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Russian Websites Critical of Elections Targeted In DDoS Attack
theshowmecanuck submits this news from Russia, where "Websites which exposed violations in Russia's parliamentary elections were inaccessible Sunday in a hacking attack they said was aimed at preventing them revealing the extent of election day fraud." Further, says the linked article, "Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whose United Russia party is expected to win Sunday's polls but with a reduced majority, has denounced non-governmental organisations like Golos, comparing them to the disciple Judas who betrayed Jesus. Russia has seen an upsurge in Internet penetration since the last elections in 2007, and analysts have said the explosion of critical material on the web poses one of the biggest challenges to United Russia's grip on power."
"United Russia", the party of Putin has dropped from 64% of the votes to 48.5%.
Capitalism is just a word, which has nothing to do with the political system. It's not capitalism that turned into this authoritarian system, it's literally the fact that various former KGB and mafia bosses got together and used all sorts of violence in order to prevent any competition in the political arena. Khodorkovskiy is in jail not because of 'capitalism', he is in jail because a criminal is at the helm of the government and he put him there.
Here is an example of 'carousel' - the people are instructed that they will be voting in 16 different schools (these are the same people), they are explicitly told who to vote for (United Russia obviously) and how to behave, which tables to approach, what to say to any authorities if they are questioned, etc.
The guy who shot this video asked if it makes sense to join the Party and he is told: obviously if you join it, you get material benefits, money whatever.
Then the video shows scenes of this same guy voting in multiple locations, by 5:30 it says: I voted 12 times already, almost done.
You can't handle the truth.
A significant proportion of communist vote on these elections is, effectively, protest vote against United Russia. We used to have "none of the above" on the ballot ages ago, it was scrapped under Putin. Then people started to ignore elections altogether, in hopes that, if enough do, they don't get the voter turnout needed to elect anyone - the government has responded by removing the requirement for minimum voter turnout. So right now the only way to vote against the party in power is to vote for some other party, and for preference many people vote for the second biggest one to maximize the effect.
This election is being won by United Russia because of a large-scale electoral fraud - voting for people who didn't come to vote, tampering with ballots, injecting prefilled ballots in ballot boxes, sending people to shove in more than one ballot when they vote, driving people around on buses to vote several times etc.
No, he made a point, and you ignored him or you don't understand it.
Unfettered capitalism has just as much capacity for totalitarianism as communism. Capitalism, left to its own devices, naturally results in a few large players, who, if allowed to, will subvert and take over the government, simply buy it off. Plutocracy. This is why you need a strong government with strong regulatory powers to keep the marketplace fair by preventing the largest players from performing inevitable abuse, and breaking them up if necessary.
Your problem is that you only understand one narrative: the narrative of oppression from communism, where the government IS big business. That is not the only way oppression can form or function. The government can be the mafia, which you understand. But an uncontrolled corporate sphere can also function like a mafia, and it can simply turn a weak government into its puppet. This is what you see forming in the USA. You don't seem to understand that.
You NEED a strong central government, and you need a healthy marketplace of corporations kept in check. If you weaken the government, the power vacuum is simply filled by the largest corporations, who simply buy the government. Do you understand?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it