Crimea/Ukraine crisis - follow the money

Russian forces cross Crimea border to seize gas plant on eve of referendum

Russian forces backed by helicopter gunships and armored vehicles Saturday took control of a village near the border with Crimea on the eve of a referendum on whether the region should seek annexation by Moscow, a Ukrainian official said. 

Fox News confirmed Russia troops took over a gas plant in the Kherson region, located between Crimea and Russia. 

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/03/15/2-dead-in-ukraine-shootout-reportedly-between-pro-russian-protesters-and/

Follow the money, and read on

16% of Natural Gas Consumed in Europe Flows Through Ukraine

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, IHS EDIN, and International Energy Agency
Note: Representations of international boundaries and names are not authoritative.

Europe, including all EU members plus Turkey, Norway, Switzerland, and the non-EU Balkan states, consumed 18.7 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas in 2013. Russia supplied 30% (5.7 Tcf) of this volume, with a significant amount flowing through Ukraine. EIA estimates that 16% (3.0 Tcf) of the total natural gas consumed in Europe passed through Ukraine's pipeline network, based on data reported by Gazprom and Eastern Bloc Energy.

Two major pipeline systems carry Russian gas through Ukraine to Western Europe—the Bratstvo (Brotherhood) and Soyuz (Union) pipelines. The Bratstvo pipeline is Russia's largest pipeline to Europe. It crosses from Ukraine to Slovakia and splits in two to supply northern and southern European countries. The Soyuz pipeline links Russian pipelines to natural gas networks in Central Asia and supplies additional volumes to central and northern Europe. A third major pipeline through Ukraine (Trans-Balkan) delivers Russian natural gas to the Balkan countries and Turkey.

In the past, as much as 80% of Russian natural gas exports to Europe transited Ukraine. This number has fallen to 50%-60% since the Nord Stream pipeline, a direct link between Russia and Germany under the Baltic Sea, came online in 2011.

http://theenergycollective.com/todayinenergy/354301/16-natural-gas-consumed-europe-flows-through-ukraine

If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some; for he that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Poor Richard's Almanac

Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/m/money_quotes.html#SspU4LodCuGHeWKd.99

Crisis in Crimea: Can Putin Claim Consent?

March 8, 2014

JENS DAVID OHLIN

When Vladimir Putin sent troops into the Crimean peninsula, he sent a strong signal to both Ukraine and the rest of the world: Russia will use military force, if necessary, to secure Crimea’s independence from Ukraine and its eventual reintegration into Russia, its presumptive ancestral homeland. Russia is now also trying to argue to the United Nations, as well as the court of world opinion, that its actions are justified by international law. Evaluating this claim is tricky, but here are the key elements of the argument.

- See more at: 

http://verdict.justia.com/2014/03/08/crisis-crimea-can-putin-claim-consent#sthash.6eS52Nix.dpuf

Crisis in Crimea - none of our business

Consider the "Crisis" in Crimea in these terms:

Let's say Texas, which was once Spanish territory was seized by Spanish troops, claiming the authority of ancient land treaties.  Mexico acted as a starting off point and was used to send in Spanish troops.

Additionally, let's say that Russia began issuing decrees, stating some unknown treaty with Mexico or Spain.

Now what would America do?

After Obama got through apologizing for former American imperialism, even he would be bound to tell Russia that this affair was none of their affair, we would settle things ourselves, and to stay out.  (though he would somehow arrange for a special UN Mission to accomplish the same thing)

The Ukrainie and Crimea are identical - these areas are traditionally part of Russian territory and are of strategic importance, due to the Naval Port under consideration.  They are NOT within our sphere of influence.

STAY OUT OBAMA AND STAY AWAY - worry about US BORDERS, not Russia.

BORDERS LANGUAGE CULTURE 

- as Dr. Savage reminds us so often.

Do you want your neighbor's son to die for the Crimean peninsula?@

Welcome to The Michael Savage Newsletter, your daily insider report on all things "Savage." 

In today's issue: Obama is issuing empty threats while John McCain and John Kerry seem to be beating the drums of war.

Dr. Savage asks whether or not we really want to go to war over the Crimean peninsula, comparing American intervention there to the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion.

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"John McCain, the neocons and John Kerry have gotten what they wanted," Savage told his audience, noting:

We're on the verge of a possible confrontation not seen since the Bay of Pigs invasion.

The idiots running this country have put themselves in a no-win situation.

They told Russia they have no right to defend their own territorial integrity.

So now what is America going to do?

They can't win.

Would you like your neighbor's son to die for the Crimean peninsula?

I want everyone to pray for peace, because sometimes, if enough people refuse to get hysterical, you can stop something bad from happening.

Let's pray for the children of Ukraine, of Russia, of Venezuela and the world.

Let's pray that the adults running this world don't take us into the Third World War.

Visit the Michael Savage website here. 

#Ukraine nationalists wear "Beat the Yids" t-shirts

Australian Jewry @ECAJewry

#Ukraine nationalists wear "Beat the Yids" t-shirts, amid fears Ukraine's #Jews will be targeted. @WorldJewishCong pic.twitter.com/bmk7usqQes 4:10 a.m. Tue, Mar 4 Twitter ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is an area of Russia long known for its anti-semitism and murder of Jews. I am currently reading a book called "Resistance" which details the Belorussian Jewish Partisans and their flight from the Nazis in the forests of Western Russia. Many of these #Ukraine nationalists are Neo-Nazi thugs reborn in the 21st century.  See  Holocaust Resistance: The Bielski Brothers and the “Otriad”, Prior to the onset of WWII, conditions throughout occupied Poland & Belarus varied greatly. In some areas, especially in eastern Poland, which the Soviet Union invaded in 1939, and subsequently “formally” annexed, the situation was particularly volatile. The Bielski Partisans During the two year occupation till the Soviet-German war outbreak in1941, the Soviets carried out the ethnic cleansing of Poles considered as a potential threat to full annexation of these territories into Soviet Union. Hundred of thousands of Polish officials, officers, soldiers, policemen, teachers, churchmen, landowners, and civilians with their families were sent to Siberian concentration camps. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/BielskiBrothers.html This book on the Jewish resistance in Western Russia is an excellent source of information and historical background on the region and its history.

PUTIN PLAYS CHESS WHILE OBAMA PLAYS MARBLES

By: John Hayward  
3/3/2014 09:34 AM

RESIZE:AAA

House Intelligence Chair Mike Rogers (R-MI) summed the Ukraine crisis up perfectly on Fox News Sunday by saying “Putin is playing chess, and I think we’re playing marbles.”  The degree of disconnect between reality on the ground in the Crimean region, and the Obama Administration’s hapless stream of babble and bluster, is amazing.  The message other global leaders and miscreants must be taking from the confrontation is profoundly disturbing.

Rogers relates an old geo-strategic saying: “Russia without the Ukraine is a country.  Russia with the Ukraine is an empire.”  The scary thing is that nobody in the Obama Administration seems familiar with that saying, or much of anything else about the region.  The fallback position for nervous Obama apologists at this point is to snarl at critics, “Well, what do you think he should do, nuke Moscow?”  The point is not that a better President would be on a war footing against the Russian empire, but that a better President might have kept this crisis from bubbling over the way it has, or at least avoided further damage to American diplomatic prestige by fumbling the response so badly.

http://www.humanevents.com/2014/03/03/putin-plays-chess-while-obama-plays-marbles/

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The American state of California is a former Spanish territory.  Consider the situation if Mexicans living in that state agitated and wanted to rejoin Spain.  What would we do?

What is Russia decided that this was somehow in their interests, and decided to intervene, via trade sanctions, diplomatic moves and the like.

What would our response be?

Even a president like Obama would tell them to buzz off and mind their own affairs.

This one is none of our business and we have enough problems at the moment. 

Stay out and stay safe.

Ukraine Reform shul defaced by anti-Semitic graffiti

The Reform synagogue in Simferopol, the capital of Ukraine’s Crimean republic, was vandalized Thursday night as the city saw clashes between thousands of armed pro-Russian protesters and Ukrainian nationalists.

Simferopol’s 150-member Reform congregation, Ner Tamid, is housed in the city’s historic Old Synagogue building, which was returned to the Jewish community after the fall of the Former Soviet Union through Holocaust restitution efforts.

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This area of Western Russia has a long history of Anti-Semitism and Pro-Nazi activity:

see:

Holocaust Resistance:
The Bielski Brothers and the “Otriad”

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Holocaust Resistance: Table of Contents | Photographs | Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

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Prior to the onset of WWII, conditions throughout occupied Poland & Belarus varied greatly. In some areas, especially in eastern Poland, which the Soviet Union invaded in 1939, and subsequently “formally” annexed, the situation was particularly volatile.

The Bielski Partisans

During the two year occupation till the Soviet-German war outbreak in1941, the Soviets carried out the ethnic cleansing of Poles considered as a potential threat to full annexation of these territories into Soviet Union.

Hundred of thousands of Polish officials, officers, soldiers, policemen, teachers, churchmen, landowners, and civilians with their families were sent to Siberian concentration camps.

Some Jews had welcomed the Soviets as liberators, believing that life under the communists might be preferable to that of the Poles.  However time would soon disprove that theory.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/BielskiBrothers.html

A true story of the Jewish resistance in the forests of Belarus. 

Vandals spray painted anti-Semitic messages on the outside walls of the historic building, Ukraine’s Chief Reform Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny told The Times of Israel on Friday.

Early Friday, Ukraine accused Russia of a “military invasion,” saying that Russian troops had taken up strategic positions in the Crimean peninsula. Later in the day, the chief of Ukraine’s security council seemed to back away from those claims, saying that gunmen had attempted to seize airports in Simferopol and Sevastopol.

Read more: Ukraine Reform shul defaced by anti-Semitic graffiti | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/ukraine-reform-shul-defaced-by-anti-semitic-graffiti/#ixzz2ukPwnywx
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