New EU poll: Only 4% of Europeans rate climate change as their most pressing concern

The new Eurobarometer poll must be depressive reading for EU's überwarmist, climate change commissioner Connie Hedegaard and her fellow alarmists in the European Commission. The number of people who rank climate change as their most pressing concern is barely recognizable. 

Last year a paltry 5% of all Europeans rated climate change as their most pressing concern. In the new poll the percentage has gone down to 4%. Most likely climate change will soon disappear completely, despite of the barrage of alarmist propaganda produced in Brussels (and funded by European taxpayers). 

Only in Malta (22%), Sweden (19%) and Germany (10%) does the number get into double digits. Even in Hedegaard's home country Denmark, only 9% of the people rate climate change as their main concern. And in seven countries - Slovakia, Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Latvia, Estonia and Greece the number is zero (0%)! 

Kudos to Google for not shying away from Inhofe fundraiser

Kudos to Google, which did not shy away from funding the fundraiser for Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe earlier this month, despite of greenie protests. 

However, the global warming alarmists have not given up. According to this "environmental writer", who cannot even spell the senator's name correctly, there will be another action against Google:

Despite protests from climate change activists and several Google shareholders, the fundraiser went on as scheduled this month, and Google representatives in D.C. refused to accept thousands of signatures the activists had collected on a petition. Undeterred, those activists are heading to Mountain View Wednesday to try again.--

In the wake of recent revelations that Google, the Bay Area-based search engine giant, is supporting one of the most stubborn climate change denialists in the Senate, climate activists plan are planning a demonstration Wednesday at Google's headquarters in Mountain View. Their message will be a poke at Google's much-vaunted informal corporate credo: "Don't Fund Evil."

The search engine and data collection giant, which had been a large investor in renewable energy development, was revealed early in July to be planning to host a fundraiser for Oklahoma's Senator James Imhofe (R-Pleistocene), notorious for his denial of climate change science, as well as his general opposition to progressive sentiments, civil rights, net neutrality, and immigration reform, 

Gazprom is not able to stop shale gas eploration in Romania, Poland and Lithuania

The world's most corrupt energy company Gazprom, in an alliance with various environmental campaigners (most probably financed by Gazprom), tries to stop the shale gas revolution reaching Europe, but that will not stop Chevron from intensifying its efforts in Romania, Poland and Lithuania:

Environmental campaigners, in an unlikely alliance of interests with Russian gas-export monopoly OAO Gazprom, have also held up investment in the shale industry. Chevron had its license revoked in Bulgaria last year after hundreds protested in Sofia over concerns fracking would pollute water and land.

A report in the corporate Gazprom Magazine said prospects for shale are undermined by lower reserves estimates, green protests and the harm to profits of low gas prices. “Europeans have no real alternative to cooperation with Russia,” it concluded.

That possibility hasn’t stopped Chevron. On top of three wells in Poland, the second-biggest U.S. oil company plans an exploration well in Romania, has begun work in Lithuania and been awarded a 1.6 million-acre license in Ukraine.

“While the shale gas revolution may not be on the same scale as what we have seen in the U.S., we are still confident of the opportunities,” MacDonald said by e-mail. “Unlike the U.S., in central Europe there’s little pre-existing geological data. The exploration activities we are currently undertaking will be important in assessing the resource potential.” Chevron is pledging to explore for as long as five years, he said.

That commitment is winning support from some governments.

“Romania, Poland and Lithuania are in favor of shale gas as these countries see the natural gas problem as more than just an issue of getting cheaper energy,” Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta said on July 18. “It’s important for us to have cheaper energy, especially because of its impact on the economy and the population, but more so to stop relying on imports from Russia, from Gazprom.”

Read the entire article here

Another empty letter by Barroso and Van Rompuy

During the warm summer weeks the EU bureaucracy has been busy putting together a joint letter to the 28 EU Heads of State and Government by the EU presidents Barroso and Van Rompuy about the "key issues coming up for discussion at the G20 summit in Saint Petersburg on 5-6 September", hosted by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. 

The Barroso-Van Rompuy letter is full of the usual phrases lauding the various (empty) "plans", "roadmaps" and "compacts", which the EU is so good at producing: 

"Saint Petersburg Action Plan", Compact for Growth and Jobs, Youth Employment Initiative

Single Resolution Mechanism, EMU roadmap, "Youth Guarantee". "Investment Plan" 

No doubt all those beautiful plans and roadmaps will once again be discussed in St. Petersburg, but one thing is clear; they will not in any way alter this reality:

Unemployment across the 17 European Union countries that use the euro hit another all-time high in May, official data showed Monday.

Across the eurozone, there were 19.22 million people unemployed, 67,000 higher than the previous month — a closer look at the figures show that Italy was largely behind the increase.

Even though the monthly rises outside of Italy were relatively modest, analysts still expect unemployment in the eurozone to continue to rise as the region remains stuck in recession that started in late 2011.

The useful idiot tradition is alive an well in Britain: University of Warwick professor praises dictator Putin

The useful idiot tradition has been particularly popular in British academic circles ever since the Bolshevik revolution. And this rather unpleasant adulation of Russian autocracy is alive and well even today in the UK. 

Christopher Read, professor of 20th-Century European History at the University of Warwick is a typical representative of the the useful idiot school of thought. In his latest article he smears Boris Yeltsin - the only leader in the history of Russia who (despite his shortcomings) permitted almost complete freedom of speech and religion - and praises the current corrupt and criminal dictator Vladimir Putin, who has made Russia a mafia state:

At first, it appeared that Putin would have to be, like Yeltsin, a puppet of the oligarchs and the Kremlin kleptocracy. However, he soon proved to have a political strength of his own and, in a first major arm wrestle in 2004, he arrested and prosecuted the richest and most powerful oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, at that time number 16 on the Forbes world rich list. --

Putin's style has certainly been authoritarian, but to see oligarchs as human rights victims is to stretch the definition.

Other elements of his popularity have been a more assertive international stance in which Russia shows independence in the face of American and western opposition -- currently manifesting in the crisis in Syria, one of Russia's oldest allies -- and a relatively successful economic policy which saw a period of growth, falling unemployment and rise in real wages, sometimes achieved by increasing state intervention in the economy, including the re-nationalization of factories and industries.

Obviously, none of this was popular in the West, since they curtailed Western influence over the country, limited business opportunities and, supposedly, revived Soviet-era ghosts. The response of the Russian population, apart from its oligarchs and intellectuals, has been much more favorable and, even though they are slipping, Putin's poll ratings remain very high.

It has often been said that the pattern of governing a vast country like Russia is that if the center is weak, chaos ensues. On the other hand, if the center is strong, state construction and tyranny ensue. Russians as a whole seem to prefer the latter to the former. Even so, Putin is no tyrant.

Russia's stagnating gas giant Gazprom is expanding its intelligence gathering operations

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's former money machine, stagnating gas giant Gazprom is, assisted by a French company, building a huge data collecting center in the UK:

The marketing arm of UK-based oil and gas company Gazprom is building a new data center in Manchester, using a third-party hosting facility which will be closely aligned with another data center, already built, in London.

OAO Gazprom is one of the largest gas and energy companies in the world and the marketing arm GM&T helps to promote its energy trading and energy retail activities in the European markets in which it operators, including optimizing its energy commodity assets and downstream expansion using Gazprom’s trading network.

GM&T director of global IT Rob Pringle said the division has grown rapidly with the growth of Gazprom’s gas and power trading and retail systems. --

GM&T is working with Paris-based multinational Nextira one for its new DC2 facility which will be implemented as a dedicated suite inside a third-party facility, which with the London data center will provide disaster recovery, backup systems and services for the global operations.

Director of global IT Rob Pringle talks about the "growth of Gazprom's gas and power trading and retails systems". However, in reality the world's most corrupt and  mismanaged energy company is stagnating everywhere. The only "arm" with real growth seems to be intelligence gathering - which should make western security services worried.

This is what the Financial Times recently wrote about Gazprom:

Wherever it turns in Europe – by far the biggest contributor to its $38bn net profit last year – it faces difficulties. Often, they are the result of the US shale gas boom of the past decade that has sent shockwaves through the global energy market.

Gazprom has been forced to cut prices to its western customers and is being investigated by the EU for suspected market abuse. At home, it is facing growing competition and may lose its treasured monopoly on gas exports.

“Gazprom is a stagnating company,” says Igor Mikhailov, portfolio manager at Uralsib, a Moscow investment bank. “It’s losing market share inside Russia, its negotiating power in Europe is waning and it spends all its cash flow on big projects that don’t add value.”

Putin praises huge military exercise

The Russian Navy's landing ship Minsk 127 in Oresund on July 10, 2013.

"Russia will continue to build up its own defense capabilities according to foreseeable threats"

"... there are methodical attempts being carried out to undermine the strategic balance" 

 "In fact the second phase of the U.S. global missile defense system has begun and there is continued probing into the possibility for further expansion of NATO to the East."

Vladimir Putin (February 26, 2013)

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is trying to divert attention away from the rampant corruption, stifling of the opposition and mismanagement of the economy in his country by bringing back the good old days of the cold war: 

A surprise snap inspection of unprecedented scale of the current combat readiness of Russian troops in Russia's Far Eastern and Central military districts ended on Sunday. The Russian Defense Ministry will discuss and analyze the overall results of the exercise at a special meeting on Monday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has already described the results as more than satisfactory, noting there had not been a single serious violation or failure.

The exercises involved five Russian armies, the Third Air Force and Air Defense Command including strategic aviation, and the Pacific Fleet.

Some 160,000 servicemen, approximately 1,000 tanks and armored vehicles, 130 aircraft and 70 warships took part in the drills, stated Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

"Such exercises have not been held since the Soviet era, or perhaps even during that period, Putin said on Wednesday after flying over the exercise in a helicopter accompanied by Shoigu.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the snap drills on July 12.

It is the third surprise combat readiness check since January and follows a major shake-up at the top of a military establishment tarnished by persistent evidence of rampant corruption.

Read the entire article here

Read more: http://english.ruvr.ru/news/2013_07_22/Results-of-massive-military-drills-more-than-satisfactory-Putin-1555/

Read more: http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_02_28/Russia-will-continue-building-up-its-defenses-Putin/