Month: January 2009

Economics Update

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Well, it looks like cutting defense spending to help the economy may not work, S&P is threatening to downgrade New Zealand’s AA Credit Rating.

By the time this is over, I would not be at all surprised if we see a number of countries out there like Australia and New Zealand with rating in the “B”s.

Well, we’ve got another retailer bankruptcy, Shane Co., a Jeweler with 23 stores in 14 states….We’ll see a lot more of this.

The Dollar rose, because traders are expecting the ECB to cut rates.

Also, Oil is back below $40/bbl.

Well, Here is a Story that I Missed

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Enterprising young environmental protester Tim DeChristopher was at a demonstration against hurried auctions of government land next to some of the crown jewels of the National Park system by Bush and His Evil Minions&trade, when an idea hit him: go into the auction, and bid against the people getting the sweetheart deals, and drive the prices up.

He had no money, but he did drive the prices up, and DeChristopher, the now infamous “Bidder 70”, actually won a fair portion of the bids before authorities realized what was up, and they threw him out.

Well, he has been collecting donations online, and he now has the requisite $45,000.00 to make the first payment on the 13 leases that he won, which accounted for roughly 15% of the total acreage that was sold at auction.

He still needs to pay a total of $1.7 million, but it’s a start.

You can donate to him here.

Is a Negotiated Solution Involving Gaza and the West Bank Even Possible?

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Regardless of the final status of a negotiated solution regarding Israel and a Palestinian entity (or entities, with the West Bank and Gaza going separate ways), there will doubtless be compromises on both sides that will outrage significant constituencies on both sides of this dispute.

Whether one is talking about East Jerusalem, the “Right of Return”, water rights, transit rights, etc., it there will be provisions that people on one side or the other will not be happy about.

If one, for the moment, ignores the substance of these compromises, and agrees to the existence of these compromises, it raises an interesting question: Is there actually anyone in the Palestinian community who can negotiate such a deal and survive long enough to make it stick?

We know that the compromises of Michael Collins with regard to the 6 northern counties or Ireland were directly responsible for his death at the hands of anti-Treaty faction of the IRA.

The important thing to remember in the case of Michael Collins is that despite his death the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 was a done deal, and remained a done deal.

While there is a a real possibility of political assassination, as a result of successful negotiations, it has already happened with Rabin in Israel, but on the Palestinian side there is a real possibility that with the assassination and/or the overthrow of of whoever signs such a deal will abnegate whatever deal that is signed.

Hamas is for the foreseeable future without the institutional imperatives to even enter into such a negotiation, and on the PA side, Mahmoud Abbas carries the moral weight of Hillary Duff.

He’s a party apparatchik who survives through appeasing the various factions and playing them off one against the other, and as such it is unlikely that he would have the political ability to survive a successful final status negotiation.

So, the question is how does one create an environment that will facilitate the creation a movement and/or leader in the Territories that will have the political and moral infrastructure to allow for a successful negotiation?

Luck is a Residue of Design

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By the standards of any counterinsurgency campaign, the IDF has superb intelligence on the other side.

There is also some luck involved, as when Israeli paras captured a man and found a detailed map of the measures that had been taken by Hamas in the al-Atatra neighborhood in Gaza. (see also here)

I would assume here that the reason that this man was targeted in the first place was because it was believed that he had valuable information.

An interesting side note to all this, is that Hamas is going Beau Geste in their plans, using manikins to tactical advantage.

The irony there is obvious.

Why NASA Is Screwed Up

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And why the first step of of the Obama administration should be to fire NASA administrator Michael Griffin.

He’s still lobbying aggressively for his pet project the Ares launcher, claiming that keeping the shuttle flying will cost $3 billion per year and have a one in 8 risk of another fatal accident, so we need to accelerate the Ares.

The fact is that there is a man-rated system that can meet the needs of space station servicing, the Russian Soyuz, in the interim, and not withstanding his arguments that the atmospherics of relying on a foreign system somehow or other diminish US prestige, this has been the sort of self destructive behavior that has characterized NASA since the shuttle, where they decimated existing capabilities in order to insure that there was no viable alternative.

Obama should be announcing a replacement for Griffin sooner, not later.

India Buys 8 P-8I’s for $2.1B

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It’s the largest defense contract ever between India and the US for 8 of the Boeing 737 derived maritime patrol and anti-submarine aircraft.

They will replace a similar number of Tupolev-142Ms “Bear” turboprops.

They will carry sonar buoys, depth charges, torpedos, and Harpoon missiles for use against surface combatants.

Considering that the next largest Indo-US deal was a $962 million contract for 6 C-130J, this is a step up, both in size and technology transfer.

That being said, the US is still a bit player, with Russia, France , and Israel dominating the defense import market to India.

More Evidence of Chinese Carrier Aspirations

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We have reports that the China are in negotiations to buy Su-33 carrier based fighters.

I think that we will see moderately sized (about 50,000 ton) carriers joining the Chinese fleet in the next decade, but the real indicator of their naval aspirations will be their submarine and amphibious warefare ship fleets.

The carriers are primarily a national pride undertaking, not a military endeavor.

Guided Rocket Video Pr0n

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Direct Attack Guided Rocket (DAGR) guidance kit for the 2.75-inch rocket
vid and pic
Note that this a Lockheed-Martin analogue to BAE’s Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System that I wrote about a few months back.

The rocket and guidance, semi-active laser homing for DAGR, appears to be pretty much the same as APKWS, though it appears that the launcher is designed to be compatible with Hellfire, as opposed to the existing 2.75″ rocket launchers.

Here is the video for the earth shattering kaboom.

Big Surprise Here

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I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!

It appears that the congressional panel tasked with investigating the Treasury Department’s TARP program has discovered that absolutely nothing has been done by way of oversight on the recipients of this money.

Maybe I’m a cynic, but I think that this is a feature, not a bug.

Bush and His Evil Minions™ in general, and Henry Paulson in particular, have done their level best to ensure that not the smallest vestige of accountability accrue to those people who are most responsible for this mess, because they believe the rules of accounting and honesty should not apply to rich people.

Elizabeth Warren, who heads a congressionally appointed oversight panel, told ABC news there was no evidence the Treasury had used money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to support the housing market by avoiding preventable foreclosures.

“There’s just no money that’s gone in that direction. This one’s not even arguable,” she said. “The TARP funds themselves have not been used in this way despite congressional statutes requiring them to do so.”

In a draft of a report to be released on Friday, the panel said the Treasury has failed to reveal its strategy for stabilizing the financial system and had done little to track how the money was used.

U.S. in Talks with India to Sell Star Wars Systems

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The US and India are in talks regarding the purchase of missile defense systems.

From a purely technical perspective, India’s defense needs are less challenging, the speed of an incoming missile increases with the distance with which it travels and Pakistan and China both share a border.

It’s unclear from the article whether this is a real attempt to sell systems to India, or a PR attempt intended by missile defense advocates on both sides to boost the government support for their respective systems.