The announcement that Russia is planning to lift its self-imposed ban on selling the advanced S-300 air defense system to Iran gives us an important insight into how Moscow plans to move ahead with its ambitious plans to modernize and reequip the Russian armed forces.
Initially, the rearmament plan announced by President Vladimir Putin was to be funded from the golden river that was generated by the taxes on energy exports that had helped to fill the Kremlin's coffers. The collapse in world energy prices over the past year (as prices have gone down, the amount of the windfall tax collected has also contracted)—coupled with the recession Russia is now undergoing (with its economy expected to contract by at least 3 percent in 2015), has diminished the resources available.
The Defense Ministry expects to cut military spending by 3.8 percent—less of a haircut than what other ministries and departments must slash (generally 10 percent of their budgets)—but it will be a test as to whether the Russian defense industry can mitigate the impact of any reduction by finding greater efficiencies. A forthcoming test will be whether the chassis for the 5th generation tank the T-14 Armata can be used as the basis for other new vehicles such as armed personnel carriers and self-propelled artillery, simplifying production and cutting down on maintenance costs. There will also be pressures to cut costs for procurement by holding the line on salaries—which, paradoxically, may not produce labor unrest as the deteriorating economy makes it less likely professionals would be able to easily switch into other, higher-paying jobs.
#2
Still got to have bodies to 'man' the force. Not looking good demographically. Annexing your neighbors and drafting their kids doesn't really work out well.
#3
Hey Barry, maybe you should push that reset button now, think??
Smart diplo time again, no???
Just one more thing to turn my natural optimism to cynical disgust and pessimism. I'm afraid my grand-kids have a truly f-ed up world to look forward to.
#1
As per WORLD MILITARY FORUM + US Naval Intel Report, CHINA + PLAN is likely to begin routine patrols = entry into EASTPAC, i.e. Hawaii + US West Coast, in 2020, to include their anti-US "offensive" nuclear submarines.
Welll, to get into EASTPAC China has to go through WESTPAC, etc. POAS which means Guam-CNMI locals + other should be seeing or reading about PLAN ships, LR aircraft? in and around our island(s) soon enuff.
PUTIN HAS HIS "BEAR" STRATEGIC BOMBERS TO SEND OVER GUAM + CORNWALL, ENGLAND - THE PLA HAS ITS "H-6K"S???
---------------
* ION PHILIPPINE STAR > US TO CHINA: CLARIFY YOUR BOUNDARY, ala disputed SCS.
* RELATED SAME > US ADMIRAL [PACOM Chief ADM. Locklear] CHINA ISLANDS COULD HOST ADIZ, MISSLES.
* GROONG > NEW KID ON THE BLOCK: CHINA DEALING CRUSHING BLOW TO US SUPREMACY IN ASIA. CHINA DETERMNINED TO CHANGE "STATUS QUO" AND ELIMINATE US PRIMACY.
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > ONLY US AND CHINA WILL DOMINATE WORLD FINANCE IN 2030, US BARELY ABLE TO MAINTAIN GLOBAL LEADERSHIP: US DEPT. OF GRICULTURE REPORT [Macro-Economic Projections].
* TOPIX > [NRO Online] KRAUTHAMMER'S TAKE: "AL-QAEDA PROBABLY STRONGER THAN ITS EVER BEEN".
* WORLDNEWS > [HuffPo] "ISIS IS FIGHT OF OUR LIFETIME[Generation]": US GENERAL.
Failure to defeat + destroy the ISIS now = US-World = Western Christianity will face AQ, ISIS-inspired Islamic Mahdi/Messiah/Hidden Imam come 2030-2050, save wid ISLAMIST-JIHADIST NUCBOMB GOODNESS.
* SAME > [BigNewsNetwork = Repost] ISIS RELEASES PROPAGANDA VIDEO WARNING AMERICA + OBAMA OF NEW 9-11.
America = Amerika "on fire", POTUS Obama being beheaded.
#4
What's the score on Obama's watch? Russia, China, Cuba, the Muslims have all gotten aggressive. So much for his Kumbaya approach to foreign policy--it is not respected and is an open door policy to aggression.
#5
..when you're indoctrinated since childhood that the big bad boy is the United States, you're beyond the comprehension that it might just have been the 'cop' on the beat keeping the real bad guys down and in their place. Even in face of reality of the nature of the real world, your synapse can not connect the link of the real threat to anything else.
[DAWN] Heedless of the lessons that should have been learnt from history, the old playbook on how to tackle Balochistan has not been revised.
The army chief’s high-profile visit to the Frontier Corps headquarters in Quetta on Wednesday, where he met the Balochistan chief minister and governor as well as the head of the FC Southern Command — who oversees security-related operations in the part of the province where the insurgency is at its height — makes that very clear.
During his trip Gen Raheel Sharif warned “foreign governments and intelligence agencies” against meddling in Balochistan and thereby sustaining the insurgency that he vowed would be defeated “comprehensively”.
The timing of the army chief’s visit and his bellicose statements are significant, and seem to indicate an imminent intensifying of the already heavy military footprint in the province.
The reprehensible murder by separatists last week of 20 non-Baloch labourers in Turbat who were working on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, appears to have been the catalyst for this renewed focus on the province, despite the military’s ongoing operations against extremists in the country’s tribal areas.
The imminent visit of the Chinese president and his plans to inaugurate several mega projects in Gwadar in all likelihood also factored into the robust response to the murders by the military.
It claimed to have killed 13 militants in a clash, although reports suggest that at least some of the dead were earlier victims of enforced disappearance.
The involvement of third parties in fomenting trouble in Balochistan has long been alleged.
Given its strategic location, there may well be truth in that contention, and evidence to the effect should be brought into the public domain.
Critically though, the establishment continues to ignore its own role in creating conditions in the province that are ripe for exploitation by regional forces.
By stifling alternate narratives, allowing free rein to its proxies to run amok and commit horrific human rights abuses, and refusing to suspend its inhumane kill-and-dump policy, the state has allowed deep-seated grievances to develop among the Baloch and fanned the flames of separatist sentiment.
Moreover, despite the much-touted benefits of devolution, Balochistan is still deprived of agency over its vast natural resources that are its primary asset.
Even though the COAS during his visit advocated an integrated civilian-military approach to address the Balochistan problem, the optics left no doubt that the province continues to be viewed primarily through a security lens.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/17/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
IMO the Bammer's new nuclear rapprochement wid Iran will only make Pakistan that much more nervousy twitchy as per foreign interference or interest in Balochistan.
* TOPIX, DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > IRAN CALLS FOR TRILATERAL MEASURES/ACTIONS IN AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN.
* BIGNEWSNETWORK > [IBT.com] ISIS CALIPHATE: ISLAMIC STATE SENDING MILITANTS TO CENTRAL ASIA, INDIA, CHINA, AND EUROPE.
Iran DM Hossein Dehghan.
VERSUS
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > INCREASNG MUSLIM POPULATION DANGEROUS FOR INDIA | [India Today] MUSLIMS SHOULD ADOPT FAMILY PLANNING TO PREVENT ANOTHER
PAKISTAN: SHIV SENA.
* RELATED SAME > THE WAY INDIA WILL HAVE THE WORLD'S LARGEST MUSLIM POPULATION IN NEXT DECADE [Year 2025 plus-minus = 2020's Decade?] - WSJ.COM.
[DAWN] The story goes back to the year 2000 when 1,100 participants from 164 countries assembled in Dakar (Senegal ... a nation of about 14 million on the west coast of Africa bordering Mauretania to the north, Mali to the east, and a pair of Guineas to the south, one of them Bissau. It is 90 percent Mohammedan and has more than 80 political parties. Its primary purpose seems to be absorbing refugees... ) for the World Education Forum.
The Dakar moot set for itself the goal of 'Education for All' and underpinned it with six specific targets to be achieved by 2015. Unesco stepped forward to monitor progress on these goals annually.
Thus an independent team was constituted and the Global Monitoring Report was born. GMR 2015 was launched last week and summed up the achievements of countries in the education sector.
The score card is not too inspiring. The key finding is that only half of all countries have reached the goal of universal primary education. The report says 80 million more children are in school today than 15 years ago. But the worrisome reality is that millions of children and adolescents are still out of school as states have failed to keep pace with the growing world population.
For us Pakistain is of primary concern. Being the sixth most populous country in the world and a major contributor to the global pool of illiteracy Pakistain is now widely seen as a basket case. Aaron Benavot, director of the EFA Global Monitoring Report, says, "Three years since Malala Yousafzai ...a Pashtun blogger and advocate for girls' education from Mingora, in Swat. She started blogging at age 11-12. She was 15 when a Talib boarded her school bus and shot her in the head in 2012. She was evacuated to a hospital in Britain and the Pak Taliban vowed to kill her and her father. Among other awards, she received the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, which she deserved more than Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Yasser Arafat, or Rigoberta Menchu... was shot for speaking out about her struggle, and that of other maidens of tender years, to get a decent education a new Unesco report has revealed that little has changed in Pakistain. It remains the only country outside of sub-Saharan Africa to be in the bottom 10 countries in the world for overall achievement towards Education for All."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/17/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] In recent days there have been a couple of observations by the Lahore High Court that raise hopes of some reform in the schools soon. Last Friday, the Lahore High Court asked the Punjab Textbook Board to decide within a month “about making fundamental rights of the citizens”… “an essential” part of the syllabus.
Earlier this month, the court had called on the government to make laws to rationalise the school fees which have always been a subject of heated argument between parents and schools, with the government playing the role of the silent if sympathetic onlooker.
The discussion on fees was taken a notch higher when in recent months the schools were required to tighten security around their premises in the wake of the Dec 16 terrorist attack in Peshawar. Both in public and inside the courts, the government had offered assurances that the additional costs would not be transferred to the parents.
The parents believed they had already been paying school fees that were too high and ‘unaffordable’. Others agreed except the school administrations which chose to not take part in the fee discussion for the time being. Everyone, however, knew that they would use the old method of communicating their demands the next time they prepared the fee challans for students enrolled in their institutions.
How could this go unmentioned and uncharged on the fee ledgers of schools known for making a neat profit on everything and anything that they made mandatory available to the students?
There were eventually complaints from everywhere in the country about schools adding a few hundred rupees or more to the fee demand in the name of enhanced security. But if this was expected it did not pass as unnoticed and was not considered to be routine as the standard annual increase in the fees. The visibility and scale of the exercise to enhance security at the schools had provided a broader base for the debate about the schools’ tendency to ‘overcharge’ and got it some urgent attention.
The call by the Lahore High Court in early April for laws to govern fees at privately run educational institutions has provided a kind of logical direction to the intensified discussion. Many would be hoping that it will lead to some kind of rationalising of the fee structure and will ease the pressure on parents living in perpetual fear of the clause in the school rule book that forewarns them of a regular increase in fees at the time of admission of the student.
It is not so clear whether everyone would be as keen on following the more recent Lahore High Court direction about the inclusion of a reinforcement of the basic rights through the school syllabus.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/17/2015 00:00 ||
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h/t Gates of Vienna
This morning, as I watched the lighting of the flame at Yad Vashem to begin Holocaust Remembrance Day, I couldn't help but think of how the Jewish people remain under siege by dark forces committed to their destruction (if there's one stubborn constant in human history, it's that).
At the same time, my thoughts turned to the Christians of the Middle East, who are today being subjected to a genocidal campaign by ISIS and other jihadist groups dedicated to exterminating followers of Jesus in the very region where His teachings first blossomed.
In other words, first the Saturday people (Jews), then the Sunday people (Christians). That old jihadist rallying cry is literally playing out in real time today before our very eyes. We learned. Can you?
#1
The Christians might briefly consider turning the other cheek but neither they or the "Chosen People" are likely to be dragged into another Holocaust.
#2
Turn the other cheek, rotate, with your gripping hand grab a hold of your opponents fruit loops, remove not minding the tearing of the fleshy bits. Proceed about your bidness.
[Daily Caller] KRAUTHAMMER: The administration is quickly developing a huge problem of credibility. When the vice president says that, and within seven days ISIS is at the gates of Ramadi, it has it surrounded, as you said, the civilians are fleeing, they are also attacking Baiji, which is a very strategic point because it is a producer of oil; you've got to ask yourself, what exactly is the vice president talking about?
On the other hand you've heard that we are succeeding or at least we're holding the line somewhat in Yemen, and remember Obama had said al Qaeda is decimated, it's on the run, we heard that for years. Well, al Qaeda today captured a major port, airport, seaport and oil terminal in Yemen. It is now stronger than it probably has ever been and it is intent on attacking the United States.
And our third adversary in the region, you've got ISIL, you have got of course al Qaeda and there's Iran. Iran is on the march, Iran is on the move and that's why the Saudis are complaining about the deals that we're making with Iran while ignoring their aggression on the ground all around them.
[JudicialWatch] Responding to Judicial Watch's report earlier this week of ISIS activity along the Mexican border, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) supervisors called a "special" meeting at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez.
A high-level intelligence source, who must remain anonymous for safety reasons, confirmed that the meeting was convened specifically to address a press strategy to deny Judicial Watch's accurate reporting and identify who is providing information to JW. FBI supervisory personnel met with Mexican Army officers and Mexican Federal Police officials, according to JW's intelligence source. The FBI liaison officers regularly assigned to Mexico were not present at the meeting and conspicuously absent were representatives from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It's not clear why DHS did not participate. Well, I'm sure that was interesting.
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 announcement that Russia is planning to lift its self-imposed ban on selling the advanced S-300 air defense system to Iran gives us an important insight into how Moscow plans to move ahead with its ambitious plans to modernize and reequip the Russian armed forces.
[Daily Caller] KRAUTHAMMER: The administration is quickly developing a huge problem of credibility. When the vice president says that, and within seven days ISIS is at the gates of Ramadi, it has it surrounded, as you said, the civilians are fleeing, they are also attacking Baiji, which is a very strategic point because it is a producer of oil; you've got to ask yourself, what exactly is the vice president talking about?
