Hacker News Reader

Comment by w_t_payne | Hacker News Reader

Sadly, he has not shown himself to be a trustworthy actor.

True. But neither has the USA. The USA has a long history of interfering in elections. ex the 1996 Russian election.

In that election, it sounds like Clinton endorsed Yeltsin and pushed the IMF to lend the Russian government some money; is that about right, or was there something dirtier?

There's no comparing that to all the hacking, tampering, psy-ops on social media, and general sowing of public unrest the Russians are accused of in '16 and currently. About 2 orders of magnitude difference?

To the general point however, of the US interfering in other governments, yes absolutely, US has run assassinations, overthrows, insurgent support, and lots of other stuff we'll never learn of.

Why are you comparing the actions the US admitted to doing with the actions Russia is accused of doing?

The US manipulated the IMF to give a 10.3 billion dollar loan, and then advised Yeltsin to use that money to buy votes. The US stalled election watch dogs and prevented them from realizing their duties fully. The US sent intelligence agents to Russia to advise Yeltsin on what his tactics should be, and as we have already seen they were highly fraudulent.

The US absolutely was as involved, if not more, in meddling with the 1996 Russian elections as Russia was in 2016. Just because the tactics weren't the same - Yeltsin had already seized control of the media to use it to give himself good coverage, and there was already public unrest - doesn't mean what the US did has a lesser magnitude.

Because in one case, if allegations are true, thousands of people are sick, hurt, and dead in the chaos. In the other case, another bad man is elected as normal.

Mass-privatization and dismantling of the government in Russia (that was done with strong influence and election tampering by the US) caused increase in poverty, increase in death rates, lowering of life expectancy in Russia. A lot of people in Russia died due to US election tampering. This is a under discussed topic in the West.

Let's discuss it then, but first I need some sources on 'A lot of people in Russia died due to US election tampering'

I know that a lot of people in Russia survived because of humanitarian aid from US though.

This is just one study [1]. There are plenty of others. Mass privatization killed a lot of people in Russia. It’s already been publicly admitted by US politicians that the Russian elections were influenced and tampered with by the US as discussed in above threads.

I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of things that put the US in a positive light. That’s great but doesn’t say anything except that the US says a lot of good things about themselves.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5459934/

Don't shift the goalposts, I've asked for sources on 'A lot of people in Russia died due to US election tampering'

That report literally details how the "reforms" the US meddled in Russian elections in order to see happen lead to millions of excess deaths.

This report just talks about _projected_ excess deaths, nothing else.

Bad job, comrade.

No, it doesn't, it discusses the results of PrivMort, a retrospective study, that showed 13% increases in mortality for men in Russia for an extended period of time. This corresponded to about 7 million excess deaths beyond the death rates expected of the RSFSR under the Soviet Union.

The catastrophy that is the Russian economy and social systems have led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths over the years and has put million in misery. This is because the liberalization process was incredibly corrupt and catastrophic.

Life expectancy and GNP per capita (accounting for inflation) still haven't recovered from under the Soviet Union.

Indeed. Pretty much the first thing the CIA achieved was overthrowing a foreign government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Russian_presidential_elec...

That doesn't sound too bad?

That's the kind of election interference I can get behind. If Russia decided to just start giving us oil, or we created some mutually beneficial joint effort to deal with Iran or N. Korea. That would be a good thing over all and the world would be a better place if we all went around doing good things to spread our country's influence.

and what about the people who voted in that election. do they have any say in their own countries matters, or are just to believe american influence is good for them

I'm not exactly sure what you are asking.

Who are the trustworthy actors in global politics?

Well, all nations act in their own interests, but it is generally possible to identify win-win outcomes and work together for mutual benefit. However, as the (former) spouse of a diplomat, I got the distinct impression that it was only really the Russians who were deliberately trying to screw things up for everyone else, just to cause mischief. I guess they are stuck in a mental rut where every situation is seen as win/lose, even when that's not the truth of the matter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com