EU Parliament to oppose a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood in a meeting in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110614/ts_afp/usspacesun
Scientists predict rare 'hibernation' of sunspots
WASHINGTON (AFP) – For years, scientists have been predicting the Sun would by around 2012 move into solar maximum, a period of intense flares and sunspot activity, but lately a curious calm has suggested quite the opposite. According to three studies released in the United States on Tuesday, experts believe the familiar sunspot cycle may be shutting down and heading toward a pattern of inactivity unseen since the 17th century.

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/weird...123908874.html
Family Driven From Home by Hundreds of Snakes
An Idaho family was driven from their home and into bankruptcy by "hundreds and hundreds" of snakes that slithered inside the walls as they slept and left them and their children terrified. The garter snakes were so prevalent that the ground around their home appeared to move, according to Ben and Amber Sessions. Ben Sessions killed 42 of the serpents in one day, but eventually gave up and abandoned the home they had bought in 2009.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13769747
Middle East Christians facing 'extremist atrocities'
The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned that there are extreme forces at work that have turned the Arab Spring into a "very anxious time" for Christians. Dr Rowan Williams told the BBC that the vacuum left by the end of autocratic regimes was being filled by extremists.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=311229
Muslims turn Christian villages into cattleyard
There's more evidence being uncovered of a concerted campaign of violence by Muslims against Christians in Africa, as a new report from Compass Direct describes how Christians in two villages in Nigeria cannot return home because Islamic attackers have turned their entire villages into cattleyards. The attacks have been documented by Obed Minchakpu for Compass Direct