By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Politics - The Russian Debate

DeletedAccount3 on 17 February 2018

User Requested removal



Around the Network
Goatseye on 17 February 2018
LurkerJ said:
ArnoldRimmer said:

I find that whole "Russia tried to influence the POTUS election!" completetly ridiculous.

Did the russian government prefer one POTUS candidate? Probably. And maybe they really tried to influence the POTUS election in order to improve the chances of their preferred candidate to win.

Pretty much every government tries to influence elections in other countries in some way; if these governments point their fingers at russia now, they're nothing but the worst hypocrites. Germany for example clearly tried to influence the Brexit voting, they tried to influence the POTUS election (for example by giving 5 million dollars to Clinton's infamous "pay-to-play" foundation right during the POTUS election, or by producing Anti-Trump and Pro-Clinton articles and publishing them via the german government-controlled international media etc.).
Governments are constantly trying to influence the affairs of other countries to their liking, sometimes more, sometimes less successful.

And the US itself probably has the worst record of meddling with foreign elections of them all; in 1996 for example they were successful at making their preferred candidate Boris Yeltsin president of Russia. The TIME magazine even proudly admitted that back then:
http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1996/1101960715_400.jpg

So Russia trying to influence foreign elections is quite probable, simply because every country does so. And yet, the "proof" they've presented so far is ridiculously harmless:

For example some facebook ads worth a few tenthousand bucks. Not only is that virtually nothing; it got even more ridiculous when they had to admit that hardly any of these ads advocated a specific POTUS candidate, and that the majority of these ads were published AFTER the POTUS election - which makes perfectly clear that the purpose of these ads wasn't even to influence the POTUS election, for it makes no sense to publish such ads after the election had already taken place.

I completely agree with what someone has written on the first thread page: If the "right" candidate had won (Clinton), there would never even have been any reporting on this.
If I remember correctly, someone working on the Clinton campaign meanwhile even admitted that the whole "Russia rigged the election" narrative was invented after Clinton lost, simply because they needed a scapegoat to place the blame on.

An excellent post, I agree with a lot of it.

EVERYONE did something to sway the elections, the democracy of the west is swayed by autocrats of the east and money. This is how it is set up, to be whored and bought by the highest bidder. Anyone with extra cash and enough power can and will sway elections & policies around the world (and why wouldn't they?). News channels like CNN and FOX news report the news in a biased manner to sway elections and opinions, so does Al-Jazzera. You're naive af if you think countries like Qatar & Saudi Arabia will sit on astronomical amounts of cash and sit idly by and not try to have their teeth in sunk into your democratically elected president, and it doesn't stop there. You have lobbyists doing the bidding of governments and corporates around the world affecting internal and foreign policies. Non of this was viewed an attack on US sovereignty, until crooked Hillary lost. 

You don't make sense at all. Lobbying policies is not the same as interfering to change the outcome of people's vote.
And use crooked on people convicted of something. Like Trump when he got fined $10.000.000 by FinCen for not complying with anti-money laundering policies. Or have his kids do the bidding on his crooked real state business and have Attorney General of NY drop fraud charges against Ivanka and Don Jr.



McDonaldsGuy on 17 February 2018

Now people are legit talking about NUCLEAR WAR with Russia.

This is even scarier than the Iraq war. People have completely lost their minds just because Trump won.



AsGryffynn on 17 February 2018
Final-Fan said:
AsGryffynn said:

Technically, you win if your loss is less than the enemy... 

I am aware of this much. However, Russia's non urban population is spread so thinly that it's been discussed that in the event of Russia starting a nuclear war, there would be enough nukes to reduce the US population to a sub hundred thousand number, but Russia's population would probably remain in the million range, even if only a very small figure... 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia

With three inhabitants per square kilometer, you're only going to have enough to nuke the major cities because the other locations are near non existent as they are. The only place that would fare similarly would be Alaska... 

Alaska, Wyoming, and Montana all have population densities lower than or as low as Siberia.  Generally speaking, your concept probably applies to the whole region east of the (U.S.A.'s) West Coast states but west of the Mississippi River.  This region is on average more hospitable, I think, to human life than Siberia, but would likely experience worse fallout.  I'm not sure how that would balance out. 

Either way, the better question is, what do you define as Russia "winning" versus the United States in a nuclear war?  Total number of survivors?  Percentage of population reduction?  If its government is totally destroyed, can "Russia" be the winner, even if there is a remnant of the U.S. government left?  Should we factor in the likelihood of a neighbor annexing the remnant instead of helping it back on its feet? 

Well, I took into account that the number of warheads in US stock is probably not enough to target the very sparse selos and rural localities of Siberia, whereas Russian policy is to go for high megatonnage whenever possible, so the fallout would hit the aforementioned regions worse. 

That said, I think we've safely reached the ludicrous part of the conversation where we just go apeshit. My version of winning was basically "who gets hit worse and has a lower ending population". I have little doubt either government is going to make it in some form. Russians have an insane network of underground cities and pathways and strange silos that seem more like hideouts. Americans always could just resort to aircraft carriers or, failing this, the network of refuges and backup command posts. 

The implication is basically that Russia was kind of readying for nuclear war. The US assumed nuclear war would be limited, and so civilian evac networks were not built for a sizable part of the population, whereas Russia had plans to stuff the country underground if the Politburo approved it. Nice to know they didn't and instead invested on the safer and less destructive Dead Hand system. 

Also, I am officially at the end of my rope here. We're thinking about nuking the world solely because a country bought adverts and funded rallies? They must be new here. America did this since the Mexican American war. 

Goatseye said:
LurkerJ said:

An excellent post, I agree with a lot of it.

EVERYONE did something to sway the elections, the democracy of the west is swayed by autocrats of the east and money. This is how it is set up, to be whored and bought by the highest bidder. Anyone with extra cash and enough power can and will sway elections & policies around the world (and why wouldn't they?). News channels like CNN and FOX news report the news in a biased manner to sway elections and opinions, so does Al-Jazzera. You're naive af if you think countries like Qatar & Saudi Arabia will sit on astronomical amounts of cash and sit idly by and not try to have their teeth in sunk into your democratically elected president, and it doesn't stop there. You have lobbyists doing the bidding of governments and corporates around the world affecting internal and foreign policies. Non of this was viewed an attack on US sovereignty, until crooked Hillary lost. 

You don't make sense at all. Lobbying policies is not the same as interfering to change the outcome of people's vote.
And use crooked on people convicted of something. Like Trump when he got fined $10.000.000 by FinCen for not complying with anti-money laundering policies. Or have his kids do the bidding on his crooked real state business and have Attorney General of NY drop fraud charges against Ivanka and Don Jr.

Except the charges are lobbying one way or another. 

McDonaldsGuy said:
Now people are legit talking about NUCLEAR WAR with Russia.

This is even scarier than the Iraq war. People have completely lost their minds just because Trump won.

I think people are unable to fathom the fact that Donald J Trump would've won anyways solely because the country was fed up with the establishment and he was the closest thing they had to a dark horse candidate. If Bernie had won the primaries, he would have probably scored a landslide victory across the board solely due to fact number one: Even Trump admits that it was the indignation of the Bern that helped him win. Many of those supporting Bernie either switched to Stein, voted him in anyways or elected Trump to spite Hillary, since we didn't think about making Mr Ego Almighty president as much as we were determined to make Hillary NOT be. 

Also, people despise racist Trump even though he's no more racist than, say, Dubya... If he can go through a term without starting another war, then he will be better than the previous Republican president. 



DeletedAccount3 on 18 February 2018

User Requested removal



Around the Network
Errorist76 on 18 February 2018
Lucas-Rio said:

Honestly, I can't believe it has been going on for so long as a major development in american media and politics.....

What were russia involvment ? A few targeted ads on facebook that were ridiculously low in numbers compared to the money spent by the two candidates, some bots on Twitter, the hack of the democratic commitee and some mail of Podesta, which faled too dig something important.

In comparison of that, the USA has decades of history of meddling with other country politics, by military actions, by sanctions, by financing coup d'etat and other coloured revolutions. Clinton herself tried to boost up Russian opposition, and medlde in Russian politics as the US did in Ukraine.

The US got a taste of their own medicine, and on a so little scale and so little level, that it is really ridiculous to see the reactions. You reap what you sow.

While I agree, I disagree on the level of impact, if it has lead to the US getting the worst president in history.



Goatseye on 18 February 2018
LurkerJ said:
Goatseye said:

You don't make sense at all. Lobbying policies is not the same as interfering to change the outcome of people's vote.
And use crooked on people convicted of something. Like Trump when he got fined $10.000.000 by FinCen for not complying with anti-money laundering policies. Or have his kids do the bidding on his crooked real state business and have Attorney General of NY drop fraud charges against Ivanka and Don Jr.

No one "hacked" the election, everyone interfered or tried to "sway" it though, that's undeniable.

Giant corporates (who are only looking after themselves) & foreign governments effects on policies of the USA is what matters in the end, the means by which those effects can be achieved are endless. Be it helping a certain a candidate during elections, working with congressmen and lobbyists, or funding news channels to spread propagandas and fake news.

You can call Trump and his children crooked all you want, I am not a fan of him or the ones before him. Just because I find the narrative against Russia ridiculous and biased, it doesn't mean I am defending Trump.

Not to mention, the USA proudly interferes in everyone's business everywhere, Hillary would've taken that interference to the next level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmvl1zCOrU0, you can't possibly defend Hillary's claim to the throne and be mad the Russians successfully swayed the elections to the candidate of their choice in the same breath.

That's a bunch of nothing you said. You like Trump that's fine. But don't come here with crooked narrative when the most crooked person to ever run for presidential elections, won it in 2016.

It's  ridiculous that some of you folks are saying that US citizens cannot push back against election meddling from foreign actors on our own turf. The push for transparency and accountability of US foreign policies is being pushed by the same people that want Russian meddling investigated.

Where are you from by the way? Brazil?



DeletedAccount3 on 20 February 2018

User Requested removal



DeletedAccount3 on 20 February 2018

User Requested removal



Goatseye on 20 February 2018
LurkerJ said:
Goatseye said:

That's a bunch of nothing you said. You like Trump that's fine. But don't come here with crooked narrative when the most crooked person to ever run for presidential elections, won it in 2016.

It's  ridiculous that some of you folks are saying that US citizens cannot push back against election meddling from foreign actors on our own turf. The push for transparency and accountability of US foreign policies is being pushed by the same people that want Russian meddling investigated.

Where are you from by the way? Brazil?

Obama or Hillary want to tame US foreign policies? Are you for real?

Obama and Hillary are reasonable folks, can't say the same about 45.