Is Iran two months away from a nuclear bomb?

Iran is going to install centrifuges into its heavily fortified Fordo facility inside the mountains near Qom, it announced today.

The ultimate purpose of this move is to triple the enrichment capacity. They also say that they could eventually abolish the Natanz side which doesn't have to be the case.




Meanwhile, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency believes that the country is working on a bomb. The project is almost complete, IAEA suggests. The statement seems to be in a remarkable agreement with the RAND corporation, a think tank, that claims that Iran may be 8 weeks away from the nuclear bomb.

Those guesses may and may not be true. It may be counterproductive and unethical to attack Iran if she doesn't deserve it. And on the contrary, it could be much more troublesome not to attack Iran if she is actually completing the bomb. It's questionable whether it's too late already.

Would it be difficult to neutralize the Fordo facility by a nuclear strike and, if it is not enough, by an H-bomb? If the information about the location of the key facilities were safe enough, the facilities could be the only thing that matters. In principle, the Iranian people and officials could be informed about the neutralization of those places in advance so that everyone can relocate and there would have to be no casualties at all. ;-)

Obama's betrayal of Israel

While Barack Obama looks like a moderate guy in many respects, and his successful execution of Osama bin Laden is a recent example, there are also situations in which he turns out to be a largely uncontrollable threat for the democratic civilization.

He wants Israel to return to pre-1967 borders.



Between June 5 and June 10th, 1967 (the Six-Day War which was both pre-emptive and helpful for Israel), the yellow Israel on the map manage to win the Golan Heights (still controlled by Israel but the population is just 40,000; international deniers of reality consider it a part of Syria), Judea (South) and Samaria (North; in combination Judea and Samaria are known as the West Bank, currently under military control of Israel but administered by the moderate Fatah's Palestinian Authority), Gaza Strip (currently controlled by the Hamas terror group, but still somewhat unofficially supervised by Israel), and the Sinai Peninsula (peacefully returned to Egypt shortly after the 1967 war).




Just try to impartially ask the question: is the yellow region defensible? I find it totally silly. To return to pre-1967 borders means to probably return to pre-1949 borders - i.e. to eliminate Israel off the map - within another decade. It's crazy that someone may propose something of the sort while calling himself an ally of Israel. In this sense, the difference between Obama and Ahmadinejad may be just a few years. Make no doubts: the democratic consensus among the "Palestinians" is that the Jews should be pushed to the Mediter. sea. Obama clearly agrees.

As Bibi Netanyahu correctly said, Obama doesn't understand reality.

Obama's proposals will either quickly die, showing that Obama is just a loser and crazy kibitzer who is disconnected from reality and whose big words don't mean anything; or they will not quickly die and Obama will work to realize them. In that case, I would find it pretty natural for Israel to try to assassinate Obama and any other future U.S. president who will threaten Israel's existence in a similar way.

And that Israel's existence is clearly what is at stake is completely obvious. Golan Heights, currently controlled by Israel, would become mountains from which you can easily get to the Galilee - the adjacent part of Israel. Or shoot at them. It's crazy. This is something that the Czechs know a lot about. The loss of the Sudetenland - the mountains naturally bounding the Czech kingdom for centuries - has made the smaller Czech lands (the "Second Republic", as the castrated territory is known to us) indefensible and, indeed, Hitler took the rest of the Czech lands within half a year, too.

Now look at the yellow strip on the Western side of Judea. It's about 20 kilometers thick in the thinnest parts. Tel Aviv, the formal international capital of Israel, is somewhere in this thin strip. You gotta be kidding, right? If forces that are hostile to Israel are allowed to thrive in Judea and Samaria, and allowed to exchange "goods" with other hostile Muslim countries, Israel (or maybe I should call it just "rae") is going to be destroyed soon.

The situation is even crazier in the case of Jerusalem. This de facto capital of Israel is located in the Western "hole" in the West Bank - it separated Judea from Samaria; look at the map. It's almost completely surrounded by the "Palestine" and if you run 3 miles on the West side of Jerusalem, you will encircle it completely. The same easy Palestinian access exists in the case of the local airports etc., too. That makes a siege about 1,000 times easier than the Siege of Leningrad.

It's just crazy.

Now, would the small indefensible Israel be protected by the U.S. in the case of trouble? I don't think so. What's happening today is enough to predict how the U.S. led by someone like Obama would react to a "purification" of the region by some Muslim powers. When Obama came to power, America ceased to be an ally of Israel and it may be pretty correct to say that it became an enemy yesterday.

Obama's plans represent the most threatening plan by a top global politician for the existential interests of the Jewish people since the 1940s. Needless to say, Israel haters across Europe - not only Angela Merkel - have endorsed Obama's idiocy, too. But that's not unexpected; after all, Germany has been the birth place of some worse plans how to treat the Jews and Merkel is much less anti-Semitic than some of her most famous predecessors. But America used to be an Israel's ally. As socialism spreads over America, so do anti-Israeli policies.

NASA: small nuclear war reverts years of global warming

 Farsi translation here...

According to National Geographic,

Small Nuclear War Could Reverse Global Warming for Years

See also New Design World and many other echoes via Google News.

NASA GISS' computer modelers (Luke Oman et al.) were trying to solve the "global warming crisis" and they found a solution: a regional nuclear war, for example between India and Pakistan, would reduce floods and cool the Earth by 1.25 °C - some places by 3-4 °C. After a decade, the temperature would still be 0.9 °C lower than before the war.



The predictions are a humble version of the nuclear winter scenario.




You see, nuking Iran and a few other thug states away will also revert decades or a century of "global warming" at the same moment. It has not yet been reported whether John Holdren has already asked Barack Obama to press buttons.

More seriously, it's kind of amazing what kind of research is being funded. If there were a nuclear war between similar countries, a cooling by a degree Celsius would clearly be one of the least significant consequences. We had minus 14 Celsius degrees in the morning, fine, so we would have minus 15 Celsius degrees. And irradiated, dying relatives across the world, too.

Concerning the impacts, well, it's very likely that there would be some cooling that would depend on the magnitude of the explosions and that would last for years. It isn't terribly useful to calculate the exact impact because the total size of the hypothetical nuclear war would remain uncertain until its peak - or until its end. Nuclear wars may differ by many orders of magnitude.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki haven't experienced much of a climate impact so one has to speak about much larger conflicts - about 100+ times larger. They would probably have to kill tens of millions of people. Do those people really think that a degree of temporary cooling or warming would be more important than those lives and other political impacts of the war?

I am surely among the top 10% of the Hawks who would use nuclear weapons e.g. against Iran under certain circumstances. (To be sure, I know that this article is mostly read by Persians - so I don't really mean you or your friends haha, as a person who respects the Persian heritage and contributions as as an ex-colleague of two Persian-origin top physicists, Cumrun Vafa and Nima Arkani-Hamed.) But I don't mean carpet bombing without any good reason; what I mean are surgical operations meant to cripple their offensive military. A temperature change by a degree can't be the reason to start the bombing.

By the way, the cooling effects of a nuclear detonation have been vastly exaggerated in the past - see Michael Crichton's comments about "nuclear winter" in his famous speech, Aliens Cause Global Warming.

---

Bonus

When we talk about regional nuclear wars, my Persian readers across the world will surely forgive your humble correspondent that he has recorded the song "The [Iranian] Bomb" by Latma TV:



I think that many Iranian folks should try to appreciate things like this Jewish humor. You know, folks, I am as un-Jewish as you are, but it's just fun, and Latma TV is often right on the money when it comes to Iran and other topics.

I wonder whether the Iranians who are abroad can understand that the people like those in this pro-Israeli Internet TV are essentially friendly towards Iran etc. and whether someone has some compassion with the fate of the Jews who are still not treated as fairly as others.

You know, in my hometown of Pilsen, Czech Republic, we used to have thousands of Jews before the war and all of them died. My visit to the local holocaust museum - which I have only saw because my American friend visited me and wanted to see itt - has been a heartbreaking experience and many contemporary attitudes seem way too similar to the developments in Germany of the 1930s (and Czechia in the late 1930s)...

Iranium

I recommend the U.S. and other readers who are interested in the Middle East to watch Iranium, a 60-minute movie by pro-democratic Persian folks and conservative pundits:

Full movie at YouTube

It presents a rather convincing case for the opinion that as a potential owner of the nuclear weapons, Iran represents a qualitatively graver threat than any previous country that became a nuclear power.

The story starts in the 1960s and 1970s when Iran was the most civilized country of the Muslim world. Of course, it was the time when it was governed by the king of kings, the Shah, who was leading the Persian nation to the place where it once belonged - a nation that was critical for the progress of the human civilization - the same civilization that has gradually transformed to the "Western one".

I was about 5-6 years old when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown. At that age, I didn't really understand politics too well (as a first-grader, I bought the friendly pro-Soviet propaganda, and I only became an anti-communist dissident around the age of 8 or so haha) but I do remember that the name of Pahlavi (which sounds like "pohlaví" in Czech, a formal word for sex) and later Khomeini (a very different cup of tea) would appear on TV very frequently.




The Islamic revolution would be totally non-nationalist, fully driven by the religious fanaticism. The movie explains how Iran has been nurturing terrorist organizations across the world. Some scary pictures of officially supported mobs screaming "death to America" and Iranian leaders who say really tough things are sketched, much like possible methods how the regime could destroy the U.S. cities: nuclear bombs in cargo ships, luggages, and electromagnetic pulse above the U.S.

Mutual assured destruction doesn't work as a deterrent for them; in fact, it is a catalyst because those religious loons are obsessed by the idea of a doomsday and destruction in which the final struggle between the believers and infidels will divide the people to the heaven and to the hell. The Islamists are like global warming alarmists on steroids, I add. Some pundits explain that it is not necessary to distinguish radical Islam from the "moderate one" because 5-10 percent of the Muslims are inevitably ready to sacrifice their lives etc. and it's still a huge mass of tens of millions of people who are eager to destroy anything for their medieval divinity.

It's time to combine tough sanctions and credible military power to stop the insane regime before it will become much more expensive to be saving the civilization, they conclude.



Meanwhile, Muammar Gaddafi has killed hundreds of protesters - which is very different from Hosni Mubarak who essentially didn't deliberately harm anyone. Nevertheless, the "mainstream media" are much less eager to criticize Gaddafi because he's a socialist much like almost all of them.

But some rumors, denied by Venezuela, claim that Gaddafi has fled the country, after he ordered his army to bomb the protesters. Some pilots refused and deserted, some of them to Malta, the second largest city was taken by the protesters etc. - it's a possibly emerging civil war (which may end very soon, however).

Similar protests appear in many other Arab countries - the shared language is the main reason that makes them act in the same way, despite different environments and political elites.

Iranian warships sail through Suez canal

Well before the debates whether Egypt has allowed the two ships to get through abated, Iran used the chaotic situation in the largest Arab country and sent these two friendly looking ships to Syria - around Israel:



This is Alvand, an Iranian warship with torpedoes and anti-ship missiles. 1,500 tons. It looks very similar to one of the U.S. ships I liked to visit in Boston.



This is Kharg, a 33,000-ton support ship.




Well, it may ultimately turn out to be a good idea to sink them before it's too late.

WikiLeaks diplomatic cables: a summary

A young U.S. intelligence analyst - or anyone else - could have been behind the leak of 250,000 cables from U.S. embassies all over the world.

Whoever it was, he or she is obviously playing with fire and the WikiLeaks founder himself may be charged with espionage; Julian Assange is also investigated for rape in Sweden. More generally, it has both advantages and disadvantages to "measure" the intermediate stages of various processes. Note that in quantum mechanics, much like in diplomacy, such a measurement may influence the final results.

Obviously, the influence may be both "positive" as well as "negative", depending on whether the "secret work" is more constructive than the opinions of the interceptors who may interrupt it in the middle - which may include the whole public.

To get the honest quantum mechanical results for the original question, you must sum over all conceivable histories. It is often better for sensitive processes, research, and negotiations not to be interrupted and distracted in the middle.

However, once the diplomatic cables are published, I don't think that they're excessively shocking. We have still learned something, namely that

1. behind the scenes, the U.S. administration has a somewhat tougher attitude to Iran than what we can see publicly; however, this attitude could still be included in the impotence category; Gates himself believes that an attack on Iran is hopeless without the U.S. and solves nothing even with the U.S.
2. Israel is doing and thinking exactly what we publicly see; as far as the leaked documents go, the Jewish State may be described as the most honest country in the world
3. Arab countries urge America to bomb Iran; they're clearly more afraid of their Muslim comrades than what they're ready to openly reveal
4. Russia is also afraid of Iran and the big Slavic country is actually excited about the missile defense technology; it may be more excited than many Americans; Russia may try to build its own systems and/or shared systems with the U.S. or others
5. Brazil didn't want to join war on terror
6. China has abandoned the North Korean comrades; it's clear that China no longer considers the totalitarian "spoiled child" (Chinese term) a useful ally and it won't protest against the incorporation of North Korea into South Korea once the commies collapse - either spontaneously or in a stimulated way (e.g. by Japan, as the papers indicate); this is probably going to become the official policy, in fact
7. the Czech Republic is working hard to strengthen the U.S. influence within the EU; that includes some help with the steps against the Iranian nuclear program; some people in Czechia find this finding surprising but I don't find it surprising at all; in fact, the trans-Atlantic link seems to be an official value promoted by the Czech foreign policy
8. prince Charles is not in the same league as the Queen when it comes to his natural authority in the Commonwealth
9. Berlusconi gives wild parties; Merkel is made out of teflon; Putin is an alpha male; the U.S. worries that the Argentine female president doesn't take enough psychiatric medication; Hamid Karzai's brother is probably corrupt and a drug dealer; Mugabe is a "crazy old man" (not only) in South Africa; Gaddafi was intimately close to a voluptuous Ukrainian nurse

Ahmadinejad, demagogy, and the recent deterioration of the West

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is visiting the U.S. and he charms the politically correct Western journalists with his charisma and his ability to abuse their own idiocy and the West's own weaknesses. For example, in a fresh

Associated Press interview,

they're impressed how "calm and self-assured", "being in command of himself and prepared to deflect questions" he appears to be. This is the kind of worship that the journalists wouldn't dedicate to any proper conservative Western politician. ;-)

Is it really so shocking that a leader of a rogue state, chosen primarily for his arrogance, appears self-assured if he is visiting a portion of the world that has deliberately stripped itself of its manliness and the determination to physically defend its core values such as freedom? No one is even contemplating the assassination of Ahmadinejad - and yes, someone certainly should.

If it is so, what should he be afraid of? He is facing a horde of impotent irrelevant sissies and the media that have been pandering exactly the same kind of lies and the destruction of the Western values that he represents in the Middle East - and maybe beyond the Middle East.

In the interviews, he knows how to use his own physical weakness to his advantage. That's exactly the kind of a weapon that works in the West. Should it work? Well, it shouldn't. Why should it matter that it is a frail chimp who is leading this regime? If such superficial things should matter at all, they should matter in the negative way.




Much like many other, very similar demagogues such as Lee Smolin and thousands of others, Ahmadinejad is a double-faced jerk. He is fundamentally adjusting his speeches according to the audiences.

Lee Smolin tries to be subtle when presenting his fog e.g. about the finiteness of string theory or its background independence when he is talking to the experts because he knows that they wouldn't buy a self-evidence nonsense - but he uses 100% of the ignorance of the laymen and journalists when he is talking to them and offers them the cheapest and most obvious lies.

In the very same way, Ahmadinejad impresses his Iranian listeners with ambitious and detailed plans to remove Israel off the map and with a straight denial of the holocaust. When he is talking to the Western media, he doesn't do it. Instead, he offers the kind of "subtle undermining" of the basic moral values by "mere questioning" of the existence of the holocaust. And a "subtle undermining" is something that the politically correct Westerners learned to love.

He only asks: Why does the set of 6 million Jews killed during the war get such a special treatment? Didn't the war kill 60 million? A wise journalist may get ingenious for a while - and he actually provides Ahmadinejad with the answer. It's because the Western ethics appreciates the striking difference between warfare and genocide. But of course, Adhmadinejad asks again: did all the non-Jews die in a standard warfare?

You can continue such analogies and counter-analogies indefinitely and you get get drowned in the miles of confusion. But you must be stupid not to see the statistical difference between the methods and events that has led to the death of the Jews and the death of the non-Jews during the second world war. Of course, one needs some kind of quantitative thinking and decent "instinct" to reach a sensible conclusion.

Does the double-facedness belong to the cannon of a good politician? Well, a good politician - or a good speaker - may adjust the tone to increased the effectiveness according to the audience. But if his speeches contradict each other, he's simply dishonest.

And the people who are not able to catch the most obvious inconsistencies, despite the accessibility of the information in the modern world, are just stupid and we should work as hard as we can for these stupid people's influence on the real world to be minimized (e.g. the influence of imbeciles who vote for Ahmadinejad or those who read Smolin's books as a source of information, to enumerate two structurally similar examples from vastly different contexts).

Ahmadinejad, much like other far left-wing demagogues, always loves to benefit from the weakness of his group and himself personally, and to "merely get to the level of others, which is fair, isn't it?", but when he gets there, he will do anything to suppress the opposition and use his newly gained power as an argument to extend the power. In other words, the egalitarian values are only cherished when he is the bottom dog - but once he gets higher, the new bottom dogs have to be suppressed. It's all about the consensus, isn't it?

The Western leftists and other radical movements are doing the very same thing all the time (just think about the Nazis, communists, or environmentalists who have evolved from whining fringe groups to aggressive defenders of their dominance) - so why can't the Western media see through these cheap tactics?

Well, it's because the bulk of the contemporary Western media themselves have become a part of this dishonest game. As long as Iran - and its clique of leaders - are just another country, it's surely being oppressed by the "Devils" and "Zionists" and it deserves the same rights as the Western countries. But once this strategy succeeds and moves Iran or Ahmadinejad higher in a hierarchy of power and influence, the language abruptly changes. Quite suddenly, he is a representative of the majority and others have no right to reach his status, have they? They're just a f***ing minority that should be spitted upon.

So in his interviews, he is saying a lot of garbage about his desire to have a world that is free of nuclear weapons. He doesn't want any nuclear weapons, we are told. Of course, he is saying these crazy things to the gullible Western audiences in order to inflate the Western impotence even beyond its current, already bloated dimensions. And Iran is also a great democracy with lots of freedom, he mentions. It's just that the majority has to decide - which is what he is guaranteeing for Iran. (Some minorities are completely absent in Iran, such as gays - Ahmadinejad told us: the fa**ot in the presidential palace is the only exception.) Is a country of this kind a democracy?

Well, obviously it isn't. If this kind of a "rule of the majority" were enough for a country to be democracy, than Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union would have been democracies, too. A democracy is not a country where the leadership describes itself as the ultimate reflection - and the ultimate spokesman - of the majority and where it works hard and arranges the institutions in order to preserve this situation. Quite on the contrary, a democracy is a country where the people choose - without any intimidation - who the spokesman will be in the few years to come and where the right answer to such questions is simply not clear except right after the elections and where no institutions with a direct power are being arranged to produce one answer or another.

Once someone intimidates the opposition by saying that the opposition is doing possibly undesirable things because they contradict the majority's will, he is no longer acting democratically. That's one of the many ways to see that Hitler, Stalin, or Ahmadinejad have not been democratic politicians and that railway porn kibitzer Pachauri is no representative of the evolving insights of the climatological community.

In democracy, the opposition simply can't be de facto annihilated or constantly demonized for its being a voice of a minority. Democracy is a system where the will can always change and where no power or status is forever guaranteed. Needless to say, this dynamical character of values applies to science, in an even more essential way.

Because he is talking to the politically correct, morally and intellectually degenerated Western journalists, he may also boast all the time. The future belongs to Iran, we hear, aside from all this incredible crap. Everyone has to accept that they're a power.

Well, be sure, stupid chimp of Tehran, that I won't accept it - and hundreds of millions of people in the civilized world won't accept it, either. Once you will act in such a way that would indicate that you want to do something counter-productive or dangerous that transcends the boundaries of your once famous and currently pathetic country, I will prefer to nuke hundreds of thousands of the brainwashed sheep and allahs who live there (and who give you a part of your power to emit your arrogant pronouncements) over taking the risk that the freedom will be removed or reduced in our civilized world.

Iran's is just a pathetic regime that may ventilate its self-confidence in front of the Western media because the inconsistent sissies who have a lukewarm relationship to freedom, to say the least, have spread in much of the Western political institutions and the media in recent years if not decades. But the latter fact is not here with us to stay, either. If there were a genuine threat or even a genuine confrontation, be sure that we would replace the rotten elites of the West and the self-assured majority that licks the ass of a chimp named Mahmoud could disappear after a few blasts.

Ahmadinejad, you are the person who should learn that you simply have no power outside Iran and, except for the irrelevant agencies you are currently giving the interviews to, no one is respecting any influence of yours outside Iran, OK? ;-)

Thanks for your understanding.

---

Avigdor Lieberman in Prague



Meanwhile, the Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman is visiting Czechia: Czech public radio. On the picture above, he is seen with the zionist prince, the Czech FM, Karl Johannes Nepomuk Josef Norbert Friedrich Antonius Wratislaw Mena von und zu Schwarzenberg.

It's kind of good to feel that at least our relevant politicians, however secondary their importance may globally be, won't leave an ally just because he faces some trouble. Schwarzenberg has assured Lieberman about Czechia's remaining an ally.

Lieberman is realistic about the impossibility to reach peace in a near future. His plan for a future peace includes population & territory swaps as well as mandatory declaration of loyalty to Israel as a country by all of its citizens, whether they're Jews, Arabs, or others. It makes complete sense to me.

Crazily enough, Czechia is perhaps the only country outside Israel that openly agrees with the self-evident point that the growth of the settlements is natural and, to some extent, inevitable.

Ex-president Václav Havel has joined Spanish ex-PM Aznar's pro-Israel group that will try to improve the image of Israel in the world and suppress the flourishing of anti-Israel boycotts across the world (none of them was ever joined by anyone in Czechia). Not sure whether it may help at all.

Just moments ago, I thought that the exceptionally good Czech-Israeli relationships only began around the war - because of the horrible things done to Jews that the Czechs mostly passively witnessed on our territory, because of the new opposition to the Soviet Union that wanted us to befriend comrade Arafat etc.

But a knowledgeable woman on TV has just explained us that the exceptional relationships go a century back and they include our beloved first Czechoslovak president, "daddie" Thomas Garrigue Masaryk (born 1850), who was a staunch defender of a Jewish state on the "Palestinian" territory. She also wisely says that the Czechs feel that Israel shares "our fate", being surrounded by the enemies.

Bush liked the dumplings

"Vojáci, nazdár," greeted Bush the soldiers in very good Czech.

During his speech / full, Bush said that Russia under Vladimir which is how he proudly calls Putin was derailed from democratic reform tracks and that Russia has nothing to be afraid of. Countries like Czechia no longer have to choose who is their friend because both America and Russia may be friends, he said. Bush encouraged China to open its politics as much as it opened its economy.

The Czech defense minister gave him her new CD, "Good Morning Mr Radar, we couldn't wait", a parody of a 1961 song celebrating Gagarin. :-) I can't almost hear her singing in it. She is much more quiet than Jan Vyčítal.

There's a lot of criticism of this new song because the lyrics is too simple (it was completed in 10 minutes) and because it is a propaganda song backwards (the Gagarin song wasn't propaganda but rather an authentic expression of global excitement but there have been a lot of propaganda songs in the socialist bloc, of course). The only difference between propaganda and propaganda upside-down is that propaganda is wrong & ordered and rewarded by a powerful political clique while propaganda upside-down is correct & not ordered by anyone and its authors become a general target of virtually everyone else.

Lunch (photos). Bush was chewing a chewing gum for hours. When he saw some faces that looked surprised, he probably swallowed the chewing gum :-) because no one noticed that he would throw it away. The appetizer was a cheese roll with a honey-cognac sauce. Bush's eyes started to shine when he saw the duck with Czech dumplings and cabbage and he liked the lunch prepared by 30 cooks. Bush tried to smile at everyone and speak to everyone. For example, he praised the green tie of the environment minister, Martin Bursík, the chief of the Green Party. Well, this is somewhat characteristic about Bush's recent positions. :-/

In the afternoon's talk, freedom was Bush's most favorite word. Its attractivity is the most powerful weapon against terrorism. Freedom was given to us by the Creator, Bush said, and it is the only arrangement that leads to justice and human rights. The event "Thank you America" was attended by few hundred people. The anti-American rallies were comparable although they were much more heavily promoted in the media.



CNN reported that Bush has met its counterpart, the prime minister Klaus Topolánek. The photograph above suggests that Klaus Topolánek are two people, not one. Click the photograph to get 94 more.

Angelina Jolie decided to adopt a Czech boy.

Bush in Prague: rockets not radars

The missile defense system will be one of the main topics of George W. Bush's visit of Czechia that starts tonight. What do Czechs think about it?

According to polls, a majority (around 60+ percent) opposes the radar base. But it's not necessarily the sensible part of the Czech population. The demonstrations against the base are usually organized by communists, Islamists, and "peaceful feminists" (which is fortunately not a numerous group). One of the rallies had to be moved to a less prestigious place. Thanks God.

On the other hand, the icon on the left belongs to the movement called "We don't want radars, we want rockets!". I sympathize with the movement. Reuters has released a report called "Prague has Cold War edge before Bush visit". They compare the current plans with a long history of powers occupying Czechia in the past and ask whether the citizens think that it's the same thing today.



The picture above shows Fidel Castro who has become one of the Czech advocates of the U.S. umbrella. The pro-American demonstration took place at the Prague Castle.

The Czech prime minister will assure Bush that Czechia is an ally but one that can't be directly controlled by a superpower. He will make it clear that the U.S. will have to pay the expenses connected with the radar otherwise the project is dead.



Ms Vlasta Parkanová, the Czech minister of defense, is a former jazz singer. She had a great idea to compensate the negative campaign against the radar organized by various kinds of commies. She asked Mr Jan Vyčítal, a songmaker who is also well-known for the most famous song of the first celebrations of liberation of Pilsen by the U.S. army that were held in 1990, for collaboration, and they created a brand new old song.



A highly unofficial videoclip of the new song. In the happy end, U.S., Russian, and Osama's nuclear bombs meet in the Czech Brdy Hills. ;-)

He used the melody of "Good morning Major Gagarin" (MP3) and both of them have recorded Czech as well as English version of the new song. Vyčítal only needed 10 minutes to create new lyrics - well, it's almost identical to the old lyrics about Gagarin. :-) I only see Czech lyrics so here's my translation:

The whole world heard the news from the free press,
the whole world suspended all its chats.
And I welcome you [Bush] by shaking you hand
and we turn all our eyes to the skies.

Good morning, the banner with stars and stripes,
you have already unrolled above [us].
Good morning, the banner of our friends
with their jeeps who have come to save us.

Good morning, the radar, simply welcome,
we couldn't wait but now it is here.
Good morning, the radar, I applaud you
and our pals were waving with their hats.

Tell the guys who live on the stars,
tell the guys who live in outer space.
Tell them that we want to live in peace
but we prefer clothes from Uncle Sam.

Good morning, the radar, simply welcome... hats.

Tell the guys we know who has freed us.
Back then in May nineteen fourty-five.
And where Masaryk with Woodrow Wilson
helped our whole nation.

Good morning, the banner with stars and stripes...

I hope the actual English lyrics is better than mine. Bush will receive a CD of this authentic and moderate Czech socialist propaganda, with music stolen from the U.S., copied to modern conditions. :-)

George Bush will visit Prague next week

See also: Bush in Prague and rockets, not radars and Bush liked the dumplings

Laura Bush plans to enjoy gardens of the Prague Castle, together with Lívia Klausová, the Czech first lady who is Slovak.



George Bush has to see the headquarters of the Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty in Prague, a building that used to be the communist Parliament.



Most Czechs are looking forward to see the Bush family. However, Martina Navrátilová wants to get her Czech citizenship back to protest against the "Bush regime". ;-)

Russia has successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile system (ICBM) that can beat anyone. Our Slavic brothers in Moscow's Izvestia daily have calculated that they need 15 minutes to destroy Czechia by nukes if the country hosts the missile defense system. Polish officials have correctly identified this position of the Russian brothers as their mental problem. ;-)

Klaus in Russia

The Czech president had a friendly phone call with his U.S. counterpart, mostly about the radar base. George Bush will visit Prague in June 2007.



Today, Václav Klaus started an official visit of Russia. His relations with Vladimir Putin are much better than the average relations between two international leaders which will make any possible controversy about the radars less violent.

Radar excursion: visa denied

Two Czech lawmakers, a communist deputy and a Christian democratic senator, were denied U.S. visa for their trip to the Marshall Islands where they were invited to see how the missile defense radar works.

It is hard to avoid mixed, mostly negative feelings. It would be a kind of fun if a communist were denied the visa for being a communist except that it's apparently not the case. They were rejected simply because they didn't submit their documents early enough: for purely bureaucratic reasons.

I view it as a typical example of the system being overrun by uncontrollable bureaucracy. If the U.S. thought that the radar base were a good thing for its national security, it should be completely obvious that trivial formalities such as visas for foreign lawmakers who will help to decide about the fate of this base should be completely circumventable.

The fact that it's impossible to avoid these bureaucratic misunderstandings even under these highly special circumstances shows that something is wrong with the system. The U.S. government or ambassadors should have the right to unconditionally allow entry to the U.S. in special circumstances and this situation should be an example.

And that's the memo.

Czechia vs Austria: nuclear energy and radars

You might think that all environmentalists have already switched to the anti-greenhouse religion and they should therefore prefer nuclear energy over fossil fuels. You would be wrong.



This is the Temelín nuclear power plant producing 2x 1000 MW of energy. Its late Soviet nuclear core is combined with American gadgets to control the device from Westinghouse. The plant is situated in Southern Bohemia about 30 miles from the border with an anti-nuclear country called Austria. This distance makes the plant more controversial than a somewhat older type of a Soviet nuclear power plant located in Dukovany, Moravia.




Austrian environmental activists have been doing all possible nasty things against the power plant including border blockades. Very recently, this has convinced the Austrian government to accept some of their demands. This surrender has intensified the activists' belief that border blockades are a great idea: it is an extremely dangerous decision to surrender to extremists, even if it is only by a little bit. At any rate, we should no longer talk about activists: what they represent seems to be an exaggerated version of the official Austrian attitude. Temelín is not necessarily flawless - what is? - but the accusations about nuclear insecurity are only substantiated by irrational fears.

Electricity: numbers

Let me now mention some basic annual numbers as of 2004 or 2005 describing the electricity in Czechia / Austria (in this order) in billions of kWh (or percent if indicated). The countries have comparable populations:

• electricity production: 79 / 65
  
• fossil fuels: 76% / 30%
  
• hydro: 3% / 67%
  
• nuclear: 20% / 0%
  
• other: 1% / 3%
  
• consumption: 59 / 65
  
• exports: 25 / 18
  
• imports: 10 / 20

You can see that the consumption is comparable. Because of certain geographical reasons, Austria can obtain 67% of its energy from hydro sources while Czechia needs 76% from fossil fuels.



Austria must import some - 2 billion kWh - energy every year. Czechia is a clear exporter - 15 billion kWh. At any rate, one can't afford to close the nuclear power plant because the energy would be missing. Someone would have to produce it elsewhere - probably by burning more fossil fuels - otherwise blackouts similar to the recent ones would follow.

In this moderate tension, Karel Schwarzenberg, the Czech minister of foreign affairs who could also be a member of the German or Austrian government if he wanted - which is both great as well as controversial under different circumstances - remained a defender of the Czech dignity. With a delicate aristocratic diplomacy, he indicated that the blockades are not the optimal way to improve the relationships between the countries.

Missiles

Temelín is not the only thing that is going to cause tension in the Czech-Austrian relations. On Monday, the U.S. and the Czech Republic will start negotiations about the radar base in Brdy, Central Bohemia. Why is this another source of tension? Well, Russia views the base as something that threatens its security and it even suggested that they could attack the base - which is of course ludicrous because that would be an attack against the U.S. Needless to say, if the U.S. can't guarantee security to the Czech ally in the case of an attack against the radar base, the project will die.



However, it is not just Russia. There are all possible countries around where the anti-American sentiments are stronger than in the Czech Republic (and my father was just explaining me that among many older ordinary Czechs he knows, these negative sentiments are strong anyway). However, Schwarzenberg argued that Austria should be grateful to Czechs because the base could potentially protect them, too. Needless to say, Schwarzenberg is right.

I just think that all these anti-nuclear, anti-energy, anti-growth, anti-capitalist, anti-greenhouse-effect, anti-American, anti-everything people have gotten far more influential than they should be and someone should deal with them much more aggressively than what we're seeing right now.

And that's the memo.

Missile defense system against Iran, not Russia

There is a growing consensus that Poland will host the missiles and Jince in the Czech Republic will host the radar (see the XBR radar on the picture below). Jince in the Brdy hills is known for trilobites.



Some Russian officials immediately commented that Russia will redirect some of its weapons to the Czech radar, getting ready to attack it. The Reference Frame thinks that these comments are meant to show the Russian muscles and should be treated as ridiculous.

Moreover, Rice, Poles, and Czechs agree that the system is not built against Russia but primarily against a possible attack from Iran against the U.S.

Missile defense: radars in Czechia, missiles in Poland

The new Czech government makes it much easier to locate a part of the missile defense system in the Czech Republic. The senior government party, the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) led by Mr Mirek Topolánek, supports such a unit without any referendum.



Mr Karel Schwarzenberg, the aristocratic minister of foreign affairs, seems to be excited by the idea, too. He says that "it is a great contribution to our security". Do you know which party has nominated him? Well, it's the Green Party. Do the U.S. environmentalists support the missile defense system? The notion that Europe is necessarily more anti-American and anti-imperialist ;-) than America may need a revision.

The third party in the government, the Christian Democrats (KDU-ČSL) seems to agree, too. Ms Vlasta Parkanová thinks that the project should be seriously considered because the threat is real and will become even more real in the future.

Two places without any population near some villages, namely Jince near Příbram, Bohemia, or Libavá near Olomouc, Moravia, seem to be the most likely spots for the project. About 200 experts would work in the facility that would respect the Czech laws. The missiles would be placed in Poland.

Nuclear North Korea: welcome but...

Czechoslovakia's former comrades from North Korea claim that they have successfully completed their first underground nuclear test. The U.S. agencies initially couldn't confirm the report but South Korea and Australia have detected tremor so the communist report is probably true. Later, USGS described it as a 4.2 magnitude earthquake, confirming the report, too.



Figure 1: The denotation with energy of 30-100 percent of a Hiroshima bomb (5-15 kilotons of TNT), according to Russian sources, fortunately occured in a horizontal isolated mountain tunnel and not in Seoul or Tokyo: 200,000 lives were saved.

If they were good guys who are among the first ones to realize this technological advance, I would add: "Congratulations." Not this time.

They can praise themselves, after all. The new weapon will strengthen the peace in the region. The success comes exactly at the time when North Korea is completing the construction of the modern socialist economy that will exceed and supersede the imperialist nations. Blah blah blah - I've been hearing these things for the first one half of my life.

Of course, the Democratic People's Republic - or, more precisely, the Totalitarian Party Leader's Dictatorship - is far from being the first dangerous country that has opened this Pandora's box so it would be exaggerated to paint the situation as a real crisis. Nevertheless, it is annoying, especially because the socialist nation seems to have untested ballistic missiles able to reach the U.S. territory.

The new Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe will probably find the test useful as a method to increase his support among the public: whenever your country faces a threat, the government becomes more important and more loved.

Aspects of the U.S. missile defense base

The U.S. already has some bases associated with the missile defense system in Scotland and Greenland.

The new base could be either in England, or Poland, or Czechia. Czechia probably has the best conditions, according to the experts.

80% of the Czechs are against such a base. However, the new government supports the base and opposes a referendum. Moreover, this positive attitude is not a right-wing conspiracy of the current government: the negotiations to build such a base go back to the social-democratic government of Vladimír Špidla in 2002.

The U.S. would either build a special radar or locate 10 anti-missiles to destroy intercontinental missiles in the middle of their flight.

10 squared kilometers would be hosting a facility that would mostly be buried underground. Around 400 U.S. soldiers or other staff would be working in the facility located either in Central Bohemia or Central Moravia. The small number implies no significant economical benefits.

The system has been considered for 40 years and it is primarily meant as a protection against Iran, Syria, and North Korea.

Positives:

• According to the newest information, the system would also be protecting the European allies. The U.S. would have a high interest to protect Czechia in particular that could partly simplify its own defense
• New possibilities to solve crisis situations in the context of NATO arise
• Czechia gains importance in the overall military picture of Europe
• Czech researchers could share the opportunity to work in the U.S. labs with the newest technologies

Negatives:

• Relatively untested technology can create a false feeling of security
• The U.S. may gain more power than others in Europe might want
• New technologies could revive arms races with potential negative consequences for the global economy
• The bases could be attractive as targets, of course

Plan for a few years:

• In 2006 and 2007, new anti-missiles should be located in Alaska and a new place in Europe. The information technologies would interconnect satellites and all these bases
• In 2008 and 2009, new research should be focused on the annihilation of missiles right after they're launched
• In 2010 and 2010, mobile rockets would be installed at various places, including ships and submarines; incremental improvements in 2012 and 2013 would follow
• Rockets would also be installed in the outer space - the real Star Wars; this concept originated, incidentally, in the skull of the Nazi gift to the U.S. rocket science, Wernher von Braun

Source: Mojenoviny

Missile defense: a success

The controversial missile defense system has had a good day.

• BBC

A dummy missile was launched from Alaska and 17 minutes later, it was destroyed by an 16-meter-long interceptor from California. The warhead was hit by a fridge-sized "kill vehicle" moving by the speed of 29,000 kilometers per hour. This $85 million test has increased the measured reliability of the system slightly above 50%. About $10 billion is spent on the program every year. That's a few percent of the global annual cost of the Kyoto protocol, and I am absolutely sure that a missile attack is a bigger threat than a few percent of global warming - and probably the whole global warming - even though the costly Kyoto protocol can only remove a few percent of this hypothetical warming.

I have never understood the comments that the missile defense system was impossible. It is possible: the only questions are the quantitative ones: how much does it cost and what it can do and how reliably. ;-)

The modern civilization faces all kinds of threats but it also has all kinds of tools and policies to fight against these threats. It is hard to quantify the relative importance of different scary scenarios but I believe that the old-fashioned missile attacks remain a likely threat. Countries that don't like the West are expected to have or acquire old-fashioned weapons.

Is it possible that Iran and North Korea already have nuclear bombs in the New York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco waiting to be activated? Is it possible that they will be capable to do so in the future? I don't know. Maybe. Such a thing has never happened but the responsible officials together with the intelligence services are already fighting against this potential threat and other threats they find imaginable. It is easier for them to supervise the U.S. territory than to check what's going on in countries that are not exactly friends.

An old-fashioned attack remains a possibility and it could be helpful to be protected against such a threat, even though the protection wouldn't be 100% reliable.

Imagine that a hostile country just develops nuclear weapons and its leader orders the U.S. to introduce communism, Sharia law, or to immediately stop all sources of carbon dioxide - or to face nuclear consequences. Many of these guys believe that their dreams are not only justified but also realistic. What will the U.S. president do? Surely, she won't accept such a deal. How could she sacrifice the market economy, religious freedom, or all of technology in the U.S.? It is better to be at risk that one or two U.S. cities will be destroyed before the whole attacking country will be flattened. No doubt about it. Neither Condi nor Hillary would surrender. You would have to elect Dennis Kucinich or someone like that to get a different answer and it is just terribly unlikely.

Fine. But the communists, islamists, and perhaps also the environmentalists can be dead serious. One can simply imagine that they launch the missile with a nuclear warhead. What will you do? You can't do much if you don't have a missile defense system.

Many people would argue that the U.S. government would never accept the risk of being attacked by nukes. I just don't believe it. In fact, it has done so in the past. All these questions are quantitative. It is clear that some demands will remain unacceptable and the risk will remain a better option in these cases. In such situations, you simply want to reduce the risk.

I believe that the reliability of the missile defense system will continue to increase. But even if you imagine that it will be 50%, such a reduction of the risk is priceless. The imperfect reliability only means that the average benefits are reduced by a factor of two, not more. Many people can't understand this reasoning. Many people think that if the safety is not 100%, it is worthless. Many people's reasoning has the form of zero times infinity, and what a surprise that most of their conclusions are crappy.

Imagine that in the next 50 years, there is a 10% probability that someone will send nukes against 5 large U.S. cities in average and there will be or won't be a 50% probability of intercepting each missile. What is the benefit of having the defense system?

To make a random order-of-magnitude estimate, consider 10 million casualties per attack. The value of a human life is really uncountable but let's find a lower bound. Imagine that one killed human being together with his or her fraction of the city plus the indirect losses for the rest of the country is evaluated as $200 thousand. The large attack against one city is thus above 2 trillions of U.S. dollars. I must divide it by 10 because the probability of the scary scenario is 10%; multiply by 5 which is the average number of missiles; and divide by 2 because the missile defense system is inefficient. You still save half a trillion or 500 billion of U.S. dollars.

That's the price of the missile defense system for 50 years, assuming that the annual spending will be constant. My calculation was designed to match the costs and benefits. It is up to you to decide which numbers should be adjusted and what your result will be. If the risky scenario is at least remotely acceptable, I think that the unbiased comparison of the average costs and benefits is the only rational way to decide whether an insurance is a good idea. However, when truly catastrophic scenarios are at stake, it may be better to be safe than sorry.

Consequently, I think that the missile defense system is a good investment for the U.S. Incidentally, the experts have found out that Czechia has better conditions for a missile defense base than Poland. However, most of the population oppose the base; the anti-base campaign is led by f$#$# young communists.

If you want to see an opposing opinion, see the nutcases at dailykos.com. Their description of the system reminds me of Peter Woit's description of modern theoretical physics. It's probably not an accident since dailykos.com is one of the primary sources of information for Peter Woit: he has learned a lot from them.

Pandora's box

Pandora was, according to the Greek mythology, the first woman in the world. Zeus has constructed her to punish the men for Prometheus' theft of the secret of fire. Good job, Zeus.

She had received gifts from all Gods. How do you say it in Greek? Yes, "all" is "pan" like in "pan-American". Gifts are given by "donors", so a girl who got gifts from all Gods must be Pandora. :-)

The gift from Zeus, the God of Gods, was a box. She was instructed not to open it. However, as a curious woman, she opened it and released sorrow, plague, poverty, crime, and other misfortunes of mankind. (Well, Adam and Eve did more or less the same thing with the Macintosh.) She closed the box before the hope evaporated: hope was the only ingredient that was left in Pandora's box. Later, she opened the box again and released hope: this act of hers ended a very bad period of the human history.




What is the message? The message is that what you get from Pandora's box depends on the timing and other circumstances. Pandora's nuclear box was first opened in Summer 1945, and although the obvious consequences looked horrific, most historians and others agree that the nuclear bombs saved a lot of lives. Nuclear weapons give people a certain additional power and the power can lead both to clearly bad as well as relatively good outcomes, in comparison with the non-nuclear alternatives.

I think that this was essentially the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The White House would be mad if they declared the nuclear weapons to be forever unusable. I've been always amazed how many nuclear heads have been produced despite the tiny probability that someone would like to use a significant portion of them. When I was a kid, we would hear about the disastrous consequences of nuclear weapons all the time. Life on Earth would end, and all this stuff.

I no longer believe these alarmist ideas; they look kind of childish and irrational to me. Life on Earth did not end with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, even life in Japan did not end; on the contrary, Japan started one of its most optimistic historical periods. The higher the moral standards of the main nuclear powers are, the better outcome one can expect from a possible nuclear confrontation.

A necessary condition for the hundreds of thousands of Hiroshimas in the currently existing warheads to destroy life is that they're controlled by a lunatic such as Mahnoud Ahmadinejad or the leaders of Sudan. And one of the tasks for responsible politicians is to guarantee that such a thing won't happen.



Figure 1: In fact, it's a task for both of them.

In the real world, there are many other sources of evil, instability, and numerous threats, and there are easy-to-imagine circumstances in which the nuclear weapons could become helpful for a more civilized party in a certain conflict. Yes, I still prefer a future without nuclear confrontations, but the price to pay for such a future can't be infinite.

Iran may nuke Czechia, Italy, Romania

According to Haaretz, Iran has just received a first batch of BM-25 missiles from its ally in the Axis of Evil, namely North Korea. They are able to carry nuclear warheads and attack countries such as the Czech Republic, Italy, and Romania.

Such a conflict is not hard to start. Imagine that sometime in the future, for example on August 22nd, 2006, Iranian troops suddenly attack Romanian oil rigs on their territory. Romania will respond nervously - and the mad president of Iran will have an opportunity to check out his nukes.

• Canada.COM

The Czech Republic is, together with England, one of two European countries on an Iranian black list of countries whose citizens are not allowed to get 15-day visa for Iran. Some Muslims in the Czech Republic preach that Islamic Shari'a law should be adopted by Czechia.

The diplomatic relations between Czechia and Iran cooled down 8 years ago when the Radio Liberty (more precisely in Iran: Radio Tomorrow) started to broadcast anti-government programs in Persian from Prague. See here.