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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
“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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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” [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
should they counsil, cansel it or cancel it? I’m sure your opinion on the F-35 is duely noted by...
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