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Go Figure! A Guest Post

Artillery Bay, Sevastopol

The following is a letter recently published in Edward’s local paper.

Sir

There is more than a whiff of 1914 in the air as Germany, under the
cloak of the EU, presses boldly forwards into the Ukraine. The policy
long pre-existed today's  European Union..

On September 9th 1914, the Imperial Chancellor of Germany , Theobald von
Bethmann Hollweg, asserted Germany's war aims.

"Russia must be thrust back as far as possible from Germany's borders
and her domination over the non-Russian vassal peoples broken...We must
create a central European economic association through common customs
treaties to include France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Austria-Hungary,
Poland and perhaps Italy, Sweden and Norway.

"This association will not have any common constitutional supreme
authority and all its members  will be formally equal but in practice
will be under German leadership and must stabilise Germany's leadership
over central Europe"

Now, of course, we do have a "common constitutional supreme authority",
the EU Commission, as our own real government for most things. Yet
William Hague talks about bringing  "democracy" to the Ukraine when his
own so-called government had no power to prevent large parts of Somerset
being flooded on the orders of EU environmental Regulations and
Directives.

The "Weltanschauung" (way of looking at the world) by the German
political class existed from at least 1848, before Germany was a unified
country. The delegates of the Frankfurt parliament then resolved that
the Balkans were part of "Germany's natural economic hinterland" and
that no significant Slavic state should be allowed in the area. In 1999,
after a generation of destabilisation by the German secret service,
Yugoslavia was destroyed by NATO  air power - with our assistance.

Now Russia is more assertive and this sort of push-over cannot occur.
The Crimea was part of Russia but made part of the Ukraine in the
Fifties when the change was rather like being moved from Derbyshire to
Staffordshire. Now it is an international boundary.

Yet Russia's main warm water, Black Sea naval base is in Sebastopol in
the Crimea, where most people speak Russian.

As the Americans say - Go figure!

Yours faithfully

Edward Spalton

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Petty Tensions In Scotland But Serious Tensions In Crimea

Whilst a foolish member of the Labour-run Aberdeen Council proposes to ‘ban’ Alex Salmond and his government ministers from council estates and all council property, tensions are running high in Crimea.

It seems part of the problem is identity. Russia and Ukrainian forces have always worked together in Crimea as part of the deal worked out when Ukraine got independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.  All over Crimea people are being forced to choose their identity - Crimean, Russian or Ukrainian.

Who would have thought that more than 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union these issues of identity and power would reassert themselves so dangerously? 

I confess I understand little about Putin’s reasons for his behaviour, other than what I’ve read in the oft-inaccurate press, but some bloggers and commentators have attempted to give their opinions. Craig Murray offers a little history and James Delingpole wonders ‘Why are people so hot for war with Putin?’

Perhaps the image below is one reason and the Washington Post has its take on it too.

click to enlarge

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Cyprus - An Interesting Analysis

A guest post from Edward Spalton. 

An interesting analysis. Countries do not have eternal friends or eternal enemies.
They have eternal interests which they pursue in different ways in different times.
Something which the UK government, fixated on the EU and the "special
relationship" with America as ends in themselves, appears to have
forgotten.

Germany, of course, has formed much of the architecture and policy of
the EU to pursue long-standing aims which the German political class has
held since before Germany became a united political entity.

Editor's note: Edward, like myself, keeps a close eye on German politics and the fact that he is proficient in the German language helps.

In response to the analysis I would be prepared to place a few shillings on a secret agreement between Germany and Russia as suggested in the article.  

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Will Faslane Be Scotland's Bargaining Tool?

Fifty years ago I doubt if any Scottish independence supporters would have dreamt that their country would be the talk of Washington and Moscow steamies, but it is and the interest of the Russians is said to be causing 'jitters' in senior American circles.

One of Putin's US political counsellors made an appearance at the National Capital Tartan Day Committee's (NCTDC) Tartan Day 2012 Symposium in Washington at the end of last month.  His attendance was unusual because it was the first time a Russian has shown up at one of these events.

But why was he there?  Maybe to admire the tartans (if there were any on show) but his main interest was discussing Trident and the future of Britain's nuclear deterrent should Scotland decide to vote Yes in the 2014 referendum.

A senior Congressional aide stated many US political experts believe that if Scotland does decide to become independent the SNP will be forced to abandon its opposition to basing nuclear missiles on the Clyde as part of the separation agreement. "A favourable outcome would be that the bases would still be available for the Trident fleet and would be leased to the new British government," he added.

All very neat and tidy for the US because some Americans are said to be worried independence would 'weaken the military power of America's staunchest ally'.  I don't agree that there is any 'special relationship' between the US and the UK. The US is well known for looking after its own interests and those of its allies are secondary.

Republican Congressman John J Duncan, who is co-chair of the Friends of Scotland Congressional Caucus, is one of the biggest supporters of Scottish interests in Washington DC.  He can't understand the SNP's opposition to nuclear weapons.

The SNP is currently reviewing its NATO policy and it is expected to decide that an independent Scotland would apply to be a member.

However, the NATO decision, or any others, will not belong solely to the SNP. When Scotland is independent all political parties will be forced to declare their policies and membership of NATO will be just one of them. Scotland could even decide to have a defence force similar to Finland - a non-NATO EU country.

The people should be asked if they want nuclear weapons to reside in their country and the SNP would be sensible if they included a NATO referendum in their independence proposals.

Negotiations between Westminster and Holyrood will be ongoing in the next two years or so, with oil and Faslane being prominent subjects for discussion. I can't see any political party in Scotland bartering North Sea oil, but will Faslane be the bargaining tool?

There's no doubt the Russians and Americans will be keeping a close watch on developments.

source

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Peak Oil

Contributed by TediousTrantrums (petem)

I was casually reading through my Tweets when I saw the following from Captain Ranty “The Russians will be pleased to see Libya normalise. They were the only f****** finding anything. BP – nowt. Shell – zip. Russia 7 wells, 7 finds.”

This reminded me of a bit of research I carried out a few months ago which was prompted by an article I’d read on the web about the success of Russian oil prospecting. They’d been very successful and this had been attributed to research, which had been carried out in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Due to a shortage of oil in Russia at the time and a lack of potential oil imports the Russian had decided to look at hard at what oil really was and where it was to be found.

They discovered that oil was, in fact, produced deep within the earth and flowed up through deep faults into reservoirs. At the time this was a fairly wild thing to suggest and it gained no traction at all in the West. Since then however, they have gone on to explore in areas, which do not fit the traditional topology for oil prospecting and have been pretty successful, just as Captain Ranty suggested in his tweet.

They drill deeply, very deeply. Much deeper than Western Oil companies which is no surprise given the traditional search for oil is looking for decomposed dinosaur and other creatures residue. The Russians don’t believe a word of “fossil fuels” or of peak oil for that matter.

Which brings us neatly to another group of people who have trouble with oil, our environmental friends or Greenies. They don’t like oil because it produces CO2, which is a very bad thing, although it isn’t. They have managed to have oil exploration completely stopped or curtailed to the extent that there are supposed shortages and of course it’s running out. The oil companies are no angels that’s for sure and neither are the futures commodity oil speculators.

So oil could be plentiful, cheap and last for a very long time.  The fact that it is becoming ever more expensive, duty hikes notwithstanding, causes us all major headaches and problems. The cost is passed onto to us for the petrol we buy, the goods we buy which are delivered to the shop using oil and of course every sort of item, which contains or is contained by oil based products. It is also still used for heating especially in its gaseous form the price of which also increases beyond which is sensible.

The bottom line is Russia has demonstrated significant success in finding new oil in significant quantities by using science to determine what is actually possible rather than relying on discredited science mixed with global warming fairy stories as we in parts of the west do.

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Russia Rearms

While there is much talk about the forthcoming defence review and where the cuts will fall, Russia has decided to rearm and is increasing its defence budget by 65%.

The spending boost is part of an ambitious £276 billion rearmament programme to re-equip its conventional forces between now and 2020.

Currently Russian defence spending remains well below US levels and their present equipment is dated. But why are the Russians investing so much in their military hardware during a global recession? Food for thought.

source

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A Quote

OK it's a quote from Vladimir Putin but it's worth reading ( sent by a lovely reader of this blog):

"Excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state's omnipotence is another possible mistake... Instead of streamlining market mechanisms, some are tempted to expand state economic intervention to the greatest possible extent...

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state's role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated...There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state...

And one more point: anti-crisis measures should not escalate into financial populism and a refusal to implement responsible macroeconomic policies. The unjustified swelling of the budgetary deficit and the accumulation of public debts are just as destructive as adventurous stock-jobbing."

-- Vladimir Putin, Russia Prime Minister
Feb 2009 Lecturing the U.S. on the dangers of socialism.

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