121–130 of 371 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The man is ex-KGB, installed himself in power for life and somehow his critics have a way of getting killed or tripping on some soviet nerve agents.
Merkel of Germany has been chancellor since 2005 (15 years) Putin has been president since 2000 with 4 years break (16 years). So technically he is not THAT bad in comparison.
Maybe I'm too skeptical, but this seems a bit too obvious to me. Why would you try to poison someone with no real threat to you and risk him becoming a martyr, using a method that immediately brings you to mind, with a nerve agent that is also strongly linked to you?
FWIW, I agree, even though it seems to be an unpopular opinion. I don't have a strong opinion on that, and honestly I don't really care, but it looks way too weird. I mean, people mention Litvinenko and Skripal. With Litvinenko there really was no doubt with regards to both if he was assassinated and why he was assassinated. Whole story with Skripal was weird, it was a huge scandal which very much served UK (or anybo…
Putin & co. is the simplest explanation. Why question it? Who else would stand to gain from this? Because they do gain from it: intimidating the opposition is the name of the game in a dictatorship.
If it was in his tea he never would have made it on the plane. The inventor of Novichok pointed this out and said it was likely applied to his skin.
Everything is a function of dosage. We don't know how much was in his tea, nor how much of the tea he actually drank. "In the tea" is also functionally equivalent to it being on his teacup, although that would be a more dangerous/aggressive attack. But they did use a doorknob as a vector in the UK attack.
If you ever wonder about the extent of Russia's online efforts consider that the comments on this HN thread might be part of things. Not saying anything in here is good/bad/other but you rarely see this level of flagged and down-voted comments in a HN thread.
If you ever wonder about the extent of Russia's online efforts consider that the comments on this HN thread might be part of things. Not saying anything in here is good/bad/other but you rarely see this level of flagged and down-voted comments in a HN thread.
If you are worried about astroturfing, you might email hn@ycombinator.com. They're pretty good overall at taking care of this kind of stuff.
This guy has gotta be one of the bravest and most principled people out there. Almost anyone else would have determined that fighting this fight has no practical utility, since nothing short of a massive popular uprising could unseat Putin at this point, and Russians apparently have no appetite for such an uprising today. Hard enough to risk your life for something that might have a good outcome. To me, it's almost i…
Would you support Navalany if you were aware he is a nationalist?
If you ever wonder about the extent of Russia's online efforts consider that the comments on this HN thread might be part of things. Not saying anything in here is good/bad/other but you rarely see this level of flagged and down-voted comments in a HN thread.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Domestic enemies are the sole threat to Putin. He wants them terrified; NATO has enough commandos to take down Russian political leadership in a single evening. NATO is a big gun, but it has no trigger.
> NATO has enough commandos to take down Russian political leadership in a single evening. And Russia probably has enough commandos to do the same to NATO leadership as well. Neither side actually does that because it would be a suicide mission that would just result in a war.
2. NATO towers over Russia for when it comes to size, and quality of elite infantry forces.
3. The loyalty of Russian military is so low, that the collapse of the military leadership will be near immediate upon news of heads rolling in the Kremlin. Absolutely nobody wants to die for those guys.
4. Even if none of the points above will come to fruition. The attack is guaranteed to deliver big enough shock to the Russian C3 to assure that a followup with conventional forces will succeed.
There cannot be a single scenario in which Russia would be able to keep any advantage in force if NATO takes the initiative, and goes on offensive. This a plain statement of the fact that even the USSR's military was acknowledging.
I reiterate this for the 100th. Neither China, nor Russia is an impossible to defeat adversary to the NATO. Not only an option for the decisive defeat is still very much on the table for NATO, that can be done as a very much contained, quick, and mess free military operation. A controlled demolition of the regime in few large swoops, over a "whack-a-mole" of conventional C3 suppression campaign.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn't they poison some guy with radioactive isotopes a few years back? I don't think they care about it being attributed to them, or think that being attributed to them has positive value .
That was Alexander Litvinenko. https://www.google.com/search?q=alexander+litvinenko
As far as I'm concerned, the Germans are about as trustworthy as Russia. They are currently closing the investigation around the Breitscheidplatz[1] terror attack, which has uncovered massive tampering with evidence and more open questions than answers. And let's not forget their history of false flag attacks.[2] Most of you will likely disagree, based on their current public image vs. Russia's, but ask yourselves wh…
It is remarkable that Germans for the most part are unwilling to look for signs of corruption in their government. I recall the conversations that I've had with regular German working stiffs around 2012-2014, chatting about the new Berlin Airport and how that showed symptoms of government corruption. The good folks of Germany started admitting to the possibility of corruption only when the media in Germany began to i…
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/finanzen/bafin-mitarbeiter-hande...