Year: 2008

Some Insight on the Russian Psyche from a Russian

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From Stanislav Mishin‘s blog Mat Rodina, we find The Sixteen Reasons Why Russia Should NEVER Trust the West.

You can go to the site to get a bit more in exposition.

About half of the reasons are true, or at least true as one can when one is talking about international relations:

  • Western banks and institutions raped Russia in the 1990s, which is true. The bankers made money, the pensioners were out on the street, and teen aged girls were selling themselves as prostitutes in order to keep from starving.
  • Western Governments did cheer when Yeltsin shelled his own parliament
  • The West, particularly western oil companies do want control of Russian oil
  • NATO was expanded to the Russian border, despite promises to the contrary
  • NATO bombed Serbia, though I would argue that there were legitimate reasons, a genocidal regime, for doing so.
  • The West has a policy of explicit and extensive support to political enemies of Russia in the nations of the former USSR.
  • That the West’s moves into Central Asia following 911 were accompanied by attempts at regime change, or regime foreign policy change to create states generally hostile to Russian interests.
  • That the west abrogated treaties as soon as they were no longer convenient, most notably the ABM treaty.
  • That the west has provided fairly explicit aid to opposition groups in Russia. Clearly true, though I think he lists this one item as two on his list of 16.

Then there are those that I have doubts as to their significance or veracity. Either I have no knowledge of the truth of the statements, or I think that he is conflating basic international Realpolitik with explicit hostility:

  • That the west has been backing secessionist and Islamist movements within Russia, most notably in Chechnya. Certainly, given the consequences and how they might effect access to Caspian oil make them plausible, particularly when it appears clear that the US gave tacit approval for Saakisvili to launch assaults in South Ossetia.
  • That the Polish missile defense silos for could be used for the deployment of short range nuclear missile….Technically true, I put this in the paranoid section, it’s easier/safer to use SSBNs firing missiles on depressed trajectories.
  • That the West is giving asylum to people wanted by Russia, while demanding extradition of Russians to face western courts…Technically true, but meaningless, as a pretty standard standard state of diplomacy.
  • That the west went soft on the Taliban, and pressured the Russians not to respond militarily to them prior to 911 because they wanted an oil pipeline that avoided both Russia and Iran. True, but I don’t see it as overtly hostile, it’s just the Texas oil men running the US government. To quote The Godfather, it’s not personal, it’s, “Just Business”.

Then there is the tinfoil hat stuff:

  • That the West despises “Russian Patriotism and Christianity”
  • That the, “The West back every Jihad aimed at Orthodox Christians”

These are tinfoil hat, but it does reflect the deeply Xenophobic character of the worldview expressed here.

What I see as stupidity, he sees as malice.

I would say that this is particularly the case with NATO expansion, where the Euros were just too busy partying about the fall of the wall, and the US was looking at new markets for their military hardware and saw the need to replace Soviet legacy systems in new NATO members as a profit center.

I do think that Mr. Mishin represents a mainstream view in Russia, which begs the question, how is this addressed.

Unfortunately, many of the things that have been done, the feeding frenzy of the 1990s and the expansion of NATO cannot be easily undone.

As start, a forceful statement that the US is opposed to NATO membership for the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan would be constructive.

I have little knowledge of the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, but it is clear that the presidents of Ukraine and Georgia have a few screws loose.

Additionally, it’s clear that the state security apparatus of Georgia has been thoroughly penetrated by the Russians, as the speed and effectiveness of the Russian military response shows that they knew of the specifics of the assault on South Ossetia for weeks in advance.

I am not a military man, but the idea of having an ally whose defense establishment is completely penetrated by another country does not fill me with glee.

What Hilzoy Says

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In the entire matter of the false accusation of politically motivated assault, I agree with what Hilzoy said:

I’d also like to give a shout-out to all the people who held off on this, and to Michelle Malkin, who did a lot to keep this story from getting completely out of hand.

Michelle Malkin did the right thing, which is is something that I never expected to say.

One final note, I do not know whether the woman who did concocted the report is mentally ill or not, but in either case, she should spend an extended time in confinement.

If she is mentally ill, she is clearly a threat to herself and others. If she is not mentally ill, then she did something ¼ step removed from an attempted lynching.

Why I Didn’t Comment on the Race Baiting Fraud

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I make no claim to wisdom or prescience, but I had reasons not to discuss this story.

  • I had nothing meaningful to add. I haven’t been talking about the assaults and death threats at McCain-Palin rallies either. I put this stuff down to C=MI,* and figure that is just the way things are.
  • To the degree that I have political teeth, I cut them in the UMass SGA Senate, where I served with future actors in the Abramoff and Sciavo matters† who were in the College Republicans, which gave me a nose for College Republican bullsh&#, and this reeked of College Republican bullsh&#.

    Thus. when I heard that this was a College Republican, I figured that it was a stunt which did not deserve comment.

  • By the time I heard about it, the note that the “B” was backwards, and likely applied in front of a mirror.

I just don’t one of those typewriter font types who need to get a life.

*Conservatism equals Mental Illness.
†Interestingly enough, more often than not, we were on the same side in SGA Senate,a Mondale Democrat and College Republicans,against the “US Out of North America” crowd.

How to Know When a Burocracy is Out of Control

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When its budget is growing so fast that auditors cannot keep up..

Case in point, the Pentagon:

Government reports are not known for plain language, much less candor. But in a report issued in March, Pentagon Inspector General Claude M. Kicklighter summed up what had been growing increasingly evident for years: Defense spending has been growing so rapidly that auditors can no longer keep track.

“We currently are not able to provide sufficient audit coverage of [Department of Defense] acquisition programs given the dollars expended by the department,” Mr. Kicklighter wrote. “The rapid growth of the DOD budget since FY 2000 leaves the Department increasingly more vulnerable to the fraud, waste and abuse that undermines the department’s mission.”

And they want to browbeat the next president into increasing their budget even more.

Major Army Strategist Savages Future Combat System*

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Col. H.R. McMaster, a, “is a highly influential soldier-scholar who is currently putting together a brain trust for Gen. David Petraeus to review U.S. policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan,” just released a blistering paper condemning the direction of the US military.

He believes that the folks who support the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), which espouses high tech communications, surveillance, and precision weapons at the expense of boots on the ground is are profoundly wrong, and unclear on what is actually going on the ground right now.

He also cuts the flyboyz in the USAF a new one while he’s at it.

Good read, check it out.

*Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant of the FCS-MGV* from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts).

OK, Time to Call an Obama Adviser Stupid

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Specifically Paul Kaminiski, who is talking up a dual buy strategy for the USAF tanker competition.

There are a number of problems, not the least of which is the fact that this is the worst of all possible solutions, doubling inventory and supply issues.

You also pay the cost of the tooling and engineering twice

A bad deal for the tax payer and the military.

There is also the problem that the 767s being made for Italy do not work. (Paid subscription required)

Boeing has assigned a “tiger team” to deal with the wing flutter issues caused by the refuelling pods.

I Knew that It Did Not Look Right

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When I last posted about the PiperJet, I said that it didn’t look right, though I added the caveat that the same applies to the F-4 Phantom II.

Well, it appears that my hunch meant something. Piper is looking at , modifications to the airframe to deal with pitch changes from changes in thrust. They have an automatic trim system to handle this, but they would like to eliminate this and use, “a Coanda effect device that would channel the jet’s exhaust in an appropriate direction to reduce nose-down moment created by adding power and nose-up trim changes when decreasing power.”

Basically, they are talking a poor man’s thrust vectoring, I think.

“Baby Seal” Report May Have Cost RAND Analyst Their Job

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It appears that John Stillion has abruptly left his job as an analyst at the RAND corporation, He’s best known for writing a report which described the JSF as being clubbed like a baby seal in air to air combat by aircraft already flying.

Dennis Jensen, an Australian MP and a fierce critic of the JSF, who used this report to argue against Australia purchaasing the aircraft, is alleging that he was fired for this report.

Curiouser and curiouser.

I Recall an Anime Movie About This

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Specifically Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle.

Only this one is real, or at least in prototype state courtesy of those wacky Danes from art collective N55 in Copenhagen.

The theory is that when rising ocean levels from global warming make your current location to wet, the house walks somewhere else.

Reminds me of that bit of dialogue from a Get Smart episode:

99: What’s that?

Max: An electric snake, we’ll send it it to get
information.

99: What does it run on?

Max: Tiny Little Feet.

Heh.

Not Enough Bullets: Tax Loophole Edition

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Well, now we know why Wells Fargo wanted wanted to buy Wachovia, a tax loophole

The day after Citigroup made its bid, the Treasury changed a tax rule that lets banks accelerate the losses and writedowns on banks they acquire against their own net income, offsetting the charges as tax write-offs.

Wells plans on writing off some $74 billion of Wachovia’s $498 billion loan portfolio — an insanely large amount that reflects just how poisoned Wachovia’s books really were. With the new tax rules, it gets to use all of that $74 billion as a charge against its own net income, which means one thing: Wells Fargo’s going to be a tax-write-off machine for years to come.

Not enough bullets.

Bachmann Now Behind Tinklenberg

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SurveyUSA has the numbers:
Michele Bachmann(Insane ‘Phant): 44%
Elwyn Tinklenberg* (D): 47%
Bob Anderson (I) 6%.

There is a 4% margin of error, so it’s still too close to call. There is only about 2% undecided, and so the 2:1 undecideds breaking against the incumbent does not mean much here.

It will be close.

*I know that it’s not nice to make fun of someone’s name, but his name still sounds like a character from Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegone.