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Comment by george_ciobanu | Hacker News Reader

There's a darker explanation than the two suggested already: that Russia actually controls people high in the administration (possibly more than one, including Trump) and intelligence agencies are fighting them.

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People give Russia too much credit. The narrative I've seen on Reddit lately has been that Russia controls pretty much everything in the world.

Russia is a barely middle income country with a shrinking GDP, a shrinking population and an ageing military.

Surprising that I've never heard a single story of Russian influence in my country, India. Apparently, Putin and his stooges were able to infiltrate all levels of politics and media in the rich western world, but don't give two hoots about its more direct economic rivals in the BRICS.

Russia is more interested in military rivals than in economic ones. If you talk to Russians about geopolitics, you'll notice that right away: the countries that are listed as the primary opponents are US and China, and the reasons given are always military: US leads NATO, and China has an eye on the Russian Far East. You'll never hear anyone so much as mention India, Brazil etc as competitors.

And while you're correct about your overall assessment of Russia, that is precisely why it has to resort to measures like these. It cannot compete militarily, and it cannot compete economically, so it is left to resort to Machiavellian devices to fight for (what it believes to be) its rightful place, if not on the top of the pile, then at least on the top tier of it. That's what really grates so many people in Russia, both elites and commoners - that it was a superpower, but it isn't anymore. A lot of people really, really want it to be one again. And for them, the definition of superpower is, "they fear us".

Thank you for a good analysis. I was going to answer along the same lines, but you've beat me to it.

It's much more likely to be the British than the Russians.

Even darker still: that a great conspiracy to trap US politicians in a pedo-honeypot was a success, and now the corruption runs so deep that its a matter of national security that these investigations don't become public - thus, the tightening of the noose around leakers.

You know, like happened with the utterly corrupt British government, right before Brexit ..

What on earth are you talking about? Brexit was a very openly and acrimoniously contested public vote that had nothing to do with "conspiracy to trap politicians in a pedo-honeypot".

The UK had its own disaster with pedophile politicians requiring a coverup due to "national security interests" .. what I'm saying is, this could be whats happening in the US as well.

The UK had a well-publicised paedophile investigation in the past few years in which they investigated a lot of claims about sex abuse involving famous people in the 1970s and early 80s which had been ignored for about forty years. A couple of them involved politicians who had long since become irrelevant or dead. This had nothing to do with Brexit.

Similarly, when civil and security services and the executive quite openly distrust each other and brief against each other, "it could all be explained by paedophilia" is just unnecessary sub-4chan speculation.

Yesterday, a UK police chief also alleged former PM Heath was a pedophile [1], and that his crimes have been covered up.

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4238188/Sir-Edward-H...

Edward Heath died in 2005. How is the cover up of Edward Heath's alleged[1] crimes relevant to Brexit?

[1] There have been many allegations made by "Nick", and everyone now accepts none of these are true.

Then would they not leak proof of that, if it existed?

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