Mooney_Driver wrote:
So is it really reasonable or useful to blame people like Merkel or others who felt they were on the right track with economical integration? Clearly it turns out to be a misjudgement but did anyone until maybe 2-3 years ago really think that Russia would throw it’s whole economy away in favour of a nationalist war? I think there were very few who ever thought so. Remember when Medvedev was praised as a reasonable guy and even the softer version of Putin during his presidency? Now he is the guy who talks nukes all the time. This throwback situation which in fact is worse than ever before was simply not predictable to the extent that we are now.So what is the point of this Monday morning quarterbacking, other than learn from it for the future, if there is any? What the West needs right now is to stand united while defusing the situation to an extent that finally some sort of stand down becomes even an option. This in a situation where facts are created which will get harder and harder to reverse?
I agree!
Maoraigh wrote:
If the Donbas area population is mainly ethnic Russian and wants to be part of Russia, then the democratic choice is to let them be part of Russia.
This is not a free and fair referendum like the Scottish Indyref, or the Brexit referendum, or the various referenda that go on in Switzerland: this is a sham, with the occupation force going door to door and demanding votes with menaces (and apparently also counting blank ballots as “pro Russia”). And should we let any ethnic population just have a referendum to join another country? How about ethnically English parts of Spain holding a referendum for pockets of Spain to become part of the UK? No, that’s not acceptable, and neither is this.
If the news is to be believed, most Russian-speakers in Ukraine aren’t very keen on Russia, and have welcomed the Ukrainians as they have retaken their territory.
Remember that Zelenskyy himself is ethnically Russian, and is a native Russian speaker, and learned Ukranian as a second language later in life.
alioth wrote:
And should we let any ethnic population just have a referendum to join another country? How about ethnically English parts of Spain holding a referendum for pockets of Spain to become part of the UK? No, that’s not acceptable, and neither is this.
Actually, I think it is acceptable – in principle. (Which includes becoming independent.)
There may be practical issues – obviously you can’t let every other village in a region change country or become independent. (As an aside, I recently read the book The City and the City where that in effect has happened, but to an even more extreme degree. Very good book.)
If the news is to be believed, most Russian-speakers in Ukraine aren’t very keen on Russia, and have welcomed the Ukrainians as they have retaken their territory.
That may very well be true, on the other hand that’s what Ukraine would say no matter what, isn’t it?
Btw, are there ethnically English parts of Spain!?
Mooney_Driver wrote:
So is it really reasonable or useful to blame people like Merkel or others who felt they were on the right track with economical integration? Clearly it turns out to be a misjudgement but did anyone until maybe 2-3 years ago really think that Russia would throw it’s whole economy away in favour of a nationalist war?
I think it is. And: it is NOT about Putin.
A well identifiable group of leading German politicians never listened to the people warning them – not of Putin per se – but of making us overly dependent on one gas and oil supplier. That’s just bad craftsmanship, bad management. Every small company distributes its supplier risk. We should expect that from a government, shouldn’t we ? There is an infamous video showing our foreign minister, Heiko Maas, grinning and mocking Trump when he held a speech about the topic back in 2018 or so. He grinned because it was de rigueur to mock Trump at the time. Is he still grinning ? And of course, it wasn’t Germany alone. Other countries went ‘full Russia’ as well – how much real estate in London is being owned by Russian offshore vehicles again ?
They call it misjudgement, but it is really personal failure out of collective groupthink.
I agree, though, it is water under the bridge.
Indeed; the UK was very happy to take Russian money and give them visas. And bend the KYC rules when nominee companies were used for property purchase. And it did the same for all kinds of dodgy people from e.g. the Middle East. All of Europe did the same. The Adriatic marinas filled up with Russian operated yachts, with hired Ukrainian “female assistants” 
The probability of a Russian having acquired serious money via non-criminal means is not zero but is very low especially among the high-vis ones. The fact that these people culturally treat the locals, notably restaurant staff, like sh*t, didn’t matter. Money talks and always did.
You are right about lack of energy security but like I said the whole policy just dovetailed ever so conveniently into the whole climate. A climate which is still there today…
Like I said, Putin should get the Nobel prize for advancing international relations awareness education in the post-Bismarck era.
If this had not happened now it would have happened in 10 or 20 years’ time, only much bigger.
A powerful supplier always f*****s its less powerful customer(s) eventually. Just like a powerful customer always f*****s its less powerful suppliers eventually 
Peter wrote:
with the stuff regarding “Autonomous Republic of Crimea”
What’s wrong with that?
Aa a German it hurts to say but all of our mainstream political parties were wrong on energy policy for at least 30 if not 40 years.
First, Germany had a very strong anti-nuclear movement since the early 80s. The Green party in West Germany basically had its root in that movement. As the Greens entered federal government in the late 1990s, ending the use of nuclear power in Germany became one of their primary political goals, even well ahead of ending the use of fossil fuels for electricity generation, despite the climate change debate which was already in full swing back then.
The established parties, both the Social Democrats and the Christian Union, both had begun initiating gas deals with the then Soviet Union during the Cold War, as a way to overcome tensions and – more importantly – supply the German industry with cheap gas. The percentage of gas imported from Russia was gradually increased over the years, from about 10% in the 1970s to 30% in the 1990s and 50% in the 2010s, most recently via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Former Chancellor Schröder got good friends with Putin during his two terms (1998 to 2005) and was elemental in cementing this dependency, although in his favour it must be said that at the time all mainstream parties agreed more or less with the plans.
When Merkel got to power in 2005, she reversed the decision of the previous government to exit nuclear energy, but did nothing to lower the decency on Russian gas. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, she did an U-turn on nuclear and agreed to a phase out of all of Germany’s reactors by 2023. Yet her allies, notably economic minister Peter Altmaier, stalled the extension of wind and solar generation at the same time, through ill-designed policies.
Influenced by growing fears of climate emergency, the government then also decided to abandon coal power in the medium term, until 2038.
So, thanks to the policy being largely dictated by wishful thinking and wanting to stand upon the “moral high ground” as well-formulated by @Peter a few posts above, Germany basically tried to exit both nuclear and coal at the same time, without building sufficient renewable capacity. Gas was seen as the stopgap solution. Nobody of note even considered that getting that mainly from a single supplier was dangerous.
As shale gas took off in the US, Fracking was made illegal in Germany (we have ample shale gas reserves in my home state of Lower Saxony, enough to supply our entire consumption for at least 20 years). This was mainly done out of NIMBYism, because now we’re buying LNG from the US that has been mined through the exact same process we outlawed.
It really is a mess and we have nobody but ourselves to blame.
I understand what you’re saying but respectfully disagree. I’m also not talking about the timeframe 20 years ago but after 2010, and most notably 2014 and beyond. Just my gut feeling, not facts.
OMV is Austria‘s largest partly state owned fossil fuel company. It was on track to invest in Norway, Romania etc… which was suddenly halted in favor of directing more efforts to Russia.
Former OMV boss Gerhard Roiss distributes vigorously against “Putin understanders” in this country. Austria and OMV were deliberately directed into dependence on Russia by a group of people. “These people have put their own financial interests above all morals,” he told the profile. The great dependence on Russian gas, as is currently the case, should not have been. “We were also on a promising path. In 2012, we recorded the largest gas discovery in OMV’s history in the Black Sea off Romania,” he cites the “Neptune” project as an example. “My assumption was that we will be able to deliver around three billion cubic meters of gas to Austria annually with Neptune in the future. This would have covered about a third of the annual requirement,” Roiss calculates. Roiss criticizes “little Austro-oligararchs” — The owner’s representative for Austria’s interests in the Vienna oil and chemical group is the respective Minister of Finance. This was Hans Jörg Schelling (ÖVP) between 2014 and the end of 2017, who according to Profil, had a consulting contract with the Russian gas group Gazprom after leaving politics. Roiss said: “This shows a general problem that has become visible over the past five or six years – the close integration of politics and business. We no longer only have oligarchs from the East, we also have small Austro-oligararchs.”
The Great Deception
It’s a recurring pattern.
Lie 1: COVID is an incredibly dangerous disease that can kill anyone
Answer Lie 1: The only solution is to vaccinate the entire world with a new patented vaccine.
The scam: Obscene amounts of taxpayer money siphoned off to the health care industry.
Lie 2: Muslim terrorists pose an existential threat to our countries
Answer Lie 2: The only way to deal with it is to take the fight to them. Fight them over there instead of over here.
The scam: Obscene amounts of taxpayer money siphoned off to the defence industry
Lie 3: If banks are allowed to fail, the global financial system will collapse.
Answer Lie 3: The only way to solve the problem is for the money printing authority to buy assets from banks (i.e. give them money in exchange for dodgy assets).
The scam: Obscene amounts of money are given to banks
In short, the gargantuan power of the state is captured and wielded by powerful industries, and individuals, at the expense and to the detriment of ordinary people.
Leaves us up to date with Russia Ukraine…..Lie 4. The answer awaits
So it’s all a great conspiracy? Who are the conspirators?
