Krasnodar is a beautiful region near the Black Sea which is justly famous for its black tea. It may become the home for Iskander tactical ballistic missiles, now that the Kremlin has pulled the plug on talks with the Obama administration over missile defenses. The passage of time clearly has not diminished Moscow’s hyper-sensitivity over …
Who Wants Diplomacy on Iran?
by | 2011-12-01 | 78 Comments
Given the diplomatic fallout which began raining down with the pre-release of the IAEA board report on Iran to the P-5 at the beginning of November, I surmised then that there might be a chance that Russia would embellish a two-page offer which it floated to Iran this summer, and that the Obama administration might regard that as a potential opportunity to keep things from spiraling …
Plushkino Traffic Jam
by | 2011-11-30 | 5 Comments
This past August, a Russian TEL carrying an SS-25 ICBM broke down along a road in Russia, causing massive traffic jam. It made the news immediately, replete with images of the disabled TEL and angry locals stuck in the traffic snarl. A colleague pointed this out, as an illustration that we live in a very …
Making Messes in Space
by | 2011-11-29 | 15 Comments
The only top-of-the-charts space-age instrumental was silenced by the highest yield US atmospheric test ever conducted. OK, I’m taking literary license. Readers of a certain age will recall Telstar, the satellite and the top-40 single. Telstar enabled the transmission of images across the Atlantic on our black-and-white TV screens, just as the British music invasion …
