Moreover, we’re not talking about the Russian people, we’re talking about Russia, the dictatorship. The US isn’t assassinating dissidents in EU countries, after all. It’s also not installing dictators in your neighboring countries.
Julian Assange? Edward Snowden? If they could 'the US' would very much like to disappear them, by whatever means.
Furthermore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio seem just like the tip of an iceberg.
I think you're confusing "extradition and trial by jury" with "assassination" or "disappearing".
kthxbye
Do you have proofs? Anything comparable to killing 4 millions in Vietnam, 600,000 in Iraq (probably more), etc, etc.
a) picked the "high estimates" - really bad choice for the sake of an Internet discussion
b) you rounded it up!
c) you presented that number as civilians killed while it is total deaths on both sides
d) you tried to present that number in the context of children killed
e) you assume these were all killed by US, which they weren't
Considering grossness of the misrepresentation in your comment, I don't think it makes sense to argue with you. However, there's plenty of proofs for Russia not minding killing children in its war efforts as recent as 2014, including MH17 which had 80 children on board.
[x] https://fair.org/extra/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/
I'd also like to add
[1] https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/weapons-mass-migrat... &
[2] https://www.covertbookreport.com/weapons-of-mass-migration/
(Would you like to have fries with that?)
That said, the US should absolutely work to reduce its collateral damage, but let's not pretend that accidentally killing a civilian and bombing a city (because they are disproportionately critical of your dictatorship) are morally equivalent.
I would also expand this to known supporters and voters, but that can be next step.
So you would massacre tens or hundreds of millions of civilians because accidentally killing civilians is bad? This is the most heinous thing I've ever read on HN.
> Or at least judged by peers of their victims. Like for latest case I say ship everyone in chain of command and involved in manufacturing to Afghanistan and have the local government there deliver the justice they deserve.
Ironically Afghanistan no longer does trial by peers, they do door to door executions without any kind of trial (certainly not trial by jury of peers).
And of course, you're notably silent on deliberately targeting civilians in their thousands, which is what Assad has been doing and the Kremlin implicitly supports.
> So you would massacre tens or hundreds of millions of civilians because accidentally killing civilians is bad?
When you are killing children using rocket propelled explosives deliberately launched into crowded urban areas, from high-altitude unmanned vehicles, operated by professional soldiers an ocean away, on intelligence only you have, you are as far away from an accidental killing as is possible.
It you hadn't passed another law threatening the Netherlands with an invasion, you might finds yourself having to answer for it.
Futhermore, the US has been involved or started numerous conflicts in the EU backyard, which we are forced to cooperate in, and have no choice to take care of the refugees.
Russia is absolutely a dictatorship. They just rigged their most recent election (jailed the leading rival politician and banned apps that informed people on how to use their vote strategically to minimize Putin’s party’s power).
As for "rigged elections" all the US elections in the last 50 years were rigged as well - think about gerrymandering and deliberately blocking black and Latino minorities from voting (by making it hard for them to obtain proof of identity, or making them wait hours in line at the polling stations).
"Dissident" is just a critic of a policy or regime. It doesn't improve Russia's hand at all to say that it only assassinates critics, and it certainly isn't an exclusively US-held position that Alexander Litvinenko, Boris Nemtsov, Alexei Navalny, etc were critics (as opposed to bonafide violent terrorists).
As for "America labels its critics as 'terrorists'": can you name any critics that the US labeled "terrorists" and consequently assassinated, especially on EU soil?
There's no evidence that Putin is related to death of these persons. BTW, Navalny is alive and well and all the evidence shows that he was probably "poisoned" by the CIA to create another "victim" of Putin's regime.
Besides, Navalny is a terrorist on CIA payroll. He's working on destroying Russia from within. He was recruited and trained abroad and most of his "donations" are coming from western governments and spy agencies. Nobody trusts him here.
Also, Germany had provided him with studio and equipment to film his last propaganda movie and YouTube promoted it very aggressively (no other YouTube clip was ever promoted this aggressively - it was starting automatically for almost any person in Russia that opened YouTube).
Yeah, that's a conspiracy...
Think cheer leaders.
And we are the best cheer leaders ever, or fanbois, ankle-biters.
Things which come to my mind are [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khodorkovsky ,
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_Weiwei
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yulia_Tymoshenko
(Miraculously healed from her excruciating back pains
due to rough handling by the magicians of the
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charit%C3%A9
does this ring a bell, Nawalny, Charité, yes?)
All greeted by politicians at the Airport when they arrived here, by whichever diplomatic means.
And now that Nawalny thing. Which somehow stinks.
The same way the Skripal thing stinks.
Though I don't know what to make of Litvinenko, that stinks different.
One could even go further back to
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Hale &
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program in the context of
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinio...
and wonder why we have so many buddhist organisations here?
I'm not saying that there aren't any other parties playing similar games here and elsewhere, that would be unlikely.
It's just the endlessly repeated and obvious BS, which is so ridiculous.
Most recent example is some nobody who suddenly popped up as 'the hope' of the german green party,
pushed by media, talking empty phrases in interviews, lied about credentials/qualifications, got caught,
didn't matter, media pushed harder.
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annalena_Baerbock
Media said boo! Fake-news! Uhhh... why?
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttenberg_plagiarism_scandal
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annette_Schavan
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvana_Koch-Mehrin
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franziska_Giffey
and so many more.
We (traditionally) don't like fake it till you make it. That goes against our (percieved) sense of order! :-)
Anyways, back to that Gazprom vs. Germany topic. This is all non-news, noise, pushed by either brain-washed,
or at least uninformed people, or outright liars, having an agenda.
This is absolutely not true. US is assassinating dissidents all over the world all the time.
US is installing puppet governments and staging revolutions all the time to pursue its economical interests.
BTW, none of the alleged Russian assassinations were proven. There're only "highly likely" arguments without a single piece of evidence. And when there're counter arguments, they are not printed in the western press. E.g. how Germany was preparing for investigation of "poisoning" of Navalny, before it was known that he was "poisoned".
Otherwise you’ve shown you are either consuming Russian state TV for breakfast, lunch and dinner or you’re doing this for money.
“Highly likely”, no single piece of evidence, Germany/Navalny… these are the most trashy arguments that are spread 24/7 by state paid actors.
It never cease to amaze me how hard US population believes that it has some kind of monopoly on truth. That no other nation or person can know the truth, but US is always right.
That's the main difference between us and the "collective West".
Also, West is amazingly ignorant. E.g. when people from the West discuss history of Russia, USSR, Georgia, Chechnya, Ukraine, Crimea, it is clear that you don't know a single bit about these places or history or relationships between countries and people here. You just regurgitate typical stereotypes and media lies.
The level of ignorance is so high that there're cases where it is beyond facepalm. E.g. utterances of Jane Psaki about shores of Belarus, or recent declaration in French newspaper that Ukraine invaded Crimea in 2014.
You guys know nothing, absolutely nothing. You live in a bubble created by ignorance, not knowing a single foreign language, inability to consume any information but lies fabricated by your media that belong to 5-6 rich persons that push a single agenda in unison.
Yet you're ready to kill millions based on that misinformation.
1. The US doesn't do this.
2. This is an apt description of USSR history, which is of course Russian history.
> Also, West is amazingly ignorant. E.g. when people from the West discuss history of Russia, USSR, Georgia, Chechnya, Ukraine, Crimea, it is clear that you don't know a single bit about these places or history or relationships between countries and people here. You just regurgitate typical stereotypes and media lies.
Yes, I'm sure the free media all over the world (including those of the countries you've mentioned) is wrong and the Russian state media outlets are telling the truth. (:
US killed tens, maybe hundreds of millions directly and indirectly. Starting from the very beginning of its existence (genocide of natives). Ending with Libya, which is a failed state now, with slaves and anarchy, thanks to the help of US and NATO.
> 2. This is an apt description of USSR history, which is of course Russian history.
Russia (and USSR) was not always right. But it never genocided whole populations, there was never colonies of Russia that were exploited like African or Asian colonies. USSR, for example, pumped a lot of its income not into the Russian population but in the limitrophe republics (Estonia, Latvia, Uzbekistan, etc). It is not the same.
> es, I'm sure the free media all over the world
Free media, LOL. People need to live somewhere, you know buy or rent an apartment or house. Buy food, pay for electricity and heat. Nobody is free from that.
So journalist, you know, usually work for some organization that pays them salary. That organization determines what they should write about and how, where to put accents in the articles.
There're not many such organizations. They all belong to some mega-corporations, holdings, etc, that in turn belong to a very limited circle (no more than 10 persons worldwide).
Where would the truth appear in this scheme of things?
Are you really that naive?
I can open BBC news or CNN and read something about Russia and make facepalm 1000th time when I read about some fact about the place where I live or some event I witnessed.
You, people on the West, don't know what we know about you. What we read in our news about you, what we think about you.
So even if you suppose we're brainwashed, you can't have any evidence of it.
b) Using "West" gives away you're from Russia or the neighbouring countries
c) Your "truth" of “highly likely", no single piece of evidence, Germany/Navalny, etc are cheap arguments that are exaggerated and repeated non-stop by Solovyov/Simonyan and other state actors that instil fear and hatred into Russian people every day.
Each of your arguments is easily debunked within a few minutes of Googling around, including looking at investigations from within Russia (e.g. by The Insider) that used corrupt sources to buy passport copies, geolocation, flight history and phone metadata from the internal police databases. These investigations are never mentioned or even rejected by the state or the media. The reason? Because you can buy the same data and come to the same conclusions and confirm the investigation yourself.
That's all. But that Nawalny thing stinks.
It has the typical pattern of getting some useful idiot somewhere, build him/her up,
have some ankle-biters who don't know any better bark for him, and try to stir up dissent where it is useful for you.
If it works? Good! If not? Poor bastard.
Next!