Abandoned Russian nuclear lighthouses

A friend of mine sent me this post from the site “English Russia” (which has the great tagline “just because something cool happens daily on 1/6 of the Earth’s surface”), about abandoned Russian polar nuclear lighthouses. During the days of the Soviet Union, the Russians built a series of lighthouses along the country’s northern coast. And since many of them would be located hundreds of miles from the nearest human settlement, the Soviets decided to power each with its own miniature nuclear power plant.

Like many things in the former Soviet Union though they fell victim to the hard economic times of the 1990s and were abandoned, and in many cases looted (though the looters will be easy to identify at the scrap yards since they’ll be the only people glowing). It is an interesting story, but I’m really posting it since it gives me an excuse to run this really cool picture:

Gaza update - day 13

Israel is threatening an "escalation" of their military action as the conflict in Gaza heads towards its third week.

The IDF has been warning Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of a new phase in their operation and telling them to stay away from Hamas-run sites. Speculation is that the IDF will go into the urban areas in Gaza, which will likely lead to an increase in casualties on both sides. So far 13 Israelis and an estimated 800 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting. On Friday both sides rejected a UN resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire: Israel because the resolution did not guarantee Hamas would not rearm and Hamas because the resolution didn't demand Israel lift its blockade of Gaza.

There have been developments in the PR portion of the war as well. In an analysis piece this morning the BBC is asking what are the ultimate goals of Israel's Gaza offensive, since the Israelis themselves have been pretty vague on what will mark 'victory' in Gaza. The BBC reports that there is apparently a split between the two architects of the Gaza campaign, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on how far the offensive should go - Barak is pushing for an operation that “increases Israel's security”, while Livni is said to have “grander designs” that could include getting rid of Hamas entirely. One analyst cited in the BBC piece said that the confusion is an indication the Gaza operation was not well thought out, and that removing Hamas and creating a power vacuum in Gaza could lead to even more extreme groups taking over.

Meanwhile Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, is accusing Israel of possible war crimes and is calling for an independent investigation. His call stems from an incident where Israeli shelling killed 30 members of one extended Palestinian family. Pillay slammed the Israelis for not doing enough to prevent civilian casualties and for (reportedly) blocking medical personnel from reaching wounded Palestinians. Pillay's comments were echoed in, of all places, the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal. In "Israel is Committing War Crimes", author George Bisharat lays out the case that Israel's current actions cannot be justified by the claim of self-defense under international law.

Bisharat argues that Israel's military response has been disproportionate and has not taken the welfare of the citizens of Gaza into account (which under international law you're required to do). He makes the case that Israel's entire claim of self-defense is faulty. Israel has repeatedly said that it launched Operation Cast Lead in response to a barrage of rocket attacks from Gaza. Bisharat points out though that the large-scale rocket attacks didn't begin until after Israel launched a major incursion into Gaza on November 4, meaning that (according to his analysis) Israel provoked the attack that they are now using to justify their actions as self-defense (a nice bit of circular logic that Bisharat points out won't fly under international law).

Finally the National Post of Canada says that Israel may even be losing the PR war among the Jewish Diaspora , citing the split in opinion among older and younger Jews over the war and even over attitudes towards Israel itself. The Post points out that John Stewart, along with a host of young, influential bloggers, have all been publicly critical (some quite harshly critical) of Israel since the invasion. I liked this quote from Dana Goldstein, who says: "Asking young Jews to fight and die in a ground war, one whose perpetration inflames anti-Semitic sentiments, is not the best way to make Israel, or the world at large, safe for the Jewish people." That's along the lines of the point I was trying to make in an earlier post, that while Israel can carry out effective military operations, actions like the one in Gaza are ultimately self-defeating because they don't make Israel any more secure in the long run.

Not the ending the pirates were expecting...

Somali pirates finally released the oil tanker Sirius Star on Friday after receiving a $3 million ransom payment from the ship’s owners. But things didn't end happily for all the pirates - six of them drowned, along with their share of the ransom payment, when their overloaded speedboat capsized after leaving the tanker.

The payment ends the two-month saga of the Saudi-owned Sirius Star, the largest ship ever captured by pirates. But even the end of the hijacking tale had a surreal, Hollywood-esque feeling to it, the ransom payment was delivered to the ship by parachute from a low-flying plane. The crew of the Sirius Star is reported to be safe and the ship is now on its way back to Saudi Arabia.

The Somali pirates also released an Iranian-owned freighter also captured in November, no word on whether a ransom was paid for that ship as well. The pirates are still holding 17 ships and more than 200 crew, including a Ukrainian-owned ship carrying three-dozen Soviet-era tanks. More than 100 ships were attacked off the coast of Somalia last year.

Russia gets the short end of the pipeline

With the natural gas shortage still not resolved, editorials across Europe and the US are bashing Russia for cutting off supplies – hauling out the usual accusations that the stoppage shows Russia is again trying to bully its neighbors and that it’s proof that Russia is not a reliable business partner.

Frankly these editorials miss a few important facts, not the least of which is the $2 billion in back payments owed to Russia’s Gazprom by the government of Ukraine. Then there’s the charge made by Russia that Ukraine has been stealing natural gas being shipped across their country for points further west in Europe (a claim that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says he has proof to back up), the reason why Russia says it finally turned cut the gas to the pipelines on Wednesday (Russia increased the amount of gas flowing through other pipelines that do not pass through Ukraine and promised to replace any gas their customers had to use from their national reserves).

But apparently, according to the editorialists, Russia should have either let Ukraine continue to run up their gas debt, or they should have looked the other way while the Ukrainians stole gas headed for Western Europe (and, apparently, made up the shortfall so the countries further west didn’t suffer).

You have to wonder why Russia is being cast as the bad guy in this affair. If anything I think the crisis shows Ukraine, not Russia, as the unreliable partner since they are the ones who ran up an enormous debt, didn’t make a good-faith effort at negotiating a payment plan, and then when they were finally cut off, stole what they needed from someone else. These are hardly the actions of a reliable business partner, yet there continues to be a strong push to fast-track Ukraine’s membership into both NATO and the European Union (where membership was once held out as the reward for countries adopting democratic, free market and good governance principles).

Call it a Cold War hangover, but Russia always seems to get the blame during an international crisis, whether it deserves it or not. The last time Ukraine and Russia squabbled over gas prices back in 2006, Russia was again accused of using natural gas as a weapon, even though the gas price fight came after years of Europe demanding that Russia start charging fair-market prices for gas it sold to the countries of the former Soviet Union, rather than continuing the Soviet-era policy of selling it at well below market rates.

Ukraine doesn’t pay for gas it uses and takes gas that’s not theirs, yet Russia gets the blame, somehow that just doesn’t seem fair.

One Hundred Billion Dollars

What is it - a ransom demand from Dr. Evil? The updated loss total in the Bernie Madoff scandal? Nope, it is the latest denomination of money issued by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.


You might remember that this summer Zimbabwe issued a $50 billion bill. That was before Zimbabwe 'revalued' its currency - basically just dropping five zeroes off the end. But thanks to the country's runaway rate of inflation, the currency is once again so worthless that a $100 billion bill is needed just to keep up. Not that it is going to make life any easier in Zimbabwe mind you, one Zimbabwean complained that it wasn't worth going to the bank to get the new denomination bill since bus fare in Harare is roughly $250 billion (think about that during your morning commute).

Other world hotspots have pushed Zimbabwe from the headlines, but that doesn't mean things there have improved. Disease and hunger still plague the country, while President Robert Mugabe has basically abandoned any pretense of negotiating a power-sharing agreement with Morgan Tsvangirai, the man generally believed to have won last year's presidential elections. Mugabe is now suggesting he will stock the government ministries with people loyal to him next month (the proposed power-sharing agreement would split government ministries equally between Mugabe's ZANU-PF party and Tsvangirai's MDC).

Meanwhile religious leaders in South Africa are pressing their country to take action to end the Mugabe regime. Since Zimbabwe is a landlocked country, it relies mainly on port facilities in South Africa to bring all of their imported goods to ashore. Zimbabwe gets much of electricity from South Africa as well. South Africa could therefore have a dramatic impact on Zimbabwe if it imposed a boycott on the shipment of goods and electricity, a move many observers think would bring a quick end to President Mugabe. But so far South Africa has been unwilling to take such a dramatic step.

Religious leaders and noted figures from South Africa's anti-Apartheid struggle though say that the time has come to ratchet up the pressure on Zimbabwe. They note that Zimbabwe supported South African groups like the African National Congress as they fought against the Apartheid regime, now it is time for them to take a stand for the millions of Zimbabweans suffering under Robert Mugabe. South Africa has been absorbing wave after wave of Zimbabweans fleeing the chaos of their country, a situation bound to only get worse.

So far, though, South Africa's government remains committed to negotiations for a power-sharing agreement in Zimbabwe and has avoided harsh criticism of Mugabe.

Make way for 'moral' capitalism

In a damning joint statement today the heads of France and Germany said that the current world financial system is a mess and that it would be up to Europe to bring in a new age of 'moral' capitalism.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel took aim at the United States, with Sarkozy saying that "in the 21st century it is no longer a single nation who can say what we must do, what we must think," in regard to America's position as the global leader of Capitalism. The two said the current global financial system "had been 'perverted' by an 'amoral' form of unbridled finance capitalism," and that it was up to Europe to lead discussions for a new global financial system at this coming April's meeting of the G20 (a group representing the world's 20 largest economies).

Since the Wall Street market meltdown last September, the United States has been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism for its laissez-faire approach to regulating markets - that the sub-prime loan market caused banks around the world to engage in bad investments that in turn led to a global financial crisis (for an example of how bad it is in some places, check out Iceland where the entire country has basically gone bankrupt because of over-exposure in the sub-prime market). But it's one thing to hear leaders like Hugo Chavez and Dmitry Medvedev call for the United States to be replaced as the world's financial leader, it's something different to hear those calls come from Sarkozy and Merkel.

The two have called for a ‘UN-like’ world charter to govern financial markets and stressed the need for continuing regulation of the markets, especially once the immediate global financial crisis passes, when regulation in the past tends to get lax. The call for reform extends to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, two powerful economic organizations that now are basically run by the United States.

It will all make for a very interesting meeting of the G20 in April, since unlike the similarly-named G8 (Group of Eight), the G20 includes as members developing nations like Brazil and India, meaning development-related issues will likely have a prominent role in any proposed new world financial charter. It will also make for an early foreign policy challenge for President Obama as he tries to keep the United States (I would assume) in the role of the global leader of Capitalism.

Europe's gas crisis rolls on

Natural gas might not be flowing to much of Europe, but the accusations on who's responsible for the shortage sure are.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin criticized the European Union for not doing more to negotiate a settlement between his country and Ukraine, which Russia accuses of stealing natural gas bound for countries further east in Europe. Ukraine denies the charges, but Russia's national gas giant Gazprom turned off the taps because of the alleged theft, causing a shortage in many parts of Europe and an outright crisis in countries like Bulgaria that get almost all of their gas from Russia. And of course this all happens during one of the worst cold snaps in Europe in the past decade.

Just in case you haven't been following this story - on January 1 Russia's Gazprom cut off natural gas shipments to Ukraine after their government failed to pay up on a $2 billion debt for gas deliveries. Eighty percent of the natural gas shipped to Europe goes through pipelines that run across Ukraine. Almost immediately European countries (15 in total) reported that gas supplies to their countries were falling, leading Gazprom to accuse Ukraine of siphoning off some of the gas bound for Europe to use at home. Finally yesterday Russia turned off the taps to all of the Ukraine pipelines - to prevent ongoing theft, they said - causing the shortages across much of Europe.

In addition to the $2 bil owed to Gazprom, Russia and Ukraine can't agree on a price for gas sales for 2009. Russia has been under pressure to stop selling natural gas to Ukraine, and other former Soviet states, at cut-rate prices. But now Ukraine, suffering from its own economic crisis, is balking at paying what Europe pays, instead proposing a rate for 2009 at about half the going fair market. Ukraine is proposing to charge Russia the market rate to ship gas across their country, something Russia says they will agree to, only if Ukraine then pays the same price for gas as the rest of Europe.

The European Union has stepped into the dispute, and it looked like they had at least secured an agreement to get the gas flowing. They proposed having EU monitors watch the pipelines to make sure Ukraine wasn't siphoning off gas (Gazprom’s charge against them), but that deal fell apart when Russia asked to also have their own monitors work with the EU team, something Ukraine refused.

Putin blamed corruption and incompetence in the Ukrainian government for the problem, while Ukraine's national gas company, Naftogaz, said that Russia was using gas as a weapon to destroy both it and the entire Ukrainian economy. Meanwhile the shortages have prompted rationing in several central European nations and have caused a couple of countries to think about restarting old Soviet-vintage nuclear reactors to make up for the shortages in power in their nations.

Vatican official calls Gaza 'concentration camp'

Vatican City's Justice and Peace Minister Cardinal Renato Martino has sparked a row with Israel after saying they had created a virtual 'concentration camp' in the Gaza Strip.

"Let's look at the conditions in Gaza: these increasingly resemble a big concentration camp," said Cardinal Martino. He went on to say if the two sides couldn't find a resolution to the conflict, then it was up to the rest of the world to impose a peace deal upon them.

Needless to say the Israelis were not happy over the Cardinal's remarks, claiming his comments were based on "Hamas propaganda". Of course stories like this from the Times of London: "Red Cross finds starving children with 12 corpses in Gaza 'house of horrors'," aren't likely to make Cardinal Martino reassess his opinion about Gaza. And while the Red Cross hasn't called Gaza a concentration camp, they have used awfully harsh language (for the Red Cross at least) in talking about Israel's actions there accusing them of "unacceptable" conduct and several violations of international law.

The Times story focused on a group of children found alive but very weak lying next to the bodies of their dead mothers. The Red Cross said that it had been trying for four days to gain access to the area of Gaza where the children were found, but that the Israeli army repeatedly blocked them. The United Nations also announced today that they are withdrawing their personnel from Gaza after Israeli forces bombed several UN-run locations. In the worst incident 40 people were killed at a UN school where they went for shelter, thinking it would be safe from the bombing. The Israeli military had said that they fired on the school because Hamas forces were using it as a location to attack their troops, but late yesterday, in one televised report they admitted there were no Hamas forces at the school when it was hit (which begs the yet-unanswered question as to why the school was attacked in the first place).

Meanwhile, Hamas rocket attacks have continued today, as have talks about a ceasefire.

Is it time to rethink our relationship with Israel?

Barack Obama today at least teased that he would be taking a different approach to the Middle East than the outgoing Bush administration. And made me wonder if it’s not time for the US to rethink its relationship with Israel (I know this is an emotional topic for many folks, so hear me out).

There’s no denying that the United States and Israel have a special relationship – it was President Harry Truman’s decision back in 1948 to recognize the fledgling state that literally put Israel on the map, without that step, Israel might likely be just a footnote in the long history of the Middle East. Since then, our two countries have tended to view ourselves as ‘best friends’. George Bush’s take on this special relationship has been to fully back whatever Israel has felt it needed to do in the name of national security these past eight years, including the 2006 invasion of Lebanon and ‘09s Gaza operation.

But sometimes it’s your best friend who has to be the one to tell you the harsh truth: “you’ve had too much to drink”, or “s/he is cheating on you.” So maybe it’s time for us to tell Israel that their military can’t solve all of their problems and that it’s time for peace. Sure, Israel can go into Lebanon or Gaza and wreak a horrible (and given your point of view, perhaps righteous) vengeance, but to what end? Their action in Lebanon didn’t destroy Hezbollah, instead they’re now a powerful part of the Lebanese government; even as Israeli tanks roll through Gaza, Hamas rockets continue to fall on Israel. It is likely that in the next few days there will be a cease-fire in Gaza and Hamas will crawl from the rubble to claim victory.

Just last November, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert publicly said that perhaps it was time for Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders and end the occupation of Palestine, while Ehud Barak talked about taking a fresh look at a 2002 proposal put forward by the Saudis that offered recognition of the State of Israel from all Arab nations in response for Israel’s withdrawal from Palestine. I don’t think it’s hopelessly naïve or optimistic to think if the Palestinians had their own viable, independent homeland that the fuel for Islamic militant groups like Hamas would largely dry up (that is basically the take-away from an LA Times interview with Hamas spokesman Mousa Abu Marzook).

So perhaps then its time for the US, in the role of best friend, to tell Israel that continuing the occupation of Palestine will only bring more insecurity, and the chance for more wars that they can’t win and can only damage their image to the world. And if they’re not willing to change, then maybe we need to. Abu Marzook noted that LA Times piece that “when Palestinians see an F-16 with the Star of David painted on its tail, they see America.” A Rasmussen poll from earlier in the week found that half of the Americans surveyed thought Israel’s Gaza campaign made it more likely there would be a terrorist attack against the United States.

Sometimes best friends do grow apart; perhaps we will find that is the case in the US-Israel relationship. We should advise our friend to take the best action for their future, but if they don’t then we should act in the way that is in the best interest of our own national security.

A legend passes

There's news today that Alfred Shaheen has died. Okay, right now you're asking "who is Alfred Shaheen?"

Shaheen happens to be the man who made the floral-print Hawaiian shirt popular, clothing generations of tourists, frat boys and, of course, Magnum P.I. in the process. In 1948 Shaheen opened a Honolulu shop where he produced flower-print 'aloha shirts' not as disposable tourist gifts, but as high-quality garments - and an icon of American kitsch was born. Shaheen's business eventually became worth millions and he's credited with starting the garment industry in Hawaii.

I would don my black floral print in honor if it wasn't about to snow here.