what should we do about the situation in ukraine?

Nuclear. EU can more easily convert to electric vehicles due to its greater density.

Also, off shore drilling, and middle east Europe area has gas/oil.

 

I would agree but it takes years to get a nuclear power plant online.
and more drilling is not feasible since COP-something or other created environmental targets.

 

Well I think in this we can agree. This seems to be a European issue and the US should stay out.

 

If they are not going to even show a good effort to start protecting their own national security via economic changes, why should America throw our lives and money into protecting their interests and security?

I don't care that it will take a while. I just want them to start.

 

Great!! Nothing to worry about

 

Because we have the best printing presses in the world

 

Nothing to do with economic changes.
It has to do with environmental protection and reducing dependence on fossil fuels.
Happily France still has nuclear energy at the heart of its power generation and sells a gret deal of it to the UK. They are getting a tad old now but instead of decommissioning them as considered, there is renewed interest in replacing them one by one.

 

Well, Russia would be the logical ally of the US in a war with China, but the US military attacked and killed Russian forces within month of Trump's inauguration.

"The death toll from the skirmish, already about five times more than Russia’s official losses in Syria, is still rising, according to one mercenary commander who said by phone that dozens of his wounded men are still being treated at military hospitals in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

Most of those killed and injured were Russian and Ukrainian, many of them veterans of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, according to Alexander Ionov, who runs a Kremlin-funded group that fosters ties to separatists and who’s personally fought alongside pro-government forces in Syria."
BLOOMBERG, U.S. Strikes Killed Scores of Russia Fighters in Syria, Sources Say
By Stepan Kravchenko , Henry Meyer , and Margaret Talev, February 13, 2018.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...d-to-kill-scores-of-russian-fighters-in-syria

 

I don't care what Trump would do. What should be done is the world should immediately move in all kinds of peaceful people like the Red Cross, charities, religious people, and several others from many countries right into the spot that Putin would first invade. That way Putin wouldn't be attacking just Ukraine, he would be attacking the world.

 

Well said! Especially given that the Chinese surely have enough 'dirt' on the Biden Family 'Business' Syndicate by now to cause 'the Big Guy', Geriatric Joe, and his cocaine-huffing child, Hunter, some considerable 'malaise': https://nypost.com/article/hunter-biden-china-timeline-business-ties/ .

. -- "No, no! There was NO mention of "the Sword of Damocles"...!"

 

so that you can then bitch about all the americans left behind russian lines by those incompetent dems? i don't think so. next.

ukraine has been russian since the 17th century, its current boundaries were set by stalin. donbass, like crimea, is majority ethnic russian. o'm wondering og we can negotiate some kind of election?

 

You guys on the left have a reading comprehension problem. I said send people there from charities, religions, etc from all over the world, not just from the US. Russia would have to think long and hard about attacking an area stuffed with innocent citizens from many countries from all over the world.

 

I have had to rethink my opposition to nuclear power plants -- especially after learning that the energy source I have hoped for many years -- hydrogen fusion power plants -- may never be developed at all because of the great difficulty in obtaining enough tritium to run them (Damn!) .

The truth is that even conventional power plants such as those which have been operating without problems in France are very efficient, and they do not (NOT) pollute the atmosphere like burning fossil fuels does -- especially in places where they burn coal, such as India.

I hate having to give up my 'pipe-dream' of hydrogen fusion, but, in all fairness, when was the last time we heard of a "Chernobyl"-event happening in France?! Oh, BTW, my German friends tell me that they are going to shut down their last three nuclear power plants before the end of this year... just as natural gas prices are shooting even further into the stratosphere. -- "Wunderschön, nicht war...?"

 

"REMEMBER WHEN THEY TOLD US BIDEN WAS GOING TO MAKE AMERICA RESPECTED AGAIN?" German Chancellor Snubs Biden’s Request for Meeting on Ukraine Crisis.

"They lied."

​

Biden's not respected.

 

You can't help but feel bad for poor, old Olaf Scholz, the new German Kanzler. He's barely had his butt in the 'big chair' in Berlin for more than a month, and now this whole "Ukraine thing" has presented Germany with some very challenging options -- none of which are particularly good for Germany in the short-term.

To put it mildly, Germany has been hit with a blitzkrieg of skyrocketing energy prices -- I mean, OFF THE CHARTS. By Christmas Eve, seven of Germany's big energy-supplying companies had gone bankrupt, throwing their customers in the lurch, and forcing them onto the 'fallback' local supplier -- at whatever rates would apply! Truth? "Gas prices in Europe are more than five times as high as they were a year ago", according to the Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/natura...rman-utilities-into-dash-for-cash-11641387867 . Everybody had hoped that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia directly into Germany would be turned on by now, but the EU 'regulators' still have the whole thing paralyzed, awaiting 'certification', until JUNE at the earliest, probably because of the stuff going involving Ukraine.

Now, add to that the fact that Germany is definitely going to shut down all three of its remaining nuclear energy plants, by the end of THIS year. Oh, and going back to burning coal isn't an option -- besides, Olaf's "Green" coalition partners would stage a 'palace coup' if anybody even seriously suggested such a thing!

Now, even better -- the U. S. is driving efforts to get NATO nations into war-fighting preparations of all kinds in case Russia does invade Ukraine. Take note -- Biden has made it clear that America won't be involved in any actual battlefield fighting, but the Europeans (and, yeah, that means GERMANY) may well be expected to 'suit-up', 'fix-bayonets', and storm out into the ice, snow, and mud to go fight Russians in winter! Poor, old Olaf can probably remember hearing horror stories when he was a child from his grandfather's generation about how much fun it was the last time Germany got involved in something like THAT....

So, the next time you look in the mirror and think things are pretty bleak this year for you, just be glad that you aren't Olaf Scholz!

. "Smile, Olaf... things could be worse -- you could be ME!"

 

Very interesting post, you brought up some Russian/Germany history that I hadn't applied to this. Imagine how much differently the world today would look if Hitler would not have broken the pact with Russia by invading.

I thought of you post when I saw this article:

Germany Roiled By "Political Earthquake": Navy Chief Resigns After Saying "Putin Deserves Respect", Warning China Is "Not A Nice Country"

​

“Does Russia really want a small and tiny strip of Ukraine soil to integrate into their country? No, this is nonsense...”

Of course, they are lying, thieving, outlaw slavers.

Russia's claims

 

Naturally the one guy who tells the truth gets the boot.

 

I am not clear as to what you mean by certification.
Normally energy matters are NOT in the competence of the EU Commission.

The issue about energy companies closing down is also a big problem in the UK which had spawned lots of dubious energy companies all offering cheaper energy. It was like a reverse auction and why now, some people are having to face not only global increase in prices but REAL prices.

Re Ukraine, the UK (and other Euroepan countries) has made it clear it won't send troops etc etc. Like the USA, military equipment maybe, but not personnel.

 

Meanwhile and at he same time, the internal US legal process is investigating your previous president's credibility, honesty and virgin legal status.
Uh huh.

 

It's actually a combination of German and "EU Commission" bureaucracies that are dragging their feet on providing the needed 'certification': https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...aucracy-not-scholz-could-hobble-nord-stream-2

From the story in Bloomberg: "Before gas can flow through the pipeline at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, Germany’s regulator and the EU Commission, two institutions not known for their speed, have to give the green light. Certification from Germany’s Bundesnetzagentur, or Federal Network Agency, must undergo EU scrutiny before a final sign off by Germany -- a back-and-forth that could take six to eight months."

And, as far as NATO mounting an 'armed forces' confrontation with Russia goes... so far, there are no troop deployments, but who knows for sure what German Kanzler Olaf Scholz may be 'jawboned' into doing by U. S. Sec. of State, Tony Blinken...? It is obvious that the two NATO countries doing the most 'saber-rattling' today are the U. S. and the UK, but, of the major 'players' in Western Europe, Germany is the closest to an indicated 'battlefield theater'....

Yes, you're right! Trump has been put under a 'electron microscope' by our 'mainstream media', with every action, real or imagined, subjected to intense scrutiny and speculation. Meanwhile, with evidence in a pile that rivals Mt. Everest, Biden's family 'business syndicate' has attracted next-to-NO interest from the major U. S. networks nearly all of which are populated today by hyperliberal, 'woke' Democrat "news" reporters.

One point most of us on the Right agree on, though... and that is that anyone, whether that were Biden OR Trump (or anyone in their respective inner-circles) is proven to have broken the law, those individuals should be charged, tried in court(s) of law, and, if found guilty, should be thoroughly punished, without regard to political influence, money, or power....

 

In any place I have lived , any judicial enquiries or investigations are sub judice including the publicising of such into Trump and his family.
If any media outlet leaks information about such investigations, thy are breaking the law.
Which is why it may seem a tad quiet for the moment.

 

To gt back to the Ukraine, I wonder if anyone has heard of the Bucharest Memorandum?

https://www.dw.com/en/ukraines-forgotten-security-guarantee-the-budapest-memorandum/a-18111097

Twenty years ago, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from Russia and the West. Today Kyiv feels betrayed - and not merely by Moscow.

The document was signed on 5 December, 1994 at the summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In it, Ukraine, a nuclear power at that time, voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees.

The US, Great Britain and Russia welcomed the decision of the Kyiv regime to accede to the non-proliferation agreement and pledged, among other things, to respect the independence and "existing borders" of Ukraine.

The Soviet Union, Belarus and Kazakhstan signed similar memoranda on the same day.

ISTM most people including national governments have forgotten about it...

 

You are quite right about this, and in a very real sense, everyone let Ukraine down. That said, in reality, Ukraine couldn't have done anything with those nuclear weapons anyway, despite having so many of them. All the controls, launch-codes, etc., were in the hands of central control entities in Russia, and, as the story in the link points out, it would have bankrupted Ukraine to try even to do anything with them or even to maintain them.

From the story in the link:
"Ukraine could have kept the nuclear weapons, but the price would have been enormous, (Leonid) Kravchuk (the President of Ukraine in the early 1990's) says. Though the carrier rockets were manufactured in the southern Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk, the nuclear warheads were not. It would have been too expensive for Ukraine to manufacture and maintain them on its own.

"It would have cost us $65 billion (53 billion euros), and the state coffers were empty," Kravchuk said."

Additionally, the West threatened Ukraine with isolation since the missiles were supposedly aimed at the United States. Therefore, "the only possible decision" was to give up the weapons, according to Kravchuk."

It appears clearer with the passing of time that one agreement after another has been ignored, forgotten, or simply thrown in the trash -- by everyone. Perhaps the most recent (and most egregious) example of this conduct has been the non-compliance of those who signed the "Minsk Protocol" and the subsequent "Minsk 2 Agreement"... and that, perhaps more than anything else, has brought us to where we are today....

 

Ukraine was taken by this, since the agreement doesn't actually provide any security guarantees.

 

Biden is going to repeat Afghanistan and probably react to his second failure in an even poorer way. ****ing moron