Comment by scarmig | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scarmig | Hacker News Reader

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There's a slight difference: Russia has nuclear weapons(1), a dictatorial autocrat, and a desire to be a world power. South Africa is an only slighty out-of-the-ordinary cesspool of corruption.

Of course, all those other things you mentioned are, in isolation, much worse than these recent Russian affairs, and obviously the Western media takes a particular thrill in being putting on the mantle of courageous defender of human rights to condemn a geopolitical rival. But a bunch of workplace strikers being gunned down by an undisciplined police force isn't really indicative of much (as outrageous and terrible as it is), while Russia doubling down on shutting down internal dissent, despite international attention and condemnation, is very, very interesting and worthy of attention.

(1) Yeah, yeah, South Africa stockpiled and proliferated a hundred nukes or so in preparation for a race war. Point still stands.

> a desire to be a world power

With Russia being the primary energy supplier of Western Europe, you might want to think through the desire part a bit better.

It's not. Surprising fact, but Russian gas supply is 6.5% of primary energy in the EU, and Russian oil supply about as much. It is the largest supplier, but not dominant, and can be cut out quickly if needed. Only Slovakia is heavily dependent on Russian energy, the rest can do without in a few years if needed.

Dropping that much supply in price-inelastic fields like energy is a pretty big deal.

With Iran oil embargo, world dropped about as much (in oil) as Russia exports. Did not prove to be a big deal.

My mistake here. Russian oil exports is 2x Iranian.

Poland s also depending on Russian natural gas (primary source of natural gas in Poland)

Poland produces itself over 70% of the primary energy it uses. So it's not much import-dependent at all. But yes, since most of the energy it produces is coal, it imports about 2/3 of the natural gas it uses, and most of that, about 1/2 of the total use, from Russia. Anyways this isn't a big deal since it has sea gasification terminals, and gas market is going global because U.S. needs ways to export lots of cheap natural gas they have. Right now LNG is cheaper than Russian gas.

Did you notice Guantanamo was also mentioned? I guess you are still right in that a dictatorial plutocracy is marginally better.

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