It sure seems like it! Between the Germans getting stupid with the green agenda and the EU forcing countries to allow refugees in, Russia cutting off the gas pipeline just before winter, Belgium shutting down a nuclear reactor next week, Holland and others trying to ban farms and cattle operations, the Swedes going for a hard right leaning government, and the Italians doing the same thing, all of this after Brexit, this could literally be the ‘winter of discontent”. Italy may now implement a no illegals policy (time will tell).
Lack of food, no or limited heating (especially in those areas full of immigrants in those no go zones who like being warm), and general discontent over what is happening in Ukraine and other former Soviet ‘client states’, has everybody on edge.
Hungary and Poland have been the holdouts, with Hungary’s border secure, and no illegal migration (Gee, fences really DO work). And Orban, who was reelected, promotes Christianity and has implemented family-friendly policies. Poland has been trying to reform their judicial system for a couple of years, and finally have a ‘plan’ to get the EU to finally give them the money the EU has been holding. Of note, this is nothing new, having been going on since the early 1990s after Poland became ‘free’.
Remember, France had a scare earlier with the Macron/Le Pen election, with Le Pen actually pressing Macron much harder than in 2017! That scared the hell out of France and the EU, because Le Pen was truly hard right.
And England is feeling its way as King Charles III takes the helm, and people wonder which direction THEY are going to go. Charles was notoriously FOR a green agenda, but the question is, will he actually step back now that he is king. Some of the Commonwealth are discussing ‘breaking away’ from England, etc…
And we have a dysfunctional administration in charge, bumbling from error to error… With our own set of problems, many driven by political partisanship, so there is no ‘steady hand’ at the helm.
In summary, I think all we can do is sit back, stock up on things we need, and hold our breath that things don’t blow sky high on us…
Your thoughts?
Gradually, then suddenly. Much like the Covid 19 health crisis, it appears events are herding us into ‘We must act NOW’.
The important change in the UK is not King Charles so much as new Prime Minister Liz Truss. Truss seems to be a smallish government Thatcherite sort, but she’s coming into power facing a winter that will be worse than the “Winter of discontent” that propelled Mrs T to victory.
If she can get through the winter then there’s a fair prospect that she will thrive. But this winter is going to be tough even as she does her best to reverse the more idiotic green policies of the last 2 decades
In Italy Giorgia Meloni probably doesn’t have the power to change anything critical and if she tries the EU will find a way to ensure that the changes don’t stick. That is the key difference between the post-Brexit UK and the rest of the EU nations. The UK can actually do things, the others can’t because the EU has too much control
And now there is this–
“Gonzalo Lira is absolutely right. This is the modern equivalent of Cortez burning his ships upon arrival in the New World.
Occam’s Razor strongly suggests that the global imperialists headquartered in the USA are attempting to prevent the Europeans
from surrendering to Russia and thereby freeing themselves from the satanic New World Order.”
https://voxday.net/2022/09/27/the-us-shuts-off-europes-lights/
At a minimum, Europe will get a reality-check.
Green energy seems like an excellent idea until all of the (nearly) invisible, conventional-energy supports are turned off.
Continued pursuit of green-energy in the face of reality will be a “let them eat cake” moment for the EU.
Correction: Green energy seems like an excellent idea as long as one is a complete wanker and can’t understand science.
There, fixed it for you.
Somebody bombed Nordstream 1 & 2.
Gotta wonder who.
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/apparent-sabotage-disables-nord-stream?
no need to wonder. brandon did it. he said he would, first promise ever kept. now the germans can’t go back, they’re done and us with them.
The USS Kearsarge was tracked off Bornholm prior to NS1 and NS2 suddenly losing containment. The USA has just sentenced Germany and the EU to at least two years of economic depression, even famine, because there is insufficient LNG and pipeline capacity to replace those lines and it will take at least that long to replace them or repair the lines. It will take a few months for this to sink in, but by then I presume the US, having just shipped intermediate range missiles to Ukraine, will have provoked enough escalation to get the full on European war it wants.
The EU set up the conditions for that famine and economic weakness with their insane and monstrous attempts to ‘address AGW’.
The logic of AGW has always ultimately pointed towards mass murder. The prospect of a stable agreement to compel compliance from populations was never plausible, and the engineering reality is that the populations would need to be compelled. Reasonable people would conclude that the Climate Scientists have not provided sufficiently conclusive proof to justify mass murder.
But, if Climate Science is truly unimpeachable, Americans with the goal of exterminating all other populations would probably be the most feasible option.
This would necessarily involve exterminating the Russians. And, there is also a case where AGW is not real, and where we should still seek to exterminate the Russians, instead of trying to ignore them all the time like we do now.
If AGW is real, we should kill the EU. If AGW is not real, the EU is screwing us over by pretending, and maybe we ought to fight them as a result.
Thus, a grand strategy argument for trying to encourage war in Europe. If we were pursuing this, however, we should get internal buy in first, because pulling it off would require serious commitment. We have not, and the incompetence of US leadership makes American population support for even minor strategic gambles pretty low.
But Europe already has war, because of Russia, and doing nothing would simply ensure a continuation of war. The best road towards peace in Europe is beating the Russians. It is a shame that US leadership is too insane to contribute much there. It is has a very high chance to stab the good side in the back as soon as it is possible to force terms on Russia.
But, we may have been in a bad strategic position since we missed the opportunity to nuke the PRC for that winter cold they almost certainly brewed up in a lab.
SecDef trying to funnel money to his defense contractor cronies to make up for the coming budget cuts (post political realignment), may well be accidentally the right thing to do.
jrg- Yep!
Francis- Oh, good point, I should have added her, just forgot.
RHT- Hadn’t thought about THAT possibility… But yes, definitely another ‘option’ if you will.
ERJ/Beans- Excellent point! And we know that they don’t really work/pay for themselves.
John- Saw that this morning, NOT good.
Jeff- Maybe… Kearsarge cleared the English Channel two days ago heading into the Atlantic, so she couldn’t have been up off Bornholm yesterday.
Time delay fuses for plausible deniability?
Of course, it’s not like Russia doesn’t have subs. But they could just turn the gas off at the source.
Another site speculated that the bombing of the Nordstream pipelines would serve to prevent Germany and the EU from surrendering in exchange for Russian gas.
The Globalists wouldn’t like that at all.
The old Chinese saying “May you live in interesting times.” Is twue., it’s weally twue!
I default to scepticism every time somebody gets labelled “hard right”. It’s one of the generic insults that the left and mainstream media throw at anyone who isn’t in lockstep with them.
Have a good, “hard” look at the Mandate on which the new Italian government was elected……
In the “Cui bono” examination of the Nordstream incidents, I think the most obvious candidates would be an E European country as it forces any Russian gas to go via the E European land pipes so W European countries (coff Germany coff) can’t stab the E Europeans in the back.
John- Possible…
C-90- REALLY don’t want to do that again!
Peter- Yep, you have to take a deep dive, and my Italian doesn’t lead to me being able to do that.
Francis- Possible. The next question is whether they will take out the Norwegian line.
Isn’t the time since the end of WWII the longest Europe has gone without a war? The US has been the hall monitor and now is as dysfunctional as any European country.
There have been several minor skirmishes and one major war in Europe since 1945, not including the current unpleasantness in Ukraine.
Could possibly be an industrial accident. There are circumstances that might contribute to industrial accidents.
Some of the industrial accidents that have happened in Russia this year are almost certainly ‘accidents’, human malice, that were not carried out by Russians.
On the other hand, a lot of the almost certainly murders that have happened in Russia seem a lot like they may have been carried out by Russians.
I’m not sure I would believe Biden if Biden publicly claimed responsibility for the act.
Hopefully the old worlders will learn to keep their leadership in check and under control better. If not, screw them. It is not our responsibility to make them learn civilized behavior. It is only our responsibility to decide if their uncivilized behavior is worth the benefits of not warring against them, and not having already exterminated.
Note: Technically, this isn’t hypocritical even if Americans have not yet acted properly with regard to our self proclaimed elites, because I have hope that we will act properly. And, Sri Lanka, and the Canuck Honkening are encouraging signs from the barbarian world.
Improbable to the extreme given the separation and timing. I was the principal technical authority for major hazards for an international oil major, mostly offshore platforms and pipelines. Predicting and preventing these kinds of accidents was my daily remit for 20 years. This was sabotage. I do note the depth was only about 45 meters, so well within working depth for planting of delayed charges by divers or submersible.
A surface ship would be way too obvious. Both the US and UK have history with under sea operations. The USN supposedly has been tapping Russian communications cables in the Pacific, so a pipeline operation probably would not be too difficult. I am surprised that neither Russia or NATO saw this coming. This does seem to force the use of surviving over-land gas lines from Russia or the use of LNG from Canada, the US and/or Israel. Got to wonder who is gaming this.
Perhaps Jim – or other vets – would care to comment, but I suspect that doing something like this with the US Navy would involve a significant number of personnel, many of whom would be asking themselves if this was an illegal order.
It’s not like a Bond film where the PM rings M, M calls 007 into the office…. and only 3 or 4 people know anything about it.
The consequences for Biden Inc. would be rather disastrous if it came out that they had done it. Total wreck of their credibility and foreign policy. Biden impeached? ….. How could they be sure that there was not one Edward Snowden or Bradley Manning amongst the crew, chain-of-command, comms, tracking and logistics personnel who knew what was where, when, and could put 2 and 2 together?
Last I heard, Biden was not the front-line military’s greatest hero. Would attacking the supply lines of allied nations fly, as a legitimate order? Outside Hollywood, I mean?
Yes, it is a perfectly legitimate order, from an illegitimate President.
Sorry, my friend, but that’s a contradiction. I get it that you don’t like or respect Biden (I’m with you on that) .
I’m looking at the legal position of the personnel.
The US President is not a Supreme Ruler. There are legal limits on the orders that he can give, and “just following orders” is not a defence if those orders are outside the legal authority. Attacking another sovereign nation, without justification and with no Declaration of War would appear to be something that even the President probably does not have the authority to do.
One of our senior officers held the post of Ops-Officer under Petreaus in the Iraq Theatre. Every military action in theatre came across his desk, and he comments on the degree to which the American military applied legal scrutiny to their own actions.
“Running the War in Iraq”, by MajGen Jim Molan, if you are interested in an outsiders view of Americans in that conflict.
soldiers and sailors do as they are told. they may not have even known what they were blowing up or whose it was. unless you tell them to shoot an unarmed civilian woman in cold blood, or something of the like, they won’t question it.
The Nuremberg Trials decided differently.
I’m not betting the farm on it, but Czar Vlad could have ordered it.
He’s not concerned about revenue. He won’t suffer, and he’s gambling that the Euros can’t cope with discomfort as well as the Russians… and the Euro governments don’t have a secret police anymore.
Putin is after power, and he could easily decide that -as he is not selling much gas anyway – blowing up his own pipeline makes him able to pose as the “good guy”, while sowing discord amongst the NATO allies.
Look up “Maskirovka”, it’s a formal part of Russian military and political doctrine.
doesn’t make sense to me, putin had euros on the ropes and about to trade their brandon hat for a putin coat. they have realized in the last few days that their people and economy have had enough of this crap and are ready to put their leaders to the torch. brandon’s masters saw the euros wavering and put an end to their way out. now they are toast and so are we. just a few weeks, or even days.
I’m going to suggest two things.
1. The euros were nowhere near as much “on the ropes” as some think. Things were far worse after WW2, and they rebuilt. There is a lot of political noise, as you would expect, but no-one is dying in numbers yet. The threat is far more severe for people who have never experienced hardship, like your society and mine.
2. That Putin has already demonstrated that he cares more about power than money. If he gets power NOW, he can build his economy LATER. He doesn’t have to worry about the election cycle. His biggest threat is not his economy, but losing the war.
As for Brandon…. do you really think he is competent enough to run a decent conspiracy and keep it secret? If it doesn’t stay secret, he loses far higger than he wins.
I’m with Jeff, the probability against two near simultaneous industrial accidents is astronomical. That said, I’m not sure it matters who is actually responsible. Russia is already blaming the U.S. in part due to China Joe’s statement regarding the future of the pipeline if Russia invaded Ukraine. If Ivan reacts based on that accusation, we could well end up in shooting war directly with Russia. I don’t see how that could end without at least tactical nukes being used. I pray cooler heads will prevail, but Murphy does get a vote.
The penny has dropped, somewhere.
https://joannenova.com.au/2022/09/as-underwater-gas-pipes-explode-ponder-that-a-third-of-uk-gas-comes-from-an-underwater-pipe/
Underwater pipelines and communications systems are immensely vulnerable and difficult to guard. Russia is not vulnerable in this regard (Czar Vlad has already shown that gas is more valuable to him as a weapon than as a source of revenue) but at least some NATO countries are.
Does anyone here not think that the implied threat suits Russia more than anyone? It’s how a thug thinks.
All- Everybody can ‘posit’ what may or may not have happened, and who is responsible, but the reality is we’ll probably never know. But looking at US ship tracks, I don’t see where we had anybody in the area in the last week or more… Another take that popped up today was an ‘industrial accident’ caused by running a pig down the line to ‘clean’ the pipe… sigh…
Jim….
I’ll leave it to you to post links or explanations regarding the high probability that the gas pipelines blew due to the same incompetent engineering culture that gave us Chernobyl and a bunch of other disasters.
I’d ask how “Murphy” translates into Russian, but they make Murph look like an amateur.
EU melting down today, Beijing tomorrow, Moscow Friday, DC Saturday? We can but hope.
Scaffolds in locations that were I to post would get me unwanted attention. I’m sick of this shit.
Hey, you asked…
TOS- Who knows… sigh
Heath- Understood!