> Big business is subject to federal mafia clan wars.
This can be summarized with one word "corruption". Corruption that is deep, toxic, and permeates every sphere of life. From small things like getting a passport or drivers' license. What kind of grades kids will get in kindergarten, to large things like the government appropriating and stealing billion dollar companies.
Corruption becomes a way of life and it spreads like a disease.
It is hard to describe how it feels. You know as corrupt as US is, one can at least have a little hope that the judicial system will work. At the end of the day if someone commits murder and they are caught, you know there will probably be a good trial. In these countries (at least where I am from), one can commit murder and then there is a price you pay to the prosecutor, police, judge to make it "go way".
If you start a business, and are very successful you might pop on the radar of the local mafia, who has members in the local government. They will ensure that your business has not "paid all the taxes" or that your immigration paperwork "was not in order" and kick you out of the country and take your business.
Going through life you see this. Colleagues in school who fail everything and don't do work are getting top grades in a final exam. You try to pass a drivers' exam and you are getting deliberately failed with hints that a bribe is necessary for you to pass and so on. That is very stressful and it something I am not used do and don't want to be used to. Others, on the contrary, thrive and prosper in that environment.
Recent news confirm this. >> Pavel Durov the former CEO of Russia's main social network, VKontakte and founder of Telegram quit his job at the beginning of this month saying, "it has become increasingly complicated to stick to the principles we once founded our social site upon.” Speculators gave an educated guess that Russian authorities have been pushing for more and more censorship on the site. Two days later, he apparently "unresigned," but that wasn't the end of this story. >>
http://arcticstartup.com/2014/04/25/lithuania-pavel-druov
It is somewhat worse than just corruption. A mafia is esger to make positive harm by killing/injuring/damaging property/kidnapping... whereas corruption may just be a "hindrance". You risk your life or property if you fight a mafia, unlike fighting corruption.
Although it is true that the bad extreme of corruption is a mafia.
> At the end of the day if someone commits murder and they are caught, you know there will probably be a good trial.
I won't claim to have done anywhere near enough research to know either way, but I have heard and read a lot of supposedly educated people say that trials now are extremely rare, primarily due to plea bargaining. I personally think that plea bargaining is a terrible idea in our current legal system.
"shot down by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes on 3 July 1988," "All 290 on board, including 66 children and 16 crew, died"
"The Fogarty report stated, "The data from USS Vincennes tapes, information from USS Sides and reliable intelligence information, corroborate the fact that [Iran Air Flight 655] was on a normal commercial air flight plan profile, in the assigned airway, squawking Mode III 6760, on a continuous ascent in altitude from take-off at Bandar Abbas to shoot-down.""
"shot down by the Ukrainian military over the Black Sea on 4 October 2001" "Ukraine eventually admitted that the disaster was probably caused by an errant missile fired by its armed forces.[1] Ukraine ended up paying $15 million to surviving family members of 78 victims ($200,000 per victim)."
This article isn't actually about the shooting down of any flights. It's about the more general way the Russian government operates. Maybe it would have been a better article had it not mentioned any flights, lest the conversation be derailed by debate over the causes & outcomes of the recent tragedy.
> This article isn't actually about the shooting down of any flights.
Have you read it?
It actually writes:
"The mass murder of passengers & crew of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 using Russian’s weapons and (most likely) by hands of Russian military squad exposed to the world that Russia is now complicit in committing crimes against humanity."
Now what do you think about proved US and Ukrainian plane shootings? Aren't they crimes?
"on February 3, 1998, near the Italian town of Cavalese, a ski resort in the Dolomites" "Twenty people died when a United States Marine Corps EA-6B Prowler aircraft cut a cable supporting a gondola of an aerial tramway." "the subsequent acquittal of the pilots, strained relations between the United States and Italy."
Or is this "just a human error"? Where to draw the line?
These two are even older, from 1978 and 1983 respectively. Also note that the 007 was some 500 miles away and that 902 was a few thousands miles away from its regular path. Not so with 655, 812 or MH17.
Most people will probably say the key difference is that the US incident was a mistaken attempt to defend an imminent attack, rather than a terrorist attack. Being perhaps more cynical, I would say the key difference is that Russia is not the biggest kid on the playground.
They definitely thought it was an Ukrainian military transport plane. I don't see how the distinction between enemy military transport plane and enemy fighter/bomber is of any importance here.
Version about rebels taking passenger plane for AN-26 seems plausible, considering that rebels themselves seemed to believe it in the first minutes after the event (I am judging by the reaction of their mouthpieces on Russian internet which I happened to see with my own eyes).
Anyway that's not the point, the point is that even if (people may still doubt) the rebels downed the plane, at worst they thought of it as of an Ukrainian military plane, ie they had no intention to kill noncombatants, it was definitely not an 'act of terrorism' as Ukrainian govt wants to paint it.
I am talking about Boris Rozhin's livejournal ('colonelcassad'). That's about as close as it gets to rebels' mouthpiece, being probably the most popular social media outlet with separatist viewpoint (not to be confused with Russian govt's viewpoint). Of course he is not an official figure of any kind, but if anyone can be trusted to be able to tell legit sources from 'hotheads in their mommies' basements', that's him.
It's a journalist from Crimea, Nobody you should consider to be fully informed with what rebels do. I can imagine he's now a kind of a war reporter, but in wars there are a lot of rumors. Nothing can be more probable than that somebody actually saw the crash and produced the rumor that that's an achievement of the rebels and the journalist repeated it.
Oh, it's simple. Separatists were posting how happy they were about bringing down the Ukrainian military plane. In some hours it turned out it was MH17, the messages were deleted then. (I've seen the post myself, not a screenshot).
How can you know if separatist on the internet are real rebel commanders or just some hotheads in their mommies' basements or (gasp) other intelligence agencies? How do you know that nobody took over their digital identities? We're on HN we all know how easy it is.
I assume I know that since that account has a rich history of timely reports, quite a few with unique media content. The account is being continued to be filled with the same inside information which indicates it is unlikely to be hacked.
Really? What makes you believe that the incident a few days ago didn't happen for the exact same reasons?
We do not even know who shot the plane down, but what we do know is that the captain who shot down the Iranian plane received medals and was promoted after the incident.
In the case of the Siberia Airlines Flight, I do not find it unlikely that Russia pressured them to admit it was them. At the time, Ukraine was basically a Russian satellite state. The evidence is inclusive, but Ukraine just suddenly admitted it was them.
This is one of the typical rants by Russian immigrant who enjoyed top quality free education in USSR/Russia which made his success possible (+ no student loans), left during turmoil of 1990-2000s and still judging Russia on that bad memories basis.
Article is full of clichés and gives general FOX news feel while reading.
I lived in Moscow in 2011 and I'm part of that creative class he mentions and no one in my social network was supporting the protests. I doesn't mean that we are happy with all that happens - we just believe in slow and steady hard work towards better Russia and progress so far proves that it's working.
Stop blaming Russia for everything - you're not USA State Department! :)
Max article seems spot on. The blame is on Russian brand - which is hijacked by current Russia power structure, not on the Russian people per se, even though they share the responsibility for that kind of government. Cliches here, unfortunately, are rooted in realities - it's sad, but compare Russia with a failed state is probably not too much of an exaggeration. The fact that US has its own corruption does little justification to - much bigger, in my opinion - problems in Russia.
What's your plan? How do you organize? How do you persuade people? How do you plan on gaining power peacefully?
> and progress so far proves that it's working.
What's your track record? How do you measure progress? This post-2006 Putin era can be just a temporary setback, but since he (and the Kremlin and the Duma) rolled back so many laws and principles, that it seems to be a seriously hard blow, very hard to stand up from for at least a generation to come, and when progress will happen, it'll be probably because of exogenous factors encouraged/forced it.
It's easy to understand the author's hidden sentiment that Russia is very ineffective state currently and depends too much on natural resources export and enforcement. But what bothers me most is that all of those former Russian immigrants sit in their comfortable chairs somewhere in Nebraska and yapping endlessly while not giving a sparrow's effort to research the actual situation and suggest anything to improve it. Instead they spread xenophobia and popularize knee-jerk reactions to events. I.e. they're just hatred-filled idiots who waste our time on reading them.
> The murder weapon happens to also be in the hand of the Ukrainian army (19 systems, 3 of them stationed in the range of the crash site) [2]
If the Ukrainians were responsible, why are the rebels trying to cover up all the traces and why are they interfering with the international investigation? (Also, the source you quote is from Russian media, which are inherently biased, much more so than the multiple other sources whose evidence points towards Russia-backed rebels)
I can certainly not say you're view is wrong and I didn't know of the group membership (thanks for that). Still, my 2ct
Motive: The motive "mistake" is a motive that works for both sides.
Identity: The membership in the groups "Russian" and "former FSB" is at most an indication. "All former FSB members that are Russian shoot down passenger air planes" holds as much as "All Germans kill jews" and "All jews kill Palestinians"
Murder weapon: The thing is, I assume Western media is as biased as Russian media. The very fact they rarely even consider Ukrainian govt participation (as they should also with the Maidan sniper shootings) makes me wonder what side I should trust less.
> Motive: The motive "mistake" is a motive that works for both sides.
Yes but as I said, if this was a mistake from the Ukrainian part, the rebels would have everything to gain to prove it. But all they seem to be doing right now is strongly interfere with the investigation.
> Identity: The membership in the groups "Russian" and "former FSB" is at most an indication. "All former FSB members that are Russian shoot down passenger air planes" holds as much as "All Germans kill jews" and "All jews kill Palestinians"
That's not the point that I made there. The most likely explanation is that it's a mistake. Russia gave the "separatists" (which are truly agents of the government) a sophisticated anti-air weapon. Someone used it against a plane, only they messed up and ended up shooting down a civilian airplane. I am pretty sure that the Kremlin is super pissed off that this happened. This doesn't change the fact that: the "separatists" are Russian agents (who are maybe a bit too much on the loose?) and that Russia gave them the weapon that lead to this mistake. I'm certainly not saying that Russia wanted this plane to be shot down (and that seems very unlikely, considering how much backlash they are facing now).
> The thing is, I assume Western media is as biased as Russian media. The very fact they rarely even consider Ukrainian govt participation (as they should also with the Maidan sniper shootings) makes me wonder what side I should trust less.
I would disagree. Of course, Western media are biased, but the bias they have is mostly done through capital (big media groups with ties to politicians). Russian media is a propaganda machine. Despite all the flaws of our Western countries, they are still less corrupted and less susceptible to propaganda than Russia.
> The very fact they rarely even consider Ukrainian govt participation (as they should also with the Maidan sniper shootings) makes me wonder what side I should trust less.
It's a sad thing but that's something to be expected of "general consumption" media. Of course they will paint Ukraine as the good guys and Russia as the bad guys because it serves their story. But that doesn't mean that Russia isn't the bad guy here, and most of the evidence points that way.
In particular in this plane crisis, it has to be said that neither the USA nor the EU want to be involved in Ukraine. A war over there would be yet another mess (like Yugoslavia was). So far the position of the EU and the USA has been fairly tame, but the fact that Russia was caught red-handed delivering weapons to wage their proxy war (and annex some new territory to "the Greater Russia", which is Putinism's ultimate goal), changes things, and the USA and the EU may have to get reluctantly involved if Russia doesn't back off. Considering that the USA and the EU don't have much to gain or to lose in Ukraine (because let's face it, Western people don't give a shit about the fate of the Ukrainians for the most part, as has been demonstrated by the previous very weak involvement during the riots; and due to the fact that Ukraine has very little to offer since they don't have any significant natural resources), I'd say that Western media (and in particular more specialized media you can find on the web written by analysts and not general purpose journalists) are much more likely to be trustworthy on this.
> This view is partially based on the WMD allegations in Iraq and the use of chemical weapons by Assad, both of which can be considered "false flags".
The WMD allegations were largely countered by many of the Western media (in particular in Europe). France refused to participate in that war.
He's mostly right, although I'd correct a few important things:
* Putin's approval is now at 86+%, an all-time high,
* and it's universal across socio-economic classes. A lot of young bright facebook-equipped software engineers are Putin's fans.
* even a lot of first-generation Russians in US absolutely love Putin, for the sense of belonging to a great empire which he gave them (finally someone stood up to evil America!)
* because of the above, any dissenter is basically a pariah
... and yet it is a quite accurate portrayal of the current situation in Russia. I should know - I'm Polish and my country was annexed by Russia on several occasions.
I would add that the western EU countries seem to have learned nothing from history. Trying to appease a country with ambitions to become an empire, that annexes neighboring countries -- let's see, haven't we seen that before?
And if we are going back to the times of Polish annexation we can remember Polish people robbing Russia, burning Moscow, trying to put Polish dude on the throne and best part - exploitation of Ukrainians :). And yes, Poland is also known for imperial ambitions. Generally European history is full of wars and mutual blame. Take UK for example - conquered by French and ruled by German dynasty.
So once again, please, stop blaming Russia, go on with your life, build better country for you to live in.
NATO is expanding and Russians were not happy about that way before current situation. Being Crimean myself I would say that so much feared 'annexation' was forced on to Russia by Crimean local establishment. Not that Russia was against it though. As a matter of fact - throughout 23 of the Ukrainian independence it was never less than 65% of Crimeans that were ready to join Russia.
Ukrainian crisis is the result of building nationalistic state in the country with two different cultures, frequently incompatible. And also grave incompetence of the Ukrainian government leading to escalation of the conflict.
Poland and Baltic states - these countries are outright hostile toward Russia, yes, it has historical reasons. But now it's easier to trade and use economic power than to conquer and control territory. These countries are part of EU, and Russia will never - until forced - engage in any military confrontation with them.
I think saying "NATO is expanding" you mean that Ukrainian choice of signing agreements with EU left Russia no choice.
From Ukrainian point of view, they are an independent country - which may, at different times, get into different unions with different partners.
So, Russian (actually, Russian government) point of view that any Ukrainian motion towards EU signals a threat to Russia doesn't justify Russian hostilities, because Ukraine is an independent country. And when Russia in turn decided to protect its perceived interests, it went against that independence - and all things associated with that.
Ukraine is acting in its (perceived) interests, and Russia -- in its own. Where is the problem?
The thing is, there is a handful of superpowers in the world, which dictate the geopolitical motions. A smaller country bordering a superpower can be friends with it, be strictly neutral (see Finland) or be friends with opposing superpowers (see Ukraine). The last scenario means you are asking for all sorts of shit to happen to you. It's not "good", but that's how things are.
Complete and total bullshit, based on US propaganda against Russia. I live in Russia and build my second IT business here. Most of my friends are entrepreneurs from Moscow and other cities.
Of course there is corruption, autocracy and alcoholism. It is there for several hundreds of years, and we have to deal with that. But situation is actually getting better with time. You can't change loves of millions of people in an instant.
Propaganda is an interesting point. In fact, I think it is not strong enough to counter the massive western information war against Russia. I read BBC and NY times regularly, and constantly notice biased and one-sided view.
I think that the author fall victim to the NY Times style propaganda articles about the evil Putin, connected it with his experience and decided to support it. I don'think it is a objective point of view and it does not describe reality.
It's confirmation bias at work. People often can't control their "reptilian brain" effectively. Having some superfluous idea they only find confirmations to it all around all worse if they are emotionally unstable at the moment.
I honestly don't know how to feel about this. It's really just as deceptive in presenting a clear cut and linear case about the other side, as if geopolitics really are this straightforward, and not actually a cryptic clusterfuck. It's just as pandering as Russian propaganda, or any form of propaganda.
That and, for what it's worth, I can see there being just as big of an incentive for Ukraine, as for Russia, to take down MH17. In fact, I found the immediate pinpointing of the blame on Russia to be strange. If they were the perpetrators, then they shot themselves in the foot. It's just a baffling and asinine strategic decision.
The rebels posted on twitter that they shot down a Ukraine military airplane around the same time as when MH17 was shot down. Yet no Ukraine airplane was shot down. The tweet was later deleted but can be found on web.archive.org.
So hitting Ukrainian planes is OK?
There wasn't any kind of terrorists that I'm aware of who got access to such a sophisticated weapons. And no one of those 'monkeys' could even handle with that 'BUK'. It's obvious that only trained army team could make this launch and it's obvious for us(Ukrainians here) that after brutal annexation of Crimea , this sick freak wont stop until he gets punched in the face. He doesn't understand any other language other that rude force.
Ukraine is weak, much weaker that Russia now. Mostly because the very same Russia-oriented mafia clans. Former government of Ukraine is now hiding in Russia and they wont be judged there. Russia's mission number one was to prove that Ukraine is a failed-state. This is the main reason why all this happening. Max explains the rest in his post.
I never said it was okay? I said there wasn't any strategy to it. Don't put words in my mouth.
I was only saying that it wasn't intentional, there was no strategy behind it, so you can't really ask "What were they thinking" because they weren't. You knee-jerked yourself into oblivion.
Great read, I like how author's perspective and distance helps him see through a layer of lies and propaganda. I have russian and ukrainian friends and they confirm everything said in the post, they left their home countries because they didn't feel safe there.
> If Kiev government survives, it will fairly quickly unlock economic benefits of non-mafia, free economy.
...maybe. The rest of the Ukrainian political elite is also fairly corrupt, actually. So I expect it to take a decade at the very least. See, for example, Romania and Bulgaria.
As much as most of it may be true, Russia's fault in the Malaysian plane shoot-down hasn't been proved, even the crash site hasn't been examined properly, isn't it too early for such conclusions?
There is a massive amount of secondary evidence, all of which points in the same direction. Here is few research resources, unfortunately they are all in russian; perhaps google translate will recover enough meaning for it to be useful:
It wasn't proved, but there is not a believable alternative scenario.
There are videos of transported missiles, intercepted calls, orders of obstructing access to crash site... John Kerry even says there is "Enormous amount of evidence" for that scenario. Still not 100% sure, but 99% yes.
For a country to officially start condemning or placing blame on Russia there would have to be irrefutable evidence I'd say. I wouldn't want to get into a seriously heated conflict without being 100% sure, so even 99% wouldn't be good enough if I were in the driver seat. Result being people all standing around, shifty-eyed, 99% sure Russia and the separatists are behind the shooting, no one dares throw the first punch with 99% certainty.
But what kind of evidence do you consider irrefutable? This is a murky situation where officially there are no russian soldiers in Ukraine and the 'separatists' are just volunteers who happen to have military training and access to russian weapons. You know, nothing special, such things happen in every country.
It can be a conspiracy by Ukraine's government (with some possible help from some foreign intelligence advisors) to discredit pro-Russian faction. Or idiots in pro-Russian faction that didn't confirm or were mislead about the target (like someone falsely hinting them about the plane) before shooting it down. I wonder why all those people state it as if they know the truth already. If it is not propaganda at work then I don't know what is.
Missiles in video appeared to be Ukrainian - people identified street and city, calls has strong indication of being mixed up from several sources, OSCE dismissed all talks about obstructing access to the crash site.
So the reasonable thing to do now is to wait for ICAO verdict. Regardless of who actually hit the plane, Ukraine is still to blame for directing it to fly over the war zone.
Seems like the stereotype of the self hating Jew now has its counterpart in the self hating Russian.
While all deaths are deplorable being a world power means killing people you disagree with. And unlike the US of to a small but quickly growing extent China Russia lacks the geopolitical power to change the rules of the game.
"Modern Russia is not a weaker version of Soviet Union “empire of evil.” This capability is, thankfully, long gone." - empire of evil is still alive and well, after defeating the Soviet Union and is still seeking for new proper enemies (will it be you, China?).
He's trying to rationalize his personal hate of russians. I've heard a lot of such speeches from 1980-90 emigrants, usually they have no idea what's really going on here.
Living in UK I can say that something is terribly wrong with freedom of speech and objectivity of mass media - Russian media reports all possible scenarios, blames Putin, Ukraine, rebels, but UK press is all focused on blaming Russia.
Where's the alternative? UK media is free to blame Russia?
Remember that Russian gay propaganda ban? So much noise, and at the same time Saudi Arabia executes gay people and there's no USA/UK campaign against it.
Show me just one blame for Putin from Russian mainstream media.
Or someone calling separatists a 'rebels'. They prefer to hide them under credible-sounded 'militia', you'll have to knew it if you're watching kremlin TV.
This can be summarized with one word "corruption". Corruption that is deep, toxic, and permeates every sphere of life. From small things like getting a passport or drivers' license. What kind of grades kids will get in kindergarten, to large things like the government appropriating and stealing billion dollar companies.
Corruption becomes a way of life and it spreads like a disease.
It is hard to describe how it feels. You know as corrupt as US is, one can at least have a little hope that the judicial system will work. At the end of the day if someone commits murder and they are caught, you know there will probably be a good trial. In these countries (at least where I am from), one can commit murder and then there is a price you pay to the prosecutor, police, judge to make it "go way".
If you start a business, and are very successful you might pop on the radar of the local mafia, who has members in the local government. They will ensure that your business has not "paid all the taxes" or that your immigration paperwork "was not in order" and kick you out of the country and take your business.
Going through life you see this. Colleagues in school who fail everything and don't do work are getting top grades in a final exam. You try to pass a drivers' exam and you are getting deliberately failed with hints that a bribe is necessary for you to pass and so on. That is very stressful and it something I am not used do and don't want to be used to. Others, on the contrary, thrive and prosper in that environment.