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Archive for August, 2008
Woo!
Friday, August 29th, 2008Georgia
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008Via Power Line we have a fascinating piece about the truth behind the Russian invasion of Georgia. Worth a look.
Attack Ad
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008This one has definitely enraged the Obama camp — he has demanded the prosecution of the man who funded it. Have a look:
Not likely to give people good vibes about Obama, that’s for sure.
The LHC, Sort Of
Monday, August 25th, 2008It’s good to see that the people running CERN’s LHC have a sense of humor…
Quirks Of The Day
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008One accidental, one made up.
Russia Hits Bottom, Digs
Sunday, August 17th, 2008Russia’s invasion of Georgia may have stopped expanding (20 miles from Tbilisi), but they’re not going anywhere either. This has really turned into an international disaster for the Russians — who are better known for their heavy-handed tactics than their PR savvy. After 18 months of negotiations and dithering, Poland suddenly decided that the US could station anti-missile missiles in their territory — something the Russians have long opposed. And suddenly, Ukraine has decided that the US could use a Soviet-era satellite base for the missile interceptor program.
The Russians will be FURIOUS. They’re already plotting political revenge for Poland’s acceptance of interceptors and America’s steady (if fairly low-key) support of Georgia. While stationing the Iskander missiles in Syria sounds rather far-fetched (and designed specifically to threaten Israel — possible, really, as Israel has previously supported Georgia at Russia’s expense), arming the Baltic fleet with nuclear weapons and stationing more in its exclave at Kaliningrad seems realistic and a major symbolic step towards the re-establishment of a Cold War mentality. Ukraine is pushing Russia very hard at this point. It would be difficult or even impossible to disallow Russian ships from returning to the naval base at Sevastopol if they were used against Georgia (something that easily remains in the realm of plausibility), but the international humiliation of being opposed by a close neighbor with so much shared history would do bad things to the paranoid Russian national psyche.
Are we seeing the run-up to a new Cold War? I doubt it will come to that, at least not for a long time. Washington is keeping the rhetoric running at a steady heat (Bush has insisted on the maintenance of Georgian control of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia), but is pushing behind the scenes to find a middle way (including forcing Saakashvili to accept the loss of control over South Ossetia and Abkhazia). Bush is smart enough to know that Russia has to be allowed to get out of the situation while saving face. Let’s just hope that the Russians are smart enough to take the concessions and run with them.
RIP Alexsandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn died the other day, and I’ve finally found a decently detailed obituary of the man. Solzhenitsyn is one of my favorite authors, although I have only read a few of his works besides The Gulag Archipelago. The Gulag Archipelago is what really sparked my interest in the Soviet government and the Gulag in particular. It remains a classic in the historiography of the Soviet prison camp systems, and is considerably better (besides being better-written) than many of the more recent highly-acclaimed histories. One can even detect an undercurrent of jealousy in many authors who take Solzhenitsyn to task for minor errors or things that they portray as distortions; rarely have I seen a substantive criticism of The Gulag Archipelago. On the whole, the man wrote a remarkable history secretly, and without access to the records of the government — and his work has stood the test of time.
Solzhenitsyn, by writing the history of part of a totalitarian regime, found himself a political figure. A quote at the end of his obituary put it well: “His biographer, DM Thomas, compared the author to another returned exile, Lenin himself, imagining ‘Lenin and Solzhenitsyn, staring cold-eyed at each other across the corpse-filled gorge of the 20th century.’” It then points out that Solzhenitsyn was a gentle man, as though that were a counterpoint to that quote. In reality, staring down the cruel is the hallmark of a gentle man — a moral lesson that the decadent West that Solzhenitsyn criticized never fully recognized.
And that’s saying nothing about his other moral and religious thinking.
RIP Alexsandr Isayevich — may the Russian conscience live on through your works.
The Way Politics Should Be
Friday, August 1st, 2008Just because Congress is no longer in session doesn’t mean that the GOP congressmen can’t have a little fun.
This is what I like to see — standing up and making a point, while not taking yourself all that seriously.
UPDATE 8/1/08 11.24PM: More here.