Posted on 03/18/2024 11:49:12 AM PDT by UMCRevMom@aol.com
President Vladimir Putin extended his reign over Russia in a landslide election whose outcome was never in doubt, declaring Monday his determination to advance deeper into Ukraine and dangling new threats against the West.
After the harshest crackdown on dissent since Soviet times, it was clear from the earliest returns that Putin’s nearly quarter-century rule would continue with a fifth term that grants him six more years. Still, Russians heeded a call to protest Putin’s repression and his war in Ukraine by showing up at polling stations at noon on Sunday. With all the precincts counted Monday, election officials said Putin had secured a record number of votes, underlining his total control over the political system. U.S. and other Western leaders denounced the election as a sham.
The election was “neither free nor fair in any sort of way,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Ahead of the election, Putin’s greatest political foe, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic penal colony, anti-war candidates were barred from the ballot and independent voices were silenced in a Kremlin-backed media blockade. No independent monitoring organizations were able to observe the election and analysts said online polling meant the vote was highly susceptible to manipulation. Any public criticism of Putin or his war in Ukraine has been stifled.
Putin appeared Monday evening on Red Square in the heart of Moscow at a concert to mark the tenth year since he annexed Crimea from Ukraine. Putin’s three token challengers for the presidency appeared on stage beside him and publicly supported him after campaigns in which none of them criticized him.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
INFO: 18.03.24
Ukrainian defenders continue to inflict fire on the enemy’s locations, firing positions, and rear.
During the day, confirmation was received that Russia had lost:
• 228 occupants;
• 14 cannons;
• 39 units of armoured vehicles;
• 2 units of special equipment;
• 2 boats;
• 2 reconnaissance UAVs
In addition, it is noted that 2 field supply points, 2 fortifications and an enemy observation post were destroyed.
Proven reserves and how long they will last is an interesting topic. In the 70s we were at “peak oil”
The fact that we are producing more oil now than then gives pause to predictions.
“Proven “ reserves and how long they will last also leaves out technological improvements and to me the most important IMO, oil is not a set amount that we just have to “find”. Oil is being produced by the earth daily, and the term “fossil “ fuels has to be one of the biggest falsehoods ever pushed.
Even as a kid it struck me that oil and gas coming from such depths couldn’t possible be the result of decaying plant matter let alone “dead dinosaur” remains.
Think about the perfect conditions organic matter would have to attain for it to end up thousands of feet below ground and be converted to hydrocarbons , and be in the perfect geological structure to be captured to be able to later be extracted..
Thousands of animals die every year and do they end up 500 let alone 5000 feet deep making oil, or do they rot or are consumed by other animals within weeks.
Also interesting is that as I recall, it was the Soviets who first proposed the abiotic theory of hydro carbon creation, and directed their bases for searching for reserves.
Other discoveries also made me question the “fossil fuel “ narrative, one being the moon Titan, were there vast fields of plant life and dinosaurs roaming that moon at some time that created a moon with such huge amounts of hydrocarbons that dwarf the earths “reserves” so much so that there are literally liquid hydrocarbon oceans?
With that said is it possible that even with the earth producing new hydrocarbon deposits, and/or refreshing old and newly discovered deposits, that demand could still outstrip this production? I would say yes, but even as the 70s predicted “peak oil”, I don’t think we have a clue as to what is down there and how much new deposits are there and being still produced
This is a continuous process, so it’s certainly possible that old oil fields can be or will be renewed over time (or not) and that new oil fields could also be created.
I don’t think the earth will run out or can run out of oil.
Agreed, there is a question if it can sustain our needs, either through new production or recoverable reserves.
We will see
Read the late Dr Thomas Gold’s book “The Hot Deep Biosphere “ he makes the case for abiotic complex carbon (coal, oil & natural gas) fuel production. Technically his argument is not completely abiotic since he hypothesises it comes from thermophile bacteria living in rock fissures and in between rock grains. They slowly consume “rock” output waste that and themselves are slowly processed again to make these fuels. The point is its ongoing i.e., continuous.
I don’t think its the whole story but part of the story. Also I have a hard time accepting the argument for coal. You find fossils in coal! Maybe anthracite! Anyway its worth reading!
Oil has been redefined since about 2009.
There is a parameter that measures its nature, specific density. All oil is not created equal. It used to be that oil’s “quality” was defined by sulfur content because that determined ease of refining. This has changed somewhat.
The density is measured with the API number. This does not directly decide constituent parts of oil, but it’s suggestive before any formal assay.
Shale oil is called LTO — light tight oil. Tight because it is locked away unless you create artificial permeability in the rock (permeability is a measure of fracture total in the rock) so oil can flow through it. Because the fracturing is so low in shale large hydrocarbon molecules did not form in the total liquid over the millions of years.
So shale oil is light. It has gasoline. It has the lighter fractions. It has much less diesel or kerosene (jet fuel). And not much asphalt.
The point of all this is the API of the industry standard West Texas Intermediate has changed sharply since the early 2000s. Because Permian shale oil has flowed and changed the density of the overall label of WTI.
So US production is up because the definition of “oil” was loosened a bit. Not hugely, but a good % of what is now being called oil would have been called NGL (Natural Gas Liquids) or Condensate 20 years ago.
Russia and Saudi Arabia have not done this. They have not needed to. They have plenty of non shale oil. Russia will eventually get around to the Bazhenov shale, but there is no need for now.
I am not singling you out.
The forum has the nature of responding to posters.
Your post is similar to many.
You highlight your moral equivocation: Putin and Zelensky are the same.
But you have no particular preference for or against either.
That is not a reasonable claim. Putin has invaded another country and killed many innocent people in that country. It matters not whether Zelensky is as good or worse than Putin. Putin has committed terrible crimes and amplified his ambitions of global dominance and yes explicit nuclear annihilation of the US as has been Soviet custom since the 1960s.
You call people Zeepers as a take on the undue affection for Zelensky. That is not reasonable. It matters not who leads Ukraine, they are being militarily annihilated by a Neo Soviet authoritarian.
Your tagline is a mockery of Ukrainian appeals for the dignity of their homeland.
The rhetoric is clear.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Ukraine stood with us/US and fought along side of us/US in the Iraq war during in our time of crisis after 9/11 and they had casualties, too.
If America has honor, then we would stand with them in their time of crisis, also, as we seem to be trying to do now.
But, for many, that “Never Forget” slogan was forgotten long ago.
Thans for telling me.
That is a good summary.
As I’ve said elsewhere on FR, there is a cognitive bias across the USA as a consequence of the USA never having had to conduct an election during a situation where very large populations would be put at immediate risk of death/injury if it went ahead exactly as prearranged according to a fixed timetable.
You’ve only had two significant events in the last 100 years where elections could’ve been disrupted on that level - and both times only a handful of areas were affected for a comparitively short time window. Pearl Harbor, 9/11.
These events both profoundly impacted on the USA for years, and yet neither is remotely comparable to a country experiencing sustained bombardment, constant cyber attacks, and having whole towns flattened. Consider the absurdity of saying, Ukraine could avoid risk to life by adopting fully digital voting processes, when the very first thing Russia would do in response is attack the voting infrastructure.
The Founding Fathers never foresaw the kind of warfare we had in the 20th Century, which is understandable. But neither did they consider what might happen if yersinia pestis or influenza started decimating the population (which was vastly more probable, given the plague of 1665 was not ancient history and medical science didn’t understand the causes).
It is actually far more remarkable than not, that there is no US Constitutional cover at all for what to do if it ever becomes impractical to just pretend it’s still safe to stick to a totally arbitrary timetable.
Every other mature developed country has a contingency plan for these scenarios. Heck, even the British government had to come up with one during World War Two.
Finally, the constant criticism of Ukraine for having Constitutional cover for being bombed to hell by Russia when that’s already happening, is contrasted with the critics of Ukraine being strangely unable to ask themselves why, during the entire three years where deaths in the Donbas due to Ukrainian and Russian forces shooting at each other (and not at civilians) were less impactful than a single coach crashing every 3 months, the LPR and DPR carried on arguing that it was unsafe for THEM to hold elections.
If they think it’s safe for Ukraine to hold elections today, where were these brilliant minds when the LPR and DPR were blocking elections for no good reason between 2016 and 2022?
Change the name from pooootin to Obiden and the story is the same.
...so whatsyourepoint, besides simply more ukraniac propaganda?
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