Ukraine: never mind the Fascism taunts, follow the money

"... while the focus has most recently been on Crimea, eastern Ukraine is expected to be the next hotspot, with the action centring on Donetsk, the regional capital of the industrial heartlands. Pro-Russian activists say they are ready to fight against Kiev and its "fascist" backers in the West. And upon the outcome of this struggle will depend on whether the country splits between east and west."

- says Richard North today (htp: Raedwald).

As I said on Wednesday:

"... was the whole thing [anti-government Ukraine protests] set up by Russia in the first place, to provoke a crisis aimed at the annexation of Crimea, near which will run the South Stream gas pipeline?

- and possibly, in due course, eastern Ukraine, which is also predominantly Russian-speaking and across which runs Blue Stream?"
The core curriculum in our schools should include history and map-reading.

See also my Monday post on how Putin has for years been building up infrastructure on the shores of the Black Sea, using the Winter Olympics as cover. Some echoes of the 1938 Munich Games, perhaps; but unlike Hitler, Putin's not mad. Let him have his Sudetenland.

For really, it's business as usual: he's selling what we want to buy.

For the third time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Major_russian_gas_pipelines_to_europe.png

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Osborne gives us the threepenny bits

Pic source: BBC

The proposed new-style pound coin is publicised on the day of UK Chancellor George Osborne's Budget speech to Parliament.

The 12-sided design resembles the pre-decimal brass threepenny piece first issued in the reign of Edward VIII. The resemblance is more than physical, as we shall see.

Before 1937, threepence coins had always been based on silver, but the silver content reduced over the years and the coin eventually became inconveniently small. Why? Inflation, the curse of the twentieth century.

This year marks the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War of 1914-18. The Daily Mail's purchasing power calculator shows that one pound in 1915 was equivalent to £87 today. Coincidentally, under the old coinage system, there were 240 pence to the pound, or 80 "thrupenny bits". So a modern pound coin is worth much the same as a WWI threepenny bit.

The Chancellor introduced his Budget with the words, "Our country still borrows too much. We still don’t invest enough, export enough or save enough. So today we do more to put that right. This is a Budget for building a resilient economy. If you’re a maker, a doer or a saver: this Budget is for you. "

Actually, it's still not one for savers. I'm on Day 647 of my attempts to get my MP to ask questions in Parliament about NS&I Index-Linked Savings Certificates. All I've had so far is substandard, ill-informed guff in written answers from three different Treasury ministers (see right-hand sidebar on the Money blog).

In Cockney rhyming slang, the "threepenny bits" stands for "the shits". Funny how all these things link up.


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Ukraine: is it just a business plan?

Were the protests really started by democrats fed up of a corrupt government? We don't seem to manage that here, so why there? These things need organising, so who organised it? Any involvement from the West?

Even if this did begin as a people's movement, France24 suggests that it may have been infiltrated by Russian agents.

Or was the whole thing set up by Russia in the first place, to provoke a crisis aimed at the annexation of Crimea, near which will run the South Stream gas pipeline?

 - and possibly, in due course, eastern Ukraine, which is also predominantly Russian-speaking and across which runs Blue Stream?

At present, according to the map below, there are two key points (one in central Ukraine, the other in western Belarus) that between them control Russia's gas exports to Europe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Major_russian_gas_pipelines_to_europe.png

Quite apart from empire-building and the desire for a year-round seaport, is all this fuss really about securing energy supply routes? Putin the businessman, prudently working out a plan for economic resilience? If so, Europe wants the same - all those houses to heat, gas-powered electricity generating plants to fuel.

In which case, the hooha is strictly for the punters and the fix is in already. Maybe that's why some of the South Stream construction contracts were signed last Friday.

And when Nord Stream is completed (see map), the capacity of Ukraine and Belarus to hold Russia to ransom will be very considerably reduced.

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From Sochi to Sevastopol

from Google Maps



"What Did Sochi Get for $51 Billion? Highways, Railroads and a Lot of White Elephants," scoffed Alec Luhn in The Nation last month. Don't forget the new airport, Alec. And the new port.

Further up the coast is the "Hero City" and major port of Novorossiisk. Also being developed.

 

An hour away on the M25, northeastwards, is Anapa:

 

Between Novorossiisk and Anapa is where the proposed South Stream gas pipeline will dive into the Black Sea, on its way over to Bulgaria. Here is one map of its route, which takes in part of Turkish territory:

 

(Source, if you need to look more closely)

Here is another, rather more roughly drawn, which apparently doesn't need Turkish permission:

 

(Source)

About half of Russia's gas exports to Europe go through the Ukraine (and even the South Stream crosses a bit of the extreme eastern part of Ukraine, but a little territorial snipping - a land purchase, maybe? - could put that right).

(Source)

 

So it is very useful to have a route that avoids Ukraine and Belarus; and some of the contracts were signed last Friday. Even then, it would be most inconvenient if the Ukraine accidentally did anything off the shore of Crimea that disrupted the new supply route, but fortunately it looks as if that danger has been foreseen and forestalled.

A spur of the South Stream is planned to run through Greece, which was the subject of some little local difficulty a while back. EU legislation forbids Gazprom from buying Greek gas pipelines, so step forward a Russian cat's paw outfit called Sintez to do the job instead, according to the OilPrice website last year.

 

What with sparkly new port facilities at Sochi and Novorossiisk, not to mention the docks at the M25-serviced Port Kavkaz on that spit of land opposite Port Crimea (see below), there will be lots of logistical support for the future increase in Black Sea Russian naval and shipping activity.

 

 

Why, a bridge only some 3 miles long - like, say, the Pensacola Bay Bridge opened as long ago as 1960 - might cross the gap so easily:

 

 

Poor, dumb President Putin! He simply can't see how he has wasted all that money developing Russian assets on the Black Sea.

Nor, to be frank, can I.

Watch for (a) destabilising tendencies in Greece and (b) a gradual rise in the commercial fortunes of Thessaloniki. And - who knows? - a revival of nostalgic sentiment among the descendants of Pontic Greeks (many of whom now speak Russian) in northern Turkey, Georgia and the Ukraine.

Currently, the Bosphorus Strait is 35 metres deep at its shallowest northern part.

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The better part of valour is indiscretion

Many lessons are too late for the learning.

Only now do we know what an alley-cat Roy Jenkins was, and of his (surmised, but also in those days hardly exceptional) erotic relationship at Oxford with future Cabinet Minister Tony Crosland, surely relevant to the former's campaign to decriminalise homosexuality. Should we have known this in 1967? Perhaps it wasn't essential.

But how long ago did it become public knowledge that Crosland, once his party was in power, had said, "If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to destroy every f***ing grammar school in England"? Should we have been told that at the time? Surely.

Now, we can peruse 40+-year-old ministerial briefings that show how Heath and others (including Macmillan - we do we leave him out of it?) plotted to make us part of a European political union without our realising it; but 70+ years on, according to master blogger John Ward, we still can't read the minutes of three British Cabinet meetings from May 1940.

It seems that on every matter of importance, we are kept in the dark at the vital moment. Yet some know the truth, and others know who knows.

To what extent do the mainstream media collude in suppressing information that must be revealed if we are to make informed decisions, or accept decisions made for us?


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Domeniconi: Koyunbaba

Came across this wonderful meditative piece on a Miloš Karadaglić CD my wife just bought me. The rendition below is by George Vassilev, which a couple of Youtube commentators say is the best.




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A reply from Mr Nigel Farage MEP

It may be a form letter, but at least it's a reply to my letter of 23rd February. Perhaps Christopher Booker will also reply.

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