Russia on the brink of collapse

Did you give it a try?

Well. What is the reason that NATO is existing? I understand that when there was a soviet presence in Europe there was a sense, although if the US followed the advice of USSR leadership and haven't formed NATO - there would be no cold war and thousands of people would remain alive. But now since there is no competitor and a policy should have been done under the UN since the early 90s. Why did US still keep the military block which has never ever ever defended in their entire history and which invaded a dosen of countries already and can easily invade any country in the world?

 

I will tell you the honest facts.....at the time....there were all those Nukes, Chemical and Biological Weapons in the Ukraine, Georgia and in other former Soviet States......and at that time.....THEY WERE POINTED AT MOSCOW!!

We wanted to develop a Partnership with Russia because as Partners we would not have to spend TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS as we had been doing and still are over the decades.....worrying about Soviet Expansionism.

I was IN RUSSIA at a time when hopes were high but then came the MARKET CRASH!!

The Russian's felt it was somehow our fault as they did not have experience or the understanding that the Market is controlled by the MARKET.

Plus at the time there was a LOT of animosity that had built up between all those former Soviet States like Ukraine, Georgia...etc....and former Soviet Block behind the Iron Curtain Nations such as Poland, Cech Republic now...etc...as they had endured almost 50 years of Soviet rule.

The United States I will admit REVELED in the collapse of the Soviet Union but when you needed us....WE WERE THERE!!

We spent over $300 Billion to buy those old Soviet Nukes, Chemical and Biological Weaons and WE ARE STILL IN RUSSIA....RIGHT NOW....still cleaning up old Soviet Bioweapons Labs that if not cleaned up could result in the deaths of MILLIONS.

We paid for the weapons....we destroyed them environmentally safe....and let's face it if those Nukes were still in Georgia or the Ukraine then Putin would not be ding what he did and is doing.

The whole thing fell apart when Putin cancelled that Joint Russian/American Siberian Infrastructure Program as when he cancelled that....AND REMEMBER THE U.S. AND CANADA HAVE NO NEED OF RUSSIAN OIL OR NATURAL GAS......after Putin cancelled that and after he started CHANGING THE RUSSIAN CONSTITUTION.....we knew there were going to be problems.

But it's not too late.

Even after all this.....the U.S. is still willing and capable of helping Russia as it is much cheaper to help Russia and have a friend and partner....than to keep spending over $500 to $700 Billion a year of the Military.

Europe got BURNED BAD when Putin seied all those Private Companies that had a lot of Money in European Investment backing them so Europe want's nothing to do with INVESTING IN RUSSIA.

But the United States still see's an oppertunity for both the U.S. and Russia.

Eve Putin has stated that although Russia is selling Oil and Gas to China from EASTERN SIBERIA.....that it would be DANGEROUS and NOT IN RUSSIA'S INTEREST to allow China to start attempting to develop WESTERN SIBERIAN INFRASTRUCTURE.

First of all China is not qualified nor does it have the experiece to do this so it would be trial and error and costly....plus in reality the ONLY MILITARY THREAT TO RUSSIA is the possibility of MULTIPLE MILLIONS OF ARMED CHINESE SOLDIERS JUST CROSSING THE RUSSIAN BOARDER!!

Russia KNOWS...and the U.S. KNOWS.....that JOINT RUSSIAN/AMERICAN PROGRAMS like what we have done together in Space....have worked well.

At issue here is THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY.

There is only one way Russia can fix it's economy and that is with our help.

Russia needs to develop the necessary infrastructure which currently is almost NON-EXISTENT...in order for RUSSIAN COMPANIES TO MAKE PRODUCTS FOR RUSSIAN PEOPLE and Russia cannot rely soley upon Oil and Gas sales as the U.S. and Canada are becoming MASSIVE OIL AND LNG EXPORTERS and we can produce Oil much cheaper than Russia can.

Solution?

Knock off the stupidity in the Ukraine.

Cut a deal with the U.S.

And allow U.S. Transportation and Infrastructure Development Firms in to HELP.

The United States has the worlds largest and most complex Infrastructure system.

Our FREIGHT RAILS ALONE move 15 times more product than all of Europe combined.

A deal can be made.....were EVERYONE WINS!!

China cannot be trusted and we know this....and you know this as well.

AboveAlpha

 

Sorry. I have heard this crap and answered it 20 times already. Which I haven't heard and haven't found is the answer to a question that you tried to comment. Which is:

If I missed and haven't understood the answer - please, point it out to me. And if You want to talk - talk facts. Please.

 

but it isn't a disaster, as you might see. Russia thus is a country that does not go by Western economy standards, and what would be a crisis to the West does not have the same effect on her.

i for one don't know anyone here in Russia who could have been described as 'having a very hard time'.

you shouldn't take at face value what a Russian would reply when asked 'how do you do' because with us Russians it is a custom to respond with 'so-so' in that case.

hot because built for winter time, thick walls and so on; this get fixed easily with an air conditioner, if you don't know.

this very phrase just proves you've never been to Russia, otherwise you'd know buildings here are provided with a district heating system, which renders the apartments comfy hot during the winter, so no need in stoves etc.

not as rich as your Rothshields and Rockfellers who rule the West and your country too.

even now that it is clear you're a liar, the horror stories like the above mentioned could happen only back in the 1990s, if happened at all.

you West folk when talking Russia deliberately omit the timeline so that to portray 1990s era events as current ones.

 

Oh gawd. You always try to shift the emphasis away from what's being discussed. The link I provided states very clearly what was promised and what actually happened, so it should be apparent. But no, you turn a blind eye to established history and wriggle and wriggle and wriggle.

So let me spell this out for you.

The German and the US administration at the time, promised Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, that in exchange for allowing Germany to reunite and btw, this promise also led to their decision to dissolve the Warsaw Pact (which they wouldn't have done otherwise), that the west would not expand eastwards. That promise centred on NATO (see HERE)

That promise proved to be utterly worthless. And both Genscher and Baker later lied saying that no verbal agreement was ever reached.

However, documents later came out, backed by testimony of others involved in the discussions that an agreement had, indeed, been reached.

The moral of this story is that you can't trust US or German promises when it came to surrounding Russia with a military alliance.

No one who knows what they're speaking of, disputes this now established version of events. Those who don't know what they're talking about - that would include you Alpha - continue to blab and blowhard about it. Even so the facts are clear and indisputable.

On the matter of a nation applying for NATO membership, what the US and NATO could have done was to politely decline approaches based on the agreements they reached. But instead they have encouraged more and more members from the east to join and, clearly, this was always in their minds. This has continually shown bad faith and caused the Russians a great deal of anxiety, as revealed by any number of Russian statements about it in the past. This is exacerbated even more by the EU expanding further eastwards, which also was not in the spirit of the agreement.

In regard to America being but "one member" of NATO. True but either that's hilariously naive of you or utterly cynical. Without the US leading and driving NATO, it would fold. It's called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for a reason. Europe has it's very own European Defence Agency would take over European defence in its own right if NATO ceased.

In regard to to what "we" told the Russians at the time, would you care to explain? I have no real idea what that orphan of a sentence is intended to convey in any case? What are you referring to? That you told the Soviets that America's word was worthless and that America is never to be trusted?

 

The good news is folks won't starve. When they're ready, it looks like China may absorb the area and clean things up.




​

 

NATO continued to exist because we simply DID NOT TRUST RUSSIAN LEADERSHIP...specifically Putin.

The Soviet Union was the entity that BUILT THE BERLIN WALL.

The Soviet Union was the nation that mistreated it's neighbors.

And although Russia is not the Soviet Union....Russian's created it......and all this nonsense that Putin talks about as far as Hostilities breaking out between the U.S. and Russia.....WELL THAT IS JUST BULL S#!#!!!

There is a better chance that both you and I are hit by LIGHTNING AT THE SAME TIME while both of us are in two different submarines 1000 feet underwater wearing RUBBER SUITS IN DIFFERENT OCEANS OF THE WORLD AND ALSO AT THE SAME TIME WE BOTH WIN THE LOTTERY!!

There is a better chance of that happening to you and me then any Hostilities breaking out between Russia and the United States.

AboveAlpha

 

Now you are showing yourself be be oblivious to what went on these past few winters where Soviet Era Built Moscow Tenament Housing had the people living there cutting holes for ventilation for wood burning stoves they installed.

I have SEEN THESE WITH MY OWN EYES....so don't even attempt to pretend they don't exist!!

AboveAlpha

- - - Updated - - -

SHOW THE MEMBERSHIP ANY PROOF...ANY SIGNED AGREEMENT...ANY DOCUMENT....where the U.S. agrees to do something it has no control over that being a Nation applying for NATO MEMBERSHIP!!!!


SHOW US ANYTHING!!!

AboveAlpha

 

i have never seen anything like it and never heard of it; things you talk about, had they occured in reality, would have of course become a matter of close attention from Russian liberal media and Putin's opponents who would have put it up for public view immediately, not to mention the housing/utilities managing team infuriated and the police called.

to prove you aren't a liar you have to disclose the exact address where such an abnormity took place, the date, and the personalities involved in that accident; a photo of this would be helpful too.

 

Just to be clear, I've already shown - several times I might add - reports proving what I've said. You avoid all mention of those, I notice.

But your post is another typical swerve to another irrelevant angle that deflects and detracts from the central point of my earlier posts.

On NATO, the US and Germany clearly demonstrated in those discussions I referenced earlier between Baker, Genscher and Gorbachev, that the US has the political power to cause NATO to reach decisions the US and Germany wanted. This was clearly implicit in the discussions. They made those commitments to Gorbachev: no NATO expansion to the east, other than East Germany. Not even an inch. Ergo, any eastern nation applying for membership of NATO in the future would be declined.

You're being very deceitful and dishonest, Alpha.

 

That I can do....give me a bit.

AboveAlpha

 

It started to an extent in the 1990's but really it was during the 2011 and 2012 Russian Winter that now old not very well insulated and falling apart HIGH RISE MOSCOW TENAMENT HOUSING started losing their Systems which were usually old BOILERS that no longer worked.

These High Rise Tenament Houses in Moscow usually house their tenants FREE OF CHARGE or at an extremely low rent as some of these places were homes to FORMER RUSSIAN SOLDIERS, AIRMEN AND SAILORS as well as friends and families of at one time Medium Range Soviet Communist Leadership Members.

Then this SUPER COLD HIT....

Brutally cold Russian winter kills 123 people
DateDecember 26, 2012 (29)
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Extreme cold forces Russians to evacuate
Thousands living in Russia's Far East and Siberia have to leave their homes when old pipelines burst in heavy snow and cold weather.

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A bitter cold spell in Russia has claimed 123 lives in the past 10 days, an official says, with the unseasonably early freeze testing authorities in a country used to notoriously tough winters.

Temperatures have plunged to around minus 30 degrees Celsius in the Moscow region and minus 60 degrees in Eastern Siberia, as part of a winter being described by local media as the coldest in 70 years.

"Since the start of the cold, 123 people have died of exposure and frostbite," a medical source was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.


A man walks in a snow-covered park in Russia's southern city of Stavropol. Russia is enduring an abnormally cold winter, the most severe in more than 70 years, according to local media. Photo: Reuters

In the past 24 hours, 201 people had to be hospitalised for treatment for hypothermia and frostbite, including 14 children, the source added.

Advertisement Since the start of the cold snap, 1745 people were affected, and more than 800 had to be hospitalised, the source said.

State television reports on Tuesday focused on a village in Tyva, one of Russia's poorest regions in southern Siberia, where temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius were coupled with an accident at the local heat station which left some 3000 residents stranded in the cold.


A dog runs past a Soviet-era tank, with the air temperature at about minus 8 degrees Celsius, in a park of Russia's southern city of Stavropol on Christmas Eve. Photo: Reuters

"There is nothing; not even water. We have to melt snow and the temperature at home is below zero," one bundled-up resident told Vesti-24 channel.

Some residents, including children, have been lifted by helicopter to the regional centre of Kyzyl, the report said.

Temperatures have been about 12 degrees Celsius lower than seasonal norms in Russia, where the coldest weather usually does not arrive until January or February.

In the Moscow region, Monday became an all-time record for the amount of electricity consumed by residents, Russia's power operator said on Tuesday, blaming unusually cold temperatures.

But Russia's weather service is predicting a drastic temperature hike in the European parts of Russia later this week, with 0 degrees Celsius expected in Moscow.

The emergency ministry warned however that the warming will be accompanied by strong winds and freezing rain that will likely damage communications and slow down traffic.

In neighbouring Ukraine last week, the cold claimed 83 lives, new data showed.

On Tuesday, the health ministry declared that the numbers of victims would now be made available only once a week.

Now I had seen people in other former Soviet States cut holes in Shoddy Constructed High Rise Tenant Housing but it was not until 2011 I saw this in Moscow as NO ONE WAS FIXING THE HEATING SYSTEMS whether they were steam or Gas or Oil Boiler Systems.

So people decided that if they did not want to FREEZE TO DEATH....they had better do something so people started cutting holes at first in WINDOWS to vent various wood burning stoves some new some old some home made.

I will see if I can find some pictures.

AboveAlpha

 

"The United States as well being the #1 Manufacturing Nation on the Planet with a projected $24.3 Trillion GDP by 2023 from it's current $17.7 Trillion.....compared to Russia's less than $2 Trillion and China's $6 Trillion Economies....is in no danger at any time of needing to worry about what Russia or China are doing Economically or Militarily."

Ha, ha , ha ,ha...

The United States is broke, literally broke.

Last time it was an emergency vote because the budget, the Congress voted to "increase the debt limit". Lol.

The most plausible interpretation of what the Presidents and Congress are making is comparing their way to "maintain a healthy economy" to a household who is broke and in big debt with several banks. This household won't stop buying music online, spending in shoes every week, won't work overtime, and do things to pay what is owed, but will apply for more credit cards... in order to pay the debt owed to the first ones... the dumb circle...

Here is the chart of the US national debt year after year. The ratio percent represents a greater economy when is 30% or lower, while when the GDP ratio is 50% and over it represents economical failure. Obama received a GDP ratio of 68% and his administrations increased it to 101% ratio.

http://useconomy.about.com/od/usdebtanddeficit/a/National-Debt-by-Year.htm

So forget about your "2023 projections" which are nothing but opium dreams.

We must demand the balancing of the budget today, do you understand?: today.

Hell with illusory dreams for the next decade, and forget about Obama the loser, we must vote for the candidate who promises to balance the budget in the next administration. The candidate must show a solid solution. And, the candidate will have no other choice but to show the current miserable condition of the US national debt caused by the Obama's administration.

On the other hand, the well known source that enjoys verifiable studies, which is Forbes published on May 15, 2015 the following:

You can't beat that. Russia recovered from its fall in December to a quiet healthy economy five months later.

Let me see how good is the US doing the same, this is to say, having a healthy financial situation with a low debt at the same time.

Prove it!

 

Here is some more.....
It's Colder Than Siberia--Even in Siberia
Russia: Blackouts and temperatures as low as minus-70 leave millions struggling to survive.
January 20, 2001|MAURA REYNOLDS | TIMES STAFF WRITER

MOSCOW — It's enough to make California electricity customers count their blessings.

Across the Pacific Ocean in the Russian Far East, Olga Korolyova is troubled by blackouts. But unlike her counterparts in California, it's not the darkness that she fears, or even her electric bill. It's the cold.

Since December, the temperature has hovered around minus-40 degrees Fahrenheit--cold even by Siberian standards. Little or no heat comes from Korolyova's radiators. She and her husband survive in the feeble warmth of two electric heaters--all they can plug in without blowing a fuse.

To cook, they have to turn off one of the heaters. Several times a day, they decide between eating and staying warm.


But the main problem, according to Roman Vilfand, deputy director of Russia's national weather service, is how long the cold snap has lasted.

"This has been the longest cold wave in eastern Siberia in the last 80 years," Vilfand said. "If the cold had lasted for just a week, there would have been no problems. But after three weeks, disasters began to pile up in one town after another as the boiler houses were unable to cope with the load and energy resources were running low."

This country is particularly vulnerable to outages because many Russians, especially those living in apartment blocks, get their heat and hot water pumped from a municipal boiler house. When a pipe bursts, entire neighborhoods can go cold.

Mikhail Tsedrik, a spokesman for the DalEnergo electric company, which supplies Novoshakhtinsky, said the system is a remnant of the Communist era, when people lived in mass-produced apartments and consumed mass-produced utilities, essentially at no cost.

"It would not be an exaggeration to say that the root of all these power failures, blackouts and frozen pipes is that we are still getting over the Soviet legacy, which has proven very tenacious," Tsedrik said by telephone from his office in Vladivostok. "It never occurred to those who planned and built the infrastructure that heating and energy may cost money."

Those who live in old-fashioned wooden cottages are better off because they tend to have wood-burning stoves. But two-thirds of Novoshakhtinsky's residents live in more modern, concrete-panel apartment blocks constructed in the last 40 years, and they are all but helpless when the city utilities fail.

Mikhail Tsedrik has urged those Muscovite who are unfortunate enough to be living in one of those High Rise Soviet Era Constructed Apartment Complexes who's heating systems have failed NOT TO DO AS MANY OTHER MUCOVITES living in similar high rise apartment buildings that have completely lost heat to make the mistake of installing WOOD BURING STOVES whether well made units or home made wood buring stoves that such High Rise Apartment Buildings WERE NOT DESIGNED FOR.

Mikhail Tsedrik emphatically stated that the cutting of holes through the concrete or glass windows of these High Rises in order to allow smoke exhaust pipes and in most cases such exhaust piping is mearly cylindric duct work increases the chance of a building fire exponentially.


"All it takes is one very windy day where at a height of 50 to 100 Meters the force of the wind can blow open unsealed Wood Burning Stove Doors and force sparks and hot coals out through the stoves air intakes to result in the buring down of the entire building and perhaps the deaths of hundreds."


"There's not a single place you can go to get warm," said 41-year-old Vera Zarudayeva, Korolyova's neighbor. "A human being can get used to anything--to shortages of food, to high temperatures, to wind. The only thing that's impossible to get used to is cold."

A plan to send Moscow Fire Inspectors around to such buildings has met resistence all across the board as one tenent put it...."We either take the chance of causing a fire which if proper use of such stoves can greatly limit or we HAVE NO CHANCE AND FREEZE TO DEATH!"

AboveAlpha

 

Although I also believe Deficit Spending must be brought under control....it has been done in a way that benefits the Security and Financial Stability and both Military and Economic Interests of the United States.

There was an OVERALL PLAN...created by Nixon and Kissinger....and this plan was NIXON WOULD GO TO CHINA for two purposes.

#1. Develop a Mutual Security Agreement against Soviet Agression and Expansionism later to be known as THE CHINA CARD.

#2. No matter what...develop the beginnings of trade with China which at that point had been only called RED CHINA...as we refered to Taiwan as being China.

Purpose......

#1. To get reign on the ongoing Military foreys by the Soviet Military.

#2. To SLOWLY WESTERNIZE CHINA EVEN IF IT MEANT ALLOWING CHINA TO EXPORT MORE TO THE U.S. THAT THE U.S. TO CHINA.

As this was never about the money. It was about slowly allowing the culture known as AMERICANA....to penetrate every aspect of Chinese Life....and it is close to that point.

Also understand when China stated it wished to invest inU.S. Deficit Spending by bankrolling the U.S.....this was done in the HUNDREDS UPON HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS....as the Chinese Communist Party thought....incorrectly...that if China was owed huge sums of money by the United States that this would allow the Chinese Communist Party to dictate U.S. Foreign Policy.

IT DID THE EXACT OPPOSITE!!!

The combination of China's economy being dependent upon exports to the United States Market....none of these exports from China has any Strategic Value or Importance as it is all MADE FOR WALMART CHEAP JUNK.....along with the ability of the U.S. TO STOP PURCHASING ALL CHINESE EXPORTS AT ANY TIME AS WELL AS CEASE ALL DEPT TO CHINA PAYMENTS AT ANY TIME....most likely at a time where CHINA does something Militarily that the U.S. does not like.......THE CHINESE ECONOMY WOULD FAIL IN ONE WEEK!!

China's Communist forgot the 1st RULE OF LENDING!!!

RULE #1. NEVER LEND MONEY TO ANY PERSON, GROUP, ENTITY OR NATION THAT YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO POSSIBLE WAY OF FORCING PAYMENT!!!

AboveAlpha

 

We need to get Keystone going and bury the oil market. Also need to stop the Utah coal lockup and saturate the coal market too. Of course the next POTUS needs to give me a few days heads up so I can sell all my USO stock.

 

No.....you have secifically argued that there was an agreement between the U.S. and Russia to refuse applications and entry into NATO of any former Soviet State or Eastern Block Nation.

I have told you no such agreement exists....or ever has existed.

You would have to provide PROOF by providing a LINK to a SOURCE that details in any existing Written Agreement or Treaty between the U.S. and Russia that states the U.S. would not allow any of these Nations to apply or become members of NATO.

You have not done this BECAUSE YOU CAN'T BECAUSE SUCH A WRITTEN AND SIGNED TREATY BETWEEN THE U.S. AND RUSSIA STATING THIS DOES NOT EXIST!!!

So either provide a LINK to PROOF......or admit no such agreement exists.

AboveAlpha

 

...
I don't believe even if there would be agreement by written, nothing wouldn't change. The USA after war 2 always wanted to expand the influence, any methods.

 

China is requesting to purchase 5 to 6 times what they are currently buying in Metric Tonnage of Coal from the U.S.

We can easily supply it.

AboveAlpha

 

We are talking about the Russian request that the U.S. Purchase and Destroy and Clean Up Nuclear, Chemical and Bioloicl Weapons as well as clean up abandoned Soviet Biological Weapons Development Sites in former Soviet States as well as in Russia.

Those weapons many in the Ukraine and Georgia were POINTED AT MOSCOW!!!

Cost of this to the U.S. Taxpayer....over $300 Billion.

And we still have U.S. Military Biological Weapons Destruction and Cleanup Teams IN RUSSIA WORKING RIGHT NOW!!

AboveAlpha

 

In Georgia never was the nuclear weapon. Ukraine never directed the rocket on friendly Russia!

 

Research it and get back to me.

AboveAlpha

 

that is, after the destruction of USSR, so that the West now could gloat over the tribulations of Russians bereft of the advantages of Soviet infrastructure... but even then, during the turbulent 1990s, nothing of the sort you claim ever happened anywhere in Russia; her district heating system is unique and the best in the world, as was back then and is today.

you seem to avoid the question posed to you as to the location of those 'falling apart' buildings.

hope you do understand that such houses is an extremely rare thing in Russia, a one-off case, which cannot be used to pass judgement about the life in here.

that's an emergency case, can happen anywhere in the world albeit for different factors. Russia does not live like that, no such problems occur everyday here, only seldom they do.

the homeless, like street bums etc. would of course be first victims of the cold... as for 'notoriously tough winters' - it isn't Russia but the US and UK, as this year has showed. Russia is not a winter country, she is more about the summer.

that's a typical horror story the West has on Russia while ignoring her bright sides... when cold weather and snow struck the US and Britain this year, the Western media did everything to cover up the victims toll, intead going with cheerful publications like nothing really happened - i.e. a spin.

once again it was an accident that was immediately addresed by the local authorities, which the Western media is quiet about

 

you told and must prove...

 

​

#potmeetkettle