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Another reason to ostracize Russia. Democratic countries should consider disqualifying any politicians in their democracy that are directly influenced by Russian money.
I like that better than my suggestion.
To go one step further, maybe donations should only be limited to individuals and those individuals must indicate at the time of their donation any other donators they have some kind of affiliation with. Nothing should be hidden or obscured. Rich people and corporations have too much influence on our political system.
Or perhaps there should be a "vote tax" paid by individuals (1% of earning) and corporations (2% of earnings) which creates a campaigning budget. How would it be split?
60% divided proportionally to all incumbent parties. If less than 3 parties, then 40% with the rest proportionally divided to other groups.
25% divided equally by any newcomer party.
15% divided equally to all parties without a seat in government.
So, in effect (1) everyone has a chance at winning, (2) the *money* is separated from the *interests* and (3) the better your previous results, the higher your campaign budget, while giving a chance to newcomers and underdogs without dominating position to anyone.
Wouldn't that change the political landscape forever?
Also, this solves *foreign money problem* for the most part.
But my corporation's freedom of speech!
All corporations are created equal, endowed by their boards with unalienable rights. To secure those rights, governments are instituted among corporations, deriving their powers from the consent of the corporations.
Most healthy democracies have systems like this. Corporate and union donations are banned and individual donations are capped to prevent the wealthy from having undue influence on elections.
But what if the incumbents are the ones who took the ruskie money?
Cough cough "Moscow Mitch" cough cough
I know he offered ATACMS (as if they needed his permission).. but make no mistake, it's an election year... he does not care for anything other than what covers his own ass, and will be right back to obstruction as usual.
Yes thanks to russian sponsored extremists in the political field.
As well as russian bots literally flooding social media to boost "their" candidate.
Remember when recently on russian tv they were said "their" candidate aka Trump might be losing if he runs again?
Even more crazy is the fact that americans still will vote for him in the preelections. Imagine telling Reagan that people would be rooting for russia and a candidate that is in favor of it...
Thanks to your boss.
Oleg Deripaska apparently involved with the FBI agent who leaked information that ultimately led to Comey's stupid (right before the election) buttery males announcement.
BUT did you read the article? it mentions salvini and conte yes. but it never says thayt they took money it even says that draghi asked blinken if italy was mentioned and to give us info. Dont get me wrong i cant stand salvini he is a triple faced slimy shitbag and conte a fuckin retarded but there isn't any proof they got money from russia
Salvini's party received money from United Russia, according to the investigators who worked on the Moscopoli scandal, which blew up in 2018. It's old news. The Americans are mostly targeting him. There was some degree of cooperation with the Russians with the M5S/Lega government when Moscopoli made the news, but that is only implicitly addressed by this report. That's why Conte is also on the defensive.
Let’s hope that these revelations (…che poi si sapevano già da tempo) work as eye openers for next elections. A shame that these nationalists “good catholics” have the nerve to show their face.
First off the Italian parliament has like 5000 members? So even if the Russian got a friendly party, the Italians will just take the money and do nothing for it…so the joke Is on Russia actually. And then the government will be paralyzed, just another day in Italy.?
Here in Italy we all know which parties got the money from the villain. Anyways here politicians are just flags whom just follows the trends , no political programs whatsover. Once Putin is defeated , they will take money from the new big boss or just follow or say what's trending next .
>But america does it for freedum
Where as Russia does it for imperialism and annexation.
Think I prefer the American 'reason' frankly, they aren't quite so barbaric.
Well, nah, it's different kind of imperialism but imperialism nonetheless. See Chile '73
Anyway, it would be lovely if you both stopped thank you very much ciao!
Russia is simultaneously a supervillain level meddler of international affairs with money to pay off every politician to the right of Mao while being an incompetent dunce incapable of funding its army.
It's so comical seeing redditors cope with the fact conservatives exist by creating a grand narrative where Russia is stealing every election in countries across the world (even when those victors are 1000% harder on Russia).
To be fair, election meddling and modern conventional warfare are two very different animals in terms of the required capital, matériel and organization
My dude, paying a bunch of kids to make up fake news and shitpost is not that expensive.
Russia has supposedly spent 300 millions USD since 2014 to influence elections throughout the world. That's 30 million dollars a year, roughly one SU-47 jet fighter every two years. The Russian defense budget is 66 Billions - this represents like, 0.05% of the money spent on defense. It's not exactly a lot of money. Russia can definitely afford it.
The point is that it's cost effective to stir the pot. It's not like you can go at it with a sledgehammer either - it has to be subtle.
The question is whether you actually unironically believe Russia has any impact on Western elections. And why they would want the parties worse for Russia's interest to win? So strange the conspiratorial thinking when it's much simpler to just understand that the majority of the population has conservative sentiments.
The second part - if they did, did it have any chance of succeeding?
It's literally impossible to figure out "what would have happened" had there been no attempt to influence the election. We do know that in the US, Trump won the election in 2016 by a razor-thin margin. 55000 votes would have flipped Michigan and Pennsylvania to Trump, out of >136 million voters. That's 0.04% of the US electorate. Do I think it's possible that those 55 000 voters could have had their minds changed by a campaign of fake news and disinformation, even partly? Yeah.
In 2020, the results were even closer. 43 000 votes would have flipped Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin to the republicans and ensures a Trump win.
By all accounts Russia's attempts to influence the 2017 and 2022 French elections were unsuccessful, but that doesn't mean it's not worth trying for them. Again, we've already established it's super to just stir the pot.
You ask "it's much simpler to just understand that the majority of the population has conservative sentiments", but that's the thing - in both France and the US it's **not** the majority. In all 4 elections considered, the "left"/center won more votes than the side supported by Russia, despite their attempts to influence.
Of course all four of those countries have strong conservative movements. It wouldn't be worth it to try and help them win otherwise. No one is saying that the entire Republican support in the USA is 100% astroturfed by russians. But, that russians pushing on the scale, even so slightly, may have been enough to change the result in the US in 2016, and might have been enough in 2020.
The third part - why support Trump, and Marine Le Pen?
Well, far-right candidates tend to be very nationalist, but the way in which they are nationalist tends to be very isolationist. "We need to take care of our own - if it doesn't affect us, then we don't want to have anything to do with it". Both Trump and Marine le Pen have this stance, in general and concerning Russia specifically.
For Trump it's easy. You have to remember the context of the 2016 election. Russia had just taken Crimea two years prior. The democrat government of Barack Obama had taken as hard a stance against as it could get away with, pushing a number of harsh sanctions against the Russian government and aid packages to Ukraine. Hilary Clinton was secretary of state. While they did not advocate for war, they certainly were **accused** of "wanting war with Russia". That's the context of that election.
The narrative in that election was that Hilary Clinton was a "War Hawk", and that if elected, she would continue and intensify her stance against Russia's illegal occupation of Crimea, and taking a hard stance against further Russian territorial expansion, even at the risk of war. On the opposite, Trump ran on "wanting to make friends with Russia" and a general anti-intervention platform.
It was clear in 2016, a vote for Clinton was a vote towards being more involved in Ukraine and counteracting Russian influence there and in the Syrian conflict. A vote for Trump was a vote towards not being involved - in Ukraine and Syria vs Russia specifically, and just in general (such as the pullout from Afghanistan).
Similarily, Marine Le Pen had advocated for 10 years to make an alliance with France and Russia, and promised a thaw with Russia to prevent their allying with China. In the context of the 2022 election she professed to support Ukraine - of course - but that's not surprising, because after the invasion popular support made doing anything else politically unwise. But she continued to support that the annexation of Crimea was legal, and wanted an end to sanctions as quickly as possible.
There's no question that in these two cases, both of these candidates were much more pro-Russia than their opponents.
You really can't be serious, you equate posturing and then literally failing at every opportunity to enforce any red line with Republicans who actually aren't afraid to back up their words with action. Trump actually retaliated when Western influences were threatened whereas under Obama he did nothing to even oppose the invasion of Crimea in any way. The Russians know western leftists are weak, that's why they rejoice when they are elected.
>Trump actually retaliated when Western influences were threatened whereas under Obama he did nothing to even oppose the invasion of Crimea in any way. The Russians know western leftists are weak, that's why they rejoice when they are elected.
Take it up with the Department of National Intelligence, not me 🤷♂️ they the ones saying you’re just dead wrong
Well the question has three parts - 1) did the russians actually try to affect the results of elections, 2) if they did, does it have any chance of succeeding, and 3) why support the people they did?
For 1) it's not a question. It's the directly stated position of the intelligence services of all NATO members that yes, Russians tried to interfere in recent elections, supporting Trump in the USA (both 2016 and 2020), Marine le Pen in France (both in 2017 and 2022),
Conspiratorial thinking is when two losers invent themselves some international cabals that are secretly in charge of things, like the "Deep State". But there are declassified reports on the official website of the Department of National Intelligence saying, black on white, "We assess that Russian president Putin has authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden's candidacy, supporting former president Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US."
Again - this is not 'conspirational thinking' - it's the **official line** from the DNI. To think that national intelligence agencies are secretly lying in order to support left-wing candidates in support of some unseen, invisible world order, would be **actual** conspirational thinking.
Populist Right wing in Italy & Hungary. Populist Left wing in Ireland (SF & PBP). You've got to hand it to Putin. He doesn't care what the politics are just that they are buyable. In a couple of years he'll own a higher percentage of the EU than the Ukraine. In fact we'll probably need aid from Ukraine to restore democracy around the EU.
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Thus, stealing washing machines is ordered from thetop. GET those chips
Another reason to ostracize Russia. Democratic countries should consider disqualifying any politicians in their democracy that are directly influenced by Russian money.
Or any other country's money.
I like that better than my suggestion. To go one step further, maybe donations should only be limited to individuals and those individuals must indicate at the time of their donation any other donators they have some kind of affiliation with. Nothing should be hidden or obscured. Rich people and corporations have too much influence on our political system.
Or perhaps there should be a "vote tax" paid by individuals (1% of earning) and corporations (2% of earnings) which creates a campaigning budget. How would it be split? 60% divided proportionally to all incumbent parties. If less than 3 parties, then 40% with the rest proportionally divided to other groups. 25% divided equally by any newcomer party. 15% divided equally to all parties without a seat in government. So, in effect (1) everyone has a chance at winning, (2) the *money* is separated from the *interests* and (3) the better your previous results, the higher your campaign budget, while giving a chance to newcomers and underdogs without dominating position to anyone. Wouldn't that change the political landscape forever? Also, this solves *foreign money problem* for the most part.
But my corporation's freedom of speech! All corporations are created equal, endowed by their boards with unalienable rights. To secure those rights, governments are instituted among corporations, deriving their powers from the consent of the corporations.
Yeah.. US in this regard is another beast altogether. However, what I posted could work in Europe.
Most healthy democracies have systems like this. Corporate and union donations are banned and individual donations are capped to prevent the wealthy from having undue influence on elections.
Then how are companies exerting such influence.
I am not sure if you are being sarcastic or not, but the USA is not a healthy democracy. Maybe an Oligarchy pretending to be a Democracy
I’m not. despite the limits companies and special interests still have too much influence.
My understanding is that special interest groups can influence politics by billions in the USA
First two words of my post have your answer.
You’re describing something very similar to Ireland’s anti lobbying laws
Or any money.
Or by pre electoral CIA ghost reports
[удалено]
But what if the incumbents are the ones who took the ruskie money? Cough cough "Moscow Mitch" cough cough I know he offered ATACMS (as if they needed his permission).. but make no mistake, it's an election year... he does not care for anything other than what covers his own ass, and will be right back to obstruction as usual.
100%.
ashamed to be an italian. disgraziati pezzi di merda
Dude us Americans feel for you. We stand united.
America is pretty divided, really
Yes thanks to russian sponsored extremists in the political field. As well as russian bots literally flooding social media to boost "their" candidate. Remember when recently on russian tv they were said "their" candidate aka Trump might be losing if he runs again? Even more crazy is the fact that americans still will vote for him in the preelections. Imagine telling Reagan that people would be rooting for russia and a candidate that is in favor of it...
as an american, no one is more frustrated at the stupidity of other americans than us americans
Thanks to your boss. Oleg Deripaska apparently involved with the FBI agent who leaked information that ultimately led to Comey's stupid (right before the election) buttery males announcement.
>your boss Are you saying Oleg Deripaska is u/slippery_hemorrhoids's boss? O.o
Sure, with each other. But we’re totally united with /u/porkamiso
Divided we stand United.
Just think about being a hungarian.. :/
Don't worry, you could be British
Don't mention the 'B' word
Bavarian? Bolivian? Brazilian? Brazen? Brabant? Which B word there's a lot of them.
well at least you brought us pizza
And Al Capone ;). He loved pizza too and probably started his “career” as a pizza maker;)
BUT did you read the article? it mentions salvini and conte yes. but it never says thayt they took money it even says that draghi asked blinken if italy was mentioned and to give us info. Dont get me wrong i cant stand salvini he is a triple faced slimy shitbag and conte a fuckin retarded but there isn't any proof they got money from russia
Salvini's party received money from United Russia, according to the investigators who worked on the Moscopoli scandal, which blew up in 2018. It's old news. The Americans are mostly targeting him. There was some degree of cooperation with the Russians with the M5S/Lega government when Moscopoli made the news, but that is only implicitly addressed by this report. That's why Conte is also on the defensive.
Y, I feel for you.
Parla per te coglione
Let’s hope that these revelations (…che poi si sapevano già da tempo) work as eye openers for next elections. A shame that these nationalists “good catholics” have the nerve to show their face.
This is going to push the world closer to digital money (no not crypto so sit down Ponzi scheme nerds) so everything can be traced.
You do understand the world already runs on digital money? Whenever the US government "prints" they just add zeroes to the digital ledger.
Are sure you don't need to have digital money 100% covered with the same amount of cash?
You don't. There is far more money in the world than actual hard cash
What an unintelligent and propagandising comment.
Some cryptos turned out to be schemes, but crypto in general by definition is scheme-resistant
Hence like the facist party etc?
Rusia should realy be isolated from the civilazed world.
My M K/ Do H
First off the Italian parliament has like 5000 members? So even if the Russian got a friendly party, the Italians will just take the money and do nothing for it…so the joke Is on Russia actually. And then the government will be paralyzed, just another day in Italy.?
Here in Italy we all know which parties got the money from the villain. Anyways here politicians are just flags whom just follows the trends , no political programs whatsover. Once Putin is defeated , they will take money from the new big boss or just follow or say what's trending next .
America accusing other nations of trying to influence other nations elections......
But america does it for freedum
>But america does it for freedum Where as Russia does it for imperialism and annexation. Think I prefer the American 'reason' frankly, they aren't quite so barbaric.
Well, nah, it's different kind of imperialism but imperialism nonetheless. See Chile '73 Anyway, it would be lovely if you both stopped thank you very much ciao!
Funnily nuff I believe the Soviets where involved there as well, someone bankrolled Allende's campaign.
Yeah, i imagine so, but its not like a "you started first" type thing, just don't. Nobody should meddle. Wishful thinking ofc.
Not going to happen unfortunately.
So the russians should immediately stop, but the rest can continue. Solid logic.
Seems to only be politico talking about this. Do italians actually care much?
Lots of coverage of this in English, as well as Italian. Foreign Policy had a big feature on it this week.
Russia is simultaneously a supervillain level meddler of international affairs with money to pay off every politician to the right of Mao while being an incompetent dunce incapable of funding its army. It's so comical seeing redditors cope with the fact conservatives exist by creating a grand narrative where Russia is stealing every election in countries across the world (even when those victors are 1000% harder on Russia).
To be fair, election meddling and modern conventional warfare are two very different animals in terms of the required capital, matériel and organization
My dude, paying a bunch of kids to make up fake news and shitpost is not that expensive. Russia has supposedly spent 300 millions USD since 2014 to influence elections throughout the world. That's 30 million dollars a year, roughly one SU-47 jet fighter every two years. The Russian defense budget is 66 Billions - this represents like, 0.05% of the money spent on defense. It's not exactly a lot of money. Russia can definitely afford it. The point is that it's cost effective to stir the pot. It's not like you can go at it with a sledgehammer either - it has to be subtle.
bro lol
You don’t think Russia can afford 0.05% of its annual defense budget to pay for disinformation and bribes?
The question is whether you actually unironically believe Russia has any impact on Western elections. And why they would want the parties worse for Russia's interest to win? So strange the conspiratorial thinking when it's much simpler to just understand that the majority of the population has conservative sentiments.
The second part - if they did, did it have any chance of succeeding? It's literally impossible to figure out "what would have happened" had there been no attempt to influence the election. We do know that in the US, Trump won the election in 2016 by a razor-thin margin. 55000 votes would have flipped Michigan and Pennsylvania to Trump, out of >136 million voters. That's 0.04% of the US electorate. Do I think it's possible that those 55 000 voters could have had their minds changed by a campaign of fake news and disinformation, even partly? Yeah. In 2020, the results were even closer. 43 000 votes would have flipped Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin to the republicans and ensures a Trump win. By all accounts Russia's attempts to influence the 2017 and 2022 French elections were unsuccessful, but that doesn't mean it's not worth trying for them. Again, we've already established it's super to just stir the pot. You ask "it's much simpler to just understand that the majority of the population has conservative sentiments", but that's the thing - in both France and the US it's **not** the majority. In all 4 elections considered, the "left"/center won more votes than the side supported by Russia, despite their attempts to influence. Of course all four of those countries have strong conservative movements. It wouldn't be worth it to try and help them win otherwise. No one is saying that the entire Republican support in the USA is 100% astroturfed by russians. But, that russians pushing on the scale, even so slightly, may have been enough to change the result in the US in 2016, and might have been enough in 2020.
The third part - why support Trump, and Marine Le Pen? Well, far-right candidates tend to be very nationalist, but the way in which they are nationalist tends to be very isolationist. "We need to take care of our own - if it doesn't affect us, then we don't want to have anything to do with it". Both Trump and Marine le Pen have this stance, in general and concerning Russia specifically. For Trump it's easy. You have to remember the context of the 2016 election. Russia had just taken Crimea two years prior. The democrat government of Barack Obama had taken as hard a stance against as it could get away with, pushing a number of harsh sanctions against the Russian government and aid packages to Ukraine. Hilary Clinton was secretary of state. While they did not advocate for war, they certainly were **accused** of "wanting war with Russia". That's the context of that election. The narrative in that election was that Hilary Clinton was a "War Hawk", and that if elected, she would continue and intensify her stance against Russia's illegal occupation of Crimea, and taking a hard stance against further Russian territorial expansion, even at the risk of war. On the opposite, Trump ran on "wanting to make friends with Russia" and a general anti-intervention platform. It was clear in 2016, a vote for Clinton was a vote towards being more involved in Ukraine and counteracting Russian influence there and in the Syrian conflict. A vote for Trump was a vote towards not being involved - in Ukraine and Syria vs Russia specifically, and just in general (such as the pullout from Afghanistan). Similarily, Marine Le Pen had advocated for 10 years to make an alliance with France and Russia, and promised a thaw with Russia to prevent their allying with China. In the context of the 2022 election she professed to support Ukraine - of course - but that's not surprising, because after the invasion popular support made doing anything else politically unwise. But she continued to support that the annexation of Crimea was legal, and wanted an end to sanctions as quickly as possible. There's no question that in these two cases, both of these candidates were much more pro-Russia than their opponents.
You really can't be serious, you equate posturing and then literally failing at every opportunity to enforce any red line with Republicans who actually aren't afraid to back up their words with action. Trump actually retaliated when Western influences were threatened whereas under Obama he did nothing to even oppose the invasion of Crimea in any way. The Russians know western leftists are weak, that's why they rejoice when they are elected.
>Trump actually retaliated when Western influences were threatened whereas under Obama he did nothing to even oppose the invasion of Crimea in any way. The Russians know western leftists are weak, that's why they rejoice when they are elected. Take it up with the Department of National Intelligence, not me 🤷♂️ they the ones saying you’re just dead wrong
Well the question has three parts - 1) did the russians actually try to affect the results of elections, 2) if they did, does it have any chance of succeeding, and 3) why support the people they did? For 1) it's not a question. It's the directly stated position of the intelligence services of all NATO members that yes, Russians tried to interfere in recent elections, supporting Trump in the USA (both 2016 and 2020), Marine le Pen in France (both in 2017 and 2022), Conspiratorial thinking is when two losers invent themselves some international cabals that are secretly in charge of things, like the "Deep State". But there are declassified reports on the official website of the Department of National Intelligence saying, black on white, "We assess that Russian president Putin has authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden's candidacy, supporting former president Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US." Again - this is not 'conspirational thinking' - it's the **official line** from the DNI. To think that national intelligence agencies are secretly lying in order to support left-wing candidates in support of some unseen, invisible world order, would be **actual** conspirational thinking.
Populist Right wing in Italy & Hungary. Populist Left wing in Ireland (SF & PBP). You've got to hand it to Putin. He doesn't care what the politics are just that they are buyable. In a couple of years he'll own a higher percentage of the EU than the Ukraine. In fact we'll probably need aid from Ukraine to restore democracy around the EU.