McCain: US Must Be Tough But Listen to Allies

(NEWSER) - The Chinese Muslims freed from Guantanamo last week had never heard of al-Qaeda before arriving in Cuba, one of them tells the Royal Gazette of Bermuda. "From what we have heard about them, they are an extremely radical group, with totally different ideals from ours," said Salahidin Abdulahad, who arrived in Bermuda last week with three other Uighurs. "We are a peace-loving people." More»

(NEWSER) - Human rights in Russia are "under siege," and the Chinese government is engaging in "serious human rights abuses," the US State Department says. The finger-pointing, in an annual report released today, comes just a week after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited China and downplayed the US focus on rights abuses there in favor of economic and environmental challenges, Reuters reports. More»

Republican's 'cowboy antagonism' would sow discord with Russia, China, others

(NEWSER) - John McCain’s foreign policy—“combustible” and “idealist”—could provoke a second Cold War, pitting the world’s democracies against its autocracies, John Judis writes in the New Republic—at best creating “gratuitous tensions” and at worst wholly “reproducing” the USSR-US “confrontation.” Mac’s proposal for a league of democracies shows that the Republican—erroneously—thinks the world is defined by regimes struggling to impose their form of government on others. More»

Project Hexagon collected crucial intelligence on Soviets and Chinese

(NEWSER) - An ultra-secret clan of scientists and engineers who toiled in a gigantic enclave in Danbury, Conn., can finally reveal its covert activities. Declassified in September, project Hexagon launched the most successful spy satellite network of the Cold War and collected crucial data for decades that helped undermine the Soviet Union, reports the AP . From 1971 to 1986, more than 1,000 people worked grueling hours, speaking in code and denying the project's existence even to family members. More»

...but China, Russia veto resolution; Turkey vows to press ahead

(AP) - Russia and China yesterday vetoed a European-backed UN Security Council resolution that threatened sanctions against Syria if it didn't immediately halt its military crackdown against civilians. It would have been the first legally binding resolution adopted by the Security Council since President Bashar al-Assad's military began using tanks and soldiers against protesters in mid-March, and its defeat reflects the deep divisions in the UN's most powerful body over how to address the ongoing violence in Syria. More»