The Black Sea

>Elsewhere, this gentle-seeming New Age mystic has praised Ion Antonescu, the Romanian wartime dictator who conspired with Hitler and was sentenced to death for war crimes, including his role in the Romanian Holocaust. He has called both Antonescu and the prewar leader of the Iron Guard, a violent anti-Semitic movement, national heroes. He twice met with Alexander Dugin, the Russian fascist ideologue, who posted on X a (subsequently deleted) statement that “Romania will be part of Russia.” And at the same time, Georgescu praises the spiritual qualities of water. “We don’t know what water is,” he has said; “H₂O means nothing.” Also, “Water has a memory, and we destroy its soul through pollution,” and “Water is alive and sends us messages, but we don’t know how to listen to them.” He believes that carbonated drinks contain nanochips that “enter into you like a laptop.” His wife, Cristela, produces YouTube videos on healing, using terms such as lymphatic acidosis and calcium metabolism to make her points.

>When conspiracy theories and nonsense cures are widely accepted, the evidence-based concepts of guilt and criminality vanish quickly too.

>When I first wrote about the need for new political terminology, in 2017, I struggled to come up with better terms. But now the outlines of a popular political movement are becoming clearer, and this movement has no relation at all to the right or the left as we know them. The philosophers of the Enlightenment, whose belief in the possibility of law-based democratic states gave us both the American and French Revolutions, railed against what they called obscurantism: darkness, obfuscation, irrationality. But the prophets of what we might now call the New Obscurantism offer exactly those things: magical solutions, an aura of spirituality, superstition, and the cultivation of fear. Among their number are health quacks and influencers who have developed political ambitions; fans of the quasi-religious QAnon movement and its Pizzagate-esque spin-offs; and members of various political parties, all over Europe, that are pro-Russia and anti-vaccine and, in some cases, promoters of mystical nationalism as well. Strange overlaps are everywhere. Both the left-wing German politician Sahra Wagenknecht and the right-wing Alternative for Germany party promote vaccine and climate-change skepticism, blood-and-soil nationalism, and withdrawal of German support for Ukraine. All across Central Europe, a fascination with runes and folk magic aligns with both right-wing xenophobia and left-wing paganism. Spiritual leaders are becoming political, and political actors have veered into the occult. Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who has become an apologist for Russian aggression, has claimed that he was attacked by a demon that left “claw marks” on his body.

The NGO will also have to pay the court fees of 450 000 lei (€90 000).

>Still, participation in a grassroots movement or volunteer campaign does provide civic experience, allows people to unite, teaches them to coordinate their actions, formulate their demands, and interact with the media and fellow citizens. It also leaves them space to speak and act critically at a time when doing so is becoming more and more difficult.

>The Georgian Government has announced they are freezing their participation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), after the body voted to accept the Georgian delegation’s credentials on the condition new parliamentary elections be announced.

>The vote on Wednesday passed by 114 votes to 13, with seven abstaining. The resolution came in response to widespread electoral violations documented during October’s parliamentary elections in Georgia as well as the violence and prosecutions against protesters, journalists, and civil society figures.

>The resolution demanded that by this time, the government must: > - Announce new ‘genuinely democratic’ parliamentary elections; > - Release all political prisoners; > - End police brutality and human rights abuses, and effectively investigate these practices; > - End the misuse of legal proceedings against protesters, journalists, and civil society leaders; > - Revoke the foreign agent law; > - Enable Georgia to resume the European integration process, ‘in line with the European aspirations of the people’.

>Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, scientific director of the Institute of Water Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said where the "tongues of fuel oil" in the Black Sea may reach, whether it will be possible to swim in the contamination zone, what will happen to the beaches and animals of the Black Sea

>- How much will the spill affect neighbouring countries? > >- It should not go to the neighbours en masse. But it can affect Abkhazia, Georgia, Turkey. It can reach Turkey from the east. On the western coast - Romania, Bulgaria. And of course, Odessa and its neighbourhood. > >- Have you had any discussions with them? > >- Not yet. I don't know, maybe the Foreign Ministry has, but it is unlikely that the Foreign Ministry will do anything without consulting us. But one consideration is that the further away you go, the lower the concentration. That's not much of a consolation.

It seems a stable trend that Black sea news keep getting more industrial and less environmental.

This old article explains the basics

>The harmful gas, the byproduct of decay, has been accumulated for centuries. Can we work to remove the hydrogen sulfide content of the Black Sea or at least reduce its concentrations? Scientists have been for quite some time mulling this question on the look out for solutions. All the more so that the otherwise harmful gas is rich in hydrogen that has been increasingly considered as an alternative fuel option with a future.

>“I had the idea of using hydrogen sulfide not for the direct extraction of hydrogen through electrolysis as anybody would expect, but rather the direct use of hydrogen sulfide for energy. At the next stage this energy could be used to carry out electrolysis from seawater for obtaining hydrogen.”

And here's a review of most recent research: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036031992305886X

It's not about reputation as the article emphasises. It's about environmental change (due to disaster) and a future change of the way anyone around lives. This holds both for people and wildlife. What is reported now in Asana, will arrive within a year along the whole coastline.

>Speaking to the Russian paper Parlamentskaya Gazeta, the head of Russia's State Duma Committee on Family Affairs, Nina Ostanina, said bookings at Anapa's children's recreation and health retreats had plummeted by more than 27% in January and 40% for the summer.

>More than a month later, fuel oil continues to leak into the sea from the sunken tanker. Russian authorities have reported that they haven't been able to weld the damaged part of the ship closed, because the hole was too close to the oil storage tankers.

>While Russia's Emergencies Ministry has claimed there is no effective method to clean up this type of oil, environmental experts have said appropriate methods have been available since 2002, when the Prestige tanker carrying similar heavy fuel oil sank off the Spanish coast, polluting some 2,000 kilometers of coastline.

>Russian officials are warning of further problems in the summer, when rising temperatures cause the oil to dissolve and wash ashore in larger amounts.

>But once authorities began pressuring the volunteer center, he starting doubting the official statistics and work practices. Instead, the helper suspects local authorities are trying to cover up numbers and activities.

This is not about ownership of the platform, but about largest sellers on it.

As far as ownership is concerned, it's certainly a Ruskiy Mir saga, as this comment from Kadyrov (yes, he's also involved) illustrates: https://meduza.io/amp/en/feature/2024/10/10/in-first-public-comments-on-wildberries-shooting-kadyrov-declares-blood-feud-against-federal-lawmakers-who-he-claims-ordered-his-murder

It is a process that started before the war, but has accelerated now

>By comparison to the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea states lacked strong multilateral structures for cooperation. The North and Baltic Sea got the Joint Expeditionary Force led by the UK, though now all 10 of its members are also NATO members, while Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey failed at creating a NATO flotilla in the Black Sea after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine.

>The military dialogue formats within ASEAN, including cyber military valences as well, are also interesting for observers from the wider Black Sea region. In fact, the more we study the region, the more potential we find in regionally developed models on everything from industrial cooperation to common space asset utilisation for disaster management.

>Too many speak of balancing between US and Chinese economic interests, and not enough speak about economic partnerships without geopolitical baggage. This is something that the Black Sea region and the Indo-Pacific can offer to each other, in addition to the obvious advantages such as market access.

>There are commercial and investment niches where cross-border exchanges by national actors can have a significant economic and secondary impact. One of these is cybersecurity and digitalisation, both regions featuring strong start-up scenes with important midsized companies that could, with appropriate encouragement, expand into the other region. Yet, one visits growing regional events in South-East Asia such as CyberDSA in Kuala Lumpur and no Eastern Europeans are present (and very few Europeans for that matter, unlike Americans or Chinese).

This is an automated account posting everything from their RSS feed.

Given the few sources of news from the Caucasus, I thought this is an important voice to have.

Two weeks ago he claimed the spill is "smaller than they thought".

By any count, Bulgaria is among the 6 affected countries from the oil spill. Bulgarian maritime.bg remained silent for 30 days. They broke their silence with a report on Putin being upset that the cleanup is not efficient. Whose responsibility is it, comrade Putin?

Even if she left office without confrontation,... >Zurabishvili says she remains the legitimate Georgian president despite being replaced by former soccer player Mikheil Kavelashvili on December 29 by a new electoral college controlled by the ruling Georgian Dream party.

>Marine mammals are not exempt from the crisis. In the northeastern Black Sea, an alarming rise in dolphin mortality has been reported. While experts are investigating whether the deaths are directly related to oil exposure, they also point to other potential factors, including toxic ship discharges, missile strikes, and infectious disease outbreaks.

>The oil slick, already reaching the western Crimean coast, continues to spread toward Odesa and potentially beyond to the shores of Türkiye, Georgia, and Romania. The spill’s impact is not limited to marine life. Experts caution that fish and shellfish from the affected areas may contain toxic substances, posing risks to local fisheries and food safety.

>“This is the largest oil spill in Black Sea history in terms of both volume and area affected,” said Dr. Pavlo Goldin of the Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

rfi.fr/ro/interna%C5%A3ional/2…

With protests becoming daily life,the hope is that a national strike would squeeze the government into new elections.

>Georgian citizens are being urged to participate in a nationwide strike on Jan. 15 to demand the release of detained protestors and to call for new elections, Protest 24 posted on Facebook. > >The strike, organized by Protest 24, will begin at 3 p.m. and last for three hours, with businesses and employees halting work during this time. > >Organizers aim to highlight the potential consequences of political isolation, such as economic stagnation, unemployment, and poverty.

>The half-buried Bronze Age ruins of Dmanisis Gora perch on a windswept promontory a few kilometers away from a cave where Homo erectus (or a close relative) lived 1.8 million years ago. Deep, steep-sided gorges run along two sides of the promontory, and sometime between 1500 and 1000 BCE, people stacked boulders into a double layer of high, thick walls to block off the end of the plateau from the plains to the west. Sheltered between the 4-meter high, 2.5-meter wide walls and the 60-meter-deep gorges, people built dugout houses, then later aboveground stone ones, along with stone animal pens and other buildings. > >Outside the walls lay a more sprawling, less densely packed settlement, sheltered by another wall to the west. That outer wall was as high and wide as the inner ones, and it stretched a full kilometer from the edge of one gorge to the edge of the other. Between the walls, homes and other buildings formed small compounds with open space between them. Fenced fields, animal pens, and graves dotted the area.

This is old news, but it didn't get shared here one month ago, and has relevance not only for the involved 4 countries in the region, but for the world.

It is probably the Cambridge Analytica of Russia. And is almost certainly only one of many such networks.

>The total contract volume represents about 1.5% of Germany's gas imports in 2024 and would be the first deal underpinning the long-awaited deepwater project, more than a decade after gas was first discovered in Romania's section of the Black Sea. > >Neptun Deep, which is expected to start producing in 2027, holds an estimated 100 billion cubic meters (bcm) of recoverable gas, making it one of the EU's most significant natural gas deposits. > >Once it comes online, Romania will become the EU's largest gas producer and a net gas exporter for the first time.

To me it seems that the Azeri and Kurds of Iran are underrepresented.

The Neftochim refinery was constructed within a USSR planned economy and is heavily reliant on Russian crude and infrastructure.

Despite the Russian shady dominance in both Bulgaria and Kazakhstan, this development could be the best chance to circumvent Putin's regime in deliveries and refining of oil from Central Asia.

>According to the letter, signed by Tiraspoltransgaz director Igor Lisachenko, Moldova's Moldovagaz offered to facilitate "the purchase of gas from European gas platforms" to meet local needs. However, the response reads, transitioning to non-Russian gas "actually means moving from stable supplies from Gazprom to purchases on speculative terms at much higher and unstable prices." > >Currently, Transnistria is receiving no gas from either Russia or Moldova, and Moldovan government officials say the region's leaders have also refused offers of humanitarian aid, including generators.

>"I find it extraordinary that given the gravity of the crisis, where schools and kindergartens are shut and people freeze in their homes, the authorities in Tiraspol refuse to accept Moldova’s help," said Aura Sabadus, a nonresident senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis. > >"Instead of working with Moldovan authorities to find the best solution to protect the population at this very difficult time, they prefer to wait for Russian help, which may or may not come," she added. "Moldovan companies have clearly proven there are solutions to solve the issue, with the cost to bring the gas calculated by Moldovans at anything between €20 million to €45 million for this cold season." > >Last summer, Moldova's then-energy minister, Victor Parlicov, told POLITICO that Transnistria had been put in a precarious position as a result of changing energy supply routes, but that the Moldovan government continued to fund the separatists' budget with electricity purchases to avoid what he called a "humanitarian crisis."

>Geological Engineer Prof. Dr. Osman Bektaş evaluated the natural disasters, especially landslides and floods, which have been seen intensively in the Eastern Black Sea region in recent years. Stating that earthquakes have a triggering effect on the increase in landslides, Bektaş said, "The Black Sea coast should be ready for an earthquake of 6.6 magnitude or higher at any time. The coastal areas are much more dangerous and risky."

>The spill involved heavy M100-grade fuel oil that solidifies at a temperature of 25 degrees Celsius and, unlike other oil products, does not float to the surface but sinks to the bottom or remains suspended in the water column.

Of course over summer water often warms more than 25 degrees and would probably refloat. Some of us remember such experiences from our childhood.

>Мазут из затонувших российских кораблей дошел до северо-восточного побережья оккупированного Крыма.

> "По радиолокационным снимкам хорошо заметно поверхностное пленочное загрязнение, а не мазут, который находится под водой… Мы видим именно поверхностное загрязнение у порта Феодосия, у мыса Такиль и, предположительно, на большом участке ЮБК - от Партенита до мыса Меганом (Судак)”

>The problems of Russian Railways are forcing importers to resort more and more often to delivering goods from the Far East by road instead of rail, and Chinese carriers are taking over the market there.

>Logistics companies and drivers from China began to explore this destination in earnest in the second half of 2024, when road freight demand and prices began to rise rapidly due to capacity shortages on rail routes.

>Until this year, competition from Chinese transport companies was felt mainly in the Far East and Siberia, while Chinese lorries rarely reached central Russia, because the route to Moscow or St. Petersburg, where a significant portion of imported cargo is sent and then back, exceeds 15,000 kilometres, there are few high-speed roads, especially to the Urals, and the climate and infrastructure are not the most pleasant, says the manager of a federal logistics company. In addition, Chinese carriers are prohibited from cabotage - that is, transporting domestic cargo within Russia, he adds. Traditionally, Chinese applicants have received almost half as many permits to cross the Russian border as Russian drivers have received to cross the Chinese border.

Аналитик Анатолий Несмиян предрекает повторения 1917 года в Россию

Он сравнивает возможные сценарии с историей 1917 года, но с существенными различиями: "Февраль практически неизбежен, а вот с Октябрем есть сомнения: для него нет субъекта, способного повести за собой массы, как большевики в начале прошлого века". https://www.dialog.ua/russia/307047/_1735470666 @blacksea

>The Russian state should apologise to Azerbaijan. Secondly, it must recognise its culpability. Thirdly, it must punish those responsible, bring them to criminal responsibility and pay compensation to the state of Azerbaijan and the injured passengers and crew members. These are our conditions.

>Причината морските треви да бъдат основен обект на изследване в проекта е тяхната ключова роля в екосистемата на Черно море и отвъд. Те са от съществено значение за химическия баланс на водата и редица екологични процеси. Затова голяма част от институциите, занимаващи се с екологични въпроси, фокусират усилията си върху изучаването на морските треви.

>Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, a scientist who heads the Water Problems Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and served as Russia’s Environment Minister from 1991 to 1996, said Wednesday that at least 200,000 tons of soil had been contaminated with fuel oil along the Black Sea coast following the tanker accident near the Kerch Strait. > >“It will grow. There is no doubt about it because the fuel oil remains in the sea and in fairly large quantities,” Danilov-Danilyan said during a press conference. “It will continue to wash up onto the cleaned shore. It will need to be cleaned a second, or third time. We need to prepare for this.” > >He also criticized the lack of equipment being deployed and the reliance on untrained, unequipped volunteers. > >“There are no bulldozers, no trucks. Practically no heavy machinery,” he said. “Volunteers have only shovels and useless plastic bags that rip apart. While the bags wait to finally be collected, storms arrive, and they end up back in the sea. It’s unthinkable!”

>At his annual press conference last week, Putin blamed the oil tankers’ captains for the disaster, claiming they ventured out to sea without authorization.

Crypto mining is to be illegal by 2031 in Caucasian republics (including Chechenia and Dagestan) and occupied Ukrainian territories.

In some of the Russian Far South (parts of Ingushetia, Buryatia), crypto mining will be illegal between mid-November to mid-March.

This is done due to excessive growth of consumption due to mining and difficulties to keeping up with the balance.

Romanian prosecution seeks harsher punishments for incitement to violence, Legionnaire propaganda

The failed coup attempt immediately after the court decision to rerun the presidential elections, woke up Romanian institutions to what are the risks they are facing.

https://www.romania-insider.com/romanian-general-prosecutor-harsher-punishments-incitement-violence-legionnaire-propaganda-dec-2024 @blacksea

The coastal territory sees the cost of stretching between Georgia and Russia when the autocracies in both neighbours are in deep crisis.