Putin puts an end to clubbing baby harp seals in the White Sea. So ends a chapter that really freaked me out as a kid when I saw it on PBS. Long story.

No, different Topol. . . But it definitely has the potential to remove the coffee stains from your teeth.  And the teeth from your head.

Just in case you thought that the whole Russia problem just went away, Russia just tested a new ICBM designed to evade detection by anti-ballistic missile systems.

So, while the Bush Administration rattles an empty saber scabbard, Russia actually does things about it.  Feel safe, yet?

Did anyone even know there was such a thing as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization?  I certainly didn’t.  It seems the Organization is yet another multi-national pacts, though this one is less like the EU and more like NATO.

Well, it turns out that this group includes China (duh), Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.  Nations looking to join this group include our buddies Iran and Pakistan.  The admission or denial of these states is at least one item on the agenda for their current meeting, happening right now.  There are concerns, as one might expect, about the United States’ response to adding those members in what is at least on paper an alliance of military proportions.

It might be illuminating, when viewing world affairs, to keep this coalition in mind.  For a start, it’s worth considering the fact that neither Iran nor Pakistan feels compelled to join in any similar coaltions with Middle Eastern nations. . .  because of course, they are ethnically and historically separate regions.

OK, so when the man who brokered the end of the Cold War also doesn’t trust us - when the man is willing to make public statements for the world to hear about our untrustworthiness - it’s kinda bad, isn’t it?

RIA Novosti - Russia - U.S. promises cannot be trusted - Gorbachev

“The Americans promised that NATO wouldn’t move beyond the boundaries of Germany after the Cold War, but now half of central and eastern Europe are members, so what happened to their promises? It shows they cannot be trusted,” he said in Paris.

Ah, just in case you forgot that there was still an asswipe in the Oval Office, George has been busy readying the stage for his final exit, which will commence with the dropping of Russian bombs on Poland:

Bush and Polish PM hail progress on missile shield deal | Politics | Reuters

President George W. Bush said on Monday he had agreed the United States would help modernize the Polish military as part of a U.S. plan to base components of a global missile defense shield in Poland.

Just to bring you up to speed if you’ve not been paying attention, George Bush decided that the best place to have a Star Wars missile defense system was in Poland, Russia’s old turf.  The Bush Administration has insisted that the defense shield is meant to protect us from rogue states such as North Korea.  I’m no military expert - much less ballistics, physics or even higher geometry - but could someone please explain to me how a shield in Poland protects the United States from missiles launched from North Korea?

As you might have expected, Russia is a bit put-out by the idea of their chief nuclear rival putting up a missile defense system in their back yard.   It is unmistakably provocative.  And while it’s true that Vladimir Putin probably needs to do a bit of sabre rattling to maintain his tough-guy image at home, I think we should all probably be standing up and taking notice when they threaten to bomb any missile shield parked in their neighborhood.

But even more importantly, don’t miss the code wording in the above article: “Modernizing” Poland’s military is neat language for arming Poland with newer and more powerful weapons.  Get that: arming Russia’s recently-liberated satellite nation - the one they’ve fought over with Germany since time out of mind - with new and more powerful weapons.

What new and more powerful weapons?  Well, golly, that’s a great question that the media aught perhaps to ask him, eh?

McClatchy has an interesting article this afternoon discussing the U.S. military’s activities mobilizing to find ways to use the Internet to conduct war. It was, of course, an inevitability. And of course, as a wise person recently wrote, dictatorships call their armies armies, whereas democracies always use the ruse of “defense:”

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 11/26/2007 | Into the wild new yonder: U.S. prepares for cyber-wars

The blueprint for the military is the “2006 National Military Strategy for Cyberspace Operations,” a classified document that includes both defensive and offensive measures, according to officials and analysts. Likely offensive tactics include disabling an enemy’s command-and-control networks, destroying data or dispatching false information to weapons networks, often as part of a larger attack with air power and other traditional weaponry.

What new devilry will come of this is, for now, an open question. Certainly like all covert operations, the question will be answered when opportunities present themselves. And my sense is that, with Russian leader Vladimir Putin making dangerous moves and Condi Rice (an expert in Russian affairs under Bush the First) and the helm of the state department, a fair amount of the attention is aimed squarely at the activities of the Kremlin.

Careful not to choke on your turkey (or your chicken, for that matter), but President Vladimir Putin clearly has no intentions of going anywhere at the “end” of his term.  Anyone mildly familiar with Russian politics can see that this is not the rhetoric of a man planning on leaving.