It appears that elections make a difference, so a desperate Gordon Brown is allow investigations to proceed regarding potential bribery in, “Tanzania, South Africa, Romania and the Czech Republic,” but nothing involving Saudi Prince Bandar and the House of Saud, whose bribery levels are probably 10 times higher than the other 4 nations combined.
It would be nice if the west stopped coddling the House of Saud, which is a cesspool of corruption, greed, and terrorism.
We are now getting reports that, “Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France are planning to start trading oil using a basket of currencies,” rather than the US dollar, over the next decade.
The source is The Independent, which has a pretty good reputation as a newspaper, even if it publishes in tabloid (excuse me, “compact”), and it is cast as one involving much in the way of cloak and dagger secrecy, which is a bit much.
Additionally, they cast the invasion of Iraq as being driven by Saddam Hussein’s decision to Euro denominate his oil sales driving the invasion of Iraq, when this is clearly not the case.
There are any number of reasons for such a discussion to take place, most notably greater stability in oil prices for the rest of the world, though there might also be a desire to re-balance the unipolar world that allowed the United States to invade Iraq with impunity in the first place.
So, the EU has investigated the Russia-Georgia war, and concluded that Georgia started the war, and that Russia’s reaction was excessive.
The former ruling is much more significant than the latter, since the international community always wants everything to end at the old borders.
Look at the hand wringing over the demise of the Tamil Tigers.
Still, this took them over a year?
I knew this in within 24 hours of the war having started: the Georgians shelled civilians, and the Russians knew what was planned, and when it was coming, and reacted with overwhelming force.
Brazil has officially extended the final bid deadline until October 2, and there are now reports that the Rafale was not the first choice of the Brazilian Air Force, with the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) favoring the F/A-18 E/F, and the “engineers” favoring the Gripen.
I would assume that the FAB refers to the guys who fly, and that the “engineers” are the maintainers.
The latter is far from surprising. As the Gripen is less than ½ the size of its competitors, with ½ the number of engines, the simple laws of physics say that its per flight hour costs, and logistical tail, will be significantly less than either its French or American competitors.
The austere field capabilities of the Swedish jet may have influenced this too.
My guess is that the Rafale was “selected” on the basis of French technical offsets, which are at a level that the Swedes are unable to provide, and the United States is unwilling to provide, but these are considerations that is unlikely to bear much weight with a military service.
Received the following eCard from my brother Stephen:
[on edit]
When I shared the pic with folks on the Stellar Parthenon BBs, I got some interesting questions:
JR noted that, “conspiracy can expand to encompass anything you throw at it!”
This is correct, so our conspiracy encompasses Jews….
Our conspiracy encompasses Jews and Muslims….
Our conspiracy encompasses Jews and Muslims and space lizards…..
Our conspiracy encompasses Jews and Muslims and space lizards and communists…..
Our conspiracy encompasses Jews and Muslims and space lizards and communists and Nazis…..
Our conspiracy encompasses Jews and Muslims and space lizards and communists and Nazis and communists…..
Our conspiracy encompasses Jews and Muslims and space lizards and communists and Nazis and communists and Black nationalists…..
Our conspiracy encompasses Jews and Muslims and space lizards and communists and Nazis and communists and Black nationalists and racists…..
…… What does this remind me of?
It looks like the Cuban regime has finally started to relax its grip on the population of this island:
Communist Cuba has begun dismantling a vast system of state gratuities and subsidised goods and services in favour of higher wages, more individual choice and targeted welfare.
The move is part of President Raúl Castro’s drive to modernise an economy in which, he recently admitted, two plus two often equals five in terms of spending and three when it comes to performance.
They are not doing this because they want to, but because they have to.
In the “bad old days”, they could rely on a bellicose United States to unite their population, but unlike his predecessors, Barack Obama has made it clear that he has no interest in listening to the dead-ender extremists who claim to speak for the Cuban community, and with that threat removed, the Cuban government now has to produce results.
Now, if only Barack Obama would treat Congressional Republicans the same way.
Masshad to Washington, DC
Masshad to San Francisco
Masshad to Rome
Masshad to Madrid
Masshad to Istambul
Masshad to Athens
Masshad to Chicago
Obama has canceled plans for missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. Basically, they determined that the threat is not there, and the Russians find it provocative, so they are dropping it.
The Russian response is positive, if somewhat muted, probably because they have been aware that the signals that Obama has sent on this issue for some time, and do now want to stir the pot.
Notably, they mention cost a number of times in their official statement.
I think that this is a combination of a number of things:
In the case of a diplomatic crisis, you can have a THAAD or a ground based Standard interceptor battery in place in less than 72 hours in northeast Europe, and have an Aegis destroyer off deployed near Cyprus, or possibly in the Black sea, in order to protect the southern tier of NATO in less time than that.
This is a remarkably sensible and sane decision, and it appears that SecDef Gates is fully behind this, so I expect Republicans to start screaming “Munich
if they haven’t already.
I think that we will see more support from the Russians on a number of issues as a result.
You know, 10 years ago, this might have meant somehing:
The Senate Appropriations Committee voted unanimously Thursday to approve an fiscal 2010 Defense spending bill that would allow the Defense Department to develop an export version of the radar-evading F-22 Raptor fighter jet.
Now, not so much.
If the line gets restarted, here is what you have to do:
If we are asking for all that, how about a pony too?
It appears that the deal has not been sealed, much less finalized, and the Brazilian Defense Minister is saying that the Gripen and Super-Hornet. “could be still allowed to “redefine” their offers for the FX-2 contract.”
My guess is that deal was 98% done at the time of the initial announcement, and the Brazil is angling for more support, either technically or via purchase, for their C-390 transport.
Background here.
This is a major change in government, with the DPJ ending over 50 years of LDP rule, winning 308 of the 480 seats in the Diet.
I’m not sure how much of this is ideology, and how much is just that the voters were sick and tired of the LDP, which has been an increasingly rudderless bastion of cronyism.
From what I understand of the DPJ, their ideology is not particularly clear either.
They seem to be a bit more assertive on the foreign policy front, and a bit more inclined to developing internal consumer markets, but the differences are not much.
I do think that anti-American sentiment provided some of their votes, and we will see this all over the world for the next few decades, as we continue to feel reverberations of the absolute disgust of the population at US diplomacy under Bush and His Evil Minions&trade.
In many of the industrial democracies, we have an age cohort that has come to political awareness over the past 8 years, and their sense of the US is not as a beneficial influence in the world.
As they move into leadership positions in the next 20-30 years, we will see an increasingly confrontational foreign policy from them.
We now have a report that the US will abandon plans to station missile interceptors in Eastern Europe
Washington will scrap plans to put anti-missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic and is looking at alternatives including Israel and Turkey, a Polish newspaper reported Aug. 27, citing U.S. officials.
The U.S. plan, intended for defense against attacks from Iran, has met with fierce objections from Russia, which regarded the eastern European bases as a threat to its own security.
…
This is good news. Not only was Eastern Europe a piss poor location for missile defense, because it leaves allies on the southern tier of NATO unprotected, but it is located so as to be a direct threat, and a means of surveillance of, all of the European territory of Russia.
I continue to maintain that the real goal of the missile system was to create hostility, which would, in the perception of the Dick Cheneys of the world, bolster the Republican Party.
It looks like the US Military is going to resume training the Georgian army.
Considering the fact that President Mikheil Saakashvili is a truly delusional and despotic nutcase who is spoiling for another war with Russia, this is a very bad idea on that level, but it’s also clear that the Georgian state security apparatus has been completely penetrated by the Russian intelligence service that they knew to the minute, if not the second, when the Georgians were going to invade South Ossetia.
But we need bodies for Afghanistan, so we’re training them.
It looks like Russian attack boats Akula class according to reports, are patrolling off of the US coast.
The military says that they are not concerned, and that they tracked them all the way here:
Two nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines have been patrolling off the eastern seaboard of the United States in the first mission of its kind so close to shore in nearly a decade, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
The Pentagon said it was not alarmed by the maneuvers, carried out by what officials described as Soviet-designed Akula-class submarines in international waters as little as 200 miles off the coast.
Interesting in all this is the rather matter of fact statement that there was no problem tracking the boats:
The official said the Navy was able to track the submarines as they made their way through international waters off the American coastline. This can be done from aircraft, ships, underwater sensors or other submarines.
It makes me wonder if this was not intended to be public in the first place. The Russians have already leased a sub to India, and there are other potential customers, and patrolling off the US coast, if it makes it into the papers, is an advertisement for the product.
The Akulas may not be Virginia class boats, but they are pretty quiet, after all.
Then again, maybe they just wanted some good cigars, as some of the reports note that at least one of the boats paid a visit to Cuba.
Hard to believe, but true.
It turns out that Gregory Levey is stupider than conservative affirmative action baby Amity Shlaes, the woman who was fired by that Communist rag the Financial Times for extolling Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina in her reporting on the storm and its aftermath, because Mr. Levey is suggesting that Barack Obama should appoint George W. Bush as his Middle East envoy to aid in his diplomatic efforts in the region.
In related news, he suggested that Hannibal Lecter as chairman of the special White House committee on nutrition, Mary “Typhoid Mary” Mallon as head of food safety at the FCC, Timothy Leary as Drug Czar, and South Carolina Governor Rick “Hiking the Appalachian Trail” Sanford as head of the special working committee for ethics in government.
Great googly moogly.
Considering the heated rhetoric on this issue, this is pretty mild.
What they are saying is that they will cut military and diplomatic ties with nations that sell Russian built or Russian designed weapons to Georgia.
All in all, this a remarkably narrowly drawn statement, that it will not be offering support or spares to nations that ship Russian, and one would assume Soviet, weapons to Georgia.
Compared to earlier statements made where various government officials appeared to insult each other over parentage and penis size, it’s a major step forward.
The story is that SAAB went to Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) looking for a partnership on on developing its Gripen NG, and that the US Government forced IAI to pull out, claiming, “That Western technology in Israeli hands would make its way to the Indians.”
IAI was supposed to develop, “radar, communications and electronic-warfare – for the plane.” (See also here
According to Flight International, SAAB has stated that, “Israel was one of several options“, for the radar, though a report by Defense News categorically denies the report:
“Our AESA focus is on our partnership with Selex Galileo, which we reached in March,” a Saab spokesman said. “Together, we will jointly develop a new radar based on Selex’s AESA Vixen and PS-05/A technologies. Saab is not involved in other AESA programs.”
I’m inclined to believe that the reality falls somewhere in between.
SAAB already has a deal with Selex on the radar, and going with a second source at this time would be a major drain on resources, but the use of Israeli comm and ECM gear, particularly the latter, would be a very big selling point.
I would note that there is some history behind this that leads me to believe that there was some US arm twisting regarding the Israelis on something, because when the Gripen was sold to South Africa some years back, the US blocked the sale on “technology transfer” issues, the South African government decertified all the US bidders on all its defense programs, and State/DoD backed down, so South Africa is now flying Gripens.
Additionally, this could be a bit of marketing by the SAAB and IAI: I can see nothing that would more infuriate the Indian defens(c)e establishment than the idea that the US was refusing tech transfers to them, and such a meme would disadvantage the American competitors, the F/A-18 E/F and the F-16 IN (basically a block 60).
For a payment of $60 million, and no doubt a delivery of desperately needed vowels, the Manas airbase at Kyrgyzstan will be re-opened to US military traffic to Afghanistan.
The new deal limits transport to only non-military goods though.
This cartoon seems to imply that some sort of latte is is the holy sacrament of Atheists.
If this is the case, is it a full caf, half caf, skinny, mocha, soy, or what?
Or do you, like us God fearing folks, just kill each other over disagreements about what sort of sacrament is appropriate to drink, as is traditional?
They have been ramping up their defense spending, continue to be tin-eared toward considerations of their atrocities in Asia in WWII, have a growing, and increasingly violent, militarist movement, a move toward a first strike “defensive” posture, and now they are looking to rescind their ban on exporting weapons (paid subscription required), which would mean growth for their defense industry, and it was the juxtaposition of the weapon making industrial conglomerates and politics that to a large degree pushed their militarism in the 1930s.
The two nations are considering conducting their trade in yuan and ringgit, as opposed to using the US dollar as a medium.
Basically, with both the Treasury and the Federal Reserve shoveling cash out the door into that black hole which is the shadow banking system, people are beginning to wonder if there might be a better vehicle to conduct trade with than the dollar, which they expect to depreciate.