When challenging a Kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap.
Originally Posted by George Carlin
Originally Posted by Douglas Adams
Sure, let's revisit it in 2 years. In the meantime, Russia is doing little more than confirm it's dangerous to rely on them. Or live near them. https://apnews.com/article/russia-uk...8bdfaa2c901be8
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time. --Frank Wilhoit
Cant commit to stop it with military force, but we can make it really hurt.
It will neccecarily also mean we must hurt ourselves.
Some ideas of various intensity on that ;
Full economic sanctions on all russians, not only targeting the top brass.
Seizure of all western based assets held by any and all russian nationals.
Complete western embargo on all imports and russian main exports; oil, gas and grain.
Nordstream 2 has already been scrapped.
The main russian gas artery runs right through ukraine, they can rip that.
Up to europe to destroy nord stream 1 & the land lines running through belarus & poland.
Back to nuclear for europe, short term it must fill its dependency with lng and increased northsea production (forced redirection neccecary, no more lng to china).
Bit more "out there" options;
Have turkey close off the bosphorus, blue stream and the gas west line.
All of europe; no flight zones for russian aircraft.
If breached: do not meet and greet to escort away, rather respond to any form of incursion with live missiles.
Look into feasability & benefits of isolating runet, not block; but physically locking russians out, leaving them with an intra net lan of sorts; only connected to former satelites/ russian friendly regimes.
Impacts; bad, bad bad bad. But still alot worse for Russia so sort of a win, like a lose lose win.
For the positive, irregardless of Putin we where already diving headlong straight into a big economic crash.
So eh might aswell have the pain with more pain and get it over with.
And atleast it has galvinized nato.
That 2% of gdp trump deemed neccecary for nato members to contribute seems alot more plausible now.
Still If it continues to escalate, might want to consider stocking up on some iodine.
Yesterday, considering quite a few mainstream media outlets are repeating the "peacekeeping" line (and being criticised for it) which is distinctly at odds with the official government stance on it being an invasion.
"US and Russian media are basically the same which you can tell by how the media in the US didn't follow the line set out by an aspiring autocrat like how they do in Russia with its actual autocrat."(besides Trump)
Zzz. Keep your Lugenpresse bullshit to yourself, please.
Last edited by Elegiac; 2022-02-22 at 01:51 PM.
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
No, I'm not. That is nonsense. Biden has done nothing of the sort, anyone who has access to a television or the internet could see that Russia was planning to invade - do you really think that without Biden's wisdom the rest of the world could not work out what thousands of Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border was for? - I mean Putin even wrote a 7,000 word essay outlining Russia's imperialist desires on Ukraine.
Seeing as Russia has moved military assets into position and then when ready sent them to invade and it is following the same pattern as the Crimean annexation I am not sure how you worked out that this is not how Putin wanted to conduct this invasion.
- - - Updated - - -
Yeah, there seems to be a disconnect between the earlier rhetoric and what has been announced.
On sanctions:
https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/...tCp6RI-kWmd8BQ
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time. --Frank Wilhoit
Its a take I completely disagree with. He is talking that deploying all sanctions now is the opposite of a deterrent but the deterrent was the threat of the sanctions. We are not at the deterrence stage, Putin has already invaded Ukraine. We're at retaliation.
Does anyone seriously think that the threat of more sanctions would get Putin to back off now? Do you think more sanctions would stop his tanks from driving strait to Kiev if he wanted to?
At what point have sanctions shows to have any affect at all on what Putin does?
We'd lose leverage? Leverage over what? He has invaded Ukraine. Blatantly. While talking about restoring the USSR and directly threatening every other former USSR state. Are we going to put on the 'real' sanctions if he invades yet another countries?
What second marshmallow are we promised by not applying full and total financial and economic isolation now?
Last edited by Gorsameth; 2022-02-22 at 02:36 PM.
It ignores such insignificant forces as time, entropy, and death
Germany Suspends Nord Stream2. Big move my Germany. And the right thing to do.
In reply, Dmitry Medvedev acts out like a low level enforcer on the Sopranos.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has issued an order to halt the process of certifying the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Well. Welcome to the brave new world where Europeans are very soon going to pay €2.000 for 1.000 cubic meters of natural gas!
Just straight up admitting that the obvious take by everyone, that Russia would use this pipeline as a tool for geo-political extortion, was 100% true.
Another aspect of the moves yesterday by Russia is the new issue of gas exports that it created for itself. By a fairly wide margin energy exports primarily to the EU is the biggest part of Russia's GDP. As expected, Germany told Russia to stop construction on Nordstream 2 this morning. Between that, sanctions over invading Ukraine, and the fact that in the UN's meetings on it yesterday it became clear how far Russia isolated itself. It was a very short list of countries that were on Russia's side. Even China that was expected to likely be openly supportive to align with ambitions over Taiwan only made a neutral statement. Pakistan and Azerbaijan were about the only supportive countries. And energy is Azerbaijan's #1 export so they aren't going to be a buyer.
Also, if you missed it yesterday it's worth a watch of Putin's speech. The parallels with the speech Hitler gave in August 1939 prior to the invasion of Poland were pretty shocking.
- Complaints about being economically attacked and "kept down" by the West after the ending of a war (Germany - WW1, Russia - Cold War)
- Claims on the land and people of another sovereign country based on culture, language, heritage excuses, saying invasion is "reuniting" and/or "protecting" them
- Claims on the land of another country for historical reasons
- Verbal attacks on the people of the country being invaded as being criminals, less than human, etc. for justification of an invasion
Another parallel was the Gleiwitz incident in 1939 and the flurry of what turned out to be mostly proven as staged false flag videos in the last week. There were at least 2 cases of videos and pictures that had metadata proving they were recorded days earlier and clearly faked. Another one turned out to be a video from a Russian exercise in 2019. And another video was claiming to show a dead body after a Ukrainian attack that upon closer review was a mannequin. So they attempted quite a few of them, but they were very poorly and sloppily done. Overall the comparisons are eerily uncanny.
After the rough couple last years of the world my expectations for 2022 were low. But Russia going full August 1939 Germany was not on my 2022 bingo card. And the apologists for what is happening today with Ukraine simply make the rest of the world more clearly realize today how 1939 happened. There were many people back then that said don't get involved it is their problem, Germany will stop after Poland, or that bought into the propaganda of historical/heritage excuses. Needless to say those people were on the wrong side of history.
So many misconceptions here...
No, energy isn't "biggest part of GDP". Only biggest part of exports overall. Services are largest part of GDP like with any modern country.
Russia also maintains trade surplus - that is, it consistently sells more then it buys. Largest Russian export sales are in petroleum, not natural gas.
Come on... Nord Stream 2 have been completed almost a year ago, in April 2021. All they did is pull one of approval documents ("security of supply") for re-evaluation, thus delaying final approval.As expected, Germany told Russia to stop construction on Nordstream 2 this morning.
Btw, they already paid to companies that invested in the project more then 2 bn in fines for interference; they would have to pay for it in full if they would actually decide to "dismantle" it.
Everyone is going to be a buyer - or we'll see oil pushing 300$.Between that, sanctions over invading Ukraine, and the fact that in the UN's meetings on it yesterday it became clear how far Russia isolated itself. It was a very short list of countries that were on Russia's side. Even China that was expected to likely be openly supportive to align with ambitions over Taiwan only made a neutral statement. Pakistan and Azerbaijan were about the only supportive countries. And energy is Azerbaijan's #1 export so they aren't going to be a buyer.
Russian's aren't even trying with the made up bullshit anymore.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-fake-factory
- - - Updated - - -There was only one problem with the Kremlin’s dramatic account of the incident. It was entirely fake. The soundtrack of shooting and explosions was actually more than a decade old. It had been recorded in April 2010, according to open source researchers, during a Finnish military exercise.
Keep telling yourself that cupcake. High fossil fuel prices just make alternate sources more viable and allow them to scale up faster. And that's a permanent shift.