Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[sne]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

He’s always only ever been able to leave power in either a coffin, or handcuffs I’d imagine. He’s been a very naughty man with an awful lot to hide. If he leaves power through genuine free choice, he’s as good as a dead man walking.

Yeah there are a couple of these guys hanging around atm. Putin, Erdogan, (Trump),Netanyahu and so on... And that's just the ones ruling "democracies"

[Chindie]

20 years in power is very moreish. Especially when your background is in the intelligence services. And your political career has been underlined with the consistent theme of undermining democracy.

He'll leave in a box. He's not even bothering with the sop to legitimacy by stepping back into the secondary prime ministerial position under a puppet anymore.

[sne]

Nothing to see here.

[Xann]

Extortionists of a feather flock together.

Imagine being so short sighted as to not see this coming?

Maybe over the last half century or so everyone should have been weening themselves off pipelines and tankers?

Edited January 6, 2022 by Xann

[tinker]

1 hour ago, Xann said:

Extortionists of a feather flock together.

Imagine being so short sighted as to not see this coming?

Imagine being so short sighted you threaten the main one with trade restrictions while they have their foot on your throat with gas prices. 

[chrisp65]

I’ve never truly understood how ‘defence’ appears to mean nuclear warheads and aircraft carriers way way up the list from energy secure and food secure.

Why on earth would we be in a position where we are reliant on energy from various nasty regimes all thousands of miles away.

By ‘we’ I basically mean all of Europe.

 

 

 

 

[Xann]

24 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

By ‘we’ I basically mean all of Europe.

Petrodollars bought a lot of disinformation, distraction and politicians of course.

By the end of this year one or two may be starting to understand what the Tufton St protests were all about?

[sne]

Quote

Kazakh leader ordered use of lethal force on ‘terrorists’

MOSCOW (AP) — The President of Kazakhstan said Friday he authorized law enforcement to open fire on “terrorists” and shoot to kill, a move that comes after days of extremely violent protests in the former Soviet nation.

In a televised address to the nation, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev blamed the unrest on “terrorists” and “militants” and said that he had authorized the use of lethal force against them.

“Those who don’t surrender will be eliminated,” Tokayev said.

He also blasted calls for talks with the protesters made by some other countries as “nonsense.” “What negotiations can be held with criminals, murderers?” Tokayev said.

Kazakhstan’s Interior Ministry reported Friday that 26 protesters had been killed during the unrest, 18 were wounded and more than 3,000 people have been detained. A total of 18 law enforcement officers were reported killed as well, and over 700 sustained injuries.

Kazakhstan is experiencing the worst street protests since the country gained independence three decades ago. The demonstrations began over a near-doubling of prices for a type of vehicle fuel and quickly spread across the country, reflecting wider discontent over the rule of the same party since independence.

Protests have turned extremely violent, with government buildings set ablaze and scores of protesters and more than a dozen law enforcement officers killed. Internet across the country has been shut down, and two airports closed, including one in Almaty, the country’s largest city.

In a concession, the government on Thursday announced a 180-day price cap on vehicle fuel and a moratorium on utility rate increases. Tokayev has vacillated between trying to mollify the protesters, including accepting the resignation of his government, and promising harsh measures to quell the unrest, which he blamed on “terrorist bands.”

In what was seen as one such measure, the president has called on a Russia-led military alliance for help.

The alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, includes the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and has started deploying troops to Kazakhstan for a peacekeeping mission.

https://apnews.com/article/kazakhstan-law-enforcement-agencies-6dc8df9639367c3845aa00a008072997?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter

 

[MakemineVanilla]

On 05/04/2021 at 17:13, Chindie said:

20 years in power is very moreish. Especially when your background is in the intelligence services. And your political career has been underlined with the consistent theme of undermining democracy.

He'll leave in a box. He's not even bothering with the sop to legitimacy by stepping back into the secondary prime ministerial position under a puppet anymore.

I must admit that I thought Merkel's 16 years was a little excessive, especially as she lived in East Germany for 36 years, where she needed to be considered politically sound to have been given a job as a lecturer.

Notably she never participated in the celebrations when the wall came down.

[Panto_Villan]

18 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

I’ve never truly understood how ‘defence’ appears to mean nuclear warheads and aircraft carriers way way up the list from energy secure and food secure.

Why on earth would we be in a position where we are reliant on energy from various nasty regimes all thousands of miles away.

By ‘we’ I basically mean all of Europe.

Because people think nuclear power is bad, and coal is dirtier and more expensive than natural gas (not that we mine uranium or much coal ourselves anyway). And we had a lot of gas until recently, so it makes sense to have built a grid that uses it.

There’s been no other options until about 5 years ago, and it takes time to transition to renewables. Not sure what you think we should have done differently?

(Countries rich in energy resources often end up being dictatorships anyway, because they don’t actually need their people happy / productive in order to be wealthy.)

[chrisp65]

3 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

Because people think nuclear power is bad, and coal is dirtier and more expensive than natural gas (not that we mine uranium or much coal ourselves anyway). And we had a lot of gas until recently, so it makes sense to have built a grid that uses it.

There’s been no other options until about 5 years ago, and it takes time to transition to renewables. Not sure what you think we should have done differently?

(Countries rich in energy resources often end up being dictatorships anyway, because they don’t actually need their people happy / productive in order to be wealthy.)

 

No other options until 5 years ago? C’mon, there have been lots of options for longer than I’ve been alive.

What the ‘problem’ has been, is short termism where imports were perceived as cheaper short term with no thought for how that pans out long term. We have chosen not to be self sufficient in energy. The energy crisis of the early 1970’s sparked renewed interest in renewables, but it was basically decided we could wait out the price hikes and ride out the inflation rather than invest in technologies that had patents going back nearly 100 years. It was known in the 1980’s pre privatisation when the North Sea peak oil and gas was likely to be. At the same time, in the 1980’s there was a push for more solar, wind and wave technology investment but it was not funded because it was cheaper to just buy energy in, whilst at the same time, privatising the North Sea energy pool so the energy there went on to the market.

Photo below for reference is a solar panel, in New York, photo taken in 1884:

[Panto_Villan]

3 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

 

No other options until 5 years ago? C’mon, there have been lots of options for longer than I’ve been alive.

What the ‘problem’ has been, is short termism where imports were perceived as cheaper short term with no thought for how that pans out long term. We have chosen not to be self sufficient in energy. The energy crisis of the early 1970’s sparked renewed interest in renewables, but it was basically decided we could wait out the price hikes and ride out the inflation rather than invest in technologies that had patents going back nearly 100 years. It was known in the 1980’s pre privatisation when the North Sea peak oil and gas was likely to be. At the same time, in the 1980’s there was a push for more solar, wind and wave technology investment but it was not funded because it was cheaper to just buy energy in, whilst at the same time, privatising the North Sea energy pool so the energy there went on to the market.

Photo below for reference is a solar panel, in New York, photo taken in 1884:

I think that's a stretch. If you're suggesting the British government alone could have willed these technologies into existence then I very much doubt it - remember that Britain was already an outlier in investing in wind power under New Labour and the world is only just reaping the benefits of large scale offshore wind being cost effective and viable. It's a long-term investment and the UK has already done much more than most countries to make renewables viable. And it'll still take us quite a few years to build enough turbines to go fully renewable.

If you're talking about humanity as a whole not doing a push for renewables earlier at an earlier point, sure, I mostly agree. But it's always difficult to assess how effective a technology can be without the other supporting technologies (i.e. Leonardo da Vinci can invent a helicopter 500 years ago, but good luck actually building one before the internal combustion engine and aircraft manufacturing techniques reach WW2 levels), and it's difficult to know how quickly those technologies could have been developed.

The reason why I bring this up is because there's still genuine questions about whether we can run an electrical grid on purely renewables even in modern times. The general consensus is that if everyone is using renewables you need very large scale battery deployment and high-efficiency interconnections between different geographical regions to balance out the intermittance of wind and the fact the sun doesn't shine at night. But the power density of battery technology has only recently become sufficiently advanced to support electric cars, it's only just reaching the levels required to balance out a power grid, and it's not yet at the level where you could run planes or ships on it.

But it's not like people have been ignoring batteries over the years. Companies have been investing heavily in battery technology for decades for all sorts of reasons, most recently because they're required for the portable electronics like laptops and mobile phones that have transformed the world since the 1980s. So even if it were possible to build large-scale offshore wind decades ago without modern advances in carbon fiber manufacturing, and if it were somehow possible to build solar panels with modern conversion efficiencies decades ago, I don't think they would actually have given anyone energy independence. I don't think you could have sped up the development of battery tech enough to allow it.

It'd certainly have been interesting to see how much more advanced we'd be if humanity had devoted more resources to renewables back in the 1970s or something, but I don't think we'd be that much further ahead. It's certainly not a case of observing that someone built a solar panel in 1884 and concluding we could have run the world on solar back from that date onwards.

Edited January 7, 2022 by Panto_Villan

[chrisp65]

We’re sort of straying off topic here. It looks like we disagree here, which is fine. I would argue that 140 years ago we had solar panels. Imagine if the development of industry and governments had gone in to solar like its gone in to petrol and diesel technology, like it’s gone in to gas heating systems. We would be in a very different place.

You add in water and wind and we could be in a very different place where we are not beholden to Russia and some Middle Eastern tyrants.

The need for batteries might be drastically reduced if we’d spent a few decades pushing PV and hydrogen and regeneratives etc so cars and heating systems could be running without the need for battery back up. We wouldn’t need battery back up for home heating if that home heating was run off 50 years better advanced ground source heat pumps. I bought my current house 23 years ago, before I bought it I did calls to see if it was viable to install a ground source heat pump. Imagine 20 years of government backed development, similar to the level of interest and financial backing they have in pushing Chinese nuclear installations.

There is potential for a Severn barrage to power great swathes of Wales and the West, nah, let’s pay the Chinese to design a nuclear power station. 

As a long term defence strategy, it’s a little laughable really, isn’t it? The implications of a malicious attack on a barrage must just be too horrific to contemplate.

As a renewable source of energy, it’s a rare old day the tide doesn’t come in.

 

 

 

 

 

[Xela]

23 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

I’ve never truly understood how ‘defence’ appears to mean nuclear warheads and aircraft carriers way way up the list from energy secure and food secure.

Why on earth would we be in a position where we are reliant on energy from various nasty regimes all thousands of miles away.

By ‘we’ I basically mean all of Europe.

Agree. Got ourselves into a position whereby we are reliant on Russia (old enemy) and China (new enemy) for a myriad of things. 

 

[LondonLax]

1 hour ago, Xela said:

Agree. Got ourselves into a position whereby we are reliant on Russia (old enemy) and China (new enemy) for a myriad of things. 

 

To be fair China only became a new enemy when we suddenly became suspicious of how rich we had made them, not because of anything they had actually done to us

[chrisp65]

18 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

To be fair China only became a new enemy when we suddenly became suspicious of how rich we had made them, not because of anything they had actually done to us

I think China was seen as more of a ‘local’ geographical threat, a few skirmishes with India, taking Tibet and a couple of wars in Vietnam and Korea. But to the Europeans, and a Eurocentric USA it was all stuff happening out the back yard when they had Russia pissing on the front lawn.

China deciding that they’d be more outward looking and expansionist has caused the US to pay more attention.

But yes, whilst they were poor and inward looking and supplying jungle fighters with knock off AK-47’s we were relatively uninterested. When they started hoovering up industries and selling us plastic tat, we got a little bit interested. When they suddenly had 5G tech and were selling the world electric cars, ships, and nuclear power stations, whilst building mega ports and trans national highways across Africa, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and building their own islands in strategic waterways, we kinda realised we’d taken our eye off the ball.

But we need China too. Without China, North Korea collapses and 26 million dirt poor people and 500 nuclear scientists all walk 20 miles across to Seoul.

I’ve been swatting up!

[Panto_Villan]

2 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

We’re sort of straying off topic here. It looks like we disagree here, which is fine. I would argue that 140 years ago we had solar panels. Imagine if the development of industry and governments had gone in to solar like its gone in to petrol and diesel technology, like it’s gone in to gas heating systems. We would be in a very different place.

You add in water and wind and we could be in a very different place where we are not beholden to Russia and some Middle Eastern tyrants.

The need for batteries might be drastically reduced if we’d spent a few decades pushing PV and hydrogen and regeneratives etc so cars and heating systems could be running without the need for battery back up. We wouldn’t need battery back up for home heating if that home heating was run off 50 years better advanced ground source heat pumps. I bought my current house 23 years ago, before I bought it I did calls to see if it was viable to install a ground source heat pump. Imagine 20 years of government backed development, similar to the level of interest and financial backing they have in pushing Chinese nuclear installations.

There is potential for a Severn barrage to power great swathes of Wales and the West, nah, let’s pay the Chinese to design a nuclear power station. 

As a long term defence strategy, it’s a little laughable really, isn’t it? The implications of a malicious attack on a barrage must just be too horrific to contemplate.

As a renewable source of energy, it’s a rare old day the tide doesn’t come in.

I can drag this somewhat back on topic. The main reason why the world opted for petrol over solar / wind is for military reasons - petrol and diesel were and are by far the best choices for military vehices, so countries were always going to have to invest heavily in developing petrol engines, and that feeds through to the rest of society. It's the same story with nuclear power, as the current civilian nuclear reactors used worldwide were originally derived from the tech the US used to power their nuclear submarines. There's alternative nuclear reactor designs that are potentially better (people talk a lot about Thorium reactors) but nobody uses them because it's very expensive to reinvent the wheel if you already have a working nuclear reactor design.

So, ironically enough, we've ended up at the mercy of Russian / Middle Eastern autocrats because of national security concerns, not despite them. And to some extent we'll continue to be reliant on oil from places like Russia in the future even when our grid is all renewables, because if a military vehicle powered by oil outperforms an electric one with batteries then we'll still be using oil in them.

Anyway, I agree with the sentiment about green power - we should be building more hydro and using more efficient heating in our houses, and the new nuclear plant is ludicrously expensive - but while I'm a big supporter of the green revolution there's a lot of practical problems with some of the suggestions you're making. But I don't want to drag this thread any further off topic; if you want to talk about them we can do it in the climate change thread instead.

[Panto_Villan]

2 hours ago, LondonLax said:

To be fair China only became a new enemy when we suddenly became suspicious of how rich we had made them, not because of anything they had actually done to us

I don't think this is quite true. A lot of people were hoping China would develop and become like South Korea or Japan, Asian countries that have become rich and taken their place within the existing set of international rules. China's been throwing their weight around instead. The West got a bit concerned about China initially when it started flouting trade rules and subsequently when it made it clear that it sees South-East Asia as its sphere of influence, and started gobbling up territory from its neighbours

The big flashpoints I can remember in recent times are: breaking all the promises about democracy in Hong Kong, being increasingly intent on invading Taiwan, and the whole "nine-dash-line" in the South China sea (the red line in the image above). Basically China without any evidence has just decided that everything in the red line is its territory (in contravention of international law), and has siezed a lot of the contested islands and started building military bases on them and preventing their neighbours going into that territory. You can probably see why their neighbours are a bit pissed off, and the rest of the world is a bit concerned that China might not be interested in following the rules any more.

They're much like Russia in the sense that they're currently mostly interested in having complete dominance over the region around them. Russia wants the Ukraine back because it considers it rightfully theirs (whatever the locals may think), and China is the same with Taiwan and Tibet and the South China Sea. They don't really interfere too much in the world beyond that except to try to show up America / NATO whereever possible. What happens once they eventually get what they want I'm not sure.

Edited January 7, 2022 by Panto_Villan

[blandy]

3 hours ago, LondonLax said:

To be fair China only became a new enemy when we suddenly became suspicious of how rich we had made them, not because of anything they had actually done to us

Aside from @Panto_Villan's post, China has long been engaged in active espionage against the UK and the West, both military and industrial, plus all kinds of intellectual property theft from UK and Western nations. Not exactly war, but certainly hostile and with the consequence (as well as all out self inflicted ones) of damaging the UK's companies and thus people's jobs and livelihoods.  They also have a leader who is essentially a dictator. Look at what they've done with Hong Kong for another example of hostile behaviour.

Maybe they are not (back on topic) as actively hostile as Russia is, but they are much much stronger than Russia.

As always, it's governments, not the people themselves.

[LondonLax]

6 minutes ago, blandy said:

Aside from @Panto_Villan's post, China has long been engaged in active espionage against the UK and the West, both military and industrial, plus all kinds of intellectual property theft from UK and Western nations. Not exactly war, but certainly hostile and with the consequence (as well as all out self inflicted ones) of damaging the UK's companies and thus people's jobs and livelihoods.  They also have a leader who is essentially a dictator. Look at what they've done with Hong Kong for another example of hostile behaviour.

Maybe they are not (back on topic) as actively hostile as Russia is, but they are much much stronger than Russia.

As always, it's governments, not the people themselves.

My post was fairly tongue in cheek (hence the smiley) and I don’t disagree with either your post or @Panto_Villan’s but I would also say China probably claims they give as good as they get from other major powers as far as espionage is concerned.

Also they seem to focus their ‘bullying’ on areas that they consider ‘theirs’. Obviously we would disagree with their stance on Hong Kong, Taiwan or the South China Sea but it’s not on the same league for me as attacking the Middle East or meddling in South America etc etc