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/r/stupidpol is abuzz with news of both NordStream pipelines being damaged, in what mainstream sources openly speculate to be an attack:
tagesspiegel.de (google translated)
welt.de (google translated)
Stupidpol being stupidpol, blames it all on the west (either the US or UK)... but it feels like the kind of have a point? Russian performance in the war doesn't exactly scream competence, so it would be surprising, if they pulled something like this off, so deep in NATOs turf.
When we were discussing the coming winter, some people were saying "the European gas storage is filled up, it'll be fine", but isn't the gas storage more like a buffer, designed to take advantage of the decreased demand over the summer, to even out the increased demand in winter, working on the assumption that there will still be a constant supply of gas coming in? Does this change the calculus at all?
This is obviously an American op. The Poles know:
https://twitter.com/radeksikorski/status/1574800653724966915
Biden made the threat:
https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1490791554088321024
The Scandies say it was explosives:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/mystery-gas-leaks-hit-major-russian-undersea-gas-pipelines-europe-2022-09-27/
And best of all, the US had mine-planting/explosives forces right on Bornholm island in June! The bombs we're talking about detonated just off the coast of Bornholm island!
https://seapowermagazine.org/baltops-22-a-perfect-opportunity-for-research-and-resting-new-technology/
How much more clear could it be? A few mines were left behind.
With friends like America, Europe doesn't need enemies. The US-initiated war on terror got them targeted for terrorist attacks. The US destabilization of Syria and Libya got them a flood of refugees. Yes, the Europeans were partially complicit in these foreign adventures but they were really just being dragged along. The Prime Mover was Washington. When NATO made that fateful statement that Ukraine and Georgia would one day join the alliance, the French and Germans were trying to tone it down. They didn't want to antagonize Russia. Thanks to the US, Western Europe has been pushed into a proxy war against their energy supplier. Now, the US is making sure Russia can't supply Germany with energy, that it will be dependent upon US puppet states in the Middle East or expensive fuel from America directly.
I don't even think this is a wise strategy for American interests. If you try to weaken your allies so they can't form a viable bloc to oppose you, you're antagonizing them. You're giving them a reason to oppose you and sabotage you. Why should the US expect much help from Europe on the main front against China in the Pacific? 'You're fighting your main industrial supplier? Tough - we'll sell you some overpriced goods. Good luck!'
Even if everything you're saying is true, a) Russian actions are obscenely beyond the pale which excuses anything that can be plausibly framed as counterattack, and b) Americans have won cultural victory, so economic elites of those European states are of no consequence against their own populace (and media elites).
The game is played masterfully, I can't really even object to the sentence. Europeans are in no position to compromise with the plainly irrational Kremlin, and they're in no position to sustain their economy, and they can't blame anyone but themselves, same as Russians.
On the other hand, I can call out Europeans who are still pretending that this is fine. The EU will survive, but it will fall rather far behind without cheap energy, in the crucial period where everyone has to maintain a stake in high-tech economy. The entire fucking continent is going to become irrelevant.
A translation from a biased pro-Russian souce. It's not very insightful, catastrophizes the situation and frames it as an unprovable conspiracy but, I think, is directionally correct with regards to the consequences:
The continent has been irrelevant since it lost WW2. Economically EU could never compete on account of not being energy independent and not having the scale or more friendly business environment of the US.
EU itself is a fucking joke, with cargo-cult education policies, inability to keep out unproductive riff-raff such as North Africans and blacks, inability to have a solid energy policy, etc. It's been a joke since it came into existence, because the same cretins were in charge. Any university teacher not in pedagogy could have told you that the 'Lisbon strategy' and 'Bologna process' which herded everyone with IQ above room temperature into universities, were just pure BS.
Maybe as a west-slobbering Russian you had some rosy glasses on, but in all metrics that mattered EU and Germany specifically was coasting on past accomplishments. Apart from former WP countries it can't even claim it's safe.
sorry I'm not English native. Does "west-sloberring" here mean same as "west-sycophant" or some kind of bias toward west?
Slobbering all over the edifices of lies & delusion that is characteristic of post 1945 Western 'liberal democracies'.
I don't really like Russia, and China even less. But petty statist evil or the psychopathic lawful evil of Chinese Communist Party pale in comparison to the sheer Joker-esque insanity of western PMCs.
E.g. did you know how flashmobs looting shops came to also happen in the UK ?
10 years ago, their 'conservatives' decided to prosecute fewer juveniles.
And you find this pattern everywhere. Energy policy. Schooling. Immigration. Trade. Etc. It's all just plain crazy, done by people more in tune with feelings than figures.
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You really need to chill out and start expressing yourself in less belligerent terms, rather than searching for the keenest way to express your dripping contempt. Make your arguments passionately and forcefully, if that so moves you, but try using facts, sources, and civility.
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