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Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

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Re: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

#51

Post by qrendel »

woodandsteel wrote: post #30
qrendel wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert on the history of Russian foreign policy, but there are a lot of credible voices outside of the MSM that tell a different story than the U.S. administration does. For example: 1. http://johnpilger.com/articles/a-world-war-has-begun-break-t... 2. http://www.alternet.org/world/exclusive-interview-seymour-he... Those focus largely on other topics, but both touch on how the attitude towards Russia (and…

So Obama is a blood-thirsty imperialist who plans to conquer Russia and turn them into American colonies? Wow, you could have fooled me. If he is pursuing such wildly aggressive foreign policy, then how come all the hawks in this country continually condemn him for being a wimpy surrender-monkey?

The GOP criticizes Obama like he's the anti-christ for literally everything. They've opposed their own bills that they sponsored just because Obama later made public remarks about them being good bills.

If you're referring to stuff like the "red line" fiasco in Syria, Hersh explains that too. See: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin

Re: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

#52

Post by nobullet »

woodandsteel wrote: post #40
dijit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> it's like having a pit-bull in the corner that nobody loves because it defended them before in a savage way >That hilariously fails to describe Russia in any way most people would recognize. I agree. And that's a shame, Russia has always vied for peace and used force where peace was impossible. That's a trend we see all thoughout history (especially in Britain). We can't exactly crucify them for it. >That's a pret…

I think Russia's problem is it spent its entire history surrounded by powerful enemies, and was frequently invaded. As a consequence Putin honestly believes NATO has the intention of invading it, and so he thinks Russia has to take aggressive actions to prevent that. What he doesn't get is that, thanks to nuclear weapons and modern industrialization, NATO is not interested in doing that for either reasons of security…

It is all a lot simpler: power, money and sphere of influence. No one is going to give up power and money in a poor country. That's why Mr. Putin and Company build tons of bullshit about external enemies, preventing folks from blaming the government for existing economical and social problems.

Disclaimer: I'm from a country that is in Eastern Europe and borders with Russia. It also has very close relations with it. Russia affects internal politics and mass media. 80% are brain-washed.

Re: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

#53

Post by vetinari »

avmich wrote: post #38
vetinari wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kosovo?

Annexation? http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/annex Simple Definition of annex : to add (an area or region) to a country, state, etc. : to take control of (a territory or place) There is a big difference between separation and annexation. In general, do we have many examples of countries changing borders forcibly after some time mid-last century? I certainly don't remember such a thing from G7. In this light,…

Does that change the fact, that NATO did forcibly take a territory from Serbia? That is supposed to be OK? For all intents and purposes, the Kosovo government will do whatever the US government wants. The terminus technicus is puppet government.

Even Crimea itself is an example of stolen territory. It was part of Russia, until (Ukrainian) Khrushchev moved it under administration of Ukrainian SSR in 1954. It was excused as being in the same country anyway. When USSR dissolved, the Crimean referendum about returning it back to Russia was ignored by the newly-formed government in Kiev.

Bismark knew 150 years ago not to try to cheat the Russians. They will always come and take back, what's theirs.

Re: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

#54

Post by woodandsteel »

kbenson wrote: post #42
woodandsteel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? You present that as something everyone knows, but I have never even heard anyone make the accusation. I may be wrong, but I am guessing you are following a standard Russian troll tactic. This is when someone makes an accusation, accuse the West or someone in it of the same thing. For instance, when someone says the Russian government is immensely corrupt, say there is corruption in the West, too. The goal is not…

> I may be wrong, but I am guessing you are following a standard Russian troll tactic... There are ways to word this paragraph that both don't accuse the parent of trolling, and still get across the point that you don't think a specific bit of evidence is as damning as may have been implied, or if just unsupported. Do you really think accusations of trolling are really going to result in a more useful discussion?

Trolling does take place, and we need some way to defend against it. A key way is to educate people so they can recognize it. Do you deny that Russian trolls do regularly use this tactic?

>There are ways to word this paragraph...

Could you present an example of this?

You're right, though, that it was somewhat problematic for me to make a semi-accusation against a particular comment. It makes me think what we need is a page describing common Russian troll tactics, and it could be linked to whenever there is a discussion of Russia, and people could decide for themselves if any comment is a troll.

>Do you really think accusations of trolling are really going to result in a more useful discussion?

It's awfully hard to have a useful discussion when trolls are trying to take things over. I need to do some thinking on what might work.

Re: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

#55

Post by xiaoma »

vetinari wrote: post #53
avmich wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Annexation? http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/annex Simple Definition of annex : to add (an area or region) to a country, state, etc. : to take control of (a territory or place) There is a big difference between separation and annexation. In general, do we have many examples of countries changing borders forcibly after some time mid-last century? I certainly don't remember such a thing from G7. In this light,…

Does that change the fact, that NATO did forcibly take a territory from Serbia? That is supposed to be OK? For all intents and purposes, the Kosovo government will do whatever the US government wants. The terminus technicus is puppet government. Even Crimea itself is an example of stolen territory. It was part of Russia, until (Ukrainian) Khrushchev moved it under administration of Ukrainian SSR in 1954. It was excus…

If it worked that way, most of Russia would belong to Mongolia.

Re: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

#56

Post by woodandsteel »

dijit wrote: post #27
woodandsteel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason that people are suspicious of Russia is that Putin and his state-controlled media have made clear his goal is to restore Russia, to the extent possible, to its former superpower geopolitical status, and there is no way that can be accomplished without a very aggressive foreign policy. In addition, people in the West disapprove of Russia because of its highly oppressive human rights policies, including mass…

Britain is also enacting censorship of its internet. Although pushed by the government on ISPs and only for 'indecent content', who decides what's indecent? The government of course. I don't see Russia being different in this regard, we just don't understand them and we understand the British.

My view is that when it comes to internet censorship, and human rights in general, Britain has problems but on the whole is ten times better than Putin's Russia.

dijit, what is you position on this?

Re: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

#57

Post by hewhowhineth »

aaronchall wrote: post #24
pinaceae wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia occupied half of Europe, against the will of the countries occupied, for nearly 50 years. Stop re-writing history.

> Russia occupied half of Europe, against the will of the countries occupied, for nearly 50 years. Good point. Seems like we forget this.

We also seem to forget that most of those countries were part of Hitler's forces that attacked the Soviet Union a few years before that. Small example would be Hungary that sent ~500,000 soldiers to the eastern front. That invasion resulted in ~5 million civilians being killed, let's ignore the military casualties and general destruction.

Every country/nation did all kinds of nasty shit, it's just a matter of how far back you want to look.

EDIT: typo

Re: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

#58

Post by vetinari »

woodandsteel wrote: post #49
guard-of-terra wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you define "against their will"? I mean, their representatives signed the Warsaw Pact without gun to their heads (however I'm aware about Hungary'56 and Chezhoslovakia'68) This isn't a fair argument. Imagine, tomorrow USA fails, a lot of its former allies get current marginal opposition in power. They'll line up telling how USA occupied them, did this and that against their will. And they'll be partially ri…

Except those were all non-democratic puppet governments the Soviet Union had installed after WWII. Or maybe you believe communism is a form of democracy?

I was born in the Czechoslovakia.

The thing is, that communists in 1948 really did win the elections. The people at the time really wanted communism.

Just like in 1989 they wanted change for capitalism. Who knows, maybe in another 10-20-30 years they will want a change again. Should it be accompanied with a narrative, that the fall of Iron Curtain was a well orchestrated putsch to rob their countries?

Re: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

#59

Post by vetinari »

xiaoma wrote: post #55
vetinari wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that change the fact, that NATO did forcibly take a territory from Serbia? That is supposed to be OK? For all intents and purposes, the Kosovo government will do whatever the US government wants. The terminus technicus is puppet government. Even Crimea itself is an example of stolen territory. It was part of Russia, until (Ukrainian) Khrushchev moved it under administration of Ukrainian SSR in 1954. It was excus…

If it worked that way, most of Russia would belong to Mongolia.

If you want to be intellectually honest towards yourself, you must admit that Russia was going to be cheated off Crimea. They didn't accept that. That's all.

Re: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

#60

Post by dijit »

woodandsteel wrote: post #56
dijit wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Britain is also enacting censorship of its internet. Although pushed by the government on ISPs and only for 'indecent content', who decides what's indecent? The government of course. I don't see Russia being different in this regard, we just don't understand them and we understand the British.

My view is that when it comes to internet censorship, and human rights in general, Britain has problems but on the whole is ten times better than Putin's Russia. dijit, what is you position on this?

I agree on that point. But remembering that British people know what freedom is, I believe that british people would push back harder than russians.

I believe the british government would try to get away with much more if it was in russias position. But that's my feeling and it's not founded in any facts.

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