|
|
|
|
|
By Xiang Sharon on Friday April 27, @10:02PM
from the You heard it here first dept.
While other news media had to wait to get facts, JNS reported back in November about secret arms deals between Israel and China that were at the heart of the Democrat’s desperate, futile struggle to keep the White House.
Now, the recent spy plane standoff with China has thrown the spotlight on the Israel-China arms connection, The Washington Times reported on Monday.
Heritage Foundation analyst Larry M. Wortzel, a former U.S. military attache in Beijing, said Israel has been selling arms to China arms for a half-century.
"It grew and grew, and the United States just winked at a number of serious transfers," Wortzel told The Times.
"China is benefiting from reverse-engineering American technology provided to Israel," said Wortzel, a retired Army colonel who added he saw evidence of improper transfers while a counterintelligence officer in the 1980s.
JNS reports of frantic efforts by the Gore campaign to keep the White House because of the deals prompted the shadow government to hack the Jabali site late last year, diverting traffic for two days to eBay, the popular online auction site.
Neighborhood secret agent Dack McSwain confirmed the report saying ``Everything isn't always what it seems...''
Jabali systems administrator Halcyon Skinner said the hacker, or hackers, were extremely sophisticated and had been able to plant a backdoor in the Empire's command and control system.
Skinner said the backdoor had been in place for some time, and he was not sure why the site was brought down when it was. The hacking occurred as JNS was preparing to post an article on the Florida recount, reporting the Gore team was desperately seeking to keep the White House in Democratic hands because George W. Bush couldn’t be counted on to keep the secret arms deals under wraps.
The Times reported Monday that Chinese fighters carry Israeli Python 3 heat-seeking missile, which were painstakingly developed based on the U.S. Sidewinder missile sold to Israel. China has paid Israel for the rights to domestically produce the Python 3, a transaction the Pentagon says it learned about after the fact.
"I think we would have preferred to know in advance, but we didnīt get that," said Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley.
A 1992 U.S. intelligence report said Israel transferred Patriot anti-missile data to China shortly after the Persian Gulf war. Tel Aviv has denied the report, and several others that it violated agreements by exporting restricted American technology bought with U.S. subsidies, The Times reported.
Vice President Richard Cheney, the defense secretary at the time, said he had ``good reason" to believe the Patriot diversion occurred.
Shortly after the Patriot report, Israel again denied it illegally exported U.S. technology to communist China _ this time the Lavi fighter. Israel spent more than $1 billion in U.S. aid on the aircraft, which was based on the U.S. F-16 Falcon. After Israel killed the program after Washington complained, intelligence reports said Tel Aviv was selling the F-16 avionics technology to China for use in China’s new F-10 ground-attack fighter, The Times reported.
Wortzel said the Reagan Administration approved limited arms sales to China in the past to counter Soviet military buildups. The White House, however, has never condoned the illegal transfer of high-technology items meant for Israelīs use only.
"It didnīt upset the security balance in the region. But now it does," Wortzel said. "I think Chinaīs behavior has changed. China now has the advantage of some of the best American-provided technology that it may use against the United States or certainly against Taiwan."
from the Don't look at me dept.
By ALEX DOMINGUEZ
JNS Special Correspondent
BALTIMORE (JNS) _ Your drug dollars help provide desperately needed news copy worldwide, a new study shows.
Cop shootings in Baltimore, guerilla warfare in Latin America, and presidential pardons are all examples of stories that benefited from the ``sniffle-down'' effect created by a healthy drug economy, said Duke economist Carver Daniel, the study's lead author.
``It may not seem like a lot, but those nickel and dime bags add up,’’ Daniel said. ``Whether it’s bullets in Baltimore, or land mines in Colombia, drug dealers and cartels worldwide need your drug dollars.’’
A $20 coke purchase by one suburban high school student, for example, was used to buy the 45-cent, 9 mm round that killed a 3-year old, the authors reported in the study, which appeared Thursday in the journal Narcotics.
Some of the money from that buy also made it back to the distributor, whose importing activity helped provide slush funds that kept in power a Third World despot _ who used his country’s military to kill off his opposition, providing entertaining reading for millions.
The war against drugs even makes good copy, but Daniel warned against targeting buyers which could dry up the supply of dollars desperately needed to keep the drug pipeline operating.
Drugs also give the country an easy scapegoat, the poor, to blame for its problems, including its addiction to narcotics, Daniel said.
``All around it’s a win-win solution,’’ Daniel said. ``The drug trade provides jobs working inside the industry and against it _ whether in local police forces or the ATF _ and loads of infotainment across the globe.’’
< | >
Posted by Alex Dominguez on Friday April 06, @07:36PM
from the Did you expect different? dept.
BALTIMORE (JNS) _ A deli-owner standing in the way of the expansion of Mercy Medical Center does not qualify for business relocation aid, city officials reportedly have decided.
Unlike the convicted heroin trafficker from Owings Mills who was given $165,000 to move his shoe store three doors down _ including $140,000 for shoes he did not want to move _ the deli owner does not have the ability to launder large amounts of cash, or spread political donations across a large operation, sources tell the Jabali News Service.
``This is exactly the kind of business we don't need. This guy hardly gets by himself,'' said one City Hall source. ``How's that kind of business going to provide the steady stream of donations that we need?''
One jewelry store owner was also given $650,000 to offset his relocation costs, even though the city was not obligated to pay anything to the business owners. Mayor Martin O'Malley has urged city officials to go out of their way to help displaced businesses, despite the fact the city is facing a budget deficit he says may require him to raise taxes, lay off 500 city workers, and cut services.
Comptroller Joan Pratt has asked the city's auditor to review the west side relocation deals.
In the case of the deli owner, city officials are proposing to use the city's power of condemnation to demolish a law office building containing the deli, and three adjacent vacant buildings. The buildings are to be demolished to make way for a new cancer center at the hospital.
``I think it's unfair. The hospital is backdooring us by going through the city to condemn us instead of talking to us face to face," Matt Vigil, a native American who has run the deli for 11 years, told The (Baltimore) Sun.
< | >