Gryzemuis on 13/12/2019 at 15:11
Quote Posted by Nicker
Putin wins again.
Are you joking ? Or do you seriously think Putin has anything to do with Brexit, the UK, or these elections ?
Gryzemuis on 13/12/2019 at 15:19
Quote Posted by heywood
I'm curious to hear the analysis from those of you who are over there
I'm not in the UK (I'm a neighboring country).
One thing that people should't forget is the negative impact of the district-voting system, where the winner takes all.
Tories won 43% of the votes, but they got 56% of the seats.
Labour won 30% of the votes, they got 31.3% of the seats.
SNP won 3.9% of the votes, they got 7.3% of the seats !
Liberal Democrats won 11% of the votes, they got 1.6% of the seats.
Remember, a district-voting-system, where the winner takes all, almost always favours the establishment (the biggest party). It has a huge impact on who gets the power. And a huge impact on preventing change. Slow change is almost impossible with such a system. I find it a very anti-democratic system.
Thirith on 13/12/2019 at 15:21
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
Are you joking ? Or do you seriously think Putin has anything to do with Brexit, the UK, or these elections ?
I thought there's been quite a lot suggesting Russian involvement in the disinformation campaigns of the last few years. Regardless of whether you believe it or the extent of it, it's definitely not just some new, fringe conspiracy theory.
(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum)
Gryzemuis on 13/12/2019 at 15:28
People need to take responsibility for their own actions. That also means countries need to take responsibility for the actions of their own citizens. It was Brits that voted for Johnson here. It was the Brits who voted for Brexit (twice now). It was American hillbillies/clowns/fascists that voted for Trump.
Impact of other countries does exist. E.g. the EU (who are not Scotsmen, and not Brits) did a huge last-minute campaign (including lots of FUD) against the Scottish independence elections. One of our larger parties (the PVV) is mostly paid for by Israel. But overall, I think those efforts efforts are small, compared to country's, politician's, media's, party's own propaganda. Pointing to the Russians (or anyone else) is just a sign of weakness and stupidity. It's the Americans who are to blame for Trump, and the Brits who are responsible for Johnson and Brexit.
Vae on 13/12/2019 at 15:29
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
Are you joking ? Or do you seriously think Putin has anything to do with Brexit, the UK, or these elections ?
Given that Nicker is a staunch believer of Russia conspiracy theories, sadly, he is not joking.
Decentralization, is not the work of Putin...it is the inevitable progression of humanity, due to the nature of technological advancement.
Thirith on 13/12/2019 at 15:33
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
People need to take responsibility for their own actions. That also means countries need to take responsibility for the actions of their own citizens. It was Brits that voted for Johnson here. It was the Brits who voted for Brexit (twice now). It was American hillbillies/clowns/fascists that voted for Trump.
Impact of other countries does exist. E.g. the EU (who are not Scotsmen, and not Brits) did a huge last-minute campaign (including lots of FUD) against the Scottish independence elections. One of our larger parties (the PVV) is mostly paid for by Israel. But overall, I think those efforts efforts are small, compared to country's, politician's, media's, party's own propaganda. Pointing to the Russians (or anyone else) is just a sign of weakness and stupidity. It's the Americans who are to blame for Trump, and the Brits who are responsible for Johnson and Brexit.
Yeah, it's not like things can't be more complex than that.
I hear you with respect to taking responsibility, and for one thing I think that Corbyn finally needs to take some responsibility for what has happened as well, but if taking responsibility means embracing some reductive scenario, I'm sorry but that's bullshit. And dismissing things because you think those efforts are small? Unless you're someone who's looked at the data over a longer timespan and applied sound methodology to it, then your opinion is pretty much pulled out of your arse, and everyone has an opinion like that.
nickie on 13/12/2019 at 16:04
Quote Posted by heywood
I'm not sure how to interpret the results in Wales (nickie?)
I'm not sure how to interpret the results of anything, I'm afraid. And I'm not sure I care. I'm not trying to be flippant, I'm just so tired of it all. They'll be banging on about the results for days or weeks. When that's over, I expect to become a bit more energised. Ceredigion was held by Plaid Cymru with Tories 2nd.
I think the only thing I'm particularly interested in now is where the Conservative money came from and what the withheld report on Russian interference says.
Gryzemuis on 13/12/2019 at 16:04
Do you know what Hillary herself thinks about why she lost the elections ? The two main things were: 1) her ignoring the swing-states too much, and 2) James Comey. 11 Days before the elections, James Comey stated to the world: "we think Clinton broke the law, we have evidence, we're sure we can prove it, and we're gonna persecute her". And then right after the elections he said: "uh, we don't have any evidence, we're not gonna persecute her". If there was ever any direct meddling in the 2016 elections, it was that. Comey had 100x more impact on the elections than any Russian did.
For months, maybe even now, there was a narrative that the Russians had hacked the elections and changed voting-results. Time and time again it was stated that no such thing has happened. But the narrative continues. That's pure manipulation. Pure war-mongering.
There is a narrative that "ze russians" have bought ads on Facebook to influence the elections. (
https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-ad-spend/) Fact is: the IRA (a troll farm, paid for by a Russian guy, not the Russian government) bought $46K worth of ads on Facebook on the day before the elections. Trump and Clinton spent $81M on Facebook ads that day. That's almost 2000x as much. I don't know the numbers for Clinton and Trump, but I remember that Obama spent ~$1B on his campaign. So I assume Trump and Clinton spent a similar amount of money. Given those huge numbers, do you really think "ze russians" decided the 2016 elections ?
If you want to blame foreigners, blame the Australians. What Rupert Murdoch has done with his Fox News unbelievable. 20+ Years of lies, propaganda, misleading and utter bullshit. 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, 23 years in a row. Constant fascist propaganda. Made by Americans, eaten by Americans, paid for by an Australian (who probably makes more money off of Fox News now, than it costed him to start it). There is your unfair meddling with US elections. By lying and cheating and spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Do I need to give examples of all the bullshit Fox News has spread ?
The Russians are not my friends. But they are also not my enemy. Since the putsch in Kiev there has been a steady stream of propaganda to blame the Russians for everything. I'm still not sure why (I got some ideas). It's not just the Americans. Media in my own country have also been publishing bullshit stories trying to paint the Russians as the new enemies. It's almost as if someone would like to start a new Cold War.
If people want to worry about something, they should worry about why progressive parties and politicians around the world are unable to get voters to vote for them. The world has always been unfair. But to my surprise, it's only getting less and less fair. We're gonna end up with a new aristocracy, the 0.1%, who will own 90% of everything. And the rest of the world population can go and fuck themselves. Just like a few centuries ago. It should be easy to get people to vote for progressive parties and progressive ideas to make the world more fair. But obviously I'm mistaken. Why ? Why can't Labour, the Democrats, leftish parties, socialists, etc not easily acquire more power and make the world a better place ?
It's not because of the Russians. I can tell you that.
Starker on 13/12/2019 at 18:03
Do you really think this isn't a huge win for Putin? The dissolution of NATO and the EU are very high on his priority list.
It doesn't make a lick of difference whether IRA is run by "a russian guy" who just happens to be one of the wealthy oligarchs in Putin's inner circle or an official in the Russian government. Can you guess where a good chunk of his wealth comes from? Hint: it has something to do with the Russian government. And active measures have an impact that can not be easily weighed in bought ad dollars.
As for US election hacking, just read the Mueller Report -- the GRU absolutely did hack state databases and got access to voter rolls. While there was no evidence of any votes being changed, there's a lot of other things you can do with such information. Such as highly targeted messaging and voter suppression for the opponent and whatnot. Guess what Lord Dampnut's campaign did the last month of the election? They focused on voter suppression in some very select swing states.
Furthermore, I would wager that DNC cloud servers being hacked and their e-mails strategically being released to maximise the impact (the first batch just hours after the Hollywood Access tape became public) had at least some effect on the election.
And that's just some of the things that have become public.
caffeinatedzombeh on 13/12/2019 at 20:15
Quote Posted by heywood
It's really happening now and there's a pretty good chance that somebody else will follow their lead.
Who though? They'd have to have a significant enough portion of the population wanting to leave to ask them a question that could have that sort of long term consequence, have enough people who when asked would actually do it and be in a position where leaving is actually possible.
I've no idea whether anyone is in a position of wanting to but relatively few are in a position of being capable.
Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, Czech republic, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia certainly all could by not being in the Euro
Which Eurozone members could I'm not sure as I'm too lazy to look up actual target2 balances and compare them against something meaningful to make a semi educated guess (I'm unlazy enough to dig out a graph though but with a scale graduated in €100bn it's hard to judge the actual positions of those near 0), Italy for example owes everyone else (Germany) ~€0.5tn if they decide to leave so even if they wanted to they couldn't.
Various people have compared the way the euro works to a ticking time bomb. I'd liken it more to a landmine that they're all stood on, it's fine as long as nobody tries to get off.
