On 1 December 2013 a law on the export liberalization of liquefied natural gas (LNG) came into legal force in Russia. The law allows some categories of companies other than Russia's state gas giant Gazprom and its subsidiary companies to have LNG export rights. This is - without exaggeration - a historic decision for the Russian gas industry, the road…

Energy and persistence conquer all things.
Benjamin Franklin


South Stream is a gas pipeline to transport Russian natural gas through the Black Sea to Bulgaria and further to Greece, Italy and Austria. The project is seen as rival to the planned Nabucco pipeline. Construction started in December 2012, with a first commercial deliveries in late…

On December 6, a day after the death of Nelson Mandela, Solly Maipaila, the Deputy General of the South African Communist Party [SACP], revealed what analysts like Jiri Valenta have known for years.  Mandela was not only a member of this communist party but on its Central Committeee.  He was also chaiman of the African National Congress…

 

In the midst of the 20th century the Arctic resembled a geopolitical playground where two superpowers tested each other’s nerves with their burgeoning nuclear arsenals, as submarines plied deep beneath icy waters. What changed? In the 21st century bipolarity has ended and memories of the Cold War are withdrawing deeper into…

Janus is the two-faced Roman god of beginnings, endings and traditions. It’s month is represented by January and we are getting close to it now.  Frantz Fanon, ideologue of the Algerian war of independence, called for violent revolution.  Nelson Mandela, a descendent of the noble Tembu tribe in South Africa decided it could be achieved…

IN MEMORIAM: NELSON MANDELA We speak here of the challenge of the dichotomies of war and peace, violence and non-violence, racism and human dignity, oppression and repression and liberty and human rights, poverty and freedom from want. Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Address (10 December 1993)   AMANDLA! Global Education Magazine is based on a new…

It might seem that, Ukraine having decided not to sign a deal with the EU last week in Vilnius, the Union lost the integration contest to Russia. But developments seem to be on the way. In light of the happenings of the past few days, Europe may come out of this better than it would have, had things gone another way.
 
It has long been known…

Peter Van Buren, a U.S. State Department official with 24 years of experience, describes in his book We Meant Well:  How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People the types of public diplomacy projects carried out by the United States in Iraq, with an emphasis on how much money they cost U.S. taxpayers.  The book…

Latest reports published by various think tanks emphasize that China starts to pay more attention to the Arctic and that the climate change has impelled the Chinese Government to allocate more resources to research in the High Arctic.[1] The Foreign Ministry of Norway notes that the Arctic may become another region where China will adamantly pursue…

Pugwash became part of the Cold War realpolitik  before the advent of soft power, public diplomacy, the internet and social media. Henry Kissinger was still at Harvard. Robert MacNamara was managing the biggest failure in the history of the Ford Motor Company, the ill-fated Edsel automobile; the highly publicized wunderkind who computerized the…

At the same time as the Pentagon released its first Arctic Strategy with the goal of protecting U.S. interests in the region and saving the region’s environment, Russian officials, academics, businesses and environmentalists are preparing for an international conference, “The Arctic: Region of Development and Cooperation,” organized…

Very similar starting points despite today’s differences
Today, South Korea’s GDP per capita is more than 11 times higher than Pakistan’s. And the difference in human development is even stronger, as South Korea has extremely good scores for example in life expectancy and education and Pakistan’s scores are even low for its…