Baronjutter posted:

Baronjutter posted:

Baronjutter posted:

spacetoaster posted:

So it's still at -10? Isn't that still pretty bad? Or do I not understand the scale?

cinci zoo sniper posted:

-10 there basically means that out of 20 Republicans 9 view Putin favourably. Which is fairly remarkable by itself, what is there to say about dramatic shift in the Republican consensus over less than half a year.

SMILLENNIALSMILLEN posted:

This is too precious.

quote:

- Artillery units of the Russian Armed Forces fired at least on 149 separate occasions attacks against Ukraine in the summer of 2014. Another 130 locations were judged likely to have been used as artillery position.
- 408 artillery target sites inside Ukraine within range of Russian artillery systems have a trajectory crossing the Ukrainian-Russian border, 127 of them are within 3 km of the Russian border.
- In total, as evidenced by the number of impact craters, thousands of artillery projectiles were fired by the Russian military on targets inside Ukraine in the summer of 2014.
- Due to the current lack of publicly-available satellite imagery evidence and the rigid classification criteria used here, these figures represent lower bound estimates of the true numbers of artillery attacks, i.e. there were likely considerably more than 149 attacks as already indicated by the 130 further likely artillery positions. Furthermore, it can be stated:
- Artillery attacks of the Russian Armed Forces from Russian territory began from early July 2014 and increased in frequency and scale into August and September 2014.
- Cross-border artillery attacks can be found in the entire border area of the conflict zone in the Donets’k and Luhans’k regions.
- Due to the frequency, spatial distribution, and scale of the artillery attacks considered in this report, it is impossible to consider these attacks merely as accidents or as the actions of rogue units. These attacks can only therefore be considered as acts of war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.

quote:

Bellingcat's analysis struck independent experts as credible.

Sean O'Connor, the principal imagery analyst with IHS Jane's, said in an email that the work looked "solid."

Jonathan Drake, the senior imagery analyst at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said he had used similar techniques to identify artillery strikes carried out by Sri Lankan government forces in 2009. He called Bellingcat's work impressive and said the over-and-over-again overlap between the geometry of the craters in Ukraine and the orientation of the firing positions in Russia left little doubt about the group's conclusions.

"What you've got there are two independent observations that are consistent with one another and that are consistent over a pretty broad swathe of territory," Drake said in a telephone interview.

dex_sda posted:

Cognitive dissonance because they have to put the checkmark near the R guy and this time he's a russian symphatizing maniac

dex_sda posted:

Cognitive dissonance because they have to put the checkmark near the R guy and this time he's a russian symphatizing maniac

owDAWG posted:

Foreign policy of both parties over the past couple decades has been pretty similar when it comes to their stance towards foreign powers. The Obama to Trump presidency is different in the fact that Trump is willing to be more conciliatory towards Russia but confrontational towards China. There is also a tendency to view a foreign power as friend or enemy(which can change at any time; this rule can be applied to any nation) and not attempting to understand the underlying politics of a region.

You also have a future secretary of state(US top diplomatic position) who will benefit greatly from closer ties to Russia.

dex_sda posted:

Oh sure. I'm just saying it's funny how quickly an average republican's opinion flip-flopped on Russia, irrespective of any reason relevant to them.

spacetoaster posted:

On Russia, or Putin?

spacetoaster posted:

On Russia, or Putin?

I go to Russia (and Ukraine) regularly and love my family and the people in that part of the world. Putin and his buddies, on the other hand can drink a bunch of vodka and go swim in the Ivankovo.

quote:

Android Malware Targeting Ukraine 'Ties Russian GRU To Election Hacks'

The most convincing evidence yet tying Russia's GRU intelligence agency to the hack of the Democratic National Committee has been found in a bizarre tale involving an Android app developed by a Ukrainian military officer, security firm CrowdStrike claimed today.

The company, which helped the DNC with the investigation of its notorious breach earlier this year, said it had uncovered Android malware used by the so-called Fancy Bear crew in June 2016. Fancy Bear is widely believed to be the group behind the DNC hit as well as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) hack.

That spyware was hiding inside an app developed by a Ukrainian artillery officer called Yaroslav Sherstuk, which was designed to help expedite the processing of targeting data for the Soviet-era D-30 Howitzers he was using, CrowdStrike said.

As it wasn't an official government project, Sherstuk shared the app across forums frequented by fellow army personnel, explained CrowdStrike CTO and co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch. As many as 9,000 were said to have downloaded the app, as it reduced targeting time to 15 seconds. The video below shows Sherstuk talking about the apparent success of the app, noting that he had the authorization codes required to make the tool work. (Thanks to Kromtech Security for translating the Ukrainian).

Fancy Bear inserted its malware into the apps, which would reveal the location of the host Android phone and allowed Fancy Bear to snoop on infected devices, he said. This may have had a devastating impact on Ukraine's defense, Alperovitch added, pointing to open source research that indicated in two years of conflict over 80 per cent of D-30 howitzers had been destroyed. "This was pretty devastatingly effective," said Alperovitch.

That Fancy Bear was involved in such a campaign further proved the group was Russian and was facilitating GRU operations. Previous reports had linked the GRU to the DNC hack, though hard evidence was thin on the ground. But Alperovitch believes this is one of the clearest indicators yet that the hacks on the U.S. election were ordered by the GRU. "It's pretty high confidence that Fancy Bear had to be in touch with the Russian military," he added. "This is exactly what the mission is of the GRU."

CrowdStrike has sent the information to its customers, both in government and across private industry.

Patrick Wardle, ex-NSA staffer and head of research at security firm Synack, told me the malware beaconed back to the U.S. -- more an indicator of irony than anything else. The Android spyware was not particularly sophisticated, much like the hack of the DNC, he added. Both were effective, however. "There are a lot strings in the clear, makes it super easy to analyze," Wardle said. "If it's on your phone, you are done, it grabs pretty much everything. Kind of perfect for Russian hackers to infect the opposing forces with."

Today saw the U.S. impose more sanctions of Russian individuals over the annexation of Crimea, whilst Obama has promised retaliation for the hacks. With evidence increasingly pointing to Russia's culpability, Obama is evidently emboldened to come down hard on Putin before president-elect Donald Trump moves into the White House.

Zudgemud posted:

https://youtu.be/1NN6sZRiB-8

I assume that if this was in the US the driver would probably have been shot multiple times by both the cops, security guards and nearby civilians.

Personally I always had the predjudice that russian police were almost as gun happy as US police, partly because I know police misconduct is kind of feared/expected in Russia and partly because I have seen so many instances of eastern european riot police brutally beating football hooligans/rioters/protesters. But how common is it for russian police to shoot suspects in comparison to US levels or western european levels, is there any statistics on this that is reliable?

Zudgemud posted:

https://youtu.be/1NN6sZRiB-8

I assume that if this was in the US the driver would probably have been shot multiple times by both the cops, security guards and nearby civilians.

Personally I always had the predjudice that russian police were almost as gun happy as US police, partly because I know police misconduct is kind of feared/expected in Russia and partly because I have seen so many instances of eastern european riot police brutally beating football hooligans/rioters/protesters. But how common is it for russian police to shoot suspects in comparison to US levels or western european levels, is there any statistics on this that is reliable?

Zudgemud posted:

https://youtu.be/1NN6sZRiB-8

I assume that if this was in the US the driver would probably have been shot multiple times by both the cops, security guards and nearby civilians.

Personally I always had the predjudice that russian police were almost as gun happy as US police, partly because I know police misconduct is kind of feared/expected in Russia and partly because I have seen so many instances of eastern european riot police brutally beating football hooligans/rioters/protesters. But how common is it for russian police to shoot suspects in comparison to US levels or western european levels, is there any statistics on this that is reliable?

jonnypeh posted:

Google found me this: http://europe.newsweek.com/russia-police-custody-torture-abuse-441489?rm=eu
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/13/200-people-died-in-russian-police-custody-in-2015-says-website

I'm pretty sure that's just the tip of the iceberg. At least USA has FBI that could handle the cases, I don't know what they do in Russia.

quote:

"I am like a cat, I have had nine lives," she told the New York Times. "But if nationalist forces in this country prevail, my heart will burst."

Trogdos! posted:

What's up Poland? I hear PiS caved in and decided not to ban non-govt media from the Sejm (yet) and it only took nearly a week of protesting on the streets!

cinci zoo sniper posted:

Thing is, that even with 200 dead in preliminary detention thrown into the yearly totals, Russian police will fail to reach half of what Americans kill during the detention, probably even just a third if we discard the casualties from MVD special forces operations in Caucasus. It is terrible, but not even close if you compare the populations of both countries. Heck, more people per capita, on average, have died in Estonian custody during past 7 years. Not necessarily saying that for the same causes, but nonetheless. Point is, while I would expect all sorts of negligence and corruption while being detained by Russian police, death or lasting injury would be some of the last thing that I would consider.

jonnypeh posted:

Maybe it has something to do with less guns in the hands of the population, so police are less jumpy. And no "2nd amendment rights" fanatics go around openly carrying anything from a handgun to a rifle, because the russian state has the potential to gently caress them up real bad. Other than such a thing being outlawed anyway.

jonnypeh posted:

Maybe it has something to do with less guns in the hands of the population, so police are less jumpy. And no "2nd amendment rights" fanatics go around openly carrying anything from a handgun to a rifle, because the russian state has the potential to gently caress them up real bad. Other than such a thing being outlawed anyway.