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Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

reuters.com

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Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#361

Post by vkou »

Huh1337 wrote: post #355
vkou wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to have a hell of a time convincing anyone that the Cuban missile crisis nearly started a nuclear war because the US felt bad for Cuba .

I said it's apples to oranges, didn't I? This comparison just makes no sense whatsoever.

The comparison makes complete sense when we speak about the roles of buffer states, which is the conversation that the parent post started.

Your off-topic complaint that distracted from that point, is that eastern imperialism was worse than western imperialism. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not [1], but it's not relevant to the subthread.

[1] It's difficult to have a meaningful conversation on this subject, because every empire of note has a long history of being smeared in shit, and spends a lot of effort indoctrinating its subjects that its brand of imperialism is way better than all the other ones.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#362

Post by rr888 »

hef19898 wrote: post #353
odiroot wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, WW2 was one of these times.

Barbarossa might have a word with you... And the Holocaust only got really going after that. So how again were Germany and Russia friendly during WW2?

> So how again were Germany and Russia friendly during WW2? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Boundary...

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#363

Post by Huh1337 »

vkou wrote: post #361
Huh1337 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said it's apples to oranges, didn't I? This comparison just makes no sense whatsoever.

The comparison makes complete sense when we speak about the roles of buffer states, which is the conversation that the parent post started. Your off-topic complaint that distracted from that point, is that eastern imperialism was worse than western imperialism. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not [1], but it's not relevant to the subthread. [1] It's difficult to have a meaningful conversation on this subject, because eve…

It's not off topic at all. If somebody abuses their buffer states this much they can't have them. Perhaps there wouldn't be such opposition to the claims of reasonability of their request if the Russians treated their buffer states nicely (or at least not so badly).

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#364

Post by pkaye »

retinaros wrote: post #313
adventured wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the acrobatics required for Europeans that try to blame all of this on the US because they need a scapegoat so as to avoid personal responsibility.

u mean like when ukrained was trained by us operative, its leadership selected by us operative and using us weapons . the only country that used nuclear are the usa. i wouldnt trust them not to push for a nuclear attack again

It was not just US but includes UK and Canada and the NATO organization.

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN07...

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#365

Post by ben_w »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #339
ben_w wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Where?

It was almost certainly a state actor behind the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines recently. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/another-nord-stream-l... A former Polish Minister of Defense posted "Thankyou USA" to Twitter after the attack. Various US officials have made public statements since the start of 2022 stating the US wouldn't allow Nord Stream to go forward. The whole reason the pipelines were bui…

I agree that a state actor was involved.

I disagree that Russia has no incentive.

While the USA obviously has the means and more than zero motivation, I don’t see this type of infrastructure damage so close to allies as likely. Especially given the EU was already in the process of permanently ending the purchase of all Russian gas, not just these pipelines.

Russia, however, is looking at one never-opened pipeline and one already-offline pipeline, which is going to a bloc that has announced that it won’t pay as much as Russia is asking for its gas, won’t pay in the currency Russia is demanding, and wants to rapidly move away from Russian gas entirely, and which is currently sanctioning against Russia. Russia appears to believe that cutting off gas to Europe will end European support for Ukraine, and therefore has an obvious incentive to cut it off. Russia has incentives to make this look like it isn’t Russia’s fault, for the same reason anyone who might have done this would have had an incentive to hide their own identity.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#366

Post by scrubs »

hef19898 wrote: post #329
avgcorrection wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm? Could you be more coy and less direct in your replies, please? Did Russia transform from a cosmopolitan, Western European-loving, tolerant nation with fantastic relations to the EU overnight into a savage brute in Feb 2022? Or was it always at least a little bit backwards, clearly not democratic, sphere of influence-envious, and had already arguably been at indirect war with Ukraine since 2014 ? To claim that Ge…

Since Europe has not enough natural resources to be self reliant, and the US only has enough oil gas due to fracking, there is no alternative other than dealing with oppressive, human rights ignoring regimes. Iran is under sanctions, the UAE and Saudi are by no means better the Putin at his worst days (we in the West just don't give a damn about the war in Sudan and Yemen). And yes, closer relationships to Russia are…

What? Russia better than Saudi Arabia? The Saudis are neither stupid enough to attack something like Ukraine nor do they have the backbone to even think about it. They're not as caught up in cold wars or bemoaning their version of what Gorbachev did. Human rights aside wouldn't most petrol customers prefer SA over Russia? Granted, Europe and Germany esp. didn't but then again trade was supposed to mute the stupidity of the Russian government and that didn't ultimately work.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#367

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

rr888 wrote: post #362
hef19898 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Barbarossa might have a word with you... And the Holocaust only got really going after that. So how again were Germany and Russia friendly during WW2?

> So how again were Germany and Russia friendly during WW2? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Boundary...

Germany and the USSR (there was no independent Russia at that time) were not friendly in 1939. The Soviets signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact because they knew Germany planned to invade the USSR at some point, and they wanted to buy time.

It was a scurrilous, unprincipled deal (much like Poland's deal with Germany to divide up Czechoslovakia a year earlier), but the Soviets didn't make it because they were friends with Germany. They had actually preferred to sign an alliance with France, in order to protect Czechoslovakia, but that had failed due to a lack of willingness from France and a refusal by Poland to allow Soviet troops to cross Poland to reach Czechoslovakia (for some reasons that were understandable, given that the USSR and Poland had recently fought a war, and also because Poland itself wanted a piece of Czechoslovakia).

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#368

Post by retinaros »

pkaye wrote: post #364
retinaros wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

u mean like when ukrained was trained by us operative, its leadership selected by us operative and using us weapons . the only country that used nuclear are the usa. i wouldnt trust them not to push for a nuclear attack again

It was not just US but includes UK and Canada and the NATO organization. https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN07...

nato is usa

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#369

Post by godelski »

janef0421 wrote: post #357
godelski wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems a bit naive. While money is a social construct it is also a proxy for resources. Also, to be clear, just because things are socially constructed doesn't mean they aren't useful. Most things are social constructs.

Money is a useful proxy when used to allocate resources to individual economic agents, but is not useful when analysing and coordinating an entire economy. In fact, the loss of fine-grained information and introduction of social subjectivity is often highly counter-productive.

I think I understand what you're saying? That money isn't a good proxy for issues of things like shared resources. A la tragedy of the commons types of issues? If that's what you're saying then I fully agree. Money has been a great tool for proxying local economic effects and facilitating trade but it is not nuanced enough to capture more long range phenomena like ToC. But I do feel like this is where governments are supposed to step in. While I'm pretty critical of authority I do see this aspect as part of the need for strong governments and limitations to pure democracies, as we have yet to find a structure where large swaths of the population can either be accurately informed or where we can have sufficient reliance upon experts. Obviously too much in the other direction (authoritarianism) comes with its own slew of problems (ones I think are worse).

(I do think a wide distribution of ideas that we can sample from, with a fairly normal-ish looking distribution, creates a powerful framework to build democracies. You do need anarchists, nationalists, and extremists, but not in large potions. When the mean shifts to any of these I think the system becomes unstable. But neither should we truncate the distribution.)

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#370

Post by CapricornNoble »

ben_w wrote: post #365
CapricornNoble wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was almost certainly a state actor behind the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines recently. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/another-nord-stream-l... A former Polish Minister of Defense posted "Thankyou USA" to Twitter after the attack. Various US officials have made public statements since the start of 2022 stating the US wouldn't allow Nord Stream to go forward. The whole reason the pipelines were bui…

I agree that a state actor was involved. I disagree that Russia has no incentive. While the USA obviously has the means and more than zero motivation, I don’t see this type of infrastructure damage so close to allies as likely. Especially given the EU was already in the process of permanently ending the purchase of all Russian gas, not just these pipelines. Russia, however, is looking at one never-opened pipeline and…

>>>Russia appears to believe that cutting off gas to Europe will end European support for Ukraine, and therefore has an obvious incentive to cut it off. Russia has incentives to make this look like it isn’t Russia’s fault

Russia had already done the former by basically "turning off the tap", and already argued it wasn't their fault because they were willing to supply gas to Europe as long as Europe paid in Russian rubles. They were also using the gas supply for political leverage:

"release our frozen assets and we'll turn the gas back on" "pay in rubles and we'll turn the gas back on" "stop sending weapons to Ukraine and we'll turn the gas back on"

Now they physically CAN'T do any of those things, so this is a massive blow to what little bargaining power they hoped to retain through the winter. If there is any nation that is harmed by the physical destruction of these pipes, it's Russia.

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