Back in August, before the Nord Stream attacks, it was possible even for dim Green journalists to see that destroying the pipelines would be to Russia's disadvantage.
I could not believe there were so many unwise people around. If we allow them to dominate our thoughts, our imagery, we are doomed. These sorts of idiots would have been chased from villages with pitchforks and stones.
"These sorts of idiots would have been chased from villages with pitchforks and stones." If villages were the only place we need to chase them from! Unfortunately, far too many are in positions of power in all of major institutions.
I am alluding to the fact that humanity used to have a healthier self-preservation instinct. Humanity has often found itself overwhelmed by force, but that did not take away people’s power to perceive what was happening around them. Today, we are all walking around with a stiff one up our behind pretending we are not being screwed. We know we have been modified in a major way when our basic instincts (developed by long evolutionary processes) are dulled beyond recognition.
Human beings (as a species) go back most of a million years, depending upon which sources one believes. Our primate ancestors, several million more. The present generation's instincts may indeed be dulled, but I assure you that they still exist, and are not easily bred out of the race. Civilization was late addition. It did bring many advantages, but also problems. No the least of which is that it requires the management, often suppression, of various instinctual behaviors.
Good times make weak men, weak men make bad times, bad times make strong men, strong men make good times. We know where we are on this cycle, lets hope we're not annihilated before the next stage.
So it seems with the pipelines in the Baltic out of action ,Germany and other countries in Europe will have very little nat. gas ,not enough to run Industry and heat all the homes .Home heating has priority I read ,industry will have to shut down in many cases .What about gasoline and diesel ? Is gasoline in short supply also ,or just very expensive? We hear not much in north America in that regard .I know that cars and trucks can run on wood gas ,as they did at the end of the war and shortly after in Germany .I know all about it because as a kid I rode in the back of a truck that was powered by wood gas .If anyone is interested to know more about that I can explain how it worked .
I was just going to reply similarly. Such people are mostly the ones in power in the west. Folks who hold "half-pinions," which is to say that they can only see one side of a debate, and are completely oblivious to the costs. Sure, if it were costless for Germany to do without Russian gas, well, great! But Germany derives a GREAT deal of benefit from Russian gas. Putin and Russia aren't the only beneficiaries of this trade.
Personally, I think we never should have come to this point. Biden, who had the power to do so, should have prevented this war. Russia has a legitimate security interest in Ukraine. Yes, Germany was (obviously in hindsight) too dependent on Russian gas. But are serious folks really to believe that Russia is any worse than China? The China with which the West happily does trillions in trade with every single year? Maybe I'm uninformed, but I don't seem to recall any stories of Russians selling off the internal organs of political prisoners. I don't seem to recall hearing about any Russian concentration camps for folks with the wrong religion. Sure, Russia is a repressive totalitarian state. It would be nice if it were more democratic. But to imagine it's somehow the worst actor in the world is just ridiculous. Where would you rather live? Russia? Or Saudia Arabia? Or Iran? Or any number of other places with whom the West doesn't seem to have any beef, but which are horrific places?
NOBODY seems willing to recognize that Russia DOES have a legitimate security interest in Ukraine---i.e., Crimea, one of its only ice-free naval ports. And Ukraine promised self-determination to the Donbas area, which is almost exclusively ethnic Russian, in the Minsk agreement of 2014. And promptly reneged on that. Nobody in the west would stand for the kind of oppression in their own countries that the Ukrainian government has imposed on Donbas. So, why should anybody be surprised when Russia steps forward to defend an ethnic Russian population? The are NO true statesmen anywhere in this situation. Kissinger said as much not long ago. At at his age, he's a helluva lot more lucid than "Plugs" Biden. By the way, if Russia REALLY wanted to smash Ukraine, they would have done what the western allies (primarily the US) did in Iraq 20 years ago: take out the power grid first, followed shortly thereafter by the communications and water systems. War over. Three weeks, max.
I couldn't agree with you more, really. I wasn't aware of the Minsk agreement of 2014, but that makes sense. I've often likened Ukraine to Texas when it was an independent country. The USA stepped in because of the "ethnic Americans" who were living there. No, the analogy isn't perfect, but let's say it rhymes. Cheers!
Let's add to all that reports that Zelenskyy and his people have siphoned off $800 million in US aid, intended to buy weapons, into offshore bank accounts... a little hedge against having to make a short notoce, rapid departure from the field of strife.
Nobody has given me a good explanation of how anything that happens in Ukraine is of vital national interest to the US.
The reason is that Ukraine is not of vital national interest to the US. But it is of vital personal interest to the money-laundering, corrupt political class. Joe Biden can't be the only politician laundering money through there. Support for the war is too bipartisan. The entire thing makes me sick, and now there's a genuine threat of nuclear war. Let's pray to God it doesn't come to that.
It's utterly disgusting the level of corruption that the American people seem willing to tolerate these days. It's going to be the death of our republic.
I'm an American, but I live in Mexico City. Let me tell you, if Mexico's government weren't so utterly corrupt, Mexico would be a first-world country. But the corrupt government robs the people blind and keeps them ignorant. It's sad that the USA is going in that direction.
True. An Authoritarian state is one where an elite or elites want a monopoly on power in order to run a government. A Totalitarian state is one where an elite or elites want a monopoly on power in order to run everything, including everyone's lives. There can certainly be degrees of control within any such monopolistic government.
Yes. You are absolutely right. Here's a must-read: Desmet, Mattias. The Psychology of Totalitarianism. He's a Dutch psychologist (University of Ghent). Describes beautifully how people (including well-educated elites) suspend critical thinking to embrace policies requiring the sacrifice of individual liberties. Examples: Nazi Germany, COVID, climate change, wokeness... the list is almost endless. The phenomenon is known as mass formation.
Agreed. But I'd qualify that ny suggesting that the authoritarian is not one individual (Putin), but rather some kind of oligarchy. There are some far right power-people behind him. They've got enough powet that he's deferring to them to some degree. I believe that if they wanted him out, he'd be out. And then WATCH OUT. Those guys think Putin's been too soft. I think they'd pull the nuclear trigger without a second thought...
Think of the US, where a senile puppet serves as head-of-state, and the so-called 'elites' actually running things can remain virtually anonymous, and thus escape accountability.
The fact that a senile person is the nominal head of both the state and government clearly indicates that modern day presidents are little more than puppets. The true political power stems from concentrated economic power and is exercised politically directly through deep state structures. What we are allowed to see is a crumbling facade which was allowed to stand to fool us into believing we still have a Constitutional system of governance. We don’t!
[Based upon my possibly biased readings] Biden and Harris apparently were not even the first choices of Democrats. This is based upon early primaries in 2020; they were not the leaders in the polls. Of course it's to no one's surprise that money and influence sways such elections. Still [IF it is actually true] it's a very interesting question how the less popular choices were the ones who made the final cut.
Bernie Sanders would have won the Democrat nomination but for extreme pressures applied from inside the party, and no doubt, from big donors and of course the Deep State. While I don't in any way want Sanders as president, I think a general election between Sanders and Trump would have provoked some very good and interesting discussions. And both were standing up for the little guy, though coming from different directions.
And having both of those guys running against each other would have absolutely FORCED the mainstream mis-leadia to focus on issues of import to the everyday person.
It could have been a good wake-up call to America.
I don't think this is a permanent condition in the US. The so-called deep state is not unified or pervasive enough to have a stranglehold on every level of government. Yet.
Every level? No. They don't have that degree of control, thanks to our federal structure. But they have a great deal of control over the federal government, and apparently a good deal of suasion over state and local governments.
Our tax structure is sadly inverted. Personally, I think the largest chunk of my taxes should go to my city and county, with the next largest chunk going to the state. Finally, the federal government should get the tiniest share. Such a system would maximize accountability to the citizens. Yet we have it ENTIRELY reversed. The federal government takes the largest chunk, and then doles it out back to states and localities, with many strings attached. I'd prefer that local voters were the ones deciding what and how many strings were attached, not some far-off, unaccountable federal monstrosity.
I think you hit the nail on the head, there. Plus there are so-called elites who think (wrongly in my view) that the USA can somehow "win" a nuclear war with Russia. That kind of thinking combined with cornering Putin and not giving him an out is the single most terrifying thing about this whole Ukraine situation. It's utterly bonkers.
It has probably always been much like this throughout recent decades, but with the advent and pervasiveness of the internet and social media, it is only in recent years that we plebes have been able to find out about it all. The extent of the rot everywhere is almost overwhelming but now that we've seen it, we can't un-see it.
Blaming Russia for the sabotage of the gas lines is as far fetched as what the media has been filling the heads of its readers about the Covid vaccine being “ safe and effective” and that recession is good for the consumer.
The Greens are committing German suicide without help from the Yanks, but of course the Neo-cons in the WH are happy about it as they want the same thing here.
Europeans need to stop playing the victim and look at their own home-grown globalists.
You can blame a lot on the Greens and rightly, but that should not let the actual perpetrator of the massive damage multi billion pipelines off the hook.
Well there may have been other helpers, either too afraid to stand up to Uncle Sam or just crazy. One thing is plain though, this terrorist attack would not have taken place without a US say so.
The Germans and other European countries laid the groundwork for this well before the current administration, while Trump was doing the opposite in the United States.
I notice when I go to a store in Canada to by German bear it is not available anymore . If industry must shut down like beer brewing it would be the greatest disaster for all of us but especially in Bavaria just before the October fest . Could a new Putch start again in the beer halls in Munich ?
Germany was subjected to the most intense social engineering operation of all time, after WWII, according to E. Michael Jones. They've "internalized the commands of their oppressors". And now Morgenthau plan, version 2.0, is being implemented. (According to EMJ) https://culturewars.com/videos/germania-delemdea-est-or-why-germany-must-be-destroyed
Condoleeza Rice was saying something along these lines back in 2014. It's like saying that a country that mostly depends on tourism should have all of its tourist infrastructure destroyed and its beautiful nature contaminated. Their obsession with Putin and destroying Russia is beyond insane and seems illogical. The strange thing is that most of the US Russophobic neocons have their roots in Eastern Europe or Russia and are Jewish (Madelaine Albright bombing Serbia was from Serbia, Victoria Nuland's grandparents were from Ukraine, the wife of the ex-Polish minister who thanked USA for bombing the pipeline Anne Applebaum has ancestors from Belarus, Anthony Blinken, Paul Wolfowitz with his Wolfowitz doctrine and many others). Do they have some personal vendetta against Russia and why do we allow such people make policy decisions? A woman who was raped is not allowed to sit on a jury of a rape case, but we allow our whole lives be at the mercy of these people with who knows what agenda on their minds?
I’ve always believed that the invasion of Iraq under Bush 43 was a vendetta. Saddam had plotted to assassinate 41 and his son under the pretense of WMDs cost the USA trillions of treasure, over 5000 dead, the delivery of weapons to ISIS, and more...
And we're STILL paying the price of that ridiculous war. Not only do we have a permanent presence in Iraq, but Saddam Hussein kept the Iranians in check without us having to dirty our hands. There's no way Saddam Hussein would have just acceded to Iran having nukes.
Yes. Now part of the agenda isn’t past hatreds but present guilt. The Americans (👃)causing the war were neck deep in The Post USSR looting of Russia, they laundered the money. This is public record. They’re trying to cover their tracks. Ukraine was the following money laundering operation. You can certainly add Afghanistan and Iraq to the list.
Below is the US Congressional Record , hearings on Russian Money laundering.
Testimony of Anne Williamson
Before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services of
Well, they don’t care if it’s unjust to involve others.
I don’t know how to get this across without sounding flippant or crazy; these are criminals attempting mass scale arson to cover their crimes. By cover I mean escape consequences in the confusion. > This is in keeping with certain historical events in Spain with Conversos leading the Inquisition and deportation of Moriscos , and more recent events in The USSR and Germany in the 30s/40s. Anything will be done to survive, all shame expunged by vengeance. I am saying there’s a pattern.
It’s not so much a personal vendetta against Putin as rage that he robbed them (by stopping the looting of Russia) combined with ethnic blood vendettas against Russians, Germans and I daresay Cossacks/Ukrainians for sins of the past. That’s all mixed in with fear that Putin has the goods on them, and fear of consequences.
But this is staff being allowed to run wild , this is not the dominant strain in charge in America, despite what you may hear - the dominant strain in America is Anglo- Puritan. Or should be...
These vendettas fit in well enough with the overall agenda of Global American-Anglo dominance pursued for a century. There’s a danger of it getting out of hand, indeed it may have. But the “staff” are disposable. Rosencrantz and Guilderstein can ride the Tiger then be tossed away as food.
The real problem is that the staff seem to have slipped the leash. Now lets understand the staff.
They’re criminals and can’t run the place. If they are its Russia in the 90s and this shall pass.
It is Russia in the 90s and this shall pass.
To end on a hopeful note - the Russians know all this, Putin knows all this , he had to clean this out of Russia 25 years ago.
So we pass through a period of madness as most countries have in their own history.
To be more hopeful since this is an American problem most of the suffering will happen here, and to get to your concern the American military is not going to follow these maniacs into nuclear war.
We’ll end up bearing the brunt of the suffering here in America.
The rest of you had best sever the ties and alliances, as these chain us to our Imperial Majesties in DC you would help us in the bargain.
We The People never agreed to any of this, and were deceived this was about Freedom.
Think about it; this is the only Empire in history that won’t admit its an Empire.
What part of driving Russia and China together means the fall of the western world they don't understand? Especially if Persian and some other smaller groups join
Maybe the Western world needs to fall. We've just discussed some of the cause for the systemic rot it has suffered, and to appearances, those in power pursuing dangerous adventurism. If we can avoid major radioactivity, I think we shall have done well.
Based upon my "alternative" readings, you are largely correct. What I find curious is that (presumably) such an amount of Jewish influence directly in the US government was much less in the early 20th century, through end of WW II. Yet based on the same readings, Western money (much of it Jew controlled) had no problem financing the Bolsheviks and later the Soviets. There was also US aid during the 1930s, never mind WW II. The Jewish animus against Russia dates to at least Czarist times, but that still doesn't fully explain their fawning over the Communists. Whatever the details, the sad truth is that the USA (and many other nations) are indeed ruled by people whose [great] Grandmother was indeed raped by the Cossacks, or a border guard took the family jewelry, or some other real or imagined ancestral grievance.
Add in the barbarous treatment that the kin of many of these people suffered at the hands of the Nazis, and you also have ammunition to see why they treat the present Germany so horribly.
It's not far from the truth that the outsiders allegedly "helping" the Ukrainians actually have deep-seated hatreds against all parties. As such, a disinterested observer might indeed wonder if the hidden agenda was to make BOTH sides lose.
Ancestral hatreds are a real thing, but it's not clear that they should be background policy for decision making by nuclear powers.
Gonna stop you right there. He doesn't think anything. He probably doesn't even remember what he wrote a month ago. The hive speaks through him. The words he voices have no more to do with thought than the twitching of an ant's antennae.
Russia invests billions into building Nordstream 1 and 2, then sailed undetected all the way to Poland, exactly where the US Navy was recently doing exercises for this type of attack, and then blew up their own pipeline.
I was shocked to hear Sebastian Gorka say that Putin actually destroyed the pipelines. He claims that it lines up perfectly with the news of the Russian draft. He believes that with Russian men running for the borders to avoid the draft, Putin needed a cause for the people to rally behind. Therefore, destroying the pipeline would look like a direct attack on Russian sovereignty and shore up support for the draft/war effort.
“Felix is a 31 year-old reporter for Welt with Green tendencies and very little intelligence or knowledge.”
You are the king of understated insults, eugyppius 🤣
On another note, the globalists are ramping up the propaganda campaign pushing the pandemic accord and blaming the WHO's COVID policy failure on—wait for it—lack of funding and power! I encourage everyone who wishes to help raise awareness about the one-world totalitarian threat posed by the pandemic accord to share the article below along with the hashtags #StopTheTreaty, #StopTheWHO, and #ExitTheWHO:
Obviously, this young man has never truly had to go without any of life's basic comforts. Food, heat, clothing, freedom to move about ... etc. This generation is the most privileged ever to live and it shows. From gender foolishness to green agendas we endure childish movements with zero basis in reality. It's cute when a 13 year old wants to save the world but when it becomes government policy, it transitions clearly over to insanity. The constant barking about fossil fuels is ridiculous. Technology will evolve as markets absorb their potential. Government interference makes nothing better. Ever.
Sadly, the people of Europe will pay a heavy price for this position. All to be sacrificed on the alter of American exceptionalism. Foolish indeed. Pray, plan, prepare and RESIST.
You forgot that global warming will keep everyone sweating in northern lands in winter and the ice is melting .It is the Heat we must fear not the cold ,just ask Al Gore .
Instead of buying russian gas, or in the case of Germany accepting gas already contracted and paid for, EU is now trying to strike a deal with Turkey's ruler Erdogan.
An all-but-in-name islamic fascist dictator who has repeatedly used the hijrah - the spreading of islam via migration - and refugees as blackmail and weapons against Europe. Conditions for human rights activists in Turkey, better than in Russia? Apparently so according to the EU.
Meanwhile, Turkey's long race war against the kurds and their refusal to accept responsibility and pay reparations for the armenian genocide is apparenty much less of a bother than Vlad the Incorrigible's invasion of Ukraine.
And about US buddy-ally Saudi's war in Yemen? Scch!
As far as I can tell, it goes something like this. The US Deep State decides what it does and doesn't want, with little to no regard for things such as "freedom," "democracy," "human rights," and all the rest of it. Having decided what it wants, it uses American presstitutes to justify Deep State decisions using the language of "freedom," "democracy" and "human rights." European elites follow suit because, deep down, they know that Europe is an American colony (a privileged colony - for now - but colony nonetheless), plus they really, truly love virtue signaling.
It doesn't have to be that way. The only european nation that needs the US is Britain, since they have happily adopted the role of cuckold to the US bull re: Europa.
The US is able and (as we've seen) willing to destroy Europe's infrastructure. And what can Europe do about it? If you outsource your defense to someone, then you become defenseless against that someone.
Yes, but we don't have to do things like that. We can re-industrialise, re-energise, and re-militarise. Not under the EU-umbrella perhaps, but as nations united in a will to independence of empires, be they chinese, russian or american.
No, I mean we - as in the european nations - doesn't have to make ourselves subservient to the US, Russia, China or globalist non-democratic corporatist groups like the WEF, IMF and so on.
It would be a piece of cake to gradually impose such fees on chinese (f.e.) made products from their poison-factories, that domestic industry would become viable again - frame it in the right language about fair trade, human rights, LGBT-whateverisms, and climate crisis.
Any retaliation can then be spun to strengthen resolve that we shall not be beholden to others. Any threats from the World Bank or IMF (i.e. US/Britain) can be handled by striking favourable deals with their boogeymen, putting them in the position of having to handle too many too expensive conflicts (of all kinds) at the same time.
Say european investments in oil/gas extraction in Venezuela in a win-win deal? Solar towers in a similar deal with Morocco - the Iberian peninsula is close enough. And so on - we can, we must as peoples and cultures go on the offensive again and stp thinking the US axis are our friends. The people may be, but their owners are not.
destroy the German middle class, tear down the old system, liquidate as many liabilities as possible, that being people, systems, debt, etc., and then offer a new replacement at the depth of everyone's despair. That replacement is the Davos' set dream of control over every aspect on your life.
If this guy was an American we could call him a Neo-con. But Neo-con thinking actually crosses national boundaries. Better to think of them as a transnational faction.
You're kidding, the EU are too stupid. No, the clever people here are the Chinese. They have the Democrats and huge swathes of US industry in their pocket. (Apple, Dell, Tesla operate in China under CCP permission). The Chinese have convinced dumb Americans that Russia is a threat, so stirred up Ukraine long ago, poked Russia, Putin reacted, now Europe is going down the pan, fast.
Yet the ghost of Malthus refused to be totally exorcised. He whispers things like: "if the lifeboat only holds twenty people, and a hundred are in the water, what does the captain do?" Like it or not, there are limits to resources. When those limits are reached, very difficult decisions need to be made, or they will be made for one.
the thing is, we have two separate explosions within 17 hours of each other, in two different pipe systems, each near the same Danish island. and, is there any precedent for this kind of pipeline accident? i can't find any.
‘... is there any precedent for this kind of pipeline accident?’ Maybe there is now? By definition precedent is something which hasn’t happened before.
Alas, so do most Americans. Whatever our past accomplishments may have been, it's a fact that a large portion of early, and even later colonists and immigrants were people who were "asked to leave' their homelands.
Yes John is British which is why he knows the nuance of the English language. Precedents are created, or are the first occurrence of something. Therefore a precedent defines something which has not previously happened. It then becomes a reference point.
Okay, then, let's use a British dictionary. You are talking about setting a precedent, which will be then be referred back to in the future. Every definition here, including law, defines precedent as something that has happened in the past.
If they were doing the same ‘maintenance’ at the same time in both pipelines with the same problems, it isn’t unreasonable that the same accident will occur in both within a short time frame.
Speaking to reporters on February 7, Biden said: "If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2."
"We will bring an end to it," the president said. A journalist asked Biden how he could do that since Germany was in control of the project, the president replied: "I promise you: We will be able to do it."
Of course now Biden is trying to point the finger in the other direction:
President Biden called the damage to the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines "a deliberate act of sabotage," rebuking Russia's claim that the West was responsible for the explosions. The president said Friday that divers would eventually be sent to the pipelines, which were designed to bring gas from Russia to Europe, to determine what happened.
"It was a deliberate act of sabotage and the Russians are pumping out disinformation and lies," Biden said.
"At the appropriate moment, when things calm down, we're going to be sending divers down to find out exactly what happened. We don't know that yet exactly," he added.
Couldn't agree more. Have lots of family that have worked in oil industry for years on site as engineers. Offshore rigs throughout the us, Eastern Canada and the North sea. Even with constant maintenance and care by highly paid, highly trained professionals, who were on site , and still not a few weeks would go by without major problems on each of the sites they were posted to.
Look at BP Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. We have gotten fat, soft and stupid in the West when we forget that there are real, hard men doing hard jobs that allow us to get fat, soft and stupid.
Plus, lots of work in Sberia. Which made everything else look like it was run by Mensa.
Russian gas and oil runs specifically on Western resources, technology and know-how. It has now had 6 months of none of the above, I would expect more problems with this area of Russia's infrastructure to continue.
Nah, just trying to divert attention... It was not a first documented attempt at sabotage, and Russians were writing about it back in April 2021.
"The West continues to exert pressure on Russia to stop the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline – and the most important event in this chain was the Polish military provocations. Can opponents of the pipeline resort to real military operations against Nord Stream 2 – and if so, what should Russia counter this?
Recall that in early April 2021, the situation around the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline seriously worsened. A significant number of civilian vessels and warships (mostly Polish), as well as submarines, made dangerous maneuvers around the Fortuna vessel building the pipeline. Polish warplanes flew around and over the construction site". https://m.vz.ru/society/2021/4/14/1094528.html
Russians are not as stupid as they are made out to be. People do not realize that all this technology extracting resources in permafrost climate is on par with space industry in terms of complexity. US still flies to space using Russian engines...
I don’t think it’s a question of technical ability, but how work practices and systems are managed, and affected by a culture where lower ranks get scapegoated to protect the blushes of higher ups, which encourages a climate of fear, corner-cutting, risk taking, secrecy. That is what caused Chernobyl rather than technical failure.
The same sort of thing can and has happened in large institutions in Western Countries. But in Russia thanks to its Communist past - don’t meet your set targets and you will be punished, any failure is not the failure of management but yours - it is generally ingrained.
My favorite is about how the pipeline's destruction resulted in a rise in energy prices, and therefore that was to Putin's advantage. If that is the argument they want to make, then how can these previous assertions that destroying the pipeline would hurt Putin be squared against reality? Wouldn't shutoff or destruction of pipelines always have raised prices and 'helped' Putin?
What they fail to consider is that energy markets are global. Distribution bottlenecks as supply is shifted to other markets may temporarily hinder the sales of resources but demand will always drive new means of transport. Some reports say that the Chinese are just repackaging Russian energy supplies and marking up the price to resell them to Europe. Does natural gas go from being dirty Putin supporting to somehow morally superior if it also pads some Chinese profit margin as well? Makes you wonder about where some people's loyalties lie.
Even should climate change profiteering elites manage to crush demand and energy consumption in US and EU, other less insane countries will pick up the slack.
If we are supposed to view this as assuming a wartime posture against Russia, how does crippling one's own economy and demoralizing the populace help prepare a nation for war?
Somehow I think that the elites have been so long isolated from the feedback mechanisms of hard physical reality that they live in a fantasy world created by their own rhetoric. This was enabled by the incredible prosperity of a functioning economic system that they now propose to destroy. Eventually, reality will always catch up. I just don't want to be collateral damage when it does. And I certainly don't want to see the powerful ride this out to become even more powerful.
"Somehow I think that the elites have been so long isolated from the feedback mechanisms of hard physical reality that they live in a fantasy world created by their own rhetoric."
Exactly. They don't realize that the abstractions they excel at manipulating don't actually keep you warm in February. I actually think they'll be genuinely shocked when it's suddenly cold.
"If we are supposed to view this as assuming a wartime posture against Russia, how does crippling one's own economy and demoralizing the populace help prepare a nation for war?"
The same way a two-year old thinks pissing their pants gives them power over its parents.
I could not believe there were so many unwise people around. If we allow them to dominate our thoughts, our imagery, we are doomed. These sorts of idiots would have been chased from villages with pitchforks and stones.
"These sorts of idiots would have been chased from villages with pitchforks and stones." If villages were the only place we need to chase them from! Unfortunately, far too many are in positions of power in all of major institutions.
I am alluding to the fact that humanity used to have a healthier self-preservation instinct. Humanity has often found itself overwhelmed by force, but that did not take away people’s power to perceive what was happening around them. Today, we are all walking around with a stiff one up our behind pretending we are not being screwed. We know we have been modified in a major way when our basic instincts (developed by long evolutionary processes) are dulled beyond recognition.
Human beings (as a species) go back most of a million years, depending upon which sources one believes. Our primate ancestors, several million more. The present generation's instincts may indeed be dulled, but I assure you that they still exist, and are not easily bred out of the race. Civilization was late addition. It did bring many advantages, but also problems. No the least of which is that it requires the management, often suppression, of various instinctual behaviors.
Good times make weak men, weak men make bad times, bad times make strong men, strong men make good times. We know where we are on this cycle, lets hope we're not annihilated before the next stage.
So it seems with the pipelines in the Baltic out of action ,Germany and other countries in Europe will have very little nat. gas ,not enough to run Industry and heat all the homes .Home heating has priority I read ,industry will have to shut down in many cases .What about gasoline and diesel ? Is gasoline in short supply also ,or just very expensive? We hear not much in north America in that regard .I know that cars and trucks can run on wood gas ,as they did at the end of the war and shortly after in Germany .I know all about it because as a kid I rode in the back of a truck that was powered by wood gas .If anyone is interested to know more about that I can explain how it worked .
Annihilation only makes you stronger.
Always enjoy your comments gdoc
Same
I was just going to reply similarly. Such people are mostly the ones in power in the west. Folks who hold "half-pinions," which is to say that they can only see one side of a debate, and are completely oblivious to the costs. Sure, if it were costless for Germany to do without Russian gas, well, great! But Germany derives a GREAT deal of benefit from Russian gas. Putin and Russia aren't the only beneficiaries of this trade.
Personally, I think we never should have come to this point. Biden, who had the power to do so, should have prevented this war. Russia has a legitimate security interest in Ukraine. Yes, Germany was (obviously in hindsight) too dependent on Russian gas. But are serious folks really to believe that Russia is any worse than China? The China with which the West happily does trillions in trade with every single year? Maybe I'm uninformed, but I don't seem to recall any stories of Russians selling off the internal organs of political prisoners. I don't seem to recall hearing about any Russian concentration camps for folks with the wrong religion. Sure, Russia is a repressive totalitarian state. It would be nice if it were more democratic. But to imagine it's somehow the worst actor in the world is just ridiculous. Where would you rather live? Russia? Or Saudia Arabia? Or Iran? Or any number of other places with whom the West doesn't seem to have any beef, but which are horrific places?
Enough ridiculousness!
Cheers,
Kim G
Roma Sur, Mexico City
NOBODY seems willing to recognize that Russia DOES have a legitimate security interest in Ukraine---i.e., Crimea, one of its only ice-free naval ports. And Ukraine promised self-determination to the Donbas area, which is almost exclusively ethnic Russian, in the Minsk agreement of 2014. And promptly reneged on that. Nobody in the west would stand for the kind of oppression in their own countries that the Ukrainian government has imposed on Donbas. So, why should anybody be surprised when Russia steps forward to defend an ethnic Russian population? The are NO true statesmen anywhere in this situation. Kissinger said as much not long ago. At at his age, he's a helluva lot more lucid than "Plugs" Biden. By the way, if Russia REALLY wanted to smash Ukraine, they would have done what the western allies (primarily the US) did in Iraq 20 years ago: take out the power grid first, followed shortly thereafter by the communications and water systems. War over. Three weeks, max.
I couldn't agree with you more, really. I wasn't aware of the Minsk agreement of 2014, but that makes sense. I've often likened Ukraine to Texas when it was an independent country. The USA stepped in because of the "ethnic Americans" who were living there. No, the analogy isn't perfect, but let's say it rhymes. Cheers!
Let's add to all that reports that Zelenskyy and his people have siphoned off $800 million in US aid, intended to buy weapons, into offshore bank accounts... a little hedge against having to make a short notoce, rapid departure from the field of strife.
Nobody has given me a good explanation of how anything that happens in Ukraine is of vital national interest to the US.
The reason is that Ukraine is not of vital national interest to the US. But it is of vital personal interest to the money-laundering, corrupt political class. Joe Biden can't be the only politician laundering money through there. Support for the war is too bipartisan. The entire thing makes me sick, and now there's a genuine threat of nuclear war. Let's pray to God it doesn't come to that.
Joe had to hide and/or pay off the people that know his perfidious secrets and Hunters, and could tip off the people.
Joe also needs to have regular, hidden income to pay for his 3 houses, and those black mailing him. Jill needs to be kept in comfort, ya know.
It's utterly disgusting the level of corruption that the American people seem willing to tolerate these days. It's going to be the death of our republic.
I'm an American, but I live in Mexico City. Let me tell you, if Mexico's government weren't so utterly corrupt, Mexico would be a first-world country. But the corrupt government robs the people blind and keeps them ignorant. It's sad that the USA is going in that direction.
I wouldn't even call Russia a Totalitarian state. More of an Authoritarian state.
I can't disagree with that. Saudia Arabia, Iran, & China all make Russia look like some kind of libertarian free state.
True. An Authoritarian state is one where an elite or elites want a monopoly on power in order to run a government. A Totalitarian state is one where an elite or elites want a monopoly on power in order to run everything, including everyone's lives. There can certainly be degrees of control within any such monopolistic government.
The US is rapidly becoming totalitarian.
Yes. You are absolutely right. Here's a must-read: Desmet, Mattias. The Psychology of Totalitarianism. He's a Dutch psychologist (University of Ghent). Describes beautifully how people (including well-educated elites) suspend critical thinking to embrace policies requiring the sacrifice of individual liberties. Examples: Nazi Germany, COVID, climate change, wokeness... the list is almost endless. The phenomenon is known as mass formation.
Agreed. But I'd qualify that ny suggesting that the authoritarian is not one individual (Putin), but rather some kind of oligarchy. There are some far right power-people behind him. They've got enough powet that he's deferring to them to some degree. I believe that if they wanted him out, he'd be out. And then WATCH OUT. Those guys think Putin's been too soft. I think they'd pull the nuclear trigger without a second thought...
Think of the US, where a senile puppet serves as head-of-state, and the so-called 'elites' actually running things can remain virtually anonymous, and thus escape accountability.
The fact that a senile person is the nominal head of both the state and government clearly indicates that modern day presidents are little more than puppets. The true political power stems from concentrated economic power and is exercised politically directly through deep state structures. What we are allowed to see is a crumbling facade which was allowed to stand to fool us into believing we still have a Constitutional system of governance. We don’t!
Did joe pic Pamela as vice president ,so he had some one with knowledge to change his diapers .?
[Based upon my possibly biased readings] Biden and Harris apparently were not even the first choices of Democrats. This is based upon early primaries in 2020; they were not the leaders in the polls. Of course it's to no one's surprise that money and influence sways such elections. Still [IF it is actually true] it's a very interesting question how the less popular choices were the ones who made the final cut.
Bernie Sanders would have won the Democrat nomination but for extreme pressures applied from inside the party, and no doubt, from big donors and of course the Deep State. While I don't in any way want Sanders as president, I think a general election between Sanders and Trump would have provoked some very good and interesting discussions. And both were standing up for the little guy, though coming from different directions.
And having both of those guys running against each other would have absolutely FORCED the mainstream mis-leadia to focus on issues of import to the everyday person.
It could have been a good wake-up call to America.
You're definitely on to something. I suspect they may have been chosen BECAUSE they were weak.
I don't think this is a permanent condition in the US. The so-called deep state is not unified or pervasive enough to have a stranglehold on every level of government. Yet.
Every level? No. They don't have that degree of control, thanks to our federal structure. But they have a great deal of control over the federal government, and apparently a good deal of suasion over state and local governments.
Our tax structure is sadly inverted. Personally, I think the largest chunk of my taxes should go to my city and county, with the next largest chunk going to the state. Finally, the federal government should get the tiniest share. Such a system would maximize accountability to the citizens. Yet we have it ENTIRELY reversed. The federal government takes the largest chunk, and then doles it out back to states and localities, with many strings attached. I'd prefer that local voters were the ones deciding what and how many strings were attached, not some far-off, unaccountable federal monstrosity.
Why doesn't anyone talk about this?
Correct
I think you hit the nail on the head, there. Plus there are so-called elites who think (wrongly in my view) that the USA can somehow "win" a nuclear war with Russia. That kind of thinking combined with cornering Putin and not giving him an out is the single most terrifying thing about this whole Ukraine situation. It's utterly bonkers.
Insane people, for sure!
Well said.
Gov't/press collusion. Revolving doors between administrative state and private sector.
Nothing new here. But, we are in a period where this evil dominates.
It has probably always been much like this throughout recent decades, but with the advent and pervasiveness of the internet and social media, it is only in recent years that we plebes have been able to find out about it all. The extent of the rot everywhere is almost overwhelming but now that we've seen it, we can't un-see it.
Blaming Russia for the sabotage of the gas lines is as far fetched as what the media has been filling the heads of its readers about the Covid vaccine being “ safe and effective” and that recession is good for the consumer.
Or that an Inflation Act can stop inflation.
The Inflation Reduction Act is basically the Build Back Better act in drag.
Fabulous
The acquiescence of the German public to their US assisted suicide continues to amaze me.
The Greens are committing German suicide without help from the Yanks, but of course the Neo-cons in the WH are happy about it as they want the same thing here.
Europeans need to stop playing the victim and look at their own home-grown globalists.
All the german party leadership (incl CDU, FDP) flipped and agreed to end the nuclear plants. On a dime.
The command came from outside.
Brussels
You can blame a lot on the Greens and rightly, but that should not let the actual perpetrator of the massive damage multi billion pipelines off the hook.
Surely a complex operation with a submarine and Navy Seals?
if you think the US did this all on it's own you are naive.
Perpetrators, plural.
Well there may have been other helpers, either too afraid to stand up to Uncle Sam or just crazy. One thing is plain though, this terrorist attack would not have taken place without a US say so.
The Germans and other European countries laid the groundwork for this well before the current administration, while Trump was doing the opposite in the United States.
I notice when I go to a store in Canada to by German bear it is not available anymore . If industry must shut down like beer brewing it would be the greatest disaster for all of us but especially in Bavaria just before the October fest . Could a new Putch start again in the beer halls in Munich ?
Well there's always the German sounding American beer Budweiser, now owned by a Belgian company, and there is a Dutch beer such as Heineken.
No reason to go to Munich if the beer taps are closed.
Germany was subjected to the most intense social engineering operation of all time, after WWII, according to E. Michael Jones. They've "internalized the commands of their oppressors". And now Morgenthau plan, version 2.0, is being implemented. (According to EMJ) https://culturewars.com/videos/germania-delemdea-est-or-why-germany-must-be-destroyed
Certainly seems that way.
Spot on
"Dismantling Nord Stream", really?
What if Russians decide to 'dismantle' some of our infrastructure?!
It's SO STUPID and irresponsible to play with the life of humanity
Condoleeza Rice was saying something along these lines back in 2014. It's like saying that a country that mostly depends on tourism should have all of its tourist infrastructure destroyed and its beautiful nature contaminated. Their obsession with Putin and destroying Russia is beyond insane and seems illogical. The strange thing is that most of the US Russophobic neocons have their roots in Eastern Europe or Russia and are Jewish (Madelaine Albright bombing Serbia was from Serbia, Victoria Nuland's grandparents were from Ukraine, the wife of the ex-Polish minister who thanked USA for bombing the pipeline Anne Applebaum has ancestors from Belarus, Anthony Blinken, Paul Wolfowitz with his Wolfowitz doctrine and many others). Do they have some personal vendetta against Russia and why do we allow such people make policy decisions? A woman who was raped is not allowed to sit on a jury of a rape case, but we allow our whole lives be at the mercy of these people with who knows what agenda on their minds?
I’ve always believed that the invasion of Iraq under Bush 43 was a vendetta. Saddam had plotted to assassinate 41 and his son under the pretense of WMDs cost the USA trillions of treasure, over 5000 dead, the delivery of weapons to ISIS, and more...
And we're STILL paying the price of that ridiculous war. Not only do we have a permanent presence in Iraq, but Saddam Hussein kept the Iranians in check without us having to dirty our hands. There's no way Saddam Hussein would have just acceded to Iran having nukes.
Proxy war against EU. To block the road to Saudi oil. It worked. Turkey will not be EU. UK out. EU weak.
UK weak.
Right on!
Yes. Now part of the agenda isn’t past hatreds but present guilt. The Americans (👃)causing the war were neck deep in The Post USSR looting of Russia, they laundered the money. This is public record. They’re trying to cover their tracks. Ukraine was the following money laundering operation. You can certainly add Afghanistan and Iraq to the list.
Below is the US Congressional Record , hearings on Russian Money laundering.
Testimony of Anne Williamson
Before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services of
the U.S. House of Representatives
September 21, 1999
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/bank/hba59889.000/hba59889_0f.htm
I think calling them 'americans' is a bit too unspecific.
I don't care about their personal vendetta, go and kill Putin if you have problem with him but don't challenge him to destroy humanity
Well, they don’t care if it’s unjust to involve others.
I don’t know how to get this across without sounding flippant or crazy; these are criminals attempting mass scale arson to cover their crimes. By cover I mean escape consequences in the confusion. > This is in keeping with certain historical events in Spain with Conversos leading the Inquisition and deportation of Moriscos , and more recent events in The USSR and Germany in the 30s/40s. Anything will be done to survive, all shame expunged by vengeance. I am saying there’s a pattern.
It’s not so much a personal vendetta against Putin as rage that he robbed them (by stopping the looting of Russia) combined with ethnic blood vendettas against Russians, Germans and I daresay Cossacks/Ukrainians for sins of the past. That’s all mixed in with fear that Putin has the goods on them, and fear of consequences.
But this is staff being allowed to run wild , this is not the dominant strain in charge in America, despite what you may hear - the dominant strain in America is Anglo- Puritan. Or should be...
These vendettas fit in well enough with the overall agenda of Global American-Anglo dominance pursued for a century. There’s a danger of it getting out of hand, indeed it may have. But the “staff” are disposable. Rosencrantz and Guilderstein can ride the Tiger then be tossed away as food.
The real problem is that the staff seem to have slipped the leash. Now lets understand the staff.
They’re criminals and can’t run the place. If they are its Russia in the 90s and this shall pass.
It is Russia in the 90s and this shall pass.
To end on a hopeful note - the Russians know all this, Putin knows all this , he had to clean this out of Russia 25 years ago.
So we pass through a period of madness as most countries have in their own history.
To be more hopeful since this is an American problem most of the suffering will happen here, and to get to your concern the American military is not going to follow these maniacs into nuclear war.
We’ll end up bearing the brunt of the suffering here in America.
The rest of you had best sever the ties and alliances, as these chain us to our Imperial Majesties in DC you would help us in the bargain.
We The People never agreed to any of this, and were deceived this was about Freedom.
Think about it; this is the only Empire in history that won’t admit its an Empire.
What part of driving Russia and China together means the fall of the western world they don't understand? Especially if Persian and some other smaller groups join
Maybe the Western world needs to fall. We've just discussed some of the cause for the systemic rot it has suffered, and to appearances, those in power pursuing dangerous adventurism. If we can avoid major radioactivity, I think we shall have done well.
I certainly hope there are some cooler heads who will not let these maniacs get us all killed just to stick it to Putin.
Based upon my "alternative" readings, you are largely correct. What I find curious is that (presumably) such an amount of Jewish influence directly in the US government was much less in the early 20th century, through end of WW II. Yet based on the same readings, Western money (much of it Jew controlled) had no problem financing the Bolsheviks and later the Soviets. There was also US aid during the 1930s, never mind WW II. The Jewish animus against Russia dates to at least Czarist times, but that still doesn't fully explain their fawning over the Communists. Whatever the details, the sad truth is that the USA (and many other nations) are indeed ruled by people whose [great] Grandmother was indeed raped by the Cossacks, or a border guard took the family jewelry, or some other real or imagined ancestral grievance.
Add in the barbarous treatment that the kin of many of these people suffered at the hands of the Nazis, and you also have ammunition to see why they treat the present Germany so horribly.
It's not far from the truth that the outsiders allegedly "helping" the Ukrainians actually have deep-seated hatreds against all parties. As such, a disinterested observer might indeed wonder if the hidden agenda was to make BOTH sides lose.
Ancestral hatreds are a real thing, but it's not clear that they should be background policy for decision making by nuclear powers.
The Shadow knows.
Yes, she does
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/bank/hba59889.000/hba59889_0f.htm
"I wonder what Felix Eick thinks"
Gonna stop you right there. He doesn't think anything. He probably doesn't even remember what he wrote a month ago. The hive speaks through him. The words he voices have no more to do with thought than the twitching of an ant's antennae.
Russia invests billions into building Nordstream 1 and 2, then sailed undetected all the way to Poland, exactly where the US Navy was recently doing exercises for this type of attack, and then blew up their own pipeline.
The clown honking gets louder and louder.
Would you like to buy some Covid vaccines that are safe and effective? The US did - they spent billions, and then blew up their own military.
I was shocked to hear Sebastian Gorka say that Putin actually destroyed the pipelines. He claims that it lines up perfectly with the news of the Russian draft. He believes that with Russian men running for the borders to avoid the draft, Putin needed a cause for the people to rally behind. Therefore, destroying the pipeline would look like a direct attack on Russian sovereignty and shore up support for the draft/war effort.
“Felix is a 31 year-old reporter for Welt with Green tendencies and very little intelligence or knowledge.”
You are the king of understated insults, eugyppius 🤣
On another note, the globalists are ramping up the propaganda campaign pushing the pandemic accord and blaming the WHO's COVID policy failure on—wait for it—lack of funding and power! I encourage everyone who wishes to help raise awareness about the one-world totalitarian threat posed by the pandemic accord to share the article below along with the hashtags #StopTheTreaty, #StopTheWHO, and #ExitTheWHO:
• “What If They Threw a Pandemic and Nobody Came?” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/what-if-they-threw-a-pandemic-and)
The first rule of being an informed citizen is turn off the tv.
That's #2 in my 12-step recovery program for menticide!
• "Letter to the Menticided: A 12-Step Recovery Program" (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-menticided-a-12-step)
The only reason it isn't #1 is because they have to first acknowledge that they have been deceived.
The iron law of government programs:
If it works, we need more funding!
If it doesn't work, we need more funding!
🎯
Obviously, this young man has never truly had to go without any of life's basic comforts. Food, heat, clothing, freedom to move about ... etc. This generation is the most privileged ever to live and it shows. From gender foolishness to green agendas we endure childish movements with zero basis in reality. It's cute when a 13 year old wants to save the world but when it becomes government policy, it transitions clearly over to insanity. The constant barking about fossil fuels is ridiculous. Technology will evolve as markets absorb their potential. Government interference makes nothing better. Ever.
Sadly, the people of Europe will pay a heavy price for this position. All to be sacrificed on the alter of American exceptionalism. Foolish indeed. Pray, plan, prepare and RESIST.
Excellent.
Lets see what he has to say when he has no heat in his home in February...
You forgot that global warming will keep everyone sweating in northern lands in winter and the ice is melting .It is the Heat we must fear not the cold ,just ask Al Gore .
Jane I don't have a hair shirt ,will a bear skin do ??
what a massive left wing turd muncher
Instead of buying russian gas, or in the case of Germany accepting gas already contracted and paid for, EU is now trying to strike a deal with Turkey's ruler Erdogan.
An all-but-in-name islamic fascist dictator who has repeatedly used the hijrah - the spreading of islam via migration - and refugees as blackmail and weapons against Europe. Conditions for human rights activists in Turkey, better than in Russia? Apparently so according to the EU.
Meanwhile, Turkey's long race war against the kurds and their refusal to accept responsibility and pay reparations for the armenian genocide is apparenty much less of a bother than Vlad the Incorrigible's invasion of Ukraine.
And about US buddy-ally Saudi's war in Yemen? Scch!
As far as I can tell, it goes something like this. The US Deep State decides what it does and doesn't want, with little to no regard for things such as "freedom," "democracy," "human rights," and all the rest of it. Having decided what it wants, it uses American presstitutes to justify Deep State decisions using the language of "freedom," "democracy" and "human rights." European elites follow suit because, deep down, they know that Europe is an American colony (a privileged colony - for now - but colony nonetheless), plus they really, truly love virtue signaling.
It doesn't have to be that way. The only european nation that needs the US is Britain, since they have happily adopted the role of cuckold to the US bull re: Europa.
The US is able and (as we've seen) willing to destroy Europe's infrastructure. And what can Europe do about it? If you outsource your defense to someone, then you become defenseless against that someone.
Yes, but we don't have to do things like that. We can re-industrialise, re-energise, and re-militarise. Not under the EU-umbrella perhaps, but as nations united in a will to independence of empires, be they chinese, russian or american.
That sounds good in theory. Problem is, it's really, really hard to undo seventy years of stupid policy decisions.
Things like that? What do you mean? We don't have to react when a foreign power blows up our infrastructure?
No, I mean we - as in the european nations - doesn't have to make ourselves subservient to the US, Russia, China or globalist non-democratic corporatist groups like the WEF, IMF and so on.
It would be a piece of cake to gradually impose such fees on chinese (f.e.) made products from their poison-factories, that domestic industry would become viable again - frame it in the right language about fair trade, human rights, LGBT-whateverisms, and climate crisis.
Any retaliation can then be spun to strengthen resolve that we shall not be beholden to others. Any threats from the World Bank or IMF (i.e. US/Britain) can be handled by striking favourable deals with their boogeymen, putting them in the position of having to handle too many too expensive conflicts (of all kinds) at the same time.
Say european investments in oil/gas extraction in Venezuela in a win-win deal? Solar towers in a similar deal with Morocco - the Iberian peninsula is close enough. And so on - we can, we must as peoples and cultures go on the offensive again and stp thinking the US axis are our friends. The people may be, but their owners are not.
Mr.Eick personifies the globalist's dream:
destroy the German middle class, tear down the old system, liquidate as many liabilities as possible, that being people, systems, debt, etc., and then offer a new replacement at the depth of everyone's despair. That replacement is the Davos' set dream of control over every aspect on your life.
If this guy was an American we could call him a Neo-con. But Neo-con thinking actually crosses national boundaries. Better to think of them as a transnational faction.
They're all playing to China's tune, one way or another.
this is not China, this is the EU's dream of world dominion.
If it will get really cold ,will the migrants turn and migrate back to warm deserts where they came from .?
You're kidding, the EU are too stupid. No, the clever people here are the Chinese. They have the Democrats and huge swathes of US industry in their pocket. (Apple, Dell, Tesla operate in China under CCP permission). The Chinese have convinced dumb Americans that Russia is a threat, so stirred up Ukraine long ago, poked Russia, Putin reacted, now Europe is going down the pan, fast.
I beg to disagree Ms. Bucket. The Davos' set are highly intelligent sociopaths, diabolical in their goals.
The Chinese didn't convince dumb Americans that Russia was the threat, our own
home-grown zealous ideologues convinced us of that.
Eick's bullshit tells familiar tale. Greens hate humans. It's an extension of their mysophobia.
Yet the ghost of Malthus refused to be totally exorcised. He whispers things like: "if the lifeboat only holds twenty people, and a hundred are in the water, what does the captain do?" Like it or not, there are limits to resources. When those limits are reached, very difficult decisions need to be made, or they will be made for one.
Well, at least they got one thing right.
This is an interesting observation on the situation.... https://thelawdogfiles.com/2022/09/nordstream.html
In Britain when we ask, conspiracy or cockup? The answer is, it’s usually cockup. Occam’s Razor rules.
the thing is, we have two separate explosions within 17 hours of each other, in two different pipe systems, each near the same Danish island. and, is there any precedent for this kind of pipeline accident? i can't find any.
‘... is there any precedent for this kind of pipeline accident?’ Maybe there is now? By definition precedent is something which hasn’t happened before.
That is incorrect--by definition precedent *is* something that happened before.
Yes, John is happily demolishing his own already flimsy theory. You can bet that John is British and most Brits still believe in fairy tales.
Alas, so do most Americans. Whatever our past accomplishments may have been, it's a fact that a large portion of early, and even later colonists and immigrants were people who were "asked to leave' their homelands.
Yes John is British which is why he knows the nuance of the English language. Precedents are created, or are the first occurrence of something. Therefore a precedent defines something which has not previously happened. It then becomes a reference point.
Okay, then, let's use a British dictionary. You are talking about setting a precedent, which will be then be referred back to in the future. Every definition here, including law, defines precedent as something that has happened in the past.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/precedent
If they were doing the same ‘maintenance’ at the same time in both pipelines with the same problems, it isn’t unreasonable that the same accident will occur in both within a short time frame.
Not an accident.
Speaking to reporters on February 7, Biden said: "If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2."
"We will bring an end to it," the president said. A journalist asked Biden how he could do that since Germany was in control of the project, the president replied: "I promise you: We will be able to do it."
https://www.newsweek.com/video-biden-saying-end-nord-stream-resurfaces-after-pipeline-leak-1747005
Of course now Biden is trying to point the finger in the other direction:
President Biden called the damage to the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines "a deliberate act of sabotage," rebuking Russia's claim that the West was responsible for the explosions. The president said Friday that divers would eventually be sent to the pipelines, which were designed to bring gas from Russia to Europe, to determine what happened.
"It was a deliberate act of sabotage and the Russians are pumping out disinformation and lies," Biden said.
"At the appropriate moment, when things calm down, we're going to be sending divers down to find out exactly what happened. We don't know that yet exactly," he added.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-nord-stream-pipelines-biden-sabotage/
Couldn't agree more. Have lots of family that have worked in oil industry for years on site as engineers. Offshore rigs throughout the us, Eastern Canada and the North sea. Even with constant maintenance and care by highly paid, highly trained professionals, who were on site , and still not a few weeks would go by without major problems on each of the sites they were posted to.
Look at BP Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. We have gotten fat, soft and stupid in the West when we forget that there are real, hard men doing hard jobs that allow us to get fat, soft and stupid.
Plus, lots of work in Sberia. Which made everything else look like it was run by Mensa.
Russian gas and oil runs specifically on Western resources, technology and know-how. It has now had 6 months of none of the above, I would expect more problems with this area of Russia's infrastructure to continue.
This would easily explain one explosion. But three?
Very soon we are going to be skinny and freezing… and still stupid - if are nit nuked first.
The state forbade BP from safer drilling in shallower waters.
Nah, just trying to divert attention... It was not a first documented attempt at sabotage, and Russians were writing about it back in April 2021.
"The West continues to exert pressure on Russia to stop the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline – and the most important event in this chain was the Polish military provocations. Can opponents of the pipeline resort to real military operations against Nord Stream 2 – and if so, what should Russia counter this?
Recall that in early April 2021, the situation around the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline seriously worsened. A significant number of civilian vessels and warships (mostly Polish), as well as submarines, made dangerous maneuvers around the Fortuna vessel building the pipeline. Polish warplanes flew around and over the construction site". https://m.vz.ru/society/2021/4/14/1094528.html
Very interesting theory. As you say, when the choice is between sinister or stupid, always pick stupid - especially for the Russians.
Russians are not as stupid as they are made out to be. People do not realize that all this technology extracting resources in permafrost climate is on par with space industry in terms of complexity. US still flies to space using Russian engines...
I don’t think it’s a question of technical ability, but how work practices and systems are managed, and affected by a culture where lower ranks get scapegoated to protect the blushes of higher ups, which encourages a climate of fear, corner-cutting, risk taking, secrecy. That is what caused Chernobyl rather than technical failure.
The same sort of thing can and has happened in large institutions in Western Countries. But in Russia thanks to its Communist past - don’t meet your set targets and you will be punished, any failure is not the failure of management but yours - it is generally ingrained.
This is easily the dumbest thing I've ever read on your 'Stack, so glad it wasn't you writing it!
We must free ourselves from prosperity to stick it to the Russians!
Yes! Let's shoot ourselves in the foot, that'll teach the Russians!"*
*German foreign policy maxim, ca 2022
My favorite is about how the pipeline's destruction resulted in a rise in energy prices, and therefore that was to Putin's advantage. If that is the argument they want to make, then how can these previous assertions that destroying the pipeline would hurt Putin be squared against reality? Wouldn't shutoff or destruction of pipelines always have raised prices and 'helped' Putin?
What they fail to consider is that energy markets are global. Distribution bottlenecks as supply is shifted to other markets may temporarily hinder the sales of resources but demand will always drive new means of transport. Some reports say that the Chinese are just repackaging Russian energy supplies and marking up the price to resell them to Europe. Does natural gas go from being dirty Putin supporting to somehow morally superior if it also pads some Chinese profit margin as well? Makes you wonder about where some people's loyalties lie.
Even should climate change profiteering elites manage to crush demand and energy consumption in US and EU, other less insane countries will pick up the slack.
If we are supposed to view this as assuming a wartime posture against Russia, how does crippling one's own economy and demoralizing the populace help prepare a nation for war?
Somehow I think that the elites have been so long isolated from the feedback mechanisms of hard physical reality that they live in a fantasy world created by their own rhetoric. This was enabled by the incredible prosperity of a functioning economic system that they now propose to destroy. Eventually, reality will always catch up. I just don't want to be collateral damage when it does. And I certainly don't want to see the powerful ride this out to become even more powerful.
"Somehow I think that the elites have been so long isolated from the feedback mechanisms of hard physical reality that they live in a fantasy world created by their own rhetoric."
Exactly. They don't realize that the abstractions they excel at manipulating don't actually keep you warm in February. I actually think they'll be genuinely shocked when it's suddenly cold.
Exactly
"If we are supposed to view this as assuming a wartime posture against Russia, how does crippling one's own economy and demoralizing the populace help prepare a nation for war?"
The same way a two-year old thinks pissing their pants gives them power over its parents.
So very true.
But, we are living in Clown World so sensible analysis/logic no longer applies