Canadian election + more on the PLAN visit to Vladivostok

As a Canadian watching the Canadian election from America, I'm ever thankful that C-SPAN is actually willing to show something other than Obama and McCain in this election season. As the results come in, it looks like the conservatives are having another minority government which will probably last until 2010. That means the country would have 4 elections in 6 years. Just think how all the campaign money could be spent helping ordinary Canadians. It's no wonder that the number of people turning up to vote in this election is probably going to be an all-time low. Interestingly enough, we might see a more pro-American government in power. For years, the reform conservatives (not the old progressive conservatives) generally held the most pro-American positions while the NDP and BQ generally held more anti-American positions. Liberals do the nice balancing act of barking against American government, but quietly following America. The absolute dismal performance of the Liberal party in this election (70 some seats in a 308 seat parliament) almost guarantees that Stephan Dion will get sacked. If Michael Ignatieff gets selected as the leader this time, you will see the most pro-American leading/opposition party combination in the recent Canadian memory. This might not sound like a big deal, but such a government would most likely favour higher military spending and pulling more weight in American led initiatives.

Anyhow, a little bit updates on PLAN, specially the recent visit to the Russian Navy's Pacific Ocean Fleet.
You can find the visit by ESF to Vladivostok here and the article there reads something similar to this article on Itar-Tass.

VLADIVOSTOK, October 14 (Itar-Tass) - A squadron of combatant ships of the naval forces of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China, called here on Tuesday for a visit. The squadron consists of the destroyer "Tai Zhou" and the guided missile frigate "Ma Anshan".

An officer in the information and public relations service of Russia's Pacific Feet (PF) has told Itar-Tass that the naval squadron's four-day visit is made under the flag of Vice-Admiral Xu Hungmeng, Commander of the PLA's East Sea (Sea of Japan) Fleet, who arrived in the main city of the Primorsky Territory for this purpose earlier in the day.

"The present meeting between Russian and Chinese navy men pursues the main aim: to promote a further development of naval cooperation between the navies of our two countries," the PF information service officer pointed out.

The programme for the visit is traditional: the PF Command and the PT administration chief will receive Chinese seamen. The programme also envisages bus tours, basketball competitions, and a number of official functions and informal get-togethers of the seamen of the two countries. Hosts on the Russian side are the large anti-submarine ships Admiral Panteleyev and Admiral Tributs.

This is a fifth call at Vladivostok by a Chinese naval squadron. Last time naval ships of the PLA and PF Marines participated in large-scale bilateral anti-terrorist exercises "Peace Mission-2005" that took place in the area of the Liaodong Peninsula.

I got a few more photos here, interesting to see 525 stuck between all the ships with Top Plate Search radar.



We also have a couple of new photos showing modified Han class submarines out in the sea. We don't get too many photos of 093 class, but it seems 091Gs are getting more action from all the photos. In fact, one of them just came out of a major refit recently.



That's it for now, we will probably see some new stuff on 054A on my next post.