this phrase will never go away, the fact that it stems from a 100 year old supreme court decision that used it as example why speech in opposition to the WWI draft was not protected free speech under the first amendment is still funny besides the fact that it was later overturned.
> Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that the BND had intercepted radio traffic discussing murders of civilians in Bucha. It stated that the radio traffic had been linked to the bodies photographed in Bucha. However, further research has revealed that the communications can only be geographically assigned to the region north of Kyiv, even if they show clear parallels to the killings in Bucha.
The Western Ukrainians (AFU), who are fighting vs the Eastern Ukrainians (LPR & DPR), and the Russian Army (Moscow Regime) all speak Russian, and have similar radio equipment. With the exception of the new Western new radio gear that the Western Ukrainians CIA-supported units have fielded, they are all using similar stuff. Given they all speak Russian with minimal difference, it is premature to say which force is doing what where in the middle of a contested warzone.
Please be very careful with the trolling. In a past life I had contact with teams returning from Kossovo having handled mass graves there, identifying corpses, getting information to investigators, these ones then talking with families, piecing through what exactly happened.
Some of the affected persons, still alive 30 years on, with only the memory of their raped 10 years old daughter, are at it and anyone associated with the deeds, even if the perpetrators have long ago been peeled, are still after associates, even if only just in propaganda associates.
This is not trolling. Maybe you shouldn't be so flippant about making accusations like that.
> In a past life I had contact with teams returning from Kossovo having handled mass graves there, identifying corpses, getting information to investigators, these ones then talking with families, piecing through what exactly happened. Some of the affected persons, still alive 30 years on, with only the memory of their raped 10 years old daughter, are at it and anyone associated with the deeds, even if the perpetrators have long ago been peeled, are still after associates, even if only just in propaganda associates.
I too, did "peace enforcement" in the Balkans as a uniformed member of the US military in a NATO unit.
Who were the allies of NATO in executing the peace enforcement? Russians. How quickly people forget this, in the "Rah Rah Rah EvilRussianz" media blitz.
However, you are comparing genocidal conflicts in the Balkans, with a war that is essentially a defensive move by the Russians to prevent encroachment into their sphere of influence & sphere of control.
Wars are brutal, horrible things.
NATO should not be in the business of fomenting revolutions, "Color Revolutions", Regional destabilization, or encroaching on regional powers turf where we have no clear national interest. And no, we hate Putin is not a National Interest. NATO has been supporting the Western Ukrainians in Kiev, and assisting the coup, in attacking the Eastern Ukrainians for a number of years now. We should not be in that business.
We would not tolerate Mexico or Canada becoming a Chinese military base, any more than we did missiles in Cuba [1]
Countries only have "sphere of influence and control" as much as they are able to influence and control. The invasion demonstrated both lack of influence, and lack of control.
No NATO missiles were being deployed in Kharkiv that I know, so this was not Cuba.
Clearly now my Kharkiv friends want nothing but...
If we're lucky we survive the escalation, I call it 50/50 at this point, got the iodine.
TOW, Stinger, Javelin, and Switchblade Drone/Missiles are all capable of taking out large commercial airplanes.
TOW 2 are specifically designed to take out buildings in the Bunker Buster variants. Simultaneous release of multiple TOW2s could be used to defeat large industrial buildings, or skyscrapers.
Slovakia has sent an S300 to Ukraine, and those are pretty hefty sized missiles too.
Are you drawing the limit on short range tactical missiles, intermediate range tactical missiles, Cruise Missiles, ICBMs, or Nuclear ICBMs, since we have already established NATO is supplying a number of missile types to Eastern Ukraine?
Super interesting discussion, so sorry I cannot really continue it much!
You mentionned Cuba, so I mentionned Cuba, false equivalence yada yada...
Still, so far the Buk that fools used to down the Malaysia MH17 is the only actual case we're talking about: misguided killings inside the aforementioned "sphere of control", more like sphere of complete corrupt incompetence if you ask me.
All the rest you list is the result of the unprovoked aggression.
So far only Israeli airlines have installed flare decoy systems on commercial transport aircrafts, there are technical issues with downing one of those with what you list though. Let us both hope your theories do not have to get tested.
> Still, so far the Buk that fools used to down the Malaysia MH17 is the only actual case we're talking about: misguided killings inside the aforementioned "sphere of control", more like sphere of complete corrupt incompetence if you ask me.
This is what western media would have you believe.
However, the Western Ukrainians have been attacking the Eastern Ukrainians for half a decade now, bombing civilians much of the time.
Similar to what happened with the Buk, is the new Kramatorsk situation.
However, we know that Russians claim to be only using Iskandar missiles these days. Iskandars are more powerful, more accurate, and significantly longer range.
Russians fired a Tochka-U at an exercise in '22, and there is alleged film of a Russian unit having a Tochka-U. Whereas, the Tochka-U is the only Ukrainian missile of the type, as they do not have access to Iskandars
What landed at the Kramatorsk train station was clearly a Tochka-U.
So, I guess it is in the realm of possibility that it was either side.
A corporation can have economies of scale, which could (in a free market) mean lower costs to renters, and also be less subject to the landlord's personal circumstances, which should make rental agreements more stable.
Obviously the property market isn't functioning like a free market, but why do you think that having more private landlords would make things better?
Do you just want a limit on the share of the property market in a given location that one entity can own? That would definitely make sense.
> Germany has seized control of a local unit of Russian natural-gas giant Gazprom, saying it will do 'what is necessary' to maintain energy supply in the country
this action doesn't make much sense then, does it?
> Germany's economy minister announced the seizure in a statement on Monday. The move came after the ministry of economic affairs learned that Gazprom Germania had been acquired by JSC Palmary and Gazprom export business services LLC — but it wasn't clear who the owners behind the two companies were, per the statement.
> Germany's economy ministry justified the takeover by saying it had not granted permission for the Gazprom Germania acquisition. Permission is required, the ministry said, if the investors are not from the European Union and "critical infrastructure" is involved.
GAZPROM mother sells gas to the Russian GAZPROM EXPORT OOO (the Russian version of a GmbH) in Petersburg. This sells the gas to GAZPROM Germania in Berlin. This in turn sells the gas to a large number of smaller subsidiaries with their various customers. So far, this strong division has served to minimize risks and taxes.
Customers pay the gas to the subsidiaries of GAZPROM Germania in EUR/USD. These are the much-cited “supply contracts”. GAZPROM Germania aggregates these payments and transfers them via Luxembourg (GAZPROM Bank) to the Russian GAZPROM EXPORT.
Therefore, only GAZPROM Germania (for Germany) is affected by the conversion of payments to GAZPROM EXPORT from EUR/USD to rubles. After all, end consumers in Germany do not buy from GAZPROM AG in SPB or from GAZPROM EXPORT in SPB, but from the subsidiaries of GAZPROM Germania. The new legal situation in the RF will not change anything for these end users with their EUR/USD contracts.
Instead of transferring the EUR/USD to Luxembourg, where these funds can be "frozen" at any time, GAZPROM Germania is now transferring the aggregated payments from its subsidiaries to Moscow, where they are forcibly converted and effectively revalue the ruble. To a certain extent, these funds are thus withdrawn from the EU's options for sanctions. And Habeck and Co. can (almost) do nothing about it.
But the west doesn't want that. The idea of the western values is that GAZPROM Germania receives payments from the subsidiaries, but cannot pass these funds on. At the given moment GAZPROM Germania can then be confiscated as part of a further level of sanctions together with its considerable account balances. The RF would then have supplied gas without receiving any payment. The moral justification for such an expropriation would then be “reparations to Ukraine”. The USA in particular has experience in this. Private German companies were selectively expropriated after 1918 in order to "pay" for war damage by the German Reich.
What is the counter-strategy of the RF?
GAZPROM (mother) instructs GAZPROM EXPORT to liquidate GAZPROM Germania. This eliminates the commercially necessary intermediate step for gas trading, the trading chain is interrupted and the supply comes to a standstill. Not because someone turned off the tap, but because the importer is "bankrupt". However, since this would be a quasi-hostile act by the RF (specifically planned insolvency of a strategic utility company), they do it more skilfully: GAZPROM Germania is sold. To shady offshore companies whose owners nobody knows and whose cash flows are as yet unknown. And these offshore companies first withdraw the capital from Luxembourg, leaving behind a GAZPROM Germania as an empty shell, which is then sent into insolvency.
Habeck wants to forestall this scenario. The BMWi places GAZPROM Germania under receivership in order to prevent GAZPROM Germania's assets from flowing out to the new owners. And to prevent GAZPROM Germania from transferring the capital collected from the subsidiaries to Moscow for compulsory exchange.
Only GAZPROM EXPORT could now stop selling to GAZPROM Germania if GAZPROM Germany does not pay in rubles.
The only question now is how quick the "new owners" were over the weekend. Because GAZPROM Germania was supposedly sold on April 1, 2022. So now, four days later, it is unclear whether GAZPROM Germania is already insolvent. If so, then Habeck and Co. would have a problem. On the one hand, they would have to save the company with significant financial contributions, if necessary, and on the other hand, they would then have the buck in their hands. Because if you now instruct the management of GAZPROM Germania not to bill in RUB, as requested by GAZPROM EXPORT, then you are breaking the contracts, not RF. After all, GAZPROM Germania and GAZPROM EXPORT can specify any currency for internal settlement, and these are in rubles for GAZPROM EXPORT by law.
Second to last paragraph (not copy/pasted in the parent comment) shows that the person who wrote this note knows about this stuff. I have customers scrambling right now because if this really big problem.
It's the 'their own people' part that's problematic. If they only decide against the interest of businessed but in the interest of the people then I have no problems with it.
Stingers are manufactured in Germany. Logistically, they need to load some crates into a few trucks and drive about thirteen hours. The logistics of limited warfare in modern Europe is frighteningly straightforward.
Is there some doubt that the Polish authorities will be more than happy to provide them with a police escort?
this phrase will never go away, the fact that it stems from a 100 year old supreme court decision that used it as example why speech in opposition to the WWI draft was not protected free speech under the first amendment is still funny besides the fact that it was later overturned.