Arms Control Wonk

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Albania to the Rescue

Just as news of the Spanish and Honduran pullouts from Iraq was giving “false comfort to terrorists” and evil-doers the world over, Albania announces it may increase its “71-member-strong contingent patrolling the northern city of Mosul under U.S. command.” “The…

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China launches small satellite

China successfully sent two new satellites, Experiment Satellite I (Shiyan 1) and Nano-satellite I (Nuoxing 1), into space early Monday with a Long March II C carrier rocket, according to the People’s Daily. People’s Daily hailed the launch as a…

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Mordechai Vanunu, Israel and the Bomb

Mordechai Vanunu will be released from an Israeli prison Wednesday. Vanunu was a technician in the Israeli nuclear weapons program who took his camera to work one day. When The Sunday Times published the photographs along with technical analysis in…

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Condi Rice goes Kissinger over Rantisi Assasination

The White House has expressed concern about the killing of Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, but affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself. The concern expressed by the White House has a Kissengerian amoralism to it. Here is Condolezza Rice, condemining Israeli…

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Secretive Chinese Hide Technology in Museum

Yesterday, I visited the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) museum. CALT designs, develops and manufactures Chinese space launch vehicles and ballistic missiles. The highlight, for me, was a “Smart Dispenser” (SD), which is a CZ-2C upper rocket stage…

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Bush on Iraq, Redux

Looks like it was that bad. Kaiser claims the press conference “aggravated the doubts of a lot of people.” One literate friend quotes Fischer on Amis: The Bush performance “isn’t bad as in not very good or slightly disappointing. It’s…

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Bush Press Conference

Obviously, I didn’t get to see the Bush press conference, but I received the following observations: He didn’t answer a single question (most of which were softballs), he was offered and refused 3 or 4 opportunities to admit that he’d…

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Workshop on Technical Aspects of Space Security

The highlight of the Workshop on Technical Aspects of Space Security, so far, has been the tour of The Beijing Museum of Astronautics. I have some great pictures of myself with China’s first ballistic missile (the 1059) and its first…

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Putin Calls for Space Weapons Ban

In a speech on the 43rd anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s epochal spaceflight, President Vladimir Putin called for the demilitarization of outer space: “We all know that for many years, space was an area for military and political rivalry. Today, we…

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Chinese kidnapped in Iraq

Xinhua is reporting that seven Chinese nationals were kidnapped by armed men in Fallujah, after they entered Iraq via Jordan. I just arrived in Beijing for a conference on Technical Aspects of Space Security at Beihang (Beijing Aeronautical and Aerospace…