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How They Tried to Kill Me

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Re: How They Tried to Kill Me

#41

Post by willcipriano »

mistermann wrote: post #21
kunley wrote: post #15

Russia as a state didn't "descend into fascism". It was always like that. For centuries. I have heard stories about NKVD methods since childhood. The victims were my family members living in the estern Poland, after it was invaded by Stalin at the very beginnings of WW2. What was happening before red revolution, during tsars rule, is in the literature. It is funny how generations of intelligent, well-educated western…

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.

Re: How They Tried to Kill Me

#42

Post by pxeger1 »

> I corresponded about my trip to Munich over Facebook Messenger. It’s not secure and I knew that

Technically, this is intriguing. Is Facebook compromised, or do you think they compromised her phone, or the phone or whoever she was talking to?

Re: How They Tried to Kill Me

#43

Post by paganel »

throwbadubadu wrote: post #35
paganel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it wasn't a joke, not all of us share the same beliefs when it comes to this war. I was alluding to the fact that the Russian liberals, like this lady is, usually get attacked from both sides, and it seemed to me that the OP was unhappy with some of her literary performance in this article (an attack, in other words).

Huh what? Maybe language gap, but to me it sounded like you made kind of ironic/sarcastic underlining of OPs attack by meaning "that's how liberals are, they need some slack", so painting her as liberal and also painting liberals as needing slack sounded like a typical thing right OR left extreme may say.. but as you say right about sharing not the same beliefs: That as well as politics should ideally just stay out o…

> so painting her as liberal

I'm not "painting" anything, she's a Russian person who has just emigrated from Russia on account of this war and who also happens to write in a literary online magazine, so most definitely she's not a conservative Slavophile. But, again, this might be a translation issue, because as I understand it calling someone a "liberal" in the States has become a slur, so that could explain your dissatisfaction with me calling her a liberal.

> That as well as politics should ideally just stay out of here what is firstly a personal sad story, and also doesn't belong into HN?

Glad that we agree on something.

Re: How They Tried to Kill Me

#44

Post by sinkwool »

selectodude wrote: post #40
0xDEF wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a few years back Iran send assassins to kill Iranian dissidents in Germany, Austria, and Belgium. The assassins were caught and politely returned to Iran on a private plane. No punishment for planned/attempted murder. The West is hopelessly naive about sophisticated and brutal adversaries like Russia and Iran.

It’s not naïvety, it’s that that west would appreciate the same treatment when they send spies and assassins, which they do.

Or maybe they manage to recruit some of the spies/assassins to work as double-agents?

Re: How They Tried to Kill Me

#45

Post by jackmott42 »

0xDEF wrote: post #34
Kapura wrote: post #14

The part that really got to me was this paragraph: >“That is what drives us crazy,” the detective said. “You come here and act like you’re on vacation. Like this is some paradise. It doesn’t even occur to you to keep yourself safe. We have political killings here. The Russian special services are active in Germany. Your carelessness, yours and your colleagues, knows no bounds.” It's very difficult to reconcile what s…

I remember a few years back Iran send assassins to kill Iranian dissidents in Germany, Austria, and Belgium. The assassins were caught and politely returned to Iran on a private plane. No punishment for planned/attempted murder. The West is hopelessly naive about sophisticated and brutal adversaries like Russia and Iran.

It is more general than the west, it is that Good people are naive. They don't understand how many people are willing to lie and kill to get even petty gains from it. The USA is struggling with this asymmetry internally right now too. We are slowly and politely trying to prosecute people who attempted to overturn an election while they incite civil unrest and pass laws protecting themselves from prosecution

Re: How They Tried to Kill Me

#46

Post by dralley »

FredPret wrote: post #32
kunley wrote: post #15

Russia as a state didn't "descend into fascism". It was always like that. For centuries. I have heard stories about NKVD methods since childhood. The victims were my family members living in the estern Poland, after it was invaded by Stalin at the very beginnings of WW2. What was happening before red revolution, during tsars rule, is in the literature. It is funny how generations of intelligent, well-educated western…

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 60s they either lost them all, or knew they couldn't afford to win them.

Russia may or may not undergo the same development, but losing in their war of conquest over Ukraine is a prerequsite to any kind of progress in this area.

Re: How They Tried to Kill Me

#47

Post by gdy »

Kapura wrote: post #14

The part that really got to me was this paragraph: >“That is what drives us crazy,” the detective said. “You come here and act like you’re on vacation. Like this is some paradise. It doesn’t even occur to you to keep yourself safe. We have political killings here. The Russian special services are active in Germany. Your carelessness, yours and your colleagues, knows no bounds.” It's very difficult to reconcile what s…

[dead]

Re: How They Tried to Kill Me

#48

Post by FpUser »

kunley wrote: post #15

Russia as a state didn't "descend into fascism". It was always like that. For centuries. I have heard stories about NKVD methods since childhood. The victims were my family members living in the estern Poland, after it was invaded by Stalin at the very beginnings of WW2. What was happening before red revolution, during tsars rule, is in the literature. It is funny how generations of intelligent, well-educated western…

>"It was always like that. For centuries."

Centuries ago all countries were committing atrocities and all kinds of large scale crimes one can imagine. You do not even have to go back that far.

Re: How They Tried to Kill Me

#49

Post by Wronnay »

AdamN wrote: post #39

The 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?

There won't be much discussion about that in Germany because it is old news. Every German knows that and this is not the first incident.

> We have political killings here. The Russian special services are active in Germany.

This quote is the reality. It is well known that we have Russian, Turkish, Iranian and other spies here, political killings happen from time to time and sometimes we even have terrorists registered as refugees because our Government has no IDs from them (this happened back when we had many refugees from Syria - some of them were IS-Terrorists)

We don't talk about America, we talk about Germany where the Military is a joke.

Re: How They Tried to Kill Me

#50

Post by giraffe_lady »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #24
kunley wrote: post #15

Russia as a state didn't "descend into fascism". It was always like that. For centuries. I have heard stories about NKVD methods since childhood. The victims were my family members living in the estern Poland, after it was invaded by Stalin at the very beginnings of WW2. What was happening before red revolution, during tsars rule, is in the literature. It is funny how generations of intelligent, well-educated western…

Because admiting wrongdoing of Russia would go in face of their "America bad" mantra. It is really funny to see western leftist pointing American imperialism here and there and when obvious non-American imperialism start happening all the western leftists are trying to bend over backwards to justify how Russia is not doing imperialism, how SVR and GRU squads can't be compared to what CIA is/was doing. Their doublethi…

This isn't really that inconsistent tbh. Your own country's transgressions should always be a higher concern as you have more moral culpability for them and more leverage to change them.

And one of the very core attributes of modern imperialism is using real faults in other nations to subvert, divide, and discredit local movements. It's hard to condemn another state without inadvertently contributing to your own state's nationalist propaganda.

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