The end of Gazprom - and the Putin era - is near

The demise of the Russian energy giant Gazprom - to be followed by the the fall of dictator Vladimir Putin - now appear almost certain, even if it will take a few years: 

Gazprom, the natural gas company controlled by the Russian state, is in crisis. It is likely to fall victim to the shale gas revolution that is under way across the US. The shale gas revolution will probably have telling consequences for Russian state capitalism and President Vladimir Putin’s power.

This crisis erupted suddenly. With its surge in shale gas production the US has become self-sufficient in natural gas. It has overtaken Russia as the biggest natural gas producer. Crucially, US natural gas is cheap. Domestic US natural gas prices are only a quarter of Gazprom’s oil-linked eastern European prices. Such large price differentials cannot possibly last for long.

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Curiously, in 2011 Gazprom was formally the most profitable company in the world with purported net profits of $46bn, but these profits were hardly real. Investment analysts opined that no less than $40bn disappeared through inefficiency or corruption. Gazprom’s cash flow was barely positive.

In their 2010 booklet Putin and Gazprom , Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov, the opposition politicians, detailed how assets were being stripped from Gazprom through large kickbacks on pipeline construction and cheap sales of financial and media subsidiaries to Putin cronies. Since shareholders have realised that only their dividend yield is material, Gazprom’s market value has plummeted by two-thirds from $365bn in May 2008 to $120bn today.

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Gazprom’s demise looks likely. With its demise, Russia’s revenues would dwindle. Mr Putin‘s model of state capitalism would suffer a devastating blow from Gazprom’s fall. If not even Gazprom is viable, which Russian state company is? Such an insight could give market economic reforms new impetus. After all, Russia just privatised $5.2bn of shares in Sberbank, the state savings bank.

In his first comments on the European Commission case against Gazprom in Vladivostok on September 9, Mr Putin revealed the level of his incomprehension of market economics. He said the “EU subsidises the economies of eastern European countries. Now it seems that someone in the EU has decided to shift part of the burden, some of the subsidies, to us”.

Contrary to the evidence, he said Gazprom’s prices were market-oriented, adding that “we have had certain pricing principles for decades and they are written in long-term contracts. No one ever questioned these principles”.

Well, the European Commission does question them. The longer Mr Putin denies reality, the deeper Gazprom’s crisis will grow.

Read the entire article here

Of course Vladimir Putin will fight until the bitter end in order to stay in power. But there is no way he can save his failed money machine, Gazprom. And there will be no Putin without Gazprom. The day when Putin shares the fate of all other corrupted dictators could be beginning of Russia´s progress towards real democracy, for the benefit its long suffering people. 

As we have said before, this will be another huge benefit of the American led shale gas revolution. 

European media have lost interest in international climate change conferences

The European Union still pretends to be the global warming "superpower" at various UN sponsored climate change/global warming conferences, telling and, in the case of airlines, forcing other countries to conform with their "progressive" climate legislation. However, European media have lost interest in these mega meetings, and in global warming in general. Even alarmist environment journalists now doubt "that a difference in climate change will emerge from a global forum like a UN summit":

For the 16 years preceding Cancun, more than 80 percent of the journalists reporting these  conferences came mainly from Europe, the US, Japan and Canada. But Cancun—otherwise known as COP16—saw a reversal of that dynamic, with 55 percent of the reporters from the Global South. This increased to 66 percent in Durban, while those from developed countries dwindled to 34 percent.

The decline of European media attendance is astonishing. European journalists have passed from representing the largest group at all the summits held until Copenhagen, to almost an endangered species. They have dropped from representing 60 percent of the attendance at Copenhagen, to 22 percent in Cancun and 19 percent in Durban. While a number of large developing countries, such as China, India, or Bangladesh, maintained their media presence after Copenhagen—even when expectations for an international agreement were much lower—European countries that traditionally sent a cohort of climate correspondents, such as France, Germany, Spain or the UK, drastically reduced their numbers.

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I interviewed seven experienced reporters working for mainstream outlets in Western European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom), all of whom used to attend climate summits until Copenhagen and now cover them from afar.

In addition to media organizations downsizing and making budget cuts, all their editors argued that as expectations were lower and there were fewer Heads of State attending Cancun or Durban, it was not worth spending money to send a correspondent abroad for at least a week.

In most of the outlets represented by these reporters, climate change coverage has seen a dramatic reduction in terms of copy and broadcast minutes, at least during the autumn period when these events take place. Additionally, the lack of interest by editors in climate negotiations has been accompanied by less interest in the subject of climate change in general during the rest of the year.
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None of the climate journalists I have talked to believe that a difference in climate change will emerge from a global forum like a UN summit, but more likely from action at the local level. 

Read the entire article here

The Spanish journalist, who wrote the article in the Columbia Journalism Review, is still a believer in the UN climate change/global warming propaganda, but her text gives a rather realistic view of the situation in European media. It is also apparent that also US media have lost interest in the UN global warming jamborees. Soon the only reporters attending will be those from "developing" countries, sponsored by governments hoping to cash in on the global warming hoax.

Alarmist "study": 1000 children a day are dying because of climate change

Alarmists still seem to think that scaremongering is a winning strategy: 

Nearly 1,000 children a day are now dying because of climate change, according to a path-breaking study published Wednesday (PDF), and the annual death toll stands at 400,000 people worldwide.

Climate change also is costing the world economy $1.2 trillion a year, the equivalent of 1.6 percent of economic output, reports the Climate Vulnerability Monitor, a study commissioned by 20 of the world’s governments whose nations are most threatened by climate change and released on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York.

Most of the 400,000 annual deaths are “due to hunger and communicable diseases that affect above all children in developing countries,” concludes the study, written by 50 scientists and policy experts from around the world.

Read the entire article here

The enviro-fundamentalists behind the "study" do not seem to realize that this kind of lunatic scaremongering is counterproductive. But from a climate skeptic point of view it is not without its benefits; sane people understand how far from reality the alarmists are. However, it is sad if easily influenced individuals - and children - suffer after reading the horror stories. 

Germans have lost their faith in the euro - and the entire European Union

A recently published opinion poll about how the Germans view the euro and the entire European Union  membership has not received the attention in the rest of Europe that it deserves - probably because the generally pro EU mainstream media have chosen to ignore it. 

The poll, done by the renowned Bertelsmann Foundation, shows a dramatic loss in the support for both the euro and the entire European project. For the first time ever, a majority of Germans think that they would be better of without the European Union:

Only 32% of the Germans think that they would be worse of without the EU! In addition, 48% of those polled even see the EU as a danger to social peace and stability in Germany.

And the Bertelsmann poll also clearly shows that Germans are tired of being the euro paymasters: 

65% of the Germans think that they would be do better without the euro! Only 21% think that they are better off with the common currency. 

Never before have the Germans been so critical of the European Union and the euro, says Bertelsmann Foundation Chairman Aart De Geus.

Read the entire article (in German) here

The poll should be a clear message to the ruling political elite in Germany, as well as leaders elsewhere in Europe. Sadly though, it is also clear that they - and the eurocrats in Brussels - refuse to listen to ordinary people. Instead they are pushing their Slow Motion Titanic towards its  final destination ...

China´s inhuman and shameful one-child policy

Yesterday marked the 32th anniversary of China´s one-child family planning policy, which has resulted in massive human rights abuses. US Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, one of the leading pro-life and human rights advocates in Congress, has condemned the inhuman Chinese policy: 

“On that date in 1980 the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party sent an open letter to party members setting forth its plan to embark on a national one-child policy,” Smith said. “What came out of that letter? A cruel and inhumane policy, a human rights violation that is, in scope and seriousness, the worst human rights abuse in the world today. No other government policy anywhere else in the world systematically punishes, abuses, and violates women so grossly as this.”

Smith said the policy has made it so brothers and sisters are illegal and children are growing up in a society with no aunts and uncle because the one-child policy has now been around for a generation.

The policy is unlike any other in the world in that it requires all women to obtain a birth permit before becoming pregnant and children of unwed mothers are subjected to abortions. And it monitors the reproductive cycles of all women of childbearing age through a system of mandatory, regular, and crudely invasive physical check-ups.

He says the policy has created an “atmosphere of fear” where anonymous pregnancy informants spy on citizens.

“The brave pregnant woman who refuses to give in is usually detained and beaten – or, if she goes into hiding, her relatives are detained and beaten. Families that succeed in hiding an “out-of-plan” pregnancy are punished with fines up to ten times the average annual income,” he explained.

Congressman Smith has called on President Obama to speak out against this shameful and inhuman Chinese policy: ” Doing so, he said, would provide encouragement for millions of Chinese people, “to suddenly feel that the leader of the free world understands and empathizes with their plight.”

Regrettably, knowing Obama´s general kowtowing to the Chinese, it is not likely that he will react in any way. 

Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, has written a letter to President Hu Jintao of China, in which she is asking him to stop the violence. The letter includes some grim examples of the reality of the once-child policy: 

Feng Jianmei, for example, was forcibly aborted at seven months when she and her husband, Deng Jiyuan, could not pay a 40,000 yuan fine ($6300). Officials of Ankang City, Shaanxi Province, tried to force Feng into a car, but she escaped to her aunt’s house.  They broke through the gate, so she fled to the mountains, where officials found her hiding under a bed.  After forcibly aborting her baby, officials laid the bloody body of her dead daughter next to her in the bed.  The story and photograph immediately went viral, sent shockwaves around the world, and ignited a firestorm of outrage.

Our hearts go out to the victims of forced abortion and their families.  The coercive enforcement of China’s cruel and barbaric One Child Policy causes more violence towards women and girls than any other official policy on earth.  It is China’s war against women and girls. Women are forcibly aborted up to the ninth month of pregnancy.  Forced abortion is not a choice.  It is systematic, institutionalized violence against women, official government rape; and it continues to this day.  Women’s Rights Without Frontiers urges you to put an end to this hideous crime against humanity.

Feng Jianmei is not alone.  Several other cases of coercion have emerged in the past year:

Lijing County, Shandong Province. October 12, 2011.  Jihong Ma died during a forced abortion, six months pregnant.  Due to the trauma of being seized by Family Planning Officials, she had been placed on oxygen.  In the words of a family member:

“More than ten persons from the Family Planning Bureau came, took off the oxygen mask from her and forced her to induce labor. From the time she was put into operating room at 4:00 p.m., there was no news about her . . . At night around 10:00 p.m., someone came, opened the door of the delivery room and slipped away. We ran into the delivery room and saw that the doctors and nurses all disappeared while poor Jihong Ma’s body had already been totally freezing cold, with purple lips and bleeding nose, lying on the operating table without any movement.”

Linyi City, Shandong Province. March 2012.  A photo of a forcibly aborted full term baby drowned in a bucket, submitted anonymously, circulated on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, and in the West.  The infant reportedly cried at birth, but was drowned in a bucket by family planning personnel.

Huangqiao Town, Jishui County, Jiangxi Province. March 2012.  A 46-year-old woman was forcibly sterilized, in retaliation for bringing a petition. The woman posted the following account on the internet:

On March 14, my husband was being escorted back from making a petition.  To retaliate for his petition, the town government sent more than 20 strong men.  I could no longer give birth to a child at that time, but they still dragged my legs, treated me like an animal, and forcibly performed a tubal ligation on the operating table of the Family Planning Office.  Guoqing Luo (the Deputy Town Secretary) also exclaimed, “The Government takes the consequences!  The Government has the money!”

Cao Ruyi, Changsha City, Hunan Province. June 2012 and ongoing.  Five months pregnant, Cao Ruyi was detained by Family Planning Officials, who beat her husband and attempted to forcibly abort her.  They demanded that she pay the Chinese equivalent of approximately $24,000, or face forced abortion.  Because of international pressure, this amount was reduced and Cao was allowed to leave the hospital, but she remains in jeopardy.

Hu Jia, Jianli County, Hubei Province. June 19, 2012.  China’s Southern Metropolis Daily reported that Hu Jia was forcibly aborted at nearly eight months.  This case was reported by a major Chinese newspaper, indicating the growing discontent with the policy inside China and the courage of the Chinese news media to report it.

Chen Guangcheng. Not only are women oppressed, but so are those who try to defend them.  Blind activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng exposed the widespread and systematic use of forced abortions and involuntary sterilizations in Linyi County in 2005.  The Chinese Communist Party imprisoned Chen for four years and three months.  They then kept him and his family under strict house arrest from September, 2010 until his dramatic escape.  Chen arrived in the United States on May 19, 2012.

Read the entire article here

Regrettably, also Reggie Littlejohn´s appeal will fall on deaf ears. The Communist Party authoritarians - today widely feted by western leaders begging for economic assistance  - may look civilized in their dark business suits, but in reality they are a bunch of corrupted brutes, who could not care less about human rights or democracy. 

New study: It was warmer during Roman and Medieval times

Four scientists - Jan Esper, Johannes Gutenberg University, Ulf Büntgen, the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Mauri Timonen, Finnish Forest Research Institute and David C. Frank, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern - have studied northern Scandinavian summer temperatures of the past two millennia. Their new study, which has been published in Global  and Planetary Change 88-89 has produced some rather interesting results: 

Background

In introducing the report of their most recent study, the authors write that millennial-length temperature reconstructions have become "an important source of information to benchmark climate models, detect and attribute the role of natural and anthropogenic forcing agents, and quantify the feedback strength of the global carbon cycle." And, therefore, the four researchers have dedicated themselves and their talents to developing the most reliable long-term regional temperature reconstructions possible, focusing their attention most recently on parts of northern Sweden and Finland

What was learned
Most importantly from our point of view, the four researchers say that the new temperature history "provides evidence for substantial warmth during Roman and Medieval times, larger in extent and longer in duration than 20th century warmth."

What it means
As ever more data-inclusive and carefully-analyzed studies of palaeotemperature proxies are conducted, it is becoming ever more evident that there has not been anything unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about either the rate of warming or the level of warmth achieved during the 20th century, which further suggests that there is no real-world empirical evidence for any CO2-induced global or regional warming. It has all been natural.

Read the entire article here

Václav Klaus - "a lone fighter for democracy among Europe's heads of state"

In his new book "The Shattering of Illusions", Czech President Václav Klaus argues that European "two-faced" politicians, including the British Conservatives, have opened the door to a European superstate: 

In his book, Europe: The Shattering of Illusions, to be published by Bloomsbury on Thursday, Mr Klaus makes the case that the EU has evolved into its current form because political leaders have found it convenient to turn away from their nation states, where voters have historically been able to hold them to account.

"Political elites have always known that the shift in decision-making from the national to the supranational level weakens the traditional democratic mechanisms (that are inseparable from the existence of the nation state), and this increases their power in a radical way. That is why they wanted this shift so badly in the past, and that is why they want it today," he writes.

"The authors of the concept of European integration managed to short circuit the minds of the people, making a link between Hitler's aggressive nationalism (nationalism of a totally negative type) and the traditional nation state, calling into question the existence of nation states in general. Of the many fatal mistakes and lies that have always underpinned the evolution of the EU, this is one of the worst."

Mr Klaus is genuinely baffled and aghast when describing his state visit to Italy last week, where he encountered what he called the "destructive mentality" of Italian politicians who were using the eurozone crisis to give up on democracy and to evade responsibility for running their country.

"It was really very depressing for me how many leading Italian politicians expressed the view that it is necessary to shift competences from Italy to Brussels because of one thing: they passively accept they are not able to make rational decisions themselves," he said. "They can now find the excuse or alibi that 'we are forced to do it'. I have never heard it before so explicitly or directly.

"It is a flight from accountability and responsibility. They have given up on the role and importance of democracy. That is the final and really tragic consequence."

With sadness, more than anger, he concludes that the Conservatives, in government under David Cameron, are no better than any other national politicians with "two faces", who "show one to their voters and the other when speaking in Brussels, at various EU summits and similar events."

"We see it best with the British Conservatives after Margaret Thatcher. With the full weight of public opinion behind them, sharply opposing the euro and any further transfer of powers to Brussels - winning many a vote thanks to this - as soon as they step on to the continent, their resolve to fight for these principles evaporates," he writes.

It is also interesting to note how positively Dr. Klaus speaks about the UKIP:

After the collapse of Communism, conservatives in the Czech Republic found natural allies in their Britain counterparts under Baroness Thatcher - a relationship that has continued, with members of Mr Klaus's party sitting in the grouping led by British Conservatives in the European Parliament.

But Mr Klaus himself is beginning to think beyond that. As Czech president he cannot act unilaterally, but he expresses his personal support for the UK Independence Party, a relationship that became closer after a recent meeting with its leader Nigel Farage, and he hinted at possible plans when his second and last term of office ends next March.

"Involvement in an explicit way is at the moment out of the question. I suppose in the long run, but definitely not as president of this country," he said, adding: "I support many of their ideas."

Read the entire article here

Another excellent analysis by Klaus. Bruno Waterfield´s characterization of Klaus as "a lone fighter for democracy among Europe´s heads of state" is spot on. Looking forward to reading the book!