Europe cannot afford to have its foreign and domestic policies dictated by Putin’s blackmail
Guest essay by Paul Driessen
European Union nations want to impose tougher economic sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine and providing the missiles that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. However, they are worried about biting the hand that feeds them – with the natural gas that fuels much of its economy.
Russia is the world’s second-biggest natural gas producer and third-biggest oil producer, so it can inflict tremendous pressure and damage on its neighbors without firing a shot. The 28 EU nations as a whole depend on Russia for one-third of their oil and gas. However, Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania get 100% of their natural gas from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Six other European countries get more than half of their gas from the powerful Russian Bear: Czech Republic (57%), Poland (59%), Ukraine (60%), Hungary (80%), Slovakia (84%) and Bulgaria (89%).
That makes the Europeans highly vulnerable to cuts in the fuel supplies they need to power their cars, keep their businesses, factories and economies running smoothly – and heat homes, to literally keep people alive during brutal winters like those they’ve experienced recently. A simple “nyet” from Mr. Putin could reduce or cut off energy exports, leaving the continent hostage to Russia and creating a potential disaster. European officials know this but so far are frozen by their own fears and policies.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) calls Russia “a gas station masquerading as a country,” because 60% of its exports are oil and natural gas. Cutting these exports to pressure Europe politically might hurt Russia’s economy. However, it has already done so, is currently squeezing Ukraine over winter gas supplies – supposedly over late payments for past deliveries – and is making export arrangements with China and other countries, to reduce any economic harm it might suffer from engaging in renewed energy blackmail.
Moreover, during one week this September, Russia supplied up to 45% less gas than Poland requested, the Poles’ largest oil and gas company reported. Over the past decade, “Russia has halted the flow of gas through Ukraine three times, directly affecting eastern and southern European countries most reliant on Gazprom, the giant Russian energy monopoly,” the Christian Science Monitor has observed.
Indeed, 16% of Russian natural gas exports flow through Ukraine. In yet another pressure tactic, Russia began tightening the export spigot in June. Russian gas supplies through Ukraine to Slovakia have been cut by 25%, says Ukrainian Energy Minister Yuriy Prodan.
There’s no question that the EU and USA must punish Russia for seizing Crimea, infiltrating troops and military equipment into eastern Ukraine to support secessionists, aiding terrorism, and killing hundreds of innocent jetliner passengers. Since no one wants a shooting war with Russia, economic sanctions are all that’s left. Failure to do even that would give Putin a green light to move more forcefully against Ukraine – or even try to occupy other former Soviet Union nations.
Putin has called the breakup of the Soviet Union “the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.” Before invading Ukraine, Russia invaded the former Soviet territory of Georgia in 2008 to support separatists who had declared independence for the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It’s not at all hard to imagine Putin moving against Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, other former Soviet possessions or even Finland, to bring them into Mother Russia’s suffocating embrace. But how can the EU end the blackmail, enjoy some foreign policy independence and improve its faltering economy with less reliance on Russia?
If European countries faced food shortages due to import restrictions, they would offer their farmers incentives to grow more. EU members need to act the same way on the energy front. Otherwise, they give Russia tremendous sway over their future. European nations certainly have the ability to take action.
For one thing, they could import more natural gas from the United States and other countries besides Russia, until it can produce more domestic energy. Europe is blessed with enormous quantities of oil and natural gas – including enough gas to supply all its needs for at least 28 years, during which it could develop viable alternatives to gas and the dozens of coal-fired generators it is now building. US Energy Information Administration data reveal that Sweden has enough gas to meet its needs for 250 years. Denmark, Poland, Bulgaria, France and Spain also have extensive potential, as do Great Britain and other countries. Unfortunately, those deposits aren’t economically recoverable using traditional drilling.
However, they can be captured using hydraulic fracturing (fracking) – which has been used safely and with great economic and employment benefit more than a million times in the United States since 1947. It has made the United States the world’s largest natural gas producer.
Not surprisingly, environmental extremists strenuously oppose fracking – further crippling Europe’s ability to meet its energy needs and chart its economic destiny and foreign policy. Also not surprising, Russia is secretly funding the European anti-fracking movement “to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas,” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen recently revealed.
But if there’s a silver lining to unfolding Middle East events and Russia’s naked aggression, it’s that more sensible Europeans are finally looking more critically at their self-destructive energy and environmental policies. The European Union announced in September that it will combine previously separate energy and climate ministries into one office. The decision infuriates radical greens, but it reflects growing business, worker, consumer and family concerns about reliable, affordable electricity and motor fuels.
Next, Europe needs to allow fracking. Right now, virtually every EU nation except Poland and Britain bans fracking. Besides making Europe more energy independent, fracking would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by enabling European nations to rely more on natural gas and less on coal. Fracking would also reduce EU natural gas, electricity and even oil prices, as it has in the USA. It would also create or save millions of jobs that are endangered (or gone) because of Europe’s outrageously high energy costs. In fact, many EU companies and families pay three to eight times more than Americans do for electricity.
Another problem in Europe is that people living above the shale deposits have no ownership or economic interests in developing them. They are inconvenienced, but the state and drilling companies get all the money. The EU needs to devise incentives that give landowners and residents a positive stake in development – such as a royalty or percentage of every Euro of oil and gas produced and sold.
On this side of the pond, US petroleum production must be further increased. The huge gains in American oil and gas output since 2009 were all on private and state lands, while the Obama administration has presided over a nearly 40% decline in production from onshore and offshore federal lands. The President and congressional Democrats need to stop being energy obstructionists, and let American companies tap these energy treasure troves. That would create jobs, generate billions in government revenues, make more gas available for European purchase, and strengthen our economy and balance of trade. Congress should also consider prohibiting state and local fracking bans as unconstitutional constraints on trade.
Congress and the President should also fast-track US natural gas exports to Europe, by speeding permits for liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities. These actions would encourage further drilling, technology improvements and job creation. As Europeans adapt and improve America’s rapidly advancing fracking technologies and develop their own gas, these exports will be less vital. But they are essential now.
The world is not going find safe, efficient, affordable, environment-friendly alternatives to oil, natural gas and coal in the next decade or so. (Right now, Europe gets just 1.3% of its energy from wind and solar, but 75% from fossil fuels – and both wind and solar exact significant environmental costs.) In the meantime, we need to rely more on realistic opportunities and initiatives, and on our oil supplier friends in Canada and Mexico. If we don’t, we’ll have to continue importing from increasingly unstable and unfriendly parts of the world – and being constantly at their tender mercies, just like the Europeans.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and Congress of Racial Equality, and author or Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
I’m pretty happy with the recent emphasis on the political battle ground in the climate scare realm. It will be in the political world where this sad chapter will end. Too much political enlightenment isn’t enough in a world where every vote is critical, and one one single vote can put us solidly on the path to ruin.
Sounds a lot like the “bargaining” phase.
Perhaps the politics will soon be “settled”…
A Russia stripped of supplying its resources is a dangerous Russia.
Russia has long been a bully – majorly to its own citizens! Imagine you agree to buy the school bully’s cigarettes from him every day, so it gives him money. Then one day you tell him that you are getting them somewhere else or making your own. Does that make the bully less or more of a threat to you? I know the analogy is poor, and there is a ridiculousness about placating a country, but as I said, Russia can very easily turn into a dangerous country. They are a very strange people, formed by their history. And we should be wary of the alternatives to Putin (a macho bully disguised as a leader), for they are more hard-lined than him.
I agree that reducing or cutting off the bully entails some danger, but the other choice is to continue feeding the bullies ever increasing demands basically become a slave to the bully. Yes and economically damaged Russia can be dangerous but when the option is to economically and politically damaging your own country then the choice is clear.
Your simile assumes that the bully will keep his strength without selling cigarettes. Russia will not keep its strength without exporting oil and gas.
Do you have personal experience of this, or are you channeling 50+ year old Cold War propaganda?
Cold War propaganda? Hardly! Growing up in England (being just the same distance from Moscow as Washington DC is to Denver) we have been taught that Russia is only understood if you understand its history. Now, it may surprise you to learn that I’m no fan of the way the US has handled Russia. It was wrong-footed over Syria for a start (but that’s very recent politics). The US is poking Russia with a stick much like you would a bear, and it’s not a very good strategy. The Ukraine is being coerced into joining in on the poking. However, Russia does understand someone marking a red line (as did JFK). And there’s your trouble. Once you cajole the Ukraine into being West-leaning, then you’d better follow through. The downing of the airliner should have been a reason for a red line. But Germany is weak, given its economic, energy, and geopolitical position. Without Germany being strong then the EU is just playing games. The future is far from certain.
Just read the headlines. As far as the Russians are concerned, the cold war never ended.
The statement that Russia has acted as a bully, mainly to its own citizens is hardly controversial.
Reply to The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley September 30, 2014 at 5:20 am
Yes it¨s true that you need to know, and understand Russian History in order to understand the past and present of Russia! That´s a problem because not even here in Sweden which have a long history together with and sometimes against Russia, people are taught in school the most important parts of the history.
Such as:
The Nector’s cronicle which more than one scholar of history here in Europe disputed, is confirmed when it comes to what happened in 861 AD. Where? In a wellknown contemporary sourse Rimbert’s Vita Ansgarii chapter 32 ff. When did Rimbert write his work? In 865-67 AD. Mind you, we do know that Rimbert visited Sweden and in his own work he mention a person with his own name who visited the Baltic areas the years around 861…. But he didn’t mention Rurik only what happened and had happened during centuries before.
Rurik, or should we say Rus’ Eric is mentioned in other eastern sources as a co-king to his father and brother. Same names are to be found on runestones dated by runexperts 100 years later.
Now the most important thing hardly ever told is that leading people from what’s now Swedish areas up to Birger Jarl’s days collected taxes from 100 Russian gorods. If they didn’t pay the tax: a squirel fur and an other fur, then the people collecting the “tax” took the leading men in the gorods (town) to row their boats and sold them as slaves in The Byzantic Empire later on to the new rulers.
Russia never ever had democraty the way we in West have had. Mind you there are dark spots on democraty here in Sweden. There are only two countries outside Schweiz where all “ingridients” need to be a true democracy is at hand, US and France.
I am a conservative “Moderat”. Voted for Reinfeldt and our Allians who sadly lost. But I have to say that you “Ghost” as so many others never learnt nor understood the most important historic factors.
If you like to know more, please read:
Sorry not to have translated but you might translate via google translate
Krims 1103 år gamla Rusisk-Svenska historia (Crimea’s 1103 year old Russian-Swedish History
more
Nestorskrönikan bekräftas av Rimberts Vita Ansgarii and
Sveriges okända rysk-ukrainska historia
Nice to know you haven’t outgrown your land of ‘1984’ indoctrination.
The UK is probably the only nation more Russophobic than the US – due to the Monarchy’s multiple stymied attempts to gain a foothold in the Black Sea. That nation seems to have no problem taking oligarchs’ money stolen from the Russian people, but complains about the ones who stay at home and brought Russia back from the brink of economic and demographic decline?
I’d look a little closer to see which nation’s leadership is more divorced from its citizens: the one where we have father and son Presidents in the past 2 decades, with a possible husband/wife President combo – or the one where the military has not engaged in any conflicts more than 500 miles from its border in literally 60 years.
Russia is not imperialistic. In Georgia it intervened in small regions of the country with a Russian population, it could easily have taken control of the whole of Georgia but did not. Likewise in Ukraine claims that Russia has its eyes on the whole of Ukraine are wrong. It only intervenes in regions where a pro-Russian population is involved in a conflict. I’m not saying everything Russia does in Ukraine is OK – far from it. Giving buk missiles to militias was a huge mistake. (“What was a Malaysian plane doing in Ukrainian airspace?”) But even in Crimea – what the population has done there is no more than what nationalists in Scotland tried – unsuccessfully – to do this month.
There is absolutely zero evidence to support the claim that Russia had any direct or indirect role in the shoot-down of MH17.
Of course there is no evidence – they destroyed it 😉
MH17 was a 767 flying at a usual operating altitude of ~35,000 feet. The only missiles capable of striking aircaft at that altitude were Russian made/supplied. The usual targets were twin-prop transports about half the size of a 767 and operate at an altitude of ~26,000 feet. There is plenty of evidence that MH17 was struck by some form of missile at ~35,000 feet.
MH17 was shot down by a fighter jet’s machine gun strafed both sides of the cockpit to kill the pilot, not a missile. look at the damage to the cockpit, it consists of entry and exit holes on the same piece of wreckage just below the cockpit window, impossible for a missile to do. eyewitness state MH17 was being followed by a fighter jet. google “20mm cannon mh17” and look at the photos yourself, they are not difficult to find.
this is but one untruth of many in the article.
Given that both the coup to power Ukrainian present government and its independence/terrorist opponents are using ex-Soviet equipment, the above statement is quite thoroughly fatuous.
I also like how so much of the “stories” of Russia invading, Russia bad this, Russia bad that come from Twitter postings by the US Ambassadar to Ukraine using material supplied by the coup-to-power government’s intelligence services. Yes, the same Ambassador who was the other side in the F**K the EU call.
Really – that’s the best that can be done given the US’ trillions of spending on satellite reconnaissance? Not to mention European defense intelligence capabilities or that there was an American Aegis cruiser literally offshore from the area where MH17 was shot.
No radar images, no plumes detected, no photographs. Seems odd.
After the whole Saddam (lack of) WMD situation – I personally place the burden of proof to be higher for such allegations.
So its 30mm cannon now?
@enviro mental
The type of missile that destroyed MH17 is designed to explode near the plane, showering it with shrapnel.
enviro mental – September 30, 2014 at 12:53 am
You obviously have no idea on how the guns on fighter aircraft are set or how close to impossible it is to ‘strafe the side of a cockpit’ which would be a 90 degree offset. Note that most fighters have only around 10 seconds of ammunition or less – some as little as 3 seconds. Standard attacks with guns are from below and behind. The Dutch investigators have already stated that it was a close by explosion with the aircraft being peppered with high velocity fragments. There may have been subsequent attempts on the ground to obfuscate the cause of the crash using ground based guns, which only makes it more likely that it was a Buk missile strike otherwise why try to hide the reason for the crash?
If a missile struck MH17 there would have been a fireball in the sky. There wasn’t. Furthermore the official inquiry failed to identify the attack as coming from a missile… Perhaps if the US released satellite images this issue could be resolved. And why are have the control tower audio tapes been sequestered?
I thought that it was a 777?
The Ukrainian Gov’t also has plenty of Russian designed missiles, both of the Buk variety and air-to-air missiles.
Sure, but which side did the obfuscating?
We seem to be digging deeper and deeper into conspiracy theories without knowing exactly how the plane was shot down.
Even US intelligence is now admitting that MH17 was shot down by fighters, not shot down by a missile. You really need to update your knowledge base.
As for who loses power by the loss of Russian gas and oil to Europe? Ask the companies of Europe, not the European Union. In case none of the Russia bashers have noticed, the pipeline to China is already underway. The Europeans are bound by contract – and need – to Russian supplies long enough for the pipeline to be completed – that is, if the Ukrainian government will allow the gas to be passed through the pipelines through its territory. If Europe gets a bit chilly this winter, they can only be thankful for their new friends just to the east of them. After that, Europe had better have another source since Russia will already have another client for they gas they were buying..
This whole fracas sounds like the elites in the US want to make more money on their frakked natural gas which they want to ship to Europe rather than make the US more energy independent by selling it here.
I have seen nothing from Putin that implies bullying. I have seen a lot of effort to find peaceful ways out of international conflicts. You need to start reading outside of the MSM which has told you the absolute truth about climate change for as long as it has told you the absolute truth about world politics. How can you believe one and not the other? Its the same agenda. Russia stands in the way of a one world government, which is the whole drive behind the climate change bull crap. A one world government can’t allow sovereign states like Russia, which is why you have the European Union made up of vassal states with no say in anything.
Absolutely ridiculous, Amatør1. Have you seen these ‘rebels’? It’s unlikely they can fire an AK47 properly – that’s why the Ukraine army were having little trouble in pushing them back. By all accounts, most of them were drunk for most of the day! Then Russia got more involved. They sent in equipment that only THEIR men had been trained to use, so the personnel had to go in too. If you really do think that Russian personnel didn’t down MH17 then you must fall for every con trick coming your way.
Amatør1 is right. The American public is being subjected to a neocon inspired propaganda campaign. This is identical to the “Iraq WMD” story.
The author´s statement: “There’s no question that the EU and USA must punish Russia for seizing Crimea, infiltrating troops and military equipment into eastern Ukraine to support secessionists, aiding terrorism, and killing hundreds of innocent jetliner passengers.” is pure baloney.
Why should the EU and the USA punish Russia for sezing Crimea? Does the author understand Crimea used to be part of Russia, and was handed over to Ukraine by Krushev in what amounted to an administrative reorganization? Whether Russia is infiltrating troops and military equipment to support seccessionists is also questionable. And even if it is, the Russians would be acting to preserve their defensive buffer against European nations which have already shown their tendency to invade Russian territory. As for the missile downing the airplane, that´s also questionable. As far as I can see the shooting was probably accidental. Let´s not forget the USA downed an Iranian plane full of civilians and I can´t recall anybody declaring war on the USA over this matter.
What ought to be clear to the readership is that, just like you are subjected to a campaign of lies by Obama over the global warming issue, you can also be subjected to a campaign of lies to make you support a new cold war. And what drives this campaign? That´s something you will need to think about.
Show your evidence then.
Amatør1 and Fernando Leanme are correct. Americans are not getting accurate reports.
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley: you’ve got it exactly backwards. The “rebels,” as you call them, are the eastern Ukrainians who (1) do not want their country divvied up and fed to the EU and bond vigilantes, (2) are not willing to hand over their natural resources to the US neocons, and circling vultures like Joe Biden’s son, and (3) are much better soldiers than the Privat Sektor (Right Sector, the western Nazis), that’s why they repelled them and the Kiev prez was forced to back down.
The Dneiper-Donetz basin is in eastern Ukraine. That oil field is bigger than the Alaskan one. What the hell do you think this fight has been about?
——————-
Paul Driessen is naive, and badly educated. Putin was responding to Georgia’s lethal aggression against the citizens of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the middle of the night (running tanks and bulldozers through people’s houses) while Putin was at the Beijing Olympics. Both Abkhazia and South Ossetia had submitted requests to the Russian Duma the previous April asking for Russia’s help in making them part of Russia. Russia had announced in March that it would no longer participate in the Commonwealth of Independent States economic sanctions against the two countries. Georgia was trying to gain NATO entrance by this action and failed.
Further, Driessen seems unaware that the reason why the “Obama administration has presided over a nearly 40% decline in production from onshore and offshore federal lands,” is the same reason there have been no new oil refineries or domestic drilling (except a limited amt) since 1979. Through Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama. Oil is National Security Item #1, and has been since the 1973 embargo when the US military discovered the lack of oil left US forces with one-to-two day reserves. The US strategic goal since became to rid other countries of their oil before we use ours. It costs us nothing to buy foreign oil for our military; we are the reserve currency and oil is denominated in $US, which we issue.
As you admit, Crimea was given to Ukraine, the Russians then invaded to take it back.
Using your logic Mexico would be justified in invading the US in order to take back the southwest, since it was once part of Mexico.
second that! ukraines 2 planes tailing it at the time…funny how thats glossed over.
No evidence, other than all the evidence.
What constitutes a direct role? Do you mean did Russia order it? Did Russia approve it? No, of course not.
Did Russia supply the weapons? Yes. Did Russia train the rebels? Yes. Were Russians actually manning the SAM launcher? Very likely.
my respect for cfact has just evaporated. this article is full of blatant untruths. it epitomises and justifies everything the greens say about the oil industry.
One little article justifies all the greens claims? Heck of an article!. Almost as powerful as CO2 itself!
Please: list the “blatant untruths”.
not “all the green claims” but “everything the greens say about the oil industry”.
“Please: list the blatant untruths”.
1. Russia invading Ukraine.
crimean people voted to succeed from ukraine, then voted to join russia where it historically belonged for hundreds of years. russia sent no troops into ukraine, they had long term basing rights agreed with the ukraine government. no “invasion”.
2. providing the missiles that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.
MH17 was shot down by a ukrainian fighter jet’s machine gun. pictures show entry and exit holes next to each other on the wreckage just below the pilots window – strafed from both sides by machine gun fire.
3. squeezing Ukraine over winter gas supplies – supposedly over late payments for past deliveries.
not supposedly but actually.
4. Russia invaded the former Soviet territory of Georgia in 2008
It was Georgia that attacked russia.
patrick, why do you assume that the plane was shot down accidentally?
Enviro mental,
Seems that either you have swallowed the Russian propaganda without question or have swallowed some of the Russian anti-fracking funding.
Watermelons have a spiritual home in communism .
@environ mental can you point to a post where I assume that the plane was shotdown accidentally? I was comparing certain facts about MH17 (767) and the usual twin-prop transports (An Antonov if I recall) which if I recall two were shot down a few days before and it’s clear a certain type of missile struck MH17 at crusing altitude well above a military target.
patrick, you said this “If MH17 was shotdown by a fighter, then the pilot would have been able to visually identify the aircraft was a commercial passenger jet flying legally in an established and recognised air corridor.” I am reading you say here that a jet could not have shot down mh17 because it would have seen the target as a passenger plane. given that the evidence shows that the cockpit was strafed from both sides with a fighter’s machine gun, the obvious conclusion is that the ukrainian jet fighter following mh17 (as proven by radar data) deliberately shot it down knowing it was a passenger plane. look at the following picture of the pilot’s window, you can see bullet entry and exit holes next to each other, impossible for a missile given it’s blast is in one direction, notwithstanding that a missile would target the engine, not the pilot:
http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/images/localworld/ugc-images/276309/Article/images/21747780/6461452-large.jpg
@enviro mental
..
If the fighter jets were “following” MH17, how did the bullets from it’s guns fly past the airliner, turn around then hit the pilot’s window area? ….
Did it have U-turn enabled bullets?
No, that is not what I am saying. That is what you are saying. If you read my posts the implication is that it WAS indeed shotdown deliberately, by whatever means, it was shot down deliberately. I was just not using direct language.
Even in the picture you post, top left-hand side, you can see entry and exit points…
Sorry, Ukranian fioghters are armed with 30mm cannons. Those holes are not what a 30 mm cannon would cause. You will have to come up with another theory that actually fits the data.
@ beckleybud@gmail.com
have you ever noticed that a fighter jet is faster than and more maneuverable than a passenger jet. you appear to be looking for a reason to justify your belief, rather than form a conclusion from the evidence.
@ddpalmer, you provide no evidence that “those holes are not caused by 30mm cannon”
you will have to take up your belief with the forensic investigators who disagree with you, meanwhile do you have another unevidenced belief about how those holes punctured both sides of the cockpit.
@Patrick,
ok, i acknowledge I misunderstood your original post.
@environMENTAL, those are very obviously shrapnel holes. First off they are way to concentrated to be cannon shots, secondly they come in all shapes and sizes. Cannon shot comes in one size and one shape.
You are believing what you want to believe and ignoring reality to do it.
A good article, pointing out how the EU could become energy self-sufficient via fracking. One only needs to look at what has happened to US oil and gas production, with the US on track to be the worlds largest produce of oil and gas after many years of decline.
The EU could of course do the same and free itself from the current situation. Putin is obviously aware of this and the risk to Russia’s economic future. Thus the large number of posts trying to pin the blame on everyone else. Clearly WUWT has the Kremlin’s attention.
You know that “secession” is a dirty word these days as far as certain people are concerned.
Besides, the narrative is more important than ascertaining the facts.
They do not necessarily look like 30mm bullet holes, but then there are other questions:
1. Why would a BUK missile detonate near the cockpit. It is such a small fraction of the aircraft.
2. Since they detonate in proximity with the aircraft and throw out metal fragments in a sphere, I would expect the holes to be spread further apart the further they are from the detonation and to have a different pattern than those holes, which all “seem” to be oriented in much the same direction.
blatant untruths? oh yes, the sort of untruths that are mentioned, but never specified. sort of like invisible untruths.
If MH17 was shotdown by a fighter, then the pilot would have been able to visually identify the aircraft was a commercial passenger jet flying legally in an established and recognised air corridor.
I see. Political / military actions are proof of a big-oil conspiracy behind CFACT.
CFACT repeating blatant, provable and widely acknowledged neocon propaganda is evidence that CFACT (or at least the author of this piece) has a marriage with western oil interests and is motivated by oil interests and western hegemony, rather than any truth regarding AGW. for the record, I am not a advocate for dangerous AGW.
Nah, what this post shows is the US government´s ability to collude with the media to spread lies and seek public support for stupid moves. President Obama has been convinced by his advisors to back really dumb moves to “fight global warming”. The anti Russian campaign is a parallel case of dumb policy pursued for the wrong reasons.
Let´s be clear about something: Neither Putin nor the Ukrainian separatists are good guys. But this world is full of really bad guys, and the USA can´t afford to impose its will on other nations using economic sanctions (or even worse, military actions and wars). Right now, today, we see the Cuban dictatorship thumb its nose at the US and practically invade Venezuela, where they set up one of their moles as Dictator. Does Obama do anything about it? Not a peep. Do you want more examples? I can make you a huge list. But when the government and the media work in cahoots to make the country march in a given direction they sure push hard. This is what happened when the USA blundered into Iraq. Today it is blundering by seeking a confrotation with Russia.
+++++ yup!
I agree with you, enviro mental. What a stunningly stupid article for CFACT to write.
thank you, “stunningly stupid article” is ALL that needs to be said. it is one massive own goal.
Completely agree – let’s just see the followings:
1) Do you accept a president of a country who forcefully crushes through the country and overthrows a democratic system and then bans the opposition in parliament (hint: Poroshenko)
2) The same guy sends troops into areas where a stronghold of the opposition resides and kills people (incl opposition supporters) – do you condemn the outcry and support of the neighboring country (Russia)?
3) Again, this so called president has the guts to ask USA and Europe for support and help with weapons – is this for a humanitarian cause? or maybe to suppress further opposition in his country? (see 1 above)
4) Ukraine has shown over and over that democracy is pledged but not led by example (see Tymoshenko’s case). The upper elite is riddled with corruption – (ok – Russia may not be a good example either but that is not the point here) and the Western World gets blinded by these leaders who pretend to protect their people but in fact throw civilization back into Medieval times by trying to eliminate any opposition and cling on to power. The West should have long NOT accepted this guy as legitimate leader but somehow none of the Western countries has the courage to point the obvious and call for democracy.
So does that make Russia a bag guy? Or should we let Ukraine know that we do not accept suppression of opposition and that the opposition party needs to be back in parliament before we consider any further help or action? Russia is not a saint but at least it condemns the way Ukraine treats some of their own people just because of different opinions!
Russia invading Ukraine and providing missiles for the MH shoot down? Where do you get that from?
From the Russia media: Russia provided enough materials for experts to conclude that MH17 was shot by Russia missiles – it provided satellites photos of missiles launching systems in “rebels” controlled area in reality – in area controlled by Russia mercenaries): Russia claimed that it was Ukrainian launching systems, but there wasn’t any Ukrainian forces in vicinity: Russia provided record of “Ukrainian military plane flight”, which as Russians claimed destroyed MH17, but starting point of “Ukrainian military plane flight” was from earlier photographed location point of missile launching system in Russia mercenaries controlled area and final point of “flight of plane” is point of destruction of MH17 flight. Ukrainian military intelligence concluded, that purpose of Russian attack was flight of Russian airlines, which was flying on the same time through northern borders of Russia controlled area, but Russian forces confused point of destination to dislocate missile launching system and instead settlement on the front line with Ukrainian army, they launched missiles from the settlement with exactly same name in the center of Russia controlled area. Near planned site of launching there is Ukrainian site of air defence, so all materials were prepared to support claim of shoot down of Russia civil flight by Ukraine. And these materials were used by Russian Media in early efforts to divert attention from Russia crime,
Absolute nonsense. This is the Russian tv report of what the engineers found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7puNlaX0s0
An English translation of the Russian Union of Engineers report can be found here: http://www.vineyardsaker.co.nz/2014/09/18/malaysian-flight-mh17-crash-analysis-by-the-russian-union-of-engineers/
[Please note: the English translation doc ends with an additional ‘.dot’ extension. Remove it. MH17_Report_Russian_Union_of_Engineers_EN_Oceania_Saker.docx]
From the report:
Well, we cannot be sure that they were not fed information by the Russian Gov’t either.
There are two government parties here and they are both likely feeding us mis-information.
Well, I find that less than convincing 🙂
I have read the report. It is more thorough than much of the speculation from the other side, but there is much that is unknown.
Sounds like you bought the absurd lies from the US govt hook line and sinker. Quoting McCain (who poses with terrorists) boy that’s a really strong argument. The USA started everything to take over resources from Russia and weaken it in its oil dealings per the wolfowitz doctrine What do you think an ambassador caught on the phone saying “screw europe” means? The list of your fallacies goes on and on, the CIA and NGO’s fingerprints are all over this one just like Georgia, the orange revolution, etc. Putin kicked the bankers and oligarchs out of the country and they are pissed and want back in to take over the resources from the largest resource country in the world. Problem is this time they are meddling with a nuclear state that has comparable or even better technologies. They have already said that they would have to use nukes if pushed, because the USA policy of surrounding Russia is an obvious first strike approach. These idiots in Washington with their hubris are going to start WW III and people actually egg them on, go figure?
agreed, the CIA took over Crimea. those are secretly Amerikans dressed as Russians manning the border posts in Crimea. Putin is completely innocent. He told me so himself, so I know it is true.
pissedman’s post is highly accurate. the only thing that is going to stop this madness is the truth. there is no excuse for being propagandised when you have a reasoning mind and the internet.
Yes, because the internet is full of reasoning minds and unbiased truths.
Agreed. This horrible post must be in the top 5 all-time horrible posts at this site. The U.S. Empire is killing men, women, and children worldwide but Russia is the new Satan? None so blind as those who will not see.
pissedman,
That about sums it up in 13 lines.
any nation that might become a threat to uSSa hegemony is a threat to be removed basically
presently russia and china are it.
I dont see Russia putting missiles all over the borders of nearby nations
theres a hell of a lot of nato ones though
wolfowitz doctrine I think it is?
stinks.
most aussies would like you to pack n leave pine gap and not add more marines etc in Darwin.
Chairman of BP admitting the Russian economic sanctions are ineffective.
Russia is simply relabelling equipment imports for the oil industry, which are subject to sanctions, as “gas” drilling equipment. Gas extraction is exempt from the sanctions, because Europe cannot survive without imports of Russian gas.
You base this article on the assumption that EU politicians are rational, big mistake.
Couldn’t agree more, EU politicians have a strong left-wing bias with some having been communists and Marxists in the past and is probably why Obama is so keen to see the UK fully subsumed into the EU state.
The EU is built on the premise that you can’t trust the public to make the right decisions through democratic votes and that an unelected political elite and elite civil service must take over this role. That is how the EU operates and it has such a major democratic deficit that it is largely anti-democracy in terms of what people understands democracy to mean or to be.
And that is where the EU’s economic and energy problems come from. The overwhelmingly left-wing, unelected EU elite have far too much in common with the watermelons under the ‘green umbrella’ and that is why they have worked hand in glove with them to (wittingly or unwittingly) destroy the EU’s energy base.
I think EU politicians are fiddling along with the USA. The initial hostile move was made by the EU when it encouraged and then backed the Ukrainian coup de etat earlier this year. Now the EU economy is tanking, they run the risk of reduced gas deliveries, and all of this to support a crooked government in the far reaches of Eastern Europe? It´s absolutely crazy.
With the energy deals with China in the Russian pocket, the first snow flakes over Europe may indicate a bitter winter for the EU.
It is going to be several years before Russia is actually delivering gas to China.
There is plenty of evidence that MH17 was shot down by a BUK. The ceiling for the BUK is well in excess of the highest flying passenger jet.
Then show it.
Just look at the fragments, they are not bullet holes, they are too irregular. The jet was downed by a missile, tracked by satellite in 3 countries, and detonated by proximity fuse before striking the aircraft, the resulting shrapnel peppered the aircraft causing it to break up in flight so quickly the Pilots didn’t even know what was happening. Yes a machine gun might down a 767 but it’d take a lot of holes and I’d think the 767 pilot or flight engineer might happen to notice that and mention it on the flight recording.
Was the flight recording ever released?
bobl, do you see the picture i posted. the window frame you see is that of the pilots, the very front tip of the aircraft, look at the window frame, how it curves up, it is the pilot’s window.
>>>Just look at the fragments, they are not bullet holes, they are too irregular.
nonsense, many are round, others are at an angle, just like bullet holes.
>>>”The jet was downed by a missile, tracked by satellite in 3 countries, and detonated by proximity fuse before striking the aircraft, the resulting shrapnel peppered the aircraft causing it to break up in flight so quickly the Pilots didn’t even know what was happening.”
a missile blast next to the aircraft is in one direction. the holes in the picture are entry holes and exit holes, not consistent with a missile explosion, yet it is consistent with the cockpit being shot at from one side, then the other.
>> Yes a machine gun might down a 767 but it’d take a lot of holes and I’d think the 767 pilot or flight engineer might happen to notice that and mention it on the flight recording.
look at the picture – that is the cockpit, the pilot was sat just behind that window, can you count these 30mm cannon fire, just one of those bullets will take your arm off.
So you contend that they were shot at head on by a jet aircraft on a collision course with the aircraft, gee, the guns would have to point straight at it, and neither the pilot, nor the automated systems for collision avoidance nor air traffic control noticed a thing. Yup, I’m sure you’re right /sarc
@enviro mental
…
How did the jet hit the front of the cockpit with bullets if it was flying behind the airliner?
Enviro mental…
Err no, it depends on the warhead, if this device had multiple payloads designed to spray a cloud of shrapnel in all directioms, I’d expect the target to be hit in multiple directions pretty much simultaneously. The blast does not come from one direction at all.
Bobl, can you provide some links to the reports you cite? Because even the Dutch don’t say that it was a missile. Equally, the only satellite or radar evidence I’ve seen to date was provided by the Russians. No Kiev air traffic control radar or controller conversations. No US satellite imagery. No US or European radar records.
RESNAP – a fragmentation missile cannot simultaneously explode on one side of the aircraft and again on the other side of the aircraft. if someone throws a grenade and it lands in front of you, it explodes in front of you, it does not explode in front of you and at the same time explode behind you.
I have seen what 20 and 30mm cannon can do to steel. What you see in the single picture you post is shrapnel from an exposive. If you can post pictures of the fussilage from BOTH sides, verfiable, then you may have some credence. Either way…thats not 30mm connon holes, not even 20.
patrick, you said , “What you see in the single picture you post is shrapnel from an exposive”
how do you explain entry and exit holes near the same location? an explosion radiates from a single point outside of the plane, any object in the way of an explosion is going to be hit by shrapnel from a single direction. the wreckage should have shown only exit holes or only entry holes. explain please.
Look at the “pealed” back section of rivetted metal… and also not all entry/exit points are similar…rules out a single calibre weapon.
>>look at the picture – that is the cockpit, the pilot was sat just behind that window, can you count these 30mm cannon fire, just one of those bullets will take your arm off.
And you have contended that it was shot from both sides of the cockpit. After the first pass if those were 30 mm cannon holes, which they aren’t, the pilots and controls would have been destroyed. So the Ukranian fighter pilot is so good that he could accurately fire on the other side of the cockpit while the plane was flying out of control.
And if it was downed by cannon fire to the cockpit why did it come apart before hitting the ground?
And what reason would Ukraine have for shooting down a commercial jetliner?
@Patrick
Boeing’s aren’t made of steel. They’re mostly aluminum. Just saying.
false dichotmoty – that is not evidence that a BUK shot it down and certainly not “plenty” of evidence. ukraine has BUK’s so says nothing to who did it.
how does a BUK cause entry and exit holes next to each other.
a BUK homes to the engine, not the cockpit.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh17-extraordinary-new-wreckage-discovered-machine-gun-type-holes-1458258
[img]http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/images/localworld/ugc-images/276309/Article/images/21747780/6461452-large.jpg[/img]
This class of missile has a fragmentation warhead coupled with a proximity fuse designed to explode beneath an airborne target at a range of between 100 & 300 feet, depending on the variant. The warhead is designed to explode in an expanding pattern which ensures that the target is struck multiple times.
RESnape – a fragmentation missile cannot simultaneously explode on one side of the aircraft and again on the other side of the aircraft. if someone throws a grenade and it lands in front of you, it explodes in front of you, it does not explode in front of you and at the same time explode behind you.
When the pilots’ oxygen tank that is in the cockpit explodes when hit by shrapnel from the missle
The images are meaninless. Certainly not 30mm connon.
I don’t believe that the bold part is true.
The Wiki page on the BUK missiles claims that terminal guidance is under the control of semi-active radar and that it is radar proximity fused.
So, while I don’t think it homes in on the engines, I would expect the designers to have it home in on the center of the object as determined by its radar reflections, although there might be problems with that as well.
In any event, if a BUK was used, it would have been approaching the plane from below, but off to one side (ie, not directly below), and heading roughly towards one of the wing roots, I would have thought, and would have detonated once it was within the proximity distance they designed into the missile. I imagine that 5 meters would be the distance, but it could be longer.
From the picture above the holes appear to be going the wrong way for such a scenario, but I could be wrong. The picture also shows some holes (3) (top left) that appear to have been created by objects going from outside the plane to inside the plane, and other holes that appear to have been created by objects that were travelling from inside the plane to outside the plane.
We can also estimate the size of those objects by comparing the holes to the screw/rivet heads nearby.
At 100 feet, the total surface area of the sphere when it reaches the plane is something like 125,000 feet. A 777-300 subtends about 3% of that surface in one direction (across its width) and 39% in the other direction. It total, a 777-300 intersects with about 4% of that sphere. (as long as I have not got my numbers wrong.)
I think there are serious problems with the claim that a BUK was used if your claim that it detonates between 100 & 300 feet from the plane is correct. I would expect holes all along the portion of the plane facing the explosion and they should have differing trajectories, and that does not seem to be the case from what we have seen.
Where I said 125,000 feet, I meant square feet 🙂
The moment of the shot down there were more US spy satellites watching this place than any other place on Earth. The Big Boys know exactly what happend that day.
… but they have not bothered to show us what they claim to know.
Of course they haven’t shown us. Intelligence agencies have historically been loath to reveal their sources and capabilities. In WWII attacks that could have been stopped or impeded weren’t just so the Germans wouldn’t suspect that Enigma had been compomised.
But still you believe them?
Where did I ever say I believed any intelligence agency?
If Russia does turn off the gas this will be an excellent opportunity for the EU to make use of all their green technology. Reportedly trees burn quite well and will heat a house in winter.
Well I see WUWT is now spreading NATO propaganda.
[your opinion is noted, and ignored -mod]
I wouldn´t even call it “NATO” propaganda. It seems to be a neocon campaign.
Exactly. Victoria Nuland, wife of Robert Kagan, is the one who said “F**k the EU” as she engineered the Ukrainian coup that overthrew the elected government of President Yanukovych. Nuland was foreign-policy advisor to Dick Cheney during the George W. Bush administration, and is currently serving as assistant secretary of European and Eurasian Affairs in the Obama administration.
Husband Robert Kagan was the original director of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), and created its successor, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), with Bill Kristol in 2009 after PNAC garnered too much attention as a fifth column in foreign policy.
Now Robert’s brother, Fred, and his wife, Kim, are eager to get WWIII started, and slay Iran for Israel in the process, with a horrifically idiotic strategy published in September, 2014, called A Strategy to Defeat the Islamic State. If you ever wonder how we get embroiled in wars we don’t know how to end, or enact foreign policy that comes back to bite us on the rump, skim the Kagan doc. All these people possess is a vocabulary. Their stupidity is beyond belief.
(contd.) Or they are trying to destroy the USA.
Fernando Leanme
September 30, 2014 at 3:14 am
“I wouldn´t even call it “NATO” propaganda. It seems to be a neocon campaign.”
Same/same. NATO always has as supreme commander an American general (Breedlove currently); the general secretary is the public figurehead, always a European, who has no say.
Obama administration is basically run by neocons who also ran the previous administration (Nuland/Nudelman et al).
The EU is an off-chute of the russian empire. They pretend to apply sanctions but really can’t. The greens rule the EU via the commissariat and will not allow the drilling for oil and gas in europe of which there are massive reserves. The greens don’t care either way, their form of marxism or the russian form of communism.
Yesterday, the far right FN entered the french Sénat for the first time ever. UKIP are marching in the UK, AfD in germany.
Your post is correct in all respects bar one – you need to replace “russian” with “US” in your first sentence.
They say that like war is a bad thing.
The US has gotten far better returns as advances with profitable practical applications from research spending on military technologies than it has ever been gotten from research spending on windmills and sun catchers.
Besides, we could use the jobs, and wartime economies make lots. Domestic manufacturing would skyrocket as importing from China wouldn’t be too sensible.
It could also help with the recent cross-border flood of undocumented would-be future Democrats. They come from horrible places plagued with corruption and violence. Let them sign up and serve as front line grunts, after a few years we’ll ship them back to their home nations with a fat contract completion bonus and the acquired skills to fix their own countries so their people don’t have to come here.
And pushing the EU faster towards independence from Russian energy supplies and away from thinking “carbon emissions” are a tangible global threat would be a great boon.
War is good, when it’s a good war.
Well smashing things up, should be a real boon to the economy, Bastiat has a thing to say about that I think; but let’s look at the wonderful experiences the USA had:
Vietnam – depleted the Gold reserves and forced an end to Bretton Woods, switch to PetroDollar, fourfold increase of Oil price in USD terms, and the subsequent 1970ies stagflation economy.
Iraq – huge deficits, switch to the Greenspan housing bubble which got pricked in 2007, and threw labor force participation rate back to levels of the 1970ies, to this day, even while the Fed was printing trillions of Dollars…
WELL GOOD LUCK WARMONGER.
See, you make my case. War is good, when it’s a good war. Vietnam certainly wasn’t one, ongoing skirmishes in brush and swamp with no clear objective that went on far too long for no good reason.
For Iraq you’re largely attributing the effects of long-standing and ongoing Democrat policies and initiatives to the war. Yes, you are blaming Bush. For Afghanistan there was a clear goal, punish the Taliban for shielding the 9/11 perpetrators. Done. For Iraq it was get rid of Saddam. Done. But then we tried to build democratic nations of regions comprised of sects and tribes that could only be temporarily unified by strong dictators.
Now World War Two, there was a clear enemy that wanted to destroy us. The entire country could support the effort, except for disloyal sympathizers and betrayers, the common people were willing to buckle down and accept sacrifice, to volunteer. It was a world war where we had strong allies who were fighting for their survival as well. It lead to a massive economic boom and tremendous increases in personal wealth. Before people in poverty couldn’t afford food. Nowadays people in poverty might not be able to afford premium cable TV.
Provided the nukes aren’t used, and even the losing side wouldn’t want their own people wiped out in the retaliation, World War Three could be a very good war.
Do you notice what you just said? Small wars, nyaah, they’re stupid. World Wars, those are the ones where we make money hand over fist.
I won’t even go into the details of who did what and how America managed to earn money in WW II; what you’re saying is, let’s destroy all kinds of countries quickly while trying to avoid damage to our own and we should be fine, and you’re right, that’s a great way to run a world war if one can get it.
But this time the weapons systems would not allow you to survive the war unscathed.
Maybe something to consider even for an Arch war monger.
Sorry, but the broken window economic view is a fallacy – triply so when talking about ‘good’ war.
I saw recently that the highest federal spending in 1 year for the Vietnam war was in the last decade – because of ongoing medical and other benefit costs for the US troops who served there.
I also don’t see how 58K dead and 150K+ wounded – not to mention the opportunity cost of literally millions of prime working age American men and women – can be considered an economic boost.
Then there’s the fact that the combination of Vietnam war spending and Johnson’s economic programs forced the US to exit Bretton Woods because the US gold supply was dangerously depleted.
No. On the international scene, it was France depleting the US gold supply throughout the 60s that forced Nixon’s hand. Every time France got their mitts on $US35.00, they would trade it in for an ounce of gold. For 10 years.
The US paid for the Vietnam War and continues to pay for domestic economic programs with $US we issue. We’ve been off the gold standard domestically since 1934. We can’t go broke. We’re not broke. We issue our own currency and can denominate all debts owed in $US.
Don’t you know why and how France was depleting the US’ gold supply? It was because under Bretton Woods, a nation which had too much of another nation’s currency was allowed to redeem it for gold at a fixed price.
Thus your assertion is correct, but you have the correlation completely wrong.
From c1ue on September 30, 2014 at 4:43 am:
So of course you try to make your points using the Vietnam war, which I had already identified as not being a good war, thus your “points” were meaningless towards refuting my words as they actually reinforced my case.
“I saw recently that the highest federal spending in 1 year for the Vietnam war was in the last decade…”
Good wars are normally short, brutal, and effective.
“I also don’t see how 58K dead and 150K+ wounded (…) can be considered an economic boost.”
That comes afterwards, when the victors extract their rewards of victory. And mere body counts are meaningless, WWII had far more, 420K US dead. It’s the technology and tactics that determine those.
“…forced the US to exit Bretton Woods…”
The Bretton Woods system assured WWII was a very good war by fortifying the dominant economic position the US had gained. But by setting a fixed price of US dollars to a fixed amount of gold, it was doomed to failure. If nothing else, the natural increasing of the worldwide gold supply assured the devaluing of the dollar. Its collapse was inherent, leading to the US changing the game to retain dominance.
The Greenies will continue to push renewables and fight shale. No matter the cost as they are building their pre-industrial utopia. So what people die of the cold, their are saving the planet!
No wonder they are considered Putins Pawns, he must be proud of them!
Fracking may not be banned in UK , but neither is it happening. Decisions are taken, not at National level but at local, County level , and the local councils are too frightened by activists to allow it.
Milliband and Labour are certain to regain power in May 2015 and one of their first decisions will surely be to ban fracking. I understand from the media that they intend to greatly expand wind power capability , onshore and off shore- “1 million green jobs to be created by next Labour Govt”.
During this last month of lovely anticyclone weather ( thanks to AGW of course ) wind power supplied approx. 1% of UK’s power consumption against a nominal 6%.
Seriously?
Why I agree with the necessity of europe developing shale gas, this whole article is nothing but a load of anti Russian propaganda.
Is the moderator asleep? Anthony, your website should not venture this far afield of science affiliated politics, it dilutes the message. This is the first time I have seen this happen since reading here daily for 4 years now. Stick to science related politics along with the science not this.
It will be fun to see if Putin’s propaganda machine comes down on WUWT. Judging from some of the comments above it seems that they may have taken notice. CBC (Canadian national radio well known for being delusional over global warming) had a phone in show on the situation in Ukraine and half the people who called in had strong Russian accents and they were filled with comments like “Putin ees warm teddy bear who just want to make warm luvy duvy but evil West is corrupting our slavic brothers in Ukraine”. CBC being rather dull witted simply aired the inane comments without challenging them. However you respond to these Putses, make sure you take the time to have a good laugh because they really are hilarious. Hale to the Putsin.
BCBill
September 30, 2014 at 1:36 am
“It will be fun to see if Putin’s propaganda machine comes down on WUWT. Judging from some of the comments above it seems that they may have taken notice. ”
I don’t get a check from Putin neither do I get one from Big Oil for being a Global Warming Skeptic, but thanks for the slur, you show your colors.
But you know I am in an American colony, therefore closer to the wars the USA wages than a CONUS inhabitant, so you might understand I see the actions of the USA warmongers with a bit more skepicism than you. For you it might be great business in the military industrial complex; for the rest of the world, not so.
BCBill – I suggest you hail the spell-checker.
The supposed Russian speakers at least have the excuse of not having English as their primary language.
What’s your excuse for not being able to spell or compose grammatically correct sentences?
Or use that “enter” key on your keyboard?
The spelling mistakes were intentional.
You miss-spelled Putz too – although why you’d use a Jewish term for a Russian Slav is beyond me.
A sad attempt at humor?
Was your failure to use punctuation also deliberate? The run-ons in your post are quite delightful.
A more energy self-sufficient Europe is a good thing. There are many ways to achieve this, and if we look at the total supply and use of energy in Europe, the Russian part is not that big. Russia depends more on Europe as a customer than Europe depends on Russia as a supplier.
More fracking, more nucear power, more coal. That seems to be the way international politics is pushing European energy in the nexrt few years, at least. Wind and sun will probably become less interesting if the political crises in the east goes on.
We’ll see this winter. BTW, Russia has made a deal in the last two weeks to send gas to Ukraine.
Yes, we will see this winter. BTW, Russia seems to be eager to keep Ukraine as a customer? And Germany has gas reserves that they are ready to send to Ukraine via Poland.
Other suppliers are also ready to step in:
“Lithuanian gas supplier Litgas said Thursday it has signed a five-year deal with Norway’s Statoil AS to deliver 540 million cubic meters of natural gas annually from 2015, a move that could put an end to Lithuania being wholly dependent on Russian gas.”
http://online.wsj.com/articles/statoil-to-supply-gas-to-lithuania-in-five-year-deal-1408637833
Especially the nuclear. Am I mistaken, or did Germany and Japan effectively dismantle their nuclear infrastructure?
Anthony, please assess this article for content and the author for motive. At the least, please address our comments here. The whole essay beggars confidence. It is difficult to conceive how this article isn’t similar to a propaganda piece.
1. It appears to identify several emotionally-charged events: jetliner downing, Ukraine civil war, Russian human-rights record, etc.
2. It focuses substantially on fracking and natural gas as a solution to energy and electricity supply challenges, utterly neglecting nuclear power.
3. It seems to advocate for substantive legal and political change, such as adjusting laws to mineral rights property ownership, potentially motivating citizens receiving those rights to vote policy for personal gain (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we’re talking a major shift in law).
4. It advocates that the US, which has so far been unable to arrange even the Keystone XL pipeline for tar sands, should focus efforts to transport natural gas across an ocean to supply nations with several local alternative fuel sources, including coal and nuclear fuels.
5. The article utterly neglects efficiency solutions. Granted, Europe is already very energy-efficient, but the omission is still telling.
6. The article places much blame at the feet of one man: Vladimir Putin. Such arguments should be suspect in this world after the deaths of Mohamar Khadaffi and Saddam Hussein, among others.
7. The article ignores alternative customers for Russian oil and gas, specifically China, but also both Koreas and Japan.
8. I am especially troubled by the apparent motive for European energy independence from Russia. While I believe every nation should seek at least enough economic and resource independence to sustain sovereignty, the article appears to advocate energy independence for the express purpose of opposing a particular nation’s pursuit of its own sovereignty and internal governmental affairs – one that arguably ought be permitted to sell inexpensive energy resources to others. Is the next argument for an embargo of Russian energy exports?
9. Finally, and here I am on shakier ground, I recall some international disputes over Ukrainian transport fees for Russian petroleum through Ukraine. It seems unlikely that Ukraine will successfully emerge from very difficult economic conditions without Russian participation and Russian trade, especially given Crimea’s independence form Ukraine and attachment to Russia.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) calls Russia “a gas station masquerading as a country,” because 60% of its exports are oil and natural gas.
How would he call Saudi-Arabia ?
Both the US and the EU are bankrupt so they take you to war. They have no other way out of the debt crisis. But don’t worry WW III will be short. I myself have calculated that it could be over in 1 or 2 hours
Time is running out for Congress to extend more than 50 tax breaks worth nearly $85 billion, including popular ones for college expenses and energy-efficient appliances.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/09/30/dozens-tax-breaks-set-to-expire-unless-congress-votes-for-extenders-in-lame/
You might need a stronger battery for your PC, so that the war game could last a bit longer.
The US, Great Britain, Japan, Canada, and Australia cannot go broke. They have sovereign non-convertible currencies on a floating exchange rate.
The EU countries that use the Euro are another matter. They’ve given up their sovereignty. They are subject to the whim of the unelected technocrats in Brussels who dole out the Euros.
I suspect World War III has been ongoing for much of living memory. It started with the unnecessary nuclear bombing of civilians in Japan and has gathered steam ever since. Cold War, Berlin Wall fall, NATO expansion, and 9/11 marked changes in phase. Sure, nuclear exchange and an end of civilization in a few hours is entirely possible. An Orwellian permanent warfare world or a New World Gulag are more likely though..
It`s Germany you have to watch, it`s never had an empire, tried twice and now it`s having a third go by stealth.
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/leo-mckinstry/485699/Germany-s-march-to-control-Europe-is-now-relentless
Yup. And considering it was the country with the largest debt and in trouble in 1999, that’s quite a feat.
“The 28 EU nations as a whole depend on Russia for one-third of their oil and gas.”
Such statements are always difficult to interpret. Are all 28 countries regarded as equal here, so that Estonia counts for as much as Germany? Or is it 1/3 of the total use of oil and gas in the EU?
European nations imported 449 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2013, and produced about 236 billion cubic meters. Production is declining as fields deplete. The problem is more serious in Great Britain.
162 billion cubic meters were imported from Russia in 2013.
The key point is that Europe is “hard piped” to consume Russian gas in large quantities. A slight reduction in deliveries can´t made up. The idea that USA gas can replace Russian gas is naive. The USA lacks the export facilities, Europe lacks the import facilities and distribution grid. And the USA doesn´t have the gas delivery capacity to replace Russian gas.
Russian oil is also supplied to Europe in large volumes. Replacing Russian oil is also logistically impossible because a portion is delivered by pipeline. Europe lacks the distribution networks to flow oil from import points into the pipeline nodes.
If you want to study the issue in more detail you could start here
http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy/statistical-review-downloads.html
Lots of assertions about Russia in this propaganda piece. Woefully short of evidence. Could just as well be reading some evidence-light garbage from an AGW zealot.
Did this parachute into the wrong website?
Over the years a lot of European politicians have been good friends of the Russian energy sector – such as former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who accepted a lucrative post with Gazprom shortly after stepping down from politics. No doubt it was to ensure smooth continuity of supply.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schröder
Dear Mr. Watts, I suggest closing this thread for comments. There is way too much ranting already (also by me), and WUWT is a much too serious website to have these political hobbyhorses trampling all over the place.
Please do not close comments. That would be unproductive by proving you can be motivated to close free discourse. I’m guessing you can afford the comment space here.
This post seems to be an unrealistic wish list.
The post is a neocon wish list. I don´t understand why Driessen would put his head in a bathtub full of piranhas over an issue like this. Hell, if they are going to go into non climate issues I want to get a guest pòst about Venezuela´s government and the way it abuses human rights.
Reliance on Russian natural gas reminds me of the days of Arab oil embargoes when they put everybody up to ransom to increase prices; it worked. France made the decision to increase its nuclear capacity, and now it keeps its green neighbours supplied rather than reduce output overnight, but current politics seems not to favour new facilities. In the interests of their national security many countries will have develop new energy policies so they are not reliant on others, and it will have to be something other than green power which does not provide baseload capacity for industries and isn’t very reliable.
Mr. Watts:
I suggest more than just closing the thread for comments, though that would be a start.
A straight international power-politics post like this doesn’t seem to belong here at all.
Let’s not see WUWT morph into a different kind of DailyKos.
I agree with Old Crusader. This is going off in all directions, including the ‘Jewish conspiracy to take over the world’ hints. Even if I agree with Paul concerning the energy situation.
you are the only one to mention jews. something in this discussion obviously frightens you.
small minds like yours, enviro Mental
you appear to be the only racist here, are you saying racists have large minds?
Hear hear! I’ve found that a blog is only effective as long as it stays focused. I’d truly hate to see this blog become ineffective. Stay focused on climate. If you want to link to an article then put in the link and the energy/climate related parts. Ignore all the political wrappings.
Again, closing this thread only proves WUWT can be forced to silence discussion. That does nothing to address the flaws in the essay posted here, repeatedly addressed throughout these comments you propose to close. If there are specific comments that ought be censored, it would be better to name those and the reason for censure.
Right, but are we not straying very far from the climate issue here? What has 30 mm fighter jet guns to do with global climate?
In truth, Anthony Watts himself has wide interests both within and outside the sciences. It only ‘seems’ that WUWT is dedicated to climate issues.
“Watts Up With That” was overtly intended by Mr. Watts to allude to a broadly inquisitive, investigative & exploratory disposition.
I both approve & enjoy the ‘mix’.
Not may folk were shot trying to get into East Berlin from the West. Why was that? What has really changed in the government of the West since then? Not a lot. What has really changed in the government of Russia since then? Not a lot. And when can the Tartars have Crimea back following their mass deportation in 1944?
The fact is that it is the EU (Germany?) which has been aggressively expansionist in Eastern Europe, ludicrously provocative towards Russia. The pro Russian government in Ukraine was overthrown in a pro EU coup. Hardly surprising that the ethnically Russian people of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea (which is historically part of Russia) want nothing to do with the Kiev regime. As regards who shot down the jet like everyone else here I don’t know who was responsible, but it does not change the fact that we have a dubious regime in Kiev supported by the highly dubious imperialistic EU.
What, like when Russian tanks rolled into Prague in spring 1968 to stop Dubcek being seduced by the west? Or Hungary in 1956 when the Russian tanks rolled in there? At least now the iron fist of Russia can pride itself in jailing young women for singing rude songs in a christian cathedral.
Yes, and Hungary now seems to be yearning to go back from its neocon dabbling. Equally interesting to see how the various US government funded NGOs have played a huge role is so-called “democracy” uprisings – the Ukrainian coup-to-power government being actually the 2nd incarnation “democracy” movement.
Sad that democracy is only acceptable when the government voted in is a US puppet.
WOW wasn’t expecting to see NATO propaganda posted here.
Makes your stance to GW invalid.
I thought you people use the brain (skeptic).
I see – because you disagree with views expressed here about Russia, then we are wrong about global warming? Seriously?
Another drive-by attack by the truly Ignorant. He won’t be back and he doesn’t care- he’s ‘made his point’ and feels better about not doing his part to ‘WE’RE SAVING THE WORLD!’
I guess this is a diversion from the main topic, the same way your side likes to peddle communism when you protest advocating the draconian control of CO2 emissions? Or what exactly do you guys protest for? Could be you are mostly a bunch of watermelons using climate science as an excuse to do what you can´t do by winning elections?
(This thread sure is getting political, isn´t it?)
I would just like to leave a link so as to put the Putin/Ukraine happenings into a different perspective via a Gentleman who knows a thing or two.
http://freenations.net/
I think the Author of this post should read some ‘Russian News’ just to get some idea of how complicated things are.
The Gas dispute–
http://en.itar-tass.com/economy/751985
An interesting post. Even more interesting comments. It has certainly struck a nerve.
Holy Smokes! two articles here in the last day and all I can do is shake my head. If you realized who was behind the Trans Caspian Pipeline years ago, and followed what happened thereafter as I have, you will find that it is the same people who got all that stimulus money to put up numerous wind turbines and solar plants.
I also see critics of the occupy protests and will say this, it did start out with the blame being rightly focused on those who committed criminal activities and still got away with it. it started out on the right foot until Bill Mckibben et. al.. went in and tried too co-opt it with ill informed paid protesters. The same financial institutions the original movement protested about, financed the renewable entities that everyone here knows about and that included significant conflicts of interest and the cronyism. Also, the financial institutions protested against were involved in laundering money for the drug trade (HSBC et.al.), terrorism financing, human trafficking, fraud (BOA/Wells et.al.) and on and on. What about MF Global and how Corzine skated on that even after he lied under oath to congress?
How about the institutions that finance certain renewable companies involved in drugs, arms smuggling and organized crime: UPC/IVPC/Evergreen et. al.?
I am an older individual and am disappointed at the attitudes shown at times here by some who hide behind women, wrapped in a flag holding a bible. Most of the original protesters, (a mix of intelligent young and older conservative AND liberal persons) and knew that AGW was bullshit and that the banks and others were all too willing to profit from it. They alway finance both sides of a war for profit .
The protest was eventually ruined by a calculated ‘poisoning of the well’ and well placed propaganda. Sadly, I see the media had also been poisoned as have the minds of other intelligent people.
Like a really bad magic trick, I see fingers pointing somewhere else as to distract from what the magician is really up to.
It was the EU’s attempt to annex the Ukraine which led to the confrontation with Russia. They were trying to steal Russia’s access to the Black Sea by deposing an elected government and imposing their own apparatchiks. The whole thing, including many of the “Pro” protesters has been directly funded by the EU’s taxpayers and Russia’s response was entirely predictable.
If the EU can’t cope with the consequences of its actions that’s its problem.
L.O.L.
Seems that it is OK for USA to exercise economic might but not democratic Russia. Also that Germany having banned both nuclear and fracking, is in a pickle of its own making.
That aside, like Coi2 and warming, evidence of Russian complicity in MH17 is non existent.
What tangled webs we weave.
Vaclav Klaus – renowned CAGW sceptic:
27 Sept: Spectator: Vaclav Klaus: the West’s lies about Russia are monstrous
An interview with the former Czech president, possibly the West’s last truly
outspoken leader
He doesn’t agree with the western elite’s current hostility towards Russia,
which he believes is based on a false and outdated view of the country
I spent most of my life in a communist
Czechoslovakia under Soviet domination. But I differentiate between the
Soviet Union and Russia. Those who are not able to understand the difference
are simply not looking with open eyes. I always argue with my American and
British friends that although the political system in Russia is different
from the system in our countries and we wouldn’t be happy to live in such a
system, to compare the current Russia with Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union is
stupid.’
He says, with finality: ‘The US/EU propaganda against Russia is really
ridiculous and I can’t accept it.’…
Vaclav Klaus is different, a throwback to the days when our leaders did
stand for something and weren’t afraid to speak their minds. Let’s hope he
does not turn out to be Europe’s last conviction politician.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9322652/europe-needs-systemic-change/
Well, I take the war mongering, imperialist, infiltrating, anti-environmental, US-EU anyday over a medieval, backwards, aggressive, poor country like Russia. It is a simple matter of choice and by the way, we KNOW that the Putinbots are activated all over the internet. No exception for this blog either.
Anytime someone starts throwing around the term “neocon”, the credibility of their words drops to near zero, with me.
The term “neocon” was coined and applied themselves by a group of American intellectuals. The term has been in use now for decades. It says a lot about you that a political term in wide use is now not to be used. I guess you would toss out “progressive” also. Any others we should never write here? (besides the S-word of course)
Now it is true that many people toss about all sorts of good and descriptive terms and labels without really knowing what those words mean — but it is a fact of life that ignorance is an human trait. (see “Dr.” Mann for example) A term is not devalued simply because an ignorant man uses the term.
.So what if the term has been in use for decade, it’s almost always misused, as either a propaganda term, or by grossly misinformed people. Feel free to go upthread and show one example of some harangue where “neocon” was used in a realistic context.
It says a lot more about you that you made an untrue claim about what I said and used it for a personal attack. Way to go.
Goodness – a totally misguided diatribe if I ever saw one.
The reason those countries are dependent on Russian energy is because their energy infrastructure was largely built when they were part of the Soviet Union, and many of those nations received lower than market priced energy for years after the USSR changeover in 1991.
To blame Russia for its customers failing to diversify is neocon economics of the highest order.
WUWT really should stay out of areas which have nothing whatsoever to do with climate – and this area doesn’t even have anything to do with energy except that it is the excuse used in the latest East vs. West struggle.
Hey, c1ue– There you go with that “neocon” thing, which tells me you are either a know- nothing or a propagandist (both?), then you make an argument for the suppression of (our) free speech. You are welcome to take your own advice and STHU. How about that?
Neocon is a very correct term given the fact that the primary source of all this anti-Russia talk (and action) ranges from the wife of Robert Kagan (Vic Nuland), to John McCain, to Brzezenski, and on and on.
Equally, your inability to intelligently converse seems to indicate your own predilection to that ideology.
That’s quite a spectrum of politicians you’ve included as neocons. It becomes apparent that according to you, politicians fit the mold of neocon if they aren’t leftist enough.and in this instance, if they aren’t supporters of the current Russian adventurism. Your suggestion about what WUWT should and should not be concerned with falls flat, but it’s the sort of talk one would expect from the Politburo and from those who have suddenly appeared in these threads in support of Putin.
One of the better articles this year. The EU should frack and nuke. Frack for the current generation and then develop nuke (thorium would be my choice to divert windmill funds into development) for the future. Nuke power can drive synfuels. The Germans did synfuels in WWII which is a much better alternative than whatever they have blowing in the wind.
Except the essay doesn’t advocate nuclear decay fueled steam turbines, it very clearly omits nuclear and favors fracking for natural gas. Why the omission?
Russia : A land where you have none of the rights and all of the freedoms.
The USA : A land where you all of the rights and none of the freedoms.
The first casualty of war is the truth. As this “romance blogger” noted.
http://www.luckylovers.net/blog/uplode_file/43203_1411646811.jpg
Note, Lugansk and Donetsk flags are being waved. Another lie biting the dust.
The UA army were sent in to stop any referendum being carried out. They bombed homes, businesses and infrastructure also shot people up. So they ran. Apart those who wanted to fight, the old and the poor. A war crime!
Now Tartarstan has free health care. No UA debts, lower taxes. big tax income from the sea port lease..
They are now thriving!
Don’t forget Britain, France and Turkey fought for control of this port and we got our hides kicked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War
Nothing changes.
Putin simply sat there while the west destabilises for strategic advantages. The west certainly don’t want the people, their unelected nazi politicians. Or to take on their debts. The west wants that strategic deep sea water port. Control of the gas supply. also their land has to be made open for Mons(ters)anto. Russia banned GM crops due to the Indian cotton debacle. Once the market is cornered. Put the price up.
p.s. Taking about Chechen. Many of these guys are fighting in East UA. Plenty of videos of them being very effective!
MH17 (another outfitted spy plane diverted with civvies on board) was taken out in an attempt to put the blame on Putin. The UA has the same weaponry as Russia. People have seen this launcher being flaunted in a town before use. No spy drones, satellites, spies (reporters) saw anything come and go via the Russian borders.
Another war crime belonging to the UA army
Speaking of that. Not noticed one of the “recent” Russian “army movements” all over the news had guns lined up on a harvested field? Yes, you can see it was harvested. Remember the date it was announced.
More lies. Only people who are soft in the head can believe.
When the investigators came to the aircraft. The UA army denied safe passage. They came to collect the boxes. The UA started mortaring in the vicinity of the aircraft at the time. The UA will not hand over radar records. Russia did. A definite false flag from the US advised UA.
Another war crime.
The UA refused the Russian funded UN aid convoy. They checked everything, twice while refusing entry. The told UNESCO point blank they would receive no aid from the army whatsoever.
This is a war crime!
What reason for Russians to bomb and kill Russians in the East UA states? Only an idiot could possibly disagree. The UA army sent in to control a civilian people is enacting a war crime!
Most shell came from the airport area and the controlled checkpoints. Yes, we know its a war crime.
The UA army got slammed because the locals were supplying intel for remote aiming.
Now mass burials have been found where the UA soldiers held land. Their heads are decapitated, shot and some are naked. All local villagers.
You have it. Another war crime.
The UA army wanted expulsion or ethnocide at any cost. Well, they do have far right wing monsters in power aided and abetted by US wormtongues in Kiev. As usual the money is dangled like a carrot.
Sorry, what was that about Putin lawfully selling gas and oil?
I know a Canadian top cheese who has everything set poised to invade. Starting with a huge software hit. Not telling you more but if he does and he does not avoid me. He will never collect his pension.
Why all this? The CO2 lie is all about hiding the fact these are energy wars. The power mongers are getting scared of running short. Not wondered why O’Bomber has taken out ONLY Syrian fuel dumps and refinery’s? ISIL controls far outside of Syrian oil interests. Nobody has bombed the taken Kurdistani sources.
You have not fallen for the AGW lie. Don’t fall for its sister lie.
it is a terrible crime what is happening to the people of Lugansk and Donetsk. it is another crime that western media will not even report on these crimes.
the youtube channel anti-maidan-youtube shows the side we are not hearing from corporate news. it is clear these are honest humble people being terrorized by the ukrainian government.
Strange that this article didn’t say a word about nuclear energy being the safest, most efficient, and cleanest solution of the Putin problem.
People who say that holes in the pilot’s cabin of the Malayan airliner are bullet holes have never seen bullet holes.
Listening to the Russian propaganda (ITAR-TASS, RTV, etc.) to “get another point of view” is a grave error that will result in much grief and death. Unfortunately, Putin’s propaganda has already found the way to penetrate even this blog.
The take away here is that the EU only needs to increase its use of renewable energy by a factor of 57 times to solve its dependency on fossil fuels.
I couldn’t read past the first few sentences. There is no evidence Russia shot down MH17. The first western experts on the scene said there was evidence of machine gun fire to the cockpit (the pictures of the wreckage show this), there was no evidence of a missile plume (which the BUK missile would leave), the ATC control recordings at Kiev were seized immediately after the event and have not been released (why not?), the US refused to release any of its own satellite imagery of the event.
Ask yourself you benefited from the shoot down.
Honestly, it’s frightening how easily some people can be whipped up into a righteous frenzy by government propaganda spewed by the always complicit and sickeningly sycophantic mainstream media.
DON’T BELIEVE IT!
Do your own research, check facts (whatever the subject matter).
You can see the damage is not from 30mm cannon, let alone 20mm cannon.
The rebels shot down the plane with a Russian-made, Russian-supplied SAM. No machine guns, no cannon, either shot down that airliner.
Who benefits? It was an accident in that the plane was misidentified. You’re looking for a conspiracy where none exists.
One thing I have noticed over the last year or so.
Whenever there is a post that is in any way critical of Russia or Putin, and you get flooded with waves of trolls who spout the latest Kremlin line, even if it contradicts what they were told to say yesterday.
Naturally, FSB has a whole department working on it 24/7, and WUWT is on their list of popular Western sites.
And the EUSSR and US are totally innocent? Ukraine is Russia’s front yard. You don’t trample over their lawn.
Another thing is the people in the EUSSR are increasingly negative towards the Blitzkrieg-style EUSSR expansion to the east. It’s hideously expensive and the results are non existent. The Ukraine will only do one thing: soak up money from the EUSSR, just like all those countries. They’ve been “free” for 20 years and have achieved nothing worth mentioning. The only thing they do is elect thieves and then have a little revolution every 10 years.
We don’t need them. We don’t want them.
“There’s no question that the EU and USA must punish Russia for seizing Crimea, infiltrating troops and military equipment into eastern Ukraine to support secessionists, aiding terrorism, and killing hundreds of innocent jetliner passengers.”
This is laughable.
The jetliner was an accident. You know, like when that US ship shot down that Iranian airliner couple of years back.
You also realize that the Russian minority in the Ukraine has a right of self determination, right? If they chose to leave the Ukraine, they have the right to do so. It’s funny how the EUSSR and the US only accept this right and support it when the minority in question is not Russian. Want proof? Kosovo. Yes! So great! South Ossetia? No! Those evil Russians! That evil Putin!
The Russians in the Ukraine don’t want to snuggle up to the EUSSR, and they’re smart to do so!
The warmongering doesn’t come from Putin. It comes from the EUSSR and primarily from the US.
“But that’s all just Russian propaganda!”
And European media, especially in Germany and Austria, aren’t full of it? Do you guys even know that German and Austrian media is just a few inches away from the “Jeder Schuss ein Russ” propaganda of WW1?
The US media is known to lie about everything. Why would they tell the truth here? The truth doesn’t fit their agenda. And least the Russian news media doesn’t put Hong Kong into South America.
Do you know what the people in the streets say about it? They say that Putin can have back the entire Eastern block. The people are THAT fed up with the EUSSR’s insane politics and Obama’s constant warmongering on our doorstep.
Yeah, yeah, we’re spouting the latest line from the Kermlin. And you’re spouting the latest line from the biggest warmonger, aggressor and imperialist on the planet, supported by the biggest anti-democratic organization in Europe since the Iron Curtain fell (the EUSSR.)
I bet $30 you get per week that in 2 years you’ll serve a different master and say different things, while feeling as indignant and as righteous as you feel now, reptile.
I disagree with Driesen on his advocation of a policy to export our natural gas. We should reserve this important energy source for ourselves. Exporting it for profit is sort sighted and counter to our national interests.
Has Russia had even one day of decent governance in it’s entire existence? I mean, really. What waste of potential.
MarkW – personally I state my own view and have never been told what to say by the Kremlin or any other Russian agency. The fact that it would seem that you do not agree with me and others on this blog does not make us trolls but simply means that we are people with a different point of view; perhaps if you took the trouble to be better informed you could defend your opinions with rational arguments, not simply resort to name calling. I think that there are parallels here with the climate debate where it is better to make an effort to understand the arguments of those with whom you disagree so that you might better refute their position.
The US is behind the coup in Kiev, USAID and National Endowment for Democracy financed and organized the Petrol bomb throwing Maidan activist, to overthrow a democratic chosen president.
The US is destabilizing Europe, Victoria Nuland Admits: US Has Invested $5 Billion In The Development of Ukrainian, “Democratic Institutions”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37599.htm
West Europeans have no problem with the Russians, we have ties with the Russian that are older than the US, we are getting tired from the US propaganda,
We don’t need expensive US liquid Shale gas.
“West Europeans have no problem with the Russians, we have ties with the Russian that are older than the US” Exactly, my country has been at war with Russia for over 200 years. We know exactly what to expect from them, so they pose no problem. Sweden said NO when the Northstream gas pipe line was offered to us. Guess why? The whole archipelago outside Stockholm is full of submarine bases and hidden guns. To protect us from a Tsunami? During the beginning of the cold war Sweden had the fourth largest airforce in the world in ABSOLUTE terms. Why? Russia has historically always been a pain in the @$$ for its neighbors and continues to be so. A whole country behaving lika a drunken bully? I am afraid sanctions are not enough.
“European Union nations want to impose tougher economic sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine”.
You start off with a wrong statement. Russia did not invade Ukraine. They had 16,000 troops legally in the Crimea (they were allowed to have up to 25,000).
The democratic and legally elected government of Ukraine decided to take Russia up on a deal instead of the EU because it was a much better deal. The USA didn’t like that as it has been tightening the noose around Russia by expanding NATO eastwards.
The USA provoked and backed the overthrow of that government. The people in various regions decided they didn’t want to be part of that so they voted democratically to leave. Crimea was the first. It had been part of Russia since 1783 and was given to the Ukraine in a vodka fueled moment by Khrushchev.
If you really think that Russia would stand by idly and be encircled then your naivete is on display.
So rather than collect $90 million a year for base rental the Ukraine will now get zero. Instead of a discount on gas they will pay full price. Instead of credit they will pay in advance.
Propaganda in politics and often elsewhere (eg climate science) is a skilful mixture of fact and falsehood, so only those with a detailed knowledge of the matter could distinguish between two.
Here as a simple neutral test:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Lion.jpg
The above image is of an object recently discovered in Central Africa, it represents carved statuette of a native lion with what appears to be an early human(oid) baby.
Scientists are convinced that the object is extremely old, it predates appearance of humans, appearance of life on the Earth, and it may be older than the Earth itself.
There are two sentences there, one is fact one pure fabrication. Simple.
Wow, thanks Vuk; glad I read the piece and didn’t just look at the picture. You’ve shown clear evidence that Earth was seeded by extraterrestrials, instead of just another Elvis playing Pacman on a pizza crust.
/s
Hi Alan
We often choose to believe to be true what appears to be logical according to our knowledge and experience, but occasionally that may not the case. Your comment makes me think you already knew, but for anyone else:
the image was recorded only 11 days ago and the unexpected answer is on the ESA’s webpage
Actually, I regret making such a flippant attempt at humor, as it may detract somewhat from the excellent point made in vukcevic‘s post.
Yes, the fabrication starts with “Scientists say..” Always does.
Do you mind ? Lot of scientists read comments on this blog.
Come, come Vuk. You should know that I was referring to reports in the media that start out “Scientists say.. and then cite junk science of the warmers.
I was trained both as an engineer to make things that work and as a scientist to speculate about things that don’t. Fortunately, I was able to earn solid living out of the first rather than the second.
It was said that Science works on the frontier between knowledge and ignorance.
Most of scientists, we hope, are on the right side of that frontier, it is the mass media that it is most often on the other.
“Scientists are convinced that the object is extremely old, it predates appearance of humans, appearance of life on the Earth, and it may be older than the Earth itself.”
is pure fabrication.
“The above image is of an object recently discovered in Central Africa, it represents carved statuette of a native lion with what appears to be an early human(oid) baby.”
is a lie.
I have no idea how old is the object, ESA scientists say it is of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
ESA scientists: Comets are time capsules containing primitive material left over from the epoch when the Sun and its planets formed.
Hence fact is that Scientists are convinced that the object is extremely old, it predates appearance of humans, appearance of life on the Earth, and it may be older than the Earth itself., but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are correct, but hopefully we may find out soon.
I and many others, may have fallen in for the ESA propaganda, as it appears that many commentators in this thread have, on the both sides of the argument on the question of European energy supplies. Mixture of truth, half truths and outright lies is stuff of effective propaganda.
Dirty Snowball
http://youtu.be/ELbEG1xPX9s
or Rock
http://youtu.be/qYIpU0DpZzM
Ah, what a refreshing foreign policy blog-post about current issues…
Ten commandments of propaganda:
1. We do not want war.
2. The opposite party alone is guilty of war.
3. The enemy is the face of the devil.
4. We defend a noble cause, not our own interest.
5. The enemy systematically commits cruelties; our mishaps are involuntary.
6. The enemy uses forbidden weapons.
7. We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.
8. Artists and intellectuals back our cause.
9. Our cause is sacred. “The ages-old ‘God bless America’ is playing once more.”
10. All who doubt our propaganda, are traitors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsehood_in_War-Time
Russia is the ally of the West. Europe and America want a strong and growing Russia, to help balance a burgeoning China, India and general Asian juggernaut.
That someone owns an important resource, and is the supplier … well, the physics of economic levers & fulcrums is well known.
It is also in the interest of the West, that Russia generally acts in ways to consolidate and stabilize Eurasian provinces within its sphere. Some basically-legit forms of actions or response could of course also have avaricious or other ulterior components, and at times tactics may draw criticism (from & of all sides) … but the principle stands.
Putin’s response to recent sanctions has been so smooth & purposeful, it looks like a studied & prepared plan. Russia itself gains economic & strategic independence; enhances its domestic economy & (food) production-base … while Euro-leaders get a bogeyman with which to cajole & prod their own (somewhat dangerously) reluctant (or sniveling & whining) membership.
The problem with Putin is, not so much what he’s doing, but that he’s a bit of a ‘cult personality’. Finding a good successor and making a favorable post-Putin transition becomes more challenging, the longer he hangs around & the more dominance he gains. The USA learned this particular lesson well, under FDR.
Russian ‘crudities’, not to put too fine a point on it, help to deflect attention from American crudities … and our own exercise of often multi-dimensional (ie, sly & devious) self-interest. We, the EuroZone and Russia are partners.
And now let’s discuss the energy part of the document rather than the blatant political propaganda.
Why no mention of France and all the nuclear energy they have used for decades SAFELY?
Why ship energy to Europe? Isn’t that just trading one controller for another?
Why no mention of coal? Europe does have a lot of coal in various regions.
I’m all in favor of countries being as self sufficient as possible in food & energy as it makes sense to not be dependent on others.
It’s reasonably-ok to be energy-dependent on your ally, whom you are free to pretend is an ogre. Or a twit, in the case of USA reliance on Canada. Or a mental health case, viz Venezuela.
But it’s less-ok to be reliant on others for food-sources, since in the face of certain kinds of problems, they may not be able to provide the vital supplies, even if they want to. Plus, at-all-serious disturbances of the food-supply in developed countries could readily lead to severe destabilization.
Nuclear power policy went ‘psycho’, back in the ’70s. Globally.
This piece of propaganda has NO reason to be published in WUWT.
Notice, how many of those who attempt to defend Putin — an undeniable aggressor, blackmailer, poisoner, and mass murderer — never posted on this site before. Regardless of what they say, and however convoluted are their “arguments”, all of these “new posters” are Putin’s agents. They are being attracted to key words “Russia, Ukraine” like flies to you know what. How these people live with what they are?
Very large numbers visit WUWT regularly, but don’t usually leave comments.
Others, otoh, try to comment often, simply to ‘participate’.
If indeed a given WUWT post draws wider media notice, and this publicity does bring new visitors, that doesn’t seem nefarious either.
Advocating for a murderer, paid or pro bono, is nefarious in any case.
As a Russian, you have a useful perspective; even a special place in the discussion.
Some of your rhetoric, though, detracts from points that might have merit.
Nuke those with whom you disagree? Rape their daughters?
Come now … Russians are made of sterner stuff.
You don’t know of what you speak.
I find it distressful if someone from a different nation tells us how we should feel or whom we should trade with.
Dependence on countries serving oil is a technical issue that is solved by the consumer. We in the Czech Republic were 100% dependent on Russia even in the early 1990s, a few years after communism fell. Projects were realized that guaranteed that we get both gas and oil from other sources, too. Aside from Russian oil, we also have Arab oil flowing through Germany, and so on.
But Russia is still an extremely important provider of the fossil fuels and let me emphasize that it is the more problem-free one – in comparison with the alternative which are the Arab states (we have OK business relations with them, too, but it’s easier to imagine that something goes wrong over there). Suggestions that one should close these Russian valves in any foreseeable future are as insane as suggestions that the production of carbon dioxide should be heavily reduced or something like that. None of these things has anything to do with the reality assuming that people don’t want to pay huge amounts of money for the transition. And be sure that we don’t want to pay such money.
It is also a lie that “European nations want to impose tougher sanctions on Russia”. The Czech Republic not only doesn’t want to impose “tougher” sanctions on Russia; it wants to cancel the existing sanctions as well because our top politicians (president, prime minister, a key deputy prime minister – everyone who matters except for the foreign minister) consider them totally counterproductive. President Zeman reiterated this view on Friday on Rhodos on the “Dialogues of Civilizations” event organized by Yakunin, the boss of the Russian railways who is Zeman’s friend and who is incidentally on the American sanction list. Zeman spoke in Russian, by the way, although the official language of the event was English. Almost identical opinions are heard in Slovakia, Hungary, and often Austria and other European countries.
We are not tools to allow someone else to realize his irrational Russophobia. If you want to offer us an alternative source of fossil fuels, you will have to offer a lower price or something else that makes the offer objectively better than what we have – otherwise we will simply refuse your offer. Maybe you are used to dealing with countries in the Middle East etc. according to different rules but we won’t accept those rules. We accept the rules of common sense, free markets, and international law.
I am Russian; I suppose, it would be weird to accuse me of Russophobia.
Remove Putin, and everything you say will make sense.
Don’t remove Putin, and everything you say will remain an unadulterated cowardice.
I am sorry to see that a simple threat of closing the gas valve allows a murderous gangster to dictate his will to Czechs and Slovaks. Where is your pride?
It is not my – or Paul Driessen’s or Barack Obama’s – job to decide about the fate of Vladimir Putin.
Russia is a democracy of its sort and because Putin enjoys something like 85% approval rate (for reasons that are easy to be understood, like tripled GDP/PPP since late 1990s, reunification with Crimea, and so on), it is unreasonable to expect that he will be toppled soon. I doubt I would consider Putin an optimum politician in our country but from an objective viewpoint, he is a very skillful, sensible, moderate, rational politician – probably several categories above the “elite” of the U.S. and the EU these days. And I am sure that any realistic alternative in Russia would be much more anti-West, confrontational, and old-fashioned.
Everyone who is supplying a commodity or product to someone else that is badly needed has some influence and makes the consumer’s behavior more compatible. It’s true about *any* trade relationship. It’s why trade and prices, the wonder of capitalism, also makes nations behaving in more friendly ways towards each other. Find Milton Friedman’s monologue on “the pencil” on YouTube for more comments of this type.
Our national pride has often been limited but if it exists, it means that we won’t directly allow some overlords – in this case those in Brussels and perhaps even D.C. – to dictate whom we should like, whom we should hate, and even what we should buy. Most Czechs arguably stand on the pro-Russian side when it comes to the civil war in Ukraine but even if the percentage were lower than 50%, like 40%, it is obviously a remote problem that isn’t our business and we won’t put our main delivery of fossil fuels at risk because of these remote problems. That’s our pride.
In nations including Poland, you may see some genuine anti-Russian hatred, after a century or more of really lethal hostilities in both directions. We just don’t have this relationship with Russia. The Red Army liberated most of our territory in 1945 – from a truly existential threat for the nation. And then 5 armies of the Warsaw Pact occupied us in 1968 in order to preserve somewhat hardcore communism for 20+ extra years. But the Poles etc. were as guilty as the Russians or Ukrainians or Georgians or Bulgarians and it was really a defense of an ideology, not something we could present in nationalistic terms. Every Czech with basic education and IQ above 80 is able to distinguish Russia from communism or the USSR. Moreover, the USSR has been gone for 20+ years and the 1968 occupation is 45 years ago, comparable to the liberation from the Nazis.
We don’t constantly play some games from the past and our relationships with the Russian Federation are very good these days. Get used to it. You may have been paid to become a renegade who spits on the nation that gave you life but the money doesn’t make your assertions true and your plans rational.
As a Russian, perhaps you can show a link where Putin has threatened to close the pipelines?
The source of economic sanctions to date has not been Russia.
It has been the US and the EU.
The only sanctions Russia has enacted – after 3 rounds of US and EU sanctions – were a 1 year ban on food imports.
Unlike the murderous dictators and monarchs that the USA deals with all the time for its oil? Hypocrisy.
I always enjoy hearing the perspective of someone directly affected by the topic at hand. We Americans don’t always remember there are other, valid points of view.
However, there were alternatives offered in the post to using Russian energy. Admittedly, none could replace Russian gas or oil in the short term.
For those who wish to stay away from Mr. Driessen’s rehashed “McCainism”, I suggest reading Prof. Stephen Cohen’s take on the situation.
http://www.thenation.com/article/180942/new-cold-war-and-necessity-patriotic-heresy#
I also suggest browsing articles by Robert Parry:
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/03/flight-17-shoot-down-scenario-shifts/
It is ironic that those who condemn the MSM for their simplistic message and agitprop mass deception when it comes to the CAGW issue would fall for the simplistic narrative they are sold on Russia, Putin and Ukraine.
Tom, we have amateurs and ideologues running things now. International relations has always been a distraction to this administration, their focus has always been transforming America into…
Our foreign policy has been rudderless. It’s the Forest Gump doctrine and it moves in whatever direction the wind blows.
Putin is a murderer. Too simplistic for you? Add “poisoner,” “blackmailer,” “thief,” “gangster”, “weapons trader”, “supporter of criminal regimes”, “dictators’ best friend”, “torturer,” “embezzler,” “narcissistic little weasel,” “professional provocateur”…
Sophisticated enough now? Or, maybe, I don’t know this firsthand, and needed some “MSM propaganda” to tell me about this man and his buddies who barely failed to kill me and my family?
You, the shatter-brained Western sophisticates and pacifists, have caused two World Wars already, and are brewing the Third One. May it bring Russian nuclear warheads on your empty skulls, and Russian raping goons on your daughters!
Alexander,
We lack deterrence. The US has a large military, but with global obligations. Europe has largely disarmed and is incapable of defending itself. Fortunately, Russia’s military is also second rate.
Military force is but part of deterrence. The other is will. The USA and EU have none when it comes to Russia.
We do have a high-quality, highly-effective submarine deterrence.
The ‘real’ concern with the recent Scottish vote, was with the deterrent submarine assets based there.
It’s true of course, that there is no “will” to engage militarily with Russia. But that’s because they are the ally.
All the things you say about Putin may very well be correct Alex but I ask again “how is that different from the dictators and absolute monarchs that the USA deals with for its oil?”.
@Alfred Ledner Clayton
The USA does have nuclear deterrence, yes. But I wouldn’t place my money on Team Obama v. Team Putin and nuclear brinkmanship. No, no, no and oh hell no.
Not a pretty vision is it? 😉
Of course, while we & they ‘play games’ with the uniformed services often, deterrent forces are much less often ‘jerked around’. The deterrent is mostly left to its own internal professional devices.
There is a photo-collage ‘out there’, comparing the emotional states & expressions of Obama, with the same emotions, in Putin. Of course, all the Putin-pics are the same photograph, staring a hole in the camera. Angry, sad, sarcastic, bored – all covered by the same picture of Putin.
Being underestimated is an asset. Certain, the White House & America commonly come across like they’re trying out for a movie-part, without even bothering to read the script. We look like bumblers. Sometimes we identify too closely with our ‘harmless’ cover-identity.
But when Bush used the word “misunderestimated”, he may have been tipping his security-briefing. “Nothing wrong with being misunderestimated, Mr. President!”. Bush also openly discussed the value of “misinformation” with the public … so maybe the former wasn’t a slip. Both are candid acknowledgments of normally-hidden ‘mayor reality’.
Yeah, it’s (we are) kinda disgusting, but it is largely an ‘act’, too. 🙂
Russia will not fear missile batteries and gun crews stationed in Poland.
Russia will see its financial doom if Poland rolls in drilling rigs and fracking crews.
[snip -over the top -mod]
There is no silence. The proof still exists, and has been demonstrated many times. Victims are being identified, evidence, what’s left of it (most of it has been hastily destroyed by the Russians, while this destruction was witnessed by Western reporters), is being analyzed. I despise John Kerry but there is no doubt, based on the facts, that this plane has been shot down by the drunk Russian bandits holding Eastern Ukraine hostage on Putin’s orders, using Putin-supplied equipment.
Whatever truth may have been discoverable, was quickly enveloped in ‘The Fog’.
It’s true as Mr. Feht points out, that interference with & degradation of the crash-scene & debris field began early and proceeded energetically. More actors than he credits, however, appear to have been active on the stage.
Considering the airborne conflict in progress at the time MH17 came down, it is possible that errors of identification or targeting occurred … and were then vigorously obscured. There may even have been collusion between conflicting parties, to obfuscate any original evidence.
Show it to us, please.
Yes, the rebels kept the media away from the crash site and destroyed evidence because they wanted to hide the proof the Ukraine shot down the plane.
The rebels fired the missile. The Russians provided the missile. This does not mean the Russians shot down the airliner or ordered it shot down or wanted it shot down. It means Russia provided the equipment, the training and possibly manned the missile launcher. None of that means Putin ordered it.
[snip – over the top -mod]
Answer to Lubos Motl’s ignoble diatribe posted September 30, 2014 at 8:59 am
It is not my – or Paul Driessen’s or Barack Obama’s – job to decide about the fate of Vladimir Putin. It is not your job to tell others, what is their job. It is a duty of every moral man to work toward removal of a criminal dictator.
Russia is a democracy of its sort… Of sort? There is a democracy, or there is none. In Russia, it is no more than a bad joke.
…and because Putin enjoys something like 85% approval rate (for reasons that are easy to be understood… For reasons that are easy to understand, but not for you and for very different reasons (for example, try to vote against Putin, and lose your job).
…like tripled GDP/PPP since late 1990s… Compared to what? Russian GDP in 1990s was almost non-existent, thanks to the same KGB types who ruined Russia.
…reunification with Crimea… Crimea is part of the Ukraine, not Russia, “reunification” is a weasel term used by Russian nationalists to justify aggressive military occupation.
it is unreasonable to expect that he will be toppled soon. Wait and see, what is reasonable, and what is not.
I doubt I would consider Putin an optimum politician in our country… Oh, really? But somehow you decide that he is an “optimum politician” for me and other Russian patriots trying to free their country?
but from an objective viewpoint, he is a very skillful, sensible, moderate, rational politician – probably several categories above the “elite” of the U.S. and the EU these days… This is so subjective and contrary to objective reality that it doesn’t deserve anything but derisive laughter; the U.S. and the EU “elite” may not be “optimal” but they don’t poison and murder people at will, last time I checked.
And I am sure that any realistic alternative in Russia would be much more anti-West, confrontational, and old-fashioned. Nonsense. There are many moderate, pro-Western, educated people who would laugh in your face for saying this. There are various estimates but approximately 20 million Russians ran from Putin’s “optimal” regime to the West since 1991, which shows how little you understand Russians.
Our national pride has often been limited but if it exists, it means that we won’t directly allow some overlords – in this case those in Brussels and perhaps even D.C. – to dictate whom we should like, whom we should hate, and even what we should buy. Most Czechs arguably stand on the pro-Russian side when it comes to the civil war in Ukraine but even if the percentage were lower than 50%, like 40%, it is obviously a remote problem that isn’t our business and we won’t put our main delivery of fossil fuels at risk because of these remote problems. That’s our pride. In other words, you have no pride. I sincerely hope that there are many Czechs who would spit in your face after reading this paragraph.
In nations including Poland, you may see some genuine anti-Russian hatred, after a century or more of really lethal hostilities in both directions. We just don’t have this relationship with Russia. The Red Army liberated most of our territory in 1945 – from a truly existential threat for the nation. And then 5 armies of the Warsaw Pact occupied us in 1968 in order to preserve somewhat hardcore communism for 20+ extra years. But the Poles etc. were as guilty as the Russians or Ukrainians or Georgians or Bulgarians and it was really a defense of an ideology, not something we could present in nationalistic terms. Every Czech with basic education and IQ above 80 is able to distinguish Russia from communism or the USSR. Moreover, the USSR has been gone for 20+ years and the 1968 occupation is 45 years ago, comparable to the liberation from the Nazis. Why point out the obvious? Nothing that you said here justifies supporting murder and pillage.
We don’t constantly play some games from the past and our relationships with the Russian Federation are very good these days. Get used to it. If you chose to forget your past in order to win condescension from murderous gangsters, do it on your own. Forget that little weasel “we” word.
You may have been paid to become a renegade who spits on the nation that gave you life but the money doesn’t make your assertions true and your plans rational. This baseless insult says it all: I hit the bull’s eye, you are smarting from it, and you couldn’t refrain from accusing me of being “paid to become a renegade who spits on the nation that gave you life.” Nobody has ever “paid” me for anything but honest hard work that has nothing to do with politics. Putin’s regime is a continuation of the Soviet power that caused incalculable grief and suffering to generations of Russian people. Putin is the worst enemy of Russia, and of Russian people. Putin and his cohort of thieves rob Russia blind, and dream of re-establishing the Soviet empire. I love Russia, Russian language, and Russian culture. I left Russia because the KGB told me to disappear if I didn’t want to die in “mental hospital for dissidents”; nobody has ever paid me anything for telling what I think — and you would never dare to tell me in my face the dirty thing you wrote here. Coward.
Honestly, your commentary is utterly false.
I know a family where the patriarch is openly and loudly anti-Putin – one who actually lives in Russia. He complains everywhere he goes in public how Putin is evil, a bastard, etc etc. Yet he has no problem collecting his pension, getting his free health care, and even the people around him just politely ignore him.
Do you live in Russia now?
People who are anti-Putin lose their jobs all the time, but then again, so do people who are pro-Putin. That’s the way the world works – especially when you have an overarching bureaucracy in Russia which pre-dates Putin – going all the way back to Stalin’s era. Did these people lose their jobs because they were incompetent? Or perhaps because they engaged in some political maneuvering and lost?
Honestly, your commentary is utterly false. Because you are a Putin’s troll.
I think we’re having a problem with the cookie-cutter US cliches of the hard-done-by USSR/Soviet dissident.
This is probably the wrong site to discuss the geopolitical ineptitude of US Neocons.
As Putin this summer told a group of young people–remember the old joke about everything a Russian touches turns into a Kalashnikov? I’m beginning to think everything the Americans touch turns into Libya and Iraq.
The latest report on MH17 is here: http://www.theautomaticearth.com/russian-union-of-engineers-accuses-ukraine-airforce-in-mh17-crash/
The report is not at the link provided.
This link just points to another article on a different site. That site offers a DOC download; a translation of the Russian engineers report.
It’s not bad, but it doesn’t look conclusive, either.
The document is labeled at the top: “Informational Briefing”.
Decent pics of airframe damages. Intriguing aerial graphs (graphics-text not translated).
Here’s the Russian Engineers Report, in DOC format It opened fine in my Libre Office. Microsoft Word, Open Office, etc.
Thanks. I think the Dutch said that the complete report on the incident will be out next summer. The Russians will not let it be ‘deep sixed’.
Really, what little respect I had for Driessen as a apparatchik in an NGO, was lost with this article.
He talks about how Russia is curtailing natural gas sales to the Ukraine, but makes no mention whatsoever of the billions owed.
I also like how he says European leaders are cowed by Russian threats of natural gas cutoff: where are these threats? Can he at least document one?
Equally it is nonsensical to say these leaders are cowed when the EU has instituted multiple rounds of sanctions against Russia even to the massive detriment of their own people’s jobs and businesses.
It was the US and the EU which instituted sanctions first – not Russia.
At least I can now safely ignore all that Paul Driessen writes – I was always uncomfortable taking any form of data from someone employed by the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise – a neocon think tank which included Dick Cheney as an advisor.
@Alexander Feht
No Russian based news source has ever stated the front of MH17 was shot out with bullets. In fact from the outset they showed the video of the shrapnel damaged aircraft and STATED it looks like a missile strike.
So I will hold you as a liar until you can locate a RUSSIAN news source that says otherwise.
As goes your statements about Putin being many (nasty) things. Does not take a half wit to apply it to O’Bombers regime, Or should I say, handlers.
Statements about not feeding the Russian coffers by moving to Nuclear? Once again, most nuclear plants use Russian engineers and almost half the worlds yellow cake is from Russia. Don’t you know there is only half the worlds yellow cake remaining? Add that to our 2/5 deaths are from cancer.
@Joe
Interesting find. I did hear the submitted Russian radar events prove a following aircraft that peeled back west as the aircraft went down. Scarily similar to the previous spy equipped plane that went missing in the Indian sea..
Thank you for proving my points, портянка.
портянка in mouth? lol
My error. They are quoting non-central news sources that point to machine gun fire. It would reinforce the UKR being responsible. However, missile shrapnel comes from machined billet so *can* blow out in lines.
What is very wrong with the “engineers report” is decompression of the front of an aircraft from bullet fire. The front dome is very thin because it balances internal pressure with oncoming air and carries less structure.
Regrettably much of the responsibility for the civil war in the Ukraine must be laid at the door of the EU hierarchy. Funds, directed by the EU leadership, were channelled into Ukrainian society, money whose purpose was intended to incite Ukrainian agitation for closer union with Europe. It was inevitable that Russia would look upon these overtures as interference in its patch. Of course Ukraine is an independent entity and should be entitled to determine what path it would take, that however does not excuse the west from encouraging forces hostile to Russia to depose the legitimately elected President of that country. OK he was inept and largely pro-Russian, but that is not the point, he had as much of a democratic mandate as most western nations. I am not trying to offset or excuse Russia’s lamentable behaviour towards the Crimea and its involvement in eastern Ukraine, though the shooting down of MH117 was undoubtedly a ghastly mistake, one that ought to have been avoided if the routing of international civil air traffic had been altered to avoid this area where fighting and the use of Surface to Air Missiles had already been employed to shoot down Ukrainian military aircraft. Russia is not the big bad ogre here, the culpable parties really are elements in the west stirring up trouble for their own ends.
Yanukovich was totally corrupt, and abused the law thousands of times. Removal of his regime was a rare triumph of justice in this mean world, mostly ruled by gangsters. Nobody says that EU elite politicians are good or honest, but there are different levels of being bad. Yanukovich was as bad as they come, a criminal.
You mean it was an illegal coup d’état. You are deluded by propaganda nonsense! There was no excuse for the coup backed as it was by Nazis!
Learn some history before you spout off like an idiot!
That reporter on RT was saying how glad he was that Yanukovich was kicked out. Nobody thought it would be a leap into the fire!
And this level of corruption was not existent in any of the other regimes that the Ukraine has had over the last 20 years? Sad for the folks there but ALL their governments have been corrupt.
Given your claimed familiarity with Putin and Russia can I ask what type of response you expected? Roll over and play dead? Let NATO encroach closer and closer? Hardly realistic. About as unrealistic as the article calling for the USA to supply Europe with gas.
I see the straight US propaganda line being parroted here by the ignorami! The Ukrainians shot down the plane and blamed it on the Russians. Why else has the silence been so deafening! The mysterious resignation of the Ukrainian Defense Minister was a clear indication that he was the one in charge.
Of course you couldn’t read it in the
MSM. The US national pinhead of consciousness is full of neocon BS meant to fool simpletons.
German greed for Ukrainian oil and foodstuffs long predated Hitler. 100 years ago today they were trying to get Ukraine to secede from Russia, which they accomplished before the end of WWI. Anyone who thinks that Russia can continue to allow hostile neo Nazi led states on its borders is a complete ignoramus. The US has used momentary weakness to encircle Russia but now the Russians are pushing back and they cannot accept this Western demarche. The Nazis and their successors hold power in the Ukraine despite their filthy ideological history. When they say freedom fighters I say Nightingale Battalion. 7 years of low level civil war in the Ukraine from 1945 -1952 bought and paid for by the OSS/CIA and others.
We protected far too many murderers
after WWII and gave too many of them good jobs in the US. from Wehner Von Braun on down but the secret OSS and CIA fostering of Nazi wannabes, but the Ukrainians were not great fighters, just murderers and plunderers of the defenseless mostly. When they met the Russians in battle they ran like jackrabbits. This is history from which there is no escape, even for the delusional. Obama’s judo- esque reversal of the truth is a Hegelian tactic
tried and true but transparent as whore’s nighty!:)
Russia has better missiles than we do and will not allow us to bomb their old friend Assad either. The Syrian intervention is a war crime and we have backed the wrong people. Assad was an acceptable tyrant in place who had everything under control, under an iron heel yes but women were not 4th class citizens stuck at home under the veil like in Saudi Arabia, but rather like in Saddam’s Iraq, women worked and did not wear the veil by force. They went to college and were doctors and nurses and spokespersons and researchers,
In other words they had a good semblance of freedom! Since the US intervention in the middle rest women have been pushed back 1000 years.
Why? Because some of the precious little Obama darlings and all the reinvigorated neocon warmongers and their hypersensitive moralities didn’t like the way he fought a simmering civil war!
Pretentious hypocrites!
As if one’s petite bourgeois morality has anything to do with war. Here we have the usual suspects of Imperialism, the Brits who smashed the Ottomans to grab the Persian oil and the Suez, the French, who got Syria and Lebanon and
us the 20th century carrion crows of geopolitical world cataclysms. We let others do the fighting in two wars and then stepped in and picked up the pieces, for a low cost or at least it was acceptable to those who made the bargain, despite the fact that they later betrayed that very bargain, sealed with the blood of so many.
We have smashed open Pandora’s box and there is no way to close it up again. History will declare the winner of this gambit.
Seems like it showed a truncated piece but the other whole piece still there, sorry mod, but we do worry ,
Andrew and mods,
Thank you for allowing this thread to continue.
Several parties may have had the means and opportunity to down MH17. Among them, only Russia would have no motive.
It is unlikely that “a nation of chess-players” would execute a stupid and meaningless act whose only possible outcome would be more fuel for western propaganda against Putin.
That kind of stuff happens only in the minds of hack Hollywood writers now employed elsewhere: He did it because he’s evil.
Kievan Rus’ was the first incarnation of the Russian state, which coalesced out of the Eastern Slavic tribes under Oleg of Novgorod to protect trade from the Khazar empire to the east.
Now the trouble-makers of the world have managed to pit brother against brother in Ukraine. As always, the question is Cui Bono?
Your words come from heaven like cooling snow on Al Gore 😉
Oh please. Who is accusing Russia of shooting down that airliner? Not even that idiot John Kerry says that. The rebels did it. The Russian-backed rebels.
And their motive was?
Their motive was being drunk, and playing with war toys.
Drunken separatists could not have diverted MH17 from the normal flight path across the Sea of Azov, about 150 miles SW of Donetsk, to a route north of Donetsk.
You are full of helium! There is no proof at all which is why you don’t hear Ibama crowing about it. This was a false flag operation you dummy!
For information of those who wonder, what is going on here:
FSB has a special propaganda department; it is on high alert now, because Putin is planning to blackmail Europe into submission (and, probably, to occupy Baltic states).
FSB agents search Western forums for “Russia, Ukraine, etc.”, and intervene to promote their agenda. This is a part of Putin’s informational “softening up” of the West before he makes his next aggressive move. There are still many old Soviet agents in the Eastern European countries, including Czech Republic, Slovakia, and East Germany, who would like nothing better than to see good old times returning with Russian tanks.
There are, of course, sincere idiots who play into Putin’s hands. Western idiots were always the Soviet fifth column, and, I see with some ironic satisfaction, they are in full force here.
Remember one thing: Putin is a murderer. Not in the sense that every politician who is conducting war is a murderer. No. Putin is personally giving orders to eliminate his individual opponents all over the world. He kills investigating journalists. He kills those who have information proving his financial crimes. He infiltrates his agents in Western financial institutions and law firms, actively suppressing dissent in the West.
Only we are not afraid of him any more. He is finished, he just doesn’t know it yet.
And the House of Saud? Saddam when he was “the west’s guy” fighting Iran with chemical weapons? Need I go on?
Remember one thing Alex: All you say about Putin can be said about most of the west’s allies in the mid-east. Coffee / kettle?
Saudi Arabia and Iraq are not my countries. Russia is.
So we are to have 2 standards. One for Russia and one for our “friends” no matter how murderous they are. Sorry. I disagree.
No, I have the same standard for Saddam and for Putin.
And I consider Barack Obama as the most dangerous thing tha ever happened to the U.S.
We are discussing Russian oil and gas policy of blackmailing Europe, however.
It is you who is trying to shift the discussion to other subjects.
Why are you trying to defend this particular thief and murderer?
Ah, The Mighty Wurlitzer thunders on . . . although in this case, it’s sounding a lot more like a kazoo.
[snip – over the top -mod]
The Ukraine is a geographic expression. The Bolshevik vermin drew a map and put places like Galicia, Transcarpathia, and the Hetmanat into the same box. Nikita added the Crimea to the mix one drunken night. The idea is that if you put ethnic groups that hate each other together they will turn to the central government for protection. Diversity is a tool of empire.
Khrushchev’s motives may have been as you describe but Ukraine is a sovereign country now, that speaks its own language (which is very different from Russian). Crimea was a part of the Ukraine when the USSR fell apart; whoever populates it now are Ukrainian citizens. Historically, Crimea is the land of Tatars; were it up to me, I would make it an independent country — but if we are to follow the law in the civilized world, Crimea belongs to Ukraine, like it or not.
No if we follow the law in the civilized world we’d allow groups that don’t want to be together to vote and leave peacefully like the Czechs and Slovaks did.
The Crimean people are NOT allowed to vote to determine their future? What a concept. Maybe you should try to apply that logic on the former Yugoslavian countries.
Not under the point of Russian guns, no.
Obviously the Crimea belongs to Italy since it was once part of the Republic of
Genoa. 🙂 The people there voted to return to Russia.
The Ukrainian language also has an interesting history. There are indications that Kiev is forcing it on the ethnic minorities.
[The Tatars used to sell Slavs as slaves to the Ottoman empire; that market is gone now.]
For a different point of view on the overall situation see: Solzhenitsyn & The Return of the False Dimitris
http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/09/sholzenitzyn-return-false-dimitris-ukraine.html
“Alexander Feht September 30, 2014 at 1:31 pm
Not under the point of Russian guns, no.”
So what percentage of people in Crimea voted? What percentage voted in favor? What did the observers say? What percentage of Crimea speaks Russian as their first language?
You said earlier that “Crimea belongs to Ukraine, like it or not”. No it doesn’t and except for the past 55 or so years it never has. The people of Crimea have chosen their path fairly and democratically, like it or not.
Interesting discussion! I mention the following remarks:
– NATO sees the Nato-Russia Founding Act of 1997, signed in Paris by Nato leaders and President Boris Yeltsin, and containing an explicit requirement to respect the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all states, as a permit to annex all former republics of the Soviet Union. The way towards this goal is easy enough. EU and IMF are showering Ukraine and the other republics with money so that in elections, a majority of the voters agree with a membership of the EU and of the NATO. This is already what happened with the Baltic States. Ukraine is now a new testcase. If Ukraine will become a member of the EU, all other States around Russia will follow.
– This process has to be seen in the context of the words spoken by Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council: “I think that sooner or later we can make the whole Balkan member of the EU. In Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine the prospect of membership is not on the agenda, but we’re going to involve them closer to Europe. If the public opinion has a strong support for it, I do not know. Yet we do it. The whole of Europe outside Russia will be in some way involved in the EU, either as a member or through various agreements. I still find it an inspiring thought.”
– To counter this EU action, Putin set up the Customs Union with Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus as an alternative to the EU Eastern Partnership.
– 85% of Ukraine’s GDP is in hands of the 50 richest oligarchs. They have intense links with the government. Some famous oligarchs are: President Petro Poroshenko, Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky, Ihor Kolomoyskyi. Kolomoyskyi is the lender of some volunteer battalions, including the Azov battalion, the Dnepr battalion, the Donbass battalion. Those are kind of private militias. The Azov battalion’s commander is Andriy Biletsky, the head of the neo-Nazi political groups Social-National Assembly and Patriots of Ukraine.
– Recently, Amnesty International accused Ukraine in the report: “Abuses and war crimes by the Aidar Volunteer Battalion in the north Luhansk region”.
– When asked whether he [former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt], as then, sees Europe at the abyss, he said: “The situation seems to me increasingly comparable. Europe, the Americans, and also the Russians behave exactly as the author Christopher Clark has described in his readable book about the beginning of the First World War: as “Sleepwalkers”.
– Henry Kissinger, who has a new book “World Order”, declared: “For Russia, Ukraine is part of the Russian patrimony. A Russian state was created around Kiev about 1,200 years ago. Ukraine itself has been part of Russia for 500 years, and I would say most Russians consider it part of Russian patrimony. The ideal solution would be to have a Ukraine like Finland or Austria that can be a bridge between these two rather than an outpost.”
I do not understand and don’t like at all the Western propaganda of Paul Driessen about Ukraine!
More information, with the links to the sources, can be found on my webpage http://users.skynet.be/fc298377/EN_EC_ext_rel.htm.
Rik, from what I can find, the official money promised for the UA (UKR) is only on offer. A loan at that. Te same trick they played on Ireland, Spain, Italy etc. The loans get recalled.
I can back most of what you say but sadly many people have been taken in like climate zombies.
Good link.
Is the author 100% sure he’s correct or 97%?
Anthony, you are turning away many non-American readers with this propaganda piece.
To us non-Americans it’s like paying to watch/listen Mann live.
And where are the facts that prove this author to be right?
Or can anyone who happens to know A.Watt write anything they want?
[Site policy: Chose ONE screen id and stick to it. .mod]
WUWT accepts article-submissions from a wide range of people.
I doubt that ‘special pull’ is needed to get an article/essay posted here, but I’d be surprised if WUWT welcomed sour-puss complaints about themselves & their mission, too. Of course, WUWT does have critic-sites who might value such a critique.
Personally, I think post-author Paul Driessen (of CFACT, which is relevant (and I broadly support them)) makes a mistake by justifying expanded hydrocarbon production, ‘Because Russia/Putin is awful’.
The problem IMO with Driessen’ production-suggestion, is that with significant supply-increases, would come price-reductions. In an ideal world, the desirability of lower energy prices might be a given, but in the world available to us, that’s a big complication that we don’t want – not right now.
Russia is Russia, has been for a long time, and probably will persist as such. Nothing going on in the Ukraine, or with the trans-Caucasus gas market is especially notable, historically or geopolitically. Mr. Driessen is just assembling the pieces on the board, to present a ‘play’ or ‘move’ that makes sense to him. I agree with him, that hydrocarbons are good, but not that ‘branding’ Russia is a useful part of promoting this form of energy.
“Nothing going on in the Ukraine, or with the trans-Caucasus gas market is especially notable, historically or geopolitically.”
People are dying by thousands, Putin makes war in Ukraine. Are you out of your mind?
Current events in the Ukraine, Mr. Feht, are not “especially notable, historically or geopolitically”.
Human tragedies, yes, and social stresses (there), to be sure. But “notable” on the stage of history or geopolitics? Not especially.
It would not be especially notable, if a few thousand died of a disease in West Africa – in fact, that in itself isn’t at all historic or weighty – but for the possibility that other international & economic spheres might find themselves affected.
Events in the Ukraine are a provincial, Eastern European affair. With a little luck, most stakeholders there will be proud of the outcome, even as they mourn those who were lost.
The standard of WUWT moderation has slipped. It’s a shame but really this whole post has nothing to do with climate, climate change, meteorology, climatology. Not WUWT finest hours, and revealing of some guys’ paranoiac universe that is not worth responding to. This whole Driessen post and its thread should be removed, done! Let’s refocus, please!
I think it is a triumph for WUWT moderation in that it doesn’t cow to self righteous censors. if you don’t like it go to another thread. CFACT is a big player on the skeptic side of the debate, that it publishes obvious propaganda (imo) doesn’t bode well for it’s otherwise respectable image. all this article does is reinforce the warmist collective view that skeptics are driven by oil companies, since the demonising of russia is seen as a tactic of “big oil” in order to control oil markets and pricing. deleting the thread isn’t going to help the situation since CFACT already published it. I would rather debate issues in an adult way than be part of a dogmatic cult.
It was upsetting to read all the political propaganda part of this post in one of my favorite websites (which I thought tried to avoid political and religious issues). But, having read most of the comments, I am delighted and surprised to see that so many people in the West realize that most of the MSM is treating us like idiots with regards to the Ukrainian tragic, largely West-provoked civil war.
I guess Paul Driessen doesn’t know better about this issue than what he’s heard in the MSM and thus ignores, for example, that the Ukrainian government has spent months mercilessly bombarding its own civilian population with our support, so perhaps his rhetoric is understandable. However, I think that a pattern emerges in the comments where many of the same people that don’t buy the AGW propaganda have also been unable to digest the Russophobic agit-prop of the last months.
points to ponder:
Why has the US released no surveillance images of the shoot-down, images it unquestionably has?
Where in international law can we find authorization for spending $5 billion US to overthrow a democratically elected government?
Why did Anthony step in this bear trap?
Wow, this site was always top of my list for climate news, but to publish such a scurrilous, vindictive, and insidious piece of lying propaganda just sent it to the bottom of the list. You usually critique the MSM over its biased climate coverage but not when it’s about Russia, why not? Perhaps it’s because the main culprit in fomenting the putsch in Ukraine, as in many other political and human tragedies these past decades, is your country, the USA? Whatever the reason, you have demeaned your reputation for honesty. What a pity.
moonofalabama.org has far more informative reports about MH17 than Putin-bad-he-killer, and wrote them over two months ago.
No Evidence – Administration’s MH17 Case Against Russia Falls Apart
Ukraine: Reuters Interviews Benedict Arnold: “Rebels Had BUK, Downed MH17”
Ukraine: No “Western” Interest In Investigating MH17