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How They Tried to Kill Me
101–110 of 148 posts
Re: How They Tried to Kill Me
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Especially impressive about westerners is their honesty about the shortcomings of their own nations.
I'm in the west and I'm often the only person in the room who is aware that the US has been murdering children in almost a dozen countries around the globe for the past two decades. Like they are vaguely aware on a surface level but they haven't really conceptualized the fact and say things like "Russias unprecedented invasion!" dramatically and as if they had a moral leg to stand on.
Unintentional collateral death in the pursuit of preventing much bigger tragedies is in no way comparable to an intentional conquest and indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets. Not to mention the direct molestations and mutilations that the author has extensively documented. And of course the many attempted cover ups (culminating in the attempted assassination).
The moral equivocating is absolutely despicable.
Has the US killed children? yes! Was that ever the stated or unstated goal? Never.
Re: How They Tried to Kill Me
#103This story is being falsely flagged.
Unsurprising
Re: How They Tried to Kill Me
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
The rest of Europe (if Russia can be considered as being in Europe) went through centuries of war, revolution, upheaval, debate, and other forms of blood, sweat, and tears... all of it culminating in modern humanist thought. Modern Europeans across the socio-economic spectrum think of themselves as having rights and opinions and so on. That's a novel idea in human history (and one we should all heartily embrace) Russ…
Russia is unique in that it was european enough to be the colonizer not the colonized (so it didn't get modern law from its colonial masters), and yet not european enough to develop a modern approach to human rights by itself.
You say “modern” but we could say “western” as well. There is a well documented gradient in attitudes of elites to autocracy as a style of leadership between Europe and Asia. I.e as Alexander the Great moved east, he took up to the local institutions of totalitarian leadership, and was considered a total dick by his generals due this.
Also traditional example is the feud between Greek city states and Persia (Which is documented in the painstakingly historically accurate movies such as ‘300’).
I’m not saying peoples are predestined to be forever in one system of governance, but the differences predate enlightenment way, way back.
Re: How They Tried to Kill Me
#105[flagged]
Europe, USA and the rest of the world can easily turn into what Russia had become, if certain actions are allowed to take place.
If Trump had his way (change constitution/replace/kill his opposition), we could have authoritarian state in USA in 5-10 years. EASY.
Whats happening in Russia should be a contestant reminder for the rest of the world of what happens when you dont have a system of check and balances. When you dont have functioning legal system. When you dont have freedom of speech / freedom to protest.
Re: How They Tried to Kill Me
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
The rest of Europe (if Russia can be considered as being in Europe) went through centuries of war, revolution, upheaval, debate, and other forms of blood, sweat, and tears... all of it culminating in modern humanist thought. Modern Europeans across the socio-economic spectrum think of themselves as having rights and opinions and so on. That's a novel idea in human history (and one we should all heartily embrace) Russ…
>The rest of Europe (if Russia can be considered as being in Europe) went through centuries of war, revolution, upheaval, debate, and other forms of blood, sweat, and tears... all of it culminating in modern humanist thought. As Timothy Snyder points out, Europeans didn't stop engaging in imperialist wars because they grew morals and humanist thought, they stopped engaging in imperialist wars because in the 50s and 6…
Yep.
For example Winston Churchill lamented deeply the loss of India and considered Gandhi an annoyance.
Another reason was that the American system of rule based relations instituted after second world war meant former colonial masters could still economically utilize the raw inputs from their colonies without risk of losing the colony to another colonial power and hence being cut off from those markets and resources.
Before second world war any territories unable to defend themselves from european powers were more or leas up for grabs - hence you were afraid that giving your colony independence, another colonial power would have simply annexed them, thus you would lose the resources and the market.
The US rule based order was overall good for the world, regardless of so many documented events of behaving as dicks within it.
Re: How They Tried to Kill Me
#107I'm no assassin but wonder how someone could fail to kill someone with poison. Aren't there a million deadly choices out there that would do the job reliably? Is the FSB security apparatus this incompetent?
Yes. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/12/21/europe/russia-navalny-poi... But could be warning as well, ofc. The point is, we don’t know. Whatever the outcome, it’s a show of force.
I guess it's better not to have a body, since it keeps things uncertain and doesn't give law enforcement cause to get involved.
Re: How They Tried to Kill Me
#108Considering that she's presumably well-informed about global affairs, her resistance to the idea that russian secret services might be out to kill her, and especially her refusal to believe she might have been poisoned, is rather striking. It's almost as if she had no idea that russian agents have been poisoning prominent people in foreign lands for the last couple of decades. Perhaps she thinks she's not prominent e…
There's a cognitive dissonance of "this won't happen to me" that comes from years of walking on the line. She faced a lot of danger and intimidation and survived it. This created a survivor bias that made her discount the immediate danger.
I've seen this first hand. After a few missile alarms where everyone runs to shelters people start building confidence and stride gently. They assume that since they survived all the alarms, nothing will happen. I have that problem myself, I can't be legitimately afraid.
Re: How They Tried to Kill Me
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
The rest of Europe (if Russia can be considered as being in Europe) went through centuries of war, revolution, upheaval, debate, and other forms of blood, sweat, and tears... all of it culminating in modern humanist thought. Modern Europeans across the socio-economic spectrum think of themselves as having rights and opinions and so on. That's a novel idea in human history (and one we should all heartily embrace) Russ…
>The rest of Europe (if Russia can be considered as being in Europe) went through centuries of war, revolution, upheaval, debate, and other forms of blood, sweat, and tears... all of it culminating in modern humanist thought. As Timothy Snyder points out, Europeans didn't stop engaging in imperialist wars because they grew morals and humanist thought, they stopped engaging in imperialist wars because in the 50s and 6…
They developed the beginnings of humanism and applied it to themselves long before colonialism even started.
Racist thinking was prevalent and helped justify colonialism and humanism existing at the same time.
But you’re right, if Russia loses, everyone will win, even Russians.
Re: How They Tried to Kill Me
#110The German counter-terrorism forces hold quite a bit of blame here. These things happening on German soil are unacceptable and it shouldn't be the victim's fault. What is German media saying about this?
Assassinations happened on US soil in the height of the cold war. The Russians are really good at these sorts of things and it's pretty easy to do. As she mentioned, a person could touch her bare foot in the train to deliver poison. Spray her while moving next to her. Slip something into her drink.
Recognizing an agent is also impossible, they can't stop illegal immigration how can they stop well trained and documented foreign agents?