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kleinbl00  ·  1060 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ryanair flight carrying wanted Belarusian journalist forced to land in Minsk

    Well, to be pedantic (I'm sorry!), Russia didn't "overthrow" the 2016 election, but they certainly did everything they could to ensure the worst possible candidate (ever?) was elected, via disinformation campaigns and microtargetted advertising.

Welllll let's talk about that pedantry. 'cuz Mike Flynn didn't exactly plead innocent. And the Okham's Razor on Melania is that she's a Russian asset. And Trump has been in bed with the Mafiya for 30 years, and the Mafiya are the KGB.

No one would argue that the US didn't overthrow Mossadegh, which we did by funding agitators and exercising influence. No one would argue that the US didn't overthrow Allende. Now - what's the difference here, that our election wasn't contested? Our election also wasn't democratic so the contest happens a little differently.

From a geopolitical standpoint, influence campaigns with specific intelligence actions totally count as election interference. "Overthrow" is more of a pejorative than a technical term but I don't think I'm out of line using it here. Just because we don't know the official FSB name for it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

    Why isn't Ukraine in NATO, again? That should have been part of the response to Crimea.

I think because we're in the "you don't get to join unless you change your name to North Macedonia" level of seriousness at the moment. We just spent four years with the United States arguing that NATO had no reason to exist; it's gonna take some time to get people used to the Iron Curtain again.