Posted on 09/16/2022 7:44:45 AM PDT by Brookhaven
Did they raid Zelensky’s closet and steal his stiletto heels and dresses?
The world will never completely wean itself off of petroleum or natural gas. Without it we would have no plastics.
There are literally thousands of products made from petroleum and natural gas other than gasoline, heating oil, diesel fuel and burning methane for fuel.
We also need to stop referring to these as “fossil fuels”. They are made by the Earth. They are part of the ecosystem.
“”NATO did provoke Russia by moving eastward. I don’t think that can really be debated. And a check of my pre-invasion FR posts will show that I was quite sympathetic to Russia in that regard.
But here’s the thing. Any response to a provocation must be in proportion to the provocation. NATO did not invade Russia, or bomb any Russian cities. And neither did Ukraine.””
Wasn’t that just wardrobe for a comedy skit?
NATO didn’t start it.
You do realise that Ukraine was not on the path to join NATO. The last time they had applied, in 2008, along with Georgia, their application was rejected by France and Germany for fear of provoking Putin.
Net result, Putin invaded Georgia 6 weeks after the rejection.
My memory of the action was that they also revealed that extended family members were known and could be utilized for further demonstrations.
you do know that Estonia and Latvia havr been a part of NATO since 2004 and it is practically next door to St Petersburg and quite close to Moscow?
there was no threat from nat. Each of these countries joined NATO because if you are Russia's neighbour and are not a part of NATO then you will be invaded and/or you will be made a vassal state like Belarus
Germany voted themselves into the dark ages a long time ago.
Not a chance. This is seizing of an enemy country’s assets. Gazprom is not an independent company.
“The Russians can simply void Western intellectual property rights in Russia in return.”
Putin did that in April
Does anyone really think this is anything more than Kabuki theater...?
“NATO did provoke Russia by moving eastward. I don’t think that can really be debated.”
Yes it can. The Baker assurances were (a) not part of any formal agreement and (b) were predicated on the USSR still existing. Russia was just as independent of the USSR as was Belarus and Ukraine.
The Cold War was against the USSR, not Russia. When the USSR disbanded,the Cold War ended.
If you do a handshake deal with a married couple that’s entirely dependent on them staying married, and they have an amicable divorce, are you still required to abide by it?
The CIS agreement acknowledged the complete and unconditional right of all the newly independent states to self-determination. If Russia had insisted on no NATO expansion, it would’ve been violating that element of an agreement it had sponsored.
Gorbachev himself said the USA and NATO fulfilled all their obligations in the written deal.
So NATO didn’t expand into Soviet territory against Soviet wishes, it welcomed the applications from free countries.
Violate the terms of that contract and you most certainly will...as Germany recently discovered.
idiot
Irony alert!
Russia stumbling in Ukraine may have caused Xi to hold off on any plans to invade Taiwan. It has also caused Azerbaijan to renew hostilities against Armenia, an old Russian ally. Putin is too preoccupied with Ukraine to assist the Armenians.
The ball is in Russia's court. Does Putin have another move to regain the initiative, or will he be forced to back down?
And, I suspect, most all of us.
I am not sure that the new German leadership, even if most of them are holdovers from the previous Statsi leader, remembers how the Soviets did thing.
One hopes that the next demonstration doesn't get dropped off at the doorstep of the Bild, the Neues Deutschland or Junge Welt to get their attention.
Russia would not even consider such an act against a people with power, Germany is safe from such official govt. terrorism.
I wasn’t taking about treaties or international agreements in my post #47. I was talking about gut feelings. NATO’s eastward expansion might have been perfectly legal.
But Russia suffered through three bloody invasions from the west (one from Napoleon, one from Kaiser Wilhelm II, and one from Hitler). Russians know their history. And so it’s reasonable from them to be concerned about NATO’s moves, and see them as a provocation.
Does this provocation rise to a level that would justify Putin in starting a war? As I noted earlier, it does not.
Thanks for the laughs.
Putin is a mad dog killer. Period.
NATO and Ukraine started it.
_______________________________
“The document, which dates from January, acknowledges that the aggressive foreign policy that was being pursued by Ukraine before the conflict would push Russia into having to take military action against the country. Its actual purpose, it contends, was to pressure Europe into adopting a wide range of sanctions against Russia, sanctions which had already been prepared.
The European Union’s economy, it states, “will inevitably collapse” as a result of this, and its authors rejoice in the fact that, among other things, resources of up to $9 billion will flow back to the United States, and well-educated young people in Europe will be forced to emigrate.
The key objective described in the document is to divide Europe - especially Germany and Russia - and destroy the European economy by placing useful idiots in political positions in order to stop Russian energy supplies from reaching the continent.”
more at link
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