Moscow Drug Club

Holy shit Kittens!!!

Look who it is!!!

It’s Darwin, the Mighty Keep Your Coins Mailbag mule again!! He showed up with another delivery while I was errrrr……..resting after a couple of bottles of good vodka.

This is odd though, he only has one letter with him today. Hmmm…..well it is Friday and many of my Kittens are taking a long weekend. Lets take a look at it and see what it says shall we?

Dear Big Daddy

I was have been wondering something. You read the news a lot, and I saw something today that scare the butt plug right out of me. What’s the deal with this, and what do you think about it?

Fears ‘ghost ship’ that vanished in the Channel may have been carrying dangerous secret cargo

Fears that a ship which disappeared off the map after passing through the Channel was loaded with a secret and dangerous cargo have been voiced today.

The maritime world is rife with speculation over the fate of the apparently hijacked Arctic Sea, a cargo ship that was heading from Finland to Algeria when it apparently vanished into thin air.

Nothing has been heard from the 15 Russian crew members of the ship since it made a routine call to the Dover coastguard 16 days ago.

Today Mikhail Voitenko, editor of Russia’s Sovfracht maritime bulletin, said the ship, carrying about £1 million-worth of sawn timber from Finland to Algeria, might have been targeted because it was also loaded with an unknown cargo.
He told the Russia Today news channel: ‘The only sensible answer is that the vessel was loaded secretly with something we don’t know anything about.
‘We have to remember that before loading in Finland the vessel stayed for two weeks in a shipyard in Kaliningrad.
‘I’m sure it cannot be drugs or illegal criminal cargo. I think it is something much more expensive and dangerous.
‘It seems some third party didn’t want this transit to be fulfilled so they made this situation highly sophisticated and very complicated.’
There have been fears that Russian gangsters are illegally shipping arms to Africa.

Other theories that maritime experts have put forward to explain what happened include:

The ship has been seized by pirates and will be held for ransom. This would mirror recent hijacking by Somali-based pirates operating off East Africa, but would be a first for Northern Europe.
It has been put into a small West African port, repainted, renamed and relaunched as a ‘phantom ship’ to be used by pirates in attacks on other vessels. This happened often in the 1990s in South-East Asia.
It is at the centre of an ownership or commercial dispute. The vessel has a complicated background, being Latvian-owned, Maltese-flagged and operating from the Russian port of Arkhangelsk. ‘

It is stranded somewhere off the coast of West Africa after losing power and communications. Experts have ruled out a sinking, pointing out that, if that were the case, the ship’s timber cargo would almost certainly have been found floating by now.

Adding to the mystery is the fact the crew had reported that while travelling through Swedish waters the Arctic Sea had been boarded by masked gunmen – who claimed to be local police but are thought to have been Russian gangsters.

The crew said they had been tied up for 12 hours while the raiders searched the ship. They claimed the hijackers left by speedboat, but the ship’s subsequent disappearance suggests the raiders could have stayed on board.
Kaimes Beasley, from Dover’s Channel Navigation Information Service, said: ‘It’s very strange that the crew would have carried on with their journey if armed men had boarded the ship, tied them up and held them at gunpoint.’

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev yesterday ordered five warships to join the search – now focused off the west coast of Africa – for the 3,988-ton vessel.
Mark Clark, of the UK’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency, said: ‘The ship contacted Dover Coastguard on July 28 and that was the last time anyone has heard from them.
‘There didn’t seem anything suspicious when contact was made. It could well be that a crew member had a gun put to his head by a hijacker when contact was made, but who knows?’
Viktor Matveev of Solchart Management, which owns the vessel, said: ‘The entire staff of my company is working very hard to establish communication with the ship. Unfortunately, there is no information so far.
‘My view is that it is most likely that the vessel has been hijacked.’

~Gerrard

Witchita KS

(I’m not sure which terrifies me more, crazy Russians or Gerrard)

First of all Gerrard, thanks for writing in and second…ummm…..ewwwwww…..

I can say this though Gerrard, I have been following this story as well. If fact, right now there are two Russian Akula II Class attack submarines parked off of Canada’s shores just 12 nautical miles out in international waters looking for this thing, and scaring the shit out of the Canadian military at the same time, but not quite enough to worry them or the Americans enough to actually do much about suggesting that they are okay with it and have been given a heads up. I also know that this is the closest Russian military vessels have come to North American shores since the end of the cold war.

It is a bit worrying though when Russians start acting cold war Russiany though isn’t it? It’s a wee bit too Hunt For Red October actually, and it seems this might be a pretty big deal.

(The good old days)

You don’t have to be Jack Ryan to know a little bit about history and the Russia has played in it. If there is one thing you can be sure of regarding the Russians, is that while the rest of the world is playing checkers, they are playing chess. The do not fuck around and don’t do anything by mistake. They only act when they know what the outcome will be, and they also have the big gigantic balls to do it.

(This works on so many levels)

You can be certain of one thing for sure Gerrard, whatever is on that ship (and it must be something big and bad) was headed towards us eventually, and Russia doesn’t want anyone to know what it is. If that ship isn’t at the bottom of the ocean yet, it soon will be.

We will probably never know the fate of the ship except for speculations from people who have the spare time to speculate about these things, but it does say a few things about the state of politics between the super powers at the moment.

(Hmmm…okay maybe not quite THAT friendly)

America has never had a problem scaring the living shit out of people about the evil Russian bear. It isn’t a right-wing only game, JFK did a pretty good job doing it as well. What is interesting though is that this is a pretty big deal and what does the American press have to say about it? On the CNN website as of 11:30 a.m. on Friday 14 2009…..these are the headlines.

Latest News
Hudson River crash controllers suspended
Video shows plane’s wing clip helicopter
200 feared buried under five stories of mud
Michael Vick has a new team Obama’s big problem in Big Sky country 36 min
Commentary: ‘Death panel’ fears are false
Ticker: Palin gets new Twitter identity
Michael Phelps in car crash Commentary: GOP’s problem with Hispanics KGO: Search intensifies for missing boy, 5
‘Ominous feeling’ as ashes sprinkle down Unemployment runs 80% on reservation WESH: New twist in astronaut kidnap case
Robbery victim lunges, attacks gunman
iReport.com: Man caught after chase, tear gas
Woman on cell phone abducted, cops say
Dumpster diving + computer = 100 trees The mystery of Woodstock | GalleryGolf.com: Phil chases Tiger at PGA | Scores
Maserati ‘clunker’ must be crushed
CNN Wire: Lockerbie bomber drops appeal…

Not a fucking PEEP. Interesting don’t you think?

(Somethings never change)

(Or do they?)

We can probably the Americans have taken one of two stances on this. They are either laying back and letting Russia clean up it’s own mess, or they are helping them out. That ship must have some have some incredibly diabolical cargo on it because Russia has it’s entire fleet and satellite looking for it. Since America isn’t talking about it, and allowing attack subs that close to it’s shores suggests that they are helping out.

(It kind of mirrors life doesn’t it?)

Since there isn’t much to go on, or even really care too much except to hope that whatever is on this ship either ends up in Davy Jones locker or returned to Russia and hidden away so it will never ever scare the hell out of anybody ever again all we can do is read the news and wait for a movie loosely based on the story.

These are rapidly becoming interesting days though aren’t they Kittens? It’s the early 60′s all over again. International jewel thief rings, cold war antics by two super powers, piracy on the high seas, Russians acting fairly Soviet again with a man in absolute power, spies being murdered and all the while society is distracted by Blackberries and microwavable toast.

I suppose when i think about these events, you know….super powers secretly fucking each over and clandestine robbers taking billions of dollars from rich people I have to admit it Kittens, I rather enjoy it.

(It’s the real thing)

There’s fuck all on television, unless you listen to internet radio then bugger all worth listening to on the radio and let’s face it, the golden age of cinema is over. Real life is back to where real life should be. More interesting than fiction. It offers me a small portion of joy to know that while the rest of you are Tweeting about how you waxed your crotches or sharing every possible vague ambient thought that rattles around a largely empty head about weekend plans, a few people are still doing something interesting and not because a camera crew is recording it for a Red Bull commercial.

(Sadly, this isn’t photoshopped)

It makes me wonder if the cold war and all of the subterfuge actually ever went away, or if this massive production of the greatest ever interactive 3-D family friendly holographic scratch and sniff amusement park slavery pen to permanently distract the worker haggis just took a couple of decades to perfect.

(Sadly again, not photoshopped, but standard issue for most of society)

The difference between the old cold war and what is apparently the new and improved cold war is that the new one hides in the great open knowing full well that nobody is paying attention. There were fewer channels and distractions during the 60′s so the cold war had to keep it’s head down and do it’s business in the shadows. It still does, but now when we hear about it the media reports it behind far more interesting stories about Jon and Kate or a brand new fat reducing cream that also channels jesus to your soul more effectively.

The war on terror keeps the people who do on occasion go out of their way to watch an actual news channel…you know, the trust worthy ones like Fox and CNN before Feltching With The Stars comes on tv. The cold war used to keep people in line and patriotic but now there is no need to feed the media stories about evil mother Russia anymore. The people who believe in a different invisible man n the sky are far scarier and unlike Russia who never (at least to public knowledge) ever fired so much as a bullet towards American soil, unlike the cowards in Al Queda.

I’m going to adore the new cold war. It is better than any book, shite tv show or movie in any theatre, and it will be a treasure hunt to find little snippets of news stories about it. Let the offal have Best Buy and the X-Games to watch from their La-Z-Boys. I’d rather hang out in the Moscow Drug Club.

Have a lovely weekend Kittens, Big Daddy has some time to make up for.

Ta.

Bookmark this on Delicious

~ by jeff on August 14, 2009.