Posted on 05/29/2014 10:41:34 PM PDT by Freelance Warrior
Lawmakers urged France on Thursday to cancel the sale of two advanced helicopter carrier ships to Russia and suggested that NATO buy or lease them instead.
"The purchase would send a strong signal to (Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin that the NATO allies will not tolerate or in any way enable his reckless moves," they said in a letter to NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen obtained by Reuters.
France has said it would press ahead with the deal because cancelling would do more damage to Paris than to Moscow. The contract, worth $1.66 billion, has created about 1,000 jobs and includes the option for two more of the advanced vessels.
Purchasing the ships would also enhance NATO's capabilities at a time when many members have been cutting defense expenditures, and reassure NATO partners in Central and Eastern Europe, the lawmakers said.
Signers of the letter included U.S. Representative Eliot Engel of New York, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee; Representative Michael Turner of Ohio, chairman of the U.S. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly; and Massachusetts Representative William Keating, the top Democrats on the House Europe subcommittee.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
IIRC, Japan is looking for some more of those.
French warships. How come those two words just don’t seem to go together? Let me try a few others. Obama patriotic. Democrat intelligence. Chicago safe. Nope, they just don’t go together.
Officer's mess larger than CIC, check.
Zero fresh water for personal hygiene, check.
Lol :-)
What is NATO... I have a feeling it’s the US taxpayers
Well, sure, $1.6 bln for the ships altered for Russian-made armament and C&C systems. This could mean an extra purchase for the Russian-made equipment.
The idea that we should buy whatever France builds only means we are subsidizing their shipbuilding industry
Well, there's a difference - the U.S. says France to break the Russian contract, France doesn't want to pay the fines and the damages, so the U.S. may propose to pay the bills themselves.
“Well, there’s a difference - the U.S. says France to break the Russian contract, France doesn’t want to pay the fines and the damages, so the U.S. may propose to pay the bills themselves.”
France should not be liable for the payment of damages to Russia, because Russia’s grave violations of international law with the illegal occupation and annexation of the Ukrainian territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea have voided the terms of the contract under any force majeure provisions which are now in effect due to the Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928, the Budapest Memorandum 1934, and the Chrater of the United Nations.
India, Japan, Vietnam, and India could use some helicopter carriers.
It looks like French lawers thinks otherwise. Given the contract's value I think they're professional enough.
I know it's just a typo, but I really like the sound of that.
Russia's greatest threat is not it's military prowess.
Russian economic strength comes from energy exports.
Russia selectively uses these exports to leverage other nations.
These American politicians won't tangle with Exxon because Exxon and other energy companies will cut off their campaign money.
Russia has also pioneered very deep oil well drilling technology. The Russians have drilled over 300 producing wells now, all deeper than 17,000’, iow, where no dinosaurs ever roamed. Many Russian oil geologists have long held the opinion that vast pools of long chain hydrocarbons that formed when the earth formed lie just a little deeper. Do a search on Vietnam’s “White Tiger” oil field. What they are doing is really interesting.
There are no sanctions on Russian oil or gas industry yet, just on military co-operation. But the idea the U.S. and the E.U. are just pretending they've sanctioned Russia, hasn't been refuted.
“It looks like French lawers thinks otherwise. Given the contract’s value I think they’re professional enough.”
Evidently you are not thinking, otherwise you would realize lawyers are wrong in 50% to 100% of their cases; because some or all lawyers must be wrong in each and every case.
The Budapest Articles of Interpretation 1934 require signatories of the Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928 to sanction an aggressor in certain specified ways which include denial of weaponry and war material for the aggressor. Russia is currently an aggressor under the provisions of the Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928 and the Charter of the United Nations. France is under a treaty obligation to refrain from arming the aggressor, but that has not stopped it doing so before such as its illegal arming of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
“NATO” doesn’t have any money. If France wants to cancel this deal, they can feel free. The fact that they won’t, tell you all you need to know about why there is not and will not be a robust European response to Russia’s theft of territory. They can say what they want about Russian behavior, but at the end of the day they’ll take their rubles, just like they took Saddam’s oil prior to the second Iraq war.
White Tiger: “Petrogeologists have emphasized the oil’s components indicate a lacustrine organic facies with lipid-rich, land-plant debris and fresh water algal material, refuting theories of abiogenic origin in this area.”
The Budapest Articles of Interpretation 1934 ...
Since you're citing those international treaties, it seems you pretend to be a lawer from the better half than those French ones - why wouldn't you apply for the job with their shipbuilders/government?
“Since you’re citing those international treaties, it seems you pretend to be a lawer from the better half than those French ones - why wouldn’t you apply for the job with their shipbuilders/government?”
That is a strawman argument, inasmuch as non-lawyers are expected to know and respect international law just as the lawyers are obligated to do so. There were a number of men who went to the gallows after the Second World War who tried unsuccessfully to place the onus of such decisionmaking upon the questionable authority and judgement of likeminded jurists.
It must also be noted the Budapest Articles of Interpretation were produced by an organization of lawyers and jurists such as U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull.
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