It’s interesting, because if they break the Federal Reserve, and they can, they lose too, because they have lost their biggest market.
At this point, I’d like to see them use their power to keep us from striking Iran.
Category: Foreign Relations
I Wonder if This is Simply PR from Boeing, Lockheed, and Sukhoi
About a week ago, I blogged on the rumored sale 250 Sukhoi Su-30 multi role fighters to Iran.
Well now it appears that the US is going to be selling a s$@% load of military hardware in the region in order to provide a counterweight to rumored Iranian deal.
Maybe I’m being a cynic, but I’m beginning to think that Boeing, Lockheed, and Sukhoi are the ones spreading this rumor, as they all stand to gain a lot from the ensuing orgy of weapons procurement.
Glenn Greenwald is 100% Correct
He says America is plagued by a self-anointed, highly influential, and insular so-called Foreign Policy Community which spans both political parties, and this assesment is absolutely correct.
I’m not sold on Obama. I’m leaning towards Edwards in fact, but his statement that using a nuclear weapon to take out one individual, and in the process taking out a whole city, is counterproductive and ….well …. insane…is spot on.
Glenn Greenwald’s point about the general uselessness of the Washington foreign policy establishment is correct.
My only quibble is that it should not be limited to the foreign policy establishment.
Japan Starts Toward Abolishing Pacifism in its Constitution
Aviation Week has an article indicating that Japan’s interest in the F-22 is being driven by an turn toward a far more aggressive military policy.(subscription required)
If they just needed normal cruise missile defense, upgrading F-15 radars would do the job. The idea that that they want to acquire a large, long range, supercruising, and stealthy platform implies that they want to make preemptive strikes against cruise missile sites an integral part of this defense.
An air force must at least be able to attack the launch sites “to put an offensive ballistic missile capability at risk,” a senior U.S. Air Force official involved in the debate says. “You’ve got to get out in front of [cruise and ballistic] missile launches. Otherwise, some are going to get through.”
Of course, Scuds and their derivative (North Korea) are already mobile, and hence hard to strike and hard to hit, as evidenced by the problems in Desert Storm, when there was no threat to aircraft doing Scud hunting, and they could not reliably find the launchers.
But officials now say the fiscal 2008 budget may provide money for more upgrades. The reason is that the technology is a path to the world of network-centric warfare that has already been used by the U.S. Air Force. USAF first adopted the (v)1 radar but then upgraded it with a 21st century emitter and antenna—the 1,000-element, active electronically scanned array (AESA). That improvement, designated the APG-63(v)3, produces a radar with the ability to see small targets, such as cruise missiles, or to identify tactical ballistic missile launchers in their radar-generated ground maps. The radar also can transmit large files of imagery, electronically attack enemy sensors through jamming and insertion of false targets, and provide two-way digital connectivity to other aircraft and sensors in the battlespace.
“The Japanese could make that shift to (v)3 at any time,” the industry official says.
That shift would add another option to the decision about a new fighter for the Japanese air force. F-15s equipped with AESA would have a larger radar aperture than the F-22. As a result, in the defensive, anti-cruise missile role, the Eagle would have an advantage in detecting smaller objects at longer range because of its additional power and size. While attacking missile launch sites with the F-22 is a “strategically solid concept” for the long term, buying interim, AESA-equipped F-15Es or F/A-18E/Fs might be attractive to Japanese defense planners. So far, they have rejected the idea of a bridge aircraft.
This is the key phrase.
Aperture is the size of the antenna, and because the F-15 is non-stealthy, it has a larger antenna. The laws of physics dictate that the F-22 is inferior to the F-15 in this role.
When juxtaposed by the growing number militarist groups in Japan, and an increasing tendency toward those groups engaging in violence toward critics, this is a very troubling development.
Additionally, any problems in North Korea would handled by a the US Military, possibly with with F-22 sorties from either Korea or Japan, or F-35 sorties from a carrier.
This is intended to strike China.
Japan has never come to terms with the atrocities committed, including the only use of bio-warfare in modern military history, during its period of empire building, which is arguably the the worst of the 20th century.
Unlike Europe, where the militarism has largely been driven out of the public consciousness, in Japan it has been placed in a closet for later use.
Is Rumored Arms Sale to Iran a Pretext for An Attack?
There is a report that Iran will be buying a significant number of Sukhoi Su-30 multi role jets in the Jerusalem Post.
The specific report says that they will be buying 250 fighters, they will be purchasing aerial refueling tankers.
I call bull s$%#.
Let’s look at the points:
- This amounts to a very significant chunk of change. At least $6 billion, and more likely $25 billion total cost. They don’t have the money for this. They have already had riots over gas rationing, because they lack sufficient money to reimport enough gasoline (they lack refining capability) for their needs.
- They have no experience with the aircraft.
- This is roughly equal to the total number of fighters that they currently deploy.
- They have a significant amount of western systems that would be difficult to integrate into the platform.
- The Russian government, and Sukhoi both deny it vehemently, which would not be the case with this huge an order.
I think that this got leaked to a friendly source (the J. Post) in the sort ot PR campaign that we swa before the invasion of Iraq.
Accused Hacker Gets Appeal To Law Lords
The Law Lords are a committee of the House of Lords in the UK, and they function as the court of last appeal there.
While I have little affection for McKinnon, who, the law under which he is to be extradited is a farce. It requires no showing of proof, and no guarantees of due process, so he could be sent directly to Gitmo.
The law Lords agreed to hear arguments that US authorities acted in an “oppressive” and “arbitrary” manner during plea bargaining negotiations, for example by allegedly threatening McKinnon over the loss of rights to serve part of his sentence in the UK unless he submitted to voluntary extradition.
This is the problem with this US-UK agreement. It’s being misused.
It’s intended for terrorists, but its first use was for a group of bankers engaging in white collar crime, and now it’s being used to attempt a plea bargain.
This is why you have limits prosecutorial power.
That being said, one thing is certain, McKinnon is not the biggest idiot involved in all of this:
The 41-year-old has said he gained access to military networks – using a Perl script to search for default passwords – but describes himself as a bumbling amateur motivated by curiosity about evidence of UFOs rather than a cyberterrorist.
The people, hopefully now unemployed, who did not change their default passwords probably need help cutting their steak.
Why The US is Hated
This article by Mohsin Hamid gives an excellent picture of the lack of concern in both the American policy apparatus and the American public to the tremendous damage that is done by American policies towards people and institutions who are NOT the target of these operations.
He is in a unique position to understand this, having spent his time from ages 6-9 in the US before moving back to Lahore, Pakistan, and then returning to the US for college.
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For another, growing up in Pakistan in the 1980s let me see firsthand the devastating effects that the best of U.S. intentions can have.
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But there is another major reason for anti-Americanism: the accreted residue of many years of U.S. foreign policies. These policies are unknown to most Americans.
They form only minor footnotes in U.S. history. But they are the chapter titles of the histories of other countries, where they have had enormous consequences.
America’s strength has made it a sort of Gulliver in world affairs: By wiggling its toes it can, often inadvertently, break the arm of a Lilliputian.
He moved back to Pakistan just as the civil war that Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brezinski bought* was ramping up, and he saw the effects:
- “Kalashnikov assault rifles from those camps began to flood the streets of Lahore, setting in motion a crime wave that put an end to my days of pedaling unsupervised through the streets.”
- Zia began an ongoing attempt to Islamize Pakistan and thus make it a more fertile breeding ground for the anti-Soviet jihad.
- Public female dance performances were banned, female newscasters were told to cover their heads and laws undermining women’s rights were passed.
- Secular politicians, academics and journalists were intimidated, imprisoned and worse.
- The angry groups of bearded men who began enforcing their own morality codes became a fact of life.
- An explosion in cheap Heroine, and hence addiction and associated problems, as a result of it being Mujahideen’s primary revenue source for their activities.
He makes the very wise commnet, “Simply because America has — often for what seemed good reasons at the time — intervened to shape the destinies of other countries and then, as a nation, forgotten those interventions.”
The Taliban and al Queida are a result of both our policies in the Afghan civil war, and then our ignoring the mess that we made.
*It’s clear that the Afghan civil war was a product of American to create it. While there was always banditry in Afghan countryside, Brezinski, with Carter’s approval paid money to, and armed those bandits, with the hope of creating, and embroiling the Soviets in, a Vietnam Style civil war.
It worked all too well, and given that this was about half a decade from the fall of Saigon, they both had to know the suffering and death that this would create.
Bush Flouts Nuclear Anti-Proliferation Laws
The single most likely place on earth, and George W. Bush is handing nuclear technology to the Indian government so that he can throw some money toward some of his contributors.
Didn’t we invade Iraq on the suspicion that Saddam was doing what George Bush is doing now?
Let’s see:
- They are refusing to release the text of the agreement.
- India still refuses to sign the NNPT.
- The agreement is vague enough that the Indians claim no restrictions on nuclear weapons.
- Bush added a signing statement telling congress to go pound sand.
When do we invade the white house with the 82nd Airborne?
Seriously, what has Bush not screwed up beyond all recognition in the past 6+ years?
al-Maliki Wants Gen Petraeus out
I appears that al-Maliki has asked George W. Bush to dump Petraeus.
Word is that he’s upset that the General is arming Sunni militias to fight the Jihadists.
My guess is that the real word is that it will be too difficult for him to do ethnic cleansing in Baghdad if these people get weapons.
SCIRI, al-Maliki’s base tortured Iraqi prisoners during the Iran-Iraq war. His security forces have been murdering and ethnically cleansing Sunnis.
The last thing he wants is something that gets in the way of this.
On the bright side, if he succeeds, I think that it will flip a number of Republicans who value their seats more than they fear Karl Rove, so maybe it will get us out.
Bush Administration Politicized State Department Too
This comes down to despising government and what it can do. As a result, the only reason to govern is for money and power, because you believe that no actual good can be done.
Thus we have Karl Rove and his bully boys arm twisting to get the State Department to engage in actions benefiting their political allies.
White House aides have conducted at least half a dozen political briefings for the Bush administration’s top diplomats, including a PowerPoint presentation for ambassadors with senior adviser Karl Rove that named Democratic incumbents targeted for defeat in 2008 and a “general political briefing” at the Peace Corps headquarters after the 2002 midterm elections.
The briefings, mostly run by Rove’s deputies at the White House political affairs office, began in early 2001 and included detailed analyses for senior officials of the political landscape surrounding critical congressional and gubernatorial races, according to documents obtained by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The documents show for the first time how the White House sought to ensure that even its appointees involved in foreign policy were kept attuned to the administration’s election goals. Such briefings occurred semi-regularly over the past six years for staffers dealing with domestic policy, White House officials have previously acknowledged.
The point is not that Republicans are universally corrupt, though these days it certainly seems so.
Rather it is that when one comes from a position that sees government as the source of problems, and never solutions, then corruption is closer, since there is no good that comes through government service.
The US Government Wants to Record Religion, Sex Habits, and Politics
The Grauniad has a the scoop on what the US Government wants for Britons coming to the US.
Highly sensitive information about the religious beliefs, political opinions and even the sex life of Europeans traveling to the United States is to be made available to US authorities when the European Commission agrees to a new system of checking passengers.
It appears that the EU is upset about this agreement. So am I.
Eventually, Karl Rove is going to want to get his hands on this sort of information for political micro targeting, and considering that we know that DHS has been compromised politically, he will get this information too.
Why Did We Think She Was Competent?
Here is an interesting article on Condoleeza Rice. It appears that a view months ago, she wrote an article about Lebanon and how public/private partnerships might help in rebuilding the country.
Problem was, no on was willing to publish it. It came back from the “Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and perhaps other papers before the department finally tried a foreign publication, the Financial Times of London, which also turned it down.”
Think about that. A sitting Secretary of State could not get a paper to publish her OP/ED because it was so hactacular.
As a last-ditch strategy, the State Department briefly considered translating the article into Arabic and trying a Lebanese paper. But finally they just gave up. “I kept hearing the same thing: ‘There’s no news in this.’ ” Floyd said. The piece, he said, was littered with glowing references to President Bush’s wise leadership. “It read like a campaign document.”
The author goes on tho show how Bush politicized the State Department, as his administration has every other bureaucracy that they could get their hands on.
This misses the real point. The real point is that Condoleeza Rice is a complete incompetent who, much like Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, has an unbroken record of failure.
This failure exceeds my wildest imagination. The fact that an academic, who was secretary of state was unable to write an article of sufficient quality for publication is a truly pathetic statement. In the publish or perish world of academe, this is inconceivable.
- In the 1980s, she was lecturing troops in then West Berlin, and when someone wanted details, she did no know what a unit honorific in the Soviet army was.
- In 1991, she was adamant that Boris Yeltzin not be given head of state protocol, because the USSR was going to reconstitute itself.
- Throughout her career, she has been the only Sovietologist who did not recognize the sickness of their economy and society.
- In 2001, she told Clinton’s natinal security team that she wasn’t worrying about al Queida, that the real threat was a resurgent Russia.
She is a fraud, elevated through right wing affirmative action, because it was convenient to have someone with a PhD in Sovietology to parrot right wing talking points.
No doubt her position as a double minority, black and a woman, has also served to elevate her stature in the party and with the pundits too.
Republicans believe that government is stupid, so they leave the stupid to govern.
Disowning Rumsfeld
There is an interesting article in the Military Times about the Pentagon rethinking the drawdown of troops in Europe.
The article claims that “The idea of cutting troops from 68,000 in 2001 to 28,000 by 2012 was part of an initiative by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to transform the military into a leaner, more cost-effective force,” but it was really all spite.
Rumsfeld began this policy when the most of the governments of Europe were unwilling to follow him into Iraq. It’s a part and parcel of his “old Europe” slam.
Gates realizes that reality prevents this.
FAS A Good Insight Into the Current European ABM Kerfluffle
Along with good information on the Russian systems, and the US Posture in the Cold war, and this provides insight into why the Russians believe that this is targeted at them.
This US document might provide some insight:
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Figure 1: |
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“To ensure the penetration of the ICBM force, the Soviet ABM system would be attacked first. Minuteman E and F and Polaris missiles would first hit the Hen House early warning radars, and their Tallin system defenses [SA-5 SAM, ed.]. Then the Dog House radar and the Triad system around Moscow would be attacked. More than 100 Minuteman would be involved in the ABM suppression.” |
Here is his money quote:
All of this happened during the Cold War and many things have changed, but the basic motivation for targeting a limited missile defense system then was the same as today: The Soviet ABM system was entirely defensive and couldn’t threaten anyone (to paraphrase a characterization frequently use by U.S. and NATO officials to justify their missile defense plans today), but it could disturb the main ICBM attack on Moscow and military facilities downrange. That made it a top-priority target. And even though U.S. planners suspected that the system was not very efficient, they committed about 10 percent of the entire ICBM force to destroy it. To the extent the Russia ABM is operational, U.S. nuclear strike plans probably still target it today.
All in all, an excellent read, and it reinforces my believe that the US system IS to a large extent towards the Russians.
Brazil to Restart Nuke Power, Nuke Sub Programs
Lula resumes nuclear program to make Brazil ‘world power’ is the hed. I’m thinking that a more accurate hed would be, “Lula engages in dick swinging to distract from domestic issues.”
Then again, I’m a cynic.
Great Headlines: Ahmadinejobless
It’s the hed for a Foreign Policy Magazine article about the Iranian president, and how his general cluelessness is leading to his irrelevancy, and possible removal.
That being said, the article is substantive, and right off, it makes the important point:
Iran’s radical president is sinking fast, and he knows it. Now, there’s only one man who can keep Mahmoud Ahmadinejad out of the unemployment line: George W. Bush.
There has been no greater resource for fundamentalist dictatorships and terrorists than George W. Bush, and his crusade against his father the norms of international behavior.
George W. Bush: Generating capital for terrorists and religious fundamentalists since 2001.
Russian Diplomacy Once Agains Owns Incompetent Condi Rice
In the seemingly never ending story of the US attempting to erect a misslie defense shield against Russia Iran, the Russians have raised the ante by offering a global missile defense system.
As I’ve stated earlier, I think that US proposals are an attempt to restart the Cold war for partisan advantage. Thank God that they are idiots.
DPRK to Start Fielding More Advanced Missiles
North Koreawill be fielding modern solid propellant missiles.
This is a natural development. Missiles and missile technology are their only real exports, and, absent a nuclear capability (which we don’t want them to have) it is their only credible deterrent.
Furthermore, these weapons are legal.
Of course, you have a former Bush administration official *cough* corrupt incompetent *cough* and a US Army general *cough* Bush Toady *cough* acting as if the sky is falling.
The North Korean has a very real fear of a sneak attack from the US. As long as Cheney is anywhere near the levers of power, this fear is justified.
Even if the fear were not justified, the best course of action is to attempt to reduce that fear, rather than stoking it with bellicose and jingoistic rhetoric.
Russia To Locate Missiles In Baltic Coast In Response to US Missile Defense Plans
Let’s see. We locate a “Missile Shield” against Iran somewhere that leaves much of NATO naked, but is along the Russian border, and we are surprised when they get huffy?
This is Condi Rice trying to recreate the “Evil Empire” because her profession has vanished with its fall.
Someone should tell her that Diplomat means more than, “An extremely unwise thing to call Guido “Knuckles” Lomat“.
FWIW, missiles fired from Kaliningrad could take a depressed trajectory, and strike NATO targets with little or no warning, and said “missile shield”, which is exclusively exo-atmospheric, won’t be able to touch it.
Russia threatens European rocket deployment
MOSCOW (AFP): Russia issued a veiled threat on Wednesday to deploy rockets in its Kaliningrad region bordering the European Union if the United States built a missile defence shield in central Europe.Moscow and Washington are locked in a standoff over the US plans for a radar station in the Czech Republic and interceptor rockets in Poland.
Russia says the plans threaten its security.
The threat to put missiles in Kaliningrad was made by the influential First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov only two days after President Vladimir Putin again raised the missile shield dispute with US President George W. Bush.
Putin has suggested to Bush that the United States use a Russian-controlled radar in ex-Soviet Azerbaijan, near the Iranian border, instead of having a shield in central Europe.
Putin has also offered the use of another radar under construction at Armavir in southern Russia.
“If our offers are accepted, Russia will not consider it necessary to deploy new rocket units in the European part of the country, including Kaliningrad, to counter the threat” from the United States, Ivanov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.
Ivanov, who was on a visit to Uzbekistan, said Russia had “found an asymmetrical and effective response” to the US project for a European shield.
“We know what we’re doing…. If our proposals are not accepted, we will take adequate measures,” Ivanov said.
Washington insists that its proposed missile shield is intended to guard against possible attack from “rogue states” such as Iran. Moscow believes the systems are directed against Russia.
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They believe that it is targeted against Russia because it is targeted against Russia.
NKorea’s Kim indicates it will disarm nuclear weapons : Nuclear Weapons : Defense News Air Force Army Navy News
Funny that. Once the US stopped calling the DPRK c***s*ck*rs, and stopped calling for regime change, and stopped reneging on deals, they are willing to talk.
These people really do believe that the US is planning to take over the country, and doing things like cutting an agreement one day, and reneging on it the next, as with the frozen money, only reinforces this paranoia.
Go figure.
NKorea’s Kim indicates it will disarm nuclear weapons
BEIJING (AFP): North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il indicated on Tuesday that he was ready to begin dismantling his country’s nuclear weapons, China’s official news agency reported.
In rare conciliatory remarks the leader of the communist state raised hopes that a stalled nuclear pact will finally be realised.
“Recently some signs of easing on the Korean peninsula have appeared,” Kim was quoted by the Xinhua news agency as saying.
“All sides should implement the initial actions (of a six-nation pact on eradicating North Korea’s nuclear capabilities)”, he said.
The comments, made during a meeting with visiting Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi, will strengthen hopes that the North will disarm.
Under the agreement struck in February, Pyongyang pledged to scrap its nuclear programmes in exchange for energy aid and various diplomatic incentives.
But implementation has been stalled by a financial dispute over millions of dollars of North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank due to US sanctions.
That obstacle was removed last week when the last of the funds were returned to Pyongyang.
In another hopeful sign, diplomatic sources in Berlin said on Tuesday that North Korea has agreed to broad cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog to close its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, the first step in the deal.
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