Archive for the ‘European Union’ Category
Posted on February 3, 2011 - by Venik
Baltic Pirates – the Mystery Revealed
Some of you may still remember the strange hijacking on the Russian cargo vessel “Arctic Sea” in the Baltic in late July of 2009. The ship was boarded by masked men wearing police-like uniforms and armed with automatic weapons. The captain and the crew were forced to sail the ship to Africa. Inexplicably, the 4.4-ton [...]
Posted on January 28, 2011 - by Venik
FBI Rushes to VISA’s Defense
The FBI has announced that it executed 40 search warrants for suspected members of the Anonymous international hacktivist group known for its actions in of Wikileaks. Police in the UK has arrested five suspected members of the group. Anonymous is credited with the successful attacks against VISA and MasterCard payment systems late last year after [...]
Posted on December 20, 2010 - by Venik
Conspiracy Theory
I am at work, filling my office with clouds of cigar smoke and reading Jim Goad’s “Julian Assange’s Honey Trap: That’s Rape in Sweden“, perhaps the most entertaining account to date of Assange’s Stockholm adventure. And a seemingly redundant question popped into my head: why exactly did Assange go to Sweden? I know, he went [...]
Posted on December 16, 2010 - by Venik
Sweden Wants Out
Swedish prosecutors investigating Julian Assange told reporters that they were not involved in the Crown Prosecution Service’s decision to appeal an earlier decision by a judge at City of Westminster magistrates court granting Assange bail. “Karin Rosander, director of communications for Sweden’s prosecutor’s office, told the Guardian: “The decision was made by the British prosecutor. [...]
Posted on December 11, 2010 - by Venik
Nothing Odd
A couple of days ago Claes Borgström (thank God I am not Swedish), the lawyer representing Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilén in the sex case against Julian Assange, decided to explain some of the more obvious discrepancies in his clients’ version of events. Normally, this is what a good lawyer would be expected to do [...]
Posted on December 9, 2010 - by Venik
WikiDefendors
Today Wikileaks and Julian Assange gained two new influential supporters: the UN human rights commissioner Navi Pillay and her nemesis the Batman (aka Russia’s prime minister Vladimir Putin). Putin’s vocal support of Julian Assange comes a day after a member of Medvedev’s administration suggested Assange should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. “When asked [...]
Posted on December 8, 2010 - by Venik
Nobel Prize for Assange
An unnamed member of Medvedev’s administration told Russian new agency RIA Novosti that nominating Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize should improve his chances resisting legal and political pressure. While it is unlikely that such a nomination will come from the Russian administration, the fact that they are even talking about this in the Kremlin [...]
Posted on December 1, 2010 - by Venik
NATO, Russia, and Romania
In the recent interview for Romania Libera, Basescu announced that Romania will absorb its poor neighbor Moldova within twenty five years. According to Basescu, this “reunification” is a done deal and would have happened earlier if it wasn’t for the interference from the evil Russians. Acquiring Moldova’s territories is a key aspect of the Greater Romania concept.
Posted on April 20, 2010 - by Venik
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 18, 2010 - by Venik
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 October 1, 2009 - by Venik
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 August 22, 2009 - by Venik
Victims with Guns
Tomorrow’s seventy-year anniversary of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact is giving some historians and journalists pretending to be historians an unbearable urge to write nonsense. The Pact and, most importantly, its secret provisions are blamed by the Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians for the years of “Soviet occupation”. This was a difficult period in the history of [...]
Posted on May 17, 2009 - by Venik
Pipeline Business
The EU continues waging a losing battle for its energy independence from Russia. Gazprom, hit hard by the global economic recession and dropping energy demands, may be skating on thin ice, but it is still well ahead of the EU. Following the August war with Georgia, Russia moved to consolidate its gains in the region [...]
Posted on February 17, 2009 - by Venik
When subs collide
As we now know, a British and a French nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarines collided in the Atlantic earlier this month. Amazingly, the first newspaper to report the incident and to prompt the official admission of the accident was The Sun tabloid. The Royal Navy said that the subs “came into contact at very low speeds”, calling [...]
