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Suspected sabotage causes major Netherlands rail disruption

bbc.com

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Re: Suspected sabotage causes major Netherlands rail disruption

#271

Post by AlexandrB »

Zagitta wrote: post #129
pprotas wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely organized by farmer protest groups (FDF for example) to protest against emission restriction regulation. They are known for their dangerous stunts, including driving their tractors on the highway and spraying manure on government buildings. These actions are tolerated by the Dutch police, which willingly and purposefully refuses to punish these acts.

Farmers and right wing people in all of Europe are actively being disinformed by Russian intelligence service and either wilfully ignores it or too incompetent to realize it.

We're all being misinformed by various interest groups. If you think you're immune and have some perfect understanding of reality, you're kidding yourself.

Re: Suspected sabotage causes major Netherlands rail disruption

#272

Post by microtonal »

alexejb wrote: post #123
bsoqk wrote: post #91

Putin must be really happy - whatever happens in Europe, he's blamed for it, making him look omnipotent. Most countries would love to have that kind of power. It’s so much more likely to be the farmers, but it's easier to blame Putin and do nothing about it than it is to stop ruining the farmers and risk angering the cosmopolitan politicians whose votes in the parliament you need.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Suspected sabotage causes major Netherlands rail disruption

#273

Post by somenameforme »

kakacik wrote: post #209
apt-get wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not asserting this is definitely a Russian op (given the amount of simultaneous farmers' protests and all in NL today), but their modus operandi for foreign operations of this kind involves paying random thugs a few hundred to a couple thousand euros to carry out acts of sabotage using whatever items they have on hand. The items don't need to match, the people involved don't need to know each other.

There was recently this german lady reporter who posed as actively pro-Putin for few months and it didn't take long for fsb/gru to come to her online. It started small, just check this or that, little favor there but soon escalated to proper spycraft. Some other folks reported having death threats against family. Its for peanuts, few hundred euros mostly. They just need to find the dumbest and most desperate folks to…

The chances of this being real are basically zero, or Russia would be getting double agented, and reverse intelling themselves, out the arse. Instead all we get are attempts to connect random events, of which there are endless viable suspects, to Russia.

It's fair to say that if one jumps in the middle of a fight, they should expect to get punched, but it's also fair to say that for now Russia has been avoiding throwing much in the way of punches.

Re: Suspected sabotage causes major Netherlands rail disruption

#274

Post by paganel »

Citizen_Lame wrote: post #161
paganel wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Those were downed by Ukraine. Not, that facts matter to Russian bot. Well done comrade.

> comrade

My grandfather was a Communist Party member, as was my dad, unfortunately I ended up living in this neo-liberal hell. Which is to say that I had sincerely wished to be a "tovarăș", but those days are by now long behind me.

Re: Suspected sabotage causes major Netherlands rail disruption

#275

Post by gambiting »

century19 wrote: post #242
gambiting wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define Europeans - us Poles absolutely understand the danger. In fact I'd say we're already at war with Russia, the way they attack our democracy, our institutions and politics daily. But someone in Portugal might not see it the same way we do.

Russians are Europeans.

Yes, obviously - but I'm not sure how that's related. Or maybe actually in fact it speaks of the fact that some terrorist acts within Russia were commited by or on the order of the Russian government.

Re: Suspected sabotage causes major Netherlands rail disruption

#277

Post by persolb »

I do engineering on these systems and have some expertise on this particular class of event. We’ve had tabletop red teams, and the general outcome is that rail systems being designed to ‘fail safe’ is an easy target. Failing safe at an individual actual ‘fault’ is still the best option, but it could be abused at scale.

It’s near impossible to cause two trains to run into each other (unless you are physically operating one of them), but it is really easy to cause all trains in an area to stop because a cross check or a bit has flipped. In this case, they literally flipped a bit by short circuiting the track circuit.

If done at scale, it is still possible to bypass and run trains safely the old fashioned way. It is less safe, but would probably be the decision if this was happening at multiple locations everyday.

Re: Suspected sabotage causes major Netherlands rail disruption

#278

Post by ktm5j »

pibaker wrote: post #172
pprotas wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely organized by farmer protest groups (FDF for example) to protest against emission restriction regulation. They are known for their dangerous stunts, including driving their tractors on the highway and spraying manure on government buildings. These actions are tolerated by the Dutch police, which willingly and purposefully refuses to punish these acts.

It's crazy how much deference is given to farmers compared to every other occupation. If the garbage men started dumping the contents of garbage bags in public places I bet they will not be given a free pass.

You can go a long while without your trash being taken away for you.. you can't go very long without food.

Re: Suspected sabotage causes major Netherlands rail disruption

#280

Post by IAmBroom »

Bootvis wrote: post #85
raverbashing wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a "bunch of teenagers", a regular pipe won't cause a train to derail, one would need heavy machinery to move that rail in France

Nothing was derailed, they put pipes on the rails that tricked the system into believing there was a train on the track, shutting it down

There are two sabotage acts being discussed; a train was derailed in the other one.
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