When reading the headline, I thought "yeah, right" but had enough curiosity to dig a little deeper. Speigle is the online version of Der Speigle, a respectable source if memory serves.
#1
When asked what would happen today if the 1995 missile incident happened again, Ivanov responded, "I cannot be sure if the right decision would be taken."
Deep mistrust has developed between the West and Russia, and it is having a massive effect on cooperation on security matters.
In November 2014, the Russians announced that they would boycott the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit in the United States. In December, the US Congress voted, for the first time in 25 years, not to approve funding to safeguard nuclear materials in the Russian Federation. A few days later, the Russians terminated cooperation in almost all aspects of nuclear security. The two sides had cooperated successfully for almost two decades. But that is now a thing of the past.
Instead, Russia and the United States are investing giant sums of money to modernize their nuclear arsenals, and NATO recently announced that it was rethinking its nuclear strategy. At the same time, risky encounters between Eastern and Western troops, especially in the air, are becoming more and more common, a report by the European Leadership Network (ELN) recently concluded.
#3
Can't be right. Obama said he'd fix all of this.
Not to worry, though. If they launch at us, O will decide, nobly, that it's better for the planet if we don't respond. I mean, it's just a bunch of yahoos anyway, right?
Posted by: ed in texas ||
02/16/2015 7:27 Comments ||
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#4
Ed in Texas,
Don't worry too much - one thing that's never changed is that there are still protocols in place if there's an incoming attack and POTUS cannot/will not give the go codes.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/16/2015 7:41 Comments ||
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#8
I wonder if the Israeli nukes against Iran will be the first since WWII and what response, if any, the NORK/Iran/Russian/Cuban axis will have?
(I do wonder if all the nukes really did leave Cuba)
[DAWN] By some estimates, sectarian groups have enlisted approximately 25,000 members across the province outside Karachi. The northern districts of Shikarpur, Khairpur and Ghotki, which are closest to the sectarian groups’ original bases in Punjab, are at the highest risk. Clashes between members of different sects in these districts erupt with growing frequency in markets and during religious festivals.
While conducting research last year for a recently published report, ‘Conflict Dynamics in Sindh’, I repeatedly heard politicians and police officials describe interior Sindh as the new base for the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi.
The TTP, Al Qaeda and their various offshoots are also believed to have increased their presence in the province and take advantage of mushrooming madressahs to recruit new fighters, build networks and generate funds. Many of the militants who attempted to hijack a navy frigate in Karachi last year hailed from Sindh. Those who attacked the Karachi airport last June partially planned the attack in the province’s interior, purchasing SIM cards and coordinating in Nawabshah. The ISI office in Sukkur was attacked in July 2013.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
02/16/2015 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[10 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[DAWN] The General Zia ul Haq ...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'ĂŠtat plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988... regime in the 1980s was most active when it came to banning stuff.
Films, TV shows and books were regularly pulled out of circulation because they were considered to be against the 'Ideology of Pakistain.' This so-called ideology often meant the sudden whims of the current lot of rulers.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
02/16/2015 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[WashingtonExaminer] Israel matters to America, because friends always matter. And Israel is a friend. While I'm here for the umpteenth time in 42 years, I will tell them, 'You've got a friend.' And I won't even need to take James Taylor to sing it. I'll really mean it.
[IsraelTimes] With geopolitical lines shifting, the sliver of Syria controlled by Assad has become part of Iran's greater Leb
It's too early to be certain, but it seems the battles waged by Hezbollah, along with thousands of Syrian army troops and members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, against the anti-Syrian opposition militias on the Syrian Golan Heights, are only getting started.
But for now at least, the momentum is on the side of the Shiite axis, which has managed to capture several villages and towns from the Syrian Southern Front group and the Nusra Front, the organization affiliated with al-Qaeda, considered to be the dominant military power in the southern Daraa province.
Continued on Page 49
A lot of people don't know much about him yet, and he may not even be running, but if Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is elected president in 2016, he'll immediately accomplish something that no other candidate being talked about can: He'll lay to rest the absurd belief that you're a nobody if you don't have a college degree. And he might even cut into the surprisingly recent takeover of our institutions by an educated mandarin class, something that just might save the country. You can be born stupid---but, to be a real idiot, you need an education.
#1
The path to sanity includes diminishing the cost of the public workforce by 50-75%. One of the most glaring examples of this is the education industry. Nationally there are seven times more higher ed employees and three times more public ed employees than in 1950 vs the size of our general population. Add to that the fact that public school teacher's total compensation has doubled in constant dollars since then and you can see the REAL reason the long knives are out.
These people are terrified of losing their easy jobs and paychecks which can never go away short of committing a felony. They are scared into animal madness by the thought of losing a retirement which is twice what a person with a private sector job can get. Finally, they are pushed over the edge with fear by the take-home message of a man with not only no college degree but not one from the self-styled elite colleges - which is that maybe their services, and the magic paycheck that accompanies those services, will be deemed unnecessary by the public.
Sleep light little ones. That time is coming.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
02/16/2015 5:29 Comments ||
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#2
To pile on to comment #1. Americans would probably not blink at the exponential rising cost of education if student performance moved correspondingly. Unfortunately that is not the case mostly because costs went to higher pay (without higher performance), security, busing, fancy brick and mortar buildings, expensive athletic facilities, unfunded mandates....
#3
Spent the first few years of retirement as a substitute teacher in middle school. This gave me a lot more respect for good teachers and a lot more disdain for the educrats.
The good teachers are basically hand-cuffed by the "educators", the real source of most of the problems, and the amount of administrivia they have to deal with is ridiculous.
There are bad teachers that need to be weeded out. The worst ones are the true believers in the indoctrination of the Marxist educators in their colleges. Most could be dealt with in the same way as normal under-performing employees are dealt with in private industry.
Then there is common core.............the reason that I'm no longer subbing.
#4
In the public school system as in our government, one of the big problems is public unions.
In universities, they are basically a reflection or microcosm of the federal government. When professors or researchers secure a research grant, federal dollar research grants have a higher status in a researcher's record than private dollars.
Large state universities are splinters of the federal government in that a large part of the administration supports federal mandates that have created OSHA, EEO, EPA, etc. This inflates the cost of education considerably.
#7
In California, at least, teachers get automatic raises every year. They also get raises for completing even more college courses. They do not get raises for performance. I believe there are still good teachers. I do not believe it is a sin to be a teacher. But there are no merit increases, therefore no incentive to improve performance and no disincentive for mediocrity. This will never change as long as the unions are in charge.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'ĂŠtat plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988...
by Mike Huckabee
