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[Owlbread]

The benefits from the exploitation of Russian natural resources are very alluring for the United States.

Indeed they are, but unlike Russia the USA has enough diplomatic power and intelligence that they don't actually need to invade countries anymore to get what they want. They can just fund the opposition and support the right people at the right time, like in Ukraine. Russia is trying to do that but they always end up using organised crime and get bogged down in corruption (that's the way the cookie crumbles when you're a country run by gangsters in the first place), leading to situations like the Ukrainian Revolution.

Even when they try to do stuff like fund the rebels in Ukraine that goes completely tits up for them as well, leading to the current state of things in Donetsk. In order for them to be truly successful they need to go balls-out and just invade, like in South Ossetia or Abkhazia. Or Crimea for that matter.

I should note that I am not dismissing the fact that the Ukrainian Revolution was the work of the Ukrainian people, I'm just saying the Americans were "on their side". I'm not saying without that support they wouldn't have won. It was the settled will of the Ukrainian people and there's little Putin or Obama could do about that.

Obviously this is all a scheme to steal Russia's oil and lumber.

No, it's to get all of Belarus's glorious tractor factories privatised, thereby ensuring that Western companies face no competition over there. Belarus's tractor production industry is the last defence; the last floodgate against the coming tide of Western capitalism.

[Guardian G.I.]

no reason to do a land invasion of Russia.

The benefits from the exploitation of Russian natural resources are very alluring for the United States.

lmao, do you seriously believe this?

Obviously this is all a scheme to steal Russia's oil and lumber.

If you think there's nothing useful in Russia except oil and gas (and maybe lumber), you're wrong.
Russia has vast deposits of coal, iron ores, bauxite, copper, gold, silver, platinum, uranium, manganese, chromium, tungsten, molybdenum, nickel, rare earth elements (mostly tantalum, beryllium and niobium), diamonds, etc. etc. etc.
Even if the US industry won't use it all, controlling all these deposits can be quite a boon.

[Owlbread]

If you think there's nothing useful in Russia except oil and gas (and maybe lumber), you're wrong.
Russia has vast deposits of coal, iron ores, bauxite, copper, gold, silver, platinum, uranium, manganese, chromium, tungsten, molybdenum, nickel, rare earth elements (mostly tantalum, beryllium and niobium), diamonds, etc. etc. etc.

Russia has vast supplies of minerals, oil, gas and lumber. Guardian is completely correct. The only thing is he'd rather that Russian gangsters exploit these resources and turn Russia into a toxic wasteland than have American-backed gangsters exploit them and turn them into a toxic wasteland.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

If you think there's nothing useful in Russia except oil and gas (and maybe lumber), you're wrong.
Russia has vast deposits of coal, iron ores, bauxite, copper, gold, silver, platinum, uranium, manganese, chromium, tungsten, molybdenum, nickel, rare earth elements (mostly tantalum, beryllium and niobium), diamonds, etc. etc. etc.
Even if the US industry won't use it all, controlling all these deposits can be quite a boon.

Okay then... hahah

We could invade a hundred other countries for these resources before Russia, mind you, so enough of the victim complex please

I'm sorry your nation is a state sponsor of terror and that might have consequences, but please stop acting like that. It's hilarious to me and upsetting to others because of the baselessness of the assumption that americans want ur gold instead of us just being worried that maybe Russia is sorta sponsoring and helping people shoot down international airliners out of spite..

[mainiac]

Indeed they are, but unlike Russia the USA has enough diplomatic power and intelligence that they don't actually need to invade countries anymore to get what they want. They can just fund the opposition and support the right people at the right time, like in Ukraine.

They don't even have to do that.  China isn't the least bit aligned to the US politically but the US imports more from China then anywhere else.

You have to be living 100 years in the past, or better yet 200 years in the past to think that exploitation requires war or even benefits much from it.  The US has taken everything it wants without a fight for a long time.

[Owlbread]

Okay then... hahah

We could invade a hundred other countries for these resources before Russia, mind you, so enough of the victim complex please

The Americans can just wait until Putin dies or gets overthrown anyway. After that it's all over.

They don't even have to do that.  China isn't the least bit aligned to the US politically but the US imports more from China then anywhere else.

You have to be living 100 years in the past, or better yet 200 years in the past to think that exploitation requires war or even benefits much from it.  The US has taken everything it wants without a fight for a long time.

To be fair there have been instances in the modern era where the USA has gone to war in order to exploit another country's resources - the most obvious examples are Iraq and Afghanistan but Russia is not a third world country. Most of Russia is, but the point is that invading Russia is not the same. America is still recovering from those invasions anyway, and why invade when there are other ways of getting what you want?

[da_nang]

Finnish Customs intercepted Ukraine-bound missile components

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Finnish Customs intercepted Ukraine-bound missile components

Where did it originate? The article has no detail on the plane itself.

[da_nang]

Finnish Customs intercepted Ukraine-bound missile components

Where did it originate? The article has no detail on the plane itself.

The Swedish version claims it came from East Asia.

[smjjames]

@ Owlbread, for what, Afghanistans opium? I'm not aware of them having a whole lot of oil and we went there to kill terrorists, not siphon their oil.

I hear Afghanistan has a good deal of mineral resources which have gone unexploited because the violence scares away the mining companies.

[Owlbread]

@ Owlbread, for what, Afghanistans opium? I'm not aware of them having a whole lot of oil and we went there to kill terrorists, not siphon their oil.

The point of Afghanistan wasn't to gain Afghan oil, it was to ensure that an oil pipeline could be built across it allowing for oil to be taken out of Turkmenistan and through to India where it could be exploited without worrying about the Iranians.  Basically the same as the Russians in Chechnya.

This was originally negotiated with the Taliban, indeed it was negotiated in Texas by Bush (representing a company with a name like "Endocal", I can't remember) and a Taliban delegation when he was Governor. This was all before things went pear shaped and 9/11 and everything occurred; I don't know if Bush then decided he didn't need the Taliban, or if the Taliban were more trouble than they were worth. As you say in your edit the actual resources that could be exploited in Afghanistan are minerals, of which Afghanistan has a lot.

[smjjames]

@ Owlbread, for what, Afghanistans opium? I'm not aware of them having a whole lot of oil and we went there to kill terrorists, not siphon their oil.

The point of Afghanistan wasn't to gain Afghan oil, it was to ensure that an oil pipeline could be built across it allowing for oil to be taken out of Turkmenistan and through to India where it could be exploited without worrying about the Iranians. Basically the same as the Russians in Chechnya. As you say in your edit the actual resources that could be exploited in Afghanistan are minerals, of which Afghanistan has a lot.

The pipeline could have happened anyway if the country wasn't in the state that it was in before we invaded.

[mainiac]

The Americans can just wait until Putin dies or gets overthrown anyway. After that it's all over.

The US doesn't need to wait for shit.  The US is still buying those resources despite the crisis.  In fact if the US wanted nothing more then to exploit Russian resources we would actively support Putin.  Putin is basically the ideal dictator to keep the exports flowing.  He keeps keeps a corrupt oligarchy but not one that is too corrupt to get in the way.  He retards development of the Russian economy that would break the dependence on the export oriented natural resources sector.  Short of turning Russia into an outright Euro-American colony there is nothing more we could ask for.  Well actually we would want to see Russia completely occupy Ukraine and incorporate their country, that would mean even more resources for us at the expense of Russian and Ukrainian poverty.  It's all very ironic, where the anti-colonial movements revolted against their exploitation the Russians are now violently reacting to keep themselves in an unequal relationship.  Because their exploitation comes wrapped in a Russian flag and is done by Russians the Russians cheer their own exploitation.

People say that Afganistan and Iraq are exploitation but they're the marginal cases.  Look at Saudi Arabia.  Look at China.  You don't need to politically dominate them, you just need them to sell to you, like the Russians do.

[Owlbread]

The pipeline could have happened anyway if the country wasn't in the state that it was in before we invaded.

Well I went on to talk about that. I think what happened was Bush overestimated America's power to nation-build and he thought he could just take the Taliban out of the picture entirely after they started being troublesome, being generally terrible to the Afghan people and allegedly harbouring Osama Bin Laden.

The US doesn't need to wait for shit.  The US is still buying those resources despite the crisis.  In fact if the US wanted nothing more then to exploit Russian resources we would actively support Putin.  Putin is basically the ideal dictator to keep the exports flowing.  He keeps keeps a corrupt oligarchy but not one that is too corrupt to get in the way.  He retards development of the Russian economy that would break the dependence on the export oriented natural resources sector.  Short of turning Russia into an outright Euro-American colony there is nothing more we could ask for.  Well actually we would want to see Russia completely occupy Ukraine and incorporate their country, that would mean even more resources for us at the expense of Russian and Ukrainian poverty.  It's all very ironic, where the anti-colonial movements revolted against their exploitation the Russians are now violently reacting to keep themselves in an unequal relationship. Because their exploitation comes wrapped in a Russian flag and is done by Russians the Russians cheer their own exploitation.

Shhhhh, they're not nationalists, remember? That's the Ukrainians. The Russian people are anti-fascists, without a doubt...

Also:

The reaction of any reasonable person to a British government leaflet on the benefits of the Union to Scotland

[smjjames]

Yeah, didn't see your edit until after my post Owlbread. Figures that it was Bush (no surprise) and I didn't know about that pipeline thing.