France high-speed rail traffic disrupted by 'malicious acts' on Olympic ceremony
lemonde.fr
lemonde.fr
[1] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240726-sabotage-on-f...
We can be glad we have cars, trucks and roads that are a bit more resistant to attacks.
This was at least 4 different actors, perhaps 4 different groups of actors, executing a coordinated action simultaneously.
If the past has shown anything, then that both politics and infrastructure providers greatly overestimate the skill required for disrupting/hacking such systems and networks...
“Simultaneous operations by 4 teams in different parts of the country” does not work well with “a disgruntled ex-employee or a crafty IT-security student” as a hypothesis.
I look forward to getting more detail a couple of years from now, when information will slowly filter out.
If this were an internal political entity they would have already claimed responsibility and put out a manifesto.
In Belgium they arrested seven muslim terrorists who were planning a terror attack during the Olympics, they were from Chechnya (so, technically, russian but it sounded like the usual islamic terror attacks that was planned and not some "russia vs the west" thing).
It's frightening how easy it is to establish as a cultural norm that guessing is proper thinking.
I get phishing mail with very pertinent information only JR West would know any time I make train or rental car reservations with JR West.
Yes, I am willing to bet hard money that they've been backdoored and/or compromised at the human level. Standard fare for Japanese IT, honestly; see Kadokawa.
Cars/trucks/roads are so much more dangerous than train travel that it actually seems worth the tradeoff to me even if these sorts of attacks were a regular occurrence. Putin (or whoever did this) sucks but they have not killed 1,105 Americans in a single year. That's just the number of cyclists killed by cars in 2022. Deaths of pedestrians and drivers/passengers are significantly higher.
https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2024-06-24/us-...
It's surprising how little people know about how cars came to be so prominent: https://web.archive.org/web/20230216004635/https://libraryar...
Hack traffic light controls and set them to all-green (assuming the safety interlock is done in software), all-red, or just off. Dumbass drivers will do the rest for free.
Alternatively, disrupt Google Maps and Waze. Barely anyone has a dedicated offline navigation system any more - take these two out or "suggest" fake traffic jams to overload side streets [1] will also cause a lot of chaos.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/03/berlin-ar...
It's not. There's a conflict monitor unit that is completely separate from the signal controller. It has direct inputs from all green or other permissive lights, and a diode matrix that determines which combinations are allowed.[1] If it detects a conflict, all signals go to flashing yellow. "This monitor uses a standardized programming card for channel compatibility (permissives), minimum flash time, per channel Minimum Yellow Change Disable, CVM latch, and 24 volt monitor latch. Programming of this card is accomplished through the use of soldered wire jumpers. The programming card plugs into the monitor through a slot in the front panel."
All 4-way intersections use the same interlocking pattern, so there's a standard card that covers most cases. Only unusual intersections need a custom programming card soldered up.
[1] https://www.editraffic.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/MMU2-1...
Have you never driven during a blackout? People get a little awkward figuring out four way stop priority, but it's not pure chaos.
Maybe I'm biased but I've seen incredibly dumb shit happening in urban areas (Munich in winter to be precise). People forget how to drive when lights go out and street markings are covered by snow.
Rural drivers in contrast have zero problems because they're used to driving without constant guidance.
Cars with so much electronics on board are just vulnerable as the worst cellphone out there; always connected may seem a cool buzzword, but in reality means always ready to be exploited. The reason they're not commonly exploited is that usually who is motivated to do that would rather look for bigger targets that give back more media coverage or potential ransom money.
Which shows a cultural disaster - an idiocracy - that should be taken as a priority.
The march to touchscreen controls in cars has happened despite massive consumer complaints across the board.
Edit: myself, I have seen an overwhelming majority of users that just shrug. (Plus, a number of shocked users that could not believe the situation when told - but that does not mean they will not conform when pressed by the lack of options.)
Now: there are documented proofs of people in pornographic delight handling cars through smartphones; the facts are reachable of gadgets in contemporary premium cars that would be refused by a seventies' pimp; there are definite anecdotes of large amounts people not having the slightest idea of the security and privacy faults of contemporary cars (etc.).
To discuss how «hopeless» a population is we should probably assess and throw numbers in: "uninformed | unaware | drooling | flabbergasted, etc.". Even if the number of the «cool buzzword» enthusiasts were smaller than thought by some, the elements are there for concern and societal action.
It's similar to how consumer-grade dumb TVs do not really exist. And most consumers are not about to start a low-margin, multi-million dollar capex business and start building their own cars and tvs.
Yes Bob. I also continually monitor that market. Europe here: the powers-that-be are restricting the use of old cars, and the new ones are unacceptable - as law and makers mandate. The scissor of usability is closing the gap between the blades. But that is the situation.
But this would not have happened if, wallets being holders of votes, people told the powers-that-be and the car makers to **** off.
(Sorry, I missed that part.)
That is what we need. That is not something «most consumers are not about to start»: it should be a drive to have a few serving the rest.
An easier and (on an important side, fail-safe resilience aside) better solution would be a society that would not have let the situation happen in the first place.
Real world has lot to learn from IT infrastructure management. :-)
Extra points for putting the large bus or truck on it's side, requiring a crane or much more work to get it on its wheels.
And you don't have to walk off, you can unload your electric scooter and zip away to start your new life as a fugitive.
Um, sabotaging any city's water tunnels would make the city uninhabitable for years.
Most frightening experience I ever had as engineer in my life:
I was intern. At a place in a midwestern city where a city's water infrastructure can be monitored. Long story short, I heard "PING". Then three more "PING"s. Then another "PING". Then 2 more. Even as an idiot intern, I knew what the implications were with respect to tensioned concrete. I was thinking in my head, "8 feet diameter. 96 inches." But I couldn't remember the PSI because I probably had already soiled myself. Thankfully there was a grey beard there who coolly looked over at me and said, "Probably want to start shutting that down son."
2 things I learned. Calm is contagious. And our infrastructure is way more frail than should be the case.
Can totally picture
How are you counting this? If you mean Hudson River crossings between NJ and Manhattan, there are five: two road tunnel groups (Holland and Lincoln) and three rail grops (Upper/Lower Hudson and North River). When Gateway is complete (2030s), there will be four rail groups.
But if you mean the entire NYC metro area, there are significantly more: Manhattan <-> Brooklyn alone has the Hugh L. Carey for road traffic, and then six active subway tunnel groups. Manhattan <-> Queens has a similar number.
It's frightening how easy it is for an foreign actor to knock out a country's railway system
The attack on SNCF was not "easy". This was a methodical, large scale, coordinated attack. They knew what to take down. How to take it down with least collateral damage. And when each should be taken down. (Order likely counts here. You're trying to plug up tracks.) Point being, these attacks are not "easy". In a place with as much unrest and discontent as France has bubbling beneath the surface, the trains would go down twice weekly, every week, if it was "easy" to do so.
A similar methodical, large scale, coordinated attack on our bridges would shut the system down as well. I won't even mention some other infrastructural assets that, if targeted, easily will shut us down for months because I think they are just that soft as targets. I honestly believe it would be irresponsible to even put the idea out into the ether.
The takeaway here is that if you're dealing with large organizations, with even a modest amount of resources, and a grievance, you're likely dealing with orgs that have a lot of young people they can send to successfully carry out such attacks. Thankfully, these attacks still require a level of technical knowledge that seems to elude such groups. So it's just matter of keeping that information as secure as possible on the one hand. While working towards security and resilience of those assets on the other.
It looks more like an elaborately prepared barbecue party: careful planning, getting all the details figured out ahead of time, coordination and, well, relatively calm execution.
Maybe foreign agents could do it with 50? If they were supported by satellites and other tools to which these attackers likely did not have access. But foreign agents are operating in relatively large teams even for simple missions. I don't think with this level of coordination, and this number of targets, spread over this large a geographic area, any intelligence agency is going to send one guy/gal per target. It only works like that in Bourne and 007 movies.
The only novel thing here is coordination, but it doesn't seem like a huge stretch of the imagination to target the 4th most frequent high speed rail crossroads, which is exactly what they did.
A mere decade ago this was pure science fiction, but over the past few years it has become a possibility.
Basically every modern car can have software that says "slam the gas pedal as far as possible". Combine that with cars that are heavily integrated into their infotainment system or even include built in wifi and you've got the "over the air signal" covered.
I also believe that drive by wire systems are going to become even more commonplace in the future and eliminate the possibility of a driver attempting to muscle the car back into control.
Meanwhile if someone throws spike strips on a busy highway/tunnel/bridge between two chokepoints, you're effectively screwed. If this is done in a concerted manner it will probably take at least a day to fix.
If you have more resources (say a state actor attacking a nation that isn't on a wartime footing), you can also exploit the fact that asphalt is a petroleum fraction and therefore soluble : spill a lot of diesel or hydraulic oil, for example (and optionally set it on fire) and you will unrecoverably ruin that section of asphalt, which could take weeks to fix: this is why gas stations are paved with concrete.
So while it's not as easy to do this as it is to derail a train or screw around a signaling system, it's far more difficult to repair professional roadway sabotage than railway sabotage, and in the end the railways are probably more resilient.
caltrops could also paralyse entire highways
also bridges
I could also imagine that it's not difficult to insert sugar into gas stations
That's why they were able to get some of the trains back to operation: they can't run them as close together as before, but can still use the tracks.
At least in times of peace.
There are two issues here though. The first is that the Olympics is a special event and it is more likely for somebody to try to cause the disruptions, and as such more control is probably warranted.
The second is that somebody else (Russia) is not acting like they are at peace with us so we should act accordingly
Now that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has occurred, and cheap armed quad-copters are a publicly known thing, I can say this openly:
Are you kidding me? Because we are still petro-centric, we are extremely fragile. For example, the West Coast has a handful of oil refineries. To shut down the West Coast's road traffic it would take one guy, and less than $10,000 in equipment. This could all be accomplished in 3 days, and there are no deployed defenses for this attack vector.
I have been trying to argue that the transition to EVs is a natsec issue for 10+ years. However, I am just some forum schmuck, and it has not been going well. Any help with moving this thinking up the chain would be greaty appreciated.
A possible analogy: The Internet was designed to be a multi-path, decentralized, and distributed communications system to withstand attack. That's what EVs are for transportation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL9q2lOZ1Fw&pp=ygUSaGFja2luZ...,
Meanwhile, FERC found that knocking out just nine strategically located substations, of 55,000 at the time they did the assessment in 2014, would plunge our country into darkness.
https://time.com/6244977/us-power-grid-attacks-extremism/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304020104579433...
There is no way that I can be off-grid with oil. Meanwhile, 6 months after the apocalypse all oil products have degraded, and my solar panels and LiFePo batteries still have years left.
Also, post-attack, there is a huge difference in supply chain lag between setting up some solar panels vs a refinery.
If we lose, according to FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission)... nine... of our 55,000 substations; the entire nation could lose power in almost all areas. Maybe our situation has improved since 2014, I definitely hope so, but think about this:
33% causing ~33% damage, or 0.016% causing ~90% damage. Which one is preferable?
Here's a genius idea if you're Russia. Maybe things have improved and are 10x better. In that case, knocking out 0.16% of our substations, 90 in total, in strategic locations should do the trick. Combine that with rail sabotage so the parts to fix them don't arrive, and then you've done it. Just smuggle about 500 soldiers among the 2.2 million illegal border crossings every year, and that'd be enough to assign a team of 5 to each task.
What I didn't include in my original argument is distributed, off-grid capture of electrons. I would still argue that a national security priority should be increasing the share of EVs and distributed PV generation. If every person, and Amazon distribution center for example, could go off-grid and continue at least partial capacity.. that would be a good thing, wouldn't it?
Thank you for phrasing my previous awkward statements so succinctly.
This should be a goal for natsec. As in, actual Defense Budget should be applied to this goal.
This is not theoretical, it is TRL 9. None of our soldiers die. We can actually do this starting today. It vastly improves our national security.
The only thing that prevents this is our fossil fuel economic inertia.
https://theins.press/en/politics/273350
> On May 7, he was in Russia and due to fly from Moscow to Istanbul, where he’d catch a connecting flight back to Paris the next day. Except he couldn't. He got so fall-down drunk at Istanbul Airport that he was barred from boarding his plane. Instead Griaznov took a taxi to the Bulgarian border, where another car delivered him to St. Vlas, a resort town on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, where Griaznov owns property.
> Griaznov stayed at his apartment for a few days before moving on to Varna, a Bulgarian city 60 miles north of St. Vlas. From there he flew on to Paris. During one of his beach-side dinners he got drunk again and let slip to the neighbors that he had a special assignment this summer in Paris to disrupt the opening ceremony of the Olympics. At first the neighbors were incredulous. That’s when Griaznov brandished his FSB ID, witnesses told The Insider. A few days later, Griaznov made his way to Varna and took a flight from there. Before flying to Paris, Griaznov made a call to his FSB boss and informed him that the operation was on track. Griaznov even said he’d recruited “one more Moldovan from Chisinau.”
It would be humorous if it weren't so serious.
The article exists on both though
>By Lucas Minisini, Thomas Eydoux, Charles-Henry Groult, Der Spiegel and The Insider
This is obviously a Russian act of sabotage in retaliation for French support of Ukraine. All the downvotes of their mighty troll army can't make it any less obvious.
How do we fail so badly to counter foreign influence, sabotage, and espionage operations?
The examples of successful foreign operations in Western countries is so long and embarrassing - high level people operating for DECADES, changing MAJOR western policies, and sending back to their foreign handlers CRITICAL data and intelligence.
If this continues, we are absolutely going to get destroyed.
Basically, Western leaders can't hear you over the sound of how awesome they're trying to tell you they are.
Too little governing.
Has nothing to do with whether the intelligence community publicizes its results, which I agree, they shouldn't. They should be stopping these kind of things, though.
They should actually prosecute those "protesters" that assaulted police on camera the other day. They released them instead.
Too little governing.
Meanwhile, we get press tours saying how awesome and kind and empathetic their policies are. Look how inclusive we are! Look how many check-boxes we've checked on the fashionable political stance list! You know that thing high muckety-muck said? They never said that. You remember that wrong. There must be something wrong with your recall. You must be racist or insane to think that. Interest rates? Those aren't a problem, what are you talking about?
Too much politics, optics, and gaslighting.
And those are just the local examples. It's happening in Britain, it's been happening in France and the rest of Europe, and when people complain, they're told to shut up and stop being so selfish.
Why wouldn't we see the operational failures of law enforcement to keep citizens and infrastructure in the West safe as an outgrowth of the other outrageous failures of leadership we keep seeing day after day?
A reminder that if you want to live in a country where it is normal to buy a brand new assault rifle, 200 rounds of ammo, and go shoot it all in the same weekend, you CANNOT preemptively stop a mass shooter or wannabee assassin. Nothing he did should put up red flags in a private gun ownership country.
"A reminder that if you want to live in a country where it is normal to own an assault rifle..."
So there was no conspiracy, let alone a foreign one, for the intelligence agencies to have triggered on. This very much looks like a failure of the Secret Service agency, and it will be interesting to see what the final failure analysis looks like, and what they determine can be done better in the future.
And I think the "quality failures the rest of our government orgs are experiencing" is you projecting a bias. If you really think that things are going down hill, please find quantifiable metrics to show that.
It is suspicious that person who was radicalized enough to organize an attack on a president would have never said anything radical on the internet and not left a manifesto. A good guy that turned a killer overnight. Sometimes you wake up on the wrong foot ey.
Looking at the regular expulsions of embassy employees all over the world it should be rather obvious that there is a lot going on about which “we” never hear anything.
(By “we”, I mean normal people having other activities than following closely geopolitics. There is a lot of information to find if you are dedicated enough. A lot of misinformation as well.)
That's the ones we make public. There's been quite the lot of spies quietly yeeted or exchanged for political hostages. And just as often, it's the other way 'round.
You only hearing about this one doesn't mean anything.
So now I'm concerned, do we know who did it and why ?
And I recall hearing a month ago or more that Russia would likely try something, because they aren't allowed in the Olympics as Russia, because of the invasion of Ukraine. So they want to mar the Olympics out of saving face, or spite, or revenge, or whatever. (Sorry, I cannot cite a source...)
Radicalism in foreign policy leads straight to open war.
We can just go and supply Ukraine with a shit ton of Abrams, Taurus or lift the usage restrictions that currently forbid Ukraine to strike targets deep in Moscow.
All of that is certainly better than just accepting Putin's escalations.
So you are prescribing dangerous policy on guessing.
And besides: that's the cost of doing "plausible deniability" missions like Russia has done for over a decade now - remember the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and "they're totally not Russian soldiers" or the time they shot down a passenger plane? Fuck around, find out, it's time to have some good old-fashioned revenge for all the bullshit Russia has pulled and gotten away with until now.
Does that guarantee this is safe to do?
>> We can just go and supply Ukraine with a shit ton of Abrams, Taurus or lift the usage restrictions that currently forbid Ukraine to strike targets deep in Moscow.
There are no guarantees or anything when it comes to Putin not reacting to something done against him, but it is a certainty that he will escalate if not pushed back, because that has been both his personal and his country's M.O. for decades.
At the end this is a risk we have to be willing to take, otherwise it will be the Baltics next that's up for grabs. Or maybe Hungary, that one won't even need soldiers the way Orban is going.
What did you mean by this then?
>> There's no need to guess
.
> At the end this is a risk we have to be willing to take
Are me and my family included in this obligation?
> otherwise it will be the Baltics next that's up for grabs.
Are you guessing again?
A bunch of optic fibers have been cut, but the network was badly designed without redundancy (as evidenced by the current denial of service).
Strategic points (the attacks occurred at junctions of several axis) were left insufficiently guarded.
The location of these points also shouldn't have been made available to bad actors.
French people are not surprised because there are always problems with train when lots of people need them to go on holidays. Usually at this time of the year it's getting hot, and it's one or more electrical transformer that gets burned by high heats. When copper price get high, cables are usually stolen to be sold as metal. And there are also strikes.
There is an economic balance to be found between the cost of securing and maintaining the infrastructure vs fixing the problems once they occur. Probably can be better, but others probably have it much worse.
@liotier, I've been rate-limited and cannot reply to you directly, so I'm editing my response into this comment. My apologies.
I didn't intend any slight to French infrastructure or those designing and securing it, just the dynamics of the problem. It is easier to attack than to defend, particularly in physical security. I'm sure critical infrastructure is well taken care of. Do you know if TGV is considered as critical as the other sites you noted? I'm curious of your opinion about what level of expertise and intelligence collection it required to carry this out.
I can throw burning fuel into a manhole or at a street cabinet, and it doesn't take much insight to find one that carries important traffic - take your pick near a military base or a nuclear power plant. But the attack will be ineffective, because the attacker needs to know what other bits of infrastructure carry the backup circuits - and take them out simultaneously. And, of course, for the important stuff such information is classified. So, an effective attack on French critical infrastructure is more difficult than it seems at first glance.
Apparently they did not catch all the arson teams.
https://theins.press/en/politics/273350
> On May 7, he was in Russia and due to fly from Moscow to Istanbul, where he’d catch a connecting flight back to Paris the next day. Except he couldn't. He got so fall-down drunk at Istanbul Airport that he was barred from boarding his plane. Instead Griaznov took a taxi to the Bulgarian border, where another car delivered him to St. Vlas, a resort town on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, where Griaznov owns property.
> Griaznov stayed at his apartment for a few days before moving on to Varna, a Bulgarian city 60 miles north of St. Vlas. From there he flew on to Paris. During one of his beach-side dinners he got drunk again and let slip to the neighbors that he had a special assignment this summer in Paris to disrupt the opening ceremony of the Olympics. At first the neighbors were incredulous. That’s when Griaznov brandished his FSB ID, witnesses told The Insider. A few days later, Griaznov made his way to Varna and took a flight from there. Before flying to Paris, Griaznov made a call to his FSB boss and informed him that the operation was on track. Griaznov even said he’d recruited “one more Moldovan from Chisinau.”
It would be humorous if it weren't so serious.
It has to be a decoy of sorts right?
But well, as we all know, false flag attacks is something only The Enemy does.
I doubt their goal is to be universally reviled, so what's their real objective?
As much as I'm tempted to think they're just being full-on assholes, I assume they're being more strategic than that.
Basically the idea is to erode trust in the western system. They don't try to hide it anymore and seems it doesn't matter - it's quite effective anyway.
It doesn't erode trust in the western system.
Or do you?
You are using the colloquial versions of "know", and "is".
You are welcome to clarify if you'd like.
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Shiftin...
Do you disagree?
It's the mafia style, everyone knows who whacked whom.
You have to look at this from the perspective of deeply broken people, full of malice and hardcore narcissism. Even if sabotage fails, they pat themselves on the back, rejoicing that they’ve increased paranoia and confusion, and start planning the next attack.
And if it provokes a response from their would be victims that results in Russian goals somewhere being ruined, they cry crocodile tears for pity and make themselves out to be martyrs, and plan the next attack.
There are many humans in this world with thoughts and motivations that are completely alien to others.
That's the cleverness of this. You aren't trying to convince them that Russia is better. You're just trying to convince them that USA is failing compared to its previous self.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/508169/historically-low-faith-i...
Slide 22 - https://www.sciencespo.fr/cevipof/sites/sciencespo.fr.cevipo...
Western civilization, including most of the infrastructure, assumes good intentions of those around. How many times have teenagers independently realized the chassis they could cause just by pushing a waiting pedestrian into traffic? Trains have always been noted as an easy target.
> An extraordinary email uncovered under freedom of information laws raises serious questions about whether Bellingcat, the “open source” collective widely cited by mainstream journalists and loved by the CIA, collaborates directly with Western intelligence agencies.
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/30/bellingcat-collusion-west...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/02/grayzon...
> correction > A previous version of this article incorrectly said that leaders of the online news site Grayzone had received payments from Iranian media, according to recently unearthed documents. The documents show that only one of the site’s editors received such payments. The article has been corrected.
If you want to paint bellingcat as a tool of the CIA, you have to prove their claims to be false. If the CIA pays bellingcat to produce only factually correct information, that is still useful.
If you want to know how the Russian peace looks like read up on the partitions of Poland (economic exploitation, violent anti-semitism, deportations to Siberia, confiscation of property and land, russification, etc.) or the history of countries in Eastern Europe who found themselves inside the borders of Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact. Persecutions, mass deportations, mass murders, torture, economic exploitation.
I really pity the African nations who got convinced to kick out Americans and the French. They will now get a taste of Russia and it will not be pretty.
I think this level of unserious analysis is deeply unhelpful. You know people in Russia have their lives and goals, they are not suicidal maniacs. At least read some Russian media with google translate
Even those who travel abroad don't seem to change their behaviour and thinking no matter how often and how long they visit other countries. They have become the scourge of the tourist resorts that will still take their money. Europeans don't want to go there anymore. It's all vodka, loud parties, and being absolute assholes to others. They are quickly becoming the Sentinelese of Europe.
I will not read Russian media, I had enough of it in my early years when it was compulsory. Russians pillaged my country of birth and continue to be an existential threat. Russians also lied to everybody after 1989 and used the time, the trust, and the money to arm themselves and start invading and killing neighbours. There is zero truth in what Russians say. They can keep their ballet and Dostoyevsky.
There are many, many decent people in Russia who abhor this war. But people have zero influence on what is going on. If one day Putin decides to invade the Baltics, your statement about Russians not being suicidal maniacs will still hold true, but again with no relationship with the actual events.
As a Russian I was with you until this part. Russia doesn't seem to have enough money/influence for that. They get a taste of China instead. Like https://x.com/mirab_clothiers/status/1782115456045728135
Or it could be a reference to the Chinese tendency to invest in the form of giving countries loans that they are ill-equipped to pay back, and China playing very hardball on poorest country debt forgiveness.
Without any judgement, imo: China is good at creating extractive systems.
(I'll add, if you've not read it, "Dealing with China An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower By Henry Paulson" is a fantastic book)
That’s not how it works.
China is the primary threat to Western nations, not Russia. China savvily extended its influence in Africa in particular while the US was so caught up with its useless War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, totally squandering its post Cold War opportunities in Africa.
If you are untouchable, don't care about the people, and can keep the people in check, the economy doesn't matter. You can live in wealth and comfort, while your people face famine and poverty. And the situation can be stable for many decades.
He is untouchable because of the cost of removing him, not because he is so well protected.
> The FBI announced it disrupted a Russian AI-enhanced social media bot farm, which was designed to be an influence operation. Some of the fake profiles from bots purported to be Americans.
Some other examples:
- https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook...
- https://openai.com/index/disrupting-deceptive-uses-of-AI-by-...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_Black_Lives_Matter
It's probably quite effective, but we don't know how effective because it's impossible to re-run the last 10 years without this and see what would have happened.
most countries are captured by a mafia clan, this isn't a thing specific to Russia. When you have powerful intelligence services sooner or later they end up taking over.
For example, Asian theocracies understand their mission as a state and its government as furthering whatever bizarre ideas they gleamed from the scripture. They are often clan-ish in organization, but this only reflects the history of how they came to be that way, that isn't the goal.
When it comes to the European politicians, they may be very corrupt lying scumbags, but in order to get elected they need to put on a show pretending to act in the interest of the country they want to rule.
When it comes to Russia: they are simply criminals. They don't need to pretend to want to make their country better off. Not in the sense the same corrupt lying European politician would. In prison terms, they try to prove themselves as the higher cast. As those who are allowed (and even required) to humiliate the lower cast.
It's highly unlikely that Russian intelligence service is anything special. But they aren't the ones calling the shots that's for sure. They are just a part of the country-sized prison.
Russia is operated by straight-up criminals. And I don't mean white-collar corrupt politicians. They are literally people who committed often very violent crimes. For instance, Putin is implicated in a number of "hits" on law enforcement officers, investigators etc. He was not the one executing the "hits", but he was likely directly involved in the crime. A lot of his associates have done often long time behind bars. For example, his puppet assigned to rule over Ukraine (the one who was deposed in the "revolution of dignity" which set in motion the present conflict) started his career as a gang robber: he, with his friends broke into an apartment, tortured the owners while taking their belongings.
These people have a mental model of the world defined by the prison lore. They have a bizarre set of rules which define what honor is: "honor" (the prison kind of) is the central value / virtue in this system. In this model, the world is divided into "suckers" and "men". "Men" are allowed to humiliate the "suckers" in whatever way they want. In fact, if they don't, they might as well join the "suckers". In this system, anyone who shows any kind of compassion to the "suckers" is him/herself a "sucker". Europeans or anyone who wants to live in a society that values any human life thus is automatically a "sucker".
This is why Russians think and treat Europeans with contempt and disdain. They don't think it to be immoral to steal from a European, or to assault one etc.
It's also "honorable" to accept the risks associated with humiliating the "suckers". To prove how much of a "man" someone is that is. It's actually better to die while proving your place is among "men" than to surrender and live like a "sucker". So, they don't care about international consequences of their sabotage in France today. At least not in the sense how another European country might've cared, should they engage in something similar.
> "revolution of dignity" which set in motion the present conflict) started his career as a
Deposed by the maidan's "revolution of dignity" president of the Ukraine Yanukovich had not been "assigned to rule over Ukraine", but elected in competitive voting, that OSCE certified as democratic and "organized in a transparent manner."
You are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts.
I've got a lot of mileage out of the assumption that every such act is supposed to send a message both to Russia's enemies and citizens.
The message being "we are everywhere".
Should anyone try to start working with the enemy, like the helicopter pilot Maxim Kuzminov, they will be found and executed.
EDIT: Navalny's return to Russia raised eyebrows in the west. I think he was aware that he would be targeted anyway, so might as well have it happen on his own terms.
I try hard to avoid getting conspiratorial in my head, so I tend to leave the thought around that point, after all, it's just a thought. :)
As to be reviled, some don't care, as long as they're feared.
Because they stand no chance fighting fare and square.
Believe it or not -- their initial goal was simply to gain respect.
They actually thought the Ukraine invasion would be a walkthrough, and that of course Western countries would whine and moan about of a -- but ultimately they would respect Russia for its audacity and boldness, that Russia would emerge with greatly enhanced stature over its historic rivals, and a new era of Russian gravitas and self-assuredness would begin.
So yes - it was all definitely quite strategic, in theory. But things didn't go as they planned of course, so now they're fighting like a cornered animal.
Except now the fight isn't for "respect", and it certainly isn't about Ukraine -- but rather their own physical and political survival.
Here's Keir Giles, who wrote a related book, talking a bit. https://youtu.be/j8wVuHMAEHg?t=688
For other real skeptics, there were 100% clear Ruzzian attacks in France before, there were people that drawn Swasticas, some people that put some coffins , soem Chechen guy with a grenade/bomb. We do not have video or written proof that Putin signed the orders so we need to use our brains and ignore the bots and trolls that defend terrorists.
Perhaps a french newspaper said hamas received russian funding or weapons or some other nuance that they completely glossed over. Perhaps it wasn't even a french newspaper or one not well regarded for accuracy (look at what the Onion prints in the US!). Or possibly it's even worse and the article is just posting a quote of somebody who said "hamas is russian" and so it's not even the french newspaper saying it.
This blindness is also commonly seen in the US. i.e. people saying polls had trump at a 0% chance to win the election despite literally a week before the election even CNN had articles saying it's a tight race -- https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/01/politics/presidential-poll-do...
and then here you go about left wing being behind the train attack: https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/france-sees-hand-of-far-lef...
this is the problem when having a political bias. you stop being factual. it was not the russian you were wrong and you wont even acknowledge it. before the russian it was the arabs for decades and before that it was the serbs. we know how the hive mind operates.
> here you go about left wing being behind the train attack
> France’s top cop said Monday he suspects far-left saboteurs [1] [2]
The article you're using as support doesn't support the claim you're making; the guy _suspects_ the far left but going around posted about it as settled matter is inaccurate. We got tons of people on this forum that _suspect_ Russia should I go make a post saying Russia did it and link to them as proof?
[2]: https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/france-sees-hand-of-far-lef...
it was indeed the russian far left from france. you were right I apologize. putin owns even our left wing I wonder how France is even still a nation
nice to see the political wokeness affecting hnews.
I've read that it's not quite as simple or easy as banning vodka or alcohol, as strangely enough, the highest individual source of Russian tax revenue is from excise taxes on the vodka, and revenue from the excise taxes on beer make up 75% as much as the excise taxes on vodka.
Further reading: https://warontherocks.com/2015/07/little-water-vodka-and-the...
Just wondering: is there a reason why there needs to be a bundle of fiber optic cables to carry safety information and control the rails? Is that not overkill? I assume wireless/cellular networking is not robust enough, but what just standard-ass copper wires, like the telephone lines? I assume the reason is that they're transmitting more than just what was named in the article, but all I know is what I read.
Examples:
1. transferring data near/from/to high voltage lines, without risking short circuits that cause fire/death/damage (personal experience: getting info in/out of particle accelerators that hold mega volts of tension)
2. using fibre optic cables to measure vibration or deformations (using the fibre as sensor)
3. physical layer redudancy in case of failure
4. keeping safety critical systems physically seperate from other data transfers
There are probably more reasons that are possibly more on-topic. I'm definitely not a fiber applications expert.
Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete called the “massive attack” against the rail network an “outrageous criminal act”. He described people fleeing from the scene of fires and the discovery of incendiary devices at the sites.
SNCF said many routes would have to be cancelled “at least all weekend while repairs are conducted” as thousands of rail staff were deployed to repair the damage.
If this were the US and NatSec were on the table, we could expect some overstatement of harm done and risk to the public.
IDK France tho. Do French officials favor agenda or accuracy?
On the other hand I don't think too much nationalism is good for a country, but at what point do people start appreciating what they have and start contributing at how France look for outsiders? I really wish we were more welcoming people as a whole, and less self-sabotaging.
Which in France is a reasonable survival strategy for its people judging by their history: a bunch of kings, 3 emperors, fairly corrupt governments with huge deficits etc.
I don't get why self-sabotage is likely in this case though: plenty of real external enemies, including one that recently "stole" France's African empire.
This is low effort. The real problem with a dictatorship is that people rise through loyalty rather than competence. The people are too afraid to call attention to the situation. You get childish actions like this as a result.
One line was blocked because of "two optic fibers" in Germany "for around three hours".
Now in France three main lines are blocked: West, North, East (+ attempt on South), the disruption will probably last for days, it's a lot more than two optic fibers.
- cui prodest/cui bono? So far the government witch it VERY hated by Parisian at least due to their zoning and confinement of people "for safety reasons", reasons who appear justified if someone commit crimes, the same plot observed with recent "terrorist attacks" of Charlie Hebdo, Nice etc all with a sole general effect: justify surveillance and repressive power. No one else have earned anything else good for them;
- you can surveil a city, many people in a dense area, full of surveillance. You can't surveil a whole country, so you can easily surveil, contain people rioting or some attacks in a city, you can't protect a long rail line across a country. No matter how much surveillance you have, even if you are so powerful to deploy cam on every place of the rails in the middle of nowhere you can just watch some masked biped attacking your infra, say hi! to the cam and disappear before even a drone jet can came;
- you can't protect the society against the society, or people agree to be civil and cooperative or there is no "third party force" who can keep the order and prevent a civil war. You can protect the most against very few, nothing more, actually this means that essentially ALL government can't do nothing positive because they have essentially no popular legitimization enough to be consider "the people government system". If they try to tighten the lace a civil war will happen. If they do not any kind of anti-social activity will happen anyway, because the society is actually fractured.
There are not to many details, but the dynamic seems exactly the same.
https://notesfrompoland.com/2024/05/29/poland-detains-three-...
Some of these were stopped:
https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7785/Artykul/3407219,ukraine...
So apparently the new strategy of Russia is to set Europe on fire but pretend it's not them.
Why would Russia even do such small time damage to countries geographically pretty far? Protip: no "Putin wants to conquer the world so he's planning in advance" conspiracy theory.
It'd make more sense for it to be an operation Northwoods if anything, but that would be even more far-fetched.
In some intention, public opinion.
Sorry, but the high speed rail is Frances pride, and this was not some random attack. Russia absolutely could pull this off, and they have the motive. What other organisations does?
There has been 800,000 people affected by this outage and the opening ceremony is at 7pm tonight, so probably connected.
This thread reads like a propaganda fair sponsored by Western governments.
Over at France24.com this is what is posted ATM:
"Two security sources said the modus operandi meant initial suspicions fell on leftist militants or environmental activists, but they said there was not yet any evidence."
You could say the same about shooting down a Dutch airliner.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/13/russian-tele...
Plus arrest of that drunken FSB agent in Romania who was bragging about exactly this terrorism few days ago. Also, very typical.
Above it's a "person in the rails" or in the platform
In France there have been fires (probably Russia acting normal as usual)
https://tg24.sky.it/cronaca/2024/07/20/firenze-uomo-binari-t...
The day before they had some technical problems with electricity, but still nothing that can be connected to intentional sabotage.
Are just scraping the bottom of the barrel to find anything of use to incitate for a military escalation?
There's already no games for me, why let you get the fun?
What did you in question even expected when escalating?
Of course the real problem is that it's ordinary Russians who bear the suffering caused by their own government, while the ruling elite enjoys luxurious lifestyle no matter what sanctions Europe and US do. The solution would be making life difficult for the oligarchy, but that would probably require measures West isn't willing to employ, because they would be illegal under international law (which Russia doesn't care about).
You did not have to weaponize everything yet you did.
I don't see this historical spirit being applied in the century XXI against anybody besides Russia. And it's not like there is no wars.
You are trying to frame escalations into some legalistic framework, but it only works domestically. Internationally, it is "you punch us, we punch you, we stab you, you stab us". No empty words are necessary and may cause additional violence in response.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/us/politics/russia-assass...
But I'm sure they'll get their war one way or the other, seeing how everyone is so looking forward to it.
Two words, Deer Hunter; and this one will likely be worse.
It gets old.
Using chemical (Novichok) and radiological (Polonium) weapons to conduct assassinations (and causing civilian casualties) was an attack on NATO.
Blowing up Czech and Bulgarian ammunition depots (causing deaths) was an attack on NATO.
Attempting to assassinate German and Bulgarian arms manufacturer CEOs was an attack on NATO.
Not all "attacks" are immediately risable to the level of war, but lets be real here.
Don't forget the classic assassinations like the Tiergartenmord in Berlin [1].
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordfall_Selimchan_Changoschwi...
Traditional media is doing EU citizens a disservice. This is state sponsored terrorism and we need to start calling a spade a spade.
It’s unfounded. Maybe not impossible, but it seems FAR more likely that it was eco-terrorism or another similar grievance. I haven’t heard one parsimonious theory for why Russia might do this.
https://www.france24.com/en/france/20240729-far-left-extremi...
Russia coordinating attacks on NATO territory is FAR more likely (read certain) considering recent activity:
May 2024 - EU Intelligence warns of Russia's continued hybrid warfare with a focus on rail infrastructure
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20240510-suspected-russia...
Aug 2023 - Rail sabotage in Poland
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66630260
Oct 2022 - Rail sabotage in Germany
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/09/1127739900/germany-trains-sab...
If anything, the fires lit by the saboteurs in France seem more amateurish and heavy-handed.
It's also pretty clearly Russia's style. Islamic terrorists would have targeted people, not random infrastructure, and Russian operatives have already been caught trying such things, or after having done such things all over Europe.
I'd be very interested to see how France responds. Nuking Moscow would of course be too much, but this sort of escalation cannot be left unchecked because as we've well seen, Putin is a fucking idiot who needs to get his head kicked in or he'll just keep pushing. More Mirages for Ukraine? This list getting longer? https://www.defense.gouv.fr/en/news/french-military-equipmen... A ban on anyone receiving Russian money from French politics (bye bye Le Pen and other Quislings)?
A couple of reports (grain of salt needed):
An FSB operative caught bragging about sabotaging the Olympics in Bulgaria: https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1816431778615226742
Russian arrested in Paris over sabotage plot: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd1j7kg2nk0o
A bunch of FSB operatives caught in Ukraine: https://global.espreso.tv/russia-ukraine-war-fsb-agents-plan...
Previous reporting from Bellingcat on Russian operations: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2021/04/26/how...
So does the capabilities to deploy forces and fully sustain them independently anywhere in the world, something which at most 4-5 other countries can do.
You could maybe argue China, I suppose? Though I think they're just better at keeping the chaos boiling just below the surface.
Why should I? What were the French military success in the last 100 years? Paris is just degraded right now. French bashing please!
Dictatorships on the other hand are terrified of their own people, and so crush and expression of freedom that they don't directly approve (see for instance the lady that was arrested in Moscow for standing in public with a blank piece of paper).
However in times of threat from an external force, then people group together and there's more cohesion. Would a democracy like France press the button to protect themselves or an ally under such circumstances? Yes, I think they would.
However these societies are not run by a single small cell of egotistical leaders like feudal courts of old as current autocracies are. The question is more, would these deranged autocracies have the dumb courage to risk annihilation by directly attacking the democracies they hate? Doubt it.
Why would any of them do that? They can seat, wait and watch the west crumble apart with almost no intervention.
Thank you random dude-on-the-internet for your opinion. There is however enough information about SIGINT x French Missiles in the internet. Go and find them.
The closest narrative they produced were "independent Ukrainians using a sailboat", after which they closed the investigation.
So, whose style is Nordstream? Under Reagan, another Russian-German pipeline was sabotaged.
It is of course possible that Russia did this particular one, but it is not Russia's style. Why now and not in 2022? Why don't they cut Internet cables? Why would they do it when they know there will just be a backlash?
This one? Anything that messes up with the credibility of NATO governments (and France is one of the pillars of NATO) could help Russia. Which of course doesn't prove that it is Russia, either.
- Russia did it as a false flag operation to sow distrust between NATO members.
- Russia did it because the long term contracts for Nordstream 1 required them to supply cheap gas, whereas they'd get market prices for the remaining pipeline of Nordstream 2.
It is remarkable that all Western agencies have backed off from both claims.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/qa-nord-stream-gas-sabo...
Plenty of people claiming that Russia did it.
But that doesn't detract from what I wrote.
Terrorists surely want as much, rapid, coverage of their acts as possible (even if not wanting anyone to know they're terrorist acts). If internet were out that probably makes the acts less impactful.
> It is of course possible that Russia did this particular one, but it is not Russia's style. Why now and not in 2022? Why don't they cut Internet cables? Why would they do it when they know there will just be a backlash?
Because Russia likes to pretend it's not them (you know that)
And they have been going around internet cables in an inappropriate way
Because now there's a major event happening in France, where disruptions will be shown globally and affect people from many places congregating for a singular event. It shames France on the global stage, Putin likes shaming leaders who he thinks are weak.
> Why don't they cut Internet cables? Why would they do it when they know there will just be a backlash?
Internet cables have much more redundancy than a rail network, you can't route trains around the world to get to their destination just some hundreds of milliseconds delayed, it's disruptive but workarounds are embedded in the design of the system, not so much with rail during peak summer season in a very touristic country while hosting a major sporting event.
Do you think Russia really cares about the backlash? They keep pushing the boundaries to test responses, what kind of backlash do you think France would give to a nuclear power while they can't show with 100% certainty was Russian? That's the MO of Russia, I don't understand why you are trying to defend it.
It might as well not be Russia but the suspicions aren't far fetched, given stuff like this: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/07/24/russian-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Soul%C3%A8vements_de_la_Te...
Even the political group "Les verts" is quite radical in their language. And those groups like "Les Soulèvements de la Terre" want a violent green revolution.
https://www.leparisien.fr/societe/les-soulevements-de-la-ter...
And most of all, why would they attack high speed rail infrastructure which is one of the greenest ways of transportation?
No, it wouldn't make any sense for an "eco-terrorist" group to do it in this way. Same as it doesn't make sense for an Islamic terrorist group.
This has Russia written all over it, from the methods to the Russians already arrested to the fool bragging about it yesterday in Bulgaria.
Because they announced it:
https://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/la-flamme-olympique-d...
https://www.leparisien.fr/societe/les-soulevements-de-la-ter...
on a more serious note, even if train is low-carbon, this could be seen as an anti-olympics protest which ecologists claim is an ecological disaster.
There are no similarly held opposition to trains/mass transit. Indeed, as the parent indicates, trains appear to have unanimous support from green factions.
Russia has 1 very clear long term goal, from way before they invaded Ukraine in 2014 - making Europe as weak as possible, while extracting as much money as possible. With this optic, their approach is methodical and steady, and its up to us to decide how to react. Germany's Scholz (and Merkel before, god she really did tons of damage across whole EU security wise) took the bait quite some time ago.
Another example: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2024/07/26/non-artists-take-...
Edit: to clarify, I'm French, and this exact same modus operandi has been used by far-left movements in the past to disrupt high-speed lines; if you have solid arguments against my theory, I suggest you address them before blindly downvoting.
Think what you want about cheminots, but one thing they all love and will never attack is railway infrastructure.
SNCF may be a shitty company (mainly because it have been voluntary sabotaged by governments) but the people making those thousands of trains run everyday all over the country are almost the most passionate workers you could imagine.
Yes they do have revendications, yes, they are good at striking, but they’ll never destroy the hardware and infrastructure they love and defend.
Mainly because they respect it (railway is working because thousands people are working together to make it work) and also because of safety reasons : SNCF is one of the safest train network in the world because the cheminot culture puts safety on top of any other preoccupations.
They’ll never harm infrastructure and never, never ever in a coordinated way.
Also, when you criticize cheminots and SNCF, which I agree are far from perfect corporation and company and deserves criticism, don’t forget to look at the rest of the world and you’ll discover that most countries in the world would love to have our train network. It’s easy to brag about having imperfect things but it’s also easy to forget that at least we have them.
I would probably also be really passionate about all the treasures I amassed by successfully threatening to strike at opportune moments. France is lucky EDF workers at nuclear plants or other critical infrastructure aren't so "passionate".
>They’ll never harm infrastructure and never, never ever in a coordinated way.
I mean, given the sort of attacks that happened, you can already be pretty certain that whoever did them had very good inside information about how the network works.
In general, in labour conflicts across any industry, destroying the very instruments that provide legitimate power as a worker is so stupid that it is just not done.
Not suggesting Figaro is unbiased, but they are already reporting possible left wing involvement:
https://www.lefigaro.fr/faits-divers/sabotage-sur-le-reseau-...
(I'm assuming you are not talking about https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_de_Tarnac specifically which I would say is not "the exact same".)
The only remotely similar case is Tarnac, and it is ludicrous to even compare it with what is happening today. Tarnac was one line interrupted with a very different (and less destructive) method. Today was a coordinated attack at a much wider scale in a short amount of time. You would be hard press to find any far-left organization in France with the capacity to even approach such an operation.
... Yes, that might be a _little_ extreme for [check notes] disrupting the trains. I mean, maybe if it was Switzerland, but I don't think France takes train punctuality quite _that_ seriously.
(But yeah, I'd assume this was Putin.)
Arson attacks are actually an extremely French phenomenon, over 1000 cars are often torched a night on New Years Eve
>but this sort of escalation cannot be left unchecked
Some of us would rather not die in a world war because a sports event was mildly disrupted
Highly relevant:
TIL that during the 2005 French riots, up to 1408 cars were burned per night across the country. The government declared that the riots had ended when, after three weeks of chaos, only 98 cars were burned per night ("return to a normal situation everywhere in France"). <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4i50p8/til_th...>
> 2005
Explain how are singular events from 2005 "highly relevant"?
As far as I can tell it happened twice, 19 years ago and 4 years ago. I wouldn't call it a "common" occurrence.
Now, 1000 cars or 700 cars doesn't mean much, one would have to compare it to the amount of cars in France. For example, more than 150 000 cars burn each year in the US (probably not just arson, but it's not my point) which is 500 per day on average. But there are more cars in the US than in France.
Thanks to the power of art, it can be Russian and French at the same time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petr_Pavlensky#Lighting_(2017)
No evidence to be shown of Russia's involvement in this, but let's mention a nuclear escalation. This is absolutely delirious. I hope the people who actually take decision are just a tiny bit more level-headed than you are.
Only it fits their modus operandi perfectly, they were caught in similar acts all around Europe, Russian operatives were arrested in France as recently as last week (and a few weeks prior there was a guy who burned himself with chemicals trying to build a bomb in his hotel room), and a russian operative was arrested in Bulgaria yesterday bragging about Russian plans to disrupt the Olympics.
It's hard to imagine anyone else being involved. Of course there will be a thorough investigation.
Luckily the french government isn't as out of control as the average HNer/redditor, or we'd all be hiding underground by now.
Mind, these are anarchists we're talking about, and I assure you anarchists absolutely despise Russia and even the USSR. So think twice before going about some wild theory about these activists being paid by Russia.
As an aside note, I find the "ULTRA-left" nomenclature to be ridiculous.
- [0]: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20240729-far-left-extremi...
> think
It still makes the most sense for Russia to be behind this. It might not be them, or it might just be them sponsoring an internal group, too early to know. But they make by far the most sense.
You, other HNers and the whole of Reddit prove the opposite. If this sabotage was performed by Russia it would be the perfect justification to reinvigorate military support to Ukraine, in spite of a growing tiredness of the European public with the war.
So really who has the most to benefit here would be the faction that wants the war to continue until Ukraine can obtain a victory.
You mean the normal people, right?
> You, other HNers and the whole of Reddit prove the opposite. If this sabotage was performed by Russia it would be the perfect justification to reinvigorate military support to Ukraine, in spite of a growing tiredness of the European public with the war.
Just like all other Russian sabotages, including a murder plot against a CEO, burning warehouses and factories all across Europe?
"55% of EU citizens agree with providing weapons to Ukraine, even though data indicate a downward trend in support for this measure over time"[0]
If you draw the line with being normal at supporting Ukraine or not, then I'm afraid 45% of Europeans aren't normal anymore, and the number is growing. Must be pretty expensive for Russia to pay 200 milions of spies/trolls.
- [0]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/at-your-service/files/be-hear...
Suggestive of a basic attitude of disregard for factual accuracy in regard to such things.
I'd like to remind you that the World Wars started because of alliance networks like these, with countries like mine clearly taking sides for not-so-obvious reasons. And not because of caricatures of cartoon baddies that dwarf what the Catholics and Ottomans made of Vlad Tepes.
I'd be interested to see if French businesses that chose to ignore the atrocities committed by Russia finally withdraw from that market.
France has a number of large businesses that are still cosy with Russia: Auchan, Leroy Merlin, Decathlon, L'Oreal, Sanofi, Lacoste, BIC… the list is very long (see https://leave-russia.org/).
I thought these companies would be concerned with customer boycotts, but it doesn't seem that people care that much, I guess until rockets and drones start falling on their heads…
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4394002
NBC is mistaken of course, we learn in these threads that the West would never do such a thing.
I got 'something went wrong' at the NBC link; found the info here.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/cold-war-hotted-up-when-sabotag...
https://www.lefigaro.fr/faits-divers/sabotage-sur-le-reseau-...
» More than 45,000 police officers, 10,000 soldiers and 2,000 private security agents are being deployed
Here it is written, games are for athletes, not for people who live in Paris. City of a few million people grinds to a halt, for several weeks.
Paris does not even get any money for this "privilige", they have to pay for their own abuse!
Who cares about the 0.01% when they annoy the rest of the population?
French population and Parisians didn't have a word about it.
The Paris bid was submitted in 2015, and remained the only one in 2017 (a few cities pulled out in 2016-2017, the last one in February 2017), getting officially ratified in September 2017.
Macron was elected in May 2017, two years after the Parisian bid was submitted, and months after it remained the only one.
I read of very good editorial a few weeks ago regarding these games and how unliked they are in France. The journalist remarked that hosting the games is mostly a PR move from a city and, that if there is one thing Parisian could be counted on for, it's not caring about their own image in the rest of the world, leading to some kind of paradoxical situation here.
The city center had restricted access for about a week and is completely inaccessible for 2-3 days, which sucks for the people that live and work there, but it's a far cry from the `several weeks` you mentioned. I think folks are blowing the impact of the opening ceremony way out of proportion.
And cities the size of Paris often don't really benefit from expanding tourism - tourism jobs generally lower average salaries. And they're not just poorly paid, they're also often seasonal work.
The main benefit is when there was a bunch of infrastructure you wanted to upgrade anyway, and having a strict deadline helps stop schedule over-runs.
It was recently announced Brisbane, Australia won the contest to host the 2032 summer games.
They were the only city that submitted a bid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bids_for_the_2032_Summer_Olymp...
Given the spate of withdrawals, and that half the bids had also been withdrawn for the 2022 Winter Olympics, the IOC decided to just allocate 2024 and 2028 directly to the two bidders left to not take risks over 2028.
Mega events can be used by cities to justify needed large infrastructure projects. Funding guidelines usually are weakened; the people working on the projects tend to think their work actually does matters and last but not least: there is a hard deadline, so no excuse for needing just 2 more years.
Some cities in Germany greatly benefited from the football WM.
# Alexandre Mirlicourtois (Xerfi) - J.O. de Paris : le revers de la médaille économique
I lost hope personally, 2 days ago i got flagged for suggesting putting to jail people who didn't work to fix the Github security flaw, what ever..
Crowdstrike, yes, that showed how fragile the IT ecosystem is, and I’d like to see the CTO and CISOs being held to account for the single points of failure. It will never happen though.
It's unfair only opponents of Putin accidentally fall out of their apartment windows.
Should really just start with kicking out increasing amount of diplomats and auctioning off frozen assets to pay for the recovery post some kind of legitimate trial.
I never liked that sabotage was never considered a precursor for war but unfortunately we've been in the situation of allowing sabotage for a long time so now its considered not an act of war.
"Tit-for-tat"?!
The mentality that we must adopt should be that of an animal trainer.
Every single bad behavior by the Kremlin needs to be met with a noticeable negative response. When things like this, or the bombing of the children's hospital in Kyiv, receive no specific training response... then the animal will not learn that it was bad behavior. It will continue to push the boundaries, and there will be more defecation in our living rooms.
I am sorry to put this in such blunt terms, but this is where we are today.
https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/12/19/fourteen-members-of-r...
https://dailynewshungary.com/even-mav-doesnt-recommend-train...
https://bbj.hu/business/industry/deals/poor-infrastructure-c...