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Coal is not going to give up easily

The agreement reached at the Paris Climate Summit CO P21 at the beginning of December has been regarded as groundbreaking as it announced the end of the era of coal and other fossil fuels. Will, however, the proposed and inconsistent political declarations overcome the real circumstances that have greatly favored coal mining and use?

Coal, or rather the energy derived from it in coal power plants, has become almost a public enemy in many places in the world. The pressure applied by the ecologists and politicians, the resultant climate agreement as well as the ceremonial closures of mining pits in Germany and Great Britain, and the transformation of China’s economy make an impression that there is no future for coal in the modern world.

The first 13 years of the ongoing millennium have been a golden age for coal mining and exploitation. The end of prosperity does not, however, entail the end of the whole economic branch. The coal industry may still be developed in Asia, a continent that will be a new home to this fossil fuel; also the new technology may greatly contribute to its use if new applications of this black gold are developed, applications that do not negatively affect the environment. Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →