* Somebody (probably America) sabotaged the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline.
* That's related to the war in Ukraine because? wars are always about resources?
* The EU doesn't have any options to replace the gas that needs to come from Russia.
* That's going to drive all EU citizens back to an agrarian lifestyle.
* And also, the EU is too weak of an institution to defend its citizens.
It reeks of conspiracy theory to me. EU citizens should hate the US for driving them into poverty and should embrace Russia invading their neighbor.
One of the first results that comes up for me when I search "Nordstream 2" is the Brooking institute discussing similar conspiracy theories spreading among podcasters in the US, parroting the Kremlin: https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/u-s-podcasters-spread-k...
I'm sorry, why are you using the term conspiracy theory as a slur, here?
Blowing up an underwater international gas pipeline requires planning. Doing so in such a way that the public doesn't know about it in advance requires secrecy. The public not knowing the reason for blowing it up also requires ongoing secrecy.
Admittedly, I'm not the smartest person in the world, but this seems like a fairly cut-and-dried conspiracy to me.
* Somebody (probably America) sabotaged the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline.
Ok that's possible
* That's related to the war in Ukraine because? wars are always about resources?
Its feesable that its Russia/Ukraine war related
* The EU doesn't have any options to replace the gas that needs to come from Russia.
This is just wrong. Its just that options are expensive both fiscally and politically. Though some of the options are better for them in the long run by making them green independent. it just takes too long...
* That's going to drive all EU citizens back to an agrarian lifestyle.
Just a silly notion.
* And also, the EU is too weak of an institution to defend its citizens.
I’m currently in Chiang Mai, a city known for its digital nomad/entrepreneurship scene. Lots of European natives here who’ve been in the city for months. Many have even moved here permanently.
Talking to them, there is a definite sense of pessimism, bordering on fatalism, about them. Some of this is reflected in salaries - skilled white collar workers get paid well on average in Europe, but their salaries haven’t kept pace with the rest of the world, including (and especially) America. Even as an Indian, most of my peer group makes similar wages as their European counterparts, without even factoring in purchasing power.
What I mean to say is that it might all seem to be crumbling down now, but the decline seems to have started a while back.
The Indian middle class makes about the same(and often more) money than their European counterparts, I agree. But the Indian middle class is a much smaller part of the population, and the working class in particularly Western Europe has a much, much, much higher standard of living than the working class in India.
As a European, there might be a stagnation for few years as energy sources will be needed to be resolved first, otherwise relatively low wages are compromise for relatively high taxation and thus bearable public services, like working public transport or public hospitals.
One of the constant refrains in the Anglo-Saxon world is to describe Europe and the EU as permanently on the verge of collapse. It has not occurred so far, and it will not occur this time either.
The article just takes "cui bono" and runs with it. Nordstream blown up by CIA, wink wink. Also, obviously!, total collapse of industry within 2-3 years and return to serfdom.
Europe collapsed twice during the 20th century and several times before that. It will probably happen again but the exact timing is impossible to accurately predict.
Well, with inflation, war, various shortages, lack of power for the winter, I'm very trustful in human nature, but that may be a little too much for Europe.
Is it me, or does he skirt over Europe not working increasing the supply of gas locally? I'm not saying they could replace Russia or the US, but they could almost certainly produce more (whether via fracking or whatever).
They could also import from North Africa - Spain does it, Germany wants a pipeline, but France is inbetween these two and blocks such initiatives to try to keep a future for their failing nuclear industry (even if 50% of it is offline), under various fake pretenses.
It looks like a catastrophe in the making, and public opinion about say fracking or support for war sanctions might change when say grandmas start making the news for freezing to death due to prices/blackouts etc.
I also believe they could get all the gas they ever wanted by building a pipeline through Turkey to Turkmenistan. With this disaster of a war ongoing the Turkmen government might be willing to risk playing ball with Europe.
(Massimo Gramellini - corriere.it) - For anyone who feels like a citizen of Europe, it was sad to see proof that our German-speaking compatriot Olaf Scholz essentially thinks of his own comforts. Not content with having backed the Dutch comrade in turning a deaf ear (it must be said) to the request to put a ceiling on the price of gas, the chancellor of Berlin hijacked two hundred billion of the German budget on the German bills, with many greetings to whom - for example the Italian budget - those two hundred billion do not have them.
NOKIA is pretty much a muster for the future of Europe. Made a headless chicken by US investors that needed to save their investments in Microsoft and going from a dominant force in one emerging market to an afterthought in two years.
This is a textbook piece of propaganda targeting the smart people, a real gem. The core principle lies in this sentence "The war in Ukraine is mostly a sideshow". With fascinating lightness it completely inverts the size of a story of one of the biggest countries in the world becoming fascist and attacking a neighbor in most boody war since WW2 which was several years in the making and a story of one infrastructure attack. The war and it's culprit is too obvious to attack directly, but what a propagandist can still try is to shift focus from the obvious main story to uncertain sidestory and switching their importance. Using the uncertainty of the sidestory it's then possible to use a lot of true arguments which convinces even the smart people if they miss the initial "significance inversion".
This is Russian/Tankie propoganda. Notice how the author subtly implies that America was the instigator in cutting Russian supplies to EU. Ignoring the fact that it was Putin who invaded Ukraine and Crimea, and started this whole sequence of events. It was Putin who decided to cut gas supplies, long before the pipeline was sabotaged.
This is motivated article which speaks half-truths with the goal of casting events in a particular light to advantage Russian interests. I would dig further into the author's motivations.
> It was Putin who decided to cut gas supplies, long before the pipeline was sabotaged.
That's factually incorrect. Germany said before the invasion, and followed through with it, that it would not allow NordStream2 to come into operation if Russia invaded.
Listen: Putin did start the war and caused most problems that are causing Europe's energy prices to skyrocket... but how can we just forget the order of event so quickly and start spreading fake claims when clearly it's not even necessary to make a point? Just say how it would be immoral to buy gas from Russia after the war was started regardless of consequences to the prices in Europe.
"It seems clear that for us there are no other ways out than a decisive shift toward renewables, already today much cheaper than fossil fuels and capable of completely replacing them. Politicians have not yet understood this, but moving to renewables would protect us from new crises of energy availability and from blackmail by producers. But it's not something that can be done overnight."
Will that be soon enough for the Aluminium, steel and fertilizer plants that are currently idling and have fired 90% of their work force?
In NL we even have food packing companies shutting down production this winter for 6 weeks.
How many months/years of idling will it be before they go bankrupt or the owners decide to pull the plug?
Also I don't believe for a minute that natural gas production in the US supplying Europe was the driver for this war. If it was, wouldn't have the push from Russia been towards securing the path of their pipelines instead of the Crimean peninsula?
Renewable energy doesn't supply the chemical feed stocks that we currently obtain from fossil fuels. Those are essential to industrialized society and there are no cost-effective substitutes.
So your intelligent theory is that Putin is smart but USA outsmarted him and EU ? Or US and Putin are both controlled by Illuminati and the plan was to???
We in East Europe we knew all along that we need to get in NATO ASAP because Russia is actual evil and would not esitate to exterminate us just to take our land and resources, so fuck your Trumpan-Illuminati theories, the reality is in your face and you refuse to see it, Putin and Russia are evil, they will not hesitate to doe evil , US is not perfect but is not some super genius state where they played Putin as a stupid puppet all along.
Maybe we easter European are wrong, but for now we will curse Putin and Russia for all the shit is happening
teagoat|3 years ago
One of the first results that comes up for me when I search "Nordstream 2" is the Brooking institute discussing similar conspiracy theories spreading among podcasters in the US, parroting the Kremlin: https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/u-s-podcasters-spread-k...
recursivedoubts|3 years ago
Blowing up an underwater international gas pipeline requires planning. Doing so in such a way that the public doesn't know about it in advance requires secrecy. The public not knowing the reason for blowing it up also requires ongoing secrecy.
Admittedly, I'm not the smartest person in the world, but this seems like a fairly cut-and-dried conspiracy to me.
senectus1|3 years ago
yucky|3 years ago
spaceman_2020|3 years ago
Talking to them, there is a definite sense of pessimism, bordering on fatalism, about them. Some of this is reflected in salaries - skilled white collar workers get paid well on average in Europe, but their salaries haven’t kept pace with the rest of the world, including (and especially) America. Even as an Indian, most of my peer group makes similar wages as their European counterparts, without even factoring in purchasing power.
What I mean to say is that it might all seem to be crumbling down now, but the decline seems to have started a while back.
themitigating|3 years ago
You're dressing up what at best is anecdotal evidence, and at worst heresay, with a long post that sounds mature and well thought out but it's not.
Gud|3 years ago
TheLoafOfBread|3 years ago
akie|3 years ago
titzer|3 years ago
In reality, countries collapse in all kinds of different ways quite regularly.
trgn|3 years ago
nradov|3 years ago
csdvrx|3 years ago
carlob|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
gadders|3 years ago
csdvrx|3 years ago
It looks like a catastrophe in the making, and public opinion about say fracking or support for war sanctions might change when say grandmas start making the news for freezing to death due to prices/blackouts etc.
a2tech|3 years ago
jorts|3 years ago
hackandthink|3 years ago
https://infosannio.com/2022/10/01/lamico-tedesco/
(Massimo Gramellini - corriere.it) - For anyone who feels like a citizen of Europe, it was sad to see proof that our German-speaking compatriot Olaf Scholz essentially thinks of his own comforts. Not content with having backed the Dutch comrade in turning a deaf ear (it must be said) to the request to put a ceiling on the price of gas, the chancellor of Berlin hijacked two hundred billion of the German budget on the German bills, with many greetings to whom - for example the Italian budget - those two hundred billion do not have them.
bitL|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
calaverainfo|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
TheMagicHorsey|3 years ago
This is motivated article which speaks half-truths with the goal of casting events in a particular light to advantage Russian interests. I would dig further into the author's motivations.
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
brabel|3 years ago
That's factually incorrect. Germany said before the invasion, and followed through with it, that it would not allow NordStream2 to come into operation if Russia invaded.
Listen: Putin did start the war and caused most problems that are causing Europe's energy prices to skyrocket... but how can we just forget the order of event so quickly and start spreading fake claims when clearly it's not even necessary to make a point? Just say how it would be immoral to buy gas from Russia after the war was started regardless of consequences to the prices in Europe.
djaouen|3 years ago
anonuser123456|3 years ago
"It seems clear that for us there are no other ways out than a decisive shift toward renewables, already today much cheaper than fossil fuels and capable of completely replacing them. Politicians have not yet understood this, but moving to renewables would protect us from new crises of energy availability and from blackmail by producers. But it's not something that can be done overnight."
yourusername|3 years ago
How many months/years of idling will it be before they go bankrupt or the owners decide to pull the plug?
a2tech|3 years ago
TheLoafOfBread|3 years ago
nradov|3 years ago
roody15|3 years ago
The amount of war time propaganda on the Ukraine conflict has hit overdrive status and I would expect this article to “disappear” quickly.
There is little room to discuss the larger geopolitic situation. Instead a simplified narrative of
“Putin is an evil dictator invading a peaceful democracy and must be stopped at all costs”
And
“Ukraine is winning and will reclaim all territory including Crimea!!”
Is all that is allowed.
simion314|3 years ago
We in East Europe we knew all along that we need to get in NATO ASAP because Russia is actual evil and would not esitate to exterminate us just to take our land and resources, so fuck your Trumpan-Illuminati theories, the reality is in your face and you refuse to see it, Putin and Russia are evil, they will not hesitate to doe evil , US is not perfect but is not some super genius state where they played Putin as a stupid puppet all along.
Maybe we easter European are wrong, but for now we will curse Putin and Russia for all the shit is happening
rags2riches|3 years ago