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Comment by maxboone | Hacker News Reader

We don't know whether this was Russia, it's just as likely it was the "farmers defence force" or climate activists.

Edit: some context as I'm looking like a Russian shill now, which I understand. Today is the day that the budget gets announced, and the farmer terrorist organization (farmer defence force) have announced actions - and have disrupted highways by setting bales of hay on fire, and all the disruptions happened where farmer concentrations are high.

Regardless, the situation is dire, and probably either the tankies or terror farmers are being helped by Russian destabilizing forces, it's too early to call this disruption an action from the FSB.

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In the case of France it is pretty obvious, they would never attack random people in such a way. They either target public infrastructure or very specific politician/execs properties, not random people, and definitely not in a way that could result in deaths.

>or very specific politician/execs properties, not random people,

I don't know enough about dutch politics but in my country if the blue collar anti-regulation people wanted to annoy the white collar pro-regulation people without annoying other blue collar people stopping the trains would accomplish that pretty handily.

>and definitely not in a way that could result in deaths.

They laid pipes and jumper cables across the tracks causing the signals to be red.

Those famously anti-train climate activists…

Farmer advocates are not climate activists, surprisingly they have a negative correlation

Agreed

Yeah, my bet is on the farmers. The locations where this happened are all pretty rural and farmers have announced havy actions today.

We in NL need to be more concerned about domestic terrorism than the Russians at the moment. Though I'm sure Russian money and bots are involved in some way.

Definitely, and destabilizing by proxy is still an attack

You think farmers are willing to risk the murder of hundreds of their fellow countrymen as a form of protest? That’s plain terrorism.

Yes, they've already murdered people by causing accidents on the highway.

Are we allowed to call it terrorism now? Or just when it is farmers? I know that both climate activists and BLM have disrupted highways as well....

>caused accidents vs >"disrupted"

This equivocation is noted but not compelling

I used "disrupted" as that is the language that is used to describe these actions. When you disrupt something, you increase the likelihood of something non-standard happening including accidents. I believe the narrative was that if drivers can not pay attention to the road and keep control of their vehicles, then they should not be driving.

This was something that people decried about during the BLM and Stop Oil protests, see below for some of the accidents caused by those actions:

>M25 Police Motorbike Crash (November 2022): An Essex Police motorcycle officer was injured in a collision involving two lorries during a rolling roadblock. The roadblock was set up because Just Stop Oil activists were trespassing and climbing onto overhead gantries along the M25.

>Greenpeace bridge protesters blamed for crash on Fred Hartman Bridge https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/greenpeace-bridge-pr...

>Crash data raises safety questions about bridge protests on I-40 https://www.carolinajournal.com/crash-data-raises-safety-que...

Yes, I definitely think they are willing. I don't think all farmers are, not even that many of them are, but I think some are.

Some of them already dumped asbestos on highways, which to me is beyond what any reasonable person would do.

Don't you think those groups would have claimed responsibility by now?

no? if you are diligent you can say nothing and people will hopefully attribute it to your enemies and you get off with your own ploy of looking peaceful and harmless

In which case what do they gain here?

You can claim ownership via restricted channels, e.g. a phone call to key politicians, and rely on their self-interest to keep things quiet while understanding the threat.

In some cases, if the action is a bit too effective, you might even want to avoid it being pinned on you. Al Qaeda occasionally refused to claim ownership of things they very plainly did, and the Russians do it very often (e.g. when they shot down a Dutch passenger plane a few years ago).

if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...

Russia started with the hybrid war psyops shit, they don't get to complain about false accusations.

I'm not defending Russia, it's just that the farmers terrorist organisation has announced major disruptions today and has also set hay bales on fire to shut down highways.

For context: it's "Prinsjesdag" in the Netherlands which is when the budget is announced, and there are major changes to agriculture subsidies.

We've had a bunch of these acts of terrorism in Germany in the recent years. Mostly power, but also train and industrial targets. They all came from the same source, which is very much not Russian.

lol come on, I'm German. Of course a lot of the terrorism was probably (Vulkangruppe) or proven (the DHL and airport incidents, Tiergartenmord, SUV Bauschaum) Russian.

The only thing that is probably something else is that guy from the last week shooting wires over transmission lines (lone wolf ecoterrorist), and the Nord Stream explosion which likely was Ukrainian.

Anyone blathering about "the far left" is probably either far right or a Russian shill.

Don't be naive. They definitely are Russian backed acts. Not all sabotage is done directly by their state security apparatus, funding useful idiots has been the Russian modus operandi since the Soviet times.

There is no evidence supporting this statement and a lot of evidence directly countering it.

Ah yes, climate activists are widely known for hating public transport especially trains.

I wouldn't say they are widely known for hating the electric grid but hey here we are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_arson_attack_on_the_Berli...

Climate activists are definitely known for disliking fossil fuel plants - and there's one directly next to that.

I could see an activist naïvely thinking that this would sever that one power plant from the grid, making a clear anti-fossil statement. Still a bit of an odd choice (it's gas-powered, Germany has far dirtier lignite-powered ones), but not unthinkable.

uhu, sure thing boris!

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