So what is exactly wrong with some Russian influence? As a Dutchie I am continously influenced by Americans, Germans, Frenchmen etc.
Very different from choosing to watch American movies or cooking French food.
They know that they need to maintain spotless business reputation, precisely because Europe is already on the fence re doing any business with Russia at all and because gas exports are the most reliable source of hard currency for Russia.
Turning gas off is a nuclear option for Kremlin. Not unthinkable, but very extreme.
Well they're doing it right now.
Natural gas flows at the westernmost point of the Yamal pipeline — a strategically important 2,000-kilometer pipeline that runs across four countries: Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany — dropped to 20 million cubic meters per day in mid-August, [...] a sharp fall from its typical rate of 81 mcm per day.
What’s more, European piped natural gas supply from Russia is expected to slip even further in September. [1]
--
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/24/russia-is-pumping-less-natur...
The Kremlin is as dependent on that $$$ as Germany is on gas, perhaps even more so. They won't dream of screwing their largest client, and one of the most important trading partners. If Germany was desperate for energy it wouldn't be engaging in super expensive "green" energy boondoggles and it'd be building up baseline nuclear capacity. They _easily_ have the engineering to do it, and the operational capability to run it safely. The fact that they are not doing this is quite telling - they too do not believe the Kremlin would be prepared to blow off its feet with a Gatling gun like that. If anything a trade partnership like that only makes Europe more stable, and any political or military shenanigans would be less likely to occur. Crucially it'd also strengthen the ties between the two countries, which is something the US does not want to see, because then the US sanctions would be only good for wiping one's ass with. Can't have that.
Full disclosure: Russian-American, but not a fan of Putin.
Because of that I'd rather count on small modular reactors from whomever, or even fusion by some startup, not via ITER, or Wendelstein-X.
Why would Russia attack anyone? What would be the point of such an attack?
Why US is allowed to attack anyone, destroys whole countries and kill millions of people, including hundreds of thousands of civilians and everybody is ok with it (recent examples: Libya, Afghanistan, Syria)?
I was responding to the GP's hypothetical.
> Why US is allowed to attack anyone, destroys whole countries and kill millions of people, including hundreds of thousands of civilians and everybody is ok with it (recent examples: Libya, Afghanistan, Syria)?
If you can rephrase this so it doesn't sound like overt flame bait, I might respond. Otherwise we risk a flame war and I don't have energy for that.
They aren't anymore dangerous for Europe. The main difference is our existing trade deals with the US are more embedded into the European economy than any of the other countries. We like the US now, they are our friends, but because they are more connected, we are more reliant on them than others, which is dangerous in and of itself.
https://www.wjtv.com/health/coronavirus/canadian-government-...
Also, the decision to bar people from getting vaccinated on the other side of the border was not solely a Canadian decision. US disallowed Canadians going there to get vaccinated too. There was a very short period of time between the time Canadians started going to the US for vaccines and the time US banned this practice.
Also, your link is from July. That was right around the time vaccines became abundant in Canada and vaccination was opened to all regardless of age and health status. The disappointment was in early 2021, when Canada was still vaccinating 80+ people and US decided to vaccinate all 16+ people before allowing vaccine exports here so we can at least vaccinate people in elderly care homes.
> Canadians hoping to cross the border for the sole purpose of getting a COVID-19 vaccine will be turned away, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/confusion-abounds-...
There is and has never been a US vaccine export ban, and the US has not seized vaccines meant for other countries. If I purchase an item before others, purchase by far the most quantities of that item, pay by far the most overall, and pay a considerable amount of money toward funding its development, I should expect that item before others. Any Kickstarter backer knows this; it's what the US and UK did, and what Canada and the EU did not.
The Trump administration last year signed gigantic contracts for every planned vaccine, because no one knew which ones would work. Like, enough for every American from one manufacturer, let alone the current four major available ones. More importantly, the contracts guaranteed the US the earliest deliveries.
By early June 2020 (<https://web.archive.org/web/20200603171013/https://www.nytim...>) the Trump administration had already identified and was planning to sign the aforementioned huge contracts with Moderna, AstraZeneca, J&J, Merck, and Pfizer. (An 80% success rate is fantastic in drug discovery.) By that time the US had already paid $2.2 billion to three of the companies. (Also note the skepticism throughout the article that any vaccines could be delivered anywhere within the timeframe the administration was promising.)
The UK signed a similar contract for the AstraZeneca vaccine. The EU and Canada did not assure themselves of such quantities. Canada also bet on CanSino because it was afraid that the US would ban vaccine exports (which, again, never happened). Of course, the Chinese did not live up to the contract.
Before you say "But what about—", the Trump executive order from December 2020 merely sets up the legal framework to prohibit exports if desired. But that does not mean that the framework is invoked. Let me repeat: The US signed contracts that were a) huge in size/scope and b) from every pharmaceutical company working on a vaccine, which c) got the country the largest and among the first deliveries. The UK did the same thing with the AstraZeneca vaccine, and spent a lot of money to retool domestic plants to produce it in addition to the non-UK doses it bought.
By contrast, look at Canada as counterexample. Consider Maclean's desperate attempt to spin its procurement difficulties (<https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/where-did-canadas-vaccin...>). If you look past the predictable false eliding of the US's firstest-with-the-mostest contracts as an "export ban", the best the magazine can do is admit that
* all Canadian contracts with vaccine providers that actually delivered were signed between late July and late September
* all contracts were signed after the collapse of the CanSino deal, which Canada had loudly bragged about as proof of its savviness at obtaining vaccines ASAP and circumvent any perfidious US vaccine export ban (which, again, never happened), and which it has done its best since the collapse to pretend that said contract never existed
* the other contracts that the magazine cites as proof that CanSino wasn't the only basket Ottawa was putting all its eggs in are with VBI (Who?) and USask. They may or may not yet deliver effective vaccines, but it's all now a bit beside the point, eh?
(I don't disagree that to country B waiting on doses, the outcome is the same whether or not the cause is country A implementing an export ban or country A having bought up all the doses by having signed the contract first. But there is a difference.)
If the situation were different, might the US have implemented a ban on exporting doses already designated for another country, similar to what the EU did implement toward Australia? Perhaps. But, fortunately, the US never faced this issue, because of the huge amounts of money it invested a year ago and the contracts it signed with said money.
Now that demand has eased considerably, the US is now donating more doses of vaccine than all of the other countries on the planet combined.
This compares to the EU which allowed vaccine exports. Thousands of Canadians are alive today that wouldn't have been if the EU acted like the US.
Yes, the early days of COVID vaccination were predictably rocky. What's the excuse today for not working together to vaccinate the world?
Just like the US donates as much food to the rest of the world as all other nations combined and has been doing it for a century now.
US bad.
In whichever case, a few Internet Points is a small price to pay. :)
Same trick as people proudly touting that US is the #1 philantropy country, ignoring that other countries actually run efficient mutualized welfare services.
It doesn't mean the current vaccine donation program isn't a great thing, or that the US policy has been wrong. But it's annoying for people explaining a problem to see it reframed so that it shows feel-good results from the US pov.
(as for the numbers, [1] shows about >400M doses exported for China as of July 9th and ~350M from Europe as of May 6th, while [2] claims the US donated 160M doses as of now.)
[1]: https://dukeghic.org/2021/07/09/taking-a-closer-look-at-vacc... [2]: https://www.state.gov/covid-19-recovery/vaccine-deliveries/
"Canadian issues" was never the topic at hand. We were all responding to this comment[0]:
> The same issues apply to American control over European power supplies or Norwegian control over European power supplies. They aren't anymore dangerous for Europe. The main difference is our existing trade deals with the US are more embedded into the European economy than any of the other countries. We like the US now, they are our friends, but because they are more connected, we are more reliant on them than others, which is dangerous in and of itself.
user smnrchrds made his "US shutting off the tap" as an example of the perils of being economically entrenched with the US, but I pointed out that this was a bad example because there was no actual "flow" of vaccine for the US to cut off in the first place.
user TMWNN left the even better rebuttal[1] that the US wasn't even responsible for Canada's vaccine shortage--the US never restricted vaccine flow to Canada, but rather the Canadians failed to diversify their vaccine order until after their original vaccine deal fell through, and by the time they placed orders with US suppliers, those suppliers had long since made other commitments.
Moreover, you were the one who brought up the US philanthropic narrative--I mentioned donations in that context.
> But it's annoying for people explaining a problem to see it reframed so that it shows feel-good results from the US pov.
I'm sure it's very annoying when you're trying to pile-on another country and some buzzkill ruins the fun by setting the record straight. :) However, per the previous paragraph, the "problem" is that the Canadian government failed to make appropriate provisions. The US vaccine rollout actually appears to be even more of an unmitigated success story than I originally understood, and I'm (not really) sorry if that offends.
> as for the numbers, [1] shows about >400M doses exported for China as of July 9th and ~350M from Europe as of May 6th, while [2] claims the US donated 160M doses as of now
You're comparing all exports for China and Europe with donations from the US. When the US uses its economy to do good, everyone piles on about how evil it is that corporations are charging for something. When the US government gives away hundreds of millions of dollars worth of life saving vaccine, you pile on about how it should be selling that vaccine and that "giving vaccines away" is cheating. There's no way to win.
I've got to say, anti-Americanism is a really strange thing for me, as an American. I understand having criticism for the American government or various elements of American culture--I certainly have these criticisms myself, but I work hard to do what little I can to improve my country. I want America to be a force for good in the world. But I don't understand the impulse to interpret every event solely through the lens of "how can this be distorted to make America look bad?".
When I see another country that's struggling, I feel compassion for them. I want their country to improve. But most of the time when people see the US struggling, they seem to feel smugness and schadenfreude, and when the US isn't struggling it angers and annoys them. And it's not just Europeans and Canadians, but also progressive Americans.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28671688 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28677797
If natural gas prices in the US keep soaring, you can expect the Biden Administration to look into turning off exports via whatever justification they can come up with to make it happen.
Julian Assange? Edward Snowden? If they could 'the US' would very much like to disappear them, by whatever means.
Furthermore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio seem just like the tip of an iceberg.
I think you're confusing "extradition and trial by jury" with "assassination" or "disappearing".
kthxbye
Do you have proofs? Anything comparable to killing 4 millions in Vietnam, 600,000 in Iraq (probably more), etc, etc.
a) picked the "high estimates" - really bad choice for the sake of an Internet discussion
b) you rounded it up!
c) you presented that number as civilians killed while it is total deaths on both sides
d) you tried to present that number in the context of children killed
e) you assume these were all killed by US, which they weren't
Considering grossness of the misrepresentation in your comment, I don't think it makes sense to argue with you. However, there's plenty of proofs for Russia not minding killing children in its war efforts as recent as 2014, including MH17 which had 80 children on board.
[x] https://fair.org/extra/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/
I'd also like to add
[1] https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/weapons-mass-migrat... &
[2] https://www.covertbookreport.com/weapons-of-mass-migration/
(Would you like to have fries with that?)
That said, the US should absolutely work to reduce its collateral damage, but let's not pretend that accidentally killing a civilian and bombing a city (because they are disproportionately critical of your dictatorship) are morally equivalent.
I would also expand this to known supporters and voters, but that can be next step.
So you would massacre tens or hundreds of millions of civilians because accidentally killing civilians is bad? This is the most heinous thing I've ever read on HN.
> Or at least judged by peers of their victims. Like for latest case I say ship everyone in chain of command and involved in manufacturing to Afghanistan and have the local government there deliver the justice they deserve.
Ironically Afghanistan no longer does trial by peers, they do door to door executions without any kind of trial (certainly not trial by jury of peers).
And of course, you're notably silent on deliberately targeting civilians in their thousands, which is what Assad has been doing and the Kremlin implicitly supports.
When you are killing children using rocket propelled explosives deliberately launched into crowded urban areas, from high-altitude unmanned vehicles, operated by professional soldiers an ocean away, on intelligence only you have, you are as far away from an accidental killing as is possible.
It you hadn't passed another law threatening the Netherlands with an invasion, you might finds yourself having to answer for it.
> So you would massacre tens or hundreds of millions of civilians because accidentally killing civilians is bad?
Futhermore, the US has been involved or started numerous conflicts in the EU backyard, which we are forced to cooperate in, and have no choice to take care of the refugees.
Russia is absolutely a dictatorship. They just rigged their most recent election (jailed the leading rival politician and banned apps that informed people on how to use their vote strategically to minimize Putin’s party’s power).
As for "rigged elections" all the US elections in the last 50 years were rigged as well - think about gerrymandering and deliberately blocking black and Latino minorities from voting (by making it hard for them to obtain proof of identity, or making them wait hours in line at the polling stations).
"Dissident" is just a critic of a policy or regime. It doesn't improve Russia's hand at all to say that it only assassinates critics, and it certainly isn't an exclusively US-held position that Alexander Litvinenko, Boris Nemtsov, Alexei Navalny, etc were critics (as opposed to bonafide violent terrorists).
As for "America labels its critics as 'terrorists'": can you name any critics that the US labeled "terrorists" and consequently assassinated, especially on EU soil?
There's no evidence that Putin is related to death of these persons. BTW, Navalny is alive and well and all the evidence shows that he was probably "poisoned" by the CIA to create another "victim" of Putin's regime.
Besides, Navalny is a terrorist on CIA payroll. He's working on destroying Russia from within. He was recruited and trained abroad and most of his "donations" are coming from western governments and spy agencies. Nobody trusts him here.
Also, Germany had provided him with studio and equipment to film his last propaganda movie and YouTube promoted it very aggressively (no other YouTube clip was ever promoted this aggressively - it was starting automatically for almost any person in Russia that opened YouTube).
Yeah, that's a conspiracy...
Think cheer leaders.
And we are the best cheer leaders ever, or fanbois, ankle-biters.
Things which come to my mind are [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khodorkovsky ,
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_Weiwei
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yulia_Tymoshenko
(Miraculously healed from her excruciating back pains
due to rough handling by the magicians of the
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charit%C3%A9
does this ring a bell, Nawalny, Charité, yes?)
All greeted by politicians at the Airport when they arrived here, by whichever diplomatic means.
And now that Nawalny thing. Which somehow stinks.
The same way the Skripal thing stinks.
Though I don't know what to make of Litvinenko, that stinks different.
One could even go further back to
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Hale &
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program in the context of
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinio...
and wonder why we have so many buddhist organisations here?
I'm not saying that there aren't any other parties playing similar games here and elsewhere, that would be unlikely.
It's just the endlessly repeated and obvious BS, which is so ridiculous.
Most recent example is some nobody who suddenly popped up as 'the hope' of the german green party,
pushed by media, talking empty phrases in interviews, lied about credentials/qualifications, got caught,
didn't matter, media pushed harder.
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annalena_Baerbock
Media said boo! Fake-news! Uhhh... why?
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttenberg_plagiarism_scandal
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annette_Schavan
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvana_Koch-Mehrin
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franziska_Giffey
and so many more.
We (traditionally) don't like fake it till you make it. That goes against our (percieved) sense of order! :-)
Anyways, back to that Gazprom vs. Germany topic. This is all non-news, noise, pushed by either brain-washed,
or at least uninformed people, or outright liars, having an agenda.
This is absolutely not true. US is assassinating dissidents all over the world all the time.
US is installing puppet governments and staging revolutions all the time to pursue its economical interests.
BTW, none of the alleged Russian assassinations were proven. There're only "highly likely" arguments without a single piece of evidence. And when there're counter arguments, they are not printed in the western press. E.g. how Germany was preparing for investigation of "poisoning" of Navalny, before it was known that he was "poisoned".
Otherwise you’ve shown you are either consuming Russian state TV for breakfast, lunch and dinner or you’re doing this for money.
“Highly likely”, no single piece of evidence, Germany/Navalny… these are the most trashy arguments that are spread 24/7 by state paid actors.
It never cease to amaze me how hard US population believes that it has some kind of monopoly on truth. That no other nation or person can know the truth, but US is always right.
b) Using "West" gives away you're from Russia or the neighbouring countries
c) Your "truth" of “highly likely", no single piece of evidence, Germany/Navalny, etc are cheap arguments that are exaggerated and repeated non-stop by Solovyov/Simonyan and other state actors that instil fear and hatred into Russian people every day.
Each of your arguments is easily debunked within a few minutes of Googling around, including looking at investigations from within Russia (e.g. by The Insider) that used corrupt sources to buy passport copies, geolocation, flight history and phone metadata from the internal police databases. These investigations are never mentioned or even rejected by the state or the media. The reason? Because you can buy the same data and come to the same conclusions and confirm the investigation yourself.
That's all. But that Nawalny thing stinks.
It has the typical pattern of getting some useful idiot somewhere, build him/her up,
have some ankle-biters who don't know any better bark for him, and try to stir up dissent where it is useful for you.
If it works? Good! If not? Poor bastard.
Next!
That's the main difference between us and the "collective West".
Also, West is amazingly ignorant. E.g. when people from the West discuss history of Russia, USSR, Georgia, Chechnya, Ukraine, Crimea, it is clear that you don't know a single bit about these places or history or relationships between countries and people here. You just regurgitate typical stereotypes and media lies.
The level of ignorance is so high that there're cases where it is beyond facepalm. E.g. utterances of Jane Psaki about shores of Belarus, or recent declaration in French newspaper that Ukraine invaded Crimea in 2014.
You guys know nothing, absolutely nothing. You live in a bubble created by ignorance, not knowing a single foreign language, inability to consume any information but lies fabricated by your media that belong to 5-6 rich persons that push a single agenda in unison.
Yet you're ready to kill millions based on that misinformation.
1. The US doesn't do this.
2. This is an apt description of USSR history, which is of course Russian history.
> Also, West is amazingly ignorant. E.g. when people from the West discuss history of Russia, USSR, Georgia, Chechnya, Ukraine, Crimea, it is clear that you don't know a single bit about these places or history or relationships between countries and people here. You just regurgitate typical stereotypes and media lies.
Yes, I'm sure the free media all over the world (including those of the countries you've mentioned) is wrong and the Russian state media outlets are telling the truth. (:
I can open BBC news or CNN and read something about Russia and make facepalm 1000th time when I read about some fact about the place where I live or some event I witnessed.
You, people on the West, don't know what we know about you. What we read in our news about you, what we think about you.
So even if you suppose we're brainwashed, you can't have any evidence of it.
US killed tens, maybe hundreds of millions directly and indirectly. Starting from the very beginning of its existence (genocide of natives). Ending with Libya, which is a failed state now, with slaves and anarchy, thanks to the help of US and NATO.
> 2. This is an apt description of USSR history, which is of course Russian history.
Russia (and USSR) was not always right. But it never genocided whole populations, there was never colonies of Russia that were exploited like African or Asian colonies. USSR, for example, pumped a lot of its income not into the Russian population but in the limitrophe republics (Estonia, Latvia, Uzbekistan, etc). It is not the same.
> es, I'm sure the free media all over the world
Free media, LOL. People need to live somewhere, you know buy or rent an apartment or house. Buy food, pay for electricity and heat. Nobody is free from that.
So journalist, you know, usually work for some organization that pays them salary. That organization determines what they should write about and how, where to put accents in the articles.
There're not many such organizations. They all belong to some mega-corporations, holdings, etc, that in turn belong to a very limited circle (no more than 10 persons worldwide).
Where would the truth appear in this scheme of things?
Are you really that naive?
AFAIK they do not have a history of doing this, only when terms of actual gas deals are not met. Which is common business sense.
edit: you are downplaying US influence. Are you aware The Netherlands is a host for US nuclear weapons?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_gas_dis...
Besides, they're used as an enemy, as cannon fodder against Russia. Why would Russia feed them using our natural resources? What's our obligation? It's not their gas, it's not their pipeline (it was built by "soviet occupants").