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Kanal Istanbul: Within 7 Years US Aircraft Carriers Will Enter the Black Sea

The tension between the USA and Russia has grown enormously over the couple of months. The case of yet another Russian jet shot down by Turkey pushed Ankara into the American embrace. Iran and Syria has stood by Moscow, the guarantor of their independence of the Western powers. Turkey, faced with no real choice, decided to throw in her lot with the USA. Wasn’t it the Allies that won in World War One? Was Turkey not defeated then because she backed the wrong horse? So Erdogan, Turkey’s president for life, has taken his decision: let the Americans make use of Kanal İstanbul and move their fleet into the Black Sea. The Montreux Convention forbidding passage of navies through the Bosporus does not apply. It is not the Bosporus, it is Kanal İstanbul. The year is 2023, the canal has just been completed.

That might be a scenario playing out in the nearest future. If. If the idea for cutting a waterway through the mainland will have materialized within several years from now. Continue reading →

Teasing Russia: with Montenegro as new NATO member Serbia will be entirely encircled

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NATO Secretary Stoltenberg visits Montenegro. Image by NATO 25 Nov. 2015

NATO is about to expand taking on a new member: Montenegro. Podgorica’s bid to start accession talks and become the 29th member of the alliance was accepted on 2 December1. Strategically the country is no gain, politically it is. Russia is being sent a signal that yet another state that used to be under her influence is being taken away. The alliance is taking the Balkans piece by piece. Serbia, too, is being considered as a prospective NATO member.

The move that has been spearheaded by PM Aleksandar Vučić is strongly resisted by the Montenegrin population and by Russia. Montenegrins staged protests long ago, even during the visit paid to Podgorica by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg2. People do remember NATO aerial bombings of former Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) that took place during the 78 days of the war of 1999, which left many casualties and areas radioactively polluted due to the NATO’s use of missiles with depleted uranium. The opposition Democratic People’s Party advocates a referendum as the only way of deciding whether the country should join the alliance, but the authorities refuse3. Is it because they are afraid of losing? Continue reading →

Disunited Europe uses Schengen as a tool to exert pressure

The European Union has never been a unity but recent conflicts even sharpened the divisions. We have not only the broad EU-28 but the euro-zone within it and the Schengen-area as a next dimension. Moreover, the continent falls into the rich and stable North and poor and indebted South on the one hand, as well as the multiethnic and open West and the monoethnic and closed East on the other. Since no state wants to be excluded from the elite, European politicians started to blackmail each other using the threat of exclusion rather than cooperate. If the EU fails and loses to eurosceptic governments that may come to power due to the unwise decisions taken by the Community, then the current leaders will be to blame.eurozone

It started a few years ago with the Greek debt crisis and the possible expulsion of the country from the euro area. It was a forcible way of making Greece carry out reforms in the manner intended by the Troika, even if the Greeks had their own views. And blackmailing still continues, as only if the next deadline of a bail-out comes. Continue reading →

Donald Trump: America’s next president from Wall Street

Last summer we made a forecast that Mr Trump might be America’s next president. Back then, most of the political analysts could not take this as a serious eventuality. They wrongly viewed Mr Trump as an outsider, despised by the USA establishment. And as an outsider they think he has no chance of becoming the next US president. Some 4 months later as CNN headlines read: “CNN/ORC Poll: Trump alone at the top again”1, many political analysts are still in disbelief.

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Image by Gage Skidmore

Democracy works according to a simple pattern. To make it as a president, a candidate needs access to the mainstream media. In many countries the mainstream media are partly state owned; in the US they are owned by New York based firms like Twenty-First Century Fox (Fox News), Inc, Time Warner Inc (CNN) and National Amusements, Inc. (CBS) financed by Wall Street bankers and Wall Street investor funds. In modern society people do not receive media coverage by accident. It is carefully planned who is and who is not in the media.

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Could Artur Mas tear Spain apart and trigger a “black swan” event?

On September 27 the coalition Junts pel Si (Together for Yes) led by Artur Mas won the local election in Catalonia. Its political platform promised to work towards Catalonia’s independence of Spain. On November 9 the Catalan parliament passed a separatist motion: the legislators were tasked with

(i) drafting the Catalan constitution,

(ii) designing the Catalan social security system and

(iii) creating the Catalan treasury1.

Within the meaning of the same motion the Spanish Constitutional Court no longer had jurisdiction over Catalonia. In the wake of these events the Spanish government headed by Mariano Rajoy appealed with the Constitutional Court to suspend the Catalan motion and to issue a warning to 29 top Catalan politicians.timeline On November 11 the Constitutional Court ruled as was expected: the bill of November 9 was suspended and the top Catalan politicians were duly given a warning. The court has a further 5 months to rule over the case. Before that, on December 20 Spain will have a general election whose results may greatly affect the political process in Catalonia; so much so that the go-away region may have its own elections in case acting prime minister Artur Mas fails to form a government by January 10.

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US and Canadian oil producer suffer the most from current oil price collapse

Oil price has collapsed and is not going to rebound quickly. But not all the oil-consumer countries benefit from low prices in the same way. And not all oil-producer countries suffer equally.

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Oil prices change as the values of currencies do. Purchase or sale contracts for oil are usually long term ones, the price of oil in such contracts does not change very frequently. Fluctuating exchange rates of currencies are still enormously important for the economies. Oil for $40 per barrel does not mean that this barrel is also as cheap in all countries as consumers have to buy dollars in order to purchase a barrel. Or producers sell their barrels for dollars and then exchange these dollars for their own currency. The domestic price based on the exchange rate is not always stable. Continue reading →