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Let Me Tell You…

Posted on July 27, 2010 - by Venik

The Biggest Secret

Afghanistan Featured NATO United States
The Biggest Secret

While the US Army is revving up its investigation of Bradley Manning, those of us with a gift for diagonal reading are sure to be very busy for the next couple of weeks. However, I think it is safe to say that the Afghan war’s two biggest “secrets” have been sufficiently exposed. And they are [...]

Posted on July 20, 2010 - by Venik

The Water Boys

Featured Russia United States
The Water Boys

The best way to keep a secret is not to concede its existence. Indeed, it would be difficult for your neighbor to poison your dog, if he doesn’t know you have one. Should, nevertheless, the facts escape, your next best defense is wordiness. You shall contribute to the spectacle at every opportunity in the hope [...]

Posted on May 30, 2010 - by Venik

Deepwater Sombrero

Economy Featured United States
Deepwater Sombrero

According to the latest news reports every attempt to plug the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico has failed. At some point last week it became obvious that BP has been copying the failed attempts to stop the 1979 Ixtoc spill. It is interesting to note, that the two drilling rigs – the Ixtoc [...]

Posted on April 20, 2010 - by Venik

Why Russia and Poland Will Never be Friends

European Union Featured Russia Russian History
Why Russia and Poland Will Never be Friends

You probably heard the story by now: a plane full of Polish russophobes flew into a tree in Russia. Too bad Dante is dead: a lot of good material for a Commedia sequel. There is a veritable flurry of news reports and editorials predicting an epic thaw in relations between Russia and Poland. A brief [...]

Posted on February 22, 2010 - by Venik

Timoshenko’s Battleplan

Featured Ukraine
Timoshenko’s Battleplan

Not a week ago Ukraine’s Prime Minister seemed determined to argue her case in court. She outlined a comprehensive legal strategy that seemed certain to tie down her archnemesis in court for months, bankrupt the government, and push the country closer to anarchy. But yesterday Timoshenko withdrew her complaint from the Supreme Administrative Court and [...]

Posted on February 18, 2010 - by Venik

Mistral for Russia

Defense European Union Featured Russia United States
Mistral for Russia

France’s decision to sell four Mistral-class helicopter carriers to Russia was met with heavy criticism in the US, Georgia and the Baltic States. Interestingly enough, Russia’s decision to buy the four vessels for more than $2 billion was met with a lot of criticism within Russia as well. This is really the first time in [...]

Posted on February 17, 2010 - by Venik

Safety of Luge

Featured Georgia Society
Safety of Luge

The tragic death of Nodar Kumaritashvili on the luge track in Vancouver is the cause of online discussion about safety of this sport. Many criticize track designers and organizers of the Games for the track’s perceived lax safety standards. Others wonder if safety is even possible in a sport where one rides a tiny sled [...]

Posted on February 16, 2010 - by Venik

Ukrainian Elections

Featured Society Ukraine
Ukrainian Elections

“Liberast” is the term coined in Russia in the 1990s that is finding its way into the English language. As you might have already guessed, this term combines the words “liberal” and “pederast”. I don’t think you will have any trouble figuring out the intended meaning of this portmanteau. Western liberasts often use Ukraine as [...]

Posted on February 9, 2010 - by Venik

Sukhoi T-50 Production and Procurement Details

Defense Featured India Russia
Sukhoi T-50 Production and Procurement Details

The PAKFA (Russian abbreviation for the Prospective Frontal Aviation Complex) fighter project is currently scheduled to enter production at the end of 2014. The single-seat model is expected to enter service with the Russian AF in 2015. The dual-seat model for the Indian AF is expected to enter service two years after that. The two-seater [...]

Posted on February 6, 2010 - by Venik

Sukhoi Stealth Fighter’s First Flight

Defense Featured Russia
Sukhoi Stealth Fighter’s First Flight

As many of you already know, last week the Sukhoi T-50 stealth fighter prototype – Russia’s long-awaited answer to Lockheed-Martin’s F-22 – completed it’s maiden 47-minute flight from the manufacturer’s test airfield in the Russian Far East. The single-seat aircraft features low-observable geometry, two widely-separated engines with 3-D thrust-vectoring nozzles,  internal weapons bays, all-movable angled [...]

Posted on January 21, 2010 - by Venik

Oracle vs. MySQL

Computers Economy Featured Society
Oracle vs. MySQL

Sun Microsystems – the creator of Solaris operating system and manufacturer of my favorite computers – is being acquired by Oracle – the maker of the world’s leading commercial database software that works best on Sun servers. This seems like a good deal for both Oracle and Sun. Unfortunately, this merger will be very bad [...]

Posted on October 7, 2009 - by Venik

Your Savings and the Decline of the Dollar

Economy Featured Personal Society
Your Savings and the Decline of the Dollar

About a year ago I wrote about the plans Russia and other oil-producing nations have for breaking the tie between the price of oil and the value of the dollar. For years Russia and OPEC countries have been tiptoeing around this issue until the recent massive collapse of the US banking industry forced their plans [...]

Posted on October 1, 2009 - by Venik

War in Georgia: Reviewing EU Findings

European Union Featured Georgia Russia
War in Georgia: Reviewing EU Findings

As some of you may have heard, the international fact-finding mission (IIFFMCG) organized by the EU to investigate the 2008 war between Georgia and Russia has finally released its final report. As was expected, most of the blame for starting the war went to Georgia. Russia’s “fault”, according to the investigators, for the most part [...]

Posted on September 16, 2009 - by Venik

UN Finds Israeli War Crimes

Defense Featured Middle East
UN Finds Israeli War Crimes

The report by the UN fact finding mission on the Gaza conflict released on September 15 brings to light numerous war crimes committed by Tzahal against Palestinian civilians. A few quotes from the UN report: The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes and possibly, in some respects, crimes against humanity, were committed by [...]

« Older Entries
Afghanistan NATO Sideline United States

Global Moron Alert

Here’s my scientific study* on the density of morons in various almost randomly-selected countries. We deal with morons on a daily basis. Some of us would swear we are surrounded by morons. But how many morons are there? I decided to try to answer this question and arrived at some unexpected results. Wikipedia defines “moron” [...]

Balkans Russian History Sideline

Microsoft for Soviet Macedonia

I don’t know why, but today I stopped by Microsoft’s Bing search engine. I was greeted by a photo of Lake Debar located in western Macedonia near the border with Albania. When I hovered the mouse over little black squares on the photo, I was given a quick lesson in Macedonia’s history. My knowledge of [...]

Computers Sideline

Secret Cell

Sorry to disappoint you: this post is not about some new secret CIA jail discovered in a budding Eastern European democracy. What’s on my mind is all the ridiculous secrecy surrounding the development of the iPhone 4 and Nokia N8 and how it hurts the sales of these devices. In case you haven’t heard, iPhone [...]

Computers Sideline

Microbrain(tm)

When a few years ago I bought my Xbox 360, I had to shell out almost five hundred bucks. One of the extras I got was the 60Gb hard drive. Even by those times, charging a hundred dollars for what essentially is a standard 2.5″ SATA hard drive with special firmware was highway robbery. And [...]

Defense Russia Sideline

Yak-130 Crashes in Russia

A Yak-130 advanced trainer jet crashed earlier today at the Lipetsk combat flight training center of the Russian AF. Both pilots ejected and were treated for minor injuries. There was no damage on the ground. The aircraft went out of control on takeoff during a routine training mission. This is first crash of an in-service [...]

Iraq Sideline

Journalists Killed in Iraq

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists published a report claiming there were 88 unsolved murders of journalists in Iraq between 2000 and 2009. Incidentally, nearly all of the 88 murders occurred in 2003-2009 when the country was under American occupation and some of these eighty eight journalists died at the hands of the US [...]

Russian History Sideline

How Poland Defeated the USSR

In his latest article on Russo-Polish relations Matthew Day, a Warsaw-based reporter for The Telegraph, provides a curious timeline of some major events in the common history of the two countries. According to Mr. Day, in 1919-1921 “Poland defeats Soviet Union in war”. A snafu like this I would expect from CNN, but a British [...]

Georgia Sideline

Saakashvili to submit to a drug test?

The president of Georgia decided to go along with the proposal by an opposition parliament member Dmitri Lordkipanidze to test all government employees for illegal drugs. Saakashvili said that the test will require a single hair and that he will offer his shortly. In other news, Saakashvili shaved his head bald… Lordkipanidze’s suggestion of drug-testing [...]

Sideline Society United States

Olympic Bones

As I am sitting here watching the Olympics, I am reminded of a CNN (I think it was CNN) special a few years ago. Some angry-looking activists were discussing the alarming popularity of online videos depicting street fights, schoolyard brawls and such. The gist of the discussion was that most of us share the responsibility [...]

Computers Russia Sideline

Novaya Gazeta and DDOS Attack

The Register, among others, reports that the Web site of one of Russia’s leading independent newspapers – the Novaya Gazeta – came under a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack. Currently the newspaper’s site is unstable. The reason I even noticed this news item is not because I am a big fan of Novaya Gazeta. It is [...]

Georgia Russia Sideline

Delusions in Tbilisi

Recently Russian online news service Lenta.ru published a Q&A session with a well-known Georgian political and military analyst Mamuka Areshidze, who is known for his anti-Kremlin attitudes but is also somehow not a particularly big supporter of Georgian El Duce. In other words, Areshidze is supposedly a moderate, a centrist and so his take on [...]

Afghanistan NATO Russia Sideline

Russians in Afghanistan

AP’s recent “Safety of Russian planes in Afghanistan questioned” by Catrina Stewart is exactly why female journalists should stick to writing about Gucci purses, chihuahuas, and SUVs. After some, no doubt, extensive research on the subject of military transport aviation, this broad came to the conclusion that the reason NATO keeps hiring Russian cargo aircraft [...]

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  • Black Sea Fleet Parade

    For the first time in years Russian and Ukrainian navies joined forces to celebrate the Navy Day (July 25). The official holiday for the Soviet Navy was established in 1980.
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  • RSS News from Russia

    • 4 killed in Russian forest fires (AP) September 3, 2010
      MOSCOW – Russia's emergencies ministry says forest fires in the country's south have killed four people. Forest fires plagued much of Russia during this summer's unusual wave of withering heat and drought and cloaked Moscow in a pall of smoke in August have largely died down amid strong rains, but the southern Volgograd and Saratov regions con […]
    • Russian fires start up again: ministry (AFP) September 2, 2010
      MOSCOW (AFP) – Forest and brush fires have flared up again in southern Russia, killing two people and burning down nearly 500 houses and buildings, the emergencies ministry said Thursday. Strong winds stoked fires that burnt 474 constructions, including 342 houses, in about 20 villages in the region of Volgograd and Saratov, a ministry spokesman told the RIA […]
    • New Russia wildfires kill 2 and consume homes (Reuters) September 2, 2010
      MOSCOW (Reuters) – A new wave of wildfires swept through villages in southern Russia on Thursday, killing at least two people and destroying hundreds of homes, officials and news reports said. Fires driven by high winds destroyed nearly 500 buildings in the Volgograd and Saratov provinces, including 342 homes, Emergencies Ministry spokewoman Irina Andriyanov […]
    • Russia extends ban on grain exports until 2011 (AP) September 2, 2010
      MOSCOW – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday he has extended Russia's ban on wheat exports until next year's harvest to ensure it has bounced back from a severe drought and wildfires that destroyed 20 percent of the crop this year. Putin said in televised remarks the ban will be lifted only after the 2011 harvest in the interest of […]
    • Russian police raid opposition magazine (Reuters) September 2, 2010
      MOSCOW (Reuters) – Armed and masked Russian police raided an opposition magazine on Thursday, pressing journalists to hand over interview recordings used in reports on alleged abuse of authority by the much-feared OMON riot police. The New Times is one of Russia's few prominent opposition media outlets and has published exposes of high-level corruption. […]
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