6 December 2014 — Strategic Culture Foundation
US not Ready for an Agreement on Iran’s Nuclear Programme
06.12.2014 | 00:00 | Nikolai BOBKIN
A new round of talks on Iran’s nuclear programme could begin on 10 December. Started in November 2013, the annual marathon has still not reached the finish line. Both sides are hoping to have worked out the political framework for a future agreement by the end of March, and to have completed the signing of documents by July 2015. The essence of the as yet insurmountable differences is not exactly known, however. Most media reports suggest that the reason for the breakdown of talks is disagreements regarding the outline for the lifting of sanctions, the number of permitted centrifuges, and the fate of a reactor in Arak. However, the opinion that the White House is not ready or not willing to make strategic decisions on such a scale is more well-grounded…
Oil Prices and Energy Wars: The Empire of Frack versus Russia
05.12.2014 | 00:00 | Mahdi Darius NAZEMROAYA
Energy prices started to move downward in late-2014, when Saudi oil began to flood energy markets. Variations of two main schools about this emerged. One school explained things purely on the basis of business interests whereas the other school viewed the drop in oil prices geopolitically… Washington is responsible for the price drops in one way or another. Whether intentional or not, what should not be forgotten is that the last time prices fell dramatically was a few months before the global economic meltdown in 2007. Inadvertently or not, Washington’s push for sanctions could be leading to another international economic crisis.
Russia Scraps South Stream: Who the Message is Sent to?
05.12.2014 | 00:00 | Pyotr ISKENDEROV
The Russia’s decision to abandon the South Stream project has become one of the major events in 2014. This is a message to the leadership of the European Union… The EU has failed to come up with an alternative project of its own to provide Europe with gas supplies from the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. Nabucco was doomed from the start while the estimated capacity of TAP (Greece-Albania-Italy) is only 10 billion cubic meters a year – six and a half times less in comparison to the South Stream. The population of Europe has become a hostage of this policy…
Russia – Turkey Relations Change Balance of Forces in Europe and Middle East
04.12.2014 | 00:00 | Alexander DONETSKY
…The agreement concluded by Russia-Turkey on December 1, 2014 changes the balance of forces in Europe and the Middle East. The extension of Blue Stream kills two projects backed by Washington and Brussels: Nabucco closed in 2013 though the idea is not completely forgotten and TANAP (the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline), a natural gas pipeline stretching from Azerbaijan through Turkey to Europe. The Iranian South Pars gas field may become part of the Blue Stream as Tehran has plans to sell gas to Europe too. The Leviathan, a large field located in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Israel, is another potential source of gas to fill the Blue Stream pipeline… The deal signed by Russia and Turkey envisions the construction of gas hub near the Greek border with a leg stretching to Europe. To secure long-term supplies a second «input» hub may be required to bring together the flows from Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran.
Brussels Sabotages EU Energy with South Stream Politicking
04.12.2014 | 00:00 | Finian CUNNINGHAM
The European Union’s ruling elite just hammered another nail into its creaky coffin this week with the critical loss of the South Stream gas project. Russian President Vladimir Putin may have been the one to formally pull the plug on the project while on an official visit to Turkey, but most observers can see that it is EU politicking that lay behind the collapse. Putin said that continual obstruction to the South Stream project from Brussels had made it unviable… Gerhard Roiss, the chief executive of Austria’s top oil and gas firm OMV… told Austrian media: «It is a regretful development for Europe since it needs Russian gas, it cannot do without Russian gas. But pipeline facilities are needed to ensure secure energy supplies». The OMV boss added: «The problem today is that possibilities of supplying southeastern Europe with gas are reduced and dependence on one supplier and one route via Ukraine is high»… The energy security of millions of Europeans, involving higher market prices, is also being jeopardised by the failure to complete a strategically important addition of gas infrastructure for the continent.
Israel’s Secret Plan for a «Second Israel» in Ukraine
03.12.2014 | 10:04 | Wayne MADSEN
…One of the main reasons why Ukrainian Jewish billionaire tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky, the governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk province and citizen of Ukraine, Israel, and Cyprus, is spending tens of millions of dollars on the recruitment of right-wing Ukrainian nationalists and neo-Nazis from other parts of Europe to fight against the Russian-speaking majority in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, is a fear that plans to turn Ukraine into a «second Israel» will be derailed…
The Anti-European Heart of «European» Ukraine
03.12.2014 | 00:00 | Alexander DONETSKY
If Europe Does Not Want to Carry Out South Stream…
02.12.2014 | 20:56 | Dushan PROROKOVIC
Petersburg Dialogue: a Look from Berlin
02.12.2014 | 00:00 | Natalia MEDEN
…Since a long time ago the United States and Great Britain have been rebuking Germany for excessive pacifism. Some time ago Washington and London joined efforts to make Bundeswehr boost its Afghanistan contingent. Finally Germany increased its military presence in the Hindu Kush Mountains. Now Germans have become contemptuous of pacifism. Though they don’t mean Afghanistan this time. Germany should be prepared to intimidate Russia as well as detect, capture and eliminate terrorists in their hideouts, like the ISIS militants, for instance, says Dr. Guido Steinberg of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik – SWP) in Berlin, a think tank known to provide analysis on foreign policy issues to the Bundestag and the German Federal Government…
Papal Fallacy on EU Immigration Crisis
02.12.2014 | 00:00 | Finian CUNNINGHAM
Pope Francis weighed into politics last week when he castigated the European Union for being a «haggard bureaucracy» and «indifferent» to the needs of its citizens and workers. Another key point of his address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg was that the EU bloc was failing in its humanitarian «response» to the immigration crisis engulfing the continent. But the pope would have been more to the point if he had condemned the EU for creating this crisis in the first place…
Prospects for Ukraine’s Partition. Warsaw to Waste no Time Rushing to the Party
01.12.2014 | 00:00 | Dmitry MININ
The story is getting more confirmations. The rumors launched by Radoslaw Sikorski, the speaker of Polish parliament, who accused Moscow of offering Poland parts of Ukraine, were concocted by Poles themselves with a distinct goal in mind – to feel out the reaction on the idea of Ukraine’s partition… Sikorski realized that he jumped the gun and his statements were negatively affecting the government plans, so he changed the tactics… Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Shetina joined Sikorski making botched statements. In an interview to Gazeta Wyborcza he compared the relationship of Warsaw and Kiev with the relations between European countries and their colonies in Africa…
Otto von Bismarck’s Epistle to Angela Merkel
01.12.2014 | 00:00 | Dmitriy SEDOV
…Angela, you know, I have always been against ladies’ presence in public affairs and I have not changed my viewpoint so far… So, Frau Bundeskanzlerin, I have been watching you rule the country from my family vault and now my patience is lost. You have to listen to what I’ll tell you from my estate in Friedrichsruh. It’s a pity you have never come here to visit my grave and ask my advice. Looks I did right ordering grenadiers to give Poles a rough ride and have no mercy because hardly anybody else in Europe deserved thrashing more than them. Yes, you got it right, I mean your grandfather, a Pole by origin. He inherited the national traits of his tribe and made you inherit them too…
Tuchola: Polish Death Camp for Russians
30.11.2014 | 12:36 | Nikolai MALISHEVSKI
In early November a memorial to «the victims of Maidan» was suddenly erected on the Wilenski square, Warsaw, no matter the plans had envisioned the restoration of the Brotherhood in Arms Statue devoted to commemorate dozens of thousands of Red Army soldiers who lost their lives to liberate Poland from fascism in the days of WWII. The fact sparked a wave of indignation but it was not the desecration of the soldiers’ memory that caused it. Here is a message posted to Kresy.pl – «Maidan means a square in Ukrainian. Ukrainians made Poles come to maidan before they were slaughtered (in Volyn. – Author’s note). In some populated areas the swamps with remains of the victims are still called maidans». Some time before that the plans to erect the memorial to Polish death camp victims (Red Army soldiers who died in 1922-23) in Kraków’s Rakowicki Cemetery had been cancelled…
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The New Dark Age 
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