Missing the Cold War

Conditions: Cold.

There's something very odd going on in Europe. The Americans want a missile defense shield, and are prepared to ratchet up the old cold war tensions in order to get it. Putin keeps getting pressured over something that makes no sense. Quoth Truthout.org:

Russia President Vladimir Putin warned that Moscow would take retaliatory steps if Washington proceeds with building a missile defense system for Europe, promising to restore the strategic balance of the world.

Putin assailed the White House plan to place a radar system in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in neighboring Poland. He was speaking to foreign reporters days before he heads to Germany for a summit with President Bush and other leaders of the Group of Eight.

Putin said neither Iran nor North Korea have the rockets that the system is intended to shoot down, suggesting it would be used instead against Russia.

"We are being told the anti-missile defense system is targeted against something that does not exist. Doesn't it seem funny to you, to say the least?" an irritated Putin said.

Why is it that Putin is making complete and total sense, and everyone acts as if he's crazy? Am I crazy too? Is this opposite month, where we all walk around on our hands and talk about how warm it is?


What's really going on?

Of course at the G8 Putin pulled a brilliant move, offering a partnership with the Americans where they would jointly run a missile shield out of an old Russian radar station. This obviously is not what the Americans wanted, because if it was just about defense they would have jumped at the chance of cooperation. For more about what in hell is going on over there we go to Straight.com for some analysis.

The proposal that the Russian president sprang on George W. Bush at the G8 meeting in Germany on June 7 was a classic political ambush. You claim to be putting interceptor missiles and X-band radars into Eastern Europe to intercept nuclear-tipped, long-range missiles coming out of Iran, asked Putin of Bush?

So why don’t you make our radar station in Azerbaijan, which overlooks all of Iran from its perch high in the Caucasus mountains, part of the system?

The Bush administration has no intention of letting Russia share in its beloved Ballistic Missile Defense system, nor does Russia believe that the system is either necessary or functional, but Putin’s negotiating ploy was brilliant. If Iran had either nuclear weapons or long-range ballistic missiles (which it doesn’t), and if the United States had the technological capability to intercept such missiles (which it doesn’t), then access to a Russian radar station in the mountains north of Iran would be exactly what Washington wanted.

“Let’s let our experts have a look at it,” said President Bush about Putin’s “interesting proposal”, and that’s the last anybody will hear about that, but it did give Putin the opportunity to show that the new U.S. bases in Eastern Europe are not about what Washington says they are about. So what are they about?

That is a lot harder to answer, because the whole BMD boondoggle is a weapons system in search of a threat.

Yes, turns out the missile shield is a bullshit system, that has cost too much money, and taken too long to build, for it to ever go away. More at the link.


America can't help themselves

Well, after Putin extended the hand of cooperation to Bush in the face of weeks of rhetoric, will America work with their Russian allies in the War on Terror?

Yeah, right.

U.S. Won't Drop Czech Radar Site After Russian Offer

By James G. Neuger

June 14 (Bloomberg) -- Russia's offer to let the U.S. use a radar site in the Caucasus won't lead to a scaling back of the planned American missile-defense installations in eastern Europe, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.

The U.S. still wants to build an anti-missile radar in the Czech Republic and station interceptors in Poland, and won't replace the system with a radar in Azerbaijan that Russia has offered to share, Gates said.

``I was very explicit in the meeting that we saw the Azeri radar as an additional capability, that we intended to proceed with the radar in the Czech Republic,'' Gates told a press conference after a NATO gathering in Brussels.

Russian President Vladimir Putin offered the missile- defense cooperation last week, in a departure from months of rhetorical assaults on the U.S. for extending its influence into the former Soviet sphere.

From Bloomberg.com.

That's great. Way to work together, guys. I'm sure I'll convert my fallout shelter to an outdoor lounge any day now.


Online justice?

It didn't take long for all the internet batmen to get started. After Google came out with a streetview function to go with Google World, people started a-snoopin'. And look what they found.


Now the media pay attention

Before the war, politicians could talk about Saddam's weapons of Mass Destruction all the time. And it drove me crazy, because it was obviously bullshit. Well finally everyone's all caught up, or at least mostly everyone. But at least now when someone says it, there's someone else who can all bullshit.

Mitt Link 1.
Mitt Link 2


Go Smokey!

Everyone knows know the story of the kid in the wheelchair who got taken for a wild ride in front of a truck (here). Now full tribute can be paid, in the only way the internet knows how:

http://eastbound.ytmnd.com/



Car Update

Car not good. Weather very cold. This kinda sucks.



And finally





Peace out.