dystopian:
What am I doing wrong?
In plenty of your posts, the quote tags are not properly wrapped around parts of the post you are replying to.
Natural gas in definitely dependent on geography. Without a pipeline, you cannot transport it cheaply. It has to be liquefied and that means you use up a whole lot of gas just keeping the rest liquid. That's why natural gas prices differ widely from region to region.
Which is irrelevant, since natural gas won't stay as important forever; especially not now Europe has ample reason to move towards energy independence.
What hostility has Russia shown to Europe's ambitions?
You're joking.
She hadn't imposed sanctions on Europe until Europe joined the US' sanctions regime.
You're joking, again. Are you not aware of how Russia is constantly placing temporary product sanctions on European countries whenever those countries don't do exactly what Russia wants? Generally we just ignore it. Oh, Dutch politicians makes an unfortunate comment about Russia? We're pulling Dutch cheese off the accepted import list for a while on suspicions of improper handling for export. No no, this has nothing to do whatsoever with those comments even though this happens right after and the idea of improper handling has zero basis for it. No no, this is not at all part of an established pattern of behavior for us. Yes, I know there's a pattern of COINCIDENCES where we ban products right after country x does or says something we don't like, but it's all coincidence we assure you!
You can't leave the nuclear threat out of it.
Yes I can, because Europe is a nuclear power too; and not even the Russians are insane enough to start a nuclear fight with someone who also has more than enough nukes to destroy the planet.
But they do not have the preparedness at this point in terms of ground troops.
Which is irrelevant since even if the EU had no ground troops at all, Russia would not be able to occupy enough of Europe in the time required for the EU to get its shit together.
The US has attacked or invaded way more countries than the Russia has even thought of attacking
Are you sure about that? Because the list of wars where Russia invades and annexes countries is far higher than that of the US.
And as a matter of fact, during the 20th century the United States was involved in 15 wars, versus 37 for Russia.
Russia has invaded exactly one country - Georgia,
Ahaha. No.
First of all, Russia is a successor state to the Soviet Union; which means that all of the SU's invasions are also those of Russia. And those are a LOT. Secondly, since the end of the Soviet Union, Russia has most definitely invaded more than just Georgia: Moldavia (1992), Ossetia (1992), Tajikistan (1992-97), Georgia (1993), Chechnya (1994-96), Chechnya (1999-2009), Georgia (2008), Ukraine (2014).
and she only did that after Georgia attacked and killed Russian peace-keepers in South Ossetia.
Why am I not surprised you are just as eager to fall for Russian propaganda here? Russia did very much the same in Georgia as it did in Ukraine; this is plain for everyone to see. Russia shot down Georgian aircraft, and the 'peacekeepers' they sent were actually engaged in fighting. Ossetian separatists specifically targeted civilian population centers with artillery. By the time Georgia attacked Tskhinvali and those 10 (claimed) Russian peacekeepers were killed; as collateral damage, I might add; it was already clear that Russia was waiting for an excuse to invade. Having the 58th army move in the *exact* same day as those peacekeepers were killed shows that they had no intention of restricting themselves to peacekeeping.
You should really know better by now, than to spread Russian propaganda as if it were fact; there's too much information available on the internet for us to just swallow it.
Then Russia went in and occupied Tblisi, but she didn't annex Georgia and Putin didn't even set up a puppet government.
Nobody believes South-Ossetia is anything other than a Russian puppet state.
She did not attack Crimea. She was permitted to have 25,000 troops there under their treaty for Sevastopol.
We've been over this. Under no possible interpretation of said treaty was Russia allowed to use said troops to occupy airfields, government bases, lay fucking mines on roads, and lay siege to military bases. It does NOT matter if those troops were there from the start or if they crossed the border later; such actions constitute an *invasion*. Period.
Meanwhile, despite our promise not to expand NATO eastward, the US has admitted nearly all of the Warsaw Pact nations into NATO and established missile bases there while openly admitting that we want to include Ukraine and Georgia as well.
No such promise has ever been made in black and white. At no point prior to all this has there been talk of including Ukraine, and Georgia was only talked about after Russia started interfering with its territorial integrity.
And then there's the coup d'état that we sponsored in Ukraine where we overthrew a democratically elected government.
I have explained to you many times now that it was not a coup; that Yanukovych was in fact removed from power in accordance with Ukraine democratic law. And there is zero evidence other than vague conspiracy theories that the west sponsored anything.
Free trade is something to be negotiated. A sovereign country is free to impose tariffs whenever if feels like it.
Just as we're free to tell Russia to fuck off when they don't play nice. We can survive perfectly fine without their economy; but they can't survive without us.
Russian behavior is a function of US and European behavior and, as I have noted, the US continues to block most favored nation status.
I wasn't aware the US was obligated to give Russia 'favored nation' status. That WOULD be ironic.
It is the US that is blocking European trade with Russia.
It's not. The US took the lead initially on sanctions because they could afford them. Now that Russia isn't backing down, the EU has been taking the lead on tougher sanctions; because the EU recognizes that Russia is a far greater threat to us than it is to the US. But thanks for trying to make us believe we're just a puppet state of the US... thank you sir, may I have another?
I think you have it backward. Of course your food is cheaper because Russia isn't buying it. You may like the cheaper prices, but they are a tremendous burden on European farmers who cannot sell the produce.
By tremendous burden you mean, a burden. The governments are guaranteeing many of those losses.
Meanwhile, Russia is buying these things in Latin America which could lead to a permanent loss of business for Europe.
And of course, the real problem for Russia isn't that it can't buy European food anymore (although it's REALLY not the case that they can just easily switch to Latin American markets); it's the flight of FDI. Russian economic growth has already stalled, and foreign investments in Russia are dropping like flies. The effects of this won't be felt immediately, but if this continues then Russia will not be able to recover for a very long time.
Then China will just have to take it outright. Without US backing, Taiwan cannot remain independent.
Nice to see you finally admitting you support big countries invading and annexing their smaller neighbors outright.
That's going to take a little research that I don't have time for at the moment. I'll have to get back to you on that.
Pretty sure you won't.
But I should add that calling this a pedophilia scandal is actually an understatement. It is more like child trafficking rings. Children are being abducted and sold for many reasons, not just sex. It may be for their organs, for use in snuff pornography or even Satanic sacrifices.
Well, there goes whatever credibility you had left.
The bodies of 800 children were recently found in Ireland. They had been beheaded and dismembered which suggests that they were victims of Satanic rituals.
Conveniently leaving out the fact that A) those are not recent, B) having nothing whatsoever to do with the UK (Ireland is not in the in the UK) or its royal family, C) were not dismembered and beheaded, D) being dismembered and beheaded does NOT suggest "satanic rituals", and E) actually died of disease and malnutrition.
Do some fucking research on the insane claims you make, will you?
The other important point is that authorities are covering up these crimes.
Riight, which is why it made the news. And why the Irish parliament openly discussed what the hell to do about it. Yes, when I cover something up, the first thing I usually do is go to the press before discussing the matter in public.
but there are a lot of fingers pointing at the royal family.
No there aren't.
I'm not too familiar with Britain,
Obviously.
but in the US much of this is revealed in a book called The Franklin Cover-Up by John DeCamp. It is available on-line.
The book is actually called: The Franklin Cover-up: Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska.
How exactly a book about Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder IN FUCKING NEBRASKA tells you anything about Europe is beyond me. Incidentally, the allegations in the book have been refuted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_child_prostitution_ring_allegations
Of course, not that sane people would believe a blatant hoax involving child sex rings among senators dashed with a thick layer of SATANISM in the first place.
Certainly, there's evidence of Child trafficking rings in the Netherlands.
So fucking what, those are everywhere.
Whether there is hard evidence pointing to the royal family, I'm not sure.
You're not sure; but sure enough that you previously stated it as fact. For the record, no, there is no hard evidence for it. In fact, there isn't even any soft evidence either.
Certainly, many accusations have been directed at Prince Bernhard, but he is dead now.
There are many accusations against Prince Bernhard, yes.
None of them, however, have anything whatsofucking ever to do with pedophilia
The media will not report on it until they have official information from the police or some other authoritative source. It's called CYA - cover your ass.
I'll be sure to tell that to our media who seem to constantly report on things before having official information.