This is no suprise: François Hollande ready for business with Putin despite of his annexation of Crimea

It is really sad that the French will have to wait for another three years until they have a new president:

PARIS — President François Hollande of France will use D-Day commemorations next week as an opportunity to assume a more direct diplomatic role in the Ukraine crisis, becoming the first European leader to meet face to face with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia since the Western effort to isolate him for his annexation of Crimea.

Though Mr. Hollande and lower-ranking French officials have been in regular contact with Mr. Putin and his inner circle for months, the French have played a more quiet role on Ukraine than the Germans and Americans. Recently, Mr. Hollande joined Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on a phone call with Mr. Putin.

        

His scheduled meeting with the Russian president now constitutes the French president’s most prominent diplomatic foray into the Ukrainian crisis since it began. It follows France’s announcement that it would honor a deal worth 1.2 billion euros, or $1.6 billion, to deliver two Mistral-class warships to Russia even after its land grab in Ukraine, a decision that displeased France’s Western allies.

Read the entire article here

Reuters praises Putin's disastrous China deal

Reuters is doing a great job as Vladimir Putin's PR agency:

China and Russia signed a $400-billion gas supply deal on Wednesday, securing the world's top energy user a major source of cleaner fuel and opening up a new market for Moscow as it risks losing European customers over the Ukraine crisis.
The long-awaited agreement is a political triumph for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is courting partners in Asia as those in Europe and the United States seek to isolate him over Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula.

The China deal is in reality a result of Chinese extortion in a situation where the Russian dictator was forced to make a deal which in the end will be highly unprofitable for the Russians. Gazprom - the pipe laying company - will have to invest a huge amount of money in new pipelines, which most likely never will be profitable. And the Chinese will be able to demand even lower prices, whenever the situation in the world gas markets change.

This deal is far from the "triumph" described by Reuters. It is a political deal, which in the end will lead to an even more weakened Russia.

Garri Kasparov's message to Europe

This is Garry Kasporov's message to Guy Verhofstadt and other present and future European leaders:

Unfortunately neither Verhofstadt nor any other European leader has the guts to seriously confront the mafia state dictator. And with Obama - one of the weakest US presidents ever - in charge on the other side of the Atlantic, the field is open for the thug in the east.

Maybe the models were not so wrong after all? : First Australian climate refugees soon on their way to the US and Europe?

Finally, sanity prevails in Australia:

The budgetary facts are inescapably grim for researchers and scientists based in renewable energies and research. The funding for all government programs related to climate change is set to shrink at an alarming rate, going from $5.75 billion this year to a scant $500 million in the next four years. Additionally, the Emissions Reduction Fund which is meant to help lower greenhouse gas emissions in Australia is going to be reduced to only $1.14 billion. This was devastating news after Environment Minister Greg Hunt had gone on record promising to provide $2.55 billion to fund the program. Nevertheless, it is not only climate change programs that are feeling the pinch of the Abbott budget. The Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia’s national science agency, will have $111 million worth of funding slashed over the next four years, which will affect an uncertain number of programs and a loss of tenth of the CSIRO workforce.

The outlook is bleak from the standpoint of scientists and researchers in Australia, many of whom will probably leave the country in order to find work elsewhere.

Europe and the US, watch out, the first Australian climate refugees are coming! Maybe the alarmists' predictions about huge climate change migration were not so wrong, after all!

Most of the jobless Aussie surplus scientists will probably end up in the US, where the Obama administration no doubt will receive them with open arms ...

Finnish operatic mega star Karita Mattila refuses to appear with Putin's puppet Valery Gergiev

Kudos to Finnish operatic star soprano Karita Mattila, who recently refused to appear together with dictator Vladimir Putin's puppet Valery Gergiev in New York. Because of Mattila's refusal the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra had to invite Italian conductor Fabio Luisi to lead the concert in the Carnegie Hall on April 12.

Shame on Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra, both of which continue their co-operation with the much overrated Ossetian conductor!

Richard Miniter: "The Obama Administration is too busy trying to appease the Russian bear to see an opportunity to tame it"

Richard Miniter is spot on in his Forbes column:

The only way to transform Russia from a would-be regional threat to a normal country would be to take away its extraordinary powers over Europe. European energy independence, missile shield and a robust NATO would trim Russia’s claws and change its behavior.
Unfortunately, the Obama Administration can’t see the tremendous historic opportunity that lies at its feet.
Putin’s slow-motion invasion of Ukraine is exactly the catalyst needed to wean Europe from energy dependence on Russia, forge opinion for missile defense and modernize NATO. Without Putin’s aggression, no American president could ever get the Europeans to act collectively and rapidly.

Yet the Obama Administration is too busy trying to appease the Russian bear to see an opportunity to tame it.
A proven missile defense for Poland is a vital first step. Let’s hope the Obama Administration comes to realize what the Poles already know.

Alarmists Oreskes and Oppenheimer maintain that climate scientists actually have underpredicted global warming!

Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes, Princeton geoscientist Michael Oppenheimer and some other "scholars" maintain that climate scientist actually have underpredicted evidence of human caused global warming:

In fact, it increasingly appears that, if there is any systemic bias in the climate models, it’s that they understate the gravity of the situation. In an interesting paper that appeared in the journal Global Environmental Change, a group of scholars, including Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard, and Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist at Princeton, note that so-called climate skeptics frequently accuse climate scientists of “alarmism” and “overreacting to evidence of human impacts on the climate system.” But, when you actually measure the predictions that climate scientists have made against observations of how the climate has already changed, you find the exact opposite: a pattern “of under- rather than over-prediction” emerges. The scholars attribute this bias to the norms of scientific discourse: “The scientific values of rationality, dispassion, and self-restraint tend to lead scientists to demand greater levels of evidence in support of surprising, dramatic, or alarming conclusions.” They call this tendency “erring on the side of least drama,” or E.S.L.D. for short.

Alarmists Oreskes and Oppenheimer must be joking. Or do they think that climate scientists have underpredicted the fact that there has been no global warming during the last almost 18 years?