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on same day today: Nato jets down drone that entered Lithuanian airspace

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjx2zgk7edlzo

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and another ru drone washed ashore in Poland https://www.reuters.com/world/poland-finds-suspected-russian...
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The climate activists mostly do something stupid like obstructing traffic, unlike the farmers, who obstruct traffic in a way you apparently consider rational.
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Of those, the "tractors on highways" is the only one which has resulted in someone dying. So much for rational...
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Driving is dangerous business. We tend to forget since it’s so commonplace and integral to our lives. Cars have gotten much safer though, no longer the top cause of TBI in the US
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The cause was tractors stopping all traffic on a highway, setting up show with barbecues and what not. Then some people drove into the tail of the traffic jam.

Has nothing to do with driving being dangerous, but with the choices of these farmers to start a demonstration in the middle of a highway

They already did it a few times before, and they were warned that they should expect killing people. The question was not if, but when. They still did it.

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I think national news indeed is somewhat carefully suggesting farmers (ie [0]), actually it looks like it is escalating and they burning hay now. This article speaks of "Radical Farmer Leaders".

[0] https://nos.nl/liveblog/2631038-hooibalen-in-brand-langs-sne...

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The NOS is not the most unbiased news source in the Netherlands which is unfortunate. If it is indeed 'radical farm leaders' who are behind these sabotage actions they have turned up the temperature quite a bit and stand to lose a lot of support from the public. It would be a strange thing to do since there is not much overlap between farming and railways in the Netherlands, a small country with a strong agricultural sector which' products mostly travel by road, water and air.
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Ah, the magic of being a rightwing populist, which gives you a free pass to do illegal things (drive a tractor on the motorway) even if that results in fatalities.
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Yes, just like these [1] German border guards. Next time they should bring a sign like the one shown in the article.

For those who don't read Dutch and can't be bothered to translate the article: Germany has restarted border checks which at the time of writing of this article had caused 171 accidents, some of which lethal.

[1] https://www.gelderlander.nl/zevenaar/na-171-ongelukken-bij-d...

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I don't get this thing where "X killed people. Oh, just like Y killed people" when X and Y are entirely unrelated.

If you say "Ukraine kills people in the war? Well Russia also kills people in the war" at least they are quite related and an argument can be made from that starting point. But what's with "Some people died in a space shuttle explosion. Well, sharks also kill people"

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Whatabout is quite tiring, we are talking about the farmers you are defending as "rational", and absolving them from being the source of issues...

Can we keep on topic?

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I tried to but I keep on getting voted down. The topic here was 'farmers mostly just protest by blocking traffic' upon which someone said 'yes and they are responsible for the deaths of two people by doing so' to which I reacted by showing that traffic accidents are part and parcel of anything which obstructs traffic, in my example's case it is German border guards causing traffic jams by stopping cars. There are far more examples in the Netherlands where traffic jams are common as are accidents caused by people driving into them.
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We've banned this account for repeatedly posting abusive comments and ignoring our appeals to stop. This is not what HN is for and it destroys what HN is for. We work hard to make HN a place where everyone's point of view can be expressed, no matter what side or identity they're advocating for. But the guidelines have to apply to everyone. If you don't want to be banned, you can email us and demonstrate an intention to observe the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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Russia is involved in many acts of sabotage in Europe over past 2 or 3 years, so this is a very natural first guess for us, European citizens. They also started increasing their activity recently.
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Today is also Prinsjesdag. So pissed off Dutch is more likely. As it has been, for the last three years running with highways getting blocked on this day...
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One, the other, or a mix of both! If I were a foreign agent wanting to sow chaos, I'd look for the easy to press buttons. Encouraging pissed-off Dutch citizens would be an obvious part of the plan.
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Except that none of cases were proven. For one, recent attempts to blow up power lines in Germany were done by a German individual. Or remember how Russia was accused for blowing up Nord Stream. It never made any sense, but still European politicians and Western media fiercely pushed this narrative.

Get some critical media literacy and stop listening to NAFO trolls.

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Where are you getting the "correct" narrative from?
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By reading multiple sources by different parties and thinking for yourself. Truth is the first casualty of war.
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That's the usual trope used as an escape for the question: where are your sources?

Provide them or stop being so defensive about it, being defensive just shows you got not substance to your claim. Show, don't tell, if you can't show then you might have to do some more thinking by yourself to figure out why you ended up that way.

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And are these multiple sources 50% biased towards one side and 50% biased towards the other side? If so, how can you tell? And are you doing an average of what "the truth" is at the end?
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You wait for 20 or more years for documents become unclassified and historians to do their job.
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So in the meantime you have no real opinion about anything?
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Not at all, I take ungrounded claims like this with a grain of salt.
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Here's Deutsche Welle - what used to be the German international radio service - on the subject:

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-news-police-raid-vehicle-of-su...

German authorities believe a militant climate activist was behind a series of recent sabotage attacks on the country's power grid and are hunting for a 48-year-old suspect.

This suspect is now under arrest as also can be read in the following report by The Local (DE):

https://www.thelocal.de/20260908/german-police-arrest-suspec...

* German police on Tuesday arrested a suspected militant climate activist over a spate of sabotage attacks on the power grid that had apparently aimed to disrupt power from coal-fired plants.

The man, partially named in German media as Daniel V., 48, had spent days on the run since the first attacks last Tuesday in Brandenburg and North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) states.

Police in the city of Cologne said Tuesday that officers had "apprehended the wanted 48-year-old suspect near the Weisweiler power plant" in NRW state.

"The man was carrying additional explosive devices at the time of his arrest but offered no resistance," they said in a statement.*

Now that I showed these sources - none of them exactly 'Russian-friendly' as you might know, otherwise read a bit more of their reporting on similar subjects - will you agree that this specific case was not directly related to Russia? That these 'climate extremists' do not need to be directed by the FSB or GRU to attack their own country's infrastructure because they have somehow convinced themselves that their 'climate activism' is a good cause?

After you agreed to this can you also agree to the fact that blindly claiming 'Russia Russia Russia' does nobody a favour, least of all those who want to be able to show where Russia is actually responsible for similar attacks? This is quite important because in the end it is not infeasible that Russia and its Soviet Union predecessor are actually responsible for these anti-Western activities through the decades of support - financial, ideological and sometimes practical - they lent to all manners of activism in the west with the goal of undermining western society.

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Why is it unlikely that Russia would seek to obscure its involvement by recruiting (possibly without their knowledge that Russian was involved ) locals to carry out these acts?

If Russia was behind it, this seems like the most likely way they would proceed.

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You're reasoning from the standpoint that Russia was behind it while I'm reasoning from the standpoint that this is not a given and as such does not need to be front and center. Once the culprit has been caught there is enough time to finagle out where he got his motive, mode and means. If this turns out to be something related to some foreign state it can and should become the issue, now with actual proof of their involvement. Starting out with 'Russia was behind it, we just need to find proof' is counterproductive because it ends up like the boy who cried 'Wolf!' or its modern urban equivalent: howling car alarms. Nobody blinks an eye because they've heard it so often it blends into the background and is most likely false alarm anyway.
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None of the cases were proven is a bold claim.

It’s hard to prove these things of course but you have to ask yourself who benefits most from these kind of attacks and sabotage? Who benefits from a weakened and infighting Europe?

Hybrid warfare is by definition hard to attribute

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You can use the same logic about shit happening in Russia too. E.g. EU meddling in elections in Russia. Western security apparatus was behind Crocus City Hall attack. Ukrainian drones are launched from European countries and EU is actively involved in planning these attacks . All these claims were made by Russian media and politicians. Do you believe these as well, considering EU benefits the most from the weak Russia?
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Russia is waging an active war of aggression against Ukraine and has its sights set on the rest of Europe (countries that they feel belong to the Russian empire just as they did during USSR).

So yea I believe and actually support the EI pushing back and helping Ukraine against warmongers who have sacrificed hundreds of thousands of their own citizens on the frontline - for what exactly?

The war could be over tomorrow if they would just let go of their imperial ambitions - but of course Putin wants to immortalise himself as Russian emperor.

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You’re better off just giving them a news article or something, because “many such cases” is basically a meme
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Someone else did in this thread, but tbh I'm not inclined to give people behaving like Russian trolls too much of the benefit of doubt.
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Do you live in Germany?
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Like what? Any confirmed acts?
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These acts are subterfuge by their nature so you're not going to get Putin coming on TV and saying "lol it was me".

"There is no proof at this stage to link the flying bomb directly to Russia, which denies any role. But as well as the means and the motive, Moscow does have form. The BBC has seen details of the investigation into a plot in 2024 in which Russian-linked proxies in Poland and Lithuania not only handled drones and explosives but also delivered them to Germany."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgdmrxxkdxo

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They have a habit of being involved. It's not exactly plucked out of thin air!
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I'm trained by Russian occupation of my country.
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There are some indications that make Russian saboteurs a very likely culprit. It would be unwise to look at every occurrence of sabotage as a singular incident in the context of the ongoing campaign against European political stability.

https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2025/01/research-e...

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/sabotage-deutschland-bka...

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Who did it is irrelevant. The more important thing is who the propaganda is blaming. Then we know what the elites (behind this piece of propaganda) want.
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I knew before clicking it will be one of the things they say. people are sheeps. they will say whatever they think is right up to a limit. then they will break this limit and punish everyone that is deviating from it. this is what happened in nazi germany, soviet union, china and in the US under biden and I can already see the premises of the next term of US presidency through the lindsay clancy reaction from millions of women. to me it feels like we broke this limit in the modern developed world now. sad that as humans we cant use our brains for better than following what our hiveminds say is truth
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Right. Instead, we should do whatever someone writes in an anonymous forum.
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