The US announces a set of far-reaching sanctions against European companies that are doing business with Russia. These sanctions forced American jurisdiction on Europe, and is an attack on the sovereignty of European countries. These sanctions will have consequences for European companies, citizens and politics because European countries import 25% of their, 30% of their oil and 35% of their gas from Russia. The announced measures are the beginning of a trade war, Germany’s Minister for Economic Affairs Brigitte Zyries warned. In the Gefira (subscriber’s version) we already warned that a trade war is broadly supported by the US establishment.
On July 26, 2017, the House of Representatives accepted the bill that imposes new sanctions on Russia. Earlier, on June 15 that same year, Senate almost unanimously passed the new act, which forbids cooperation with Russia in the field of natural gas and crude oil extraction technologies and is thus aimed at not only Russian but also Western companies which cooperate with the former, and these include Gazprom, British-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, German Uniper, Austrian OMV, French Engie (dawne GDF Suez), German Wintershall, all of which participate in the Nord Stream 2 project and again Gazprom, Wintershall, Engie as well as German E.ON and Dutch Gasunie, which are engaged in the earlier Nord Stream. The same measures will threaten the Zohr gas field project in Egypt (where Rosnieft has 30%, Italian ENI 60% , and British BP 10% shares), the development of the Sakhalin liquefied gas plant (Gazprom and Shell), the Blue Stream trans-Black Sea gas pipeline project from Russia to Turkey (ENI and Gazpromu) and the project of building the LNG terminal in the Gulf of Finland (Gazprom and Shell), as well as the project of importing to the European Union the Shah Deniz natural gas field in Azerbaijan (Lukoil and BP).The stakes are high. Continue reading →

The United States is signaling that it is going to limit its military presence in countries far away. Maybe Donald Trump listened to those realists who have suggested for a long time that America can uphold its superpower status only if it focuses on offshore balancing strategy. No matter what the intentions really are, the US government’s declarations result in redefining foreign policies of Asian states. The limitation of American presence changes the regional distribution of power, and forces other actors to assess their alliances and to search for new partners who might be an asset in case of conflict.

Changes in the balance of power in Asia
Until the US leaves Asia, the balance is preserved. The limitation of involvement suggested by Washington results in a search for new allies by all states in the region in order to level the capabilities. America’s withdrawal gives new opportunities to China, which can extend its sphere of influence and endanger Russia and India. However, the military threat won’t appear instantly. We’ll probably witness an increase in economic penetration. The economic imperialism resulting in power maximization may be the indicator of growing revisionism understood as a policy aimed at bringing down the actual status quo in Asia and establishing a new order. Continue reading →

There’s some sort of collective cognitive dissonance in Italy about the migrant crisis. Both politicians and mainstream media, right or left, “globalist” or “populist” put the blame on the other European countries and their alleged lack of solidarity for not wanting to redistribute the 180’000 migrants Italy took last year. It isn’t just the fault of the Visegrad Group. Since the European meeting in Tallin, the Italian government received the “Non” of French President, motivating his answer with the argument that 80% of the arrivals are economic migrants,the politically correct term for illegals that should be repatriated, the “No” of Spain, the “Nein” of Austria and so on.

The opinion of the European Commission is unchanged, Italy should speed up returns, with the supplemental aid from the EU itself.

So while solidarity isn’t really lacking, the media and politicians, regardless of their persuasion, began screaming “Europe has forsaken us”, “They left us alone”. As if Italy were facing a natural calamity and were not responsible for what is going on. Reality could not be more different.

The “populist” party Movimento 5 Stelle almost got it. They founda video where Emma Bonino, former Minister for Foreign Affaris, admitted that Italian governments had agreed that everyone rescued by Frontex should be brought to Italy. So the beans are spilt: all the migrants were being shipped to Italy because… the Italian government decided so. It may be that the then Prime Minister Matteo Renzi traded flexibility on the Italian budged with the European Commission in exchange for taking in all the migrants rescued in Italian and international waters by Frontex. Continue reading →

Too high prices on the real property market only concern allegedly the rich and and popular cities. When you consider the case more closely, the bubble risk appears to be threatening also emerging economies.

Rumour about the real property bubble is spreading far and wide in Great Britain, Scandinavia and the Netherlands.In its report for the last year, UBS listed Vancouver, London, Stockholm, Sydney and Munich among the cities with especially inflated prices.

The reports hardly ever mention that one of the decisive factors causing the rise in prices are the open borders and the excessive immigration. For instance in London alone there live approximately 300 000 Russians who invest, mostly illegal money, in real property.Apart from Russians it is also the Chinese and people from Qatar who raise the property prices in the British capital and who have long taken over London’s City. Continue reading →

Written by Nicholas Farrell

The law on whether NGO ships that ferry thousands of illegal migrants from Libya to Europe via Italy each week are smugglers or rescuers is very murky but the name of their game is without doubt very fishy. So I asked an independent Dutch research institute, Gefira, which has done lots of work on Europe’s migrant crisis, to take a closer look at the activities of the NGO fleet. In 2016, its 20 or so vessels – together with European Union and Italian naval and coastguard ships – “rescued” a record 181,000 migrants from open boats near the coast of Libya and brought them to Italy which at its southernmost point, Sicily, is 275 nautical miles (318 miles) from Tripoli.
So far this year, they have “rescued” another 85,000 – 21% up on the same time last year. The 2017 total is expected to be well over 200,000.

Continue reading →

[a reader’s contribution]

Western left-leaning European media (from a central or eastern European viewpoint even the so-called right-wing media in the West appear to be left-leaning) sometimes comment on the events in Poland, Czechia, Slovakia or Hungary, always with a patronising, condescending attitude, almost reprimanding their East European brothers if the latter “do not behave”. Such are also the reports on President Donald Trump’s visit to Warsaw, Poland, and his speech delivered at a historical place, against the backdrop of a huge monument to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising (not to be confused with the much smaller 1943 Ghetto Uprising in the same city).

The left-leaning media seem to relish the reports that allegedly Poles were induced or forced to participate in the Donald Trump welcoming partyto which I have the following to say:

1. It may have been so, although I know my compatriots and I know they would go to greet an American president without being told to do so.
2. Exactly the same methods were applied when Poland was being pushed into the embrace of the European Union, but then, the journalists somehow did not care because the pervasive narrative was that all reasonable people wanted to become a part of the European structure.

I remember the time prior to our accession to the EU: you could not take a breath without inhaling this sticky overbearing propaganda trying to convince us that the EU was oh such a salvation. One of the renowned professors even said that Poland’s accession to the EU was comparable with Poland’s Christening (966, a date commonly regarded as the birth of Poland as an internationally recognised political entity) from a thousand years before. Can you imagine? Continue reading →