Hacker News Reader

Comment by alecco | Hacker News Reader

It freaks me out the largest mob in the world has the 2nd largest nuke stash ready to fire. They are out of control:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinen...

Your first sentence has been true for the better part of a century, now. And - while the American government is undoubtedly less corrupt and more liberal than the Russian one - I don't really see the odds of America using nukes being significantly lower than the odds of Russia using them.

(Also: I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by "out of control" - plenty of countries engage in extrajudicial killings: Russia, obviously, but also Israel, Syria, America...)

That was a blatant assassination with very expensive (30M) and easily traceable radioactive material. It was a clear message to dissidents and western governments.

The assassins even took a British Airways flight to leave a radioactive trail behind. And the material was identified to come from a specific nuclear plant in Russia.

I've never heard of anything like this before.

> I've never heard of anything like this before.

Some reading material for you then :) -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky#Assassination

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_umbrella

That's interesting and James Bond novel worthy. But I mean the message and the ruthlessness of showing off by government agencies.

"Extra-judicial" in the context of warfare is one thing (killing people who kill your people or help do so), but assassination of mere critics of a government is an entirely separate kettle of fish. Litvinenko is the most prominent example of the absolute ruthlessness and lawlessness of Putin's regime but it is far from the only one (see also the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko and the many suspicious deaths of Russian journalists critical of Putin).

Does it not freak you that the holder of the largest nuke stash has recently invaded a whole fucking country on false premises, just to access its oil? Talk about being out of control, eh?

Indeed! It's just US has long term economic interests and they're a tiny bit more rational about it. Not good at all, but less bad and out of control.

Define "out of control" then. Rationality is relative. Russia is quite rational about its own policies (including the lack of enforcement in the OP's case), the exact same way the US is rational about its.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com