No post body was provided.
Russian gas flows to Europe
151–160 of 279 posts
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Ukraine could somehow "defeat" Russia while still avoiding WW3 Why? These kind of cold-war era proxy wars happened throughout history. One big power makes a move directly or indirectly, while the other side will be supported indirectly by other powers. It becomes a pure resource war, and no party has a reason to escalate it beyond the conflict zone. Russia has no reason to open new fronts even if NATO props the war…
This is not a proxy war. Russia is involved directly on its border. A proxy war is in a far off land.
Afghanistan was on the border of USSR. Why was that a proxy war and this one isn't?
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany's GDP is 4 trillion dollars, its government budget is over 400 billion. Refurbing 3 nuke plants is nothing with those resources. The entire manhattan project that pioneered nuclear power only cost about 50 billion in today's money, but they aren't even starting from scratch like that. If they wanted it to happen I can't see any financial or technical blocker.
Why do you assume you know better than experts?
Because those particular experts were on Russian payroll.
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't know what Europe looks like in 2023 but the electricity will probably be useful then too.
At the rate we're going, I'm not so sure. "Bombed-out wasteland" seems possible.
I'd be way more worried about the general populations ability to buy groceries and keep the house warm in the winter.
Globally a lot of harvests are falling through because of floods and heat waves. Combined with the inflation that's just starting to take off... Paying for life's necessities will be challenging for a lot of employed workers
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. 'The West' wasn't hubristic, Europe was. The US has been telling Europe to get off of Russian gas & oil for decades, under multiple administrations. Both parties have been extremely clear about this for over two decades now. 'I'm astounded at how many people continue to live in the 3rd fantasy of believing Ukraine could somehow "defeat" Russia while still avoiding WW3' 2. The US lost in Vietnam without using nukes…
> The US has been telling Europe to get off of Russian gas & oil for decades, under multiple administrations Yeah and buy American liquefied gas instead. Thanks but no thanks.
but perhaps we could have had the foresight to do something else? its time to admit that our elected, due in no small part to the electorate, have not been very smart, and have basically fucked up. again. This is allowed because the regular joe is sedated with crappy television, gorging in grotesk amounts of crappy food, and washing it down with unlimited amounts of beer. at no point does the average european (or american) care at all about what happens
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#156Quoted post unavailable.
Thank you, Now I get it. Its the US bullying that was the cause for Ukraine invasion! This and Germany.
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany's shutting those down because of the Fukushima disaster. A lot of Germans believe (rightly or wrongly) that Japanese are as quality-conscious and dependable as they themselves. Corollary: if the Japanese can fuck up in the ways that led to Fukushima, then the German operators can fuck up in similar ways. Now, these people may be wrong. But they made the decision. Until Fukushima, there was a net pro-nuclear v…
> Germany's shutting those down because of the Fukushima disaster. No, they're not. The shutdown decision was made (and put into binding law!) almost ten years before Fukushima.
That law wasn't the last word… it didn't prevent extending the allowed lifetimes of the already-built reactors a year or so before Fukushima.
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not a proxy war. Russia is involved directly on its border. A proxy war is in a far off land.
Afghanistan was on the border of USSR. Why was that a proxy war and this one isn't?
USSR is not Russia. Afghanistan was a not a "core interest" or existential threat to any of the USSR nations.
If we use the Afghanistan analogy, Ukraine is on the border of NATO too. Interestingly, then NATO would be the overextended multinational entity trying to expand even further in this scenario. If we expect an "Afghanistan" scenario to repeat itself, then logically one would expect NATO to collapse.
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#159It's far too late to change this. You cannot restructure the energy sources of a whole continent in a few months or even years. This could've been fixed if the West had understood and reacted appropriately to the magnitude of the Russian threat about 10 years ago, as foreseen by academics like Stephen Cohen and businessmen like Bill Browder, instead of blindly falling for its own hubristic self-delusion (which contin…
What I find most sad is, how differently we treat eg. USA when they decide to destroy a sovereign country due to their interests, compared to eg. now russia... I'm from slovenia, and we even sent soldiers to help them in afghanistan, and we still have them in syria... somehow noone mentions words like "war", "occupation", "civilian deaths" etc., when our soldiers are there...
and why is it that we continue to do immense trade with china, given their treatment of various people? their extreme pollution(the green agenda is supposedly holier than the pope), why is it that we happily buy a gazillion trinkets from king pooh but putin is simply unacceptable in ALL ways. china is arguably far worse.
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is google, so results might vary, but this is the first result for me: https://reliefweb.int/report/afghanistan/civilian-casualties... "Civilian casualties of explosive violence mount as Taliban capture Kabul" Somehow wikipedia is only the second link, mentioning the actual numbers of civilians.... but again... when was the last time news like this made headlines? When was the last time anyone imposed sanctions…
If you count New York Times as mainstream then plenty of times. For example https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/16/pentagon-pay... https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/world/middleeast/11casual... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/16/magazine/unco... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/18/us/airstrikes... Although I agree there was no real punishment, after all the US isn't going to charge th…
NY times is behind a paywall for me, but even the first story mentions a "mistake"... somehow when americans kill someone, it's "a mistake". The other stories are from (judging by the URLs) from 2006, 2017 and 2021... so yeah... considering america is still in quite a few countries now, and noone cares.
> because it would disincentivise them from doing their work
You mean "making mistakes" and killing civilians? Why can't EU impose sanctions on US? Like kick them out of the EU teritory as a start?
USA even bombed a couple of weddings in pakistan... and they aren't even at war with pakistan.
And let's not forget what happens when US kills a reuters journalist... they go after the whistleblower of course, and the website operator that published the video.
Look, we all know russians are bad, but for many more countries america is the "number one risk and enemy", and even at this moment, many more countries are occupied by US army than by the russians. If we (the europeans) don't mind americans destroying countries all around the world, even bombing some in europe (yugoslavia 1999, similar reasons to what putin is doing now), why are we destroying our own economies now, when the russians are doing it?
The only ones having any benefit out of this current crisis are the american politicians... EU economy is fucked, russian economy is fucked, and Biden is taking the taxpayers money, giving it to Zelensky, so zelensky can buy weapons from bidens buddies, who (probably) give a percentage back to biden (or whoever his handler is). Oh, and also china for getting cheap oil an gas from russia.