Even some parasites “know” not to kill their hosts.
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You’re so right! That doesn’t speak well of humans, does it?
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However, I learned when I lost one of my indoor cats to fleas, thinking I could save some money since they are indoor 24/7, fleas can take down calves. Fleas have been known suck the blood dry out of, not just my late cat, but calves too. Allegedly, many a farmer have lost calves due to fleas. They will kill the host, if allowed to run rampid and just because a cat is indoors 24/7 doesn’t mean you won’t drag fleas into your home via your shoes and pants.
I am not sure it will interest you, but i will sum up the views of many European people, even friendly to USA.
what i say is not to excuse Putin or justify his acts but to better understand.
US diplomacy and policies have fumbled in Afghanistan.
US invading Irak was a major mistake and overthrowing the dictator has been a disaster.
Obama has totally fumbled in 2 ways.
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he fixes a limit to Irak : no chemical weapons and when they are used, he does not do anything . so he teaches Putin that USA are weak and unable to act.
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20 years ago, Putin was neither paranoid and against west. Events have built up mutual distrust. Putin warned and asked and got no serious answer.
And again when he invaded Crimea then Donbass, he got away lightly.
That was the perfect way to show him who believes in strength that you despise him but that you are weak.
Trump was a bigger disaster, courting Putin …. Europeans are very very happy that he is not in power.
I shiver at the idea.
Now, about Biden sayings.
He is perfectly true. Putin is a butcher and a war criminal who should be overthrown and put into jail.
But, as Biden has no way to do that, it was not the time to say it.
When you want to convince a paranoid dictator to negotiate, you should not tell him that your objective is to overthrow him and send him into jail.
Now it seems there is a path to peace.
Putin would accept that Ukraine stays an independent state, with a price:
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No NATO membership
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Giving up Crimea and Donbass.
But it seems he still wants 2 things 
- A disarmed Ukraine
-An Ukraine which stays our from European Union. And that would be fully non acceptable.
That little rant is not even worthy of a considered response…
After all the criticism of US weaknesses you, suggest that we get out from under by accepting Putin’s terms?
IOW, Putin gets what he wants. And that would be a display of strength on the part of the US and NATO?
Go tell that to a kindergarten. You haven’t got a clue about international politics.
I won’t even attempt to explain the game Putin is playing here. It’s called bluffing and it does not include literal suicide like Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden, Hitler, Mussolini, and every wannabe worldruler who kept trying to expand his conquests by brute force.
Here is a breakdown of Bidens speech from Alex mercouris.
He highlights that what Biden has said is not a gaffe and is In fact true in that the US is hell bent on regime change in Russia and not concerned with the welfare of Ukraine , that there is no intention from the US for a diplomatic resolution to this war when he committed the world to a long war in Ukraine and the tepid response from the Europeans to his speech in the realisation of what they have gotten themselves into
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Thanks for providing the links @milkthecow . After reading, it sounds like Biden misspoke. I think powerful countries including the United States should be careful about promoting regime change because there are examples in history where regime change has had unexpected consequences.
Yes, a new regime might prefer peace and stability to war and calamity.
What worse change could be possible than what’s happening now?
Well, it looks like Biden did not misspeak after all. He called Putin’s bluff and Putin blinked.
WELL DONE PRESIDENT BIDEN!!!
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Well well well - seems that there has been progress in peace talks on Tuesday in Turkey.
Ukrainian side has come up with a written proposal for a peace treaty which Russia’s top negotiator Vladimir Medinsky described as “substantive.”
The proposal will now be relayed to Russian President Vladimir Putin for consideration, he added.
Here is what Medinsky had said emerged after the talks.
Russian offensive scaled down
An immediate practical effect of the talks will be a de-escalation of military activities in some parts of Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry announced. In particular, it pledged to “dramatically” reduce its operations near the cities of Chernigov and the capital, Kiev.
NATO-like security guarantees
David Arakhamia, Medinsky’s opposite number in the Ukrainian delegation, said Kiev had sought a security guarantee similar to that contained in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. He named Russia, the UK, China, the US, Turkey, France, Canada, Italy, Poland and Israel as possible providers. Some of them have given their preliminary agreement, he said.
No military blocs and non-nuclear Ukraine
In the proposal, Ukraine pledged not to join any military alliance, not to host foreign military bases or foreign troops, Medinsky said. Even military exercises would require prior approval from guarantors, according to the proposal. Kiev also pledged not to seek to obtain weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, the official added. But in return Ukraine wants Russia not to object to its joining the EU one day.
Crimea, Donbass unresolved
According to Medinsky, Kiev offered to pledge not to use military force in an attempt to restore its sovereignty over Ukraine or the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. He stressed that Moscow did not commit to having the Ukrainian wording in the final version of any peace treaty.
Russia considers Crimea to be part of its territory and wants Kiev to recognize it as such. It also recognized the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as sovereign states days before launching its attack against Ukraine last month.
Borders in question
Medinsky said Kiev did not state whether it would relinquish its territorial claim to Donetsk and Lugansk. Prior to February, Ukraine controlled a large portion of both Donetsk and Lugansk and considers the regions to be its own territory.
Arakhamia made it clear that Kiev will assert sovereignty over the entire territory that Ukraine had when it declared independence in 1991, saying there could be no compromise on this point.
New conditions for Zelensky-Putin meeting
Moscow has agreed to organize a meeting between Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky as part of the final phase of negotiations over the future peace treaty. The Kremlin had previously said that such a meeting could only be scheduled once the document was finalized and inked by the respective foreign ministers. Holding a summit as soon as possible would speed up the resolution, Medinsky believes.
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That’s pretty cool, what’s the title, reference? I can see Rand McNally, but can’t make out the full author’s name. Do you know what book it was in?
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As the song goes, Just gotta pock around:
Looks to me Russia had more than a sliver in the 1800s and less in the 1900. The U.S. has the most in the 1900s and I’m not sure why.
Russia fights back against the sanctions by asking for payment of gas in roubles from unfriendly countries. I got this email from my science nerd friend
The Russian Federation ( RF ) has demanded payment in roubles. The response of the EU states is to refuse this demand. The RF has indicated it will terminate the supply of LNG for non-payment. The EU suggests it will seek substitute LNG supply. The EU position represents an absurdist element of Hybrid Warfare. This email sets out some of the issues.
According to the IEA the EU consumed 155 billion cubic metres of LNG in 2021. Of this supply 45% was obtained from Russia ( How Europe can cut natural gas imports from Russia significantly within a year - News - IEA ).
The RF 2021 EU import share was 69.75 billion cubic metres per year or 5.8 billion cubic metres LNG per month. If the EU seeks to substitute for RF LNG this is the approximate monthly quantity required.
The largest LNG tankers are the QMAX class. These can transport 266,000 cubic metres of LNG ( Q-Max - Wikipedia ).
A simple calculation shows the monthly transport of 5.8 billion cubic metres of LNG by vessels with a capacity of 266,000 cubic metres of LNG requires a total of 21,852 shipments per month or approximately 705 shipments per day.
This volume of shipping will saturate the existing EU LNG offloading ports. These ports are already dedicated to handling other LNG imports. The time to unload an LNG cargo is approximately one day. This implies the need to construct 705 new LNG offloading ports because immediately following the day 1 arrival of 705 vessels there will be the Day 2 arrival of another 705 vessels with the same vessel traffic for Day 3 and all following days. The transit from Houston to Rotterdam takes 18 days outbound and 18 days empty return. With one day devoted to loading, and a further day to unloading, each vessel will spend 28 days on voyage. These figures make no allowance for vessel downtime for required maintenance intervals.
The transport of the required monthly volume of LNG will therefore require 705 QMAX x 31 days or total QMAX fleet of 21,855 vessels. Since the available yards are fully booked it is not clear when the full build out of the required fleet will occur. My experience in the offshore industry is that it takes approximately two years to construct an offshore drilling rig (MODU). The complexity of a QMAX may be slightly less than a MODU but even if construction were to require no more than a single year the required time to fleet completion would be 5,463 years if 4 yards were involved in the build out. At present the only yard competent in this vessel construction is in South Korea; the other three required yards would need to be upgraded, or new built. LNG tankers require a speciality steel to address thermal stress issues. This steel has a high nickel content; Russia is a major global supplier of nickel.
Since the EU has voiced the intention to fully eliminate the need for Russian LNG by the year 2030 the time to recover the investment in vessels and related LNG infrastructure is extremely limited. Within 8 years the EU seeks to fully replace the entire volume of LNG represented by Russian imports. The IEA Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Roadmap helps fulfil the European Green Deal, an ambitious plan to eliminate all FF emissions in 28 years.
In 2020, U.S. natural gas production was about 10% greater than U.S. total natural gas consumption. The volume of produced gas surplus to US demand amounts to 91.5 billion cubic feet per day or 2.5 billion cubic metres of natural gas per day. This surplus is already contracted to the following countries:
TOP 10 US EXPORT DESTINATIONS
SOUTH KOREA…453,483
CHINA…449,667
JAPAN…354,948
BRAZIL…307,714
SPAIN…215,062
INDIA…196,218
UK…195,046
TURKEY…188,849
NL…174,339
FRANCE…170,780
The US is therefore in the position of withdrawing supply from some of the above to punish them for lack of compliance to US demands and to reward vassal states. Looking at the list, which countries do you think will be disfavoured?
The full list of US foreign LNG exports by country is found here:
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/NG_MOVE_EXPC_S1_A.htm
Any commodity gravitates toward the highest price. The peak price is set by the marginal buyer. It is expected that the EU attempt to displace Russian LNG supply will be impossible to achieve in the short term without an extreme impact on price. These price impacts will not only affect EU consumers, they will impact all consumers including those in the US.
The EU will replace dependency on Russia by dependency on the “international rules based order” as interpreted by the global hegemon.
I suggest that the EU should intercept and confiscate all oil or gas shipments outside Russian borders. That will pay for the damage Russia has done to Ukraine and which the EU is helping Ukraine resist to the tune of billions of dollars and other currency.
We all depend on each other. We can’t sanction a big economy without destroying the commodity system. Then Saudis would have cheap oil and nobody else. Until the rich get that they can’t cheat and exploit AND still have peace, whatever solutions will just have more problems
Gas for rubles. Who will blink first?
Looks like the Europeans have resigned to the fact that rubles will be the payment. Moscow will accommodate this with an extension of time needed for this adjustment. Michael Hudson has already called the death of the US dollar hegemony with events last Wednesday. Gas for rubles will only compound this
Please could you give a reference from Europe ?
Public announcement from European countries were negative and last
[Russia Sanctions: Germany Says Putin Backs Off Demand for Ruble Gas Payments - Bloomberg]
German Chancellor Olaf Schulz asked Putin to explain how it would work