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“The group, Baikal Environmental Wave, was organizing protests against Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin’s decision to reopen a paper factory that had polluted nearby Lake Baikal, a natural wonder that by some estimates holds 20 percent of the world’s fresh water,” Levy reports. “Instead, the group fell victim to one of the authorities’ newest tactics for quelling dissent: confiscating computers under the pretext of searching for pirated Microsoft software.”
“Security officials say the inquiries reflect their concern about software piracy, which is rampant in Russia,” Levy reports. “Yet they rarely if ever carry out raids against advocacy groups or news organizations that back the government.”
Levy reports, “As the ploy grows common, the authorities are receiving key assistance from an unexpected partner: Microsoft itself. In politically tinged inquiries across Russia, lawyers retained by Microsoft have staunchly backed the police.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Please read: Mac users should not buy Microsoft software or hardware.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Wandering Joe” for the heads up.]
Since Russian government *probably* runs a big cybercrime ring anyway, they could’ve been spying on the environmentalists with worms and viruses for months already. Carting away the PCs is just a tactic to intimidate other dissidents.
Lesson here? As soon as you start using anything MSFT, you are already fighting a losing battle. Hopefully they have backup and offsite storage.
Also with future cloud computing infrastructures, hopefully it becomes harder for governments and corporations to wipe away proof. Sometimes having your data everywhere and profile persists forever is not a bad thing.
“… lawyers retained by Microsoft have staunchly backed the police.”
It’s interesting how psychopaths flock together.
It’s time for a revolution of the SANE. Lock up all psychopaths.
@ Chas,
“… I’ll rephrase that: you are ignorant!”
And you’re a putz. Looks like a draw.
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A generic ‘From Answers.com/WikiAnswers’ quotes:
“In other words . . . THEY’RE BOTH LEFT WING. Huge government, no personal freedom. There’s no such thing as a “right wing” totalitarian state.”
Sorry, but that is an incredibly IGNORANT statement that is entirely counter to history.
This also points out, as usual, the IDIOCY of limiting political thought to a 1-dimensional system, aka ‘right’ versus ‘left’. An entire 2 dimensions are missing from this TardSystem, resulting in dumbass comments such as the above.
What is Totalitarianism: It is a form of Desperation Mode whereby a political system is so dysfunctional that it falls back to the lowest common denominator whereby fools rush in and take over as absolute dictators. It is a psychopathic system by default and hides itself behind a wide variety of rhetoric and propaganda that are used as a mask covering the hyper control freaks beneath. EVERY political system is subject to falling back into the primitive Totalitarian system.
Totalitarianism requires considerable FUD, lies, deceit, abuse, hatred and various other forms of propaganda in order to maintain the illusion of being beneficial to the citizenry. Meanwhile, it is inherently destructive to its citizens as well as its own ruling class. With time all Totalitarian systems degenerate into chaos as the ‘man behind the curtain’ is revealed to be just another nutjob psychopathic control freak. It is an unsustainable system without the constant maintenance of its mask.
∑ = Any dysfunctional political system can degenerate to Totalitarianism with sufficient desperation within the populace and the presence of readily available psychopaths to acquire dictatorship.
A great book on the subject:
The Mask of Sanity – Wikipedia
The Mask of Sanity – The Book
I said: “Totalitarianism requires considerable FUD, lies, deceit, abuse, hatred and various other forms of propaganda in order to maintain the illusion of being beneficial to the citizenry.”
If you live in the USA and you’re not having déja vu concerning a certain ongoing political cult, you’ve got your head in the sand. Wake up kids or you’ll get to enjoy the fruits of Totalitarianism, which are poison.
I lived five years in Moscow. Apple is almost unheard of. Apple in Russia is run by a bunch of lazy, ignorant, dishonest assholes. And I’ll back that up with similar opinions from the tiny number of Apple users whom I used to associate with.
Every bit of software is pirated. Every movie, every CD. No one buys anything genuine. Even the pharmaceuticals are pirated!
The thing I had to keep a closest watch on was the pain-killing morphine prescribed for me by my Southern hemisphere doctor and given to me free by my lovely Southern hemisphere government. Even the Moscow hospital doctors were envious.
We in the West laugh at or sympathize with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and wring our hands in dismay about North Korea, Burma and Iran. But Russia is not only a failed state too but also a potentially very dangerous one. Putin has a serious personality defect, feeling slighted by the rest of the world at every turn and determined to “punish” us for our failure to accord Russia superstar status.
Microsoft is no more than an ignorant tool in this milieu. Russia will use them then discard them.
It sure is nice to see all the conservation of brain cells going on here. So few neurons get used by posters such as “From Answers.com/WikiAnswers” that they deserve an award.
¡Save the brain — banish critical thinking!
If Baikal Environmental Wave had offsite backups, then they did not lose a generation’s worth of data. Let’s hope they practice safe computing.
As far as the computer seizure goes, Microsoft would be well advised not to let themselves be used as a tool for government strongarm tactics in Russia. That would be one of the few ways that their reputation could decline even further.
Microsoft spent years suppressing innovation. It’s fitting that their software is being used as an excuse for suppression.
There are some serious tea-bagging whack jobs on the loose here today. Some of their posts are hard evidence of the abject failure of the educational system in the US.
Communism and fascism are both left-wing? That’s rich. So, what’s right wing? And just where does socialism fit into this delusional reshuffling of political systems?
If I believed the myth of a holy mother of god, I’d be saying it.
Derek Currie, you need to seek help for psychosis and your delusional paranoia.
@Lookathistory
Our freedoms are inherent do not “come” from anyone, nor are they given by anyone. Our freedoms are fragile – they must be maintained by waging a never ending battle against insidious opponents like the “Patriot Act” and illegal detainment. A strong central government can be a champion of individual rights, as well as an opponent of them. Organized religion can also support or oppose individual rights. But the nature of most religions – believe this way or you are wrong – tends to favor the latter result. That is why our founders were wise to separate church from state, and why federally subsidized “faith-based” initiatives are a very bad idea.
Remember that it is not the majority opinion that drives individual rights. Those very instances in which the majority unite against the individual are the events that demonstrate the importance of the foundational values embodied in our Constitution.
What gets me riled up is people offering Wikipedia as proof of anything. Folks, you can change the information at will! The internet is opinion!
@KingMey:
I don’t know if you are Us American, but your comment here is one of the very few here that really make sense.
Most of the others on totalitarism, communism, fascism prove only the following:
Amercians don’t follow international affairs, American schools are poor and do not open eyes and ears beyond the border of the State, some as far as the boarder of your Nation!
We’ll have to wait another three generations before the beautifull Young country, the Us of A, will have matured to make it worth reading politics realted messages in generalst forums like this one.
iPol from Old Europe
MS = commie bastards! LMAO
This video explains the various forms of government very well:
http://www.wimp.com/thegovernment/
The Empire Strikes Back!
@ llibsetag
Which one?
Silverhawk is correct. (re: Wiki)
As proof of that, in an effort to make that point to my teenage boys, I used our black lab, “Rocky” as an example.
Google this
“How fast can a black lab run?”
Very 1rst hit.
(Unfortunately, after TWO YEARS, someone finally commented. “that is a lie”. But until then it stood uncontested, and very 1rst search result).
db,
I agree with 97% of the video.
The thing is, is that, “00% Gov.” is pure “libertarianism”. “100% Gov. is pure “totalitarianism”.
The idea that these ideas are left/right on a horizontal political spectrum, is false. These ideologies are on a vertical axis.
I will agree, that the “unbalance”, still leads to a political mess.
FWIW,
Haven’t centrists always acheived the best, longest lasting, results?
From the title, I had assumed that Russia was forcing dissenters to use Windows. (And a few Kins thrown in, just to rub salt in the wound.)
All this is lib nonsense. Jesus, you libs are fanatic crybaby asswipes about everything.
This wouldn’t have happened if people were honest. Stealing is wrong in any country. MS is still a co-conspiritor though.
“Hmm… Microsoft teaming up with police to curb software piracy..”
No, Microsoft teaming up with Russian police to attack Vladmir Putin’s political enemies using software piracy as an extremely flimsy justification.
@x
“All this is lib nonsense. Jesus, you libs are fanatic crybaby asswipes about everything.”
Is the irony that you’re being a crybaby asswipe about those “crybaby asswipe liberals” lost on you? Yes. Yes it is.
I hope you enjoy fanning the flames of the vapid partisanship bickering that enables the US government to become increasingly totalitarian since you dumbfucks are too busy sniping at eachother to notice, by the way.
But enough of that. Now let’s all give up some more liberty so we can help protect freedom from those damn Al Qaeda terriers.
@Jim
“Apple does far worse things but you’ll never hear about it on this site.”
Please change your handle…
This is a pretty common practice in Russia and not limited to just protest groups. I did a project for an international firm with a Moscow office to move all the local servers to Paris. Now the Russian users only have Citrix, so their “PCs” are just thin-client dumb terminals. It’s the only way to ensure that this type of seizure does not compromise the company’s data.
If any of you work for companies that do business there you may want to mention this to your CIO.