Cold war era fades further as Russia, NATO agree to 'reset' relations - Christian Science Monitor

Lisbon, Portugal

?In a speech last week to “young Atlanticists” - young people from Europe, the US, and Canada – NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he realized that to them, talking about the cold war must be akin to discussing the Peloponnesian War.

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Yet the six-decade-old North Atlantic defense alliance between Europe and North America has its origins in the cold war. And that is one reason that anyone a little older than Mr. Rasmussen’s audience could have been justifiably amazed at the degree of cooperation launched between NATO and its old nemesis, Russia, at this weekend’s NATO summit.

As Russian President Dmitry Medvedev joined NATO leaders including President Obama on Saturday, Russia formally agreed to expand its cooperation with the NATO effort in Afghanistan. Russia will allow more NATO supplies to pass through its territory, and for the first time agreed that non-lethal military equipment leaving Afghanistan can also exit across its borders.

Perhaps even more striking for anyone with memory of the cold war, Russia not only accepted NATO’s decision at the summit to develop a missile defense system to protect Europe’s territory and population from ballistic missile attack, but Mr. Medvedev also agreed to a plan for Russia and NATO to study missile defense cooperation and how the two might eventually coordinate their systems.

In a post-summit press conference, President Obama said that one advantage of launching NATO-Russia cooperation on missile defense was to demonstrate how “a topic of past tension can become a point of cooperation in the future.” Obama, who referred to Medvedev as “my friend and partner” – a characterization that hinted at what is one of the few warm relationships Obama has developed with a foreign leader – said that just as the US and Russia have “reset” their relations, “we are also resetting the NATO-Russia partnership.”

NATO’s reinvigorated cooperation with Russia – a process that began earlier in the decade, but was cut off in 2008 over Russia’s incursion into Georgia and occupation of two Georgian regions – was only one of the summit’s signs of the cold war era retreating further into history books. More broadly, the new “strategic concept” or mission statement the Alliance leaders adopted was a re-orientation of NATO away from the 20th-century threats of its origins to those of the 21st century.

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Opposition Mounts to US Plan for Israeli Settlement Freeze - Voice of America

Robert Berger | Jerusalem 21 November 2010

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairing the weekly meeting of his Cabinet (file photo)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his Cabinet to try to shore up support for a 90-day moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank that is aimed at reviving Middle East peace talks.

Israel ended a 10-month moratorium in late September, prompting the Palestinians to suspend negotiations.

The United States has offered to sell Israel 20 advanced stealth fighter jets and to block anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations Security Council in exchange for the settlement freeze.

But Mr. Netanyahu is having trouble winning support from his right-wing coalition partners.

Cabinet Minister Eli Yishai said his ultra-Orthodox Shas party opposes the freeze. But he said the party might reconsider, if the U.S. guarantees that it will not demand any further restrictions on settlement construction when the 90-day period expires.

The dovish Labor Party, on the other hand, supports the freeze.

Labor Cabinet Minister Avishai Braverman urged the prime minister to move quickly to get the peace talks back on track.

Outside of the Cabinet meeting, some 2,000 Jewish settlers held a noisy protest against the moratorium.

"We will never allow the Land of Israel to be divided!" said settlement leader Dani Dayan.

Speaking in Cairo, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also rejected the freeze because it only applies to the West Bank.

He said he would not return to peace talks, unless Israel also stops settlement construction in disputed East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim as the capital of a future state. Israel says Jerusalem is not a settlement, and it reserves the right to build anywhere in the city.

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Ireland to apply for bail-out: Your comments - BBC News

21 November 2010 Last updated at 11:40 ET Ireland is set to apply for a multi-billion euro bailout from the EU and the IMF.

Finance minister Brian Lenihan put no figure on how much may be borrowed, but told RTE radio it would be "tens of billions" of euros.

BBC News website readers in Ireland have been e-mailing their reaction. You can read a selection of their comments below.

I am really worried for the future of this little country and I am unsure of the outcome of the IMF moving in here. If I had a choice I would leave here tomorrow. Kate Kelleher, Monard, County Tipperary

As an Irish citizen, I'm actually relieved that the IMF and EU are finally at the economic helm. I don't think any Irish political party, of any colour, has the guts or policies to implement the policies that will now be enacted under the bail-out. Mike, Ireland

We have a severe winter ahead with many hardships and a country reeling and shuddering from calamity to calamity. Terms and conditions that are part of any bail-out will have to be severe and so should be the treatment of unbelievably irresponsible so-called bankers. N R de Mowbray Jeffrey, Bantry, County Cork

I am most definitely worried. Ireland is about to be bought out and taken control of by some insurmountable legal contract - one more country to be gobbled up by the EU to do with as they wish. These are very worrying times. Ian, Ireland

As hard as things will be, I'm more hopeful for the future now. This country is screaming for a general election and this is now almost guaranteed within the next four months and maybe sooner. David O'Brien, Portlaoise

If Ireland was a limited company, it would have been placed into liquidation by now and the directors would be investigated and prosecuted for the reckless activities they engaged in. Andrew Bonehill, Dublin

I'm worried about the IMF terms but there is a sense that with the IMF here, at least we have people who know what they're doing. I want corporation tax to stay the same and I want senior bond holders of the banks to feel some of the pain. Lar O'Toole, Kilkenny

I think the arrival of the IMF and EU is positive for the country. They will impose economic measures on the Irish government which it has proved incapable of doing in the national interest. The Irish people will be informed of the true extent of the financial difficulties facing the country. Hopefully it will result in economic and political change for the good. David Fitzgerald, Kerry

The government should never have bailed out the banks. Every time the government pumps taxpayer money into the banks, their share prices go up only to fall again. Some people out there are making a lot of money. Anthony, Dundalk

Ireland would have been better served in the long term to default on the debts of its banks and perhaps leave the Euro. Taking responsibility for the failures of banks, both at home and abroad, is unjust. Robert Barrett, Kilkenny

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Samsung goes where Apple won't - CNET

PALO ALTO, CALIF.--The Samsung Galaxy Tab has found a sweet spot the Apple iPad will miss--apparently.

Steve Jobs was wrong: a 7-inch diagonal is fine. Samsung Galaxy Tab on right.

(Credit: CNET Reviews)

I'm writing this on Wednesday during a brief sojourn in Silicon Valley. I had some time to burn so I spent about 30 minutes using the Galaxy Tab at a local Best Buy. Granted, that isn't a long time by product review standards, but it was long enough for me to realize that I was hooked on the size.

Let me be clear, I have no gripes about the 10-inch screen on the iPad (which, by the way, I use all the time and frighteningly at the expense of my MacBook Air--but that's another post for another day).

And I'll confess that I have a bias for small, light designs: the smaller and lighter, the better. To a point. Seven inches is that point. Without descending into tedious punditry about the merits of a 7-inch design, suffice to say that it just feels better in my hand and the screen size is more than adequate. And on-screen typing presented no problem for me.

In fact, if Apple came out with a 7-inch iPad, I can say with pretty much certainty that I would be in line to buy one (and I think that would be a long line on product launch day). That said, Steve Jobs has already apparently precluded that possibility, proclaiming--as I have touched on before--that Apple isn't interested in offering a 7-inch model.

Is this a giant opportunity for the Android camp? We'll see of course. Preliminary reports claim that the Galaxy Tab is not exactly flying off the shelves--what Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Rodman & Renshaw, has characterized as the Galaxy's "poor sell through." That may be partially due to the reluctance to buy a tablet with Android apps that are not yet ready for a larger screen, as this CNET review says. But it's more likely due to price--the Galaxy Tab is not cheap--and to consumers being unfamiliar with any device that's not an iPad. Something akin to the I-want-nothing-but-an-iPhone-4 syndrome. Plus, not all reviews have been favorable.

But Motorola, HTC, Dell, HP, and others would be well advised to follow Samsung's lead with similarly sized tablets. Sorry, Mr. Jobs, I think you're wrong on this one.

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North Korea Report Validates Concern, Mullen Says - New York Times

He said that American leaders have long assumed that North Korea continued “to head in the direction of additional nuclear weapons,” and a report in The New York Times on Sunday that Siegfried S. Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, was recently allowed to view a new and sophisticated plant for enriching uranium bolstered that assumption.

“This validates a long-standing concern we’ve had with regard to North Korea and its enrichment of uranium,” he said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week With Christiane Amanpour.”

The new plant, whose modernistic technology, rich collection of centrifuges and up-to-date control room astonished Dr. Hecker, did not exist in the spring of 2009, just before international weapons inspectors were thrown out of the country. While North Korea has already tested two atomic bombs and produced other nuclear weapons, those were manufactured from the spent fuel harvested from a nuclear reactor, not from enriched uranium.

North Korea insists the uranium is intended for a reactor that would generate electricity. American officials, however, believe the Communist regime there is focused on building more nuclear weapons and fear that without any capacity to inspect, they cannot know for certain.

North Korea is already being punished for flouting inspections with sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council. The Obama administration’s new verbal campaign may be intended to pressure China, North Korea’s most important patron.

However, Admiral Mullen did not express confidence that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, would respond to new pressures.

“He blows hot and cold,” Admiral Mullen said, adding later that the North Korean leader was “predictable in his unpredictability.” “He moves in a certain direction and then reverts, and I certainly would see him in his reversion mode at this particular point in time.”

Admiral Mullen also sought to prop up President Obama’s effort to secure ratification of an arms control treaty with Russia — the so-called New Start — by a two-thirds majority of the United States Senate. The prospects of knitting together that majority seemed to collapse last week when Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the chief Republican negotiator in the Senate on the arms issue, said he would block a vote on the pact in the current lame-duck session of Congress.

The treaty would force both countries to reduce their nuclear arsenals and resume inspections that lapsed last year for the first time since the Cold War.

Clearly targeting his remarks to Republican misgivings about a new treaty, Admiral Mullen said he was “completely comfortable with where we are militarily” and feared only that without a treaty we cannot verify Russian claims about paring its arsenal. He called ratification of a treaty an urgent “national security issue of great significance.”

“We’re close to one year without any ability to verify what’s going on in Russia,” he said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” reinforced his position, noting that Russia has “thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at the United States,” and that from the Reagan administration on, arms controls treaties “have been overwhelmingly passed.”

Both Admiral Mullen and Mrs. Clinton tried to clarify how long the Obama administration intends to keep American troops in Afghanistan. They said that American units would slowly turn over leadership in combat operations to the Afghan army starting in the spring, but the goal is not to cede that combat role completely until the end of 2014. Afterwards, Americans would continue to advise, equip and train the Afghan army, both said.

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Al Qaeda Promises US Death By A 'Thousand Cuts' - ABC News

Printer bombs planted on two cargo flights last month cost only a few thousand dollars and were intended to affect the American economy, according to a newly published Al Qaeda-affiliated magazine.

The attempt was called "Operation Hemorrhage," boasted the magazine, and the entire plot cost al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, only $4,200.

Yesterday, a special edition of Inspire magazine -- an English-language propaganda publication produced by AQAP -- gave a detailed description of how the attempted attack was conceived and produced.

"Two Nokia mobiles, $150 each, two HP printers, $300 each, plus shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses add up to a total bill of $4,200," one article said.  "That is all that Operation Hemorrhage cost us. In terms of time, it took us three months to plan and execute the operation from beginning to end."

The magazine also revealed the attack was not meant to kill more than the plane's pilot and co-pilot, and was meant to force the U.S. government to spend billions of dollars on preventive security screening measures.

The strategy, the magazine said, was  "of attacking the enemy with smaller, but more frequent operations is what some may refer to as the strategy of a thousand cuts. The aim is to bleed the enemy to death."

CLICK HERE to follow the ABC News Investigative Team's coverage on Twitter.

AQAP also took credit for the September crash of a UPS cargo flight in Dubai. However, U.S. and U.A.E. officials have concluded that the crash was not an act of terrorism.

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