The Mound of Sound

Russia built them, China has them and Iran may have them soon.

The Sizzler, Russia’s new anti-ship missile is said to be the best in the world and it’s got the US Navy flummoxed.

“This is a carrier-destroying weapon,” said Orville Hanson, who evaluated weapons systems for 38 years with the Navy. “That’s its purpose.”

“Take out the carriers” and China” can walk into Taiwan,” he said. China bought the missiles in 2002 along with eight diesel submarines designed to fire it, according to Office of Naval Intelligence spokesman Robert Althage.

If Iran does get its hands on the Sizzler it could feasibly lock down the Persian Gulf and disrupt the world’s oil supply.

It’s an old Gordon Lightfoot song but it could well double as the anthem for Canada’s softwood lumber capitulation, er treaty, with the United States.

To buy peace, we let the US government keep a big hunk of the illegal duties it levied on Canadian softwood imports, money that was then handed over to the US lumber industry to fund further legal attacks on us.

So the Harper/Emerson masterstroke agreement of 2006, the one where we supposedly bought seven years of peace, lasted one year before the Americans made their move.

That followed the procedures set out in the deal, arbitration first and then submission of the dispute to a court in London. Okay. The court came out, ruling in favour of BC and Alberta but finding that eastern producers were in violation of the terms.

Being a law-abiding country, Emerson wasted no time in saying Canada would accept the ruling which the treaty makes binding. So what do the Americans have to say? You got it, they won’t say they’ll accept the “binding” decision. Instead the US trade reps said they’ll consult the “stakeholders,” the American lumber companies that brought the attack funded by Canadian plunder.

And if they don’t agree to their binding obligations? Well they’re not quite so binding as we thought. Seems the US can bail out of the deal whenever they like. Would somebody remind me why the hell we’re in Afghanistan anyway?

A fascinating item in the International Herald Tribune about a new and rapidly expanding industry in India – surrogate motherhood.

India, widely known for the destination of a variety of outsourced jobs is now fielding a corps of housewives available for artificial insemination – at bargain prices!

“Reproductive outsourcing is a new but rapidly expanding enterprise in India. Clinics that provide surrogate mothers for foreigners say they have been inundated with requests from the United States and Europe in recent months, as word spreads of India’s combination of skilled medical professionals, relatively liberal laws and low prices.

“Commercial surrogacy, which is banned in some European countries and subject to a wide spectrum of regulation in U.S. states, was legalized in India in 2002. The cost of the medical procedures, air tickets and hotels for two trips to India (one for the fertilization and a second to collect the baby) comes to around $25,000, roughly a third of the typical price in the United States.”

“Under guidelines issued by the Indian Medical Council, surrogate mothers sign away all their rights to the child. In cases where the surrogate provides a womb for an embryo formed from the sperm and egg of the prospective parents, it is only the names of these genetic parents that appear on the birth certificate. If an egg donor is involved, her name does not appear on the document, either; only that of the father.”

There are so many moral and ethical issues that leap out from this and they’ll never, ever come up for serious consideration. Yes, your own baby and for less than the price of a Volkswagen!

This is, unfortunately, becoming a weekly feature.

The big news this week is the big money being thrown into rearmament by India and by China.

To the alarm of Pakistan, India has increased its military budget by 7.8% for the coming year. It’s also in the process of purchasing and license-producing a total force of 1,500 Russian T-80 main battle tanks which should give it the biggest armoured force in Asia, perhaps anywhere.

China, not to be outdone, is bumping its military spending 18% this year. From BBC:

“Just before the announcement, the US released a report criticising China’s military spending, and voicing concern over advances in space and cyberspace.

China rejected the Pentagon report as a “serious distortion of facts” that could harm its relations with the US.

“It breaks international norms… We do not pose a threat to any country. The US should drop its Cold War mentality,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

In the report, Washington claimed that the real Chinese defence budget for 2007 was at least double the stated amount. “

This is rich, coming from the Pentagon. Bush has increased the Pentagon’s budget by 11% for 2008, from $432 to $481-billion (exclusive of War on Terror costs) and the amount of that increase almost equals China’s entire expanded military budget which will total around $59-billion.

The Chinese military expansion, however, is serious. McClatchey Newspapers reports that, “…China has aggressively expanded its navy to include 57 attack submarines, including eight equipped with a fierce Russian supersonic missile, known as a “Sizzler,” that some experts consider the finest anti-ship missile in existence.”

I know I keep harping on this but Western leaders have to get off their arses and begin demanding that Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Mumbai, Tokyo and the Koreas knock this off, now. This is serious, people. We can’t afford to let it go unnoticed, unmentioned.

That little bit of despicable perversion comes from a Norwegian pro-whaling lobby, the High North Alliance.

Here’s their thinking. They’ve done a survey that shows harpooning whales is environmentally less damaging than raising livestock. From the Environmental News Network:

“The survey, focused on whale boats’ fuel use, showed that a kilo (2.2 lbs) of whale meat represented just 1.9 kilo (4.2 lbs) of greenhouse gases against 15.8 for beef, 6.4 for pork and 4.6 for chicken.

Greenhouse gas emissions caused by one meal of beef are the equivalent of eight meals of whale meat,” the study said.”

Now, what the Alliance’s study overlooked is that the best environmental solution is actually to harpoon Norwegian whalers themselves. Not only is it cheap and effective, it eliminates your dinner’s greenhouse gas emissions for decades. Hey Svend, get over here!

This should get a lot of brass noses out of joint. An informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers is scheduled for this week. At the meeting, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner “will express the need for the alliance to develop a true strategy in Afghanistan.”

Hmm, a true strategy, why didn’t we think of that before? Of course, Kouchner’s true strategy will have to be wrapped around the addition of a few hundred French combat troops for eastern Afghanistan. Mr. Kouchner’s true strategy probably overlooks the need for many thousands of additional combat troops but no matter.

Memo to the Big Cod. You’re being outed by a Frenchman who says NATO generals have been screwing around over there these last six years without a “true strategy.”

Remember the name, Mohamed Kohail, you’ll be hearing it a lot in the next couple of months.

The 16-year old has been convicted of murder in Saudi Arabia and sentenced to public beheading. He has 80-days in which to appeal his sentence.

Turns out it was a schoolyard brawl in which Kohail, came to aid of his brother, Sultan, after he was beset by a gang of a dozen boys, some allegedly armed, who claimed he’d insulted a girl. A punch was thrown and one of the gang. the girl’s cousin, fell dead.

Kohail’s family says he was often denied access to his lawyer and convicted in a bizarre trial that consisted of nine, 10-minute court sessions.

The Kohail family had gone to Saudi Arabia to attend a relative’s wedding, apparently a protracted ritual that entails three ceremonies.