Although Beijing is Moscow’s largest trading partner, while Russia only ranks in the second ten among China’s importers, the Kremlin is strategically the most important contractor because it supplies the most desirable product – oil – and Chinese demand for this raw material is growing. It appears that an increase in Russian oil exports to China will be at the expense of European consumers.

Chinese oil production has been falling since 2015, and yet enormous infrastructure investments and huge strategic petroleum reserves (SPR) boost the demand for it. No wonder then that in 2017, Beijing became the largest importer of crude oil, overtaking the United States. Currently, China’s consumption of product is approaching 13 million barrels per day. In the March Gefira we predicted that the PRC will have become the largest consumer of this raw material by 2025, accounting for 18-20% of the global consumption.And Russia has an important role to play because already in 2016 it became China’s most important oil supplier, replacing Saudi Arabia.

China has been buying more and more Russian oil in the last decade, even though the Kremlin does not increase its export volume, which is around 5 million barrels per day. In 2009, countries such as Poland and the Netherlands imported more Russian crude oil than Beijing, but in 2015 they were overtaken by China, which in 2017 had an over 20% share in the Russian exports of this raw material. Continue reading →

Freedom of expression is a thorn in the side of EU technocrats. The new intellectual property law adopted by the European Parliament in September threatens our fundamental rights.

Internet means freedom. Still. We can (still) freely retrieve content with our search engines. We can (still) freely and without further ado access the sources in a text. This will soon change. Article 13 of the controversial law says that website operators and Internet providers will be held accountable for the content of their customers and readers. The new law thus obliges them to use the so-called upload filters. The filter obligation leaves it to the software to decide what users are allowed to upload and what not. In plain language it says the provider will control and censor our activities on the net: every uploaded photo, video, every text will be checked. The question arises: what criteria will apply to this censorship and how and by whom will this filter software be programmed? The EU Commission will certainly soon be proposing detailed guidelines to combat fake news, the spread of terrorism on the Internet, and to combat those who infringe copyrights. All right, but it will also be a tool to suppress the critics of the EU, independent bloggers who want to throw light on the incompetence and insolence of the Brussels technocrats, dissidents (not left-wing liberals). And I bet: the directives will be introduced very quickly and eagerly in all EU countries.

Source: shutterstock.com Continue reading →

According to 2017 official data, more than 3.7 million people from outside the Community settled in the European Union, of which 565 thousand were granted asylum and 3.1 million received a residence permit. It turns out that Poland, which is considered the opponent of migration, has accepted 18% of this pool, becoming the second – after Germany – most favorable towards non-EU foreigners.

Although in 2017, among 28 countries, Poland was the ninth from the end in terms of the number of accepted refugees (560 positive decisions),it issued the largest number of residence permits. Last year Warsaw allowed for arrival of over 683 thousand people from outside the EU,of which Ukrainians, the largest group, number 585 thousand, to be followed by 42.8 thousand Belorussians and 7.8 thousand Moldovans. In 87% of the cases, a residence permit was issued on the basis of an employment contract.

Among the EU countries, Poland ranks third in terms of the number of immigrants, which is 18, per 1000 citizens. Only Malta (26.8) and Cyprus (23.7) are ahead of Poland, but these are countries with a small population, lying directly on the migration routes from the Middle East and Africa. By comparison, European leading migration advocates, i.e. Germany, France, and recently also Spain, have accepted 6, 17 and 16 foreigners from outside the EU per 1000 citizens respectively. Continue reading →

Independence Day March – Update 2018-11-09

Courts of law both in Wrocław and Warsaw lifted the ban on the Independence Day March. The mayor of Warsaw said she would appeal against this decision whereas the mayor of Wroclaw made an offensive statement to the tune that “no decent city dweller shall dare take part in it”.

At the same time many members of the law enforcement have gone on strike. Coincidence? Will the army be called in if anything happens? The powers that be (foreign and their domestic lackeys) have vested interest in disrupting the March. No difficulty paying a few thugs and telling them to mingle with the crowd and then, at the appointed place, with cameras rolling, unfurl “fascist”, “racist” and “nazi” flags for the whole world to see.

You remember President Obama’s speech a few years ago? He said something like this: if lethal gas is used against civilians, the United States will step in. On the following day gas was used.

It is going to be an interesting Sunday in Poland.

 

The celebration of Poland’s Independence Day, which falls on 11 November, has been prohibited by Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and almost all the post-war communist rulers of the country. Since 1989 Poland is supposedly an independent state and the Polish nation can enjoy freedom and feel itself at last at home. Spontaneously people began celebrating Independence Day and have continued to do so for a good many years. Every year from the point of view of the powers that be this festivity has been a problem: allegedly fascists and Nazis, anti-Semites and racists made up the long, fifty, seventy or a hundred thousand people strong column of men and women and children marching along the capital’s streets, with unfurled national flags. The message is sent to the whole world that “fascism is raising its ugly head” in Poland and that something must be done about it or else.

This year it is the hundredth anniversary of Poland regaining independence after 123 years of captivity during which it was politically erased from the maps of Europe. This national holiday was officially instituted barely before the Second World War. Its importance for the collective national consciousness cannot be overrated. And lo and behold, it is again a thorn in the flesh of the powers that be.

At first Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, who styles himself as a patriot, said he would take part; then, which was only waiting to happen, he revoked; then Warsaw’s mayor said she would forbid the march the moment she learnt about improprieties; then she took the ultimate decision to prohibit the march;eventually President Andrzej Duda said he would form and lead a rival march, with a changed name: no Independence March anymore but a White-and-Red March, named after the colours of the national flag.

Continue reading →

The conflict over gas in the eastern Mediterranean is intensifying. In February, the first case of intervention by the Turkish navy took place in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Cyprus. Last month, two more flashpoints have appeared.

The dispute concerns gas blocks, i.e. areas into which waters around Cyprus have been divided. Turkey does not recognize the government in Nicosia or its agreements regarding EEZ. Ankara thinks that the right to extract gas should also be exercised by the Turkish Cypriots and also by Turkey in the case of Blocks 4, 5, 6, and 7, through which – according to Ankara – passes the Turkish maritime border (the map below).

At the beginning of October, Cyprus put gas extraction in the disputed Block 7 out to tender, which the Gefira Team has informed about. In response to this, in the middle of the same month, Turkey sent an exploration ship assisted by four naval vessels and began exploration in the area of 44 thousand km2, including blocks 4 and 5. Nicosia and Athens consider it a violation of the Exclusive Economic Zone of Cyprus. On October 18, another event took place. Greece reported that the Turkish ship had entered the Greek continental shelf, which provoke Athens to send the frigate Nikiforos to drive the Turks out.

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In the end of the nineteenth and almost throughout the whole of the twentieth centuries it was the working class that was adored by them. Everything was done for this class, through this class, for the sake of this class, in the name of this class. They all devoted their lives to the liberation of the working class which was ruthlessly exploited by the capitalists. Who were those working class’ liberators, those do-gooders? Sons and daughters of intellectuals (and intellectuals themselves), sons and daughters of civil servants, of the déclassé or landed gentry, and last but not least sons and daughters of… capitalists. Although they themselves either never did menial jobs or did them but for a moment to “prove themselves”, and although they hardly ever mingled with the working class people, they idolised them nonetheless.

Truth be told, on closer acquaintance with the working class members the intellectual do-gooders very soon grew deeply disappointed with them, with their way of life, jokes, likes and dislikes, mentality and custom and as a result they secretly despised them. In the countries where the do-gooders eventually established their political systems – which were known by the name of socialist or communist countries – they had as little to do with the working class as possible, living in luxurious houses or separate city quarters. Continue reading →