Politics

[Wheels]

 

[jpr9954]

 

[Red Leg]

View attachment 487487

"And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon......."

 

[Newboomer]

"And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon......."

Is pretty damn tarnished.

 

[375 Ruger Fan]

If you know your history, this is really funny.

 

[Vashper]

I don't even know, maybe it's better for "Politics", but everyone there is so serious. In general, here is an example of a specific humor, in connection with recent events: Canada refused to service according to the regulations some turbines that supply natural gas to Europe from Russia, as a result, some gas pipelines stopped, etc ... As a result, such a music video appeared:

The song is very old. The words there are like this, and the singer - Vizbor - is cool:

And the winter will be big…
Here, look, across the river
Autumn, quietly dying,
Waving a yellow hand.

And, crushing snowdrifts,
the Sun will splash in the spring…
But the winter will be big —
Only twilight and snow.

 

[Wheels]

Europe's politicians have one decision to make. When will they remove sanctions, go to Moscow and kowtow to Putin.

Lacking acquiescence, energy prices will become so unbearable to the citizen that politicians will print and handout money. Inflation will rocket and the euro will debase on an accelerating scale.

The EU and the euro are hanging at the precipice. If politicians wait too long, the great experiment might be over sooner than we realize.




The obtuseness of this politician is amazing. Her first priority is her own citizens and she doesn't understand this.

German foreign minister pledges to continue supporting Ukraine 'no matter what my German voters think' despite surging energy costs

The German politician said that the government will never change its approach no matter how many people turn out on the streets to protest the soaring cost of living.

www.rebelnews.com

My thoughts go out to all of are affected AH members.

 

[Ray B]

If you know your history, this is really funny.

View attachment 487554

Actually it isn't funny- it's noteworthy that the Bidet would be rejected just as Adolf Hitler was.

 

[spike.t]

I don't even know, maybe it's better for "Politics", but everyone there is so serious. In general, here is an example of a specific humor, in connection with recent events: Canada refused to service according to the regulations some turbines that supply natural gas to Europe from Russia, as a result, some gas pipelines stopped, etc ... As a result, such a music video appeared:

The song is very old. The words there are like this, and the singer - Vizbor - is cool:

And the winter will be big…
Here, look, across the river
Autumn, quietly dying,
Waving a yellow hand.

And, crushing snowdrifts,
the Sun will splash in the spring…
But the winter will be big —
Only twilight and snow.

Think your reading and believing your poster boys bullshit about the turbines, and the other reasons for cutting gas supplies.....

 

[Woodcarver]

Well this sucks. Just received this email from Guntabs. Figured it probably fit best in this thread as the BS is driven by morons in the Senate.

"Now only FFLs are allowed to ship handguns

UPS will no longer accept firearms for shipment except from FFLs. This matches FedEx, which already introduced the same policy. Now ordinary people can only ship long guns through USPS, and can't ship handguns at all.

This change puts handguns – the most common type of gun in the United States – on the same footing as machine guns. Now both types can only be shipped by an FFL.

Apparently this UPS policy change was motivated by a threatening letter from some Senators. But their letter was based on a false premise. They said only FFLs are allowed to ship guns over state lines. That’s completely wrong, but it seems UPS went along with it anyway.

If you’re an FFL, expect more people coming to you for shipping handguns. If you’re not an FFL, be prepared to pay an outbound transfer fee to a local FFL if you want to ship a handgun.

P.S. GunTab’s shipping guidance has already been updated. As always, GunTab will help guide you and the people you’re doing business with."

Here's a link to the full story;

Handguns are the new machine guns (for shipping)

UPS just prohibited gun shipments by ordinary people. Now "nonlicensees" can only ship long guns through USPS, and can't ship handguns at all.

www.guntab.com

 

[meigsbucks]

Hindsight is 20-20, but I wouldn’t get too teary eyed over US internment camp guilt. Not sure how the “Axis” populations were treated compared to the Japanese. I imagine conditions varied some camp to camp no matter the nationality. Have been friends, since junior high school, with a family who’s parents were interred during WW2 - and worked with them after college. They were Japanese farmers and horticulturists. I never sensed any animus toward the US and they all have been successful American citizens since. A sobering comparison, historically for perspective should include how captives, both combatant and non combatant have been treated by other countries. German death and concentration camps WW2 come to mind along with Bataan and Hanoi more recently … to name some. I’m tired of “selective”, out of context, cherry picked history without perspective.

My dad used to say that you have to take the situation and time in to account. The internment of Asians post Pearl Harbor was in hindsight, a travesty. However, at the time, we didn’t have the security we do today to check on everyone. The mood of the country was one of anger and fear toward anyone who even “looked” Japanese. Even in Cincinnati, my parents who were 16 at the time, said that if you were of Asian decent, you were the target of distain and even violence.

 

[Vashper]

"Think your reading and believing your poster boys bullshit about the turbines, and the other reasons for cutting gas supplies...."

You see, spike.t., these poor turbines do need service, this service indeed is only available in Canada, but not in Germany, and, indeed, somebody does not want to send them from Canada to Russia, although according to the regulations it is supposed to do exactly that.
And these are quite legitimate reasons to stop the operation of this equipment.
But the main reason is naturally another.
I, like most of my friends, believe that this should have been done as soon as the Nord Stream-2 pipeline was refused to be put into operation in Germany, due to damage to penguin nesting or EU regulation or something like that. If gas is not necessary, then it is not necessary, "There was love without joy, separation will be without sorrow."
Economic war is a game that can be played together.

 

[Newboomer]

I don't even know, maybe it's better for "Politics", but everyone there is so serious. In general, here is an example of a specific humor, in connection with recent events: Canada refused to service according to the regulations some turbines that supply natural gas to Europe from Russia, as a result, some gas pipelines stopped, etc ... As a result, such a music video appeared:

The song is very old. The words there are like this, and the singer - Vizbor - is cool:

And the winter will be big…
Here, look, across the river
Autumn, quietly dying,
Waving a yellow hand.

And, crushing snowdrifts,
the Sun will splash in the spring…
But the winter will be big —
Only twilight and snow.

Are you listening, Germany and EU? Trump told ya.

 

[VertigoBE]

"Think your reading and believing your poster boys bullshit about the turbines, and the other reasons for cutting gas supplies...."

You see, spike.t., these poor turbines do need service, this service indeed is only available in Canada, but not in Germany, and, indeed, somebody does not want to send them from Canada to Russia, although according to the regulations it is supposed to do exactly that.
And these are quite legitimate reasons to stop the operation of this equipment.
But the main reason is naturally another.
I, like most of my friends, believe that this should have been done as soon as the Nord Stream-2 pipeline was refused to be put into operation in Germany, due to damage to penguin nesting or EU regulation or something like that. If gas is not necessary, then it is not necessary, "There was love without joy, separation will be without sorrow."
Economic war is a game that can be played together.

@spike.t and @Vashper , I follow this stuff on NS1 on a daily basis professionally. And @Vashper is right in this instance.

All equipment has a certain number of operating hours after which obligatory maintenance, replacements and checks need to happen. These turbines, were transported for scheduled maintenance to Canada before the Ukraine war broke out. Due to the trade embargo these turbines could not return (in reality after many months, EU decided to make an exception for these turbines in the embargo and let them return). However other scheduled maintenance and checks on NS1 that had been running max capacity from months on end has (conveniently for the Russians) revealed other issues. Yes they could decide to go outside of predetermined safety parameters, but why would Russia want to do this, while there is no lifting of the trade embargo by the EU.

The people telling us that the current energy crisis in Europe is the fault of the Russians, are only trying to take the attention away from their own mismanagement of energy policy and investment in Europe. Sure the Russians use their leverage to its fullest. But years of the EU forbidding shale oil/gas exploration, halting nuclear and coal power plants and only investing in wind and solar is now showing its results.

And while the EU seems currently able to continue without the large Russian gas volumes (but we haven’t seen winter yet…), we have now become dependent on the global LNG shipping market and on the goodwill of the US and other exporters to export to the EU.

Being dependent on global LNG, means that if Asia would want to start competing again for LNG cargoes with Europe, as they have done last summer, we would again find ourselves holding the short straw.

I weep for the SME’s in Europe who are seeing their energy bill go tenfold. (A small company that in 2019 was paying 500k€ for their energy needs, will be paying 5M€ next year… let that sink in, how many companies will still be solvant having to cough up 5M€ just for energy? Think smaller still, bakeries, restaurants, any small company that uses a good bit of energy, none will be able to survive for very long..)

Anyway… like I said here back in March, I hope a solution, equitable for all three parties in the Ukraine conflict can be found soon, because the alternative for Europe I cannot contemplate.

 

[WAB]

"Think your reading and believing your poster boys bullshit about the turbines, and the other reasons for cutting gas supplies...."

You see, spike.t., these poor turbines do need service, this service indeed is only available in Canada, but not in Germany, and, indeed, somebody does not want to send them from Canada to Russia, although according to the regulations it is supposed to do exactly that.
And these are quite legitimate reasons to stop the operation of this equipment.
But the main reason is naturally another.
I, like most of my friends, believe that this should have been done as soon as the Nord Stream-2 pipeline was refused to be put into operation in Germany, due to damage to penguin nesting or EU regulation or something like that. If gas is not necessary, then it is not necessary, "There was love without joy, separation will be without sorrow."
Economic war is a game that can be played together.

OK, I’m a chemical engineer and ran this equipment for most of my career. This is total BS. No one schedules downtime going in to peak season. This is either intentional or pure incompetence. Probably both.

 

[Wheels]

 

[Wheels]

 

[375 Ruger Fan]

Thomas Reed, a former Secretary of the Air Force, authored a book in 2005 called "At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War." The book is fascinating and includes declassified stories from both US side and former USSR. One of the most interesting stories is how the USSR was trying to steal US technology via Canada on control systems for compressor stations for their giant gas pipelines. This was in the 1970s, before the term "Virus" was commonly used for a purpose built flaw in software. The CIA put a virus into a programmable logic controller and allowed it to fall into the hands of the Russians building the Siberian gas compressor stations. Stuff right out of James Bond!

The reason for this was to cut off gas sales to Europe and deny the USSR a major source of hard currency. Fast forward to today and Putin himself is shutting off the gas and cashflow. It will be interesting who blinks first: Freezing Europeans or the Russian economy.

US let Soviets obtain faulty technology, book says​

By David E. Hoffman, Washington Post | February 27, 2004
WASHINGTON -- In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by a Reagan White House official.
Thomas C. Reed, a former Air Force secretary who was serving in the National Security Council at the time, describes the episode in "At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War," to be published next month by Ballantine Books. Reed writes that the pipeline explosion was just one example of "cold-eyed economic warfare" against the Soviet Union that the CIA carried out under Director William J. Casey during the final years of the Cold War.
At the time, the United States was attempting to block Western Europe from importing Soviet natural gas. There were also signs that the Soviets were trying to steal a wide variety of Western technology. Then, a KGB insider revealed the specific shopping list and the CIA slipped the flawed software to the Soviets in a way they would not detect it.
"In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply, its hard currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy, the pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines, and valves was programmed to go haywire, after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds," Reed writes.
"The result was the most monumental nonnuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space," he recalls, adding that US satellites picked up the explosion. Reed said in an interview that the blast occurred in the summer of 1982.
"While there were no physical casualties from the pipeline explosion, there was significant damage to the Soviet economy," he writes. "Its ultimate bankruptcy, not a bloody battle or nuclear exchange, is what brought the Cold War to an end. In time the Soviets came to understand that they had been stealing bogus technology, but now what were they to do? By implication, every cell of the Soviet leviathan might be infected. They had no way of knowing which equipment was sound, which was bogus. All was suspect, which was the intended endgame for the entire operation."
Reed said he obtained CIA approval to publish details about the operation. The CIA learned of the full extent of the KGB's pursuit of Western technology in an intelligence operation known as the Farewell Dossier. Portions of the operation have been disclosed earlier, including in a 1996 paper in Studies in Intelligence, a CIA journal. The paper was written by Gus W. Weiss, an specialist on technology and intelligence who was instrumental in devising the plan to send the flawed materials and served with Reed on the National Security Council. Weiss died Nov. 25 at the age of 72.
The sabotage of the gas pipeline has not been previously disclosed, and at the time was a closely guarded secret. When the pipeline exploded, Reed writes, the first reports caused concern in the US military and at the White House. "NORAD feared a missile liftoff from a place where no rockets were known to be based," he said, referring to North American Air Defense Command. "Or perhaps it was the detonation of a small nuclear device." However, satellites did not pick up any telltale signs of a nuclear explosion.
"Before these conflicting indicators could turn into an international crisis," he added, "Gus Weiss came down the hall to tell his fellow NSC staffers not to worry."
The role that Reagan and the United States played in the collapse of the Soviet Union is still a matter of intense debate.
Some contend that US policy was the key factor -- Reagan's military buildup; the Strategic Defense Initiative, Reagan's proposed missile defense system; confronting the Soviets in regional conflicts; and rapid advances in US high technology. But others say that internal Soviet factors were more important, including economic decline and President Mikhail Gorbachev's revolutionary policies of glasnost and perestroika.

 

[wesheltonj]

Germany and the rest of the EU created their energy problems. At least France is restarting there nuclear power plants. When will Germany?

 

[Wheels]