‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections
apnews.com
apnews.com
This is key here and I think we should all take note because I see comments here that feed into their tactics. Their goal isn't to have a specific election winner, but to divide us as a nation (not just US but all Westerners and even countries like Japan) and create political shutdowns. The point is to further political extremism, on both sides, and to create in fighting so that no united formation can stand against them.
So the question is how to fight against this. There are things that the government can and should do, but there are things we the public NEED to do as well. We have to be aware that we're often in these battlegrounds. This thread is one itself. So when commenting we need to ensure that we're discussing in good faith. That we're avoiding mic drops and easy points. We need nuance and to discuss the complexities of the issues we face in a complex world. Shift away from the emotional reactions because that is what they exploit. They have super computers and trolls aimed at your brain to exploit this animalistic behavior and we all are ill prepared and highly vulnerable to it (yes me, yes you, and I mean all of you). So we have to slow down and think more. It's not easy and causes an internal battle, but I think my doing this we become stronger and this helps us fight any adversary who would like to make useful idiots out of all of us.
Everything else you've said is true though - no reason to stick our heads in the sand about their preferences or to hate our fellow Americans because an adversary picked their side (worth noting Russia has also been involved in far leftist movements in the US for quite a long time).
The voting record shows their preference is to continue funding it. I don't know why your information sources are saying the opposite. Maybe they do it to polarize us.
I'm certainly not concerned about the dollars being used to fight Putin because I think the costs of not doing otherwise would far outweigh them.
You can “just ask questions” like that one about any item in any budget on the planet with the net effect of stalling everything we need to accomplish as a society, so I don’t really give that approach much credence. No reason to suspect a particularly bad or particularly important instance here and it’s especially suspect coming from people who’ve already indicated they don’t support US involvement in such conflicts.
edit: not that both don't have a huge base that is against WWIII, but with the Republicans, having a far more democratic internal process that was a concession to Tea Party activists, some of that base actually gets to have a say in Congress. The Congressional Democratic Party is completely impenetrable to anyone in their base who isn't an extreme nationalist hawk, whereas Republicans can't realistically exclude isolationists/paleocons.
The point remains that indeed Putin did prefer a Trump victory, as he himself publicly stated [0], which of course is 50% bullshit propaganda itself. However this was also confirmed by the US's Intelligence Community in 2017 [1].
---
[0]: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/16/putin-trump-win-el...
[1]: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
> We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. *We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.*
Yes, it's a minority. However, in that minority are people who spout Kremlin talking points.
I dont disagree, but my take is relying on public changing its behavior is not exactly a hopeful strategy.
The reality is that we've had a divided population ever since the 90s, and this is by the design of both political parties in the United States, because we have two different competing corporate parties now. And the way we've been provoked to fight each other didn't start with the Russians, we were doing it back in the 90s with Limbaugh and Bill Clinton. They may have thrown a little gas on the fire, but we lit it a long time ago.
And trying to shift responsibility onto individuals doesn't really work. That's like trying to solve climate change by having everyone recycle harder and plays into the old individualistic puritan work ethic mythology which it should be obvious by now doesn't fix anything and just gets us yelling at each other and policing each other.
The government is going to have to change, and corporations are going to have to change and billionaires are going to have to recognize that unrestrained plundering of the economy will wind up tearing the country apart.
And I don't see any way out of this where everyone remains civil and nothing fundamentally changes. The fact that the best solution you've got is to just remind people to be civil at all costs suggests to me that we're going to hit some kind of really bad situation.
And the fact that the proposals that I suggest in my first paragraph are likely to catch a lot of flak and a whole lot of pushing for the status quo and expanations of how those ideas are fundamentally unthinkable and politically unreasonable are why I think we're heading for violence. If nothing changes then the pressure cooker just slowly continues to boil without any release and lecturing the people who are getting angry about the situation that they're not being civil isn't going to stop it blowing up eventually.
I think it's possible to fight back with positive changes but those take decades to generations to actually take hold while requiring political support throughout so plans set in motion can actually reap benefits by then. Any political thwarting from adversarial forces and those long-term plans just grind to a halt or are reversed.
It's an uphill battle, for years and years to come.
I'd be careful with your words though. They have a defeatist attitude and may perpetuate said attitude. That is still a win for those trying to sow discord within our societies. You get people to either fight one another or shut up, but that still leaves no one to fight the dragon pulling the strings (in this case, many dragons). So I'm actively encouraging opening our voices, but to do it with care. Staying silent may not be akin to actively engaging in the inter-fighting, but it is enabling it. We're at a point where the fire won't put itself out and if we don't act accordingly, it will burn the whole house down.
Putin does the same thing in Russia (as US intelligence agencies do in the US.) With one of his major power centers being the Russian Orthodox Church, he can frame every external attack as an attack on religion, and a sign of the end-times - one of the reasons for the extremely homophobic policy and culture he's helped grow. The West is trying to turn us gay to destroy our religion.
So this, like so so many issues, cannot be solves by appeals to individuals to change their own position. It REQUIRES a national level fix.
Honestly, genuinely, what the hell would that even look like? I legitimately cannot picture a solution here.
> It REQUIRES a national level fix.
The US has a national election tomorrow. This requires individuals to vote for representatives that will adequately represent them in this manner. There is an individual role required to make a national fix.
I'd also ask, what to do when those national institutions fail? We've always, and always will, have to rely on individuals. This is both the power and vulnerability of a democracy (even democratically elected republics). It is the individual who votes. It is the individual who stokes or stamps the flames of extremism. Is always has been and always will be up to us. The alternative is autocracy. So please do not pass the buck. You have a role to play here and it is critical. Surely there are solutions that do not require us to go to civil war nor turn to autocracy. We're better than that.
I'm also going to leave this here: John Cleese's (of Monty Python) skit on Extremism. It is worth a watch, even just for a good laugh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXCkxlqFd90
There is an old and sophisticated discipline that studies this phenomenon that unfortunately (but also: conveniently, for some) does not get much attention these days for some reason:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/
There is also things like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-valued_logic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology...
Zero?
Edit: So I did some further digging and I assume the GP is talking about something like this: https://twitter.com/jim_lamon/status/1491836062934704141
It's a superbowl ad with a wild west showdown theme. Actors portraying Joe Biden, Sen. Mark Kelly, and Speaker Pelosi are having a high-noon style duel with the Republican candidate. The Republican manages to shoot the guns out of their hands and they flee defeated.
I think this is tacky more than anything else. I do not think there is some sinister subliminal message at play here. Nor do I consider this "shooting their political party's opponent", because those words conjure an image of an actual assassination and this looks like something fanciful.
Let's see, an act of war, and then what would fight mean in that context; hmm, I'm sure I had a dictionary around here somewhere...
With internet and social networks spreading all kind of manipulative information became so much easier. If someone thinks that living in democracy alone makes you immune to propoganda that just not the case.
So yeah "Divide and Rule" still work in modern age and it's crucial to keep political discussion alive even if society is really polarized. Otherwise one day we'll all wake up in another version of China, Russia or something even worse.
Disclaimer: I am Russia citizen who been in opposition for decade, immigrated immediately once war began and I financially supporting Ukraine armed forces. So I well aware what I am talking about.
I think more commonly what people do is see propaganda that is ineffective on them and inaccurately conclude that propaganda overall is ineffective on them. Often citing their intelligence. In reality you just weren't the target of said propaganda. We're all vulnerable to it, no matter your IQ. If one wants to demonstrate their intelligence they need to demonstrate their realization of their (intellectual) weaknesses. This is what I see happen with HN users a lot: "Well I'm not vulnerable to it, but others are." (often in context of ads and discussions of surveillance capitalism. But that's the same tool as in this discussion).
> it's crucial to keep political discussion alive even if society is really polarized.
Importantly that said conversation is done with good faith. Meaning we try our hardest as the listener to interpret the intent of the speaker's words (and vise versa). These people will sell simple solutions to complex problems. Unfortunately complex problems require complex solutions and nuanced discussion. Because of that, it is critical that we discuss from different points of views.
> Disclaimer: I am Russia citizen
The difference between you and me is smaller than the distance between us and our respective leaders. An old cold war hippy saying, but still true. It is our leaders who cause good men to go to war. To live through atrocities that need not be. Atrocities worse than hell. But in the end we are accountable because we are the power that they wield. A sheep tricked by a wolf in sheep's clothing is still a dead sheep. We can't always rely on the shepherd to keep us alive.
Honestly speaking I not even sure if political discussion alone is enough. I just wish more people understood this is the big problem for modern civilization. We need better education on these topics so average Joe is better suited to resist manipulation.
> So the question is how to fight against this.
I think our political parties and media are responsible for 99% of the political extremism, unwillingness to compromise, and placing their self interests over the well being of the country.
And frankly, I think posts like yours contribute to the problem. Rather than taking responsibility as a country for where we are, we constantly resort to blaming external actors. If not the Taliban, then now Russia. Or we blame China.
And the narrative from those in power is always the same. The Taliban isn’t attacking us for our freedom? Well you support terrorists then. Russia isn’t responsible for Trump getting elected? You must be a Russian shill. You say Russia did exactly what they said they would do if NATO didn’t stop expanding eastwards? Oh you’re a traitor or must work at a Russian troll farm.
No. Take responsibility for once. We’re in this situation because of our own fault. We elected leaders who divide us. In the last election, the party of liberal and forward thinking ideas elected a man who’s been in politics longer than my children and grand children have been alive. What new ideas does this man have? What’s he going to do now in the executive branch that he couldn’t influence his party to do over his many, many decades long career? Is all that Russias fault too?
To be frank: I don’t care for either party. I’m just tired of the constant blame game and passing on the buck to someone else.
FPTP usually creates this polarisation. I don't agree with your take that both parties are equally responsible though, one of them has consistently used political gridlock as a weapon, since Obama years. To the point where one of these parties fillibustered their own bills just to spite the other side.
There are differences in level and scale.
> You say Russia did exactly what they said they would do if NATO didn’t stop expanding eastwards? Oh you’re a traitor or must work at a Russian troll farm.
I have a huge grievance with this line, it's literal Russian propaganda you are repeating.
I'm not from the US if that matters.
Is political gridlock the root of the problem? Help me understand how only one party is responsible.
Interesting you mention Obama. He ran on an anti-war platform, which was fairly out of line with the media and general American politics at the time. That alone was a big reason to vote for him.
But what did he do? An unprecedented increase in drone attacks. By all measures, Obama let the military industrial complex grow.
> I have a huge grievance with this line, it's literal Russian propaganda you are repeating.
How is it propaganda? Are you staying this IS NOT exactly what Russia stated, repeatedly since the early 2000s?
The GOP doesn't compromise anymore, it's a fact, no?
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-just-say-it-the...
[2] https://www.vox.com/2016/7/18/12210500/diagnosed-dysfunction...
> Interesting you mention Obama. He ran on an anti-war platform, which was fairly out of line with the media and general American politics at the time. That alone was a big reason to vote for him.
> But what did he do? An unprecedented increase in drone attacks. By all measures, Obama let the military industrial complex grow.
I don't care and there was nothing in my comment that led to this segue about Obama. This is purely soapboxing around an issue that wasn't in discussion, thanks anyway.
> How is it propaganda? Are you staying this IS NOT exactly what Russia stated, repeatedly since the early 2000s?
That's exactly the point, you are repeating this which is Russian propaganda. Why should Russia dictate what Ukraine can or cannot do? NATO didn't expand eastwards, countries to the East asked to join NATO. Should NATO say "no, thanks, Russia doesn't allow us"?
You are performing a bizarro form of victim blaming and not seeing an issue with that. Are you subscribed to Mearsheimer's real politik/offensive realism stuff? It really does feel like you are repeating his lines...
Have you forgotten Chechnya? Or Georgia?
Hold on a second. You’re saying that Republicans have been gridlocking since the Obama years. So clearly, you’re saying one side is at fault. But you don’t want to discuss the merits of Obama’s actual policy. Barack Obama did hypocritical things, but clearly your expectation is that Republicans just go along.
That’s not how a democracy works.
You brought up Obama and Republicans gridlocking, but the minute we dive deep into a more nuanced look, away from your binary/black and white narrative, you say this:
> This is purely soapboxing around an issue that wasn't in discussion, thanks anyway.
Now you’re on a borderline personal attack. I’m not sure you’re here to discuss in good faith.
> That's exactly the point, you are repeating this which is Russian propaganda.
> Why should Russia dictate what Ukraine can or cannot do? NATO didn't expand eastwards, countries to the East asked to join NATO. Should NATO say "no, thanks, Russia doesn't allow us"?
I’m not sure if you understand what “propaganda” means.
Russia doesn’t want NATO at its doorstep, and it sees NATO as an existential threat. You don’t have to agree that this belief is justified. You can say those countries have a right to join NATO. That as sovereign nations, it’s entirely up to them to do as they please.
But that’s not the point here. The Soviets brokered a deal with us. We agreed NATO would not expand eastwards.
Again, Russia is doing what they said they would do, given the present circumstances. Whether you agree with what they’re doing or not, does not make it propaganda.
You could try to argue that the world has changed. That the US and Russia cannot single handedly make decisions in the 1990s and have them enforced on a modern day Europe, that those countries can decide for themselves.
But it’s besides the point. Russia sees NATO at their door step. The real terrifying thing is that our media paints Putin as a dictator, terrorist, a mad man. He probably is all three of those things, but why we’re playing fire with someone sitting on the worlds largest nuclear arsenal is beyond me.
Regarding Russia’s views: It’s the same way we (the US) instilled the Monroe doctrine, and you can bet money that if China gets real cozy with South American countries, we’ll be sending navy carriers down the Pacific.
Two other thoughts:
Your linked “sources” are well known liberal and left of liberal - progressive - organizations. To say this is a GOP specific problem is your ideology yelling out loud. The reality is that both parties are hyper polarized. Neither party has American interests at heart. The biggest ideas any Democrat or Republican has is on how to fan the fear mongering flame and divide people.
Again - the party of forward thinking and liberal ideas literally elected a dinosaur who probably doesn’t even know how to use e-mail.
This is simply not true. It is a talking point developed for Putin's speech at 2007 Munich security conference to justify the shift to genocidal wars against its neighbors. It did not exist before 2007 and was not brought up when, for example, Poland joined NATO in 1999. There was an endless stream of whining and unspecified threats from Russian diplomats at the time, but not once do I remember talk about any deals.
It's nothing more than a simple, yet effective hook for catching western self-flagellants into their net, while the truth is that western governments went above and beyond to accommodate Russia and build cooperation, and it still lead to a maniacal dictatorship carrying out genocide in Europe and threatening rest of the world with hunger and nuclear armageddon.
I haven't seen a newspaper in 8 months. How is that working out for them?
These should have bipartisan support. Things like paper votes for every election, random manual recounts to sample error rates and confirm they are low, funding improvements to security of voting infrastructure, etc.
According to Verified Voting (https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/navigate/map/ppEqu...), ~5% of votes are made with un-auditable "direct recording electronic" voting machines, where the votes are held in memory rather than printed to paper. When you actually do pentests, it turns out that these machines are sometimes connected to the internet (even though best-practices are to not do so), and they have been demonstrated to be hackable by someone with a USB drive even when air-gapped. Any such tampering is undetectable if done well. It's simply unacceptable to use such technology for voting IMO, and we should pass laws mandating paper-trails and banning DRE voting.
One problem is that much of the worry about election fraud is motivated reasoning ("my preferred candidate didn't win therefore there must have been fraud; let me find evidence of fraud to support my theory"), rather than actual concern based on an objective analysis starting with the facts. I do wonder if we can still make some changes to the system that strictly improve security and require zero trust of the opposition party, without destroying trust in the underlying institutions.
You waste resources playing a whack-a-mole game against the firehose of bullshit. It's electoral fraud now, something to do with green energy plans next, then whatever welfare issue is hot in the moment. Something with immigrants and then start repeating.
Lack of trust in the election system isn't a partisan issue. When I was a young Democrat, the kerfuffle was over how Diebold voting machines delivered Ohio for George W. Bush. In 2018, two thirds of Democrats polled said they believed Russia "tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected President."
Programmers should understand this. When a system is opaque and hard to reason about, people won't trust it. We can't afford for our election system to be like that.
This is one of the big reasons I endorse cardinal style voting over ordinal systems. The act of counting the vote is trivial in comparison (singular round, no runoffs, trivially parallelizable). There are other reasons I advocate for it, but this is a major one: transparency.
I definitely a agree that creating a highly transparent system is integral to our elections. I think we need substantially more transparency than we have now. But not just with how votes are counted, but also in who has power and how they are making decisions. The left has been discussing quite a bit about how the right is trying to hijack the system. So I think even both sides would be highly in favor of increased transparency.
But like I said in my OP, complex problems require complex solutions. The original post was about one such need. I think this is another need under the same umbrella and I think there are many more too.
Election security might be a moving target for you, but this is something I have been paying attention to for at least a decade. I think it's important to note that there is an underlying bipartisan issue here that has been known for a long time.
> a lot of effort and thought is wasted trying to fix a system that is not that broken
This is certainly the blue-tribe talking point right now, but it's an oversimplification, and I encourage you to actually read and engage with the materials I linked. There are security vulnerabilities and auditability failures in the system which should be fixed, and this was a common blue-tribe issue prior to 2020, when it switched to being a red-tribe issue. I don't think these issues are catastrophic failures that invalidate the election results, but they are serious and worth attention.
I think one should separate out concrete claims of fraud in 2020 that have since been refuted by recounts (e.g. Antrim County) as examples of the motivated reasoning I referred to, vs. issues like un-auditable DRE machines which are actual problems that need to be fixed.
I do understand where you're coming from; the instinctive reaction in a low-trust partisan environment is that giving oxygen to the bad-faith/motivated-reasoning claims of election fraud does more harm than good. However for one example, I think if the red tribe has a good showing tomorrow (i.e. lose some of their incentive to cry fraud), then that would be an ideal time to get some bipartisan legislation in place to try to bleed the issue of salience ahead of the 2024 elections where it could be extremely dangerous.
> You waste resources playing a whack-a-mole
The point I was making is that there is some set of policy changes that the blue team thought were beneficial in 2016, and perhaps we could all agree to do them. It's not merely whack-a-mole if you leave the world a better place after whacking the first mole. The goal I'm advocating here is not to play zero-sum games to "whack the opponent", it's to actually make objective improvements to the system that in normal times would be uncontroversial bipartisan proposals. If we can execute the political Ju-Jitsu to redirect the current toxic discourse into actual improvements that would be a major win.
Sure, following that there will be another wedge issue; that's politics. But I think the important question is whether we make non-zero-sum gains during each issue cycle, and sometimes it is possible to do so.
This is quite contrary to the ~~propaganda~~ trustworthy journalism take on the matter:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/13/us-election-...
> One problem is that much of the worry about election fraud is motivated reasoning ("my preferred candidate didn't win therefore there must have been fraud; let me find evidence of fraud to support my theory")
Another problem is that much of the lack of concern about election fraud is based on bad epistemology ("my preferred candidate won fair and square [in an epistemically sound, absolute sense] because some people said it was the most secure in history).
> ...rather than actual concern based on an objective analysis starting with the facts.
In my experience, this (utilizing actual objective analysis) is a good way to collect downvotes and insults.
> I do wonder if we can still make some changes to the system that strictly improve security and require zero trust of the opposition party, without destroying trust in the underlying institutions.
I wonder if we will ever try, as opposed to simply repeating the same claim enough times so that people believe it to be true. The latter is certainly cheaper, and certainly gets the job done (where the job is persuading the public that their election system is secure in fact, regardless of whether it is actually true).
I would note that it's possible for both to be true: A) this was the most secure election in US history, B) there are still some meaningful security issues to iron out. For example between 2016 and 2020, DRE machines were being phased out (28.9 -> 11.4%), so in that regard we do seem to be more secure than in the past.
And I want to be clear -- I think the detailed content of that Guardian article is broadly fair, even if they do engage in some sloganeering.
> The officials who signed the statement said they had no evidence that any voting system had deleted or lost votes, had changed votes, or was in any way compromised.
> They said all the states with close results have paper records, which allows for the recounting of each ballot, if necessary, and for “the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors”.
I think this is an honest evaluation of the evidence RE: specific claims of voting fraud in 2020. (Though I'm always interested to hear folks' best evidence to the contrary.)
Importantly, absence of evidence _is_ evidence of absence (evidence != proof!). If there was vote tampering, it should have been detected by a recount somewhere. But we don't see that.
-
> And I want to be clear -- I think the detailed content of that Guardian article is broadly fair, even if they do engage in some sloganeering.
Perhaps, but these articles are misinformation (Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information. It is differentiated from disinformation, which is deliberately deceptive.)
I think it is very interesting how when our geopolitical rivals engage in misinformation, it's a super big deal (regardless of whether there is actual evidence supporting the claim), but when our politicians and media do it it's "fair".
> I think this is an honest evaluation of the evidence RE: specific claims of voting fraud in 2020. (Though I'm always interested to hear folks' best evidence to the contrary.)
It may be, but this does not erase the coordinated deception that took place - and this is just one instance of deceit.
And, there was a time not so long ago where the burden of proof lied with the one making the assertion, only recently has the convention changed to the burden of proof being on anyone who questions the official narrative.
> If there was vote tampering, it should have been detected by a recount somewhere. But we don't see that.
Similarly, I "should" quit smoking and join the gym, but I ain't seeing much of that either.
If "seems about right" is the standard election officials think is applicable to their role, I'd like for them to make an explicit announcement so everyone is on the same page about what kind of a show we're running here.
Regime that is absolutely financially and morally corrupt is absolutely incapable to implement anything like that on scale. It is not important how much money they have when 99% will always be stolen in process.
Unfortunately it does not make overall situation any better because there are less corrupt, more stable, but even more totalitarian regimes that capable of doing this.
Pass the salt?
He ain't retiring. The only way he is leaving the Kremlin is in a casket.
Mr Putin is 70 years old, and reports of his health issues are circulating. So I think that it's too late for "premature" death.
I'd be interesting to gather some data on this, but I suspect it's more common that casual perception might indicate.
One possible reason for the mysterious Russian Modified Gravity that causes people to fall to their deaths might be that Putin's position is not as secure as he might like us to think. He doesn't even need to be assassinated: once he's no longer in a position to order around force, what is he going to do? Some of the above lived for decades after being deposed.
Overthrown leaders don't have a power base; mobs aren't going to turn out to return a deposed leader to power. Once they are irrelevant, they're going to stay that way, and everyone knows it.
Because propaganda has convinced every American that they know Putin personally, and understand his internal thoughts and drives. Those thoughts and drives are to cause evil everywhere, and a bottomless ego that can only be satisfied by conquering the world. It's not really a subtle caricature.
Most folks "know" far more about succession in authoritarian regimes from heroic fiction, TVTropes, and the Evil Overlord list than they do from actual history.
The guy spent years publicly denying the existence of the Wagner group, then opened a patriotic co-working space literally called The Wagner Group Centre. (meanwhile, the group itself is still illegal under Russian law)
I'm not saying he didn't interfere in the elections, but whatever he says is no proof either way.
This kind of comments are both both help Russian gangsters and downplay actual war crimes that happen in Ukraine. Your petty hatred toward US billionare have nothing to do with what happening to millions of people suffering because of war.
> My answer will be delicate, sophisticated, and forgive me - ambiguous. We have interfered, are interfering and will continue to interfere. Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once.
This is pretty much non-news coming from this guy. He said it to rile up the reporter. And the US media is eating up like a bunch of fools.
I am truly curious whether they are genuinely this naive.
A lot of people seem to be responding as per normal to this obvious troll, and a fearful public is an easier to manage public. Public relations doesn't come cheap, so any external help is (or should be) good for the public budget.
mostly from coverage that I've seen at UnderstandingWar.org
OTOH, I'm old & well-read enough to know that they are working from limited information sources, within a narrow analysis framework, and even the best-resourced and -intentioned military-style war reporting has a pretty iffy record.
These aren't just war cheerleaders, the ISW is literally the architects of war. Sure they know a lot about it, look at their Board of Directors. It's filled with warmongers.
ISW is always pro-war. They are Neocons, it is a foundational part of their ideology. Any drivel coming from that place needs to be viewed through that lens.
In other news, McDonalds thinks we should eat more burgers.
EDIT: A word
As other comments have mentioned, this is more likely posturing in anticipation of an internal power struggle.
Such declaration will be dismissed by conservatives as Democrat narrative. And democrats will just get comforted in their position.
Russia would be stupid to say anything that would help democrats. They would be much better off with a republican house and senate.
I think there are smarter things to say if they wanted to muddy the waters.
Ie what i'm referencing is more than just a single comment, it was many in agreement; but i've tended to see these "pockets of fringe" where in any larger thread i can expect to see just about anything being discussed and agreed upon.
Makes it really hard to discern larger beliefs.
From Russia's standpoint, they can't take down the US. The US can certainly destroy itself from the inside though.
If we assume the GOP is already questioning all election results, then this most recent comment from Russia will bring more of the left in to question the results. When everyone questions the results, the US has a big problem.
Really?
The war in Ukraine is obviously the #1 most important, most critical issue for Putin right now. It is as close to do-or-die as a dictatorial nationstate can get and the situation is getting worse by the day for Russia.
If someone were to believe what you're saying is true then Putin would have invaded Ukraine under a Republican President, Trump. Russia only seems to fuck with Ukraine when a Democrat is President. Why would Putin invade Ukraine or fuck with Ukraine when the party in power hates Russia and will spend untold billions to stop Russia.
Your argument makes absolutely no sense.
Wait so... why would he? Considering this is exactly what he did?
Could it be that there are other components to a decision to invade than merely who is in power halfway around the world? There's nothing incompatible with this and the idea they he'd prefer Trump, or any NATO-withdrawing and foreign-aid withholding party, in power.
Why would Putin invade when a Democrat is president. It makes zero sense.
Source : actual kgb agents who did this[0]
All that is to say it's kind of ironic. If I'm correct, the information that Putin helped the right by meddling, will be reduced and spun by many outlets to go from "there was meddling in our elections that helped the right" into just "our elections are untrustworthy".
In other words, the point of their election interference is not primarily to manipulate the election successfully, but to create the belief that they did.
US fuckups like Iraq were accidents, aka unplanned. Overwhelming majority of civilian victims is work of their opponents, like Iraqi religious insurgents, suicide bombers or ISIS.
You can be outraged at what happened to Salvador Allende and Patrice Lumumba and all that. I think you should be! And at the same time you can realize that was some time ago and if you don't believe in eternal collective punishment (everyone in Mongolia must suffer for what Genghis Khan did!), then it is relevant that the US is behaving better now and Russia isn't.
And regardless of all this, whataboutism is a counsel of despair: no good can ever be done by anyone because everyone's nation has done bad at some point. Everyone should silently take the abuse. If you truly believe there is such a thing as bad behavior, you don't silence criticism of one act by pointing to another act. You criticize both acts. And your criticism is proportional to the relevance of the act. It sucks that the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes drove out the Britons, but that isn't the top problem to solve anymore.
Now there's nation-wide protests, calls for military intervention, election denialism with some rather convincing evidence, blatant censorship of anyone who's so much as asking if this is going to be investigated.
CIA person "urging" a president of a soverign country to stop doubting voting machines? Calling his doubts "baseless"? I mean, the USA has paper ballots to this day because of the exact same "baseless" doubts. It's essentially world wide consensus that voting machines are a bad idea, some countries straight up declared them unconstitutional. But these USA officials pressured our president not to question the system of his own country. A CIA guy at that, from a country known for compromising the world's security and spying on everyone.
I'm sorry but there's so much wrong with that it's not even funny. If that's not interference I don't know what is. The more I research these elections the uglier it gets.
> If the election you won legitimized your government, the election you lost legitimizes Lula's government.
Right now it doesn't seem like this election legitimitized either government. The unprecedented censorship is not inspiring confidence. I wonder what will happen now...
Baseless means without evidence. So when a politician is yelling at his fans that the machines overturned the results of the election, and no one has found evidence of it, you should doubt those claims.
In other words, through certification and audits there is a lot more evidence the machines worked properly than the feelings you are using for making your decisions.
This isn't what he was doing though. He wanted the voting machines to have a printer function so that an auditable paper trail was established. I've seen highly voted comments arguing for this exact same thing here on HN not even a week ago.
> and no one has found evidence of it, you should doubt those claims
I did doubt those claims. At first.
Some serious evidence has surfaced though: discrepancies in the election data set showing older less thoroughly audited voting machines clearly favoring the winning candidate by as much as 15%.
I was still skeptical, tried to reproduce the results on my own dataset... Then I watched the government's election website go down for hours, then come back up with the data set modified. Then I watched a supreme court judge censor anyone asking questions about this on Twitter.
It's not exactly inspiring confidence.
> In other words, through certification and audits there is a lot more evidence the machines worked properly than the feelings you are using for making your decisions.
The 2020 voting machine models seem to have been thoroughly audited. However, we're still using older models and I don't think they were audited recently. There were discrepancies in the voting patterns of the 2020 model and older models and nobody has been able to refute that at this time.
edit: oh, I spaced out, you're asking about the last three decades? I thought you were asking about the last few years.
If there is evidence the election wasn't fair, you should object. But your evidence that it was unfair shouldn't be your own hurt feelings and propaganda.
Obviously.
> But your evidence that it was unfair shouldn't be your own hurt feelings and propaganda.
Of course not. I have some real reasons for doubting the results.
Three days ago, an argentinian man streamed a video where he analyzed our election's official data set. He found that the older models of our voting machines, less thoroughly audited, displayed a clear advantage to the winning left-wing candidate, something between 8% and 15%.
After I watched this, I went to the government website and downloaded the entire election dataset and attempted to reproduce his analysis.
Then I saw the website go down for hours.
An API for data set changes notifications remained up though. I monitored that API and saw them pushing changes to the 2022 and 2018 elections datasets. I saved that data too.
Then I witnessed that API go down.
Next day, it was back up, the data was modified and there was a bullshit note on the website explaining it went down due maintenance.
Then this supreme court judge started censoring everyone who even so much as asked if he was going to investigate any of this. Last weekend I counted at least 10 influential people censored, including a doctor in economics, elected politicians and policemen. It got to the point people on Twitter got Elon Musk to look at it.
I'm very worried about this. If it's so false, why can't they just refute it? It seems to me like they're all in damage control mode. Media is pretending nothing's going on.
If I understood correctly, they were compared to other machines in the same electoral zone. Each zone can have 2020 models and pre-2020 models. The older models had more votes compared to 2020 models even in the same geographical locations.
> I think you’re looking at correlations in data and fantasizing a causation that isn’t there.
Look I honestly don't know anymore. Can you help me make sense of it? It was published here:
https://brazilwasstolen.com/en/
Attempting to discuss this anywhere else, I was met with censorship and heavily biased political discourse. I know the electoral court has not made any statements regarding it, they're just censoring everything. I've never seen anything like this in my country before.
The argentinian man made a video presentation but I don't have access to it anymore due to censorship.
If voting preference is at all correlated to income, and what models of voting machines used at a polling place are correlated to the wealth of that district, then you will likely find a correlation between voting machine model and voter preference, with the older/cheaper model showing a preference for the candidate more favored by poorer people.
It’s not a sign there was fraud. Did you look at whether voting on newer models showed a higher preference for Bolsonaro than the national average?
What if Bolsonaro had won and someone claimed that the newer machines were built while he was in office so they were clearly programmed to favor him? Would you accept that narrative based purely on a correlation in data?
The machines look the same to the voter and we can't choose which machine to vote on. Each citizen is assigned an electoral zone and a section within that zone. One voting machine captures the votes of every section. In my neighborhood, for example, the voting took place at a school and every classroom had a different voting machine, one for each section.
It'd be extremely suspicious if it turned out that the people voting one room away from me showed statistically significant differences from the other sections.
> Did you look at whether voting on newer models showed a higher preference for Bolsonaro than the national average?
Looks like Bolsonaro wins if only 2020 models are evaluated.
> What if Bolsonaro had won and someone claimed that the newer machines were built while he was in office so they were clearly programmed to favor him? Would you accept that narrative based purely on a correlation in data?
Clearly we'd be having the same election denialism problems we're having now...
So saying that you will "accept the results of an election" is just a chant or a ritual that doesn't mean anything, because you can still declare the election was not fair after the results come in?
* Obviously this entire reply assumes an ideal world where people are responsible and prominent political movements want to prevent foreign interference (even when the interference arguably benefits them.) I realize we don't live in that world anymore, but how about let's pretend we do for the purposes of this thread.
I would argue there’s a lot of creative interpretation of how much “interference” actually happens. Democrats are pretty much starting from the position that, due to demographics, the only way Republicans can gain the upper hand in national elections (or particular state/local elections) is through trickery and the assistance of foreign government meddling. Hence why before and after every election we’re warned repeatedly about foreign interference in our elections. And you would be lying if you said that if the expected red wave materializes that there won’t be large amounts of ink spilled over how Russia pulled it off yet again.
Yet if Democrats were to unexpectedly come out on top in a few days, do you think the same people going on about foreign interference would insist that we have to see what role it played in helping certain Democrats win their respective races? Somehow I doubt it. Which is why I think “interference” is a very useful political tool. It’s vague in nature, if we’re being honest it’s impossible to measure its impact, and it serves a very useful purpose — to cast doubt on the victories of political opponents.
WTF. Our voting system is so fundamentally broken and all any party needs to do to get a government majority without a popular majority is to push on the cracks. No foreign interference necessary, though, it helps.
The USA is so heavily gerrymandered that the vast majority of congressional races don't even need to hold actual elections, the outcome is 99% certain. There are 10 seats in the up-coming midterms which could be considered competitive out of 435. [0]
For the presidential election, the electoral college makes it possible for a candidate to win the presidency with a mere 23% of the popular vote.
_Possible_ does a lot of work for you here. You have to assume all the losing states vote at 0% toward the winning party and all winning states vote at 50%+1 for that to happen. Something that is absurdly unrealistic given that California only voted 65% Biden and 35% Trump in the last election.
The EC doesn't favor one party over the other except for the fact that Democrats refuse to move their national politics to the center to win the EC and use words like "populist" to describe the candidates that do.
Realistically, the popular vote "problem" you bring up isn't the issue with the EC. The issue is that it allows candidates to ignore the vast majority of the country, causing all candidates to cater to the same minority of the population. There's nothing wrong with the EC except that the states are mostly "winner-take-all", essentially gerrymandering the presidential elections.
There are a lot of things I'd like to see done to increase the veracity of our elections (ranked choice voting, open primaries, etc.) but, I think, if we could solve or make progress in the reduction of gerrymandering it would make a sizeable difference in the quality of politics in the country. And, notably, gerrymandering is very much a "both sides" issue, ask Californian politicians if they would favor splitting California EC votes proportionally by vote. That would make California more represented in Presidential elections and would also force candidates to try and win votes in California, moderating national politics. The only downside would be to the Democratic party itself.
However, the first-past-the-post issues you're talking about have very little to do with gerrymandering? EC / Senate politics are unrepresentative of population-majority preferences due to where people have decided to put themselves; House politics are unrepresentative due to how the districts for each seat are drawn. Gerrymandering is the political manipulation of the latter.
Senate politics aside, winner-take-all EC states are mostly gerrymandered to the majority party. It has exactly the same effect as gerrymandered house districts. some states are just not worth putting any effort into winning for the losing party and all focus/money/attention/politics is aimed at persuaded a small subset of constituents, the only difference is scale.
The inaction of the party in power to undo the winner-take-all EC model in a uncontested state shares the same motivation (more power to the party) and has the same outcome (worse representation for the people).
Using the example of California because it's a one-party state (so the advantages and disadvantages are more clear), if they were to proportionally allot EC votes, it would be good for every single Californian. The national Democratic party would move toward California Democrat values and the same situation for Republicans. And, since the state is so blue, it might even provide some incentive for the national Republican party to try and persuade purple Californians, moving them even further left. That's also good for California Democrats. People are led to believe that it would be worse for them, as individuals but that isn't the case. It would be better for _everyone_ in California if California wasn't winner take all.
The only group that it's bad for is the Democratic party.
I’m trying to be generous in my interpretation here but are you using “trickery” to include the gerrymandering and voting restrictions Democrats spend most of their time on? In particular, I’d like some citations about who is saying specifically what about “interference”.
There isn't really any way to compensate for it. All that does it encourage voter apathy at best, or at worst, people start to think "both sides do it, so it evens out."
I don't think this was done on purpose, but I'm noting it because it seems to be becoming the common way we speak these days and that isn't healthy to our abilities to solve these issues. We need to discuss the nuance and complexities of these events or else others will control the narratives and make us fight within ourselves instead of uniting to solve these issues.
Please do not normalize the use of a term that is being pushed by the government to justify censoring information they don’t like [1]. I understand that there is such a thing as “true information presented out of context in a manner meant to mislead”, and I even grant that the comment might be guilty of it. But “malinformation” and “misinformation” are just becoming labels for “information that is inconvenient”, and I don’t think normal internet commenters adopting their use is doing us any good.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformat...
The same goes for dog whistling. It is easy to see dog whistling everywhere because that's its entire purpose: to hide within normalized speech. Covert speech is not covert if the only ones using that speech are manipulators. But that's why fighting it is so hard, because you don't know who's a useful idiot and who's a manipulator. But it is clear that the manipulators hide in a sea of useful idiots and parrots.
So I think good faith is trying to extract the signal from the noise and to differentiate the two rather than assuming maliciousness.
All of these fancier words like whataboutism or misinformation are just attempts to assert authority via the word. They don't convey additional meaning.
Malinformation doesn't mean something is wrong but that it is misleading. This distinction is important because if you claim malinformation you actually aren't claiming that the information used is wrong, but the way it is is. A classic example of this is white nationalists using the phrase "despite being 13% of the population black people <insert something about crime here>". While the statistics may be accurate it does not incorporate the complexities involved which end up decoupling race from the statistics. To put it more accurately, this is an aggregation error (more specifically ascertainment bias, a form of collider bias on conditional probabilities). Without the deaggregation here it is natural to assume that the conditional variable here is ethnicity (the intent of the malinformation) but in reality this is misleading because the way the information was presented is not entirely accurate.
Malinformation is specifically difficult to defend against because one can google to confirm accuracy of claims. But in reality it takes expertise to dismantle the claims. It is preying upon people's naivety and inability to process information that they are not intimately familiar with (which is all of us, just in different subjects). So it is important to recognize that this form of manipulation exists. The defense is to maintain skepticism and consult experts. Looking for consensus among experts specifically.
These words do in fact convey a significant amount of additional meaning and the distinctions are important. Especially if we're trying to encourage more meaningful and nuanced discussions.
It is easy to see dog whistling everywhere because that's the phrase's entire purpose: it's a weapon. It's an accusation that's cheap to make, and near-impossible to disprove.
Sure, legitimate cases of dog whistling probably exist. It's impossible to tell for sure, because the "test" has near 100% false-positive rate. Or, put another way, talking about dog whistling being a thing is itself malinformation - technically the phenomenon exists, but bringing attention to it is between confused and malicious.
I'm not saying that the government isn't trying to manipulate the topics and use the same words too. After all, that's the entire thing we're discussing. But that doesn't mean that they get to control words either. That's an unwinnable battle because the adversary has such an easy path to victory. All you need to do is take language people are using and incorporate it into your own, but with slightly different (but reasonable) meaning. You're actively engaging in their strategy. Words are defined by how they are used and understood by the public. So if you understand my intention and that I am not using it in this same manipulative manner, then we're pushing back and ensuring they do not take control of our language.
[0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=m...
Thanks for a new word for my 1984 dictionary.
Good, now we finally have an accurate, single-word description of all non-tabloid journalism.
> It muddles the conversation with more noise.
I agree with GP and I believe that this whole conversation is noise. The biggest red herring there ever was (no pun intended). Yes, Russia is interfering with US elections. So does US with Russia's. I can point at any news article and claim foreign interference and, unless you're literally NSA and can map-reduce the entire Internet in an afternoon, there's no way for you to conclusively prove me wrong. And whether a given article is a result of foreign interference or not, it's creating a misleading context anyway.
The right answer is to understand that the news articles, particularly on hot topics, are always manipulated by some combination of: {your party, other party, foreign influence, The Elites, advertising money} - and to treat it accordingly. That is, don't update your views on the world based on second-hand recycled soundbites. Either try to dig in and understand an issue, or accept the fact that you don't know enough to have an opinion. Yes, it's OK for an adult to not have a strong opinion on a topic. And be very careful about any argument that lets you preferentially dismiss things you don't like as malicious interference by third parties.
I'd be interested to hear more about this ... do you have links to a summary ?
> Putin came to power as a result of the US interference, after blackmailing Boris Yeltsin
I'm not clear if you mean Putin blackmailed Yeltsin or the US blackmailed Yeltsin ? What was the blackmail over ?
From a brief bit of reading and what memory I have Yeltsin was having various ...
- health ("months in hospital" [1]),
- political (four prime ministers in eighteen months [2])
- and, allegedly, criminal (government contractor providing Yeltsin and family with "we pay the bills" credit cards [3])
... problems so him going of his own accord doesn't seem impossible ?
Also wasn't it the case that you could only do two terms as President until Putin fixed it so he could reign for ever ? If that was the case then Yeltsin wasn't going to be able to run again anyway ?
I'm open to the idea that the CIA was, as is traditional, shooting itself in the foot, and there may have been US elements who felt that Boris was dangerously unpredictable but it does seem that there was other things going on which might have led to his demise ?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Yeltsin#1996%E2%80%93199...
[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/415087.stm
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/jan/28/russia.iantray...
https://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19960715,00.htm...
Nowadays the same US politicians and press bemoan Putin and the lack of democracy in Russia. It's a complete farce.
But you’re right, I’m sure lots of countries do this all the time, including the US.
(https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaig...)
There is no evidence (afaik) that russian influence materially swayed the results of the 2016 election.
Not-so-fun-fact: the DCCC is still using this strategy to funnel funds from democratic donors into right-extremist candidates races in the 2022 cycle:
https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-spent-43-million-helping-...
https://theweek.com/speed-reads/1015258/the-pied-piper-strat...
To domestic entities, the laws of the land certainly matter. If an adversarial foreign entity is breaking domestic laws without penalty, then domestic entities can focus more on the preventative aspect of enforcement of the law.
But yeah, if you have no enforcement and no deterrence then the law might as well not exist.
> Я вам отвечу очень тонко, деликатно и прошу прощения, допущу определённую двусмысленность. Господа, мы вмешивались, вмешиваемся и будем вмешиваться. Аккуратно, точно, хирургически и по-своему, как мы это умеем. Во время наших точечных операций будем удалять сразу обе почки и печень.
In English:
> I will answer you very subtly, delicately and I apologize, I will allow a certain ambiguity. Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere. Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once.
---
As a native speaker, I tend to believe that he was trolling the press. This is very similar to what Putin replied to a question asked by one of the interviewer's from the US whether Russia has plans to interfere:
In Russian:
> По секрету вам скажу: да, обязательно будем это делать! Чтобы окончательно развеселить вас там как следует. Только вы никому не говорит.
In English:
> I’ll tell you a secret: yes, we will definitely do it! To finally cheer you up there properly. Just don't tell anyone.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_electoral_interventi...
From what I can tell I would state that Brasil has a better election system than the US. Millions voted and everything was counted in just a few hours. There seems to be a whole system to make absolutely sure the results can be trusted even when looser claim the other one cheated or votes are contested.
In the US it appears each state does their own thing. I remember "hanging chads" back in 2000, what a disaster.
A lot of people with strongly held beliefs got those from foreign propaganda, and it's important to realize that. And it's not just the right wing. A lot of left wing propaganda comes from outside as well.
Their goal is to cause discord and infighting, because as long as the US is infighting it won't be effective projecting its power outside, which is their ultimate goal.
It's a perfect game to play because dividing a country along the contractions in it's own ideology is unresolvable, beautiful political maneuvering. To have countered something like this, the US would've needed to probably triple it's investing in universal education 20 years ago.
He's more like the head of Putin's SS than the head of his kitchen.
I happen to have just finished reading "Trump / Russia: A Definitive History" Seth Hettena. I think it's a good book and it covers, among other things, Prigozhin's role in some of the past goings-on that are relevant for the present.
In 1996 the US interfered in Russia's elections to help Yeltsin, the man who soon afterward played a major role in putting Putin in power.
Soros has donated $126M for midterms tomorrow. [1]
But, you know, mean tweets, Putin's puppet, etc, etc.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/us/politics/midterm-money...
I'm going to say that if these creeps donate millions and billions to Republican campaigns, cycle after cycle, with no effective objections from the court or Congress, that "foreign interference" is a nationalist dogwhistle and not a serious concern.
And the US interferes in other countries elections. It's always been this way.
It's just an issue now, because interference in the 2016 election was spun by domestic political groups to delegitimize an elected president and subvert the democratic process by attempting to remove the president.
Are you suggesting that US elections can be rigged?
I'm not American and not hugely partisan on the right/left thing but I think the whole world was watching that one and thinking it a bit odd. Obviously the Russians were trying to help Trump and may have swung things a little given that the vote was so close.
No one is alleging collusion between Russia and Trump, so you are alluding to baseless conspiracy theories here.
>Obviously the Russians were trying to help Trump and may have swung things a little given that the vote was so close.
Suggesting that American elections are insecure and have been tampered with is perpetuating The Big Lie conspiracy theory.
The Russians trying to help their prefered candidate wasn't so different to any number of other people and organisations trying to do similarnexcept they broke some laws.
Both extremes of the spectrum are pretty vocal. But I believe that there is a much bigger, more open minded center on all platforms.
The US CIA has done this, much more directly and brazenly, in South America for decades.
Kind of funny when Americans act like buff shirtless Bernie memes are worse than organizing and funding coups
IMO The Iraq War was the last colossal bullshit thing to date. Many Americans (self included) were against it and we're a few presidents removed from that shitty decision. Around the time of the invasion, Putin cited it as something that excuses his current behavior. But saying the US did something years ago does not justify one's own bullshit.
I don't want to presume too much of you. Do you speak Spanish?
Because what changed my mind about that wave of leaders was listening to them speak unfiltered in Spanish. They came across to me as not having any idea what they're doing. The ideas sound good on the surface (power to the people!) but they are corrupt, incompetent, narcissistic bullshitters. Like your sibling comment says, their inadequate leadership was for some time covered up by the high price of oil. When oil prices fluctuate, they have problems. They blame all their internal problems on the United States.
Many Americans (right wingers on the right, tankies on the left) mix up US politics with all this, or in the case of the left, believe this last point about how every internal problem is somehow caused by the devilish US, glorifying chavismo as some kind of "enemy of my enemy" thing; I myself was guilty of this last point in the past. But Chavistas don't need any help from the US in achieving poor outcomes. They do it themselves.
They do have popular support in their country. So does Vladimir Putin. So did Hitler. It just goes to show that it's OK to personally disagree with the will of voters in other countries. That is quite a bit different from a coup.
These things are all larger than some individual actor.
Sorry, a guy who reminded me of you called from 1973 and says that there's no evidence that the US was involved in the Allende coup.
But US was certainly behind a wave of color revolutions that just happened to occur in many of the former Soviet Republics and just happened to install pro-US governments that adopted anti-Russian policies (when successful). There is a whole book written about it:
https://www.routledge.com/The-Colour-Revolutions-in-the-Form...
The US was also behind the "Arab Spring" revolts that spread chaos to the Arab world (but not much democracy), as well as periodically stoking revolts in Iran. For some reason, there are a huge number of well armed foreign men murdering police in Iran in the name of women's rights, when Saudi Arabia or the other gulf states aren't exactly known for women's rights, but strangely have had no similar movements. I wonder why that is.
In Southeast Asia, the US is funding violent groups in Myanmar that have been killing school teachers, hospital employees, emergency workers, police, etc in an attempt to overthrow the junta and replace it with a government in exile that is headquartered in Virginia.
In Pakistan, the US is funding Baluchi rebels that have been attacking Chinese engineers working on belt and road projects, and recently tried to assassinate the Chinese Ambassador.
We overthrew the government of Ukraine twice, in 2004 and 2014, installing a repressive anti-Russian government in its place. We tried to overthrow the government of Kazakhstan and Byelorussia earlier.
Etc.
For example, the US had a program to arm tibetans and train them to commit sabotage in China in the 1950s. That's not to say that Tibetans did not exist as an ethnic group or that they had no grievances against Han Chinese. That's not how this stuff works. So the point is that by drawing boundaries to include large Russian populations in the 1920s, this created exactly the recipe for racial conflict when the provinces became independent nations. Then appeals could be made to people like your father to take up arms and foment violence. It just requires a steady stream of funding, propaganda, buying media, stoking up long standing hatreds, etc. That's the recipe of color revolutions. It's also how the British operated in many parts of the empire, exploiting existing ethnic dividing lines.
Similarly in the Arab world, there were legitimate grievances, for example in Libya. Of course the end result was the dismemberment of the nation, but that's how the US operates -- they pry open existing grievances and create chaos and violence in order to further geostrategic goals.
To be fair, The Soviet Union did the same thing during the cold war, famously providing funding for various radical racial groups in the U.S. in an attempt to create chaos in America in the 1960s. So it wasn't just the US and Britain that operates this way. The point is to leverage whetever fractures there are in society and make those larger.
As I re-read you are also saying the protests against Lukashenko were a US led coup attempt. Sorry, that is just nuts. I'm going to hazard a guess that if you aren't deliberately lying, you don't know very much about Lukashenko. You are just repeating all the Kremlin type stuff without skepticism. I really don't have polite words.
Meanwhile, nearly every country occupied by soviet union is doing everything to help Ukraine who is fighting this way more deathly war.
a) is highly improbable, b) and c) are proof that the media narrative is all bullshit to push a political agenda.
I read axios once a while because it's short, and, it seems more objective than all the rest(except for APNews and Reuters that is), so it's the 3rd site I visit.