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Investigators identify possible cause of Baltic Sea pipeline damage

RT | October 24, 2023

Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has said that the anchor of a Chinese-registered vessel may be responsible for damage sustained to the Balticconnector gas pipeline earlier this month, though it remains unclear if the act was deliberate.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, an NBI spokesperson said that a large anchor had been retrieved from the seabed close to where the pipeline was damaged in the early hours of October 8. Police said that they are working to establish if the anchor belonged to a Chinese container vessel which had been in the immediate area at the time.

“The next questions are about whether it was intentional, negligence, poor seamanship, and that’s where we get into whether there could be a motive for what’s going on,” NBI Director Robin Lardot told reporters. “But it’s too early to answer that at this stage.”

Police had previously indicated that damage to the Balticconnector pipeline, as well as two undersea telecommunications cables, were caused by blunt external mechanical force and that investigations were ongoing to identify if the damage was caused deliberately.

Investigators added that drag marks were visible on the seabed leading up to the section of pipeline that was damaged. The anchor had become detached from its host vessel and was lying on the seabed immediately after the damaged area.

The NBI said last week that the focus of its investigation had centered on the Chinese container ship NewNew Polar Bear that was in the immediate location at the time of incident.

Finnish police said on Tuesday that it had established that the NewNew Polar Bear was missing one of its front anchors. Photographs of the ship docked in the Russian port of St. Petersburg on October 9, one day after the pipeline was damaged, appears to show irregularities with its anchor system.

On Monday, China called for an “objective, fair, and professional” investigation to be established into the cause of the damaged pipeline and telecoms cables. NATO has increased its patrols in the Baltic Sea following the damage sustained to the pipeline.

The October 8 incident to the pipeline – through which gas flows between Finland and Estonia – has restricted Finland’s gas supplies. Helsinki said that it had made up for any shortfalls with the importation of liquified natural gas (LNG) into its Inkoo port.

In September of last year, the Nord Stream pipelines connecting Russia and Germany were severely damaged by undersea explosions in what authorities declared to be deliberate acts of sabotage. The identity of the attackers has yet to be established.

October 24, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Denmark is the latest European country turning away from transgender mutilation of children

By Jonathon Van Maren | Life Site News | September 15, 2023

The news that Denmark is moving away from the so-called “affirmative model of care” approach to youth struggling with gender dysphoria exposes, once again, how utterly radical and out of step with the rest of the world Canada and blue America are on the issue of “sex changes” for minors. Predictably, mainstream media outlets have ignored this development entirely — there is no press coverage that I can find. This may be due to the fact that this shift was published in the major medical journal Ugeskrift for Læger, the Journal of the Danish Medical Association, in Danish.  

Fortunately, the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) has published a synopsis, noting that most “youth referred to the centralized gender clinic no longer get a prescription for puberty blockers, hormones, or surgery—instead they receive therapeutic counseling and support.” SEGM published a summary of the shift:  

In the last several weeks, health journalists have reported that change may be afoot in Denmark. The article in Denmark’s Medical Association journal Ugeskrift for Læger leaves very little doubt that Denmark too has made a course correction in youth gender transitions, restricting this option to very few cases, while prioritizing counseling for the vast majority of the currently presenting youths. The article is an excellent summary of the rise-and-fall-of the “gender affirmation” model of care in Denmark. It describes how in 2016, following the influence of other northern European countries, Denmark chose to offer “a treatment approach with few barriers to hormone treatment for children and young people with gender dysphoria.” The treatment was justified by the foundational Dutch studies, “which indicated better well-being and body satisfaction after hormone treatment, a low degree of regret and few side effects.” However, the increasing number of referrals, changes in the presentation in gender dysphoria, and growing reports of regret—combined with a lack of long-term outcomes of the one and only sample of youth (n=55) on which the entire practice of gender transition rests—led the Danish clinicians to reverse course.

This is consistent with developments in the U.K., where the Tavistock gender clinic has been shut down and the NHS is changing course on “sex change” surgeries, and Sweden, which halted “hormone therapy” for minors in February 2022.  

The Finns are following a similar path. In fact, Finnish medical guidelines distinguish between early-onset child gender dysphoria and adolescent-onset gender, stating that some gender confusion or exploration can be a natural part of growing up and almost entirely forbidding medical intervention until “identity and personality development appear to be stable.” In the meantime, psychotherapy is recommended for gender dysphoria, and surgical interventions are forbidden for those under the age of 18. Puberty blocking is also considered explicitly experimental, and if utilized in severe circumstances, the patients are sent to a research clinic and medical professionals ensure that they are “able to understand the significance of irreversible treatments and benefits and disadvantages associated with lifelong hormone therapy, and that no contraindications are present.”  

Meanwhile, in Canada the National Post is reporting that Canadian surgeons are performing double mastectomies of healthy breasts on girls as young as age 14. The lawsuits have already begun as horrified young women realize they were ushered on the path to “transition” and “gender affirming care” before they could truly understand what they were doing — most recently, 21-year-old Luka Hein of Minnesota filed a lawsuit against the doctors who surgically removed her breasts at the age of 16, when she was going through a difficult time and struggled with gender dysphoria.  

“I was going through the darkest and most chaotic time in my life, and instead of being given the help I needed, these doctors affirmed that chaos into reality,” she told the Daily Mail. “I don’t think kids can ever consent to having full bodily functions taken away at a young age before they even know what that means.” She’s right. The Swedes, the Finns, and now the Danes are coming to the same conclusion.   

September 17, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Hungary may still reject Sweden’s NATO membership: top Fidesz politician

Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership would have merited a wider social debate

By Laura Szalai | Mandiner | September 7, 2023

Sweden’s NATO membership is supposed to be imminent, but there are now signs that Hungary is balking at the possibility of Sweden in NATO, with the Hungarian speaker of the house, László Kövér, stating in an interview that his Fidesz party has a number of security concerns about Sweden and even Finland’s membership.

Kövér said that contrary to claims of the mainstream liberal media, Hungary is not waiting for Turkey in order to ratify Sweden’s NATO membership, and this will be a sovereign decision of the country.

“Fidesz-KDNP is a living political community, so its members may have different opinions. And many of us in the parliamentary group think it would be worth waiting for a decision. After all, a new member would be joining the military alliance with which we would need to have a fundamental relationship of trust if we are to entrust our defense to each other,” Kövér said during an interview with Mandiner while kicking off the autumn parliamentary season.

If Hungary steps back from approving Sweden’s membership, it could mark a major blow to Sweden’s NATO aspirations. Kövér said that while both the Hungarian government and Hungarian President Katalin Novak have made clear their support for Sweden’s yet-to-be-ratified NATO membership, many MPs in the ruling Fidesz coalition have reservations.

“There has been absolutely no basis for this trust in Swedish politics, especially on the left, in recent years. On the contrary, it has been in the vanguard when it comes to attacking Hungary, and I have not seen any gestures since then to show that, if they were to join NATO with our approval, they would indeed regard us as an equal ally and not as a lackey,” said the ruling party’s politician.

Kövér also said that the profound geopolitical impact of Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership should have merited a deeper debate.

“Two traditionally neutral countries, Finland and Sweden, are giving up their positions, the latter as a NATO hopeful, and stepping straight into Russia’s front line. This in itself is a development worthy of a wider, deeper debate in Hungary and in Europe. In my opinion, the accession of these two countries to the North Atlantic military alliance will in fact weaken, not strengthen, Europe’s security,” Kövér said.

Asked to expand on that thought, Kövér added:

“Because it increases the literal and metaphorical interface between Russia and NATO, which I think is not even in the interests of the Swedish and Finnish people. I would also point out that there was a referendum on accession in Hungary, whereas in Finland and Sweden, which are always trying to teach us about democracy, the people were not even consulted.

“There are subtle signs that the remaining neutral countries, Austria and even Switzerland, are under some diplomatic pressure from overseas and the EU center to rethink their position on the outside. It is therefore about something more than the security situation of two northern countries or even of Europe as a whole.”

September 7, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Doubt in Denmark

Another progressive country is having second thoughts about paediatric gender transition

BY BERNARD LANE | GENDER CLINIC NEWS | AUGUST 13, 2023

Denmark has taken a step towards caution in gender care by offering a form of counselling rather than medical treatments to the main patient group of teenagers with no childhood history of distress in their birth sex.

Official acknowledgment of a change in treatment policy was given on May 31 by the Liberal Party Health Minister Sophie Løhde during parliamentary debate of an unsuccessful resolution seeking a total ban on medical transition of minors.

Ms Løhde said that medical treatment at the Danish central gender clinic in Copenhagen—the Sexology Clinic—would only be offered “if the child or young person has had gender dysphoria since childhood.”

“If the gender dysphoria has started in connection with puberty, the young person may, among other things, be referred to a process of reflection or clarification,” she said.

“This process is often finalised without medical treatment, as the indication for treatment is not considered present.”

The dominant patient profile internationally is adolescent-onset dysphoria, chiefly affecting females, but the (limited and contested) evidence base for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors mostly derives from past studies of classic early childhood-onset dysphoria typically among males.

Gender distress that appears at or after the onset of puberty, often following online immersion and transgender identity declarations among school friends, is commonly referred to as Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) following the 2018 preliminary study of American public health researcher Dr. Lisa Littman.

Dr. Littman’s work is well known in Nordic countries. Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare last year referenced her 2021 detransitioners study and declared that the very low rate of treatment regret claimed by youth gender clinics “no longer stands unchallenged”.

Sweden and Finland are the most advanced in the post-2019 Nordic shift to caution, while health authorities in Norway are under pressure after the country’s independent healthcare investigation agency declared in March that medicalised gender change for young people was “experimental” and should be confined to clinical trials.

Systematic reviews of the evidence base undertaken in Finland and Sweden showed it to be weak (as did reviews in the United Kingdom).

“[Although in Denmark’s parliament] the issue of gender reassignment for children and other identity policy topics seems strongly divided into blocs, we feel that this is by no means the case in the general population, when the seriousness of the matter finally dawns on people. Many simply did not know that this was happening”—Danish Rainbow Council post, 2 March 2023

Denmark’s point of difference is that the call for an end to medical transition of minors is being spearheaded by a mainstream LGBT group, the Danish Rainbow Council, launched in 2022 under the leadership of transsexual Marcus Dib Jensen. The organisation is pledged to child safeguarding and recognition of gender dysphoria as a mental disorder, while opposing the extremes of gender ideology.

In May’s parliamentary debate, Minister Løhde faced pointed questions on gender medicine from politicians Mette Thiesen and Mikkel Bjørn, both members of the populist Danish People’s Party.

The minister presented the treatment policy change as an evolution influenced by developments in the field and clinical judgment. She was not specific about which medical treatment was being withheld from patients with adolescent-onset dysphoria (or ROGD), nor the timing of the policy change.

She noted that the Sexology Clinic had “become more reluctant to offer hormone treatment” to young people.

“This reluctance manifests itself particularly regarding young people with gender dysphoria that arises in connection with puberty.

“I think it is a positive thing that there is [such] a response to research and experience… both in Denmark, but also abroad, which we must follow closely. And this knowledge and experience lead to adjustments in the current treatment options.”

The group LGBT+ Danmark, whose slogan is “Global Queer Solidarity” and which campaigns for “better gender-confirming treatment”, told GCN that the minister’s remarks referred not to a change in general treatment guidelines but to “an adjustment in the practice” of the Sexology Clinic last year.

GCN put questions to the clinic and to Denmark’s health ministry.

Video: “You can be uncomfortable with reality, but it doesn’t change reality”—Marcus Dib Jensen, chairman of the Danish Rainbow Council

Big change

A recent commentary article on the minister’s remarks posted by the Danish Rainbow Council’s deputy chairman Jesper W. Rasmussen said:

“It is important to understand how significant it is that as many as 80 per cent of the children who previously underwent gender reassignment surgery will now, in the minister’s own words, no longer be able to undergo this controversial, irreversible treatment.

“Since [the minister’s comments], we have received several emails from relieved parents of ROGD children, and in the coming months we will keep a close eye on whether these children continue to be free from hormonal sex reassignment.

“We will do this by regularly requesting access to the treatment statistics from the Sexology Clinic [at the specialist hospital Rigshospitalet].”

The resolution for a total ban, put up in March by the populist New Right party after all other members of parliament had ignored apolitical appeals from the rainbow council, was not expected to pass in the government-controlled chamber.

But the council argued that the result was significant because public debate had been unleashed and the authorities were put under pressure.

The council suspected that the de-medicalisation of adolescent-onset (or ROGD) cases had been enacted without formal announcement in 2022, thereby explaining a sharp decline that year in the number of minors undergoing hormonal treatment.

Roughly 80 per cent of the 341 minors who had undergone medicalised gender change from 2015 to 2022 were believed to be in the ROGD category, the council said.

Since 2015, when Ms Løhde was also health minister, minors have been able to undergo irreversible medical gender reassignment without parental consent from the age of 15.

“A top [American] pediatric psychiatry organization has nixed at least three panels with leading European psychologists about Europe’s move away from chemical interventions for children with gender dysphoria, raising questions about the politicization of American medicine and underscoring a clinical divide between the United States and much of the world”—Aaron Sibarium, news report, The Washington Free Beacon, 11 August 2023

Future unknown

In 2021, Sexology Clinic consultant Dr. Mette Ewers Haahr gave an interview to the Dagbladet Information media outlet in which she acknowledged “a lack of research” relevant to today’s mostly teenage female patients and her concerns about why these girls wanted to change gender.

“We see that treatment helps young people in the short term. But we lack knowledge about what happens in ten and 20 years. Or when they want to have children. What happens when they fall in love and start to have an active sex life?” Dr. Haahr said.

“Transgender young people assigned female have, for the most part, no active sex life. Not even with themselves. How will their sex life develop and does this affect their perception of their gender? We have sometimes seen in young people that gender and sex life interact and change together.”

Dr. Haahr’s comments about the weak evidence base prompted the rainbow council to ask why the authorities had allowed such a confident regimen of paediatric transition to begin in 2015.

“As adults, we must dare to step up and say stop this madness. We castrate and sterilise children and physically destroy their otherwise healthy bodies to alleviate a psychological discomfort that is usually temporary and, if not, can be treated with a sex change on the other side of puberty,” the council’s June 2 comment said.

No surgery on minors

In May’s parliamentary debate, Minister Løhde also said that under new referral guidelines, it would no longer be permissible to offer transgender surgery such as mastectomy to children under age 18—“an option that, by the way, has never been used in Denmark.”

She said the country’s “entire guidance on health care for individuals with gender identity issues” was being reviewed.

GCN asked the Danish Health Authority if a systematic review of the evidence base would be undertaken.

A spokeswoman for the authority said: “We are in the process of updating the existing guideline and we will consult leading experts in that revision.”

In a post on a Danish study dealing with trans identity and suicide attempts, the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) said:

“It remains to be seen whether the Danish Health Authority will take a cautious approach to the treatment of gender-dysphoric youth like the growing number of their European counterparts, or whether Denmark will choose to align with the current direction supported by a number of U.S. medical societies that assert that medical gender transition should be widely available for all youths who desire it.”

Copenhagen psychotherapist and former teacher Lotte Ingerslev, who writes the blog Transgender: the Fine Print and is a member of SEGM, told GCN that the Danish health minister’s May 31 remarks were “very, very important.”

She said the minister had represented this policy shift “as simply a result of the doctors ‘following the evidence’, and not a complete and utter break with their previous approach.”

Ms Ingerslev said this appeared to be a government tactic for “evading responsibility for the utter disregard for children’s bodies and lives.”

Nonetheless, she said the policy change meant “that teenagers will no longer be able to expect to get hormones as a quick fix for their loneliness, autism or inner homophobia.”

But she said these concessions to caution by the government and the Sexology Clinic were not enough and “the transing of children needs to be stopped completely.”

“Otherwise, the general public, schools, day-care centres and parents of gender-non-conforming children get a message from the state saying that gender-non-conformity is a sign that a child is ‘trans’, which goes against all evidence,” she said.

Opt-out females

In her 2021 media interview, the Sexology Clinic’s Dr. Haahr wondered aloud about why female patients are disproportionately represented in gender clinic caseloads.

She worried that for some girls, transition was more about “opting out of the feminine than opting into the masculine”, and more to do with physical discomfort than a different gender identity.

“When the birth-assigned girls reach puberty and their bodies change, some of them start to have these thoughts. Maybe the outside world has started to react differently to them because their bodies are suddenly sexualised,” Dr. Haahr said.

“They may not get as much speaking time, they’re belittled if they take up too much space, and certain girl things are expected of them that they can’t identify with. And then they feel really, really bad about their feminine bodies.

“Unlike the children [with early-onset dysphoria], who have experienced themselves as a different gender for as long as they can remember, we see that some of the [teenage] girls… have only had these thoughts for six months and are determined that they need body modification treatment. And then it becomes really difficult to figure out what it’s all about and what the right thing to do is.”

She said she paid particular attention to whether these girls had suffered traumatic experiences such as bullying, assault or sexual abuse.

“Abuse during adolescence and childhood can lead to alienation from one’s body. That’s where we need to be extra vigilant.”

She said today’s teenage female patients sometimes used formulaic language seemingly not their own when explaining why they wished to transition—it was like “listening to them read from a Facebook manual”.

She defended Dr. Littman’s 2018 ROGD study, which generated an international backlash from “gender-affirming” clinicians and trans activists, as well as pressure for the journal to issue a “correction” which in fact left the Littman hypothesis unchanged.

Dr. Haahr’s gender clinic colleague, chief physician Astrid Højgaard dismissed the ROGD hypothesis and objected that right-wing groups were enthusiastic about the idea of trans social contagion.

But Dr Haahr said:

“It is not my impression that Littman has done the research to appease the right wing or because she is transphobic, but because she thought the phenomenon should be studied.

“I think that if we can’t talk about this very large increase in the number of birth-assigned girls seeking to change their bodies during puberty, then it’s going to be a problem for all transgender people in the future.”

August 16, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Most Finns Oppose Hosting NATO Nuclear Arms

By Igor Kuznetsov – Sputnik – 10.07.2023

Finns have been consistently averse to placing nuclear arms on their soil, a policy confirmed by the government despite reversing the decades-old policy of non-alignment, and would apparently be reluctant, if the newly-baked NATO membership were to entail it.

The majority of Finns don’t support either the transportation or storage of NATO nuclear arms in their country, according to a fresh survey by the University of Helsinki and the University of Turku.

61 percent firmly opposed allowing the transportation of nuclear weapons through Finland, while storing nuclear weapons on Finnish ground appeared to be an even bigger no-no, with some 77 percent against.

Finland filed a bid to join the alliance in the spring of 2022, citing a change in Europe’s security landscape, and joined the alliance in April 2023, upending decades of non-alignment. However, membership in the bloc is not a free ride, as its leadership has been pushing members to boost military expenditure, ensure costly upgrades of gear, and take part in overseas operations — which the population may be even less eager to do.

“Finland is protected by NATO’s nuclear umbrella, but the shared responsibility does not extend to a willingness to transport weapons here. This might be a reflection of a not-in-my-backyard mentality, but above all, it is indicative of Finland’s long history of nuclear disarmament,” Helsinki University Professor Hanna Wass commented in a statement.

Finns have long had a negative attitude towards nuclear weapons, and Finnish law openly prohibits them. So far, the Finnish leadership has largely maintained its historic line on nuclear arms, despite breaching the decades-old tradition of non-alignment. Former Social Democrat Prime Minister Sanna Marin, under whose watch Finland filed a bid for NATO and entered the alliance, called it “very unlikely” that nuclear weapons would be situated on Finnish soil. At the same time, she called it important not to set any kinds of preconditions that would limit Finland’s room for maneuvering.

Earlier this year, NATO’s newly-fledged member Finland announced that while the Defense Ministry had decided not to allow any nuclear arms on its soil, it is nevertheless going to participate in the Western military alliance’s nuclear planning and support operations.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said that Finland and Sweden must understand that Russia will certainly take into account “the growing threats associated with the possible deployment of military potentials on their territories in its defense planning.” He also cited the elevated risks of a clash between the forces of Russia and NATO and lamented how the the Baltic region, which used to be “most calm” in the military and political sense, has been turned into a zone of rivalry.

July 10, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Europe Does About-Face On Transgender Therapy For Children

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | June 22, 2023

While the American healthcare industry is happy to give confused children puberty blockers and lop off various offending body parts, the European medical community is having second thoughts.

According to the Wall Street Journal, five countries – the U.K., Sweden, Finland, Norway and France – are now cautioning doctors to exercise caution in their treatment of minors, citing a lack of evidence that the benefits of transgender therapy outweigh the risks.

Earlier this month, the UK’s National Health Services restricted the use of puberty blockers to clinical trials, effectively banning their use in children.

“These countries have done systematic reviews of evidence,” said transgender care researcher Leor Sapir at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute think tank. “They’ve found that the studies cited to support these medical interventions are too unreliable, and the risks are too serious.”

American politicians have taken notice

“It’s beneficial to see European countries coming to their senses,” said Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) in an interview, referring to the UK’s systematic evidentiary reviews of puberty blockers. According to the report, Republicans plan to make transgender-care issues part of their 2024 election platform.

“This is the issue of our time. This is a hill we’re gonna die on,” said Crenshaw.

Democrats, meanwhile, say Republicans are simply scoring cheap political points.

“They are telling parents that Republican politicians know better than they do what is best for their child,” said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ), echoing comments made by former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R).

According to a poll taken late last year and published in May by the Washington Post and KFF, 68% of respondents oppose the use of puberty blockers in children aged 10-14. Since then, over a dozen GOP-run states have restricted medical interventions as part of transgender care – including Texas, which will yank a doctor’s license for providing puberty blockers, surgeries or hormone treatments to most transgender minors.

The U.S. medical community hasn’t wavered in its support for medical interventions and continues to recommend puberty blockers and hormones for minors as a clinical option. Unlike the concerns expressed by many authorities in Europe, U.S. medical associations often treat the science behind such medical interventions as settled.

Last week, delegates at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association endorsed a resolution—co-sponsored by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinology and others—that reiterated support for access to medical interventions, saying that GOP claims about transgender care “do not reflect the research landscape.” -WSJ

On the other hand, blue states such as New York have issued guidance allowing teachers to keep a child’s gender transition a secret from their parents. According to the guidance, some students “have not talked to their families about their gender identity because of safety concerns or lack of acceptance and may begin their transition at school without parent/guardian knowledge.”

Of course, this is a big business we’re talking about, so we’ll see how this plays out.

June 24, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , , | Leave a comment

NATO Holds Arctic War Games Hours From Russian Border

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | May 31, 2023

The North Atlantic alliance began military drills hosted by Finland just miles from the Russian border. An American defense official said the war games show the bloc’s commitment to the newest member of NATO.

US Army Major-General Gregory Anderson said on Tuesday, “We are here, we are committed. The US Army is here training with our newest NATO ally to build that capability, to help defend Finland if anything happened.”

About 7,500 NATO soldiers are participating in the exercises – dubbed “Northern Forest 23.” The drills are taking place just a two-hour drive from the Russian border in northern Finland and will run from May 27 to June 2. Reuters described the war games as “Finland’s biggest modern-time land force drill above the Arctic Circle.”

A Finnish Army press release detailed the multiple weapons systems allies will deploy for drills.” The equipment of the international forces will include, among others, Warrior infantry fighting vehicles [from the UK], MLRS rocket launcher systems [from the US and UK] and CV90 infantry fighting vehicles [from Sweden and Norway],” the statement said.

Helsinki is NATO’s newest member. When Finland became a member of the North Atlantic alliance, it doubled the bloc’s border with Russia. At over 800 miles, Helsinki has a longer border with Moscow than any other member of NATO.

Tensions between Brussels and Moscow have soared due to the alliance’s support for Kiev. However, the confrontation between Russia and the West has spread to other regions of Europe as well. Washington has increased its military presence in the Arctic as a show of force eyeing Moscow.

Last week, the USS Gerald Ford – the world’s largest aircraft carrier – made a port call in Norway. The Ford is the first American aircraft carrier to visit Oslo after six decades.

The warship will now travel into the Arctic Circle to conduct war games. A spokesperson for Oslo said, “This visit is an important signal of the close bilateral relationship between the US and Norway and a signal of the credibility of collective defense and deterrence.”

The Russian embassy in Norway denounced the Ford’s maneuvers as unnecessary. “There are no questions in the (Arctic) north that require a military solution, nor topics where outside intervention is needed,” the embassy posted on Facebook.

June 1, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

US to set up military bases in Finland

By Drago Bosnic | May 5, 2023

The formal admission of Finland on April 4 was the latest move in the process of “globalizing” NATO. At the time, the belligerent alliance’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg insisted that Helsinki’s membership “will be good for [its] security, for Nordic security, and for NATO as a whole.” Nobody ever explained how exactly this is “good for Finland’s security”. Russia and Finland share a border over 1300 km long, meaning its ascension has nearly tripled the line of direct contact between NATO and Russia, as the combined border between them has previously been approximately 700 km. Now being well over 2000 km long, the border could be a major source of tensions.

Precisely this is happening now, as the United States and Finland are finalizing a deal that would allow the Pentagon to establish a permanent military presence in the Scandinavian country. According to a report by Newsweek, published on May 2, a senior official of the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mikael Antell, confirmed that Helsinki and Washington DC are negotiating a so-called “Defense Cooperation Agreement” (DCA) that would allow for the construction of significant military infrastructure on Finnish soil. Apparently, the aforementioned agreement doesn’t include the deployment of US nuclear weapons, yet. However, the Finnish government and military officials are yet to specifically rule out the possibility of hosting nukes.

Considering the fact that, for months, Helsinki has been refusing to give any guarantees such weapons will not be deployed on its territory, this is quite telling and concerning. While the US already has nuclear weapons stationed in five NATO countries under several bilateral nuclear sharing programs with each, specifically Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Turkey, these are relatively far away from core Russian regions. On the other hand, Finland is not. Saint Petersburg, Russia’s second most important city, is less than 200 km away from the Finnish border, putting it well within the range of tactical ballistic, cruise and, most alarmingly, prospective hypersonic missiles (provided the US deals with its technological shortcomings).

If Helsinki and Washington DC were to go ahead with such plans, it would be the first case that a country has hosted American nuclear weapons after the end of the (First) Cold War. The same goes for Poland, whose insistence on having nuclear weapons deployed on its territory has already pushed Russia to deploy its own tactical warheads in Belarus. Finnish Foreign Ministry official Mikael Antell stated that the DCA “enables troops to enter the country, stay on the ground, the pre-storage of material and possible infrastructure investments through the funds granted by the US Congress to the Pentagon”. The US and Finland have allegedly been in talks on the DCA since last fall, with the latest round of discussions on the deal taking place in Helsinki last week.

“The agreement also defines the facilities and areas where the cooperation would be focused,” Antell said, adding: “They are basically military areas and garrisons. In principle, there can be more than one, but the discussions are still open in this regard.”

Commenting on the aggressive military buildup, Russian military expert Yuri Knutov told Sputnik: “The Northern Sea Route – a shipping lane that runs along Russia’s Arctic Sea coast – has become a prominent transport artery of late, and Moscow now seeks to increase maritime traffic and cargo flow along that lane. Therefore, the emergence of NATO military bases at the entrance to the Northern Sea Route would require us to boost security measures, to bolster our Northern Fleet and maybe even to deploy our warships to escort cargo vessels in order to protect the latter from any provocations or from some restrictions concocted by Western countries.”

The exact nature of permanent US military presence in Finland is not officially disclosed, although Knutov pointed out that “Helsinki did not attempt to negotiate issues such as the maximum number of foreign NATO troops that could be deployed on its soil, which appears to suggest that Finland is willing to let NATO use its territory without any limitations”. This notion is particularly worrying when counting the strong possibility of nuclear weapons being deployed so close to core Russian regions. Moscow previously never saw Finland as a direct threat, but its membership in NATO, a hostile and extremely aggressive military alliance that openly declared and targeted Russia as its primary enemy, completely changes the geopolitical calculus, a move that Helsinki chose to do unilaterally.

After Finland joined NATO, several high-ranking Russian officials stated that Moscow will respond in kind in case of further escalation and NATO military buildup, but insisted that Helsinki is still not seen as a primary military threat. However, from a purely strategic standpoint, the situation can hardly be considered optimistic. Finland directly broke from its apparent neutrality after it decided to acquire F-35 fighter jets in late 2021. The Pentagon has direct access to everything the F-35’s sensors can detect, meaning that Finland would be sharing key military data with the US regardless of whether it was a NATO member or not. Still, as previously mentioned, Helsinki being a member also means that it’s more likely to see the deployment of US offensive weapons in close proximity to St. Petersburg.

In this regard, when Stoltenberg stated that the ascension of Finland was truly historic, he was right. However, this was only in the sense that Helsinki is essentially repeating the same mistake as over 80 years ago when it joined the Axis led by Nazi Germany. Worse yet, just like Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich established military bases in Finland and deployed the Wehrmacht there just before launching “Barbarossa”, the US is doing exactly the same. Now that Finland is among “old friends” once again, maybe it should dust off the history books and pay very close attention to how such military and geopolitical adventurism ended the last time. The belligerent thalassocracy in Washington DC should be even more concerned, as Finland at least continued to exist in the postwar period. On the other hand, Nazi Germany didn’t.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

May 5, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

US Military Buildup in Finland May Threaten Northern Sea Route

By Andrei Dergalin – Sputnik – 03.05.2023

A possible increase in the US military presence in Scandinavia in the near future following Finland’s accession to NATO may present a risk not only to Russia’s northern borders but to the nautical shipping lane known as the Northern Sea Route, warned military historian and Russian Air Defense Museum Director Yuri Knutov.

After Finland officially became a member of NATO last month, Helsinki and Washington moved to hammer out an agreement that would allow the US to deploy its troops on Finnish soil and to use Finnish territory and military bases to store US gear and military hardware.

With Washington planning to work out similar pacts with Sweden and Denmark, stability in the region may soon wind out of control as the United States moves to ramp up its military presence in the area, allowing them to control one of the entrances to the Northern Sea Route, said Yuri Knutov.

As Knutov explained to Sputnik, the Northern Sea Route – a shipping lane that runs along Russia’s Arctic Sea coast – has become a prominent transport artery of late, and Moscow now seeks to increase maritime traffic and cargo flow along that lane.

“Therefore, the emergence of NATO military bases at the entrance to the Northern Sea Route would require us to boost security measures, to bolster our Northern Fleet and maybe even to deploy our warships to escort cargo vessels in order to protect the latter from any provocations or from some restrictions concocted by Western countries,” he said.

The escalation that might ensue could be quite serious, but Russia cannot relent in the face of the pressure exerted by the West because it protects its interests and territorial integrity, Knutov added.

Regarding the exact nature of the US military plans for Finland, Knutov pointed out that Helsinki did not attempt to negotiate issues such as the maximum number of foreign NATO troops that could be deployed on its soil, which appears to suggest that Finland is willing to let NATO use its territory “without any limitations.”

May 3, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Russia responds to Western asset seizure

RT | April 26, 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed a decree establishing a mechanism for temporarily taking over foreign assets. In its first practical application, the Federal Property Management Agency was put in control of Russian subsidiaries of Fortum and Uniper, energy companies based in Finland and Germany, respectively.

The decree allows for temporary state takeover of assets deemed to be “of paramount importance for the stable functioning of the Russian energy sector,” the agency said in a statement. Germany’s Uniper SE held a 83% stake in Russian energy generation and distribution company Unipro, while a Finnish state-owned company Fortum Oyj controlled over 98% of its local subsidiary, with a total power generation capacity of 11,2 and 4.7 gigawatts respectively.

The move will “ensure the uninterrupted operation of companies significant for the national economy and eliminate the risks of the political position of a number of unfriendly countries influencing” the security of Russia.

Original owners are considered to have temporarily lost control of the property, but not forfeited it outright. The measure “helps preserve the investment climate in Russia and reduce the outflow of capital from the country,” the agency added.

The decree also establishes a legal framework that enables the Kremlin to take over more foreign assets should other countries seize Russian private or government property in their jurisdictions, or threaten national, energy, or economic security of Russia.

Germany and Poland have so far seized an estimated $22 billion in assets belonging just to two Russian companies, Gazprom and Rosneft, according to media estimates. In June 2022, Berlin took over Gazprom Germania GmbH. In November, Warsaw confiscated Gazprom’s 48% stake in the EuRoPol GAZ joint venture, owners of the Polish portion of the Yamal-Europe pipeline.

The Polish subsidiary of Novatek, which dealt in liquefied natural gas and other hydrocarbons, was also seized. Its assets were put up for sale earlier this month.

In September last year, Germany seized Rosneft’s stake in three major oil refineries, accounting for 12% of the country’s total refining capacity. Rosneft’s complaints against the move were dismissed by German courts. A law enacted by the Bundestag on April 20 may allow outright expropriation of Russian assets by Germany.

The US government has sought to seize Russian state and private assets frozen under the Ukraine-related sanctions and turn them over to the government in Kiev, a move that critics have said would change the very nature of sanctions from an instrument of pressure to purely punitive.

April 25, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

NATO Expansion versus OPEC+ Oil Shock

By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – 19.04.2023

Finland’s inclusion in, and the consequent expansion of, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), has supposedly brought much joy to the Western world supposedly fighting Russia for the protection of democracy and human rights. The real purpose of this fight, as we already know, is to preserve the West – mainly, the US-led – dominated post-Second World War world order, which assumed the shape of unilateral US hegemony after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. With Russia – and China – delivering the hitherto clearest shock to this unilateral hegemony of the US, the latter is doing all it can to win more and more allies to augment its position against a very formidable threat. NATO’s expansion is one of the many steps the West – again, mainly the US – has recently taken to preserve the world order. But the ongoing Russia-Ukraine (NATO) military conflict has changed the world in many significant ways. For one thing, NATO’s expansion notwithstanding, the US cannot possibly even hope to successfully “isolate” Russia globally. As far as China is concerned, the US can neither “decouple” from China without facing a heavy cost, nor will be doing so without geopolitical consequences.

More than anything else, the recent decision of the OPEC+ countries to cut their production levels – and consequently raise oil prices – shows that the world’s most powerful oil producers continue to stand with Russia. This unanimous decision is not just an economic matter. In fact, the ability of the OPEC countries to reject US pressure and follow an autonomous approach – and support Russia – shows how these countries are actually following the Russian and Chinese vision of a multipolar world where countries – or blocks – can act according to their own national interests and without compromising them to appease the US. For the US hegemony, this irresistible drift toward multipolarity is much more damaging for its future than the expansion of NATO. NATO’s expansion means the organisation now has one more country with no significant military power from within Europe as its member, but the consolidation of alternative – and counter-hegemonic – power blocks outside of Europe/NATO means a fast shrinking space across the rest of the world for the US and its allies to force advantageous foreign policy outcomes.

Now, whereas the decision to cut oil production is going to hurt the US and its allies in Europe already facing an economic crunch and a cost of living crisis, the decision also shows an acute indifference to how it will hurt the Biden administration directly both geopolitically and domestically.

Consider this: since the start of the Russia-Ukraine (NATO) conflict, the US has been selling expensive oil to Europe. In March, the US oil sales to Europe hit an all-time high. But this enhanced supply has also led to about a 50 per cent increase in prices. Now, with OPEC deciding to cut its production and raise oil prices, Washington’s European allies – and indeed consumers in the US itself – will now be buying even more expensive oil and gas, which could add to the cost of living crisis they’re already facing.

Domestically, therefore, the Biden administration’s decision to force Europe to cut back their sale of Russian oil and/or put a price cap and thus start an economic war against Russia will become even more sensitive. Politically speaking, the Biden administration’s policy to release oil regularly from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve in attempts to micromanage the oil prices and keep them abnormally low in the interests of American consumers will become even more difficult to implement in the next few weeks.

For the Biden administration – which is jubilant over NATO’s expansion – its decreasing inability to permanently micromanage oil prices coincides with the start of what many see as Donald Trump’s aggressive presidential campaign.

There are, as such two shocks. The fact that Russia has OPEC on its side means the US and NATO have so far failed to defeat Russia in any meaningful sense at all. Joe Biden cannot claim a victory over Russia for his re-election due next year. On the other hand, Washington’s inability to influence OPEC means drastic foreign policy failure, indicating a Russian success. In geopolitical terms, the OPEC+ move came after a meeting between Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman in Riyadh on March 16 that focused on oil market cooperation. Therefore, it is widely seen as the tightening of the bond between Russia and Saudi Arabia.

The failure to manage the cost of living crisis and the fact that the Biden administration has lost allies, such as Saudi Arabia, combine to become very crucial rallying points for an assertive Donald Trump, who is already framing hurdles against his come-back in terms of the Biden administration’s “conspiracy” to have him convicted and eventually arrested.

Within Europe, this oil shock will complicate domestic politics and foreign policy even further. Recent large-scale protests in France against pension reform or the widespread strikes in Britain for higher wages will become a recurrent scene. Replication of such protests across Europe could force many of the European countries to reconsider the extent of their support for the US war on Russia (and China).

The oil shock delivered by Russia and Saudi Arabia, therefore, outweighs the shock the US expected to deliver to Russia via NATO’s expansion – which is unlikely to have any effect on the ground in Ukraine, and which Russia has other means to counter.

Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.

April 21, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia responds to seizure of state property in Finland

RT | April 19, 2023

The Russian Embassy in Finland has demanded an explanation after restrictions were placed on Russian state property in Helsinki.

“A demand has been lodged to the Finnish Foreign Ministry to explain how the actions of the bailiffs are compatible with the norms of international law about the immunity of the property of a (foreign) state,” the embassy said in a statement on Wednesday.

According to Russian officials, the Finnish authorities cited EU sanctions when they imposed restrictions on the Russian Science and Culture Center building, the surrounding plot of land, and the apartments of diplomats who work there.

The Helsingin Sanomat newspaper reported on Tuesday that Finland’s debt recovery agency placed temporary restrictions on the Russian building a week ago at the request of the Finnish Foreign Ministry. Officials now have three weeks to determine if the property can be linked to blacklisted individuals or entities. The injunction forbids the owner from making deals involving the real estate.

The newspaper added that the seven apartments in question are owned by Rossotrudnichestvo, a Russian federal agency for foreign cooperation which was blacklisted by the EU last year.

Last month, the Finnish authorities froze the Russian Science and Culture Center’s account at national bank Nordea, TV channel YLE said.

The EU, together with the US and Britain, has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in response to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. The Kremlin has argued that the sanctions are illegal, while the Russian Foreign Ministry has likened the freezing of assets abroad to theft.

April 19, 2023 Posted by | Russophobia | | Leave a comment

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