[05#30 1.30=7=12.21=#51:School before Brazil 1.China, EU - US. 2.Russia - US.

Nice weather. Up very early 5:55, Iraq election has been a success? CBS "Sunday Morning" is usually pretty good, 6-7:30am. NHK rebroadcasting "Winter's Sonata(3)". Still a little late for our Hakka School before many members including Hsiang-Jung leaving for Brazil on 2.2=3, leading the school to be closed until perhaps April. Simple side & back cha-cha, 4-5 Hakka songs to be presented at Brazil, then this time bentoes from Chow Mom's good, I talked about green cards and Canadian citizenship. Picked up lease-application comb forms from Mr. Louie then xeroxed 20 copies to house (truck this time facing very close to tiny storage room) and to home. Emails, answering [W] DF and Al finally about the "unnecessary" Iraqi War creation of American enemies. 6:26 now. Hoping to reach o.l. by 7pm CBS "60 Minutes". 1) China - USA: (1) China=Iran <> USA: "China Sold Missiles To Iran, U.S. Imposes Sanctions On Eight Chinese Companies", Posted by Admin on Friday, January 28, 2005 - 05:14 PM CST: http://www.texaspanhandleplains.com/newspaper/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=475 (2) China=Asia, EU <> USA: "A CIA report predicts that American global dominance could end in 15 years: 2020 Vision", By Fred Kaplan, Posted Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2005, at 2:48 PM PT "" Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com "": http://slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2112697&MSID=24D8FFCB94734BC0B74EF9B73D9D8BD0 "" from the National Intelligence Council—the "center of strategic thinking" inside the U.S. intelligence community. The NIC's conclusions are starkly presented in a new 119-page document, "Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council's 2020 Project." It is unclassified and available on the CIA's Web site. The report has received modest press attention the past couple weeks, mainly for its prediction that, in the year 2020, "political Islam" will still be "a potent force." Only a few stories or columns have taken note of its central conclusion: The likely emergence of China and India ... as new major global players—similar to the advent of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful United States in the early 20th century—will transform the geopolitical landscape with impacts potentially as dramatic as those in the previous two centuries. In this new world, a mere 15 years away, the United States will remain "an important shaper of the international order"—probably the single most powerful country—but its "relative power position" will have "eroded." The new "arriviste powers"—not only China and India, but also Brazil, Indonesia, and perhaps others—will accelerate this erosion by pursuing "strategies designed to exclude or isolate the United States" in order to "force or cajole" us into playing by their rules. America's current foreign policy is encouraging this trend, the NIC concluded. "U.S. preoccupation with the war on terrorism is largely irrelevant to the security concerns of most Asians," the report states. The authors don't dismiss the importance of the terror war—far from it. But they do write that a "key question" for the future of America's power and influence is whether U.S. policy-makers "can offer Asian states an appealing vision of regional security and order that will rival and perhaps exceed that offered by China." If not, "U.S. disengagement from what matters to U.S. Asian allies would increase the likelihood that they will climb on Beijing's bandwagon and allow China to create its own regional security that excludes the United States." To the extent that these new powers seek others to emulate, they may look to the European Union, not the United States, as "a model of global and regional governance." "" "" The NIC issued the report a few weeks before Bush’s inaugural address, but it serves to dump still more cold water on the lofty fantasy of America delivering freedom to oppressed people everywhere. In Asia, the report states, "present and future leaders are agnostic on the issue of democracy and are more interested in developing what they perceive to be the most effective model of governance." If the president really wanted to spread freedom and democracy around the planet, he would (among other things) need to present America as that "model of governance"—to show the world, by its example, that free democracies are successful and worth emulating. Yet the NIC report paints a world where fewer and fewer people look to America as a model of anything. We can't sell freedom if we can't sell ourselves. "" 2) Russia=Syria <> USA (1) "Russia and Syria sign major weapons deal: U.S., Israel upset at Moscow's new alliance", © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com: http://www.texaspanhandleplains.com/newspaper/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=474 (2) "Putin Calls Syrian Missile Sale Defensive", International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, January 28, 2005, © 2005 TruthNews: http://www.truthnews.net/daily/2005010245.htm