re: #211 Pingemi

I’m with MPH on this one. Putin is ex KGB, reporters are turning up dead who oppose him and Eastern Europe’s memories of Soviet occupation are only one generation past.

Add to that Russia’s aid to Iran and now Chavez I’d say it’s not yet a new cold war, but it worth paying attention and acting accordingly.

Putin has no strategy whatsoever, and this means that he’s not posing a systemic threat to the USA.
But ha has a lot of power and influence and most of all he has the Siberian methane, so he is the one who will make decisions for the whole of Europe until the eastern french border.

The whole area is heavily dependent on russian gas supplies, because our beautiful leaders cunningly decided to scrap or neutralize any other meaningful alternative energy source. Visit us and hear a a lot about liposuction-propelled cars, clockwork refrigerators and so on …

This means that Europe is lost as soon as Putin decides to take it, he’ll close the gas tap, be it in January or June, and we’ll kneel in a day or two.

The decision of surrendering us to the russki was made by the likes of Gerhard Schrder, not by Obama.
Even though I believe O is, at best, amateurish, the scrapping of the defense of Europe is the right thing to do.
I also believe that he should withdraw from Europe as many of the US military personnel as possible and leave us to scratch our own scabies.

The worst thing that can happen is that he will be able to sell for the right price to the Europeans the safety that is now dearly paid for by the Americans.