[An Nahar] NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... will announce the completion of the first stage of a controversial missile defense shield at a May summit that will not include Russian leader Vladimir Putin ...Second President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits he is the current Prime Minister of Russia. His sock puppet, Dmitry Medvedev, was installed in the 2008 presidential elections. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law. During his eight years in office Russia's economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase, poverty decrease and average monthly salaries increase. During his presidency Putin passed into law a series of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile... , its chief said Monday.
NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western military bloc intended to announce the deployment of the first "interim" phase of a missile defense shield for Europe at the summit in Chicago.
The US-backed system has been bitterly opposed by Russia and has remained one of the main stumbling blocks in Moscow's recent relations with Washington.
"I can confirm that it is our intention to declare what we call an interim capability of the NATO system. That is part of the first phase of the development of the NATO missile defense system," Rasmussen said in a video conference with Moscow news hounds.
However he confirmed that Putin is expected to miss the May 20-21 meeting when he pays his first visit to the United States since his March 4 election to a third term as president.
Rasmussen said he and Putin had agreed by telephone that their summit was unlikely to go ahead in Chicago "due to the very busy domestic schedule in Russia."
He stressed that he was still planning to meet Putin soon after his May 7 Kremlin inauguration. Putin is still scheduled to visit the United States in May for the G8 summit in Camp David.
"The relationship between NATO and Russia is not dependent on a single meeting in Chicago or elsewhere," commented Rasmussen.
Yet Rasmussen also poured scorn on Russia's plans to unleash a massive nuclear warhead and missile development program that is a part of Putin's 23-trillion-ruble ($793-billion) military spending plan through 2020.
"I can honestly say ... that would be a complete waste of money," he said.
Washington and NATO argue that the missile shield is meant to protect Western nations against missile attacks from potential future nuclear powers such as North Korea and Iran.
Moscow fears the shield could make its own nuclear capabilities less effective and has sought to build a joint system in which it has an equal say.
NATO has dismissed the idea and sought to assure Russia that its nuclear deterrence would remain unaffected.
#2
Until after the the US elections when a new President takes office. Obama just wanted to be left alone until he was out of office. Crisis are so complicated and he's just not that good at them.
#5
We should have brought the Russians in long ago and let them see fake systems. Either super-primitive to make them feel secure or so futuristic they'd die to figure out how it worked. Meanwhile we build the real thing unimpeded.
#6
I've always thought it would be hilarious if the US made a huge push at the UN to ban antimatter, gravitational and meson weapons while refusing to comment on any details or existence thereof.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
03/27/2012 17:22 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Poland almost got heat stroke after the "Prez" started speaking Pidgin Russian.
[Dawn] President Nicolas Sarkozy ...23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. Sarkozy is married to singer-songwriter Carla Bruni, who has a really nice birthday suit... said on Monday that influential Qatar-based Sunni Moslemholy man Yusuf al-Qaradawi ...crackpot Egyptian Islamist theologian. He is best known for his program Shariah and Life on Al Jizz, with an estimated audience of 60 million kindred souls worldwide. He is also well-known for IslamOnline, which occasionally advocates things like slavery and thumping the old lady with a rod no thicker than an inch, and has published more than 120 books, including Islam: The Future Civilization. Joe has long had a prominent role within the intellectual leadership of the Moslem Brüderbund. Some of his views have been controversial in the West, though less so among the rubes of the Mysterious East, and he was refused entry to the United Kingdom in 2008. In 2004, 2,500 Moslem academics from Soddy Arabia, Iraq and from the Palestinian territories condemned Qaradawi, and accused him of giving Islam a bad name.... was not welcome in La Belle France.
Egyptian-born Qaradawi, 86, has been invited to visit next month by the Union of Islamic Organisations in La Belle France.
"I told the emir of Qatar himself that this gentleman was not welcome in the territory of the French Republic," Sarkozy told La Belle France Info radio.
Qaradawi, who hosts a popular show on Al-Jazeera satellite television, backed Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and has launched a fund-raising effort for the Syrian opposition.
The Islamist gunman whose murder spree shocked La Belle France will be buried in his ancestral homeland Algeria, his father told AFP Monday, adding that he planned to sue La Belle France over his son's death.
"[God willing], I have decided to bury my son in Algeria," Mohamed Benalel Merah said, referring to his son Mohamed Merah, 23, who was rubbed out by French police on Thursday in Toulouse at the end of a stand-off after his shooting attacks that killed seven.
"Mohamed has an Algerian passport and has been listed with the [Algerian] consulate in Toulouse since his birth," the elder Merah said.
He also hit out against La Belle France for having shot his son instead of taking him alive at the end of a 32-hour siege at his apartment in Toulouse.
"La Belle France is a big country that had the means to take my son alive. They could have knocked him out with gas and taken him in," he said. "They preferred to kill him."
"I will hire the biggest named lawyers and work for the rest of my life to pay (their) costs. I will sue La Belle France for having killing my son."
Continued on Page 47
#4
Unbelievable. Apparently, the POS Mohamed didn't fall far from the tree. The type of people that kill in the name of "honor" seem to have very little of it to lose.
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.
...Second President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits he is the current Prime Minister of Russia. His sock puppet, Dmitry Medvedev, was installed in the 2008 presidential elections. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law. During his eight years in office Russia's economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase, poverty decrease and average monthly salaries increase. During his presidency Putin passed into law a series of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile...
The Islamist gunman whose murder spree shocked 
