Goldman-Sachs Will Justice Be Done?

The Goldman-Sachs saga drags on and the question of whether the criminal conspiracy known as the finacialization of the American economy which has raged on for the last 20 years will result in meaningful change. Business Week argues that this is unlikely, thus confirming fears on both the Left and Right:

" No one can have failed to notice the beating that bankers have taken in public opinion in the past two years. Real-estate agents have a better reputation for honesty, and parking inspectors have a higher rating for fairness.

No surprises there. The banks took huge and crazy risks, got ordinary taxpayers to bail them out, then went straight back to paying themselves massive bonuses as if nothing had happened. If that doesn’t send your reputation straight into the gutter, it is hard to know what will.

There is plenty of statistical evidence to show banks have plummeted in public esteem. In Harris Interactive’s latest survey of corporate reputations in the U.S., the banks took a hammering. Out of 60 companies, Goldman Sachs ranked 56th. Citigroup Inc. was at 57th, while Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were also in the bottom 10. Only the tobacco industry fared worse than finance. You can’t sink much lower than that.

That, however, is what Joe Public thinks. Among the corporate and political elite the story is rather different.

Top of Polls

A British survey, conducted by the graduate-recruitment Web site TargetJobs, asked 100,000 students which companies they would like to work for when they graduate. Goldman Sachs topped the poll for investment banks. All that terrible press, it seems, hasn’t stopped young people wanting to get their feet under a desk in Goldman Sachs’s offices.

Likewise, Fortune magazine recently published its annual survey of the most-admired companies. Who topped the megabank category? That’s right. Goldman Sachs. It was up from 15th to eighth place in the all-industries ranking, ahead of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Coca-Cola Co.

Fortune canvasses the views of more than 4,000 executives, directors and analysts to compile its list. It is a measure of elite, not mass opinion. And in that narrow world, it appears that the big banks haven’t suffered at all.

The message couldn’t be clearer. An avalanche of bad publicity hasn’t really dented Goldman’s reputation, or that of any other major bank, either.

Nasty and Tough

There are two conclusions to be drawn from that.

First, we like our banks to be aggressive and mean. Imagine you were hiring a bodyguard or a divorce lawyer. Do you want one who promises to be conciliatory, kind and consensual? Or one who takes no prisoners? In reality, you want your team to be as nasty and tough as possible. The same is true of investment banking. As gangster rappers say, it pays to be bad.

Second, although there is a lot of waffling about reputation and corporate social responsibility, all that matters is the ability to get the job done. The firm of Nero, Khan (as in Genghis) & Capone would probably win a fair bit of business as long as it got that Greek bond issue sold, or found someone to unwind a position in Florida mortgage derivatives.

There is a moral in that for the investment banks.

They will all spend fortunes in the next couple of years getting their images back in shape. If you happen to have an orchestra you want sponsored, an orphanage that needs a new wing, or a rare species that needs saving from extinction, this is the right moment to send in a polite letter asking for a donation. Don’t forget to mention how their generosity will improve their public image. They will write out a check faster than you can say “giant vampire squid.”

Two Audiences

But actually, for keeping the business going, there are only two audiences that really count.

While the banks can still attract the smartest, most ambitious young talent out of the universities, and so long as the people running big corporations still rate them, what the general public think doesn’t matter much.

And while the banks are repairing their images, it would also be worth remembering that they don’t want to go too far in the other direction. It won’t really do them any harm to be known as nasty and greedy -- that is what bankers are there for."

Борис Гребенщиков И Deadушки "Сны О Чем-То Большем"

A little Russian alternative music from Deadushki and Boris Grebenshchikov.

Volcanoes and Humanity, An Uneasy Relationship

The Icelandic volcano is a reminder that natural forces have profound and unexpected effects on human activity.The more complex the human technology the deeper the implications. There is now concern that the effects of this eruption might be felt for years to come as noted in the Timesonline:

"The wider economic consequence to our ‘just-in-time’ society is incalculable at this stage given the disruption to holidays, business plans and indeed the wider business supply chain. However, the global cost of the disruption will surely ultimately result in a cost of billions rather than hundreds of millions of pounds.

It is exceptionally hard to gauge how long the current grounding of flights will remain in force, although Eyjafjallajökull, the Icelandic volcano which has erupted, could potentially sputter on for months or even more than a year. Much could depend upon weather patterns, especially wind direction, over the next few days.

The worst-case scenario in terms of precedent here is the 1783-1784 eruption at Laki (a very large eruption of 14km3 compared to the one in Mount St. Helens in 1980 of 1 km3) that had a huge impact on the northern hemisphere, reducing temperatures by up to 3 degrees. This led to catastrophe far beyond the shores of Iceland (where 25% of population died), with thousands of recorded deaths in Britain due to poisoning and extreme cold, and record low rainfall in North Africa."

The article goes on to also make an argument for the role of climate change:

"At the end of the last ice age, the rate of eruption in Iceland was some 30 times higher than historic rates. This is because the reduction in the ice load reduced the pressure in the mantle, leading to decompression melting there. Since the late 19th Century the ice caps in Iceland have been shrinking yet further, due to changing climate. This will lead to additional magma generation, so we should expect more frequent and/or more voluminous eruptions in the future."

Zvuki Mu Grubi Zakat (Disgraceful Decline)

Zvuki Mu with Pyotr Mamamov is one of the great Russian alternative bands and introduced me to the world of Russian rock.

Climate Change and Nuclear War

With the recent attention on nuclear arms limitation its important not to loose sight of the stakes of even a "small" nuclear conflict could have. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has a sobering article on the climate change that could be produced in even a limited conflict:

" Recent scientific studies have found that a war fought with the deployed U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals would leave Earth virtually uninhabitable. In fact, NASA computer models have shown that even a "successful" first strike by Washington or Moscow would inflict catastrophic environmental damage that would make agriculture impossible and cause mass starvation. Similarly, in the January Scientific American, Alan Robock and Brian Toon, the foremost experts on the climatic impact of nuclear war, warn that the environmental consequences of a "regional" nuclear war would cause a global famine that could kill one billion people.

Their article, "Local Nuclear War: Global Suffering," PDF predicts that the detonation of 100 15-kiloton nuclear weapons in Indian and Pakistani megacities would create urban firestorms that would loft 5 million tons of thick, black smoke above cloud level. (This smoke would engulf the entire planet within 10 days.) Because the smoke couldn't be rained out, it would remain in the stratosphere for at least a decade and have profoundly disruptive effects. Specifically, the smoke layer would block sunlight, heat the upper atmosphere, and cause massive destruction of protective stratospheric ozone. A 2008 study PDF calculated ozone losses (after the described conflict) of 25-45 percent above mid-latitudes and 50-70 percent above northern high latitudes persisting for five years, with substantial losses continuing for another five years. Such severe ozone depletion would allow intense levels of harmful ultraviolet light to reach Earth's surface--even with the stratospheric smoke layer in place.

Beneath the smoke, the loss of warming sunlight would produce average surface temperatures colder than any experienced in the last 1,000 years. There would be a corresponding shortening of growing seasons by up to 30 days and significant reductions in average rainfall in many areas, with a 40-percent decrease of precipitation in the Asian monsoon region. Basically, the Earth's surface would become cold, dark, and dry......

Here it's important to point out that the 100 Hiroshima-size weapons detonated in Robock and Toon's regional war scenario contain less than 1 percent of the combined explosive power in the 7,000 or so operational and deployed nuclear weapons the United States and Russia possess. If even one-half of these weapons were detonated in urban areas, Robock and Toon have predicted that the resulting nuclear darkness would cause daily minimum temperatures to fall below freezing in the largest agricultural areas of the Northern Hemisphere for a period of between one to three years. Meanwhile, average global surface temperatures would become colder than those experienced 18,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age.

Amazingly, however, no follow-up studies have been initiated to further evaluate the decreases in temperature, precipitation, or ozone depletion predicted to arise from either regional or strategic nuclear war. Large studies were conducted in the 1980s on "nuclear winter" by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the World Meteorological Organization, and the International Council for Science's Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment. But given that Robock and Toon's new research has found that these early studies significantly underestimated the climatic and environmental consequences of nuclear war, wouldn't it make sense for such groups to now revisit the subject? At the very least, Washington and Moscow, with 95 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, should be required to investigate the environmental and climatic consequences from a nuclear war created by their nuclear arsenals."

Polish Government Decapitated in Russian Plane Crash

This is truly bizarre, a plane carrying the upper echelon of the Polish government crashes on the way to commemorate the Katyn Massacre practically at the site of the massacre. Julia Ioffe from True/Slant has more:

"This morning, a crappy, Soviet-era Tu-154 was headed from Warsaw for Smolensk (near the site of the massacre), but found that its ability to land was hampered by the fog. It tried to land again and again, with no success. On its fourth attempt, the plane grazed a tree, which ripped off its back section, and sent it hurtling into to the ground at 10:50 a.m. local time.

Every crew member died, as did all the passengers. Among them were the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, his wife, the head of the National bank, the vice speakers of the Sejm and the Senate, the chief of staff, the head of national security, the Olympic committee head, the deputy defense minister, and a row of senators.

Vladimir Putin, newly reconciled with the Poles, said he would personally oversee the investigation.

Stranger than fiction, as they say."

Olga Rozhdenstvenskaya and The Moscow Grooves Institute

American Christianic Terrorism

Mark Juergensmeyer has one of the more erudite commentaries on Christianic fundamentalist terrorism in America. It is no exaggeration to say that Christian fanatic organizations have the most developed terrorist networks in the United States today.

"Christian terrorism has returned to America with a vengeance. And it is not just Roeder. Last week, when members of the Hutaree militia in Michigan and Ohio recently were arrested with plans to kill a random policeman and then plant Improvised Explosive Devises in the area where the funeral would be held in order to kill hundreds more, this was a terrorist plot of the sort that would impress Shi'ite militia and al Qaeda activists in Iraq. The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded by Morris Dees, which has closely watched the rise of right-wing extremism in this country for many decades, declares that threats and incidents of right-wing violence have risen 200% in this last year — unfortunately coinciding with the tenure of the first African American President in US history. When Chip Berlet—one of this country's best monitors of right wing extremism warned in a perceptive essay published last week on this website that the hostile right-wing political climate in this country has created the climate for a demonic new form of violence and terrorism, I fear that he is correct." read more

Coloured Revolutions Turning To Mud...Now Kyrgyzastan

The CIA inspired revolutions through the former Soviet Union continue to go bad. These include the Ukraine, Georgia, and now Kyrgyzstan.As per the Seattle Post Intelligencer" :

"But as in Ukraine and Georgia, where peaceful revolutions raised similar hopes, dreams of sweeping change have soured. Many worry that this struggling Central Asian nation is rapidly plummeting into full-blown authoritarianism.

"The world is actively discussing the shortcomings of a model of democracy based on elections and human rights," Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev told a national assembly Tuesday. "There is no certainty that such a model is suitable for all countries and peoples."

Kyrgyzstan lacks the copious oil and gas reserves of its neighbors, but its strategic location has made it the object of lively interest from Russia and the United States, which both maintain bases here.

Attention from these eager suitors has done little, however, to improve the country's economic health, and many people are gloomy about Kyrgyzstan's future.

"All the talented and educated people are leaving the country," said Aisha Maratova, a 39-year-old music teacher in the capital, Bishkek. "Kyrgyzstan was once respected as a democratic state - now it has an international image of a corrupt and backward country."

Bakiyev - the opposition leader who spearheaded the Tulip Revolution of March 24, 2005 - was hailed as a reformer when he was appointed caretaker president that day following the sacking of Akayev's office.

Emerging from parliament, Bakiyev told a cheering crowd assembled in a central square of the capital that "freedom has finally come to us."

Since then, Bakiyev has tightened his grip on power at the expense of the very liberties he promised.

In recent years, government opponents have faced physical intimidation, threats and legal prosecution. Last summer, Bakiyev was elected to a second term as president in an election described as fraudulent by international election observers.

Independent reporters and political analysts critical of the government have been subjected to vicious beatings. And in recent weeks, the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Kyrgyz radio service has been taken off the air, while prominent Central Asia-focused Web sites have been made inaccessible.

Kyrgyz authorities deny they are trying to silence dissent, but experts are skeptical.

"The Tulip Revolution marked a negative turning point in the democratic development of Central Asia," said Alexander Cooley, a political scientist at Columbia University.

Some hoped Kyrgyzstan's revolt would help bring democracy and the rule of law to other former Soviet countries, but the opposite may have been the case.

"In countries such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Azerbaijan, alarmed governments equated democratization with regime change and clamped down on the activities of domestic civil society, externally sponsored non-governmental organizations and their media," Cooley said."

Arms Control...of Sorts

While I'm a fan of disarmament the recent agreement between the U.S. and the Russian Federation does stretch a few concepts particularly the difference between bombs and bombers as noted by the Federation of American Scientists:

"The treaty does not even approach territory that would call for a fundamental rethinking of how we deploy our nuclear weapons. As the military would say, the treaty protects the force structure. That is, we will still have a triad of bombers and both land-based and sea-based ballistic missiles, another obsolete artifact of the Cold War that dates back to fears of a disarming first strike from the Soviet Union (and inter-Service competition). Even Air Force advocacy groups such as the Mitchell Institute have considered eliminating the nuclear mission for the manned bomber and moving from a triad to a dyad of land- and sea-based missiles. In fact, the treaty contains a peculiar counting rule that increases the importance of bombers: each bomber counts only as one nuclear bomb although the B-52 can carry 20 nuclear-armed cruise missiles and the Russian bombers, for example the Backfire and Blackjack, have similar payloads. If we define corn as a type of tree, then suddenly Iowa would be covered in forests. If we define a bomber with 20 bombs as a single bomb, then suddenly we get a substantial reduction in the nuclear of weapons. (Hans discusses the numbers in more detail.) This rule reportedly resulted from Russia’s refusal to allow the necessary on-site inspections at its bomber bases but it creates an important caveat on any claim of “reductions.”

Meanwhile Pavel Podvig at the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces Blog gives the Russian take on the same issue:


"The way the United States and Russia will be counting bombers in New START has raised some questions about the treaty - the change in counting rules in effect means that neither side would have to make any substantial cuts to comply with the new treaty. (See the projections I published earlier and Hans Kristensen's analysis.)

The United States said that it was ready to count bombers with their actual weapons load, but Russia objected to the transparency provisions that this arrangement would entail. This is not the first time Russia gets a bad rap for resisting transparency, but I don't think this is the case here. As Hans Kristensen noted, they could have counted each bomber as carrying, say, ten warheads. No transparency is needed for that.

Another possible reason for Russia's position on bombers is that if they were counted with their real weapons load, the United States would have to find some other place to cut 400 warheads. Most likely this would have been done primarily by "downloading" SLBMs. The problem with this, of course, is that it would increase the U.S. "upload potential" - the ability to quickly bring the warheads back.

Whether or not that was the real reason and regardless of whether the concerns about the upload potential are justified, Russia appears to have been consistent in pushing for lower number of launchers and, if that is not possible, for keeping the warhead limit relatively high to avoid increasing the upload potential. We know now, for example, that it was Russia that insisted on putting 1675 into the "1500-1675" range agreed in Moscow in July 2009.

Whatever the real Russia's reasons, I am sympathetic to its position - reducing the number of warheads just by offloading them from missiles and keeping the capability to bring them back intact is not real reductions. Nuclear weapon states have to be held accountable for their nuclear-capable launchers as well At the time, I suggested keeping the old START count in place to do just that and it looks like the New START treaty will be able to do it to some extent.

As for the bombers, I'm not sure that Russia gained anything in particular there. We get better accountability for launchers, but leave quite a few warheads unaccountable. One can argue that Russia may be more worried about SLBMs than about bombers - it may well be the case. In any event, I don't think that the trick with bomber count weakens the treaty."

Sector Gaza Demobilization

Sector Gaza shows the Russian version of the effect of continuous "War on Terrorism", the message to me is it never ends.

Terrorism Returns to Moscow

After a hiatus terrorism is back. The blowback from the North Caucasus is evident. The only country with more conspiracy theories than the U.S. would be Russia. Already Kavkazcenter is claiming that the Russian government is behind this, while as above RussiaToday reports, Chechen groups are taking responsibility. Given the instability of the Caucasus they could be Chechens, Dagestanis, or Ingushetians. They all have the same beefs of heavy handed Russian security with torture, disappearances, and outright murder. It is interesting that this comes about as Russians have become more outspoken in opposition to Vladimir Putin with the recent "Day of Wrath" protests.

Black Dog (Чёрный Пес) of St. Petersburg

Yuri Shevchuk and DDT rock out for everyones benefit.

RPUSA the Largest Hate Group in America

The Republican Party of the United States of America is now the largest umbrella for hate groups in the country. The list of who they hate is amazing:

Liberals
Gays
African-Americans
Hispanics
Immigrants
Unwed Mothers
Muslims
Atheists
Free Thinkers
Progressives
Climatologists
Paleontologists
People with disabilities
The Poor
Canadians
Ecologists
Liberal Protestants
Liberal Catholics
Liberal Jews
Pro Choice
Women
The Chinese
Other Asians
Communists
Socialists
Northerners
Norwegians

The list goes on and on....its time to call out these fucktards where ever they crawl out for they expect to come out in "normal places" all over the country. Don't let them go unnoticed or unopposed.

Oleg Kostrov Or More Russian Techno in Moscow Apartments

Yes the video doesn't subscribe to the usual American bullshit, for instance why does Osama Bin Laden love New York?

More Messer Chups : Russian Techno Lounge Music

Messer Chups from Czlowiek Kamera on Vimeo.

How can I elaborate on such an amazing show that transcends ordinary description? Russian Techno Lounge Music is great!

What Happens If We Don't Pass Health Care Reform

This vivid illustration shows the effects of insurance company takeover of American healthcare.

Hillary Clinton To Seal Nuke Deal?

This is as hard to believe as is the American Health Care reform bill.

Messer Chups Meets Vincent Price

This seems to be a natural combination, post Soviet sensibility meets American craziness.Vincent as a bass player does stretch his photogenicity.

Nozh Dlya Frau Mueller: The Best Girl In The USSR

Nozh Dlya Frau Mueller (Knife for Frau Mueller) rocks out on Лушая Девушка в СССР, the Best Girl In the USSR.

Georgian Freakout

So the would be NATO member Georgia staged yet another freakout concerning their "Russian threat". This was similar to the "War of The Worlds" radio show, only instead of Martians we're talking Russians. We already have enough dependent small countries who want the U.S. to fix various real and imagined grievances, ie Israel, Tibet, Armenia, the Baltics, and the list goes on and on. Memo to these places: We are fucking broke and we need all our weapons to fight each other. Come back if there are any of us left

Ivan Kupala-Kostroma

Ivan Kupala is a group from St. Petersburg which wires up Russian folk. The Russian site is here.

Moscow Grooves Institute: Commercial Brake

Commercial Brake from Moscow Grooves.It's good to be alive and free from commercial influences.

More On the Stakes of Nuclear Arms Reduction

From the Russian site Nuclear No on what's at stake in the START negotiations. American nuclear hegemony has many supporters, the Defense Dept., Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, General Electric, the Carlyle Group, the list goes on....the American people and the people of the world of course benefit from none of this. Another missed opportunity.

"Zero Hour for Zero
Will the START treaty be the dead end of Obama`s no-nukes dream?

Remember Zero? As in zero nukes, Obama`s dream. The dream of "a world without nuclear weapons." The path he sought to start us down in his famous (and probably Nobel-winning) Prague speech in April 2009. The speech in which he seemed consciously to echo Martin Luther King when he said that we might not get there "in my lifetime" but that we must set forth on the path. Thereby construing nuclear abolition as something akin to the abolition of human bondage, freeing us from the plutonium shackles of annihilating weaponry the way the original abolitionists ultimately succeeded in cutting the shackles of slavery.

I remember it. I remember the Prague speech. I remember joint Moscow press conference in July, held by Obama and Russian President Medvedev, in which they both agreed on the goal of a nuclear-free world and signed onto the first step to Zero: a renewal or "follow-on" to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) that would sharply cut the number of deployed and operational nuclear warheads to "between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads, down from the 2,200-weapon limit the states are required to meet by 2012 under another treaty." "The leaders also pledged to restrict strategic delivery vehicles [i.e., missiles, subs, and bombers] on each side to between 500 and 1,100," according to the Global Security Newswire, a clearinghouse for nuclear-arms information.

I remember those numbers; it is often forgotten that, despite dramatic post-Cold War reductions, the superpowers still possess sufficient nuclear warheads to destroy civilization, if not the species itself. (For one thing, those numbers don`t count the nondeployed warheads and those in the hands of other nations; one estimate of the total number of those, worldwide, is 23,000.)

I remember how much closer to Zero they seemed, those new numbers being negotiated. And yet how far away they`ve turned out to be. That first step, the renewal or renegotiation of a "follow-on" to the START Treaty-which was set to expire on Dec. 5, 2009-has stalled despite repeated assurances that all was going well. Indeed, over the months since that original announcement, the related failures to meet deadlines have made the negotiations begin to look like a tragic farce whose fate is seeming ever more grim as the weeks and months pass without a resolution of the constantly cropping up "niggling problems" that have prevented agreement.

Yet I remember the U.S. and Russian presidents and their chief negotiators exuding confidence last July that the Dec. 5 goal would be reached, no problem. Just a few details to iron out. And then, as Dec. 5 crept up, more little problems began to appear, and still they reassured us there was really no insurmountable difficulty, and, besides, if they missed the Dec. 5 deadline by a little bit, they`d just agree to a stop-gap extension of the current START treaty with all its provisions for inspection and verification of arms limitation intact. And I remember how everyone said that Obama`s cancellation of the Bush administration proposal to deploy ballistic-missile defense interceptors in Poland-if not on actual Russian soil but close enough to make them crazy-would ease the way to a friendlier climate, more conducive to concluding the START treaty and for walking hand-in-hand down the path toward the nuclear-free sunset beyond the START follow-on. The "follow-on to the follow-on," as it came to be known. The yellow brick road to Zero.

It was just a matter of shifting those interceptors (supposedly designed to protect Europe from Iranian missiles-but try telling the Russians that) to ship-based platforms in the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean. That would eliminate the problem, we were told.

But I also remember having some misgivings as to whether the nuclear industrial complex and its allies in the Pentagon were really all onboard with the Zero goal, as I reported on in Slate after watching them gather in Omaha, Neb. Our nuclear commanders at Omaha`s STRATCOM, the strategic command, had assembled a massive show of force of the civilian and military nuclear elite, most of whom delivered talks that treated Zero dismissively and even raised questions about the START follow-on`s goal of a radical reductions in nukes-an implicit rebuke to their commander in chief.

And then I remember the sudden chilling dispatch from the Global Security Newswire (a subsidiary of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an NGO formed by Sen. Sam Nunn and Ted Turner) on Dec. 3, 2009:

New Arms-Control Pact Unlikely Before START Expires, Officials Say

Despite "tense, intense and substantive" negotiations taking place "practically around the clock," according to one Russian lawmaker, the sides remain notably divided over arrangements for verifying compliance with the new agreement.

Russian military officials and foreign policy planners have pushed to restrain monitoring terms they said were too invasive under the 1991 treaty.

"Russia is not interested in having the same scope of verification procedures that were in the earlier treaty. There is this conclusion that these measures were too much, and too extensive," said Anton Khlopkov, head of the Moscow-based Center for Energy and Security Studies.

One White House official said a final deal is "not going to happen" by next week, when Obama is expected to receive the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. "We are working this hard, but it will only get done if it is a good agreement that advances our national interests," the source said. ...

"The (new) agreement will not be signed on Saturday, but there is a possibility that it could be signed as early as mid-December," RIA Novosti quoted Alexei Arbatov, head of the Center for International Security Studies in Moscow, as saying.

Not quite Alexei, three months later and the talk is of May, maybe.

But then I remembered how, we`d been told that if the Dec. 5 expiration loomed, the negotiators had agreed to a no-conditions extension of START. And I remember how Dec. 5 came and went and there was no agreement, and I remember also how there was no formal extension and just vague assents to continuation. And no treaty ready for signing on Dec. 10 the day Obama received the Nobel Peace prize, a prize that specifically cited his goal of a nuclear-free world (and was probably the rationale for his winning it).

And I remember the photos of the American inspection team whose job it was (under the lapsed START Treaty) to sit outside a Russian missile factory and count the number of big and tall cylindrical objects that came out the doors. And how one day they were photographed happily picnicking together in front of the missile plant and the next ejected from Russia because the treaty they were monitoring was longer in effect. According to what James Acton, an arms-control expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, disclosed to me, their departure was a secret pre-emptive concession by the United States to get the START treaty ratified by expiration time. But that didn`t quite work out, did it?

Now any future inspection and verification counting of nukes will be complicated by the gap in continuity of inspection surveillance, but it was no big deal, we were told; the two parties were "very close."

But after the New Year, once again we began to hear optimistic pronouncements. In January of this year, Russian President Medvedev was telling the world not to worry; we were "95 percent" there, just a few little issues to be ironed out.

Only those few little issues involved the stubborn problems of inspection and verification, and the Polish concession hadn`t made a difference because now the Russians wanted the right to inspect the sea-based missiles that were to be substituted for the Polish interceptors and the Americans were having some problems with that, too. They didn`t want any ballistic missile defense, or BMD, restrictions. The American negotiators knew that any concession that restricted BMD was anathema to the GOP, and would likely kill hopes of any treaty ratification by the two-thirds majority necessary. (No "nuclear option" for the nuclear option, so to speak.) Can you say "stalemate"?

And then out of the blue we learned that the Obama Pentagon was announcing last week that it was going to be installing interceptor missiles in Romania, of all places.

When the Russians protested, the Pentagon explained that the Romanian interceptors would only have a range of 900 kilometers and could not reach Russia`s borders, which-surprise-the Russians did not find very reassuring.

Indeed, the timing and substance of the Romanian announcement may go down in nuclear history, should anyone be alive to write it, as the single stupidest act in the entire negotiation process and will perhaps sound the death knell for Obama`s dream of Zero. Or, at least, stop the START follow-on.

Didn`t it occur to someone in the Pentagon that the whole idea of missile bases of any kind and missiles of any range in Eastern Europe was anathema to the Russians? Having lost tens of millions of people to Hitler`s panzers last century in that neighborhood, they turned out to be still touchy. Imagine!

In my August Slate piece, I had argued that Obama needed a "Zero czar" if he were to whip the entrenched nuclear establishment into line behind his dream of Zero. A zero czar might have averted the potentially fatal Romanian mistake.

Meanwhile, I was informed that "sources" in Washington were spinning or being spun by the idea that a speech by Joe Biden would change everything. (As if!) Biden`s speech, the word was, would give the Republicans in the Senate more reason to vote to ratify a treaty (that had, needless to say, still not been signed and looked like it never would) by giving the Republicans nuclear "goodies" they wanted such as renewal of the "infrastructure" of our bomb-making capacity. And, indeed, Biden made a speech in which he trumpeted a puny 10 percent increase ($624 million) for renewing the physical and intellectual infrastructure of our nuclear capacity, but not the grail of the GOP, the "Reliable Replacement Warhead," a new generation of high-tech nuclear warheads they`d been lobbying for unsuccessfully since the beginning of the Bush administration.

The Biden speech was widely ignored, except for those arms-control advocates, like James Acton, who told me it epitomized a recurrent flaw in the Obama administration`s negotiating strategy-both with the Russians and the GOP-that was to give pre-emptive concessions (like Poland, like "infrastructure") in bargaining which the other side would then pocket and then ask for more.

Still, the negotiators and their spinners tried to crank up the START follow-on optimism. On March 2, those of us who followed the global security newswire were told there is new hope!
Russian Leader Optimistic on START Progress

Russia and the United States are "close to agreement on practically all questions" over a pending successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired in December, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said yesterday... Medvedev... suggested his nation and the United States could soon reach agreement on a successor to a key Cold War-era nuclear arms control treaty...

"In essence, we have reached the final part of negotiations," Reuters quoted Medvedev as saying. "I hope these negotiations will be finished in the very near future."

Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama pledged last July to cut their nations` respective strategic arsenals to between 1,500 and 1,675 deployed nuclear warheads under the new treaty. Negotiators have reportedly also agreed to reduce each state`s arsenal of nuclear delivery vehicles - missiles, submarines and bombers - to between 700 and 800, down from the 1,100-vehicle limit set by the leaders.

After wrapping up a one-month negotiation session Saturday, Russian and U.S. officials plan to reconvene March 9 in Geneva, Switzerland, "with the aim of finalizing the future treaty and presenting it for signing by the presidents of Russia and the United States," the Russian Foreign Ministry stated yesterday (Denis Dyomkin, Reuters, March 1).

Oh, Dmitry, stop being a tease! I`m beginning to wonder whether the whole thing has been a con game to make the United States look foolish. He "hopes" the negotiations will be completed in the "very near future." Just like they were going to be completed in several "very near futures" past. But now we`ve reached "the final part." But, wait, I thought we`d already gotten there, "95 percent" of the way two months ago. But two months of intense negotiations had failed to close that 5 percent gap?

In other words, minus the bogus spin, the first round of the Geneva negotiations have been a failure, and there`s no reason to believe the next round, which has the "aim of finalizing the treaty" when the negotiators reconvene March 9 in Geneva, will do any better. Not after all the false hope and groundless optimism they`ve been feeding us since July `09. Now we`re told further negotiations aim to wind up in April and present the treaty to the presidents of the United States and Russia sometime in May. Well, maybe it will happen. Keep hope alive and all that.

But the next GSN report-and the last one as I write (I have to kick my addiction to this charade at some point, but since I am working on a book about the new nuclear age, it`s hard not to chronicle the slow-motion car wreck)-was dated March 3 and we learned that all the optimistic bonhomie actually concealed something "tough," and, worse, there were "niggling details" to be resolved: "Work on the pact has been `very tough,` but `I think we can do it,` said a U.S. official familiar with the talks," according to the GSN report. "The nations remained divided over terms for monitoring compliance with the pact, such as the use of audits to check the other side`s nuclear-armed missiles, the official said. `There are still some niggling technical details,` the source said."

As any student of negotiations knows, when you get to the point where you`ve spent a year haggling over "niggling details," the details are not "niggling."

What has gone wrong? Who`s to blame? Is it zero hour for Zero or is Zero already dead?

I had a fascinating conversation with Carnegie`s James Acton about these questions and the speculations that surround them. One theory going the rounds, he said, is that Vladimir Putin doesn`t want to let Dmitry Medvedev to cover himself in worldwide glory (and thus bolster his stature viz-a-viz Vlad within Russia) by getting a nuclear treaty signed. And so Putin has allowed his minions among the Russian negotiators to raise objection after objection to the treaty. Almost all of them focusing on ballistic missile defense, which, ever since Star Wars, makes the Russians go ballistic.

Meanwhile, U.S. negotiators have made any incorporation of restraints on BMD a no-go area for negotiations, believing that any such restrictions would condemn a treaty to death in the Senate. In other words, they`ve capitulated to the Republicans pre-emptively on what could be a more ambitious treaty. Acton said what could not be known is just how substantive the differences were. If they were indeed "niggling details," Obama and Medvedev might step in and resolve them at the last minute. But if they involved ballistic missile defense, the problems might be insoluble.

When I asked Acton whether there was anything Obama could to break the logjam, he said he wasn`t sure-the delay might turn out to be a symptom of what veteran arms control negotiators had told him was a Russian negotiating tactic: make concessions along the way and then just as it looked as if agreement could be reached, "put everything back on the table."

"Meaning?" I asked.

Take back the concessions and see what else you can extract from the pressure of what seems like proximity to finality.

Proximity to finality. Zero always was a long-term dream. But the first step has been so agonizingly difficult, it begins to seem less like a dream and more like an ever tantalizing, never approachable delusion.

Alas, "proximity to finality" may be the epitaph for the START Treaty, for Zero, for the prospects of avoiding a nuclear cataclysm. Proximity to finality, yes. Zero may be stopped in its tracks before it could get STARTed.

I would argue there is one thing Obama could do. Recognize that this is at least as important as health care in terms of the urgency with which he treats it. And that he has to get involved personally and politically. He has to find out whether the Russians are serious, whether the Pentagon is sabotaging him, whether there`s any hope left. He has to realize that a nuclear war would be a rather substantial health care crisis, for instance, if he wants to put it in that framework. Recognize that this is truly the way he could make a mark on history unlike that of any previous president. And if he won`t follow my advice and appoint a Zero czar, at this very late hour, he should become the Zero czar himself."

Nuclear Policy Review American and Russian

The Obama administration faces a monumental decision regarding nuclear strategy that has largely gone un-noticed in popular media. Having backed away from conplan 8022, developed under the Bush-Cheney administration which, among other things , called for pre-emptive strikes against potential threats as well as real ones, the Obama administration must come to grips with the desire to make the world safer and satisfy the American military-industrial complex. FAS goes into more details:

"While the completion of the Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review continues to slide, FAS today published an issue paper on how a decision to reduce the role of nuclear weapons might influence the U.S. strategic war plan.

President Obama pledged in his Prague speech last year that he would “reduce the role of nuclear weapons” to “put an end to Cold War thinking,” and reaffirmed earlier this month that the “Nuclear Posture Review will reduce [the] role….”

How to reduce the role in a way that is seen as significant by the global nonproliferation community, visible to adversaries, and compatible with the president’s other pledge to “maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary…as long as these weapons exist” apparently is the subject of a heated debate within the administration.
Click image to download report.

The most persistent rumor is that the review might remove a requirement to plan nuclear strikes against chemical and biological weapons; reduce the mission to the core role of deterring use of other nuclear weapons. I recently described that the Quadrennial Defense Review stated that new regional deterrence architectures and non-nuclear capabilities “make possible a reduced role for nuclear weapons in our national security strategy.”

A reduction of the mission to only deter nuclear use would roll back much of the expansion of nuclear doctrine that happened during the Clinton and Bush administrations. But it would not “put an end to Cold War thinking,” but to post-Cold War thinking.

To put an end to Cold War thinking, the reduced role would have to affect the core of the war plan that is directed against Russia and China.

The issue paper describes how the strategic war plan is structured, how it has evolved, and discusses options for reducing the mission and the war plan itself."

Meanwhile Pavel Podvig reports on the Russian equivalent which seems to pull back from looser use of nukes:

"On February 5, 2010 President of Russia formally approved the new military doctrine, whose text is now available, and a document called "Basic principles of state's policy in the area of nuclear deterrence through 2020", which appears to be classified.

Nikolay Sokov, who has been following the Russian doctrinal debate closely, has a detailed analysis. The key point, however, is that despite the earlier signs that the doctrine would expand the use of nuclear weapons and even allow for preventive and preemptive strikes, the final document is quite reasonable. As far as nuclear weapons are concerned, the key statement of the new doctrine is that

Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to a use of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction against her and (or) her allies, and in a case of an aggression against her with conventional weapons that would put in danger the very existence of the state.

This is, actually, not bad, since the scope of the use of nuclear weapons is quite limited. For example, a limited conventional aggression against Russia would not trigger a nuclear response. Neither would a "regime change" in an allied country, as long as it doesn't cross the nuclear threshold.

Of course, it is a declaratory policy and one can argue that things may change in a heat of a crisis. This is true, but the doctrine sets a baseline, which says that Russia is quite restrained in setting goals for its nuclear forces."

Kolibri-"And I?" (Kолибри-А Я ?)

Kolibri, The Hummingbirds,are a musical group of Russian women who have collaborated in the past with Evgeni Fedorov of Tequila Jazzz and make an ethereal, other worldly sound.

Financial and Climate Collapse: One Weeks Evidence

In the past week further evidence of the decline of the American economy and climate change combine in an unhearlded and unheard of fashion. Elizabeth Warren, a genuine American heroine, describes how the coming collapse of the commercial real estate market imperils thousands of small American banks and hundreds of billions of dollars. In the world of natural science further concern mounts over arctic methane destabilization. The photo depicts a guy igniting a Siberian permafrost methane vent.



The Atlantic reports on the potential fallout of Siberian methane:

"Unexpectedly huge quantities of Siberian methane are being released into the atmosphere, according to a new study. The resulting feedback loop could dramatically outpace the climate models that scientists and policy makers have been using as they attempt to roll back emissions.

When it comes to climate change, methane is bad news: It is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide in causing increased atmospheric temperatures.

A National Science Foundation study in today's issue of Science found that melting permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is causing an annual release of nearly 8 million tons of methane. In deeper ocean areas, methane that escapes from the seabed has time to oxidize as it rises to the surface, transforming into less potent carbon dioxide by the time it is released into the atmosphere. In the shallow waters of East Siberia, however, methane that escapes through the thawing permafrost rises quickly to the surface and enters the atmosphere in its original form.

Eight million tons is a relative a pittance compared to the 80 million metric tons produced by livestock around the world each year. But the Siberian methane problem will only get worse as temperatures increase and more permafrost melts.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress describes this methane release as "the most dangerous amplifying feedback in the entire carbon cycle." According to the NSF, "the Earth's geologic record indicates that atmospheric concentrations of methane have varied from about 0.3 to 0.4 parts per million during cold periods to about 0.6 to 0.7 parts per million during warm periods." Today's study pegs methane levels in the Arctic at 2.85 parts per million, the highest concentration in 400,000 years, so the methane feedback loop is already well under way.

Perhaps the scariest part of these findings is that they are not included in climate models. According to Romm, "no climate model currently incorporates the amplifying feedback from methane released by a defrosting tundra." The methane findings from the East Siberian shelf are a dangerous new variable that must be incorporated into planning and policy making. "

Chilean Charities

More Chilean music. A guide to Chilean charities here.

Viva Chilenos!

Chile has experienced a horrendous natural disaster, however the strength of Chile is the people. With this in mind Cholomandinga is a great South American band deserving of wider exposure.

Люба, Атаc: Russian Nationalist Rock

From the blue collar suburbs of Moscow Lyuba embodies Russian national identity with some catchy rock.

Luxembourg-Sized Iceberg Departs Antarctica and Threatens World Oceans

The Australian Antarctic Division reports on another large hunk of an Antarctic glacier breaking off in this case due to another huge iceberg striking it. According to the Guardian the piece the size of Luxembourg may have a significant impact on world ocean ecology:

"Rob Massom, a senior scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre in Hobart, Tasmania, said the location of the icebergs could affect global ocean circulation and had important implications for marine biology in the region.

The concern is that the massive displacement of ice would transform the composition of sea water in the area and impair the normal circulation of cold, dense water that normally supplies deep ocean currents with oxygen.

"Removal of this tongue of floating ice would reduce the size of that area of open water, which would slow down the rate of salinity input into the ocean and it could slow down this rate of Antarctic bottom water formation," Massom told Reuters.

Mario Hoppema, chemical oceanographer at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, said that as a result "there may be regions of the world's oceans that lose oxygen, and then of course most of the life there will die"."

Agata Kristi: Dvornik

From Agatha Kristi's Opium album.

Wither NATO?

Robert Gates, former head of the George H.W. Bush Library, the C.I.A., and now the Department of Defense, decries the falling away of European support of America's never ending war on terror:

"Citing a "crisis" in the alliance, Gates said Afghanistan has exposed fundamental NATO weaknesses - shortcomings that he said can undermine the viability of NATO as it faces future security threats.

He cited a money shortage within NATO - a perennial problem that successive American administrations have tried and failed to fix. That, in turn, is a "symptom of deeper problems with the way NATO perceives threats," assesses its defense needs and sets spending priorities, Gates said.

Gates tempered his stern message with words of praise for NATO allies, saying they had demonstrated in just the last three months an "unparalleled level of commitment" to the war effort by increasing their troop contributions from 30,000 last summer to 50,000 this year.

"By any measure that is an extraordinary feat," he said. He did not mention, however, that even NATO members who have shared the combat burden in Afghanistan are finding it hard to sustain.

In the Netherlands, for example, the coalition government collapsed this month over the issue of troop contributions; the 2,000-strong Dutch troop contingent is to begin withdrawing in August. Another stalwart, Canada, plans to remove 2,800 troops by next year, even as some other nations send more."

Meanwhile NATOs historic task of pissing off the Russians continues:

"Responding to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s assurances that Russia should not fear NATO’s advance, Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin wants more than words.

In a speech that outlined NATO's mission for the 21st Century, Hillary Clinton emphasized that the 28-member military organization presents no threat to Russia.

“While Russia faces challenges to its security, NATO is not among them,” the US Secretary of State told an audience assembled at a Washington hotel ballroom on Monday. “We want a cooperative NATO-Russia relationship that produces concrete results and draws NATO and Russia closer together.”


Clinton then said that the key to NATO-Russian relations is a high level of transparency in order to dispel Moscow’s fears that the alliance will one day turn on Russia.

“European security will benefit if NATO and Russia are more open about our armaments, our military facilities, and our exercises," Clinton continued. “NATO and Russia should have a regular exchange of information on posture, doctrine, and planned military exercises, as well as specific measures to permit observation of military exercises and to allow visits to new or significantly improved military installations.”

Dmitry Rogozin, the tough-talking Russian ambassador to NATO, wasn’t buying a word of it.

“In my view, Mrs. Clinton's speech failed to answer the questions that Moscow has repeatedly raised with its US and NATO partners,” he told Interfax on Tuesday.

Rogozin then cited a long list of complaints aimed at NATO and its “spontaneous expansion eastwards.”

“We cannot be happy with these rules,” he said. “A unilateral world, NATO-centrism, the alliance's spontaneous expansion eastwards and refusal to recognize the principle of integrity and security.”

The failure “to take into account Russia's and its partners' interests… is a burp of the Cold War,” the ambassador said.

And Russia is not sitting by idly as NATO continues to encroach eastward. At a February 5 session of the Russian Security Council, President Dmitry Medvedev said he had approved Russia's updated military doctrine, which ranked NATO expansion as a major threat.

Russia’s new military doctrine mentions, amongst other threats, “the desire to invest the military potential of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with global functions, carried out in violation of international law, and advance the NATO member states’ military infrastructure closer to Russia’s border, particularly by expanding the bloc.”

But Russia had been making overtures to its partners that the European security architecture needs to be overhauled to reflect all of the parties’ interests.

In November 2009, Moscow made a push for the United States and Europe to embrace a new security structure on the European continent that would finally remove “stereotypical Cold War rationale” from NATO’s mission statement."

Why does this organization continue to exist?

About The Next War

Michel Chossudovsky explains the next horribilness.

Zdob si Zdub: DJ Vasili

More stuff from the greatest group out of Moldova.

Jah Division: Cubana

Russian reggae with a Cuban flavor.

Saakashvili, Republicans: Strung Out or Just Crazy?

Russia Today ponders whether Georgian president Saakashvili is on drugs or is just crazy.Meanwhile American republicans, who may or may not be crazy or on drugs or both, advocate sending more arms to Georgia. A conservative (in the real sense) website, The National Interest looks at the ramifications:

"Senator Richard Lugar, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has proposed that the United States and Europe rearm the country of Georgia. The result would be to increase the chances of renewed conflict with Russia.

Georgia well illustrates the plight of small, divided states with large, assertive neighbors. Independence and freedom are hard to maintain. Georgia spent centuries as part of the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union. Even today Georgia exists in the shadow of a hostile Moscow.

However, Tbilisi shares another trait with many small, divided states—brutish nationalism. The status of ethnic minorities, such as the Abkhazis and Ossetians, has varied over time. Even the Mensheviks, who ran Georgia for a time after the Russian Revolution before being overrun by the more ruthless Bolsheviks, abandoned their more liberal principles when dealing with non-Georgians. Many Abkhazis and South Ossetians understandably do not want to be ruled by Tbilisi today.

The result is a geopolitical mess, but one with little relevance to America. During the Cold War no one suggested that the status of Georgia mattered to U.S. security. Georgia was listed as a “captive nation” in a 1959 congressional resolution—along with Turkestan, Armenia, Idel-Ural, White Ruthenia, Cossackia, and Tibet. Washington issued the usual platitudes about their plight, but there was no pretense that America ever would go to war in their defense. So it should remain with Georgia today."

Zdob Si Zdub: Moldovan Hip Hop

Moldovan music moving with the times.

Messer Chups - Tchaikovsky Beat

A little classical music as Mott The Hoople would say.....

New Communism

Belgian Loose Nukes Follow Up

In a Barney Fife type moment Belgian Defense officials denied that a recent breach by peace activists got near the actual nukes. Per FAS Strategic Security Blog:

"An astounding statement by a Belgian defense official has pointed an unexpected light on the apparent location of nuclear weapons at the Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium.

After a group of peace activists climbed the base fence and made their way deep into an area assumed to store nuclear weapons, Ingrid Baeck, a chief spokesperson for the Belgian Ministry of Defense, bluntly told Stars and Stripes: “I can assure you these people never, ever got anywhere near a sensitive area. They are talking nonsense….It was an empty bunker, a shelter,” she said and added: “When you get close to sensitive areas, then it’s another cup of tea.”

April 3 2010, a day of resistance:

Loosely Held Nukes In Belgium

The Federation of American Scientists Strategic Security blog reports on a security breach earlier this month at a U.S. Air Force base and nuclear weapons facility at Kleine Brogel, Belgium:

"A group of people last week managed to penetrate deep onto Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium where the U.S. Air Force currently deploys 10-20 nuclear bombs...
The activists videotaped their entire walk across the base. The security personnel confiscated cameras, but the activists removed the memory card first and smuggled it out of the base. Ahem…

In June 2008, I disclosed how an internal Air Force investigation had concluded that most nuclear weapons sites in Europe did not meet US security requirements. The Dutch government denied there was a problem, and an investigative team later sent by the US congress concluded that the security was fine.

They might have to go back and check again.

The nuclear bombs at Kleine Brogel are part of a stockpile of about 200 nuclear weapons left in Europe after the Cold War ended. Whereas nuclear weapons have otherwise been withdrawn to the United States and consolidated, the bombs in Europe are scattered across 62 aircraft shelters at six bases in five European countries. The 130-person US 701st Munitions Support Squadron (MUNSS) is based at Kleine Brogel to protect and service the nuclear bombs and facilities.

They might have to go back to training.

The activists will likely be charged with trespassing a military base but they should actually get a medal for having exposed security problems at Kleine Brogel. And this follows two years of the Air Force creating new nuclear command structures and beefing up inspections and training to improve nuclear proficiency following the embarrassing incident at Minot Air Force Base in 2007. Despite that, the activists not only made their way deep into the nuclear base but also discovered that the double-fence around the nuclear storage area had a hole in it! “We’re not the first,” one of the activists said.

NATO needs to get over its obsession with nuclear weapons and move out of the Cold War and the Obama administration’s upcoming Nuclear Posture Review needs to bring those weapons home before the wrong people try to do what the peace activists did."

Yes fortunately the activists were peace activists rather than war activists.

My Friend the Truck and I , Я и друг мой грузовик: Otto Sander

My Friend Truck and I have been around since 1997 and are from Dnipropetrovsk Ukraine. More info is here.

The Communist Manifestoon

Tanghetto Enjoy the Silence

An interesting intersection, Argentinian Tango and Depeche Mode in central Asia.

Kino: Pachka Cigaret

Victor Tsoy is one of Russia's greatest rock personalities.

Microwaving your brain may not be a good idea

More and more research shows that the microwave radiation soup we now live in is hazardous to health.According to the Telegraph the WHO is ready to release a study suggesting that cell phone use has a significant impact on the incidence of brain tumors:

"A £20million, decade-long investigation overseen by the World Health Organisation (WHO) will publish evidence that heavy users face a higher risk of developing brain tumours later in life, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

The conclusion, while not definitive, will undermine assurances from the government that the devices are safe and is expected to put ministers under pressure to issue stronger guidance. A preliminary breakdown of the results found a “significantly increased risk” of some brain tumours “related to use of mobile phones for a period of 10 years or more” in some studies.

The head of the Interphone investigation said that the report would include a “public health message”.

Britain’s Department of Health has not updated its guidance for more than four years. It says that “the current balance of evidence does not show health problems caused by using mobile phones”, and suggests only that children be “discouraged” from making “non-essential” calls while adults should “keep calls short”.

In contrast, several other countries, notably France, have begun strengthening warnings and American politicians are urgently investigating the risks."

Not only cellphone radiation is a concern, according to GQ Wi-Fi and others are bathing our cells in radiation:

"All of these concerns—the danger of microwaves issuing from the phones we place next to our skulls, the danger of waves emitted by the cell towers that dot our landscapes—also apply to the Wi-Fi networks in our homes and libraries and offices and cafés and parks and neighborhoods. Wi-Fi operates typically at a frequency of 2.4 gigahertz (the same frequency as microwave ovens) but is embedded with a wider range of modulations than cell phones, because we need it to carry more data. "It never ceases to surprise me that people will fight a cell tower going up in their neighborhoods," Blake Levitt, author of Electromagnetic Fields: A Consumer's Guide to the Issues and How to Protect Ourselves, told me. "They they'll install a Wi-Fi system in their homes. That's like inviting a cell tower indoors."

In the summer of 2006, a super-Wi-Fi system known as WiMAX was tested in rural Sweden. Bombarded with signals, the residents of the village of Götene—who had no knowledge that the transmitter had come online—were overcome by headaches, difficulty breathing, and blurred vision, according to a Swedish news report. Two residents reported to the hospital with heart arrhythmias, similar to those that, more than thirty years ago, Allen Frey induced in frog hearts. This happened only hours after the system was turned on, and as soon as it was powered down, the symptoms disappeared.

Today, Sprint Nextel and Clearwire are set to establish similar technology across the U.S., with a $7.2 billion government broadband stimulus speeding the rollout. A single WiMAX system would provide Internet coverage for an area of up to 75 square miles. "This means an even denser layer of radio-frequency pollution on top of what has developed over the last two decades," Blake Levitt says. "WiMAX will require many new antennas."

"The concern about Wi-Fi is being taken seriously in Europe. In April 2008, the national library of France, citing possible "genotoxic effects," announced it would shut down its Wi-Fi system, and the staff of the storied Library of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris followed up with a petition demanding the disconnection of Wi-Fi antennas and their replacement by wired connections. Several European governments are already moving to prohibit Wi-Fi in government buildings and on campuses, and the Austrian Medical Association is lobbying for a ban of all Wi-Fi systems in schools, citing the danger to children's thinner skulls and developing nervous systems."

It makes one wonder if we are in an era similar to the early 20th century when x-rays were used to measure feet and treat acne.

KOT again.

Some more Russian Reggae, KOT . Listen and enjoy.

Russian Freedom of Assembly Protest

Грани-ТВ: Триумфальная площадь, 31 января

The above is a Grani-TV report on demonstrations in support of Russians right to public assembly under article 31 of the Russian constitution. Over 100 people were arrested at Triumph Square in Moscow during the demonstration January 31st. Moscow News has more:

"Evgeniya Chaykovskaya

Moscow police detained more than 100 people on January 31st when it dispelled an opposition protest in defense of Article 31 of the Russian constitution.

Around 500 people took part in the demonstration at Triumfalnaya Square in central Moscow and 150 journalists followed the event. Most of the detained were released later in the evening. Among the detained were Boris Nemtsov and Ilya Yashin, leaders of the opposition movement Solidarnost (Solidarity), Eduard Limonov, leader of the banned National-Bolshevist party and Oleg Orlov, the head of Memorial rights group. All the detained will face administrative fines. The participants were shouting the slogans "Freedom!" and "Russia without Putin!"
Article 31 of the constitution states that "Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to assemble peacefully, without weapons, hold rallies, meetings and demonstrations, marches and pickets." Opposition marks every 31st day of months which have the date with a rallies in Moscow to support the constitutional right.

Every time ahead of the planned rallies opposition groups apply for permission to hold them at Triumfalnaya Square on Moscow's Garden Ring. But their request are traditionally rejected by the Moscow city government. Authorities explain their decision saying a rally at Triumfalnaya square would hamper street traffic or cause other disturbances. This time they cited "Winter Games" festival that would take place on the square.

The authorities claim that they offered the opposition other places in central Moscow for their rally. Alexander Khokhlov, first deputy head of press-office at mayor's office said Bolotnaya Square, Taras Shevchenko Embankment, Chistoprudniy Boulevard and the square next to "1905 Street" metro station had been offered as replacements. However, the opposition had refused to change its plans.

Similar protests took place in St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Krasnoyarsk and Vladivostok.

The next rally in defense of the Article 31 of the constitution is scheduled for March, 31st.

Another massive protest took place in Kaliningrad, the most Western Russian region on January, 30th. Up to 10,000 people gathered there to protest against rising transport taxes and utility tariffs. All major political parties and groups except for pro-Kremlin United Russia, attended the protest. Boris Nemtsov and Ilya Yashin, leaders of Solidarnost flew from Moscow to take part in the rally, the organizers described as the biggest in Russia in 20 years.

The participants demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Kaliningrad Governor Georgy Boos and all the Kalinigrad government.

Nemtsov took the stage. According to the business daily Kommersant Boris Nemtsov said that "federal and regional authorities made the people so angry, that the incredible happened. The opposition united and I think that it is only a forewarning of the events that will, apparently, take place all over Russia."

The transport tax tariffs rose by 25% in Kaliningrad in Autumn 2009. Ria Novosti writes that there are around 350,000 vehicles for the million people in Kaliningrad, which is a very high number by Russian standards."

Before Americans get too smug about this they should try putting together a protest before a national political convention or global economic meeting and see what happens.

Zdob Si Zdub: Everybody In The Casa Mare

One of the hottest groups out of Moldova, singing in Moldovan and occasionally Russian.Zdob Si Zdub can be found here.