191–200 of 371 posts
What's going on here with all the new accounts and dead comments?
Its actually not all that uncommon on controversial threads. I personally don't beleive its bots as much as people who create new accounts so they can break the "flamewar rule"
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I think many Russian people, especially those who watch or read mainly Russian news, hold such views with complete sincerity. The internal propaganda is quite effective.
The events in Belarus recently demonstrated that you are wrong. I ran a small (1 mln pageviews/month) online Russian-speaking community since 2003 and since 2014, my main preoccupation are Kremlin bots. The population in Russia is mostly anti-Putin, they just do not speak up, because the state made sure they feel isolated.
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The events in Belarus recently demonstrated that you are wrong. I ran a small (1 mln pageviews/month) online Russian-speaking community since 2003 and since 2014, my main preoccupation are Kremlin bots. The population in Russia is mostly anti-Putin, they just do not speak up, because the state made sure they feel isolated.
Not that I don't believe you, but how would you back such statement when you say "majority".
It was long believed, even in US, that Lukashenka had the majority. In reality, he faked all elections since 1994.
Once his deeds became hard to ignore even for pathetically peaceful Belarusians, all the population turned against him. Gosh, the exit poll in my voting station recorded only one vote for Lukashenka among 358. I was there watching the exit poll for a couple of hours. I fully trust the organizers, but one in 358... I could not even imagine it.
Same for Russia.
P.S. Yes, I have a Belarusian passeport. Yes, I run a Russian-speaking community site. Pass on.
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?
It seems very odd and again perfect timing for the administration to show up in Germany and complain about the planned pipeline to Russia. And no, I am not a Russian troll nor do I have any connections to Russia. Check my comment history. I am just sceptical that one would do this and not just shot someone they wanted to get rid of them. Is Putin really that stupid or was it someone else?
The uncertainty you're trying to sow is in no way reasonable.
In other words, just apply occam's razor to the problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
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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…
Brandenburg airport, Wirecard, gas deals with Russia, diesel emissions scandal and probably much more of these high-profile cases I cannot even recall now. Indeed, there have to be systemic issues.
> use of phrases like these, exemplifying the tu quoque logical fallacy,[13][9] was an attempt to deflect criticism of the Soviet Union by referring to racial discrimination and lynching in the United States. [snip] Former Czech president and writer Václav Havel placed the phrase among "commonly canonized demagogical tricks".[7] The Economist described it as a form of whataboutism that grew ubiquitous after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.[5] The book Exit from Communism by author Stephen Richards Graubard wrote that it symbolized a divorce from reality.[8]
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.
I think many Russian people, especially those who watch or read mainly Russian news, hold such views with complete sincerity. The internal propaganda is quite effective.
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Not that I don't believe you, but how would you back such statement when you say "majority".
By matching what happens in Belarus now to Russia. It was long believed, even in US, that Lukashenka had the majority. In reality, he faked all elections since 1994. Once his deeds became hard to ignore even for pathetically peaceful Belarusians, all the population turned against him. Gosh, the exit poll in my voting station recorded only one vote for Lukashenka among 358. I was there watching the exit poll for a cou…
I think he did rig elections but he might have had majority already, which makes his numbers look so unrealistic or he is just plain stupid to not even rig elections to make them look believable.
I do really sympathize with the Belarussian people though, every community should get a say on who represents them.
Stupidly to poison someone, and then give them to other country.... 0_0 Say someone is a leader this less then 2% stupidly too...
We've seen this poisoning technique used plenty of times by the Kremlin. The message here isn't "we want you dead" but an empirical demonstration that "we can, if we want, kill you anywhere, any time and it doesn't matter how obvious it is that we're the ones doing it. We will face no consequences. In fact we'll make sure to 'sign' our poisoning attempt and do it in a place you think you're safe." Killing a member of…
Disagree. Proactive removal of charismatic rivals is essential for cutting off potential opposition at the knees.
You always see Russian media claim that they were a "nobody" or had no chance in the election, and that might have been true today but they could be a serious threat in a few years.
The second advantage of killing off potential rivals is that it discourages smart people from running against you.
The downside is brain drain. You end up filling your organization with toadies and with no reasonable alternatives your regime falls into chaos when you die, and usually your successor is less competent and has to be more ruthless. It's a downward spiral and after a couple of generations the whole thing collapses.
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> Why? Because the goal is reaching the goal, not the process. Undoubtedly, if s terrorist group has access to this stuff, they won't reject the idea of using it just because driving a van or yielding a knife might appear simpler. We're talking about lines of thinking that planned hijacking three commercial airplanes simultaneously to fly them into high visibility targets. How is spreading poison something that's out…
Bin Laden’s Al Qaida was very unusual in its long term planning. Most terrorist attacks by other groups have been unsophisticated.
And, IIRC, most recent terrorist attacks have been committed by isolated individuals who radicalized, and they only used means that a motivated regular person could assemble. They didn't have the material backing of any organization sophisticated enough to manufacture a military nerve agent.
Though, I suppose if a specialist like a chemist got radicalized, then we might have a lone-wolf attack with a sophisticated poison.