Norway must aid Iceland

Iceland has major financial problems. The currency is in free fall, and interest rates rises sharply. Iceland has already nationalised the third largest bank in the country. This has triggered a debate in Iceland about EU membership and adoption of the euro as currency. I do not not have strong opinions about how Island should read more »

The Irish no – paid for by the United States?

Some media, including Der Spiegel and EUObserver reports that it was U.S. neokonservatives that paid for the Irish no-campaign. Der Spiegel quoted the French Europe Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet from a meeting in Lyon: “Europe has powerful enemies on the other side of the Atlantic, gifted with considerable financial means.” further He was putting the blame read more »

The Arctic is melting – drill for oil

The Arctic is melting – drill for oil. That is the response from the European Commission at least if we are to believe the EUObserver, that writes: Drilling for oil in the fragile northern environment must go ahead with European financial and political support for the sake of EU energy security, energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs read more »

Conflicting claims

I have earlier written about the conflicting claims in the polar basin. The University of Durham has published this very interesting map of these claims. You can find a larger version of this map in a pdf-version with notes at http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/ibru/arctic.pdf This map gives you a good idea of the potential conflicts in the north.

The Arctic is heating up

No, I’m not talking about climate change. Even though I obviously could have, the North West passage is open again this year. No, I’m talking about the international scramble to grab land (read sea bottom) in the Arctic. The United Nations Law of the Sea gives all the countries around the Arctic bassin until 2014 read more »

Protestant ethics in Russia?

The russiablog.org had a very interesting post by Nikolai N. Petro today. He argues that the young people have a stronger weberian protestant ethic than you find in Western Europe. Wikipedia quotes Max Weber as having written: In order that a manner of life well adapted to the peculiarities of the capitalism… could come to read more »

Arkhangelsk, maybe the last time?

This is just to give you a short update. The Barents Observer writes that the recount in Arkhangelsk must be a falsification. They report a rusnord.ru saying that News site Rusnord.ru has however approached the leaders of the ballot stations, all people with extensive experiences from former elections. They all underline that the original results read more »

Archangelsk election – once more

The mayoral election in Archangelsk is over. I must admit I was somewhat surprised that Larisa Bazanova won the election with 37,55% of the vote against the governors candidate 37,41%. Read more about the five candidates here. Put my puzzelment was soon over. The votes are recounted and Viktor Pavlenko was declared winner. No big read more »