The Upper Lars checkpoint has been closed since 2006, most likely in retaliation over Georgian attempts to join NATO.

At the same time, Russian president Medvedev has announced that Russia will update its nuclear weapons. The plan is to develop new missiles while remaining in accord with current nuclear weapons treaties between Russia and the United States. As a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor reports, this is an important update inasmuch as "it is all it has got to defend itself with because its armed forces in general are a shambles."

Referring back to the Russian-Georgian war highlights the generalized failure of the Russian military, with some half of Russian air losses coming from their own ground forces. Russian military doctrine and equipment has fared similarly poorly in client states such as Iraq, where the U.S. military has reliably rolled them up in short order. Given that analysts attribute the Russian victory in South Ossetia to the Ossetian irregulars, it's not surprising that Medvedev is looking for an enhancement to the Russian military that will bring prestige at the very least by dint of never, ever being tested.

BBC article

...which is roughly in line with polling on health care reform a few months back. More recent polling has shown that American desire for health care reform has diminished. That's not particularly surprising in the wake of shrill shilling in the form of "death panel" claims and so forth. As we've seen in prior election and legislative voting cycles, American citizens can be convinced, given enough time and money, to vote against their own best interests.

There's already discussion of a Constitutional challenge, including during the debate. Legally, this seems unlikely to succeed if, as written, the health coverage requirement has been carried out under Congress's power to levy taxes. As I've also discussed previously, on a pure intent issue, health care assuredly fits the Constitutional intent to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare.

The current position of the legislators of the Republican party seems to be one of rabidly defending corporations at the expense of their constituents, either intentionally or in the misguided belief that they are defending an ideology of self reliance (even while they try to secure Federal funding to keep businesses in America or maintain our farms) by letting insurance companies scalp random Americans. Shooting down a plan while offering no effective alternative is the marker of a failed employee.

They're just dragging the team down.

BBC article

Indeed.

Given the history between Vietnam and its larger neighbor, we can imagine that this acquisition might markedly shift the politics of the East Sea / South China Sea.

Fun fact - the People's Republic of China also buys Kilos from Russia.

Do you suppose Russia has advisers ready to train crews on Kilo-on-Kilo combat?

BBC article

"Forced marriages and other things like cemeteries separating the pure and impure - we don't have that in Switzerland, and we do not want to introduce it," Ulrich Schlueer, co-president of the Initiative Committee to ban minarets, said.

"Therefore, there's no room for minarets in Switzerland."

Indeed, Switzerland prefers to separate the pure and impure, or let's say the white and non-white, by having a harsh naturalization policy that lets individual neighborhoods vote with their racism and keep even third-generation residents from becoming citizens.

This continues the ongoing European trend of just not getting it on the issue of addressing immigrants and any potential problems associated with them. More divisiveness and exclusion is a sure-fire path to generating more problems. Of course, the SVP and their British co-racists in the BNP aren't concerned about inciting problems that might, in turn, lead to fear that will lead to reduced immigration. One might even guess that's their entire point.

Humorously, the BNP site currently says that they are "the only party which opposes mass immigration...". Good for you, guys. All I can say about mass immigration is that I live in California, and our economy is nearly as large as the U.K.'s with just half the population of your nation. We seem to be doing fine with our immigrants.

When they aren't trying to keep those scary foreigners out, the SVP spends its time being angry at the United States for pursuing tax evaders with accounts in Swiss banks.

al Jazeera article
BBC article

The first Nevsky bombing was recently officially attributed to Ingush insurgents. Of course, as we've already seen, the list of suspects rounded up for a given crime in Russia does not necessarily have much relation to any evidence related to the crime.

Nonetheless, it wouldn't be shocking to image a Chechen or Ingushetian face behind bombing on a Russian rail line.

BBC article
al Jazeera article
ITAR-TASS article

This is, of course, the same Swiss People's Party that produced this entirely unoffensive poster about how dark people are going to murder white people.

Oh, wait, that's about how immigrants are a problem. Or something.

Given that Switzerland is already the land of alienation, where multi-generation families of non-European origin continue to not be welcomed as citizens, the SVP's attempted move feels superfluous at best. The BBC analysis suggests the vote is unlikely to pass, but it's yet another move made by people who don't understand that they won't get what they want by following their current plan.

BBC article

"This bill is the greatest threat to freedom that I've seen in the 19 years I've been in Washington," he said.

Really?

Contenders for that crown in the last 19 years surely include al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, warrantless wiretapping, a resurgent Russia, and many others. Is Boehner really contending that a debate over the specifics of how Americans can have sufficient health care is a bigger threat to our freedom than having a dedicated group of terrorists attempting to kill us en masse? If so, he's changing the goal posts significantly from the prior Republican core message.

Maybe we can ask him about it.

Incidentally, it turns out that the proposed alternative plan will cover fewer people, which is what I suspected when I heard Boehner waffling about it on CNN Sunday morning.

First, we have the seizure by the Israeli government of a cargo ship carrying a significant supply of arms, ostensibly from Iran to Syria, presumably with the longer-term goal of supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon. Curiously enough, rather than claim some other purpose for the arms, or that they have nothing to do with them, the official Iranian government position borders on insisting that the arms are not, in fact, weapons.

In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki held a joint news conference with his visiting Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem and dismissed the Israeli allegations.

"This ship does not carry Iranian weapons to Syria and does not contain military material to manufacture weapons in Syria. This ship carries imported goods from Syria to Iran."

Both this Iranian and the associated Syrian statement don't quite say that the arms aren't arms, but come awfully close. Unless one believes that the Israeli government staged the fairly extensive video of the ship's contents, however, they're pretty clearly weapons (interestingly, weapons with Spanish-language labeling, at least in the portions I've seen covered on video).

More on the claims and denials can be found in this BBC article and this al Jazeera article.

While Israel worries about Iranian government influence in Lebanon, the government of Saudia Arabia may well have pressured Nilesat and Arabsat to take Iran's Arabic language station off the air, following concerns about reporting by Al-Alam on Shia insurgents in Yemen that included language suggesting Saudi Arabia is involved. The Saudi government may be especially sensitive here following a Zaidi insurgent raid into Saudi Arabia.

We have to imagine that there will not at any point in all this be a Saudi-Israeli anti-Iranian pact (although SIAIP is a cute acronym).