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US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

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Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#341

Post by TMWNN »

jacobolus wrote: post #220
corrral wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Syria was the worst part, because the fallout from that was really bad. Not sure we'd have had Brexit without the extra pressure that put on Europe. Likely empowered Erdogan somewhat (doubt it made a big difference there, admittedly) and contributed to the rise of far right parties in Eastern Europe. Plus, you know, sucks for the Syrians. Nb. what I blame him for isn't the Syrian civil war itself, but for choosing to…

> Syria was the worst part, Agreed. Obama came in from the context of the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan and wanted to avoid another similar, and was too cautious and non-confrontational, especially once Russia got involved. > Pushing NATO members to meet their defense spending obligations ended up being damn-near prescient This was not “pushing” so much as “ineffective trash talking”. And it had nothing to do with making…

>> Pushing NATO members to meet their defense spending obligations ended up being damn-near prescient

>This was not “pushing” so much as “ineffective trash talking”.

Trump and Stoltenberg argue on camera (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k>). Who turned out to be right? Who turned out to completely, totally, 100% wrong?

If Trump was so bad for NATO and Ukraine's defense, why didn't the current war didn't begin in 2017-2020?

Let me guess: You think that the current state of the Ukrainian military (in terms of training and weaponry) that enabled it to survive the initial Russian invasion in February when few believed it could, somehow magically began in January 2021. It is a fact that the Trump administration continued and accelerated the training and arming of Ukrainian military by the US that his predecessor began.

Let me also guess: You are one of those gullible who say that Merkel was always against German dependence on Russian gas but could not do anything about it. For 16 years!

There is more "evidence" that Merkel is a long-term Russian intelligence asset, recruited from her youth in East Germany,^1 than that of Trump being the same. One guess on which claim is incessantly repeated by the bien-pensants of the chattering classes.

^1 Something else never talked about is how her parents moved from West to East Germany when she was a baby

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#342

Post by TMWNN »

juve1996 wrote: post #193
nemo44x wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the situation in Ukraine is so much more nuanced. There's a lot of history there and Ukraine is't an innocent bystander in this situation. It's fair to say Russia has been provoked in many ways and although I'm not sure an invasion is justified, it isn't all together unexpected based on how they've been treated regarding this over the last 10 years or so. The breakdown in diplomacy with Russia is the worst part.…

> The breakdown in diplomacy with Russia is the worst part. The previous administration at least had diplomacy. The current one just pushed them into this. If by diplomacy you mean kowtowing to everything Russia does, I'm not sure that's much better.

>If by diplomacy you mean kowtowing to everything Russia does, I'm not sure that's much better.

Trump and Stoltenberg argue on camera (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k>). Who turned out to be right? Who turned out to completely, totally, 100% wrong?

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#343

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

cpursley wrote: post #261
snemvalts wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile RUB to USD is at its highest in nearly 5 years Is that meant to demonstrate economic strength? * Russians have massive amount of brain drain. Most of tech employees have left, leaving only people extracting oil, people who turn it into fertilizer and gasoline and supporting roles. * They can't build military tech because of sanctions. Starting to use 1950s and 1960s tanks. * They've privatized and violate…

> They can't build military tech because of sanctions. Russia is ahead of the west both in ballistics & air defense using mostly off the shelf consumer chips that are very easy to smuggle in via 3rd parties. > Starting to use 1950s and 1960s tanks. Retrofitted tanks that get the job done. These are being sent to the rear for policing (occupying) operations as well as given to the Donbas separatists. > Renault gave aw…

> Russia is ahead of the west both in ballistics & air defense

This is an absolutely absurd claim. I will say that it is flat-out FALSE.

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#344

Post by leereeves »

aaomidi wrote: post #338
hintymad wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not issuing drilling licenses? Besides, there is, or so I heard, so much political pressures that drilling has become a high-risk business that those companies either can't afford insurance or can't get one.

You do realize these licenses take years to materialize? Oil companies use any crisis to get more rights in the future. Biden can use wartime production laws to force oil companies to produce more. Oil companies right now just don’t want to produce more. It’s not that they can’t. They have no reason to do more work to make less money.

Why would oil companies invest in production when the politicians plan to phase out oil in the near future? Infrastructure is expensive and takes a long time to break even.

And what investments they do make, like the Keystone XL pipeline, are blocked by the government.

Would you invest in that?

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#345

Post by cpursley »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #343
cpursley wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They can't build military tech because of sanctions. Russia is ahead of the west both in ballistics & air defense using mostly off the shelf consumer chips that are very easy to smuggle in via 3rd parties. > Starting to use 1950s and 1960s tanks. Retrofitted tanks that get the job done. These are being sent to the rear for policing (occupying) operations as well as given to the Donbas separatists. > Renault gave aw…

> Russia is ahead of the west both in ballistics & air defense This is an absolutely absurd claim. I will say that it is flat-out FALSE.

Well, the US President and Pentagon disagree with you. As do the receiving ends of those weopons systems.

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#346

Post by juve1996 »

cpursley wrote: post #330
juve1996 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course - through necessity. But this will force them to move away and look for other options. You can go ahead and congratulate them on their short term "victories", but long term, I don't see how this benefits them.

Russia can find new customers before EU can find new suppliers (at least regarding natural gas), which is precisely why we're seeing increases in energy costs.

It takes infrastructure to move natural gas. They can find customers - but can they get that NG there? Not right now they can't. And there are material shortages everywhere - it will take a long time and it will be more costly in the long run than their European markets.

Tensions are already rising between the Saudi's and Russians, who are frustrated with Russia's drop in output since the war started. This will only exacerbate the west moving away from fossil fuels - essentially weakening oil power world wide.

On top of that, all the money they're making from oil has been pretty much paying off accumulated foreign debts. People are concerned about the export - but it doesn't matter if you export a lot if you can't import what you need for an extended war effort or for your citizens.

I think Russia has already lost this war from a geopolitical perspective. Even if they take the Ukraine, their position is worse than it was from before.

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#347

Post by ghostwriter »

jacobolus wrote: post #305
lawxls wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"By the end of this war Ukraine might end up with the largest tank army in Europe." As Ukraine officials beg for help, and ask for half of US army armor 4th month into the war, you guys keep inhaling copium, dreaming in your beds about Russia "being destroyed" in Ukraine. I wouldn't expect anything less from western propaganda enjoyers tbh. Also taking oryx stats seriously, that's fun. While some parts were definitel…

> really is a tradegy donbass and crimea situation had to be resolved this way “It’s unfortunate those pesky Ukrainians had the audacity to exist, which forced us to invade their sovereign country, shell their cities to rubble, and mass murder their civilians. Just like we were forced to mass murder Chechens, Georgians, and Syrians. And might have to mass murder Poles, Finns, Lithuanians, Romanians, or Kazakhs in the…

> Just like we were forced to mass murder Chechens

Just like the US "was forced" to mass murder Iraqis because, in addition to fake WMD claims, the US intelligence was linking Saddam to Bin Laden.

I wonder how exactly you would characterise Khattab, among other "prominent" "freedom fighters", and his role in the Chechen wars. Would you be willing to accommodate similar kind of characters in your country of origin and, possibly, give them a freedom to attract and gather a following among certain kinds of radicals? Would the US be willing to accommodate Al-Qaeda in, say, Texas?

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#348

Post by jacobolus »

TMWNN wrote: post #341
jacobolus wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Syria was the worst part, Agreed. Obama came in from the context of the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan and wanted to avoid another similar, and was too cautious and non-confrontational, especially once Russia got involved. > Pushing NATO members to meet their defense spending obligations ended up being damn-near prescient This was not “pushing” so much as “ineffective trash talking”. And it had nothing to do with making…

>> Pushing NATO members to meet their defense spending obligations ended up being damn-near prescient >This was not “pushing” so much as “ineffective trash talking”. Trump and Stoltenberg argue on camera ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k >). Who turned out to be right? Who turned out to completely, totally, 100% wrong? If Trump was so bad for NATO and Ukraine's defense, why didn't the current war didn't b…

Trump was literally impeached for secretly withholding congressionally appropriated military aid to Ukraine and then extorting the Ukrainian president to make up a fake scandal about his political opponent in return for keeping aid flowing. Several of Trump’s top advisors/officials were directly corruptly involved with previous Russian puppet leaders of Ukraine and corrupt pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs, notably Paul Manafort, who had directly worked for years to undermine Ukrainian democracy (Manafort was imprisoned in the USA for his illegal Ukraine-related fraud, among other charges. If you want to single out an American to blame for the current war, Manafort is your best bet.)

Remember, Trump fired the US ambassador to Ukraine because she was opposed to Ukrainian (and American) corruption, and instead sent Rudy Giuliani, Rick Perry, and Gordon Sondland – an incompetent hotel developer who bought his way into a cosplay job as EU Ambassador – to further his corrupt schemes, including not only the extortion plan to invent scandals about Biden, but also replacing the leadership of a Ukrainian state-owned gas company so that it could give contracts to Trump’s corrupt American allies, ending the US attempts to extradite Firtash (a criminal Ukrainian oligarch with Russian mafia ties who hired Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies), etc.

When Trump’s extortion scheme was exposed and blew up as a scandal, Congress appropriated additional aid for Ukraine, and Trump was driven by the scandal and intense public and congressional scrutiny (not to mention pressure from the US military) to continue the aid. (He still wanted to be re-elected, remember, so didn’t want to look totally corrupt.)

Thankfully the USA is not (as of 2016–2022) a dictatorship, and the president does not personally decide all national policy. So when Trump had some bright ideas like nuking a hurricane or selling off Puerto Rico, those didn’t actually happen. When Trump suggested pulling the US out of NATO, there were still enough powerful and sane figures in the US defense establishment who were able to thwart that proposal.

* * *

You are right that the US and NATO did some (though in retrospect it perhaps should have been more) to help Ukraine from 2014–2021. That training, funding, and support was surely one important part of the Ukrainian army’s recent success. Score one for the US military and US federal government.

* * *

> who say that Merkel was always against German dependence on Russian gas

I don’t know about Merkel per se but German political parties clearly have significant corruption problems. The German response to the Ukraine war has been a disappointing indictment of the whole German political class.

More generally, many Europeans (and Americans, etc.) have been bought off (explicitly or implicitly) by money embezzled from the Russian people by various oligarchs and organized criminals. Russian corruption is a serious worldwide problem, and other countries should continue to make large-scale coordinated responses, ending money laundering, seizing corrupt assets, and imposing legal liability on local residents (e.g. the legal, real estate, and financial services industries) who knowingly participate.

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#349

Post by throwaway829 »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #334

Off topic rant here but I'm getting tired of headlines with the word 'quietly' put in them to make things seem more sinister then they are. Can HN make a filter to automatically remove this unnecessary qualifier. They can even do so quietly, for ironic effect.

In this case, it's not 'quietly' because it's sinister, it's 'quietly' because it's extremely embarrassing. The US used all its political might to force a global boycott of Russia. Now it's telling farmers to buy Russian fertilizer. I'm no expert, but even I know Russia is a (the?) leading source of fertilizer. And to do this when we were already suffering high inflation? It's a blunder at best.

Re: US quietly urges more use of Russia fertilizer to ease food crisis

#350

Post by cpursley »

juve1996 wrote: post #346
cpursley wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia can find new customers before EU can find new suppliers (at least regarding natural gas), which is precisely why we're seeing increases in energy costs.

It takes infrastructure to move natural gas. They can find customers - but can they get that NG there? Not right now they can't. And there are material shortages everywhere - it will take a long time and it will be more costly in the long run than their European markets. Tensions are already rising between the Saudi's and Russians, who are frustrated with Russia's drop in output since the war started. This will only…

You made my point for me regarding moving natural gas. EU is 5+ years from a Russian gas replacement (oil/gasoline, sooner).

Regarding debts, the Russian federal debt is one of the lowest in the world. Google/Yandex it.

And as for the citizens, yeah - no more BMWs or iPhones (just kidding, those will come from Kazakhstan and Armenia at a markup)...

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