SOFA to be Signed This Friday

According to CTK, the Czech news service, and Respekt.cz, Czech Minister of Defense Vlasta Parkanova and US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will sign the SOFA treaty this Friday in London. The deal is a follow up to July's anti-ballistic missile radar system agreement, which plans to place a US base equipped with a massive radar system on Czech soil, about 80 miles from Prague. In addition, a separate agreement with the Polish government puts nuclear missile interceptors in their country, with the new American base being only over 100 miles from Russian territory. The SOFA agreement has negotiated the legal terms of placing American troops in the Czech Republic, as well as an agreement about arming the Czech Air Command with new Hercules spy planes, as well as more equipment and transport for joint US-Czech military expeditions. Also, the SOFA agreement included a section about the further centralization of pro-imperial US news outlets gaining greater exposure in Czech markets. Thus, the Americans use their new military alliance also as a chance for influencing a foreign nation's terms of presenting news.

Already, American companies own a large television station NOVA in the Czech market, as well as a few high profile newspapers. Even the news transmitted inside the Prague metro are of American ownership.

And with all this integration used in furthering an international alliance against Russia with its strongest pro-West, freedom loving neighbors, the motives remain suspect. With three-fourths of the Czech citizenry opposing the radar, as well as the Slovakian government, many have come to question the good will of this project where no public input was taken into account, and back-room deals between the Czech, Polish, and American governments dictated the desired results. With Central Europe being remilitarized and an ever thin ice relationship the US maintains with Russia, the future for these countries appears bleak and entangled in a new mess of the two polar superpowers, once again jockeying for empire.