VK CEO Fired, Says Company Under Kremlin Control 149
An anonymous reader writes "The embattled founder of VK, Russia's largest social networking site, said this week that the company is now 'under the complete control' of two oligarchs with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. In a VK post published Monday, Pavel Durov said he's been fired as CEO of the website, claiming that he was pushed out on a technicality, and that he only heard of it through media reports."
Sorry for lame joke but (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia, book FaceYou!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
In Russia, Media Socializes YOU.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Putin Russia, just like Soviet Russia but with better suits.
Don't Mess with April Fools (Score:3)
>> He appeared to announce his resignation from the company on April 1st, but later claimed that it was an April Fools' joke, and that he would remain onboard. In a statement issued Monday, however, VK said that Durov submitted a resignation letter on March 21st and never withdrew it within the mandatory one-month window. Because of that, Durov said, he will be "automatically relieved" of his position.
Politically, it's bad, but I do enjoy seeing someone's stupid April Fools stunt blow up in their face.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
>> He appeared to announce his resignation from the company on April 1st, but later claimed that it was an April Fools' joke, and that he would remain onboard. In a statement issued Monday, however, VK said that Durov submitted a resignation letter on March 21st and never withdrew it within the mandatory one-month window. Because of that, Durov said, he will be "automatically relieved" of his position.
Politically, it's bad, but I do enjoy seeing someone's stupid April Fools stunt blow up in their face.
Wow he's a total idiot. April fools joke means saying it not doing it.
Putin town hall (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
So, does anyone have any ideas ... (Score:1)
So, does anyone have any ideas where Edward Snowden might be working in Russia these days?
Facebook (Score:2)
Isn't Facebook basically under defacto control of the NSA anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Haha, a classic. Seriously, every day Facebook is in operation must be like Christmas to the spooks, it's the next best thing to direct access to people's thoughts. Even if you don't have an account people will talk about what you do, take pics of you and tag your face for the facial recognition engine!
Vulture Communisim: the Russian System (Score:3)
That's just how things work in Russia. There's not really any Rule of Law there. So once a company gets lucrative, the government swoops in and takes it over. Any unfortunate owner who tries to stand in the way finds himself in jail [wikipedia.org], or worse [wikipedia.org].
What I don't understand is why anyone would invest a single dime of their own money in a business operating in a country where the instant an investment starts paying off, someone else will come reap all your rewards. It just makes no sense whatsoever to try to do business there.
Re: (Score:2)
> What I don't understand is why anyone would invest a single dime of their own money in a business operating in a country where the instant an investment starts paying off, someone else will come reap all your rewards.
They don't. Not any more, not to the same extent. Russia actually took a significant economic hit when the investment money slowly evaporated over the past 10 years, but it's hidden by the rise in the price of oil and gas (at least gas in Europe, still, so far..).
Background (for those who didn't read TFA) (Score:2)
This Pavel Durov guy sent a resignation letter on April 1 saying that he resigned. Then a follow-up letter on April 3 stating that this was an April Fools joke and he'd like to recall the resignation letter.
Now, the VK social is undergoing hostile takeover and there's lots of going on that we don't know about.
What most don't seem to understand is:
You don't make such kind of jokes on April 1st without expecting consequences.
Imagine if
* Your boss joked "you're fired, pack your shit" and gave you a pink slip o
The other way around (Score:2)
This comes shortly after (Score:2)
The Russian state demanded that VK release info on (Ukrainian) users who used VK to organize Euromaidan protests. Durov told them to go fuck themselves.
Now not only he's fired, but he left Russia, and he went on record saying that he has no intent of returning. Can't blame him. I had to go there on a two-week business trip, and I always had that nagging thought of shit hitting the fan while I'm on the wrong side of the border (since I'm still a Russian citizen, it would probably result in me ending up as a
Re:Surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
The US should resume its former campaign of organising cope d'etat in communist countries. Russia is clearly out of control.
You use the word communist, but I don't think it means what you think it means.
Re:Surprised? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Putin seems to want the USSR back but without Communism as its form of government, though still with the USSR's authoritarianism. Kind of like how China isn't really Communist anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
To be more specific, they're using a blend of ultra-patriotism and religious traditionalism (not one specific religion, but whatever's traditional for various ethnic groups within Russia - i.e. Eastern Orthodoxy for Russians, Islam for Tatars etc) as the new state ideology.
Re: (Score:3)
That's propaganda. They have the form of Communism but not the function.
Re: (Score:2)
Pfft. You've never seen anyone being made to quarter soldiers in their homes, have you?
Re: (Score:2)
Only on Babylon 5
Re: (Score:2)
That's propaganda. They have the form of Communism but not the function.
Ah, well then it's much like the US Government propaganda. We have a form of a Constitution, but none of the Rights.
Constitution defines what you are made of, what the government can do, their limits, which is not at all the same as defining your rights. The US Government does have a Constitution, but I'm not sure exactly WHICH rights you think that that automatically should come with?
Think about various people's rights in this country before the 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th, 26th amendments. http://www.ushistory.org/docum... [ushistory.org]
It's a constant evolution, and hard work. It always will be, and it always has been. The people who wrote the United states Constitution knew that, and since you said "we", YOU should know that.
Ah yes, the old AD&D days...Constitution. Yes, I recall. It has about as much weight these days as our actual Constitution. Been reduced to nothing more than a museum attraction really. Perhaps you'll visit it someday, unless there's been a mistake at TSA and you've been flagged as a terrorist and put on a no-fly list unbeknownst to you whatsoever. And while done completely by accident it is now basically impossible to reverse. Welcome to your new-and-improved rights. Please enjoy your semi-perma
Re: (Score:2)
The Soviet Union was not communist. Like China it was state run capitalism. All countries are capitalist, with varying degrees of openness.
Re: Surprised. (Score:2, Insightful)
They both are communist in practice; It's just that the practical definition of communism clashes with the lies of communist propaganda, and that socialists/communists like you are always arguing that other socialists/communists aren't true socialists/communists.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, at least you have the old cold warriors modding up your little troll post there. But... you're still wrong. Everybody has a price. The process of agreement is capitalism, even in the most dictatorial, communist, fascist regime you can find. There is no other way to exchange goods and services. Even with a gun, which you have to pay someone to make for you, you still have to pay someone, or an army to pull the trigger. That is capitalism.
Re: (Score:2)
Even when GOSPLAN decides the prices for you?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
An Irishman, an American, and an Aussie are talking about republicans. The Irishman describes a bunch of pro-Soviet Socialists who never go to Church (but insist they're Catholic), and think the world would be a better place if someone blew the Royal Family into tiny little bits. The American is talking about a bunch of knee-jerk Anti-Soviets who describe everything they dislike as "socialist," go to religious services at least twice a week, are (mostly) Protestant, and secretly have a major crush on the Royal Family. The Aussie is somewhat generically left-wing in economic terms, doesn't give too shits about religion one way or the other, and thinks the Queen should stop being Queen of Australia but otherwise should be left alone because she's a nice old lady. Whose lying?
The answer is nobody. The word "Republican" has been used by so many political movements over the years that hearing someone is "Republican" without hearing a lot more context tells you precisely jack-squat. "Democrat," "Liberal," "Conservative," etc. are almost as bad.
It's gets even worse with Communism because Communists have never been able to agree on much beyond that one song.
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fascism [wikipedia.org] is far more apt for Russia's state of government under Putin than Communism.
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
There is no meaningful difference between totalitarian regimens in practice. The only real difference are the excuses. Fascism, Communism and Nazism are one and the same, and no it s not possible to have a non totalitarian communist country. Communism needs big and all powerful governments and those governments as they grow become more and more totalitarian. There is no way to avoid it.
I agree with that for the most part (and history bears you out with regards to Communism). However, Fascism doesn't tie itself to a specific, unworkable, economic theory; it accepts capitalism so long as the state maintains control. Which is is a very prominent factor in Russia of late, possibly even more than in China.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This makes the Russian media's use of "Fascists!!!!1" to describe anyone the Kremlin doesn't like deliciously ironic.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, Fascism allows for a measure of capitalism, but strongly controlled by the government, which is very far from Laissez-faire capitalism
Fascism is the ultimate expression of capitalism. It is essentially a corporate state run by oligarchs or plutarchs. The regimes of Mussolini and the Nazi's would never have gotten off the ground without the help of the titans of industry in their countries.
You're right that it's different from laissez-faire capitalism, but laissez-faire is an unworkable economic system because it assumes monopolistic behaviour does not exist and people are rational, so all attempts at laissez-faire capitalism end up in
Re: (Score:2)
laissez-faire is an unworkable economic system because it assumes monopolistic behaviour does not exist and people are rational
Even Adam Smith knew better than that. Cue in the Ayn Randites.
Re: (Score:2)
We call them Randroids these days.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Your family is communist. The Amish are communists. However, having the whole country communist dos not work because we don't trust each other.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's a very superficial definition of "meaningful."
As a highly educated, under-employed left-wing with intellectual pretensions a CPUSA takeover would probably result in me getting a promotion and a raise. I might get purged by my new bosses eventually, but in the short term it would be great for me.
OTOH it's likely I'd be the first target of a Fascist government. "First they came for the Communists, then they came for the Trade Unionists," the Jews only get mentioned third.
So yes, if there was an Evil Pa
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd be dead if the Fascists or Nazis took over. I like Unions. The independent kind. They really, really, really don't like independent Unions.I am the first one on the damn death train if Fascism happens.
As for the Communists, joining the elite would be the reason I got the raise. Since the alternative to joining the elite would be an assassination in Mexico City, I'd almost certainly join the elite. If I could find some out-of-the-way, unimportant job nobody would notice my earnings would have tripled at
Re: (Score:2)
And yes the "citizens" in any authoritarian regimen are slaves, they work whenever and wherever their rulers order them to, they can't go away, they live wherever they are ordered to live and they own nothing the state can't take from them anytime it wishes. Their very lives are
Re: (Score:2)
The elite in a totalitarian regimen is a very restricted group, my friend and more so in a communist regimen. Your chances of joining it would be very slim, but if you dream of being a slave owner who and I to shatter your dreams?
You got any facts to back these assertions up? As in any, at all? Maybe a hard number, taken from actual data on these countries? Because if you seriously thing an elite the size you're describing could run anything you are a fucking moron. You need 2-5% of the country to be your administrators, and you need political support of at least 20%, or you die like Mubarak. Or Kruschev, who was un-done bny a vote of the Communist Party, most of whom couldn't be told the secret bits of the deal ending the Cuban Mis
Re: (Score:2)
At the moment my working theory is you're a troll.
Says the slave owner to be...
I think you need a fresh dose of reality if you believe in the absurd you just wrote. A slave is a slave and the difference you pointed is irrelevant for any person that pissed the wrong bureaucrat or any girls anyone in power fancied. Many slaves in US lived better than normal people in the former USSR or Nazi Europe. At the very least they had the assurance that they wouldn't starve, because they were valuable property not disposable property like in Communist regimens.
Re: (Score:2)
And you still provide no facts, because facts require "research", which requires "work," whereas spewing Libertarian gobbledygook is pure intellectual masturbation.
As for hard numbers, the average slave in the South was sold once during his or her lifetime. If the average German had been shipped out to Dachau once there would have been nobody left to fight the Red Army. The Soviets had a much larger system, but it didn't include nearly as much sexual violence as actual slavery did. If it had the leaders of
Re: (Score:2)
I am not a troll, although I am quite sure that if you believ
Re: (Score:2)
I provide as many numbers as you, my friend. The difference between us is that if you go after numbers you will quickly find out that in excess of 30 million people died from starvation and executions in the USSR, and more than a hundred million in China, against very few slaves in US. and that is because of the fact that when you have an endless supply of slaves and don't have even to pay for them eliminating them at a whim bears you no costs.
Your first number is wrong. 30 million is the Soviet death toll in WW2. Even the most ardent anti-Soviets [wikipedia.org] give a death toll of 20 million for that system, over seven decades that's a couple hundred thousand a year. Even with your higher estimate we're only talking 500k a year.
Your second number is wrong. "More then a hundred million" is about 50% greater then any estimate you see when you do actual research.
Your third number shows you still haven't read anything about slavery. Very few slaves (something lik
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually Wikipedia has life expectancy [wikipedia.org] in the USSR for two years. In 1926 it was 9 years lower then the US, but by the 50s it was a couple years higher. But you wouldn;t have bothered to find that out because that would be work. Which kinda indicates that if you're trying to blame any system for lack of life expectancy in Soviet times it should be the Czarist system, which was not totalitarian.
What ideology, precisely, do you think you're opposing? I haven't said I like either totalitarian system. I just sa
Re: (Score:2)
Life expectancy was always lower than in US, from the revolution to 1990.
USSR Life expectancy at birth - 1990:
65 years male, 74 years female
US Life expectancy at birth - 1990
71.8 years male, 78.8 years female
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.google.com.br/publ... [google.com.br]
And keep in mind that the data on USSR and China is based on official data from closed authoritarian countries that had every motive to manipulate data as much as they could get away with.
Re: (Score:2)
"Blatantly lying?" You literally make up all your evidence, and then call me a lier for linking to actual data? That's pretty damn stupid.
Especially since your data doesn't contradict mine. I said nothing about 1990. I said "late 1950s." Which I specifically cherry-picked because the research for that period takes you to a government table, which includes no pretty pictures, which means you were unlikely to find it on your own. OTOH you finally googled something, which technically doesn't count because it s
Re: (Score:2)
USSR and China famines were direct killings that killed millions of children and young people, you can`t possibly compare them
Re: (Score:2)
"You are the one cherry-picking," which I just said. It's interesting to note you still haven't tracked down my source. You really do suck at this research thing, don't you? Unless it's something you vaguely recall a libertarian spewing at you you just don't know it. Which means you really don't know jack about American slavery. Since the America of the slave-era is the one Libertarians think of as the "freest country ever," they aren't terribly likely to engage in long conversations about how South Carolin
Re: (Score:2)
No meaningful difference in terms of freedom, but there can be a huge difference in economics. Ie, rich person under the fascist state has a good chance of continuing to make money, and maybe get a lot of good state business, even if not a party member. But under a communist nation is going to be out of business. Meanwhile a factory worker in a communist nation, if also a party member and not a peasant, will have an increase in income for a short period of time (until the system collapses or corruption t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The US is relatively low in authoritarianism but relatively high in oligarchy - right up there with Russia and China. Look at how much it costs to get elected in the US, how stagnant the pool of candidates is, and the average net worth of the ruling class and tell me they are one of the least oligarchic countries.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04... [nytimes.com]
I still believe US is the best place to live all things considered,
Re: (Score:2)
Governments are necessary to make life in society possible, but what people forget is that they are a necessary evil. Governs existence is
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would it really be such a bad thing for the Soviet Union to come back?
Yes. The Soviet Union was a nightmare state.
The offered a balance of power. With the exception of a couple proxy wars (not that they weren't bad) we kept each other in check, but never checkmate. Compared to now, the world did its own thing.
Tell that to Poland, Hungary, the Czech and Slovak republics, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Not to mention North Korea and Vietnam. I'm sure they enjoyed doing their "own thing".
After the fall of the Soviet Union, we immediately elevated ourselves to the status of, "United States of America: Full-Time World Cop." That has not gone well. I sometimes miss the sanity of mutually assured destruction.
What? Seriously, what? How old are you? Do you actually remember the Cold War?
The fact that America is a flawed nation is no excuse for false equivalencies with brutal totalitarian regimes like the Soviet Union under Stalin or China under Mao. Those countries, under those leaders, deliberately killed tens of millions of their own people. We never want to see anything like that again.
Re: (Score:2)
I grew up in Estonia. It actually was't too bad.
Your turn.
Re:Surprised? (Score:4, Informative)
If it was Soviet Estonia then your parents or grandparents weren't among the victims of repression or deportation, although they might be among the ethnic Russians moved there by the Soviet Union. (Ethnic Russian by any chance?) Those would be among the ethnic Russians that Putin has threatened other countries over.
Just a snippet of history: Soviet deportations from Estonia in 1940s [estonia.eu]
The Soviet Union had started preparations for the launch of terror in Estonian civil society already before the occupation of Estonia. As elsewhere, the purpose of communist terror was to suppress any possible resistance from the very beginning and to inculcate great fear among people in order to rule out any kind of organised general resistance movement in the future as well. In Estonia, the planned extermination of the prominent and active persons, as well as the displacement of large groups of people were intended to destroy the Estonian society and economy. The lists of people to be repressed were prepared well in advance. From the files of the Soviet security organs, it seems that already in the early 1930’s the Soviet security organs had collected data on persons to be subjected to repressions. Pursuant to the instructions issued in 1941, the following people in the territories to be annexed into the Soviet Union and their family members were to be subjected to repression: all the members of the former governments, higher state officials and judges, higher military personnel, former politicians, members of voluntary state defence organisations, members of student organisations, persons having actively participated in anti-Soviet armed combat, Russian émigrés, security police officers and police officers, representatives of foreign companies and in general all people having contacts abroad, entrepreneurs and bankers, clergymen and members of the Red Cross. Approximately 23 percent of the population belonged to these categories. In fact, the number of those actually subjected to repressions was much greater, for a large number of people not included in the lists also fell victim to the settlement of scores.
Re: (Score:2)
Hitler would have taken a hot sword and ripped their hearts, their heads and made their children eat them, and then decapitate their children. That is the alternative you support. Idiot.
And they would have done it with the oil Russia sold them under Molotov-Ribbentropp. The Russians didn't give two shits about Nazi mass murder until the chickens came home to roost. So spare me the savior complex.
Re: (Score:2)
I grew up in Estonia. It actually was't too bad.
Your turn.
Most likely depends on what branch of the tree you and your family were part of.
Re: (Score:2)
During the Stalin era or afterwords? And are you Estonian or Russian?
I agree though in later days that a lot of things in many Warsaw pact countries weren't as abysmal as the west portrayed them. Unless of course you were a dissident or in the GDR or Romania.
But even in the worst eras in the US there was more freedom than in the best days in the Soviet Union.
Re: (Score:2)
Dostoyevski was a terrorist, who was caught, convicted by court, and sent to Gulag, where he spent 7 years, was re-educated, realized the mistakes of his youth, and went on to become one of the greatest writers in Russias history.
You forgot to mention this happened when the Tsars were in power. People forget the Soviet Communist Party did not invent the Gulag system.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it would be a very bad thing [youtube.com] for the Soviet Union to come back, a disaster of epic proportions. Communists killed 100,000,000 people [harvard.edu] in the last century. Such tyranny [youtube.com] has seldom been equaled.
If you miss the "sanity" of Soviet times, you are woefully ignorant about events, badly confused, or a madman. Perhaps you could start smaller, such a suggesting widespread castration because it "calms" men?
If you really miss an ever present threat against you then you could try a visit a tribal society and st
Re: (Score:2)
Would it really be such a bad thing for the Soviet Union to come back?
Are you friggen nuts? The Soviet Union had a very bad habit (Russia to a lesser degree today) where all the information is controlled and monitored by the state... there is was no independent press, no independent branches of government, no limited elections, no freedom of movement....
Re: (Score:3)
Yes.
Perhaps the simplest thing would be to point out that while America might be building walls to keep unwelcome visitors out, the Soviet Union built walls to keep its people in. A state that needs to imprison its entire population is not a state that has any right to exist.
I'm really not sure why we even need to discuss this. Assuming people are too young to personally remember this, were they also asleep during their history classes?
Re: (Score:2)
What, young people get history classes now?
Being somewhat older, and having spent a sizable chunk of my childhood near the Inner German Border, I remember this quite well.
My daughter? Not so much....
Re: (Score:2)
Former Soviet Union reconstituting. Putin saying collapse of Soviet Union mistake. Yeah I think he used the term correctly.
Are they going to call it the Russian Empire this time round?
Re: (Score:2)
Supposedly the new name is the Eurasian Federation.
Re: (Score:2)
Are we at war with Eurasia or Eastasia? I forget...
Re: (Score:2)
Has there ever been a truly, absolutely qualifiable communist government?
Re: (Score:3)
Communism is an economic theory that can't work in theory - it centralises economic planning leading to an insoluble information processing scaling problem [ucla.edu], while at the same time destroying precisely the information (prices) that are needed to make sensible decisions - and has been proven not to work in practice. There have been plenty of Communist states. They all failed spectacularly, generally displaying massive corruption and brutal oppression as they did so.
They may not have looked like you imagine
Re: (Score:2)
And this Communism have in common with any ideology. That's the reason current _functional_ states uses a flexible, adaptable design. It may not work well but it's probably as close to perfection possible with humans involved.
Re: (Score:2)
It may not work well but it's probably as close to perfection possible with humans involved.
Relevant 1-panel comic:
http://lh3.ggpht.com/-h7v6JeQ5... [ggpht.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Communism is an economic theory that can't work in theory - it centralises economic planning
This isn't Communism. It's Socialism. In Communism nothing is centralized, there even isn't a state or a government, nobody owns anything, everybody does his best and takes only what he needs.
Socialism was meant as the first step on the road to Communism and of course Communism never works apart from exceptional circumstances in small communities for a short while. It's a lovely daydream of "wouldn't it be great if...". Well, but it isn't.
Re: (Score:2)
No. It is State Capitalism which is a system proposed in Das Capital. 'Socialism' in that sense refers to a variety of supposed intermediate systems between capitalism and 'Communism'.
Re: (Score:2)
Libertarians don't want a free market in a meaningful (practical) sense. They want deregulation, consequences be damned.
Libertarians are a lot like communists. If a state fails under their system, it's because it didn't follow their ideology closely enough and the moment a system does meet the ideal exactly, it will be a utopia, you'll see!
Although bordering on a state may also be enough to prevent utopia (See: Somalia - I keep hearing that the government-controlled compound in the capital is a big sticking
Re: (Score:2)
I should add that I've only discussed the Somalia option with libertarians who say they hate government so much that they'd prefer anarchy.
Re: (Score:2)
The Soviet Union got in the habit of centralised plan/command economies due to the civil wars that happened immediately after the (second) revolution in 1917. It is arguably not clear therefore that such mechanisms are the way that communism must be. (I wouldn't count the majority of other communist states that existed in Europe in the 20th century at all, as the political/economic system there was mostly about being Russian vassals. The real exception there is Yugoslavia, and that was a timebomb after the
Re: (Score:2)
Probably doesn't know what cope d'etat [wikipedia.org] means, either.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably can't spell "coup d'etat" either....
Re: (Score:3)
Why? In the USA Facebook and Google+ are both run by people who could be described as "oligarchs" with strong ties to the White House.
By the way, if you believe this story is true then you should also believe that Putin's answer to Snowden was correct, given that it says:
Re: (Score:2)
Re:How does that sit with you, Snowden? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think if the Snowden affair has taught us anything, it's that real power in the west is not held by politicians but rather the executive branch (US) and civil service (UK). The bureaucrats appear to be able to do whatever they like, then repeatedly lie about it (USA) or simply refuse to turn up at all (UK) and politicians let them get away with it. What's more, the bureaucracy is now routinely blacklisting and even assassinating people based on no kind of formal process whatsoever, with no democratic oversight, and the people doing it are career government employees who are certainly not elected and in many cases their identities are themselves secret.
For background, in my former job I worked on one of the systems at Google that was compromised by GCHQ (they wrote wire sniffers to decode the login traffic). The root cause of this failure was the incorrect idea that western governments are "good" and the nasty Chinese/Russians/Iranians are "bad" thus internal encryption was only worth the cost when traffic transited wires controlled by "bad guys". But it turned out that they're all bad and the degree of badness appears limited only by their budget, so now Google all wire traffic all the time.
So please get out of this idea that the west is better than Russia. Democracy in the anglosphere has become so weak that lots of people simply refuse to vote at all, or are (at best) single issue voters for things like immigration. Anything national security related is uncontrollable by voting at this point.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Routinely assassinating?" That happened to one guy. Literally. The US has assassinated one US Citizen. And there was a lengthy, formal process to decide whether to nail him. It may not have been as lengthy as you'd like, or involve as many branches as you'd like (AFAIK only Obama's people were consulted), but it did actually happen.
Here's your core problem:
Nobody outside of the 1% or so of any Anglosphere country that reads Slashdot cares MORE about information security issues then they care about the othe
Re: (Score:2)
It looks like a multi-party system on paper, but the Kremlin has slowly and steadily gained control over all the media (with some exceptions), most notably the television, and as that is what most Russian citizens use for getting their daily dose of information, it’s a good and effective way of keeping one party in the limelight and belittling everybody else. The opposition gets no media time, but they do get politically motivated arrests and jail time on trumped up or made up charges etc. NGOs funded