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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%.
United Russia is a mafia party, literally, it's full of mafia bosses, it's a criminal syndicate that took over the country and destroyed the democracy in its infancy, plunged the country into the age of corruption.
Of-course it doesn't help that Russia has too many people that are made dependent upon the government for survival, that's how a criminal party takes hold and doesn't let go - the bosses literally gather people in the meetings and tell them that they will dole out money based on voting participation and the voting outcome, they also want people to prove their voting record (illegally obviously), the votes are bought and voters are intimidated.
US and the rest should take notice - once most of your businesses are just a few large ones, and the small/medium sized businesses disappear and are constantly under pressure to pay huge 'fines'/bribes to local 'politicians' and often the businesses are destroyed - illegally taken over with police force from their owners and just handed over to local mafia/United Russia party bosses, then you build a huge dependent class of people, who don't have jobs, they can't have jobs because the largest (oil/gas/metal/wood/whatever raw material) companies only need so many workers and the service sector is all monopolized.
Without a thriving middle class (and I mean BUSINESS class) the economy only allows 3 classes of people: bottom dolers, top mafia bosses and owners and monopolists in every business sector, very few monopolists that run every business.
Then you the country can't get out of this predicament - the people are poor and they don't know how NOT to be poor anymore, their only way of living depends on being fully subsidized by the government and they can't afford any change of government and any instability carries a promise of hunger.
Of-course Russia still has some protesters from the middle class and students, but right now it seems to be irrelevant, the special forces there don't hesitate to apply massive amounts of damage to the protesters. Beating somebody and even killing them is really not a big deal - people who live off the dole are really just insects in a system like that.
That's why you don't want socialism or communism or totalitarianism or dictatorship or any kind. You want many independent individual capable of taking care of themselves and by proxy of the economy by doing creative stuff, providing products and jobs and investment opportunities. But a large number of people like that not only improve the economy, but they are too independent to be held in shackles of oppression, they don't want a large parasite mafia class above them taking everything from them and deciding for them what kind of a country they will live in.
You can't handle the truth.
In soviet russia, voters elect representatives.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
From my observations as an American it seems they have a choice between being run by a corporate mafia or run by a communist party. Pick the one that works better for you, I suppose.
Well, that's one more choice than Americans have got.
You want to hear something interesting? The United Nations uses exit polls to judge the fairness of elections worldwide. If the "official" results differ from the exit polls substantially, it cannot be certified as a fair election.
In the US, official results have been deviating from exit polls to a greater extent in every election starting in 2000. Of course, we are told that this just means that exit polling just isn't that good.
You decide.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
You have now enumerated what the parties say about themselves, which is quite different from what they actually do. United Russia, for example, is simply the party of crony cleptocracy, judging by their ten-year track record. LibDems are the party of "just for lulz", they can say one thing today, do something else tomorrow, and say something completely different from either on the next day.
Communists, though, are not Stalinists. Part of their electorate is that - mostly old (60+) people who remember the USSR fondly because they weren't living in poverty back then, and pensions were actually big enough to provide for a decent living. But that electorate has been consistently dwindling as they age and die. The new one comes from younger people who are dissatisfied with crony capitalism, and want something along the lines of democratic socialism. Their program largely matches that later group - e.g. they officially endorse small and medium private businesses, while arguing for nationalization of oil industry and other "big guys". Also, unlike commies of old, these are quite religious and socially conservative - sometimes fervently so.
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.
Under Capitalism, man oppresses man. Under Communism, it's exactly the opposite.
- Woody Allen
Sure beats a single-party one. And it's a realistic, achievable goal at this stage.
Besides, the point of this exercise is to make a break from the past 12 years and to force the votes to actually be counted in a way that is prominently visible. A huge staple of United Russia's propaganda is that "everyone is for us" - basically, an appeal to citizens to vote same as everyone else. But this hinges on them actually having that popular support. Every person that didn't vote for them on this election will bring another person who won't on the next one.
Also, strange as it may sound, commies are actually one of the saner parties in this election. Alternatives include e.g. the guy who became famous by saying things like "Russian soldiers shall wash their boots in the Indian ocean".
In a democratic society with a long-standing culture of openness and freedom, most people don't hide their political beliefs, and will happily tell you which way they had voted. If people are willing to lie in exit polls in sufficient numbers that it skews the result, it indicates that something's very wrong with democracy in the country.