Hungary to start South Stream construction in 2015 despite western pressure
RT | November 19, 2014
Hungary plans to break ground next year on its stretch of the South Stream pipeline to send natural gas from Russia to Europe. It is in defiance of EU and US calls to halt the project over frosty relations with Moscow.
One major reason Hungary has thrown its support into South Stream is the lack of a better option since the EU-backed Nabucco pipeline, which was supposed to deliver gas from Azerbaijan to Europe, failed.
“Nabucco will not be built and after nearly 10 years of hesitation, and especially in light of the Ukraine situation, we need to act. This is a necessity,” Hungarian Energy Minister Andras Aradszki told Reuters.
Earlier Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that Washington is putting pressure on Budapest for cooperating with Russia over energy.
Gazprom’s $45 billion South Stream project will deliver about 64 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe, Russia’s biggest client, without unreliable passage through Ukraine.
Russia is Hungary’s biggest source of natural gas, and in 2013 the country bought 6 billion cubic meters. Hungary hopes the pipeline will be complete by 2017.
Ministers from Russia also confirmed construction will begin in 2015.
“Today the sides confirmed all their commitments signed under the South Stream project,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday after talks with his Hungarian counterpart Peter Szijjarto.
Hungary, along with Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Austria, still support the project despite EU attempts to stall it due to the political rift with Moscow, said Energy Minister Aradszki.
Proponents inside the EU argue the project is critical for EU energy security as it will provide a direct and reliable pipeline to Russia. Opponents argue that it is a step backwards for EU energy independence, as it deepens reliance on neighboring Russia.
On November 4, the Hungarian parliament approved the construction of the South Stream pipeline without European Union agreement.
The EU says South Stream will violate its Third Energy Package, which doesn’t allow one single company to both produce and transport oil and gas.
In September Hungary indefinitely halted gas shipments to Ukraine after securing a new deal with Russian gas major Gazprom, which the West saw as a move towards Russia’s orbit.
In 2013, Russia sold 162.7 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe and expects to sell at least 155 billion cubic meters this year.
READ MORE: Hungary under ‘great pressure’ from US over its energy deals with Russia
Hungarian law gives green light to South Stream in defiance of EU
RT | November 4, 2014
The Hungarian parliament has approved a law on Monday which allows building the South Stream gas pipeline without approval of the European Union. The European Commission has already demanded an explanation from Hungarian authorities.
The European Commission’s spokesperson said at a press briefing in Brussels on Tuesday that the EC was in contact with Hungarian authorities to get an explanation for their decision.
The law was passed with 132 votes in favor and 35 votes against, allowing a company to construct a gas pipeline even if it doesn’t have the licenses needed to operate it. According to the new law the only requirement for a company which wants to take part in construction is approval from the Hungarian Energy Office.
“This is meant to give a boost to South Stream and is to show Russia that Hungary is taking the project seriously,” Attila Holoda, an expert on energy regulation, said as cited by Bloomberg.
South Stream is “extraordinarily important” for Hungary because it enhances the security of gas supplies to the country, Janos Lazar, the Minister in Charge of the Prime Minister’s Office, told reporters on October, 22.
The South Stream gas pipeline was projected to deliver gas to south and central Europe via the Black Sea and the Balkans, bypassing Ukraine. The project, with a capacity of 63 billion cubic meters of gas a year, is seen as critical for European energy security. Ukraine has been an unreliable transit country, and building a new pipeline could result in avoiding numerous risks.
The South Stream would run across Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, and Slovenia before entering Italy and Greece. The crisis in Ukraine has made the South Stream project a political issue rather than a legal debate. The EU Commission has been pressuring member states to stop the building of the pipeline. Last year it started an investigation claiming the project contradicted the European Union’s Third Energy Package regulations.
Bulgaria and Austria have temporarily suspended the project but are leaving it on the table.
FIFA’s anti-racism dictatorship a greater threat to football than ‘racism’
By Greg Felton | Aletho News | April 14, 2013
In June, Israel will host the European Under-20 football championship, and in doing so will formally debunk the myth that FIFA gives a toss about fighting “racism.” In fact, it will confirm, as if further confirmation were necessary, that the great football anti-racism campaign is a pretentious, divisive sham. Let’s examine two starkly contrasting examples of “racism” and how FIFA handled them.
ISRAEL
Last July, FIFA displayed conspicuous silence regarding Israel’s years-long illegal detention of Palestinian footballer Mahmoud Sarsak. FIFA also meted out no punishment to the Israeli Football Association for the deliberate bombing of a Palestinian football stadium, which killed at least eight people.
Now, one might argue that the Israel FA was not to blame, but that would be a feeble quibble indeed, given FIFA’s categorical proclamation of high moral purpose:
“FIFA strongly condemns all forms of racism in football, and any form of discrimination will not be tolerated and will receive a strong response by the relevant FIFA authorities” (my emphasis).
Still, FIFA should have condemned the attack on principle, but no. As far as FIFA was concerned, it saw no violation of its moral code.
The hypocrisy of FIFA in the face of Jewish terrorism was obvious late last November when Secretary-General Jerome Valcke announced the official response to the stadium destruction: “We see it our mandate to rebuild football infrastructure which has been destroyed. We will also rebuild the stadium in Gaza, which has been destroyed. Football brings people together and we will support any re-construction necessary when football infrastructure is destroyed through disasters.”
Note the unspecific, generic, wooden boilerplate. Note the cowardly use of the passive voice (“has been destroyed”), designed specifically to avoid mentioning Israel. Valke did not say, as he should have: “We see it our mandate to rebuild the Gaza stadium, and we will assess all costs to Israel, which behaved with callous disregard for human life. Failure to pay for the reconstruction will result in Israel’s suspension from UEFA.” As far as FIFA was concerned, nobody was to blame for the destruction. It was a “disaster,” like an earthquake! Nobody’s fault!
By rebuilding the stadium without forcing Israel to atone for its violence, FIFA tacitly accepts what was done to Palestine and is morally complicit in the commission of Jewish racism.
In January this year, FIFA again did nothing when Israeli fans displayed undisguised racism after the team Beitar Jerusalem announced its intention to sign two Chechen players. As Agence France-Presse reported: “During a game that day, some fans chanted slogans such as ‘no Arab will tread here’ and waved a huge banner reading ‘Beitar—pure for ever.’ They also cursed [the team’s Russian-Israeli owner Arkady] Gaydamak, though reports said some fans tried to shout them down.”
Is it not perverse that the most overtly racist country in FIFA does not merit so much as a tut-tut or a fine for acts of physical violence and grossly racist chanting? How does such inaction not prove that FIFA tacitly accepts Jewish bigotry toward Arabs?
HUNGARY
On the other hand, if anyone does denounce Israel’s racism, or happens to say anything the least bit impolitic about Israel, FIFA goes berserk. Take the example of Hungary: what FIFA did to the Hungarian Football Association in the name of “anti-racism” made no sense morally or legally.
On Aug. 15, 2012, Hungary hosted Israel in a friendly match during which fans chose to voice their displeasure of Israel’s warmongering and contempt for human rights. Based on a complaint that these fans chanted “anti-Semitic” remarks, FIFA punished the Hungarian national team by forcing it to play its March 22 World Cup qualifying match against Romania behind closed doors.
The source of the above mentioned complaint was the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, one of the more notorious Zionist agencies dedicated to promoting the Holocaust® and defending the canonical fiction that criticism of Israel (anti-Zionism) equals criticism of Jews (“anti-Semitism”).* The centre has even resorted to outright defamation to proselytize the Jew-as-victim myth. In 1998, it published a screed against Switzerland alleging, among other things, that the Swiss built special concentration camps for Jews and deliberately wanted to inflict suffering on them. The report was so egregiously false it had to be repudiated.
Given the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s ethically dubious nature and history of lying, did FIFA evaluate the credibility of the complaint? What, exactly, made the fans’ protests “anti-Semitic” as opposed to “anti-Israeli?” FIFA won’t say.
In fact, FIFA’s media centre refuses to answer any questions about the event, preferring instead to recycle a generic press release and try to act invisible behind its e–mail address in hopes the questions will go away. Unprofessionalism notwithstanding, the refusal to answer media enquiries says a great deal about the moral integrity of FIFA’s “anti-racism” crusade; or rather, the lack of it.
Regardless of what the Hungarian fans did or did not chant, the Hungarian FA apologized and asserted its commitment to ensuring that Hungarian football is rid of “extremist voices” as soon as possible. Surely this act of abject contrition should have been enough for FIFA: the Hungarian FA accepted the Zionist version of events unconditionally and did not attempt to defend its fans’ behaviour. It should have been enough, but wasn’t. The Hungarian FA was subjected to the gratuitous, unjust measure of being forced to play its March 22 game behind closed doors.
Hungary’s new constitution states that every person shall have the right to express his or her opinion (“Freedom and Responsibility,” Article IX), yet FIFA acted, and continues to act, as if it can override fundamental constitutional rights. “Dictatorship” is a term that Tibor Mezei says accurately describes FIFA. Mezei, a senior adviser in the Hungarian government’s Department of Communication, said in an interview from Budapest that FIFA is not accountable to any government:
“FIFA is an absolute power like Louis XIV in France. You can’t appeal to an international court if you don’t like what FIFA has done. It’s a voluntary organization, so its members are completely at the mercy of FIFA. What happened was not a verbal criticism of Israel or any other country. It’s a question of how you interpret symbolic gestures, and if you oppose FIFA’s interpretation you risk being excluded.”
The Hungarian FA understandably appealed the penalty, but the appeal was denied. Meszei said FIFA wanted to make an example of Hungary and it’s hard to argue with him. In fact, the Hungarian media came to the same conclusion.
On Jan. 10, 2013, Szabolcs Szeretö, the deputy editor of Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Nation) wrote that the majority of Hungarians felt that FIFA’s “painful, unfair and excessive verdict” punished them for something they have never done. Moreover, he said the verdict will stir up, not lessen, anti-Jewish animosity. Ironically, that would suit Israel just fine because acts of anti-Jewishness, even contrived ones, are important for manufacturing sympathy for Jews.
Szeretö further pointed out that FIFA did not levy harsh sanctions against Romania when radical fans chanted anti-Hungarian slogans during a match in Bucharest. Furthermore, FIFA took no strong measures against Malaysia after thousands of Malaysian fans chanted Singapore itu anjing (“Singapore are dogs”) during a Nov. 25, 2012, match.
Unfortunately, the case of Hungary is not isolated. A similar disproportionate response was visited upon the Roman club Lazio after fans dared to brandish a “Free Palestine” banner during a Nov. 22, 2012, match against Jewish-owned Tottenham Hotspur.
The waving of the national flags of Iran (left) and Palestine (right) were acts of “racism” according to FIFA because they were deemed to be attacks on Israel, and so the “offending” host country was severely sanctioned. Would FIFA dare to sanction the Israeli Football Association as severely, if at all, if a Jew waved an Israeli flag during a game featuring a team from a Muslim country?
If FIFA defines non-violent expressions of support for Israel’s victims as “racist” yet refuses to recognize active Jewish racism toward Arabs, then it declares itself to be thoroughly zionized and devoid of any right to dictate morality to anyone. The truth of the matter is this: FIFA does not have an “anti-racism” policy; it has a “anti-racism” prejudice, and that prejudice infects the entire sport.
__________
* “Anti-Semitism” is an artificial term invented in 1873 by Wilhelm Marr, an anti-Jewish German journalist who needed to redefine Jews as an ethnic, not a religious, group to justify official discrimination; hence, he coined the term Semitismus, based on the linguistic term “semitic.” By this linguistic corruption, Marr was able to attack not only Jews but the larger concept of Jewishness.
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From the Archives
How a War with Iran Would Diminish American Power
By Greg Scoblete | The Compass | August 13, 2010
Jennifer Rubin wants a war with Iran:
But the emphasis on the existential threat to Israel ignores a more basic issue for Americans to ponder: a nuclear-armed Iran represents a dagger at the heart of America and an existential threat to our status as a superpower and guarantor of the West’s security. As to the former, Iran is pressing ahead with its long-range ballistic missile program. First the Middle East and Eastern Europe, then all of Europe and, within a matter of years, the U.S. will be within range of Iranian missiles. If those are nuclear and not conventional, what then? We’re not talking about whether Iran is going to be “merely” a destabilizing factor in the Middle East or whether it will set off an arms race with its neighbors or imperil Israel’s existence. We’re talking about whether America will then be at risk (and lacking sufficient missile-defense capabilities if we continue to hack away at our defense budget). The argument about whether mutual assured destruction can really work against Islamic fundamentalists who have an apocalyptic vision becomes not about Israel’s ability to deter an attack but about ours. Those who oppose American military action have an obligation to explain why America should place itself in that predicament.
I would argue that any obligation to present an explanation lies with those whose disastrous policy prescriptions with respect to Iraq lead America into the worst strategic blunder in the country’s recent history. That aside, note the blind faith in the power of the military to actually achieve its ends. … continue
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- Hungary to halt gas deliveries to Ukraine – Orban
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- Jacob Reses, one of the most powerful pro-Israel operatives in Trump’s Washington
- Israeli-US assaults kill or injure 87 children a day – Not a ceasefire Day 166
- ‘Forever live by the sword’: Understanding Israelis’ massive support for Iran war
- UN’s special rapporteur on human rights says Israel is systematically torturing Palestinians
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- Instead of taking Joe Kent’s claims seriously, the media is disregarding him as an antisemite
- Joe Kent’s Explosive Interviews about his Resignation over the Iran War
- No Tricks Zone
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- New Study: CO2 Is ‘Effectively Negligible’ As An Explanatory Climate Change Factor Since 2000
- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
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- New Research: South Australia’s Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures Were 4°C Warmer Than Today
- Storing Green Energy To Last Germany 10 Days Would Require A 60-Million Tonne Battery
- New Studies: UK Sea Levels Were 4 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Destructive Green New Deal: German Energy And Metal Group Warns Of Drastic Crisis
- New Study Documents A 20-Year Pause In Arctic Sea Ice Decline – Driven By Internal Variability
- Wake-up Call: Survey Shows Majority Of Germans Now Favor Postponing Climate Targets!
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