Biographer Masha Gessen: Vladimir Putin is "a ruthless dictator" who is in the "last stages of his regime"

Masha Gessen, the Moscow based journalist holding both Russian and US citizenship, has written an unofficial and highly critical biography of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Today she was interviewed by Susan Wood of New Zealand's TVnz.:

SUSAN          How much of a threat is Putin to the Western world, to the rest of us?

MASHA          Well, think about it. It’s one-sixth of the Earth’s landmass, it has more nuclear warheads than any other country except for the United States and it is in possession of a large part of the world’s supply of oil and gas. And it is run by a ruthless dictator who openly shows and tells that he is temperamental and he has trouble controlling his temper.

SUSAN          How long will he stay in power? I mean, you’re talking about a man who will stop at nothing to keep it, really, aren’t you?

MASHA          I think he is in the last stages of his regime. Those last stages, those agonising and miserable last stages can last a while. But this is the final act. He no longer has popular support. He has had to resort to a crackdown to keep power. Now it’s a question of how stable oil prices remain and whether there’s an economic crisis that causes the whole thing to boil over. That could happen in a year, it could happen in five years.

SUSAN          Yeah, so hard to predict, but you would be predicting a violent, some sort of violence to the end of Vladimir Putin?

MASHA          Well, the more and the tighter he puts on the screws, the more pressure there is on people and the less of the probability of a peaceful outcome.

Gessen is spot on about Putin's dangerousness. Of course everybody, including Obama, Merkel and Cameron, knows that the man is a ruthless dictator, but they have to tread very carefully, because they know that he controls the world's second largest arsenal of nuclear warheads as well as Russia's huge energy resources. Still, as Gessen rightly points out, the dictator is in the "last stages of his regime". 

Read the entire interview her.

"Euroskeptic" Herman Van Rompuy in keynote speech: "No public support at all" for "more Europe"

Has Herman Van Rompuy gone Euroskeptic? 

For the first time ever, EU "president" Van Rompuy had something sensible to say about the European Union. In a "keynote Speech at the Federation of Young European Greens" he had this to say:

Some are in favour of “more Europe” – at times forgetting it is a Europe for 
which there is no public support at all.

There must have been at least two speechwriters in action for this "keynote speech", because a little later  Haiku Herman repeated his usual message of "more Europe":


The fourth and final point is that we are deepening our Economic and Monetary Union 
with a real banking union, a fiscal union, and an economic union. Step by step, but keeping 
the right direction.

Van Rompuy also remained true to the usual EU Politburo line: Always blame others - never yourself -  for the mess you have created. The bad things came from abroad, according to Herman: "the global credit crisis and its ramifications hit our continent.": 

The financial crisis hurt Europe hard – a brutal, unprecedented shock. In many ways, our 
countries and the eurozone were unprepared. Collectively, we had to build a lifeboat in 
the middle of a storm. It took years of struggle, and I recognise that more than once, we looked into the void. But we managed to keep going, step by step, even if it was sometimes 
messy or slow. And eventually we've managed to make it out of that violent storm.

What a hero of shakesperian or wagnerian dimensions we have in the captain of the Euro-Titanic! The opera "Herman, The Man Who Defied the Storm" is begging to be composed. However, true wagnerians will probably be disappointed, because this opera cannot be anything else than an opera buffa. 

Episcopal "green" bishop Cederholm conducts service to bless solar panels

The Episcopal Church in Massachusetts seems to be a "church of many colors".

Today the "green" bishop Bud Cederholm, who has campaigned together with the likes of Bill McKibben, will bless the taxpayer subsidized, more or less useless solar panels installed on a church Dover, MA:

At 10 a.m. on Sunday May 19, St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church will conduct a service to bless the solar panels they installed in April. The blessing will be conducted by the Episcopal Diocese’s “Green Bishop,” the Right Rev. Bud Cederholm, assisted by St. Dunstan’s rector, the Rev. Mark McKone-Sweet.

“Using solar energy decreases our use of fossil fuels, and thus our contribution to global warming,” said McKone-Sweet. “It is a way to live our faith by caring for those who will be affected by the extreme weather global warming causes.”

Two weeks ago, Rev. Victoria Pretti performed another  blessing in Milton, MA:

The transformation Sunday afternoon was part of the Episcopal church’s second annual Blessing of the Motorcycles. Motorcyclists from around the South Shore and beyond came to the church, on Adams Street near East Milton Square, to have their bikes blessed by the pastor, the Rev. Victoria Pretti.

More than 100 people, many wearing black leather vests and other riding gear, showed up for the event, where food, rock music and raffles complemented the friendly atmosphere and the revving of engines.

The Rev. Pretti and her husband, Anthony, are both riders themselves, and they belong to Star, a motorcycle group with members all over the country. Steve Franzosa of Peabody, a fellow member of Star’s Charter 400, which is based on the North Shore, came down to Milton to show support for his friends and his passion for motorcycling.

“It’s nice to see people and be in the group environment,” said Franzosa, who showed up on his Yamaha V-Star 1300. “There’s food, great music and good camaraderie.”

After saying a prayer for the protection of the many motorcycles and their owners, the Rev. Pretti walked up and down the street, blessing the bikes with holy water from a motorcycle helmet.

It is pretty clear that my vote goes to the Rev. Pretti. There is a nice photo of the Reverend sitting on her bike here. 

But moneywise the "green" bishop Cederholm's global warming scare campaign has been rather successful - there are quite a few people in the "liberal" state who are an easy prey for global warming hoaxters:

This kind of falling in love with creation and responding with passion has generated more than $320,000 for green grants to some 50 congregations these past two years, with even more getting on board this year.  And our Creation Care Season itself has been an awakening in many congregations to the many resources available for worship, education, formation and contemplation in nature, and advocacy that shapes public policy.  Numerous churches and homeowners have reduced their carbon footprint.  Acts of justice have addressed the poisoning of the environment that causes death and extinction of species. 

Daniel Hannan (MEP): "There is nothing modern about the EU"

Daniel Hannan again hits the nail on the head in his Telegraph column:

The EU is a 1950s solution to a 1930s problem. In an age which places a premium on responsiveness, litheness and deregulation, Europe is a clumsy, tottering mammoth. Its share of world GDP has halved in the past 40 years and will halve again in the next 20. Its demographic outlook is dire. Yet Brussels seems bent on intensifying all the policies that have brought it to its present crisis: higher social costs, more intrusive employment laws, tax harmonisation, the centralisation of power.

None of which shakes metropolitan commentators out of their conviction that wanting to leave the EU is reactionary rather than progressive. To pluck an example more or less at random, Rachel Sylvester in today’s Times writes of “a strain in the Conservative Party that shares with UKIP a hostility to modernity in all its manifestations”.

Get with the beat, daddio! There is nothing modern about the EU with its prices and incomes policies, its agrarian tariffs, its grants to heavy industries, its swollen bureaucracy, its five-year plans, its contempt for public opinion.

(Bolded by NNonN)

Many journalists and commentators are either leftist or at least sympathetic to "progressive" liberal and socialist policies. That is probably one reason why they are blind to the reality that the European Union long ago is past its best before date. 

CEO of Atlanta-based Southern Co about renewables: “What do you do when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine?”

Tom Fanning, CEO of the Atlanta-based energy company Southern Co, gives the facts about renewable energy in a nutshell:

But as Southern moves toward less reliance on coal because of looming federal regulation of carbon emissions, most of the shift in its portfolio is going toward natural gas.

Fanning said renewable sources of energy like wind and solar tend to be available in sparsely populated areas, requiring expensive transmission lines to distribute the electricity.

Renewables rely heavily on federal tax credits, making the industry vulnerable if those go away, he said.

Fanning said renewable energy also is intermittent by nature.

“What do you do when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine?” he said.

Read the entire article here.

Dr. Roy Spencer: Increase in "superstorms" is "an urban myth"

The mainly warmist Catholic Online is to be congratulated for publishing an interview with Dr. Roy Spencer. As usually, Dr. Spencer's views are wise and balanced:  

COL: Well, let's cut to the chase. Is the planet warming?

SPENCER: No one knows whether it is currently warming, because we only see warming "in the rearview mirror"...after it has occurred.  Warming of the global average surface temperature seems to have stopped about 15 years ago, although there is some evidence that the deep ocean has continued to warm by hundredths of a degree.  Global average surface temperatures have definitely warmed in the last 50 to 100 years, by an amount which increases northward.

COL: When we look at the ice caps, particularly the Arctic, they show dramatic loss of sea ice. The images are very clear and the overall loss during the summer is about 40 percent, using the most recent data from the Cryosphere pages. (I think about 7 percent in the winter?) Regardless of the percentages, it's visibly significant. What's happening?

SPENCER: We started satellite monitoring of sea ice in 1979, after an extended cold period in the Arctic.  It is entirely possible that summer sea ice meltback now is no worse than it was back in the 1920's and 1930's, when ship explorers reported unprecedented warming and sea ice and glacier changes in the Arctic.  Humans could not have been responsible for that event, so how can we know the extent to which we are responsible for the current melting event in the Arctic?  Also, since 1979, sea ice around Antarctica has gradually increased, not decreased, which climate models have not been able to explain.

COL: We are experiencing a variety of other seemingly unique weather phenomenons such as superstorms, tornado outbreaks, rising sea levels, and the increasingly frequent closing of locks on the North Sea (Netherlands and UK, River Thames). Isn't this evidence of warming?

SPENCER: There has been no increase in "superstorms" or tornadoes, by any objective long-term measure. It is an urban myth. Sandy-class storms occur every year...they just don't happen to hit high population density areas. But sea levels have indeed increased, which probably is a sign of warming. But sea levels were rising long before we could have been to blame, since well before 1900. So, once again, it is difficult to attribute the current rate of rise, which is very slow, to humans when we don't know how much of the rise is natural.

COL: Let's say tomorrow, evidence is found that proves to everyone that global warming as a result of human released emissions of CO2 and methane, is real. What would you suggest we do?

SPENCER: I would say we need to grow the economy as fast as possible, in order to afford the extra R&D necessary to develop new energy technologies. Current solar and wind technologies are too expensive, unreliable, and can only replace a small fraction of our energy needs. Since the economy runs on inexpensive energy, in order to grow the economy we will need to use fossil fuels to create that extra wealth. In other words, we will need to burn even more fossil fuels in order to find replacements for fossil fuels.

Angela Merkel was closer to the East German communist apparatus than previously thought

Angela Merkel propagated Marxism-Leninism at the East German Academy of Sciences.

A new biography covering German Chancellor Angela Merkel's life in DDR reveals that she was much closer to the communist party apparatus and ideology than previously thought:

Published this week and written by journalists Günther Lachmann and Ralf Georg Reuth, the book quotes Gunter Walther, a former colleague of hers at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin, as saying she had been secretary for "Agitation and Propaganda" in the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ) youth organization at the institute. Merkel, a trained physicist, worked at the academy from 1978 until 1989.

Excerpts from the book, "The First Life of Angela M.," were published in the newsmagazine Focus on Monday. The mass-circulation Bild newspaper has also given the book prominent coverage in recent days.

The book explores Merkel's life growing up in German Democratic Republic (GDR), where her father Horst Kasner was a Protestant pastor and a committed socialist. He moved to East Germany from West Germany in 1954.

Merkel has said in the past that her FDJ role at the academy was more that of a cultural secretary and that her duties included buying theater tickets and organizing book readings.

'Closeness to the System'

But former German Transport Minister Günther Krause -- an eastern German politician who worked with her in the final months of the GDR and as a fellow minister in the government ex-chancellor Helmut Kohl in the early 1990s -- contradicts her in the book and says she propagated Marxism-Leninism.

"With Agitation and Propaganda you're responsible for brainwashing in the sense of Marxism," he said. "That was her task and that wasn't cultural work. Agitation and Propaganda, that was the group that was meant to fill people's brains with everything you were supposed to believe in the GDR, with all the ideological tricks. And what annoys me about this woman is simply the fact that she doesn't admit to a closeness to the system in the GDR. From a scientific standpoint she wasn't indispensable at the Academy of Sciences. But she was useful as a pastor's daughter in terms of Marxism-Leninism. And she's denying that. But it's the truth."

On Sunday evening, Merkel said she hadn't covered up anything about her past. "I can only rely on my memory," she said at a public screening of her favorite movie, a popular love film made in East Germany, on Sunday night. "If something turns out to be different, I can live with that."

The fact that Angela Merkel was so close to the communist system in DDR makes it easier to understand, why she is so fond of a centrally governed European Union, which former Czech President Vaclav Klaus has likened to the Soviet Union. 

No wonder then that a growing number of former supporters of Merkel's CDU are now intent on voting for the new anti-euro party, the Alternative for Germany:

Many see the AfD as a political home representing what German conservatives used to stand for, before Merkel moved the CDU to the center in recent years. And before the euro crisis forced Berlin to embark on the expensive path of saving the common European currency. While most Germans remain favorable toward the euro, a significant number are not -- and many of them are political conservatives.