The EU´s foreign policy chief ready for appeasement with Russia

The EU´s foreign policy chief, Italian Federica Mogherini, appears to be ready for appeasement with regard to Putin´s Russia. Hopefully Mrs Merkel will stop her!

BRUSSELS - Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, has said the bloc should launch a new “debate” with Russia aimed at ending the “confrontation” over Ukraine.
She told Italy’s La Repubblica daily on Saturday (27 December): “The current situation is very difficult for Russia. It would be in its interest to contribute to ending the conflict. At the same time, we all know that Russia plays an important role not only in Ukraine, but also in Syria, Iran, the Middle East, Libya”.
“We have to open a direct debate with Moscow on our mutual relations and the role that Russia can play in other crises”.
She noted that Ukraine and the US also want a way out.

Vladimir Putin´s press conference on December 18, the birthday of Joseph Stalin

Putin:
"What [The West] is trying to do is chain the bear, take out his claws...what we're trying to do is maintain our sovereignty and independence."

Vladimir Putin has today, on the birthday of Joseph Stalin, held a televised press conference.
The leader of the world´s foremost thugocracy carefully followed the advice of another Russian leader, Vladimir Lenin, when answering questions: "A lie told often enough becomes the truth".

The UN mega climate jamboree in Lima ends (fortunately) without reaching any kind of real agreement

The UN mega climate jamboree in Lima is about to close (fortunately) without any kind of real agreement. One can only wonder how long this madness is allowed to continue? Some sane people (e.g. in the new U.S. Congress) should put an end to this enormous waste of taxpayers´ money:

World leaders and delegates converged on Lima, Peru two weeks ago and the world watched, once again, as the spectacle of the United Nation’s climate change talks devolved into grandstanding and protests with little substance being the norm. The goal of this COP20 meeting was to create a framework for world nations to build a deal that would replace the accords met in 1997, commonly called the Kyoto Protocols. It appears that the effort has failed, as is the norm at most U.N. climate talks.

Somehow, 10,000 or so delegates from 190 different countries, plus celebrity speech givers such as John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State, couldn’t come to an agreement on climate change mitigation. Talks went into overtime Friday night, as reported by the Inquisitr, after the expected announcement of a deal Friday afternoon was not forthcoming. The climate change talks extended into today, but it doesn’t appear anything will come of it.
The sheer number of people involved in COP20 this year was staggering. About ten thousand delegates and hangers-on arrived in Lima by jet, airplane, and bus. More people arrived via boat, train, and plane to surround the talks with protests and activism. Others arrived to protest the protesters and still more were there to call into question the whole point of climate change and the science behind it. The amount of carbon expelled just to rant about climate change itself was likely in the tens of thousands of tons.

Anna Netrebko - A loyal member of the Putin fan club

The highly overrated Russian soprano Anna Netrebko has again confirmed her credentials as a loyal member of the Putin fan club:

The Russian-Austrian opera soprano Anna Netrebko has given support to east Ukrainian separatists, posing with one of their top political leaders and holding up the flag of Novorossia, a self-declared amalgamation of territory that is seeking independence from Kiev.
Netrebko, who holds dual citizenship, was pictured with the flag during a press conference in St Petersburg over the weekend, where she announced she was donating 1m roubles (£12,000) to the Donetsk Opera Theatre.

Anne Applebaum on Putin and his KGB cronies: "theft on a grand scale"

 "European politicians as high-ranking as Schröder and Silvio Berlusconi—all have been well compensated, directly or indirectly, for offering their support."

If you only read one article about the mafia state that Vladimir Putin has created, this is the one to read:

In place of a genuine media and a real civil society, Putin and his inner circle slowly put into place a system for manufacturing disinformation and mobilizing support on a new and spectacular scale. Once the KGB had retaken the country, in other words, it began once again to act like the KGB—only now it was better funded and more sophisticated. Today’s Russian “political technologists” make use of their state-owned media, including English-language outlets such as the TV news channel Russia Today; armies of paid social media “trolls” who post on newspaper comment pages, as well as on Twitter, Facebook, and other sites; fake “experts” whose quotes can be presented with fake authority; and real experts to whom Putin’s officials have granted special access, or have simply paid. Former Western ambassadors to Moscow, businessmen who have been recruited to Russian company boards, European politicians as high-ranking as Schröder and Silvio Berlusconi—all have been well compensated, directly or indirectly, for offering their support. --


Indeed, in the months since Putin’s invasion of Crimea, it has become fashionable to suggest that the harder-line face that Putin has more recently shown to the world is somehow, once again, the West’s “fault,” that we have provoked Russia into autocratic behavior through our talk of democracy in Ukraine or that—once again—the “reform process” was somehow brought to a halt because the Russians felt threatened by the expansion of NATO or by Western policy in the Balkans.
But after reading Dawisha’s book, and after absorbing the implications of the stories she has so carefully pulled together from so many sources, it is simply not possible to take this argument seriously. Since 2000, Russia has been ruled by a revanchist, revisionist elite with origins in the old KGB. This elite had been working its way back to power since the late 1980s, using theft on a grand scale, taking advantage of the secrecy provided by Western offshore havens, and cooperating with organized crime.
Once in power, the new elite sought to maintain control using the same methods that the KGB always used to maintain control: through the manipulation of public emotion, and by undermining the institutions of the West, and the ideals of the West, in any way that it can. Based on its record so far, it has every reason to expect continued success.

(Former) socialite Bianca Jagger adds some glamour to the Lima climate jamboree: "Time is running out"!

Bianca Jagger, the former socialite, now appearing as a global warming promoter, has told the Lima climate jamboree participants that time is running out:

“Climate change will affect everyone, everywhere, in every nation, in every echelon of society, in the developing world and the developed world,” Jagger said. “We will all suffer the catastrophic consequences of rising sea levels, ocean acidification, food scarcity and political unrest. But some of the most vulnerable communities in the world are bearing a disproportionate burden of the harm without having significantly contributed to the cost. This is a terrible injustice.”
Noting that climate experts predict that 2014 will become the hottest year on record, Jagger warned: “Time is running out. Inaction will lead to severe and irreversible damage

Time may be running out, but fortunately the former socialite still has time for some serious shopping. Here is a recent example:

On Bianca (left): Dolce & Gabbana gold-tone Swarovski crystal coin headband, $2,485; net-a-porter.com; Valentino silk-crepe split-back jumpsuit, $3,690; modaoperandi.com; Tamara Mellon fringed jersey halterneck dress, $1,695; net-a-porter.com; Jimmy Choo charm disco mirror box clutch, $1,050; saksfifthavenue.com; Charlotte Olympia Octavia sandal, $1,020; farfetch.com

Esa-Pekka Salonen again defends his friend Valery Gergiev

Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen again defends Russian dictator Putin´s admirer Valery Gergiev:

“I’ve spent the morning defending my friend Valery before the Swedish media,” says Salonen.
Gergiev is a committed supporter of the Putin regime, and his appearance at the festival provoked some outrage in Stockholm at a time of strained diplomacy. Salonen describes his opinions as “diametrically opposite” to his colleague’s on the subject of Ukraine but, “as long as London is making money for the oligarchs, as long as the Austrians are lobbying for a gas pipe to make sure they get an uninterrupted supply, regardless of what’s happening to Ukraine,” he says, “why should I, as the artistic director of this festival, not say that Gergiev is allowed to come here?”

One wonders, why on the earth should Salonen "defend" somebody like Gergiev? I never imagined that Salonen would be that stupid.

The Putin dance

Here is the Putin dance everybody is talking about:

 

  

Putin´s Russia summarized in 12 seconds

The Telegraph:

"Russian rouble shaken in biggest one-day fall against dollar since 1998

The currency of Vladimir Putin's Russia has been left shaken by falling oil prices and sanctions related to ongoing tensions in Ukraine" 

An brief summary of Putin´s Russia:

 

Dashcam footage shows a car upside down after it has

been driven into a huge hole in a road in Russia

 

"Thousands of diplomats" gather in Lima in order to fight global warming (which stopped 18 years ago)

It is difficult to imagine a better example of how public money, provided by hard working taxpayers, is wasted:

"For the next two weeks, thousands of diplomats from around the globe will gather in Lima, Peru, for a United Nations summit meeting to draft an agreement intended to stop the global rise of planet-warming greenhouse gases."

(New York Times)

Obama´s "climate breakthrough" with China: Hype and reality

 

The hype: 

 

 

 

With his popularity continuously sinking in the US, president Obama resorts to non-binding hype with China on "climate change". Fortunately the Republican dominated US Congress will most certainly roll back Obama´s spurious carbon "pollution" targets.

Of course China needs to control its real air pollution, but that has nothing to do with the kind of hype now agreed in Peking.


When Obama returns to Washington D.C. he will get a less than warm welcome:

The reality:

 

From the Rockies to the heartland, ferocious winds are ripping across the Plains, bringing freezing temperatures as far south as Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle.

And there's more coming.

"Round two gets colder. This is not over by any means," CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said Tuesday. "The next 10 days over the entire eastern half of the country will be below normal."

Hardly anyone in the eastern two-thirds of the nation will be spared by the time the weekend hits.

 

And this winter also Europe will be hit:

 

A FREAK series of rare atmospheric events is set to plunge Britain into the worst winter of modern times with heavy snow paralysing the entire country within WEEKS.

 

Shocked forecasters warned tonight the latest high-tech weather models point to a CATASTROPHIC big freeze in late 2014 with THREE MONTHS of blizzards and Arctic gales.
They fear a lethal and unprecedented combination of low pressure, above-average rainfall and a freak Polar vortex will come together in a perfect storm of misery for Winter 2014.

 

 

PS

This is what Senator James Inhofe has to say about Obama´s "historic" deal in Peking:

 

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, released the following statement today about the announced deal between the United States and China to address climate change:
"In the President's climate change deal, the United States will be required to more steeply reduce our carbon emissions while China won't have to reduce anything. It's hollow and not believable for China to claim it will shift 20 percent of its energy to non-fossil fuels by 2030, and a promise to peak its carbon emissions only allows the world's largest economy to buy time. China builds a coal-fired power plant every 10 days, is the largest importer of coal in the world, and has no known reserves of natural gas. This deal is a non-binding charade. The American people spoke against the President's climate policies in this last election. They want affordable energy and more economic opportunity, both which are being diminished by overbearing EPA mandates. As we enter a new Congress, I will do everything in my power to rein in and shed light on the EPA's unchecked regulations.”

Gorbachev blames the west and lauds dictator Putin

Mikhail Gorbachev accuses the west and does not have a critical word about Putin´s blatant aggression in Ukraine:

The 83-year-old former leader has accused the west – particularly the US – of “triumphalism” after the collapse of the communist bloc.
Gorbachev called for new trust to be built through dialogue with Moscow and suggested the west should lift sanctions imposed against senior Russian officials over its actions in eastern Ukraine.
Before arriving in Berlin, he gave pointed backing to Russian president Vladimir Putin, saying the Ukraine crisis offered an “excuse” for the US to victimise Russia: “I am absolutely convinced that Putin protects Russia’s interests better than anyone else.”
In an interview with the Interfax news agency, Gorbachev admitted that Putin was not above criticism, but he said he did not want others to pick on the Russian leader.

As they say in Finland, "A Russkie is always a Russkie, even when fried with butter".

Gorbachev apparently wants to secure himself a first class ticket in Putin´s thugocracy when it is time to leave ...

The Republican victory brings an added bonus: Next year´s climate change jamboree in Paris will most likely be a repeat of Copenhagen

The Republican landslide in the US elections means that sanity prevails also in the "climate change" debate. Oklahoma senator James Inhofe will again become the chair of the Senate´s environment committee. The IPCC and the international climate alarmist community can forget about getting a "meaningful" new climate change agreement in Paris 2015.

This is how one warmist blog summarized the elections already before results were in:

Oklahoma senator James Inhofe would become chair of the Senate's environment and public works committee. The committee has the ability to hold up, change, or scrap any climate change legislation. It also holds regular hearings on matters related to climate policy.
Inhofe describes climate change as a "hoax" and is strongly opposed to Obama's clean power plan. He became known for aggressively questioning the validity of climate science in his previous tenure as the committee's chair between 2003 and 2007.
If the Republican's win, climate skeptic committee chairs such as Inhofe, Ted Cruz, and Ron Johnson could also move to cut funding to those charged with implementing Obama's climate plan, such as the Environmental Protection Agency.
Combined, the committee chairs would make the Senate altogether less climate-friendly.
That could spook other governments in the run-up to next year's international climate negotiations. If they don't think the US's more proactive approach to curbing emissions is going to last, they are less likely to agree to taking action themselves.
Global issues
The US's efforts to curb emissions and the world's prospects of taking action are largely synonymous.
Those unsure of the Senate's international influence need only to think back to 1997, when a Republican Senate refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. That decision meant the world's only binding agreement to cut emissions was hamstrung from the start. Many say it never recovered.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change yesterday spelled out the dangers of failing to tackle climate change in the clearest terms yet. How the US votes tomorrow will have a significant impact on the type of action the world agrees to next year.
That's why environmental campaigners have spent millions promoting climate-friendly candidates. And it's why it shouldn't just be US citizens watching closely when the polls close.

Warren Buffett on Wind farms

 

Warren Buffett knows what he is talking about:

 'We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit.'

2014 as "the hottest year on record" is nothing but warmist propaganda

Mainstream media have lately been full of stories about this year becoming "the hottest year on record":

WASHINGTON (AP) - Earth is on pace to tie or even break the mark for the hottest year on record, federal meteorologists say.

That's because global heat records have kept falling in 2014, with September the latest example.

However, this is another example of the global warming alarmists trying to misuse unrealiable statistics in order to spread their secular "religion". Dr. Roy Spencer explains why their "facts" are no more than propaganda:

Much is being made of the “global” surface thermometer data, which three-quarters the way through 2014 is now suggesting the global average this year will be the warmest in the modern instrumental record.
I claim 2014 won’t be the warmest global-average year on record.
..if for no other reason than this: thermometers cannot measure global averages — only satellites can. The satellite instruments measure nearly every cubic kilometer – hell, every cubic inch — of the lower atmosphere on a daily basis. You can travel hundreds if not thousands of kilometers without finding a thermometer nearby. --

... the alarmists will continue to use the outdated, spotty, and heavily-massaged thermometer data to support their case. For a group that trumpets the high-tech climate modeling effort used to guide energy policy — models which have failed to forecast (or even hindcast!) the lack of warming in recent years — they sure do cling bitterly to whatever will support their case.
As British economist Ronald Coase once said, “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.”
So, why are the surface thermometer data used to the exclusion of our best technology — satellites — when tracking global temperatures? Because they better support the narrative of a dangerously warming planet.
Except, as the public can tell, the changes in global temperature aren’t even on their radar screen (sorry for the metaphor).
Of course, 2015 could still set a record if the current El Nino ever gets its act together. But I’m predicting it won’t.
Which brings me to my second point. If global temperatures were slowly rising at, say, a hundredth of a degree per year and we didn’t have cool La nina or warm El Nino years, then every year would be a new record warm year.
But so what?
It’s the amount of temperature rise that matters. And for a planet where all forms of life experience much wider swings in temperature than “global warming” is producing, which might be 1 deg. C so far, those life forms — including the ones who vote — really don’t care that much. We are arguing over the significance of hundredths of a degree, which no one can actually feel.

Garry Kasparov: "Putin’s bargaining power has been greatly overestimated"

Garry Kasparov´s speech at the Oslo Freedom Forum should be compulsory reading for European and American leaders:

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, it made perfect sense to integrate, to “engage”, with the morally and economically impoverished countries emerging from the Communist Dark Ages. But even after the European Union and NATO were expanded to their logical limits, the West continued to engage with authoritarian nations and leaders who wanted nothing to do with human rights and free markets within their own borders. Countries like Putin’s Russia and China received the economic benefits of engagement with the free world, but never ceased their crackdowns on civil society at home.

[SLIDE: ‘ENGAGEMENT’ PHOTOS: PUTIN WITH SCHROEDER, BERLUSCONI, LIPPONEN G8,]

Putin in particular has been very successful using the free world’s open borders, open press, and open political systems to his advantage. Just a note, that if not for Putin’s blatant aggression in Ukraine the so-called G-8 Summit would have taken place in Sochi last summer. Putin and his representatives have put many prominent Western politicians on his payroll, held fundraisers for political parties, brought influential western companies and executives into his network, and flooded western banks and markets with the easy cash they love, paid for with their own oil and gas money. However, Putin’s bargaining power has been greatly overestimated.

[SLIDE OIL & GAS IMPORT-EXPORT CHARTS]

The free world still has many advantages in this fight, and could have all the leverage it needs, if only it had the courage to use it. The EU, for example, gets only a third of its oil and gas from Russia. Substantial, and in many ways shameful, since it has been clear for years that Putin is not a reliable partner. Russia’s annexation of Crimea took place in March and Europe did nothing for seven months to find an alternative to Russian gas. And of course Norway could be one of the options! Today we still hear that “Europe could freeze” if Putin cuts the gas supply. But Russia exports over 80% of its oil and gas to the EU! Over 80%! Who has the leverage here? By boycotting or taxing those exports, or even making a credible threat to do so, Europe could cripple the cash flow that keeps Putin and his gang in power.
There are other powerful measures that could be employed. Russia’s hundreds of billions of dollars in cash reserves kept in Europe and the US could be frozen, as Iran’s were in 1979; Russian state corporations can be stripped of their cash flow; and Putin’s oligarchs’ assets can be seized to create a rift between the Godfather and his lieutenants. Total isolation is not possible today, but the free world must break all forms of dependency on dictatorships. Engagement with dictators has failed.

[SLIDE OF HEADLINES ABOUT PUTIN’S LOBBYING AND PROPAGANDA IN THE WEST]

This failed engagement policy of the West has given Putin something the Soviet leaders never dreamed of: an open frequency for propaganda and lobbying, and open markets for their natural resources and cash. Russia and China have channels on Western cable TV and teams of influential lobbyists in every capital. But sellers need buyers. Pipelines cannot easily be redirected. Russia’s ruling elite and their families have no desire to live in the country they have so effectively looted and ruined.
So the free world holds the winning cards in this game of geopolitical poker, but keeps folding its hand whenever Putin bluffs – and he does so regularly and successfully. A dictator knows what he must do to stay in power: he must look strong; he fights to survive. Democratically elected leaders are more worried about the next poll, the next election, or passing on tough decisions to their successors. Conflict and sacrifice aren’t winning campaign issues. Western leaders complain about jobs that could be lost from a confrontation, but how many jobs will be lost from global instability when dictators go unchallenged?
But we must fight – now, or later. If we have learned anything about dictators it is that they do not go away on their own. Putin is not a nightmare that goes away when you open your eyes! The longer we wait, the harder it will be. The price keeps going up every day. There is never a safe and easy solution. Sanctions can be effective, but they must be strong enough and fast enough to deter.
Read the entire speech here

The European Union continues on its path to economic self-destruction: Agrees on "World´s most ambitious climate energy policy"

The grim reality for the European Union:

Now that German growth has stumbled, the euro area is on the verge of tipping into its third recession in six years. Its leaders have squandered two years of respite, granted by the pledge of Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank’s president, to do “whatever it takes” to save the single currency. The French and the Italians have dodged structural reforms, while the Germans have insisted on too much austerity. Prices are falling in eight European countries. The zone’s overall inflation rate has slipped to 0.3% and may well go into outright decline next year. A region that makes up almost a fifth of world output is marching towards stagnation and deflation.

Surely the leaders of the European Union should be more than worried. However, instead of taking the necessary measures to create growth, those leaders have chosen to reinforce the only really "succesful" EU project, the self-destruction of the European economy:

in the early hours of Friday, Mr Van Rompuy, wrote in a tweet: "Deal! At least 40% emissions cut by 2030. World's most ambitious, cost-effective, fair #EU2030 climate energy policy agreed ."

The EU Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard, said she was "very proud" that the leaders "were able to get their act together on this pressing climate challenge".

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "We made a decisive step forward."

The EU is already on target to cut its CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020, compared with 1990 emission levels.

EU officials earlier said they wanted the EU to have an "ambitious position" in the run up to the UN climate change conference in Paris in December 2015.

They must be smiling in the US, China and India ...

Alan Greenspan on the never ending euro failure

There is no end to the ongoing euro crisis. Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan explains why the euro is - and will stay - a huge failure:

"At the outset of the creation of the euro in 1999, it was expected that the southern eurozone economies would behave like those in the north; the Italians would behave like Germans. They didn’t," Greenspan said. "Instead, northern Europe fell into subsidizing southern Europe’s excess consumption, that is, its current account deficits."
Greenspan predicts that as the south's fiscal crisis deepens, the flow of goods from the north will stop altogether and southern Europe's standard of living will go down.
"The effect of the divergent cultures in the eurozone has been grossly underestimated," he added. "The only way to have several currencies from divergent nations lumped together is if they are culturally close, such as Germany, the Netherlands and Austria. If they aren’t, it simply can’t continue to work."

Tim Worstall also has a good piece on the same subject in Forbes:

While these very different economies are locked into the one currency, one interest rate, system there’s really not a lot anyone can do about it. Some talk of fiscal union, which is in essence the rich areas sending money to the poor ones. But absolutely no one at all thinks that those rich areas have the desire nor capacity to ship enough money: we’re not talking about a few billions here or there, but substantial percentages of GDP being necessary.

All of which is what made me conclude long ago that the failure of the euro is inevitable. Please note, I don’t mean that collapse of it is: political finagling can hold it together for decades if people really try. What I mean is failure in an economic sense. Interest rates will always be set for the core economies, meaning that they will always be wrong for the peripheral ones. Which means that those peripheral economies are condemned to a cycle of huge boom and bust as interest rates are either way too low or way too high for their circumstances.
Yes, I do think it fair to say that wild gyrations are a sign of failure in an economic policy or system. And in this sense, I think it inevitable that the euro will fail. For it already has.

Obama is ready for another "reset" with Russia´s criminal dictator Putin

This was to be expected: Suddenly Putin´s aggression against Ukraine is (in reality) forgotten. Barack Obama, one of the weakest US presidents ever, is offering the corrupted and criminal dictator another "reset" (even if his administration is not using the word). It will not take long before the former KGB agent is again welcomed and embraced by the "leader of the Free World":

Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday that the United States and Russia had agreed to share more intelligence on the Islamic State, as he sought to lay the basis for improved cooperation with Moscow.

Just six months ago, Obama administration officials suggested that their goal was to isolate President Vladimir V. Putin following Russia’s decision to annex Crimea and provide military support to separatists in eastern Ukraine.

But Mr. Kerry made it clear that he would welcome expanded cooperation with Mr. Putin after a meeting here with Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister.

While nobody on the American side said the United States was undertaking another “reset” — the term the Obama administration used to describe its early attempt to improve ties with Russia — the tenor of Mr. Kerry’s comments suggested that the State Department was pursuing a new tack.

“It is no secret that the United States and Russia have had our differences over Ukraine,” Mr. Kerry told reporters. “We came together today in order to try to focus on those issues where we can find the capacity to be able to make a difference to other countries, to the world in general, and certainly to the relationship between Russia and the United States.”

 

Read the entire article here

 

Plummeting oil prices will weaken Putin´s Russia

Oil prices are plummeting. They have gone down as much as 20% since June. This - together with Western sanctions - weaken Vladimir Putin´s chances to continue his policy of aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere:

Lower oil prices could have lots of knock-on effects around the world. Take Russia, which depends on oil sales to bring in foreign currency. The Russian government has set its three-year budget with the expectation that oil prices would stay at $100 per barrel. A sustained fall in prices could cripple the Russian economy and run up deficits.

Indeed, some energy analysts are starting to wonder if an oil crash might even force Russia to pull back in Ukraine and elsewhere. And on Tuesday, the Russian finance minister warned that the country could no longer afford a multibillion-dollar upgrade to its armed forces that had been approved by President Vladimir Putin

Read the entire article here

Garri Kasparov on Putin: “the most dangerous man in the world”

Western leaders should listen to what Garry Kasparov has to say about Russian dictator Vladimir Putin:

Garry Kasparov, the world’s most renowned chess master, has branded Vladimir Putin “the most dangerous man in the world” in a passionate interview with Yahoo News, in which he stressed that the Russian President is more dangerous that Islamic State (ISIS) and “all the Al-Qaedas in the world”.

Asked if Islamic State or Putin were a bigger threat to global stability, Kasparov responded with “Of course Putin… Of course Putin!”

“Because Putin cannot be defeated militarily,” he explained. “The war with ISIS can be won on the ground. It is very clear that if America decides to eliminate ISIS, they will turn it into dust in 24 hours!” --

 

Russia’s nuclear arsenal gives Putin an “ability to create instability - a thousand times bigger than all the Al-Qaedas of the world,” Kasparov also said.

“Putin wants to stay in power at any cost and for him to stay in power he needs to create global instability. I would not be surprised if he starts blackmailing the world with nuclear armageddon because for him there is no life if he loses power.”

 

Of course Kasparov is right about Putin, and Obama, Merkel and the rest understand how dangerous the man is. But because unstable Putin is in charge of a large nuclear arsenal, they are too scared to take the action needed ...

Walter Russell Mead on EU: "The price for two decades of policy incompetence is goind to be high"

Walter Russell Mead is right:

Putin is dancing on the face of the West, and in Tehran, Beijing and across the world, the message is clear: Western statesmen are not serious, they don’t think before they act and they don’t mean what they say.
Ukraine continues to pay the penalty for standing up to Russia at the instigation of a ditzy, incoherent and vainglorious EU. History’s contempt for this generation of european leaders—authors of the euro disaster, disarmers of Europe as threats grew to the east and the south, creators of the worst mass unemployment in Europe since the depression—will be harsh and deep. The price for two decades of policy incompetence is going to be high, and the bill is already coming due.

The staggering costs of feeding the climate change "monster"

Tom Harris, executive director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition gives some interesting facts about the staggering costs of feeding the climate change "monster":

According to the Congressional Research Service, from 2001 to 2014 the US government spent $131 billion on projects meant to combat human-caused climate change, plus $176 billion for breaks for anti-CO2 energy initiatives.
Federal anti-climate-change spending is now running at $11 billion a year, plus tax breaks of $20 billion a year. That adds up to more than double the $14.4 billion worth of wheat produced in the United States in 2013.
Dr. Bjørn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, calculates that the European Union’s goal of a 20 percent reduction in CO2 emissions below 1990 levels by 2020, currently the most severe target in the world, will cost almost $100 billion a year by 2020, or more than $7 trillion over the course of this century.
Lomborg, a supporter of the UN’s climate science, notes that this would buy imperceptible improvement: “After spending all that money, we would not even be able to tell the difference.”
Al Gore was right in one respect: Climate change is a moral issue — but that’s because there is nothing quite so immoral as well-fed, well-housed Westerners assuaging their consciences by wasting huge amounts of money on futile anti-global-warming policies, using money that could instead go to improve living standards in developing countries.

Congratulations EU!: The man who led Finland to economic catastrophe, will now be in charge of jobs and growth!

The fact that former Finnish PM Jyrki Katainen will be in charge of jobs, growth, investment and competitiveness in Juncker´s new European Commission illustrates what is wrong with the European Union.

Judge yourselves whether the new Vice-President for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness is the right man for his job after reading what Björn Wahlroos, former economics professor and probably the most influential Finnish business executive and investor right now, has to say about the government Katainen led:

Finland is in a “catastrophic” and “murderous” economic situation, facing a challenge greater than in the doldrums of 1991, estimates Björn Wahlroos.
The outspoken tycoon refers to a recent interview in which Anders Borg, the Swedish Minister of Finance, suggested that Finland is a cautionary example of how a country can destroy its competitiveness.
“We messed up a couple of labour market agreements and tried to rectify that with measures that further increased labour market rigidity. Costs crept up. The results are evident: jobs keep on disappearing,” states Wahlroos.

A traditional measure of the competitiveness of an economy is to examine its terms of trade – the value of its exports relative to that of its imports. “In Finland, it has deteriorated by 30 per cent, which is unusual. In the meantime, wages have increased by 40 per cent,” lists Wahlroos.
“Wages have crept up by 20 per cent over the past six years alone – during a period when the gross domestic product has failed to grow one bit. In fact, it has dropped. If you're asking whether this is a problem, the answer would be yes!”
Industries, in turn, have refrained from making major investments after the financial crisis swept over Finland in 2008. “A substantial amount of jobs has disappeared. And here's the regrettable part: more will disappear,” predicts Wahlroos. --

In effect, the Government of Stubb continues to carry out the government programme hammered out by the Government of Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen (NCP) in 2011. “It's founded on as bad a premise as possible. What's regrettable in terms of political history is that it was founded on a bad premise partly knowingly,” Wahlroos states.

PS

Katainen resigned as captain of the sinking Finnish ship in June in the knowledge that he would be rewarded for his failure with one of the exorbitantly well-paid EU top jobs. You´ll never walk alone, if you belong to the "club" ....

Nigel Farage again defends Russia´s dictator Vladimir Putin

UKIP´s Nigel Farage has again defended Russian dictator Vladimir Putin´s aggression in Ukraine:

The West must stop opposing Vladimir Putin’s incursion into Ukraine and join forces with the Russian leader in the fight against Islamic extremists, Nigel Farage has said,

The Ukip leader said that Western countries must stop "playing war games in Ukraine and poking the “Russian bear with a stick” because Mr Putin is “on our side” in the war against Islamic extremism.

Mr Farage courted controversy earlier this year when he said that Mr Putin, the former KGB officer, is the statesman he most admires.

In a debate this morning at the European Parliament Mr Farage a sympathetic interpretation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said European states had “directly encouraged” the uprising that “led in turn to Vladimir Putin reacting”.

Mr Putin has been blamed by the West for prolonging the bloodshed in Syria and propping up the regime by supplying arms including helicopter gunships to President Assad, and repeatedly blocking moves to censure or sanction him at the United Nations.

Read the entire article here

Mr. Farage is totally wrong on this. I have a lot of sympathy for his criticism of the present European Union, but to defend the criminal and corrupted dictator Putin is unacceptable.

 

Former UK Defense Secretary: Putin has the potential to be as dangerous as Stalin

Former UK Defense Secretary Bob Ainsworth argues that Vladimir Putin has the potential to be as dangerous as Stalin:

As President Obama steels himself to do what he has tried to avoid, namely increase US military involvement in the Middle East, we should try to keep in perspective that he and the rest of us face a more significant threat.
The extremists of the Islamic State are an affront to our sense of humanity but they are non-state actors who could be dealt with if the politics and governance of the states in the region can be improved.
However, the situation in the Ukraine is of a different magnitude.
President Putin, having previously dismembered Georgia, is now involved in the same activity in Ukraine. Crimea has already been annexed to Russia and now the full ambitions of the Russian puppets in eastern Ukraine are becoming clear.
They plan the creation of  “New Russia” a state that would take in the eastern and the whole of the southern part of the country all the way to the Romanian border.
No leader of a major power has behaved as overtly aggressively since Stalin in the post war period, and sadly Putin would be very pleased with the comparison.
He has said the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century and he claims the right to act on behalf of Russian minorities in other states.
As there are Russian minorities throughout the old Soviet Union and far wider he is in principle claiming the right to interfere in the affairs of all of the independent sovereign states of Eastern Europe.
Stalin’s policies pushed the world into the Cold War; Putin has the potential to be equally as dangerous.
No sensible person wants, in the face of the many other challenges, to be forced to find money for increased spending on arms. No one wants the economic consequences that extensive sanctions against Russia will have on our own economies, but Putin will not be deterred by resolutions passed at Nato or EU summits.
So unless we want to gamble that this systematic aggression will fizzle out in the face of inactivity, and history tells us that doesn’t happen, we must find effective ways to deter him.
Both Nato and the EU have made a start but the small and reluctant steps taken so far sadly are not likely to be nearly enough.
All Nato countries should commit to reverse the recent decline in defence spending.
At the European level there is an urgent need to develop a strategy to decrease our heavy dependence on Russian energy.

Ainsworth is of course right, but the question is whether the present western leaders are prepared to act before it is too late.

Daniel Payne: "We should be entirely skeptical of the ceaseless predictions of climate catastrophe"

Daniel Payne´s article "The United Nations Is A Parody Of A Doomsday Prophet" in the Federalist is well worth reading. Here are a couple of excerpts:

the UN World Meteorological Organization recently came out with a series of “imagined weather forecasts” predicting the state of climate in the year 2050. “Miami South Beach is underwater,” announced one forecast; another predicted a mega-fatal “mega-drought in Arizona.” Never mind that the average weatherman can barely predict whether or not it’s going to rain tomorrow: instead, think about the fact that the United Nations is so hard-up for climate-change material that they’ve looked 36 years into the future to create fictional accounts of what the weather may be like. The tsunamis, the blistering drought, the Beginning of the End—all this stuff was supposed to be here years ago. The global climate chaos has never materialized, so the “experts” have set their sights on the future, doing some educated guessing on what the weather’s going to be like four decades hence.

Maybe we should just ignore them.

In a sense it’s not difficult to understand where the “climate experts” are coming from when they start moving the goalposts nearly half a century into the future. As Anthony Watts pointed out recently, climate science predicted in 2009 that the world would “warm faster than predicted in [the] next five years,” a process that would doubtlessly “silence global warming sceptics.” Well, the world did not “warm faster”; as a matter of fact, it didn’t warm at all, and the “skeptics” have been anything but “silenced,” if only because we’re able to observe the difference between the climate lobby’s grandiose disaster predictions and the unremarkable reality of the climate itself. Climate science is the only field in which you’re derisively considered a “skeptic” or a “denier” by forming your judgment based upon the facts. The solution is to move the “facts” as far into the future as possible in order to delay the inevitable judgment. --

The average global temperature has been effectively flat for 19 years—not simply rising more slowly than predicted, mind you, but flat. Paused. Nobody predicted this; the climate models failed to even consider it. Climate science should be a subject marked by humility, skepticism, and cautiousness. Instead, it’s a topic overpopulated by blowhards, self-aggrandizing megalomaniacs, and environmentalists more interested in authoritarianism than anything else. We should be entirely skeptical of the ceaseless predictions of climate catastrophe–and we should be completely wary of the senseless alarmists and the little tyrants that peddle them.

The Econonomist: "The euro may yet be doomed"

The Economist is spot on about the euro:

"If Germany, France and Italy cannot find a way to refloat Europe’s economy, the euro may yet be doomed." --

 "In recent weeks the countries of the euro zone have begun to take in water once again. Their collective GDP stagnated in the second quarter: Italy fell back into outright recession, French GDP was flat and even mighty Germany saw an unexpectedly large fall in output (see article). The third quarter looks pretty unhealthy, partly because the euro zone will suffer an extra drag from Western sanctions on Russia. Meanwhile, inflation has fallen perilously low, to around 0.4%, far below the near-2% target of the European Central Bank, raising fears that the zone as a whole could fall prey to entrenched deflation. German bond yields are hovering below 1%, another harbinger of falling prices. The euro zone stands (or wobbles) in stark contrast with America and Britain, whose economies are enjoying sustained growth."--

"(But) without a new push from the continent’s leaders, growth will not revive and deflation could take hold. Japan suffered a decade of lost growth in the 1990s, and is still struggling. But, unlike Japan, Europe is not a single cohesive country. If the currency union brings nothing but stagnation, joblessness and deflation, then some people will eventually vote to leave the euro. Thanks to Mr Draghi’s promise to put a floor under government debt, the market risk that financial pressures could trigger a break-up has receded. But the political risk that one or more countries decide to storm out of the single currency is rising all the time. The euro crisis has not gone away; it is just waiting over the horizon."

The euro in its present form is bound to fail. The sooner it happens, the better. Unfortunately the present European politicians will do their utmost in order to deny the failure, thus seriously delaying the much needed economic revival in Europe.

The truth about wind and solar power: "Their output is entirely unable to respond to electricity demand as and when needed"

It is good to be reminded of the fact that wind and solar power are not even close to solving the energy problems of highly industrialized countries:

there is a major problem with these renewable energy sources. Their electrical output is not dispatchable. Their output is entirely unable respond to electricity demand as and when needed. Energy is contributed to the grid in a haphazard manner dependent on the weather, and certainly not necessarily when it is required.
For example solar power inevitably varies according to the time of day, the state of the weather and also of course radically with the seasons. Essentially solar power might only work effectively in Southern latitudes and it certainly does not do well in Northern Europe. In Germany the massive commitment to solar energy might well provide up to ~20% of country wide demand for a few hours on some fine summer days either side of noon, but at the time of maximum power demand on winter evenings solar energy input is necessarily nil.
Electricity generation from wind turbines is equally fickle, as for example in a week in July this year shown above. Similarly an established high pressure zone with little wind over the whole of Northern Europe is a common occurrence in winter months, that is when electricity demand is likely to be at its highest.
Conversely on occasions renewable energy output may be in excess of demand and this has to dumped unproductively. There is still no solution to electrical energy storage on a sufficiently large industrial scale. That is the reason that the word “nominally” is used here in relation to the measured outputs from renewable energy sources.

Finnish PM Stubb: "Russia´s repeated incursions into Finnish airspace are deliberate and designed to create tension"

The behaviour of Putin´s Russia is beginning to seriously irritate also the Finns:

Russia’s repeated incursions into Finnish airspace are deliberate and designed to create tension, Prime Minister Stubb claimed on Saturday.
Speaking on Yle’s Ykkösaamu politics show, the prime minister said the three alleged violations by Russian aircraft within the space of one week were “not a question of an accident”, and said the behaviour gave a “bad message”.
Stubb said Russia's foreign policy is based on "power politics" and the philosophy that "if I'm winning, you're losing". He said it was not uncommon for the superpower to forment instability on its borders, such as in Ukraine and in Georgia in 2008.
He described the situation as “serious” but said there is no cause for alarm. “You can’t compare what’s happening in Ukraine to the situation in Finland,” he said.
On Friday Finland’s defence forces announced its Hornet fighter jets were on standby to see off any further attempted airspace breaches.

How does one deal with a mentally unstable dictator in charge of huge nuclear arsenal?

Western governments face a terrifying dilemma: How do you deal with a mentally unstable dictator in charge of a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons?

Vladimir Putin raised the spectre of nuclear war with the West on Friday as he defied international condemnation over his decision to send thousands of Russian troops and heavy armour into Ukraine.

Accused by Europe and Nato of launching a full-scale invasion of eastern Ukraine, the Russian leader boasted to a group of Russian youngsters that "It's best not to mess with us."

In language not seen since the height of the Cold War, he told his audience: "Thank God, I think no one is thinking of unleashing a large-scale conflict with Russia. I want to remind you that Russia is one of the leading nuclear powers."

Read the entire article here

Canadian delegation to NATO gives Putin and his troops a geography lesson

Canada offers some useful assistance to Putin and his troops:

Canada at NATO‏@CanadaNATO 22h

Geography can be tough. Here’s a guide for Russian soldiers who keep getting lost & ‘accidentally’ entering #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/RF3H4IXGSp

It is time to teach the liar Putin a lesson

Vladimir Putin - a criminal liar.

"Russia has nothing to do with the war in the Ukraine - it only sends the separatists tanks, missiles and paratroopers."
Berthold Kohler
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

"Russian soldiers fight in the Ukraine, Moscow leads a secret war against the neighboring country. It's time to call a spade a spade."
Die Tageszeitung


Time magazine:

Putin’s persistent denials of Russian involvement have started to crack, eroded by a growing body of proof that Russian soldiers are in fact fighting and dying in eastern Ukraine. The evidence suggests a new level of Russian involvement in the war, not merely funneling weapons and volunteers across the border to the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, but sending regular Russian ground forces on missions into Ukrainian territory. The inevitable result of that escalation has been a growing Russian casualty count, and the funerals and panicked relatives of Russian soldiers have been hard to sweep under the rug. Soon they are likely to force Putin either to come clean and admit his country’s intervention in Ukraine, or to face the growing public resentment over his denials.

It is time for the West to teach the liar Vladimir Putin a lesson!

David J. Kramer is right: "The last thing we need is a renewed search for accommodation with Putin"

David J. Kramer, president of Freedom House, has written an excellent article about the dangerous dictator Vladimir Putin. Here are the last paragraphs of Kramer´s article:

Russia’s military doctrine from 2010 cites as Russia’s top “external military danger” the enlargement of NATO and its military infrastructure “closer to the borders of the Russian Federation.” The reality, of course, is that Russia’s most secure and stable borders are with those countries—Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, Poland, Norway, and Finland—that are members of NATO and/or the European Union.
Citing this history is not to suggest that Putin is all rhetoric and no danger. On the contrary, a paranoid Putin is very dangerous for Russia’s neighbors and for internal critics. Just ask Georgia, which Russia invaded in 2008, or Estonia, the victim of a Russian cyberattack in 2007, or Moldova, which has endured trade cutoffs, or Ukraine today.
At the end of the day, Putin wants to destabilize Ukraine and other neighbors to make them unappealing to the West. Putin fabricates a threat to ethnic Russians in Ukraine to justify his invasion; the reality is there were no such threats, but more importantly he doesn’t give a damn about their welfare. After all, he doesn’t care about the rights of Russians living in his own country as evidenced by his nasty crackdown on human rights there and the import food ban. Whether Ukraine creates a federal model or some other form of governance is of no interest to Putin; fomenting chaos and separatism in Ukraine are his main objectives.
This is why calls by some commentators for Western leaders to “explore a quiet compromise” with Putin over the crisis in Ukraine and to “understand the Russian leader’s concerns, his demands, his ideas for possibly de-escalating the situation”are pointless, even counterproductive. Putin is not interested in de-escalating unless that would help him with his number one priority: staying in power.
Indeed, Putin is willing to do whatever it takes to stay in power, including, it appears, invading Ukraine under the phony pretext of a “humanitarian intervention.” Making matters worse, through his control over television programming, Putin’s propaganda has tapped into an increasingly ugly mood among Russians (see this “Bike Show” over the past weekend in Sevastopol) that will be hard to tamp down—and may even spin beyond Putin’s control. This makes Putin, and now even Russia, a serious threat. To deal with this challenge requires even tougher sanctions, including adding Putin himself to the sanctions list, and the provision of military assistance by which Ukraine and other neighbors—and not just NATO members—can defend themselves. The last thing we need is a renewed search for accommodation with Putin.

Wind farms require 700 times more land than fracking to produce the same amount of energy!

Fracking does not create this kind of landscapes ...

Fracking is clearly the better alternative when it comes to creating small intrusion on the landscape:

A wind farm requires 700 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as a fracking site, according to analysis by the energy department’s recently-departed chief scientific advisor.

Prof David MacKay, who stood down from the Government role at the end of July, published analysis putting shale gas extraction “in perspective”, showing it was far less intrusive on the landscape than wind or solar energy.

His intervention was welcomed by fracking groups, who are battling to win public support amid claims from green groups and other critics that shale gas extraction will require the “industrialisation” of the countryside.

Hundreds of anti-fracking protesters on Thursday occupied a field near Blackpool neighbouring a proposed fracking site for energy firm Cuadrilla.

Prof MacKay said that a shale gas site uses less land and “creates the least visual intrusion”, compared with a wind farm or solar farm capable of producing the equivalent amount of energy over 25 years. --

Prof MacKay, who is Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, said that a shale gas pad of 10 wells would require just 2 hectares of land and would be visible - due to an 85-foot-high drilling rig - from 77 hectares of surrounding area. However, the drilling rig would be in place for "only the first few years of operations".

By contrast, a wind farm capable of producing the same energy would span an area of 1,450 hectares, requiring 87 turbines each 328-foot tall.

Read the entire article here

 

Hillary Clinton is right when she distances herself from Obama´s foreign policy

Hillary Clinton is of course right:

Distancing herself from President Barack Obama's foreign policy, potential 2016 U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said in an interview published on Sunday that the U.S. decision not to intervene early in the Syrian civil war was a "failure."

Republican critics and others have faulted Obama for doing too little to support Syrians who rose up against President Bashar al-Assad. Syria has been torn apart by a civil war for three years, with Assad staying in power and Islamic militants among the opposition gaining strength.

"The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad - there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle - the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled," Clinton said in an interview with The Atlantic.

What made Obama say that "It´s not a new Cold War"?

One wonders why Barack Obama felt a need to say this:

"It's not a new Cold War," Obama told reporters. "What it is, is a very specific issue related to Russia's unwillingness to recognize that Ukraine can chart its own path."

So, everything is fine, except for "the specific issue" of Ukraine!?

British ambassador to the United States (rightly) calls Putin a thug and a liar

Sir Peter Westmacott: This man is a thug and a liar

Kudos to Sir Peter Westmacott, the British ambassador to the United States, who´s characterization of Vladimir Putin is spot on:

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, is a “thug” and a “liar”, one of Britain’s most senior ambassadors has said, as the EU prepares to approve tough new sanctions against Moscow.

Sir Peter Westmacott said the West’s increasingly firm response to Russia was beginning to have an impact on the Kremlin.

The British ambassador to the United States said Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine was starting to look like “the wrong call”.
 

The Church of Sweden has joined the International Church of Global Warming

 "The lifestyle of the industrialised world is untenable"  
  
The Church of Sweden

The bishops of the Church of Sweden have published a letter about climate change, which proves that this once venerable church is now a full member of the greenie leftist international Church of Global Warming.

Here are a few samples from the letter:

Climate change is probably the biggest common challenge

ever faced by humanity. The work to face this challenge must be

reflected in social development and make us reassess how we

think about lifestyle, welfare, sustainability and justice, for the

sake of creation, for the sake of life and for the sake of our

grandchildren and our grandchildren’s grandchildren. --


As long as the profitability of many companies

depends on fossil fuels, there will be considerable opposition to  

change.28 For many years, what could be called the ‘fossil fuel

industrial complex’ has obstructed the development of renewable

energy sources and the phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies. Solar

cell producers and other companies that have developed technologies

for the transition to a fossil free economy are still too weak

to seriously challenge those with interests in preserving the prevailing

system. --     Peace with the earth is increasingly becoming a precondition

of peace on earth. The role of oil in many of the world’s conflicts

has long been obvious. It is not yet equally clear whether these

conflicts will be enhanced by climate change, but competition

for limited resources such as water, agricultural land, air space

and ocean regions is already creating tension that may worsen as

the climate changes. A shortage of food and sustainable supply

potential is creating uncertainty and flows of refugees, and is

contributing to conflicts.

An awakening is required among the world’s decision makers.

They must realize that it is not possible to win a war against the

planet or to deny that the planet has limits. We must make peace

with the earth. For the sake of the poor and the vulnerable, for

the sake of future generations and for the integrity of creation. --

However,

we probably need to reconsider our consumption patterns more

fundamentally. Consumption of goods produces higher emissions

than consumption of services, and private consumption produces

higher emissions than public consumption. The knowledge that

public consumption largely consists of healthcare, education and

social services further emphasizes the fact that the balance between

goods and services needs to be highlighted.

We believe and hope that we can see new alliances between,

for example, scientific climate research, happiness and welfare

research and religion. The desire to make good change can be

enhanced if we can show how energy transition, sustainability

and welfare promote each other. If it is also possible to show

that a climate-friendly life is also a happier life, then we have

made a major advance and the willingness to give up old

patterns increases.  
(Bolding by NNoN)