Putting diplomatic pressure to stop relying on Russian gas, after Russia invaded a neighbor, is not sabotage.
Edit: And I think the EU is capable of putting pressure on Russia by itself, as they/we did. The US pressure is purely self serving and for their own economic wins. Which is fine I guess, I just would like it if we were not so sensitive to it here in the EU. It would save us citizens a lot of money right now.
Edit 2: the Russians would like it too: https://www.rt.com/business/476844-eu-russia-us-sanctions/
Many wars turned out to not be economic in the short term, but one can argue that the US has benefited from the rubblization of the middle east (like the shenanigans pulled in Iran among others, as described in "confessions of an Economic Hitman.")
> They don't need to, because they have the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantik-Br%C3%BCcke and other similary undemocratic institutions influencing the shit out of anything via side-channel attacks.
Which clearly says that the US has "undemocratic institutions" influencing Europe, but the link doesn't support the idea that the A-B is antidemocratic (there's nothing inherently "antidemocratic" about fostering international partnership and cooperation).
edit: Of course this is not exclusive to the US, let's just say they lead the market of political BS, k?
There's nothing in your article that suggested that the organization in question was some sort of propaganda arm of the US government, and there's nothing undemocratic about advocating for one's interests. You might not agree with the advocacy, but "democracy" doesn't demand agreement.
> Of course this is not exclusive to the US, let's just say they lead the market of political BS, k?
I don't buy this at all. There are nations with actual propaganda departments, state-run censorship, bot nets, etc who actually directly attempt to influence elections.
Like all other countries, the US does advocate for its own interests abroad--this is called "diplomacy" and it's generally the least-bad kind of advocacy. However, unlike other countries, the US does possess a lot of clout (the world depends on America in large part for security and prosperity, however loath we are to admit that America or Americans serve a useful purpose).
I'm not here to spoon feed, mentor, or lecture you on every single point you question. Furthermore it would be disrespectful to disturb your blissful ignorance.
Dream in peace.
Yeah besides the name I guess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanticism
Try [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantiker#Kritik and use some translation like
[2] https://www.deepl.com/translator
[3] https://translate.google.com
[4] https://translate.yandex.com
They all suffice.
Got the gist?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland
Take a note the date of the leaked phone conversation.
Still, if it is perceived that the US is active in a European country right on the border of Russia, you have to think about the possibility that it might be seen as a threat.
edit: Not saying the reaction is justified, just saying that it wasn't some random expansionist impulse.
But we're going down a rabbit hole. The point is that Russia now has more economic leverage over eastern Europe, and for what?
(Anything else? Would you like to have fries with that?)
Democracy support is not meddling. RF has done a lot of harm to Ukraine even before 2014. Euromaidan was a response against RF puppet Yanukovych. RF has used gas prices to influence election results. Leonid Kuchma who has built oligarchy regime elected with the help of Kremlin. His opponent, Viacheslav Chornovil, was killed.
It is mafia. And in RF mafia has got its own state.
I think it would be good to have good relations with Russia, "where goods cross borders, armies do not."
There are probably a lot of nice people living in Russia, and I bet they love their children too.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit...
I think that 600,000 Iraqis killed in that war (lower bound) would have different opinion.
Besides, does population of Iraq live better now? I seriously doubt that.
Can't have that, bringing some Sheiks with a very special relationship to the U.S.A. back into to empire, tsk, tsk!
Building case for chase supported by fake
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
Slapping of hands follows:
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War
Dust settles(mostly) until:
[4] http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,9985...
Uh Oh! Grave error! Threatening the
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar
That means terror! Have to be clever here, let's see and play some curve ball out of nowhere:
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)
The rest is history, as they say.
And they have the gall to call Russia a gas station with nukes run by mafia.
Yah, sure, whatever...
YOU ASS AYE! YOU ASS AYE! YOU ASS AYE!
Specifically against the Soviet Union, a communistic totalitarian regime that does not exist anymore.
Specifically it never included Ukraine as member, and specifically the US promised that NATO will never expand to more than the original members.
The only countries in Europe that are against the NS2 are those that have already pipelines or interests and are economically harmed by more competence.
>Claiming that the US is acting purely in self serving motives is wildly disingenuous.
Claiming that the US is acting purely in self serving motives is telling the truth. The US can mind its own business.
Specifically after signing Budapest Memorandum (Ukraine's nuclear disarming).
Specifically after signing Russian–Ukrainian Friendship Treaty.
Specifically without even admitting invasion!
This totally invalidates all the claims regarding NATO. That's defense alliance, everyone who has missed opportunity to join is a total fool.
Russian Federation is autocratic regime, just look at the last "elections".
East Europe countries were under USSR occupation for 40 years. Poland is going to switch to LNG to break dependency on RF gas.
Specifically after Ukraine made speaking Russian illegal and started treating Russian speaking population as second class citizens.
Specifically after Ukraine made plans to give Crimea to US to build a US military base.
I've recently switched to Ukrainian because of your kind. Fascists.
Half of my family lives in Ukraine. I speak with them several times a year. Before 2014 I visited them at least once a year.
They all want to move to Russia because of the rise of nazism. Some of them already moved and they're very happy that they did it.
Fascists.
Actually, fascists and Hitler are honored in Ukraine on the government level. There's no way to deny it.
People freely speak Russian language, though Russian language popularity greatly tanked because people like you. It is eights year of war, so many facts that confirm RF has occupied Ukraine, destroyed cities, killed thousands.
ctrl-f color revolutions
Where is the problem with that? Cry me a river!
Russia is openly an economic adversary of Europe and the United States, and is openly hostile to several countries in the east. Germany "went it alone", as far as I know, in order to get better prices.
My understanding of this topic is limited, so I admit my ignorance here. It simply doesn't make sense to give geopolitical strength to a rival by handicapping your nearer neighbors.
Germany sold these to them. Goes against my guts, but that's how it is. But theirs is not the only, and not even the largest storage.
So in principle them not owning that storage wouldn't change a thing.
So there are contracts. Which go by volume, and not continous uninterrupted flow. They delivered the volume and some more.
And now it isn't gone, burnt, and 'gone with the wind', but bought by others in anticipation of rising prices,
either still residing in that storage, just owned by someone else, or pumped to other storage, anticipating good sales opportunity.
How would you call that? Clever business? While lobotomizing Gazprom, Russia, whomever?
What's so hard to get about this? They are not the bad actors here.
However, if the US invaded Italy with little warning and took over Florence because it felt it needed warm water port in Europe, or access to a better wine supply then Western Europe would rightly panic and wonder how they can disentangle themselves from US influence.
The reason the US is allowed so much influence in the first place is because its stays out of territorial disputes in Europe---heck even if one occurs, it historically drags its feet for years.
Oh wait.
Why and how US will invade its colonies? Italy and Germany cannot resist any decision made by US. They have US military bases on their soil and their own army is deliberately made smaller and weaker than personnel of US military bases.
However comparing it to a superpower is nonsensical. The US has the 3rd largest military in the world, beaten only by India and China who have populations in the billions.
But just below the US is Russia with the 4h largest military in the world, and the largest (by a huge margin) on the European continent.
Now the era of colonialism was only possible due to vast technological differences between the two parties, and the good luck of the Europeans finding empires in turmoil (Songhai, Benin, Aztecs, China, etc.). It’s extremely difficult to subjugate much less rule a far off colony. The US couldn’t even manage it with Afghanistan so I doubt they’d have much luck with Germany.
On the other hand, it’s much easier to conquer your neighbor, push them back and simply put your own people in place. Russia did that for about 50 years and ruled half of Europe. I would wager Germans have more to fear from a revived Russia run by an KGB agent who grew up during the time of Empire, than a US who was most recently run by a television reality show host.
Apart from that which parts of it have more power is more interesting, but also debatable.
Anyways, apart from some exceptions (for show) the german military is mostly a very expensive army of clowns,
which can't even manage to transport its own troops reliably, or politicians for that matter.
Been there, done that in the 90ies. Meanwhile I haven't heard or read anything which would change my mind about that.
Rather the opposite.
Germany simply wants to have both options. America doesn't want that, because in "good times" Russian gas is much cheaper.
The US doesn't even register, so it's lumped in with "others".
All the infrastructure for the ships and further distribution is being built right now.
Anerica is under "others", because it's too expensive.
Also, even if there was sufficient capacity to import an equal volume of LNG there's still the problem of distributing it. Pipelines and other infrastructure have to be built to take care of new chokepoints.
We can import gas which is delivered as CLNG via Rotterdam, Zeebrugge, maybe even Dunkerque. The infrastructure is there since years, and has enough capacity. What is happening at the moment is just caused by speculation, hoarders, and politics.
All this crying is from the uninformed, multiplied by the presstitutes.
Economic sanctions and legal threats towards executives of any companies working on the project go a bit further than diplomatic pressure. It's probably the closest things to an act of war you can do without doing one.
Interfering in the international dealing of a foreign country can definitely be seen as sabotage. I personally stoped viewing the USA as an ally of the EU after this intervention. But to be fair I already had serious doubt after they crippled our diplomatic efforts in Iran.