Ukraine

[uglymoney]

Russian SAM battery destroyed. Presumably by HIMARS.

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status...UeulGvGnw&s=19

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[Bunion 2020]

Ya gotta give America credit, we can't manage to provide decent health care or housing or education or even clean water to a lot of our citizens but we can build some really neat shit that blows up other shit.

[uglymoney]

For now. While we are still giving out contracts to companies thst make incredible hardware instead of our dear leaders 'friends'. But let's keep this focused on Ukraine.

Edit...Could have been a Turkish TB2 drone also.

News is coming in slowly lately.

[billyk]

Who took that video? Was it just a civilian driving by in a car with a smart phone? And they just casually stopped and got out? Jeeze, it’s like a tourist at Yellowstone getting out to take closeup’s of bison. Weird war.

[uglymoney]

Who knows. I think a lot of these are actually from Russian soldiers. They are very good about uploading videos of their weapons being blowed the fuck up. And then they are found and shared by people that know people and know what they are looking at.

Remarkable really.

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[LongShortLong]

Who took that video? Was it just a civilian driving by in a car with a smart phone? And they just casually stopped and got out? Jeeze, it’s like a tourist at Yellowstone getting out to take closeup’s of bison. Weird war.

Not entirely new. The US Civil War was also a spectator sport. Smart phones were a bit ungainly back then, but they did shoot some photos.

[subtle plague]

Great so 6 days after the end of maintenance Russia reduced the gas to 20% because of New ..uh.."maintenance issues". That's the official term for putin blackmail in Russia. Oh well...but it was so cheap in the last two decades!

Im glad that Germany is forced to bear the brunt of the sanctions' consequences so the poor American Truck owners, who have to pay sooo much to fill up their trucks, don't have to and can talk about the unreliable German allies who should sacrifice more for ukraine.

I guess we'll find out this winter how much gas we need before our economy collapses and people start freezing.

[neufox47]

In fairness to Germany, it is suffering the consequences of getting all the way in bed with Putin, relying completely on Russian gas even though there were other alternatives.

https://www.politico.eu/article/vlad...la-merkel/amp/

The comments of many of the other European countries, parroting back many things Germany said to them after the 2008 financial crisis is amusing. I love Germany and think they have gotten unfair criticism since February, but this is a very predictable outcome of Germany’s energy policy of switching off nuclear early and relying so heavily on Russian gas.


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[jono]

Austerity will actually be useful this time around since it will destroy some demand. Luckily Germans will remember their advice to Greece and this Russian "maintenance" episode and will plan for the inevitable with warm mid-layers and slower speeds. Or perhaps not, I guess we'll see.

Pootin planned ahead. Hopefully Germany can, too.

[subtle plague]

In fairness to Germany, it is suffering the consequences of getting all the way in bed with Putin, relying completely on Russian gas even though there were other alternatives.

https://www.politico.eu/article/vlad...la-merkel/amp/

The comments of many of the other European countries, parroting back many things Germany said to them after the 2008 financial crisis is amusing. I love Germany and think they have gotten unfair criticism since February, but this is a very predictable outcome of Germany’s energy policy of switching off nuclear early and relying so heavily on Russian gas.


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As I pointed out in my previous post: I fucking loathe our last two decades of energy lethargy.
we could have been so much more towards renewables, or diversified supply for that matter.

Merkel did a fantasic putin blow job.

It's quite ironic that the Greens, who I voted for all those years, have to build lng Terminals and go begging for gas in the Islamic Terror Financing and slave worker oppression fun World that is Katar because of the 20 years of the CDU snoozefest. And don't get me started on taking back our well planned nuclear exit strategy (the last Red Green coalition actually had a reasonable plan before Merkel) and then taking it back back totally chaotically after Fukushima. We paid billions for that populist Merkel shit.

And we're going to pay the price for that energy stupidity. I actually ordered fire wood in more than cosmetic quantities for our wood stove thing I the living room. We don't need much gas from March until October because we have solar thermal water heating on the roof which supplies shower and heating.

I just wanted to point out that it's easy to armchair without facing any real problems

[PB]

......
I just wanted to point out that it's easy to armchair without facing any real problems

I hear you. Can just imagine what all the maga-heads and Karens would be doing if our fans encountered some shit similar to what's going down in Europe. Short term pain for long term gain isn't really embraced by anyone if it's personal.

[MultiVerse]

Great so 6 days after the end of maintenance Russia reduced the gas to 20% because of New ..uh.."maintenance issues". That's the official term for putin blackmail in Russia. Oh well...but it was so cheap in the last two decades!

Im glad that Germany is forced to bear the brunt of the sanctions' consequences so the poor American Truck owners, who have to pay sooo much to fill up their trucks, don't have to and can talk about the unreliable German allies who should sacrifice more for ukraine.

I guess we'll find out this winter how much gas we need before our economy collapses and people start freezing.

Germany could always restart its nuclear power plants the way Belgium and Finland did in response to Russian blackmail which would free up gas used for power generation for other things.

After all, isn't it better for German citizens to fight the Russians with Ukrainians in Ukraine than to fight them in Germany with Germans?

[Adolf Allerbush]

Germany could always restart its nuclear power plants the way Belgium and Finland did in response to Russian blackmail which would free up gas used for power generation for other things.

From what I've read it's just a regulatory hurdle to keep them open correct? As-in they would need to abandon the law they adopted to shutter the nuclear power facilities by 2022, which seems like a smart move considering the current state of affairs.

[MultiVerse]

Yeah, the German government said restarting the plants is impossible for a variety of reasons only to be contradicted by plant engineers and operators who say it's very doable. Ironically, the German Green party is so opposed to nuclear, the cleanest power source in terms of climate & pollution, that instead the country is burning brown coal or lignite which is just about the dirtiest energy source on the planet.

All that being said I think the main point is not to criticize Germany, but that Putin is waging a shooting war on Ukraine and also on the rest of Europe through its energy policy.

[subtle plague]

Yeah, the German government said restarting the plants is impossible for a variety of reasons only to be contradicted by plant engineers and operators who say it's very doable. Ironically, the German Green party is so opposed to nuclear, the cleanest power source in terms of climate, that instead the country is burning brown coal or lignite, the dirtiest fuel there is.

It's not that simple. Even the energy companies admitted that much. Some maybe, some others...not so much. They skipped some maintenance because of the back and forth and the changing schedule of the Merkel era. They were Set to run until 2030( because the Green party actually had a planned useful compromise) then longer and then a lot shorter.

And, I may repeat myself, electricity is not the main problem ( well it would be kind of managable. Not great, but doable) Only 12% of the gas goes from gas to electricity via power plants.

[Toadman]

Great so 6 days after the end of maintenance Russia reduced the gas to 20% because of New ..uh.."maintenance issues". That's the official term for putin blackmail in Russia. Oh well...but it was so cheap in the last two decades!

Im glad that Germany is forced to bear the brunt of the sanctions' consequences so the poor American Truck owners, who have to pay sooo much to fill up their trucks, don't have to and can talk about the unreliable German allies who should sacrifice more for ukraine.

I guess we'll find out this winter how much gas we need before our economy collapses and people start freezing.

Das ist eine Schande. Hopefully Germany will have a mild winter. Bummer that Merkel hitched her wagon and Germany's to Putin's gas station.

[MultiVerse]

Only 12% of the gas goes from gas to electricity via power plants.

Yeah, German industry uses gas for lots of things other than for power generation, other than for heating buildings. That's the advantage of nuclear, it frees up gas for other things so that Europe can become less reliant on Russian gas.

Germany and France, America too in many respects, seem to be echoing their Cold War attitudes towards Russia when in reality this is a completely new situation. Going back to the way things were is not as simple as it was in past when elites played the U.S. and Russia against each other. As you've already pointed out re Merkel and her cohorts, it was prosperity built on sand.

[Mani_UT]

Yeah, the German government said restarting the plants is impossible for a variety of reasons only to be contradicted by plant engineers and operators who say it's very doable. Ironically, the German Green party is so opposed to nuclear, the cleanest power source in terms of climate & pollution, that instead the country is burning brown coal or lignite which is just about the dirtiest energy source on the planet.
.

This is one thing that's really pissing me off. You hear from all these guys that in 20 years we're all dead if we do nothing about CO2 and in the same sentence talk about nuclear waste that will last 100 000 years. Seems like we are not looking at things in the right order?

[Mani_UT]

And, I may repeat myself, electricity is not the main problem ( well it would be kind of managable. Not great, but doable) Only 12% of the gas goes from gas to electricity via power plants.

Yes but lots of what's done currently directly with gas could be replaced by electricity.

[dunfree]

Yeah, German industry uses gas for lots of things other than for power generation, other than for heating homes. That's the advantage of nuclear, it frees up gas for other things so that Europe can become less reliant on Russian gas.

Germany and France, America too in some respects, seem to be echoing their Cold War attitudes towards Russia when in reality this is a completely new situation and there's no going back to way things were.

Think this was posted before (1982 report on USSR pipeline) https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000273322.pdf
But lots of it still reads it pretty true - like the paragraph talking about how USSR military action in Europe Polans was the example would harden attitudes against USSR, but action elsewhere wouldn’t. Energy security of Russia vs opec, etc etc not a lot changed in some ways. Main issue seems to be a surplus of delusional thinking now

[riser4]

Main issue seems to be a surplus of delusional thinking now

Heh. Great quote.

[ex-powderbroker]

short article on sanctions from axios:

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/26/rus...conomic-impact

now let’s get kherson back

[uglymoney]

Das ist eine Schande. Hopefully Germany will have a mild winter. Bummer that Merkel hitched her wagon and Germany's to Putin's gas station.

How hard was that to see coming? 20/20 hindsight not even needed.

And his point about Americans willingness to feel pain vs throw rocks from our glass house is spot on. We sit at right about absolute zero on the pain tolerance scale. Since Carter got thrown out of office nobody is brave enough to tell anyone they need to sacrifice fuck all and don't dare call out a truck owner sulking because then you're an 'elitist'.





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[MultiVerse]

Think this was posted before (1982 report on USSR pipeline) https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000273322.pdf
But lots of it still reads it pretty true - like the paragraph talking about how USSR military action in Europe Polans was the example would harden attitudes against USSR, but action elsewhere wouldn’t. Energy security of Russia vs opec, etc etc not a lot changed in some ways. Main issue seems to be a surplus of delusional thinking now

The energy issue remains but the Cold War was also characterized by de-escalation. Germany and France in particular intermediated between the U.S. and the Soviet Union through de-escalation. It was a successful strategy especially with the United States clearly committed to long-term strategically bankrolling European security.

Whereas today's situation is more like events leading up to WW1 when de-escalation and ambiguous intentions at the expense of deterrence and clear intentions fueled aggression. There's a skewed Cold War adjacent misunderstanding of the way the world works now. Unlike the Soviet Union, Russia is clearly willing to risk a major war to achieve its ambitions because it believes the West has or will soon withdraw strategically from the fight.

[LongShortLong]

This is one thing that's really pissing me off. You hear from all these guys that in 20 years we're all dead if we do nothing about CO2 and in the same sentence talk about nuclear waste that will last 100 000 years. Seems like we are not looking at things in the right order?

The thing with nuclear energy is the same amount of material produces 1000x as much energy as chemical energy (gas, coal, etc.). And while there is some long lasting waste, there's comparatively very very little of it. There's a paper floating around somewhere that calculates it out. If my lifetime energy use were supplied 100% by nuclear, my lifetime waste would fit in a soda can (including "accidents"). That's much easier to store safely than boatloads of CO2 and methane leaks.

As for can Germany turn them back on... California is making a big clean energy push, and our governor (and legislature) wears the lefty crown proudly. He's also a realist, and is working to extend the life of the nuclear plant and several old polluting gas plants previously promised to shut down. Keeping the lights on is a priority. Letting the economy suffer blackouts will not help a green agenda. So I think Germany can make the political changes. I can't speak to technical issues and cost, those would also need consideration.