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Kaspersky Lab Says It Has Become Pawn in US-Russia Geopolitical Game (reuters.com)
Russian cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab, reacting to a U.S. government move restricting its activities, said on Wednesday it had fallen victim to U.S.-Russia global sparring while the Kremlin criticized the U.S. action as politically-motivated. From a report: The Trump administration on Tuesday removed the Moscow-based firm from two lists of approved vendors used by government agencies to purchase technology equipment, amid concerns its products could be used by the Kremlin to gain entry into U.S. networks. "By all appearances, Kaspersky Lab happened to be dragged into a geopolitical fight where each side is trying to use the company as a pawn in its game," RIA news agency quoted the company's press service as saying.
children with nuclear weapons.
Mongo have similar experience.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Kaspersky should realise that their word that they aren't acting on behalf of the Russian government isn't worth shit. Putin is all fucking powerful in Russia and there is no rule of law there. So when they say they aren't at the behest of Russian intelligence, nobody fucking believes them.
Grow some balls and take back your kleptocracy from Dear Leader Putin and then maybe someone will believe you when you say you aren't a vehicle for Russian government malware.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Is there any American company that can prove their independence from the U.S. government?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Russia reverted to an illiberal criminal-syndicate state.
Not something the West has had much luck working with.
Hans plays with Lotte, Lotte plays with Jane
Jane plays with Willi, Willi is happy again
Suki plays with Leo, Sacha plays with Britt
Adolf builts a bonfire, Enrico plays with it
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Will they get sacrificed or promoted to a queen?
Just a few examples:
1) Both are actively fighting radical Islamic terrorist threats
2) Both are pretty conservative (in opposition to the ultra-liberal European norm)
3) Both are very religious and very Christian (in opposition to the increasingly atheist/agnostic European norm)
4) Both are very patriotic (in opposition to the cynical European norm)
5) Both are taking a fairly hard-line approach to immigration (as opposed to other European countries who seem to just be throwing their doors open to any middle-aged African claiming to be a sixteen-year-old Syrian refugee)
6) Both still have an active and functioning space program
7) Both are very pro-military--in spirit, funding, and practice.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The Cold War should have ended 25 years ago. But we just can't let it go.
Who is WE you are talking about?
Since the fall of the Berlin wall and Glasnost in Russia, who has been the aggressor and why?
The cold war WAS over until the Russians under Putin decided that they'd revive it for geopolitical reasons. Putin is doing all this in order to keep looking powerful and getting elected, but at this point it's all just show. Putin knows that a full frontal conflict with the USA would be a disaster for him, but he certainly is willing to take the risk of starting something he cannot finish in order to stay in power.
And what's the US's motivation? Generally we just want to engage in profitable trade and keep oil prices low/stable...With a bit of "keeping the terrorists at bay" thrown in of course.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I think you are asking the wrong question. Of course there does not exist a company that is completely free from the laws, regulations and requirements of the country in which it works (and that includes all countries in which they work for the multinationals).
What you are forgetting in your question is that, in the United States, CEOs are not murdered by the United States government if they oppose the chief executive, as has happened with Russians. You are forgetting that the United States is not an official kleptocracy (yet) where plutocratic friends of Vladimir Putin are free to steal from the country's resources at the expense of the taxpayers and that the government there is absolutely uninterested in transparency. You are forgetting that, in Russia, there are no checks and balances, the Judiciary is not independent of the central government, that the legislature (Duma) does not hold hearings to investigate the President or the Prime Minister and that the current President found a loophole in the country's constitution that allows him to hold onto power for much longer than his country's constitutional intent.
From this standpoint, a company that is located in the United States is unfettered by the politics of the day, as long as the company produces a valuable product and is a good corporate citizen. When our federal government asked for a "back door" (as a forinstance) into the Apple iPhone, Apple fought it. and, although the issue was declared moot, the government had to come up with a hack that would work on its own.
Were Apple's headquarters in Moscow or St. Petersburg, there would be no appeal to a court—they would have been forced to comply. And there might have been a sudden, unexplained death of the CEO were there any resistance.
So, my answer to your question is, yes. Companies are independent from our government here in the United States. They do not exist at the pleasure and tolerance of our Chief Executive as they do in Russia
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
>And what's the US's motivation?
Just off the top of my head...
The military-industrial complex still wields a lot of political clout, and a good enemy helps keep the defense contracts flowing.
We're also rapidly becoming an authoritarian surveillance state, and the "war on terror" is running out of steam as a distraction/justification for that. Having a more credible foreign threat helps keep that ball rolling as well.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The Pee Memos and the Russian Attorney are linked to the same Democratic Party black ops company, FusionGPS.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Not only that, but HRC campaign colluded with Ukrainian Government against Trump
A veteran DNC operative who previously worked in the Clinton White House, Alexandra Chalupa, worked with Ukrainian government officials and journalists from both Ukraine and America to dig up Russia-related opposition research on Trump and Manafort. She also shared her anti-Trump research with both the DNC and the Clinton campaign, according to the Politico report.
Both R and D are doing whatever it takes to win an election. No story here, unless you're equally outraged at "collusion" between Hillary and Ukraine, this is a nothing story.
The problem is, both sides are in deep, but we only hear about Trump.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Moscow didn't do anything, and the only reason Russia rolled into Crimea was after Ukraine adapted a law making Ukrainian the sole official language, thereby making life potentially difficult for Russian speaking Ukrainians.
Didn't do anything? LOL.
Other than sending troops, weapons and equipment, passing a vote to annex... of course, nothing. Also, you might want to review your understanding of the time line.
Sure, and Moscow is legitimately Mongolian, because they owned it once, and then later they didn't.
Not sure if trolling or just very stupid, but probably the latter.
The first Chechen war started when Putin was just an aide to a mayor, when islamists rebelled in a province of Russia. But setting that aside, what you are basically saying is that supporting islamist separatists was a good thing because it was about countering the aggression of the government forces (a.k.a "the federals"). If that is the case, why exactly do you condemn Russia supporting separatists in the Ukraine? Do separatists need to be islamists for you to cheer for them? Do you support the islamic state as well?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
At least from the Russian perspective, the end of any kind of detente came with the bombing of Serbia. At the time, Russia, broken and incapable of any kind of force projection, was forced to abandon a policy that it had essentially held for centuries; that of being the protector of the Slavic peoples. Couple this with NATO enlargement, where a number of former Warsaw Pact countries, understandably in my view, joined up, and then began entering the EU, you can see where they came to believe that the West was out to permanently castrate Russia. This is an understandable sentiment as well.
That all being said, Russia has been a right pain in the ass to the West for a few centuries now, and there's never been a great deal of trust on either side. Further, it's hard to see how there can be any trust so long as Putin and the Oligarchs are basically running the country as their personal piggy bank, and where the infant organs of a democratic state have been so quickly undermined. When they get caught interfering with multiple Western elections with the clear intent to either destabilize or get Russia-friendly candidates elected to high office, I'd say meaningful rapprochement is a long way off. Even in the US, where Trump does seem far more Kremlin-friendly than virtually any predecessor, Congress has made it awfully clear that it will not remove sanctions, and indeed would like to see even more sanctions.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
NATO made overtures to let Russia also join NATO at the same time other ex-Warsaw Pact members were joining in large part to try and avoid precisely the sort of thing that happened in Ukraine and to try and achieve a sweeping military stabilisation stretching across the entire Northern Hemisphere.
The problem is a majority of Russians have a dictatorship mentality - they don't do things by mutual agreement, they believe in a strong leadership, which is why they're constantly led by defacto dictators. This unfortunately extends into their geopolitical world view too, in that they could never join NATO because the concept of being in an organisation as an equal is alien to them - to them they should be the grand dictator of the organisation This is also why Putin so hates the EU - he'd join it, if he could be wholly in charge of it, but whilst he sees mutual cooperation between 28 of his closest neighbours, he sees that as an affront to everything the Russian mindset stands for, he sees that as weakness, and so when it works, when the EU becomes the largest single economic area in the world right on his doorstep he despises that and will stop at nothing to try and destroy it and impose his idea of a Russian led Eurasian Economic Union instead.
This is why he poses for what seem like ridiculous photos to us - to the Russian psyche it's exactly what a leader should be, not just to his own country, but to the whole world. Whilst the rest of Europe grew up, Russia fenced itself off behind a wall and kept itself stuck inside the 15th - 19th century European Empire mindset. Probably the only real solution to the Russian problem is to allow them to go bankrupt again with sanctions and so forth, but this time, don't let them get back up - make sure the territory fractures. More modern forward thinking areas like St Petersburg would likely become pro-EU independent territories, whilst the backward areas could be left to fester. Unfortunately, there's then the nuclear question, but it's clear you can't work with Russia as an equal until Russia has it's own enlightenment, because it's just not in their national psyche.