[Jabberwalker]

andyt andyt:

Don't mess with nuclear Russia, Putin says

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/putin-says-ru ... 56691.html

Time for that long-overdue, pre-emptive, all-out strike.

[Canadian_Mind]

What blows my mind is he's the one making the NAZI comparisons about the Ukrainian troops... This is there country. I'd ask if he was on glue, but it's a very overt attempt to mislead his people which, due to the high anti-NAZI sentiment still in Russia today, will probably work.

[Thanos]

Russians aren't forgetful of the support Ukraine gave to the Germans during the war. The ignorant fuckers are completely absent-minded when it comes to remembering that it was their own evil under Stalin when they tried to starve all the Ukrainians to death that led them to ally with the Nazis against Russia in the first place. Considering the way they've been behaving both domestically and internationally for the last hundred years (or more) the Russians should be the last ones to have any kind of martyr card to play against anyone else.

[Winnipegger]

He is the NAZI, so therefore he uses NAZI comparisons for his opponents. Politicians have used that for a long time. I could give examples of Canadian politicians doing that, but that would get into domestic politics. We would start tearing each other apart. Let's just say: same shit, different pile.

Perhaps the problem is we aren't thinking big enough. Look: big picture. And I mean really big. The UN was created for "Mutual Assured Security". The UN has many departments and organizations, but its reason for being is the premise that if one country invades another, then the UN would authorize military of the entire world to come to the aid of the attacked. The Security Council is supposed to rule on these cases, but hasn't done it's job. There are very rare cases where the Security Council did work. It needs major reform. And considering the aggressor is Russia, the fact Russia has a veto prevents the UN from fulfilling it's reason for being.

NATO has been expanding. When NATO started to accept former Warsaw Pact members, Russia itself asked to join. Russia was refused. But NATO is now doing what the UN was supposed to. Now the mandates of NATO and the UN are mushed together in a big mess. It's time to unify them, and create a clear means where decisive action can be taken against an aggressor like Russia. Please note: when the US stated their intent to go back into Iraq for a second war, the Security Council said no. In fact, when Colin Powell made his speech, not only did the Security Council vote no. But when Colin Powell said the US would go in anyway, the president of the Security Council said they may have to stop the US. So giving a restructured UN authority, would have stopped the US from going back into Iraq in 2004.

"Decisive Action" would include complete arms embargo, shutting off all bank activity, and other severe sanctions. Such actions could cause Russia to think twice, but they would have to be extreme, and all at once. With the military resources of all member nations of the UN to call upon against Russia. Hell, even the United States, with the most powerful military in the world, could not face against all other nations combined. That is what the UN was supposed to be. That is what Franklin D. Roosevelt argued for.

[Thanos]

NATO and the EU barely reacted when the worst of the atrocities against civilians were happening in Yugoslavia. Expecting them to do much more than that for another non-NATO country like Ukraine is probably unwise. The next round of sanctions, if they occur, are of the export and financial variety that will hurt Europe as well as Russia. Plus they're not going to risk the Russians shutting of the natural gas for heating as we start entering the colder months again. The Germans especially, who I've heard are reacting partly out of post WW2 guilt over their actions in Russia, are probably the ones most likely to try to hold up against any attempts at stronger actions against Putin.

The only thing that could really be done successfully would be sending better anti-missle tech and advisors to Ukraine. No one, Europeans and Americans alike, seem to be willing to even do that.

[Gunnair]

$1:

U.S. President Barack Obama chose his words carefully when asked whether Russia’s recent actions in Ukraine should be considered an invasion, an indication of how the White House continues to judiciously avoid the use of that particular word fearing its geo-political ramifications.

"I consider the actions that we’ve seen in the last week a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now," Obama told reporters.

Minutes before, the president had referred to the situation as "this ongoing Russian incursion" into Ukraine that will "only bring more costs and consequences for Russia."

'Discussion of terminology'

In an interview on Thursday with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, State Department official Jen Psaki was pressed on the point: "If there's artillery firing across the border and tanks moving and movements of soldiers, what's the difference between an incursion and an invasion?"

"I think this is a discussion about terminology" Psaki responded, adding that "what we've seen here is an escalation of aggression by the Russians, a pattern, actually, over the last several months."

Psaki was also pressed on the issue by reporters asking why the White House refused to use the term and that Ukraine itself was calling it an invasion.

However, the State Department official remained on message: "I think our focus is more on what Russia is doing, what we’re going to do about it than what we’re calling it," Psaki said.

The diplomatic tiptoeing around the word comes as pro-Russian rebels suddenly opened a new front and pushed Ukrainian troops out of a key town in strategic coastal territory along the Sea of Azov. Kyiv and Western countries say the reversal was the result of the arrival of armoured columns of Russian troops, sent by Putin to prop up a rebellion that would otherwise have been near collapse.

Other Western leaders have also avoided use of the "invasion" word, except Canada, which continues to employ tough rhetoric against Moscow.

But for the U.S. and other Western countries, careful language is not surprising, particularly with politically loaded words like invasion, which can spark historical comparisons to Hitler's invasion of Poland or Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.

Obligated to find a cure

"The more you hype it, the more you diagnose the severity of the illness, the more you're obligated, either morally, politically or practically, to find a cure," said Aaron David Miller, a foreign policy expert and scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars

"And there's a certain reality here. There's a tendency on the part of this administration to allow its rhetoric to exceed its capacity to deliver," Miller said "We're not going to be able blunt or stop Putin's objectives in eastern Ukraine any more than we could stop the aggrandizement of Crimea."

Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said officials avoid using the word for the same reason the U.S. wouldn't call Egypt's military ouster of former president Mohammed Morsi a coup or why some mass slaughters aren't referred to as genocide.

"Some words have both legal and emotional effects. And in the case of invasion, it's emotional and political," Abrams said.

"I think they don't want to use the word invasion because it makes harder the next question: And what are you going to do about it?"

Obama and his Western allies have so far ruled out any kind of military intervention in the ongoing crisis, instead seeking to increase economic sanctions to punish Russia. Calling the crisis an invasion would raise expectations that a response to that invasion will be be robust "when the chances are that the Western response will be anything but robust," said Randall Hansen, director of the University of Toronto's Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Meanwhile,Canada isn't subject to the same expectations of military action, allowing its officials to be more bold, Hansen said.

"It's partly the freedom of not mattering," said Hansen. "The Canadian government can shout and scream as much as it likes knowing that it doesn't really have to do anything. In contrast, Obama and [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel have to measure every word because the entire world is hanging on them and have a level of responsibility that neither Harper or Baird has or will have."

CBC News

With files by Reuters

$1:

It's partly the freedom of not mattering," said Hansen. "The Canadian government can shout and scream as much as it likes knowing that it doesn't really have to do anything.

Truth can really hurt sometimes.

[Winnipegger]

Can we send nuclear reactor technicians into Europe to help them re-activate their old nuclear power plants? We need Europe to get off natural gas from Russia. Energy independence.

[andyt]

Gunnair Gunnair:

$1:

It's partly the freedom of not mattering," said Hansen. "The Canadian government can shout and scream as much as it likes knowing that it doesn't really have to do anything.

Truth can really hurt sometimes.

[Gunnair]

andyt andyt:

Gunnair Gunnair:

$1:

It's partly the freedom of not mattering," said Hansen. "The Canadian government can shout and scream as much as it likes knowing that it doesn't really have to do anything.

Truth can really hurt sometimes.

That would have worked if Harper hadn't already eaten that weapon system...

[andyt]

I guess to be accurate I should have shown Harper saying "hold me back, I'm going to eat it." No wonder the kitty looks so freaked out.

[martin14]

Winnipegger Winnipegger:

Can we send nuclear reactor technicians into Europe to help them re-activate their old nuclear power plants? We need Europe to get off natural gas from Russia. Energy independence.

Huh.

Still take .... years.. an NPP doesn't just switch on and off.

Second problem is the infrastructure all over Europe.

Everywhere I go, people use gas for heat, cooking and hot water.

Now, changing the gas heater for electric is easy enough.


However, for example in Spain & Italy 95% of houses are limited to drawing 3KW
at any time.

It means you cannot run the dishwasher and the washing machine at the same time,
or you will trip the breaker.
Some electric kettles can blow a fuse by themselves. We have one in Slovakia
that we can't bring to Italy.
Now try throwing in an electric boiler.
Italy would also need to upgrade their delivery infrastructure to accomodate
everyone switching over... real money, and they won't be the only one.

And electricity is already very expensive, double the price in Canada.
Most expensive is in Germany, because they pay tons of extra taxes to pay for
all those stupid green projects.


Nothing is impossible, but now you start to understand just how dependent Europe
is on gas; to say nothing about all the industry that powers up on gas.

It's like crack.

[Jabberwalker]

95% of houses are limited to drawing 3KW
at any time.


Now, at 220V 50Hz, you should get a lot more pizzaz out of your 3KW.

There is a lot of gas in the world, yes but it is still a finite resource. It's not as green as the Greens make it out to be by a long shot If it comes to them with the taint of Ukrainian (and who knows whoever else's) blood in it, can mock them for their reliance on "dirty gas"?

[PluggyRug]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

95% of houses are limited to drawing 3KW
at any time.


Now, at 220V 50Hz, you should get a lot more pizzaz out of your 3KW.

Watts is Volts x Amps...... 3KW @ 240V just means you draw 1/2 the current, 4.2 A.
At 120V it would be 8.4A.

[Jabberwalker]

Yeah. Right you are. The current draw goes way down but a watt is still a watt.

[Winnipegger]

If they could just convert all electrical power production to something that doesn't come from Russia, that wouldn't eliminate all dependence on gas, but would significantly reduce it. And Canada can export bulk liquefied natural gas via ships. Would that be enough to eliminate imports from Russia? If not, it would significantly reduce it.

Shut down all natural gas burning power plants. That is a stupid idea to start with. From a resource point of view, replacing one non-renewable fossil fuel with another is stupid. If your concern is environment, then natural gas emits carbon; nuclear does not. If carbon emissions are your obsession, then natural gas is stupid. But more importantly, we need to reserve all natural gas for domestic use: home heating, water heating, and some kitchen stoves. My clothes dryer is natural gas, so some in Europe must be as well. Reduce consumption to reduce prices: supply and demand. But most importantly, because of the Ukraine crisis, eliminate this institutional consumption of a product that Europe is dependant on from Russia.

I visualize an "emergency" program with work 24:7 to re-commission nuclear plants that were shut down. Depending how far they've been dismantled, a crash program to bring them back on-line should be relatively quick.

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

If it comes to them with the taint of Ukrainian (and who knows whoever else's) blood in it, can mock them for their reliance on "dirty gas"?

Good idea. The slogan "blood diamonds" was used to campaign against diamonds from war zones in Africa. Do the same thing with Russian gas.