Tag Archives: en

NATO: Ukraine is a good excuse for military bases in Eastern Europe

The Guardian reports that NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the organisations’s summit in Cardiff next week would overcome divisions within the alliance and agree to new deployments on Russia’s borders.

“We will adopt what we call a readiness action plan with the aim to be able to act swiftly in this completely new security environment in Europe. We have something already called the Nato response force, whose purpose is to be able to be deployed rapidly if needed. Now it’s our intention to develop what I would call a spearhead within that response force at very, very high readiness.

“In order to be able to provide such rapid reinforcements you also need some reception facilities in host nations. So it will involve the pre-positioning of supplies, of equipment, preparation of infrastructure, bases, headquarters. The bottom line is you will in the future see a more visible Nato presence in the east.”

NATO plans to establish a permanent network of operational military bases across Eastern Europe trampling the pledges of the West not to expand the military presence to the East. NATO continues its march towards the Russia’s borders demonstrating a total absence of free will and clearly exhibiting the intentions of escalating the military standoff with Russia.

Ironically, NATO’s latest enlargement plans are being opposed not just by Russia, but by its very members, some of whom do not see the point in aggravating tensions with Moscow. The most outspoken support for the expansion plans comes from the most distant members – U.S. and UK. Other members, like France, Spain and Italy, clearly expressed serious concerns with the military plans. Germany remains noncommittal for the moment.

Remarkably, Rasmussen asserted that Russia “does not consider NATO a partner,” when it was NATO that flat-out refused Russian participation in the controversial US missile defense system, also planned for Eastern Europe. Such cooperation could bring to end years of mutual suspicion and antagonism between the cold-war era foes. Instead, the US and NATO opted to try to keep Russia isolated, ensuring nothing less than another full-blown arms race.

Meanwhile, there is no question as to how Russia views NATO’s relentless eastward encroachment.

“No matter what our Western counterparts tell us, we can see what’s… -->

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Ferguson protests raise international concern

FERGUSON, U.S. — Chinese and Russian officials are warning of a potential humanitarian crisis in the restive American province of Missouri, where ancient communal tensions have boiled over into full-blown violence.

“We must use all means at our disposal to end the violence and restore calm to the region,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in comments to an emergency United Nations Security Council session on the America crisis.

The crisis began a week ago in Ferguson, a remote Missouri village that has been a hotbed of sectarian tension. State security forces shot and killed an unarmed man, which regional analysts say has angered the local population by surfacing deep-seated sectarian grievances. Regime security forces cracked down brutally on largely peaceful protests, worsening the crisis.

America has been roiled by political instability and protests in recent years, which analysts warn can create fertile ground for extremists.

Missouri, far-removed from the glistening capital city of Washington, is ostensibly ruled by a charismatic but troubled official named Jay Nixon, who has appeared unable to successfully intervene and has resisted efforts at mediation from central government officials. Complicating matters, President Obama is himself a member of the minority sect protesting in Ferguson, which is ruled overwhelmingly by members of America’s majority “white people” sect.

Analysts who study the opaque American political system, in which all provinces are granted semi-autonomous self-rule, warned that Nixon may seize the opportunity to move against weakened municipal rulers in Ferguson. Missouri’s provincial legislature, a traditional “shura council,” is dominated by the opposition faction. Though fears of a military coup remain low, it is still unknown how Nixon’s allies within the capital will respond should the crisis continue.

Now, international leaders say they fear the crisis could spread.

“The only lasting solution is reconciliation among American communities and stronger Missouri security forces,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a speech from his vacation home in Hainan. “However, we can and should support moderate forces who can bring stability to America. So we will continue to pursue a broader strategy… -->

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Ferguson: urgent statement by president Obama

The President of the United States issued an urgent statement in relation to the events in Ferguson, Missouri:

“Russia must use its influence on the rebels in Ferguson to the full extent. If Russia fails to affect the rebels in Ferguson in the near future, the United States will immediately prepare a new set of tougher sanctions.”… -->

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Malaysian Boeing: The Vanishing Point…

The news of the Malaysian Boeing that crashed in Ukraine have vanished from the media completely. Everything is so quiet… Is nobody interested in the results of the investigation? Or did the investigation and the events reconstruction discover some inconvenient truths?..

A reader led me to this fair assessment by former USAF and Boeing engineer Raymond Blohm: “With proper vectoring, a Su-25 need not be quite as fast as a Boeing 777 in cruise. It just has to get to a missile-firing position. Since the 777 was not maneuvering, it would be simple to pre-calculate when to get in a certain spot in the sky below the 777. From there, it’s the missile that has the speed and altitude capability to hit the 777. (The R-60 is a very capable missile.) After the missile takes out an engine, both the 777’s max speed and its max altitude are well within the Su-25 fighter’s speed & altitude capabilities. Then, the Su-25 can show off its cannon power.”

Pepe Escobar in his article “Vanishing point…” in Asia Times looks back at the disappearance of the MH370 aircraft and the “disappearance in progress” of the MH17. He says, “MH370 vanished as in a video game. MH17 was hit as in a video game. Now their respective narratives are being vanished.”

Read the full article: “Vanishing point…”

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WordPress Multisite – Getting the correct link to the site

The WordPress multisite install is a great thing. Except when you come across something that works not the way you expect.

So, the WordPress multisite installed on example.com with blogs on subdomain basis will give you sites with names like great.example.com and aruberusan.example.com. Of course, we all like nice looking domain names, so you install a mapping plugin and get the domain aruberusan.com map to your aruberusan.example.com and it all just works… So now you happily access your blog at aruberusan.com. Great. Until you run into trouble because internally your blog’s site address is still aruberusan.example.com. And the calls to get_site_url(), home_url(), admin_url() and so on still return you the old original name of your site before mapping, in my case the aruberusan.example.com.

This sucks and I could not find a solution to this weird problem. The only thing that came to mind was to use the actual site URL from the request and recompose the URL manually like this:

$adminurl = get_admin_url($path);
$admURL = parse_url($adminurl, PHP_URL_SCHEME) . "://" . 
    $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"] . 
    parse_url($adminurl, $component = PHP_URL_PATH);

I would not call it a beautiful solution or even a proper one but it works. It is amazing that you cannot get the right URL from anywhere. Oh, and why you need it? Well, if you are going to post to, let’s say, Facebook, for example, with something like the SNAP plugin, you better have the right URL for your site or else…… -->

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Bulgaria’s population shrinks by 100+ people daily

The population of Bulgaria keeps shrinking. The process started after 1988 when the country had its max of 9 million people. Last year, the population is down to 7.2 million. The trend of birth over death rate has reversed around the same time – in 1990, and Bulgaria keeps running the so-called “natural loss” rate of around 40,000 people yearly for the last 20 years (source). The scientists call “natural loss” the difference between the number of people that die every year and the number of children that get born the same year. That is, the population of Bulgaria shrinks by more than 110 people daily. Bulgaria seems to hold the record being the only country in the world that sustained a negative population trend over a period of 25 years.

“According to the demographic transition theory, we have reached the fourth stage of low birth rate and high mortality. Experts expected that reproduction would recover, however something surprising has happened”, prof. Kaloyanov explained. The “surprising” thing just might have been Bulgaria leaving the Socialist Bloc and heading towards capitalism in 1989…

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Steven Seagal plays at a concert in Crimea

Hollywood actor and musician Steven Seagal played at a weekend concert in the Crimean peninsula, appearing on a stage adorned with the flag of Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR).

Seagal and his blues band played on Saturday at a bikers’ show held in the city of Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet. The star proudly showed his support to the people of Crimea and Donetsk People’s Republic fighting for their independence from the nationalistic regime of Ukraine. Fans waved Russian and DNR flags as Seagal performed.

Seagal said he had travelled to Crimea because music unites people, Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reported. In a March interview with a Russian newspaper, Seagal was quoted as saying that President Vladimir Putin’s desire to protect Russians in Crimea was completely reasonable.

Crimea’s largely Russian-speaking residents voted in March to become part of Russia in an all-out referendum. As the result of the referendum the peninsula became a part of Russian territory, causing much joy and celebration between the local population.

Seagal said he considers Putin, with whom he has promoted martial arts in Russia, “a friend and I’d like to consider him a brother”. In the March newspaper interview Seagal said he did not rule out eventually seeking Russian citizenship in addition to his US citizenship.… -->

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