Comments by "David Ford" (@davidford3115) on "Is Putin Losing His Gas Grip in Europe? - VisualPolitik EN" video.

  1. Indeed. People quickly forget the lessons of the Munich Conference.
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  2.  @Thorsten_Wiegand  What green power are you specifically referring to? When you factor in HYDRO-electric, then yes you can get that number because the prevalence of dams to generate electricity makes up for the steep cost of solar panels and the mineral oil required to operate wind turbines. As for Nuclear, much of the cost comes from regulations as Matt pointed out. The front end may be expensive, but it very quickly makes up over time at a much faster rate due to lower overhead operational costs. Solar and Wind NEVER make up the difference over time. Only Hydro-electric is able to do that.
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  3.  @shahzebk7899  Thank you for your opinion Nevile Chamberlain. When you show weakness and capitulate once, you invite further aggression. Lessons of Munich.
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  4. Exactly. This war is ALL about energy. In trying to protect his near monopoly, he may have just destroyed it beyond repair.
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  5. China is not your friend. You have your own problems to worry about. Or do you think that Kashmir is a lost cause?
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  6. Well, at the beginning Ukraine's mobilization was a cluster f(ire tr)uck. But to their credit, they quickly adapted and corrected their issues. Russia is 7 months behind the 8-ball and it remains to be seen if they get their act together. Something tells me that it will not without the same Western support that Ukraine enjoys.
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  7. The problem with price capping energy is that it invariably leads to rolling blackouts. Don't tell me that is prefereable.
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  8. I think that yes, for the most part it would, save for having Russia not only return Crimea to Ukraine, but also pay reparations in the form of gas deliveries in place of cash.
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  9. Sounds like Czechia has the same problem with "low information voters" as the US. Namely too many overly comfortable armchair quarterbacks with silver spoons in their mouths who have never experienced real hardship. First world problems, I suppose.
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  10. That is pretty much true of EVERY war ever fought. The US Civil War was just as much an economic one as a battlefield war. WW1 was a production war once trench warfare stagnated the fight. And finally, WW2 was won on both fronts because of American production outpacing everyone.
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  11. But at what cost? The Russian war machines is being smashed by Ukraine. The Russian Bear has been revealed to be geriatric.
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  12.  @Jake12220  If the war in Ukraine has taught us anything, it is that Russia's military capabilities are GROSSLY overestimated. All of your points while based in merit do not comport with the level of competence displayed by the Russian military. Competent training is sorely lacking in the former Soviet State.
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  13. I understand the concept of wholesaler vs retail, but I tend to agree with you that by and large there is very little reason for a middleman if all they are doing is converting from one to the other.
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  14. Most expensive on the front end, but not on day-to-day operations. It very quickly balances out to become the cheapest per kilowatt hour.
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  15.  @s9ka972  Asia is not just the Central part of the continent. South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Maylasia are also part of Asia. And India's relationship with Russia has soured, especially over the arms deals.
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  16. I dig it. A few issues come to mind. First, unless it is built running from the Canadian Coast up to Baffin Island-Greenland-Iceland and then to Ireland, that is some seriously deep water to build under. Secondly, the greenies will have a cow over the environmental issues.
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  17.  @aleksabenovic6046  I seriously hope you learn that Putin and Russia doesn't really care about you. They are using you just like they always have in the past. Whether the Czar in WW1 or Stalin in WW2, the leadership of the Russian Empire views you and the Serbian people as nothing more than expendable proxies in their war with Western Powers.
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  18. Uh, you realize that North Africans are considered "Mediterranean" and hence white? it is when you get into sub-Sahara that a racial distinction is drawn.
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  19.  @tutotutot5193  You are making a distinction without a difference, race baiter.
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  20. The problem is that the Greenies are also anti-nuclear.
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  21. Wow, completely oblivious as to how nuclear energy actually works. You do realize that much of the fuel used in the west comes from dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons?
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  22.  @pflernak  That is why you need strong contract laws. Signing one should be as airtight as a Faustian Bargain with Satan himself, to use an analogy.
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  23. Because Russian success in those areas was so rapid as to make supporting the resistance not with the effort. Ukraine's first two weeks defying all of the expectations made supporting them a more viable prospect.
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  24.  @prettitalented  Only from your limited perspective. You need to take the horse blinders off and look a little wider. The fact that Russia loses an entire generation of men (who won't have children) to the meat grinder of war coupled with the cost of paying the bill to rebuild Ukraine should be enough of a lesson to discourage future leaders in Moscow or Petrograd from ever again trying to subjugate the Ukrainian people.
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  25.  @prettitalented  Pointing out your myopic disregard for hard facts is absolutely appropriate in debate. You are just getting pissy that your position is becoming untenable. Again, RUSSIA paying for the rebuilding of Ukraine from their gas sales very much is possible, especially if it is Western banking institutions who process the payments. Keep in mind that since the start of the war, Russia has had great difficulty with foreign trade BECAUSE they were cut-off from the banking institutions. While Russia tried to create an alternative infrastructure, both the Indians and Chinese have since pulled out of participating in it. Your problem is that you lack imagination, much less creativity. And you show a blatant ignorance of historical conflicts. Status quo ante bellum is a much more common outcome than you admit. Examples include the War of 1812, The Korean War, The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, and the Iran-Iraq War.
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  26. Wishful thinking. You simply make yourself dependent on TWO masters. And you know what they say about someone who has two masters: he loves one and despises the other.
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  27. Ah, yes, always the "trust the government" argument. I got news for you, governments are corporations of a different kind, and often not interested in efficiency, only in protecting the status quo and nepotism.
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  28.  @chuapg1518  Considering that the Minsk PROPOSAL was never actually signed by the participants, you are using a strawman argument and a talking point of the Kremlin. And I find it quite telling that you blatantly ignore Russia's violation of the Budapest Memorandum which WAS signed by Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, United Kingdom, and the US. When are you going to demand that Russia be invaded for violating that international treaty?
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  29.  @Thorsten_Wiegand  I pray that you are correct on this point. You used an EXCELLENT analogy.
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  30.  @Jake12220  I tend to agree, but I point out that the biggest opponents of both Hydro-Electric power and nuclear have been the greenies. THAT is why both has languished over the last four decades.
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  31.  @pond_people  The Japanese celebrate Christmas, and most of them are not even Christian, they are Shinto. Get a grip. You are just an anti-Christan bigot.
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  32. That is quite surprising. Then again, DPRK equipment is much older than the Russia arsenal. While the Russians are fielding the old T-72, the North Koreans are fielding the even older T-55!
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  33.  @stunimbus1543  Thank you for sharing!
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  34.  @thegreatdane3627  "If it bleeds, it leads". That is the mantra of gossip mongers who call themselves "news reporters".
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  35. Gas produces less emissions than coal. If you are all for coal, then there is no excuse for being against gas.
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  36.  @thegreatdane3627  Trump has been correct about LOTS of things. Obama doesn't have an original idea in his head, particularly about geo-political factors, relying entirely on Joe Bite-me's "expertise" in 2014. Tell me, how has Biden's foreign policy acumen worked out?
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  37. Indeed. Their hard-on for top-down command economics blinds them to the invisible hand of the market.
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  38.  @potatofuryy  Can't possibly consider that the greenies could be to blame? The followers of the Chruch of Greta Thunberg have ample reason to sabotage that pipe.
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  39. Because the media has no creativity. They have to be as melodramatic as they can so as to sell clicks and advertisements. it is a sloppy business strategy.
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  40.  @Jake12220  True, but REACH and capability factor into it. Russia has shown in Ukraine that their reach only goes as far as their artillery can reach. Even their strategic rockets have failed to deliver effective results.
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  41.  @Jake12220  NATO and allies such as Australia, Japan, Israel, and South Korea are not going to attack their own infrastructure. I think you need to step back and look at the whole picture. Sure, Russian assets are VERY vulnerable, but the West is NOT going to cut its nose off despite its face. And crippling strike by the West will be very surgical and attempt to minizine the damage, unlike how the Russians have been operating.
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  42.  @thegreatdane3627  And with that you prove that you never learned a damn thing. Obama in 2014 was telling the EU exactly what they wanted to hear. Mostly about how America is bad, and Europe needs to pay reparations to the third world.
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  43. I have always had difficulty with Chinese pronunciations. Peking or Beijing? It is not as crisps as a hard "P", but not as soft as a "B". And likewise, not a hard "K", but not as soft as a "J" either. For the longest time I mispronounced the j as a hard "Z". My time in South Korea fixed me of that.
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  44.  @Jake12220  There are MANY life hacks that you can employ to prevent pipes from freezing. For one, you can keep your sink cabinet doors open to let heat from the rest of the home circulate around the leads to the faucet. Further, even with heating particularly cold snaps can still freeze the pipes even with regular heating. Some people PURPOSLY allow the faucet to slowly drip as a nearly continuous flow through the pipes helps to prevent the water from freezing.
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  45.  @Jake12220  Well aren't you just the Debbie downer?
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  46.  @FrontLinePub  Nobody is forcing the Ukrainians to fight the Russians. They chose to fight when Putin marched on Kiev. If they didn't support this war, they would have simply rolled over and let Putin march in just like the French allowed Hitler to waltz into Paris in 1940. As to volunteering in Afghanistan, that is a strawman argument. I served 8 years and several times offered to be the next in the queue to deploy, but my leadership ALWAYS denied my request. You can imagine the frustration when the guy who has already been on three prior tours gets sent instead of me. I agree that Europe needs to learn to fix their own problems, yet two world wars started because the US felt it was not our business. Like it or not, we are there because we are the responsible parent to the spoiled children of Europe. In that I respect the Japanese and Koreans much more; they are worth defending unlike Europe.
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  47. Yeah, because capitalism is so bad, it has raised more people out of poverty than any other economic system. It is even responsible for the computer you are using right now. The problem behind why there is so little investment in green energy aside from nuclear and hydro-electric is that they are just not viable on their own. If they were, then someone would already be the John D. Rockefeller of Wind and Solar.
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  48.  @Thorsten_Wiegand  Who would have guessed a year ago? You guys laughed at Trump when he warned you THREE years ago about this very issue. Part of your problem is that Germans kept telling themselves that Angela Merkel was no longer a member of the East German Communist Youth League (the same folks who trained the Munich Olympics bombers). Clearly a Tiger does not change its stripes, so she was more than willing to serve her country up on a silver platter to the Russian Bear (a geriatric bear it turns out).
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  49. Depends on where you build it. As the crow flies would put it under seriously deep water like the Laurentian Abyss (Transformers, Hunt for Red Oktober). But if you ran it along the Canadian coast to Baffin Island-Greenland-Iceland and then to Ireland, it might be more workable.
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  50. He is a real gasshole isn't he?
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  51. Not as cold as in Siberia.
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  52. For almost 50 years after WW2, Europe has done just fine without Russia. Don't fool yourself; everything you say about Russia is a recent development mostly in the aftermath of the fall of the USSR. The former Warsaw Pact nations can attest to that.
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  53.  @username65585  And yet the Japanese and South Koreans bring it in that way rather than a pipe that crosses half the planet.
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