[HN Gopher] Internet disrupted in Kazakhstan amid energy price p...
___________________________________________________________________
Internet disrupted in Kazakhstan amid energy price protests
Author : r721
Score : 251 points
Date : 2022-01-05 12:17 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (netblocks.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (netblocks.org)
| nikanj wrote:
| Not that long ago Kazakhstan was considered very attractive for
| BTC miners.
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-09/bitcoin-b...
|
| One of the surprising features of the crypto boom is the
| discovery of places where the price of energy is directly
| subsidized, or otherwise broken (e.g. you can just bribe the head
| of the city power plant, instead of paying your power bill).
| SilasX wrote:
| Wait, really? It wasn't possible to efficiently turn spare
| energy into money at scale before crypto?
| dustintrex wrote:
| Not very easily: the capital expenditure required to build,
| say, an aluminum smelter (which is how Iceland converts
| excess geothermal into cash) is orders of magnitude more than
| some crypto rigs.
| nikanj wrote:
| And once you've built it, you have to have the aluminum ore
| shipped to you, and get the processed aluminum shipped to
| the world market.
|
| A BTC mine fits into a few shipping containers, needs no
| in-out logistics, and can easily be transported around as
| needed
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Containers or a warehouse of miners also has far less
| effect on anything local. You don't have to worry nearly
| as much about local oligarchs or regulators getting
| uppity and trying to shut you down.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > Containers or a warehouse of miners also has far less
| effect on anything local.
|
| uhm what? the presence of miners mean energy prices rise
| as well as more environmental destruction to produce
| energy, especially if it's a place without green(er)
| energy production.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Even if it's green, wouldn't it be better if that
| produced energy goes somewhere to replace non-green
| energy, rather than to calculate hashes that are mostly
| thrown away?
|
| Obviously it's all stupidly chaotic, there might be a
| huge waterfall somewhere, and if we ignore the natural
| beauty aspects, before some cryptobros show up with money
| (however tangible) to build a hydropower plant and some
| wires to their container site, that waterfall's energy is
| not being utilized...
| beckman466 wrote:
| > Even if it's green, wouldn't it be better if that
| produced energy goes somewhere to replace non-green
| energy, rather than to calculate hashes that are mostly
| thrown away?
|
| yep, that's my argument above. and i personally wouldn't
| say hashes "are mostly thrown away", i would argue
| they're _all_ thrown away, especially when considering
| this 'tech' will become defunct in a few years.
|
| _"In what may be the best expression yet of capitalist
| realism, a new tool for free market speculation has
| become for many a populist symbol of resistance to the
| ravages of finance capitalism."_
|
| https://mronline.org/2021/12/28/cryptocurrencies-a-view-
| from...
| hippich wrote:
| prices rise until mine is moved to different place with
| cheap (for now) energy.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > A BTC mine fits into a few shipping containers, needs
| no in-out logistics, and can easily be transported around
| as needed
|
| ...yet creates absolutely zero _actual_ value.
|
| it is one of the greatest and most destructive
| speculative pyramid schemes yet.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| > ...yet creates absolutely zero actual value.
|
| It's only the first uncensorable / decentralized kind of
| money, nah must be nothing.
| nikanj wrote:
| Is this censorship?
| https://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-
| excha...
| danlugo92 wrote:
| Yes it is.
|
| Censorship doesn't necessarily mean the thing being
| censored is deterministically "bad" or "evil".
|
| Bitcoin is above morality, morality is a human construct,
| Bitcoin is math and computer science, by definition it
| cannot have morality.
|
| Now, you might or might not agree that Bitcoin should be
| allowed to exist given it facilitates activities such as
| the one you linked.
|
| But since it's uncensorable in the first place... you
| cannot outlaw it.
|
| Pandora's box is open, and it cannot be closed once it is
| open (unless you break Bitcoin's cryptography).
|
| Uncensorability /is/ valuable, to the people that don't
| want to be censored, and want to exchange money without
| asking anyone permission, whether that's a drug dealer,
| or an unbanked worker in Venezuela.
| bserge wrote:
| Only because governments don't give a flying fuck about
| it... Yet.
|
| They'll catch up eventually. See how some politicians are
| already starting to call on mining bans.
|
| They can easily fully ban it and enforce it. Let's say,
| put mining on the same level as growing weed or making
| heroin.
|
| Your super first kind of decentralized money is now
| fucked.
| paganel wrote:
| Plus the whole environmental nasty thing. I was born in a
| town which hosted an aluminium smelter, my parents moved
| from there when I was 10 months old on the advice of a
| doctor who was a friend of theirs and who had told them
| they should most probably seek a better place for me to
| grow up, environmentally-wise.
| _jal wrote:
| Shame about that other environmental nasty thing related
| to proof-of-work that renders the entire earth somewhere
| you'd prefer not to raise a kid.
| paganel wrote:
| I was just commenting on the aluminium smelter thing
| being very, very non-environmentally friendly at a local
| level.
| VMG wrote:
| Depends on what the miners are being powered with.
|
| Geothermal energy has very few emissions.
|
| If Iceland shuts down aluminium smelters in favor of
| bitcoin miners it is a net benefit.
| OldManAndTheCpp wrote:
| I wonder if it's more complicated that that. Narrowly
| looking at the CO2 effects of shutting down AL smelters
| in Iceland, that will make the global supply for the
| metal lower, raising prices. Perhaps that would make it
| uneconomical for usage in vehicles, meaning that cars
| would again use heavy steel instead of aluminum. Perhaps
| that would cause the global car fleet to burn more fuel
| and net pollute more CO2.
| OldManAndTheCpp wrote:
| CO2 doesn't directly poison people in the same way the
| industrial waste/emissions poison people. This
| fundamental fact is one of the major reasons it is
| difficult to coordinate CO2 emissions reductions -- the
| harm is global but diffuse.
| Symmetry wrote:
| The aluminium smelter also requires collocated skilled
| labor which is another factor.
| SilasX wrote:
| What about storage of energy in batteries for resale to the
| grid? That's very low (or negative) return by comparison?
| (Also probably not possible everywhere.)
|
| Also, if the claim is correct (about crypto making energy
| price arbitrage much easier), then a motivated reasoner
| could argue that it has had the positive effect of
| eliminating inefficiencies by forcing energy to obey the
| "law of one price".
|
| Which, to clarify, doesn't necessarily make it positive-sum
| overall, but still needs to be weighed against its energy
| usage cost to accurately gauge the full effect.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Presumably generating blue hydrogen is an obvious way to
| export free power
| stefan_ wrote:
| Where is the arbitrage? Mining crypto in Kazakhstan with
| subsidized energy can not do anything to reduce the MWh
| price in Germany. There is only up and up as energy is
| irrecoverably burned for crypto.
|
| Even better, the price of crypto is so high that it can
| be profitably mined even in countries with very high
| consumer power prices. I want to see you travel to
| Kazakhstan and tell them that paying 35 cents per kWh now
| that all the production goes towards crypto has had the
| positive effect of eliminating inefficiencies - namely
| the consumption of people living there. You might not
| make it back alive.
| SilasX wrote:
| >Where is the arbitrage? Mining crypto in Kazakhstan with
| subsidized energy can not do anything to reduce the MWh
| price in Germany. There is only up and up as energy is
| irrecoverably burned for crypto.
|
| I already said in the comment that it is "probably not
| possible everywhere". But to clarify that hypothetical,
| the arbitrage would be reselling the energy to whatever
| energy use-cases exist in Kazakhstan that aren't
| subsidized (which probably exist since it's unaffordable
| to subsidize energy everywhere in a country without
| bound).
|
| Also, really? Is that your standard for the merit of an
| argument? Whether Kazakhstanis will kill you over it? I
| explained in detail how the efficiency manifests in
| another comment [1], and (also) already said it doesn't
| necessarily cancel the negative effects of crypto.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29809318
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Price doesn't matter, profit does. And mining difficulty
| automatically adjusts to price so that the profit (also
| from transaction fees) tends to zero (whether from the
| top or from the bottom). I've seen the average Opex
| estimated at 60%, but that was some years ago...
|
| (Also, an expectation of prices being higher than they
| "should" would mean that one has to consider an incoming
| crash and the whole operation should probably start
| getting wound down, so as not to be left holding the bag
| with now (almost) worthless cryptocurrencies and mining
| rigs. In that sense, yeah, you're probably better off
| staying closer to home, which I'll assume to be one of
| those "high consumer power price" countries.)
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Energy storage is not particularly cheap.
|
| And not particularly efficient : if you cannot beat the
| highest market prices...
|
| And comes with the risk of catastrophic release of that
| stored energy. Which means that the authorities will be
| much more interested in getting involved !
|
| And the biggest issue is that if you try to become an
| energy seller, it becomes much harder to go under the
| radar as part of the black or grey market ?
| acdha wrote:
| There's an interesting short term versus long term
| discussion: if a place has cheap electricity (hydro,
| geothermal, solar, etc.) for a while it becomes appealing
| for people to reconfigure around it -- electrification
| for homes & vehicles, building heavy industry or cloud
| data centers, etc. If someone can deliver shipping
| containers full of cryptocurrency mining hardware, they
| can very quickly soak up that extra capacity, maybe even
| drive prices up a bit, and it has no benefit to the
| surrounding community other than perhaps a maintenance
| job.
| SilasX wrote:
| To make my point more concrete in terms of your example,
| the benefit would be something like:
|
| Let's say Iceland has some natural advantage in fishing,
| because of the great fish around there. But, because our
| world violates the law of one price, it's instead of
| profitable to smelt aluminum there instead of fishing[2],
| and the world is deprived of the utility gain from the
| fish captured and shipped[1].
|
| But then, once the world obeys "one energy price", the
| smelting doesn't make sense and they go back to fishing
| (while the imported crypto miners sop up the extra
| energy).
|
| [1] hopefully with sustainable management
|
| [2] They still fish there, today and in the hypothetical,
| but probably much less than the optimum.
| acdha wrote:
| Those seem fairly separate industries -- I don't know how
| many power-plant operators would switch to fishing. The
| process I was thinking of would be more like this:
|
| 1. A major hydro / geothermal / solar / etc. project goes
| online providing n GW/day
|
| 2. Usage within the region where that power can viably be
| transmitted is 0.2n so there isn't pressure to elevate
| prices. Because the power supply is based on the local
| geography, there isn't a way to bring production closer
| to the consumers in distant areas (e.g. a solar farm is
| going to be more productive in Arizon even if you want to
| power a factory in Portland).
|
| 3. Ordinarily, someone who owns, say, an aluminum smelter
| might consider building a new one in that region to take
| advantage of the guaranteed green power rather than
| facing escalating prices based on competition and
| emissions controls take effect. However, if someone ships
| a bunch of cryptocurrency miners in to soak up any
| available power there won't be slack capacity and that's
| guaranteed to happen because they can ship containers of
| mining hardware in days whereas building an industrial
| facility takes years.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Just FYI most of the energy in Iceland goes into smelting.
| It's not excess the capacity has been expanded and
| continues to be expanded to power smelting.
|
| https://nea.is/hydro-power/power-intensive-industries/nr/70
|
| It's also quite borderline as to whether or not it breaks
| even these days. Supply chain woes increasing prices have
| helped last year for example but before that they were
| losing money.
|
| https://www.ruv.is/frett/2021/09/14/icelandic-smelters-
| helpe...
| pjc50 wrote:
| The electricity in this case is not "spare", just at non-
| global prices. Electricity generation has always been managed
| by turning down the generation to match the demand.
|
| Your point below about battery storage: battery storage has
| only just become economically viable at the best of times,
| and that relies on getting paid to provide "fast frequency
| response" - stabilisation as a service.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > One of the surprising features of the crypto boom is the
| discovery of places where the price of energy is directly
| subsidized, or otherwise broken
|
| are you really arguing that letting the market work on energy
| instead of having somewhat democratic state run utilities works
| well? i think the evidence speaks for itself. what do you see?
|
| https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/10/texa-a10.html
|
| https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/06/01/texa-j01.html
|
| https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/08/texa-m08.html
| [deleted]
| baybal2 wrote:
| The Xive, the biggest mining business there actually don't mine
| itself. They lease self-contained mines in ISO containers, and
| a membership in the pool.
|
| Anybody with access to near free electricity gets it hauled, or
| even flown to him, then they only have to wire-in few kiloamps
| of power, and internet.
| trembolram wrote:
| They are now disconnected from the global Internet. What
| happens to all BTC transactions made in Kazakhstan? Will the
| local network accept them? What will happen to them when the
| Internet connection to the global world is back?
| VMG wrote:
| They can use a satellite connection. There are ready-made
| setups for this: https://blockstream.com/satellite/
| xxpor wrote:
| As a someone ignorant occational user: It'd operate similar
| to a git repo no? Transactions within KZ would be accepted by
| the local chain, which would then be merged when reconnected.
| If there's a conflict you have to decide which chain is the
| correct one, which in this case would be the global version.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| When the network is segmented multiple chains could form.
| Likely KZ would have a very low hash rate, so that segment
| would take very long to form blocks (or never complete
| any). Once the networks rejoin, the global chain almost
| certainly "wins" and the local chain is ignored.
| Transactions written to a KZ block will show some
| confirmations, but won't remain in the eventual dominant
| chain.
| nybble41 wrote:
| The global chain will "win" but transactions made in the
| local chain can be retried in the global chain after the
| networks rejoin so long as there are no conflicts. Absent
| deliberate or accidental double-spending, the biggest
| source of conflicts would be the mining rewards from the
| local chain since these rewards never existed in the
| global chain and cannot be carried over. There is a
| 100-block waiting period before mining rewards can be
| spent specifically to avoid this issue for shorter-term
| forks, but it could still be a problem in the event of
| sustained network fragmentation.
|
| On the bright side, it's not necessary to have full
| Internet connectivity to keep the local chain in sync
| with the global chain. A single local node with access to
| the global blockchain (via a VPN or dedicated satellite
| receiver[0] or multiple upstream Internet connections
| near the border) can ensure that the local chain is
| constantly synchronized with the global one, and even
| forward local transactions for inclusion in the global
| blockchain.
|
| [0] https://blockstream.com/satellite/
| h4kor wrote:
| Just stumbled over this site being down because of the shutdown
| https://blockchair.com/
| _jal wrote:
| > discovery of places where the price of energy is directly
| subsidized, or otherwise broken
|
| So, an anti-state financial mechanism subsidized by governments
| and fraud. There is nothing new under the sun.
| tsol wrote:
| What are the prior examples of this happening?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Name a country which _hasn 't_ done this when >30% of the
| population are on the streets with pitchforks.
|
| I think even western countries would do the same, they've just
| not had protests big enough in recent history.
| dandanua wrote:
| USA had the White House attacked by a significant mob just one
| year ago. Why didn't they cut the internet?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Capitol, not White House.
| huntertwo wrote:
| > >30% of the population are on the streets with pitchforks
| sAbakumoff wrote:
| The mob was not that significant. It's the defense system
| that failed intentionally.
| redanddead wrote:
| Intentionally?
| sAbakumoff wrote:
| source: https://www.justsecurity.org/79623/crisis-of-
| command-the-pen...
|
| According to a report released last month, Christopher
| Miller, who served as acting Secretary of the Defense on
| Jan. 6, told the Department's inspector general that he
| feared "if we put U.S. military personnel on the Capitol,
| I would have created the greatest Constitutional crisis
| probably since the Civil War." In congressional
| testimony, he said he was also cognizant of "fears that
| the President would invoke the Insurrection Act to
| politicize the military in an anti-democratic manner" and
| that "factored into my decisions regarding the
| appropriate and limited use of our Armed Forces to
| support civilian law enforcement during the Electoral
| College certification."
|
| So, yes, Miller *intentionally* delayed National Guard
| deployment.
| kube-system wrote:
| "intentional delay resulting in a failure" is very
| different than "intentionally failing". The DoD's
| hesitancy to touch civilian politics with a 10 foot pole
| is, IMO, one of the very best things about American
| government. The capitol police need to be empowered to
| handle these types of situations themselves.
| redanddead wrote:
| Oh wow... it seems like a difficult situation.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Involving the military (which AFAIK is NOT trained to
| non-lethally deal with civilian riots ?) would probably
| have indeed been very bad without even this kind of risk.
|
| What I still don't understand is why was the _police_ so
| ridiculously under-staffed and under-equipped that day ??
| (Where were the anti-riot water-spraying trucks ? The
| anti-riot gas ? The anti-riot walls ? The gapless shield
| wall formed by enough police people ?)
|
| It's not like they haven't been warned by the FBI weeks
| in advance of the potential risks ??
|
| OTOH I was impressed how the myth of the trigger-happy
| Trump fanatic who has a rifle like an extra body part
| didn't play out. I've only seen a single rifle, and AFAIK
| none of the rioters fired a single shot ? (The FBI
| probably helped here, since they supposedly convinced the
| "worst" ones to not participate... but OTOH they did
| still fail to prevent that truck filled with various
| explosive devices from parking nearby ?)
| helge9210 wrote:
| Ukraine, for example.
|
| The main question here is not "would a state shutdown internet
| if needed?", but "should a government have a direct control
| over internet infrastructure?"
| baybal2 wrote:
| Kazakhstan has no private Internet providers sans local ISPs.
| All long range fibre, and cross-border connections are owned
| by SOEs, and president's damat personally.
| iso1210 wrote:
| A state has direct control over everything it its borders.
| Ultimately you can send in the army to the IXPs and you pull
| the plug, be that North Korea or the USA
| emteycz wrote:
| I don't think western countries even have the necessary
| mechanisms.
| SilasX wrote:
| Hm ... not the internet at large but weren't there cases of a
| subway system or other dense area in the US suddenly having
| no cell service during a protest? I remember reading stories
| about this.
| kalleboo wrote:
| Yes it happened in San Francisco
| https://www.wired.com/2011/08/subway-internet-shuttering/
| zupreme wrote:
| Have you considered ICANN? Or USA-based DNS providers?
|
| One letter, from the right agency, can do a great deal.
| emteycz wrote:
| I don't think turning off DNS servers is 1) actually
| possible (people would start running mirrors + other
| countries continue to run) and 2) would disable the
| internet into uselessness (anything IP based still works).
| int_19h wrote:
| It doesn't have to be 100% effective, just as with the
| Great Firewall. Shutting down DNS would shut down most
| existing apps until they're updated (and also the app
| stores that are normally used to update them), and
| preclude the majority from accessing anything online.
| Victerius wrote:
| There have never been widespread energy shortages in Western
| countries.
|
| The closest we came was the oil shocks of the 70s, and it
| cost Jimmy Carter a second term.
| mgbmtl wrote:
| France had pretty big protests:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests
|
| but as an outsider, those protests just seemed like any
| other day in France :)
|
| In the west, at least where I'm from, whether energy or
| other types of protests, the government usually finds a
| wedge to split the population into two major groups where
| in-fighting will exhaust and marginalize protesters.
| Cutting the Internet only brings more focus on the
| government.
| adventured wrote:
| Jimmy Carter had zero shot at beating Reagan, with or
| without the oil shocks.
|
| Carter and Ford were both extraordinarily weak candidates.
| Ford was a Bob Dole tier candidate (ie incapable of winning
| the Presidency in an election), with the Republicans still
| mired in the consequences of Nixon, and Carter still
| struggled to beat him in 1976. Reagan's carry of California
| was a near certainty, and it guaranteed the end of Carter
| with or without the energy problems. Carter was a weak
| southern Democrat that couldn't pull Texas and couldn't
| pull New York - there was nowhere for him to win from,
| there was no angle of victory.
| iso1210 wrote:
| 3 day week 1973/74 in the UK, I'm sure there were worse
| energy crises in other countries
| baybal2 wrote:
| FYI: most of gas Russia sells to Europe is actually not Russian,
| but coming from Central Asian vassal regimes at less than a penny
| per cube, and then resold at incredible markups to Europe. I am
| talking exactly about Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.
|
| This is why Russia is not really fearing for oil price. Their gas
| is _incredibly profitable,_ and stable, unlike Siberian oil where
| freezing, rusting USSR era oil rigs require a lot of upkeep.
|
| Without Kazakhstan, no "Russian" gas for Europe.
|
| --------
|
| P.S. I got blocked again, so posting news here through edit
|
| T7-VIP1 is a personal aircraft of Nazarbayev family.
| https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/t7-vip1
|
| The news are there that he fled the country to Switzerland, got a
| boot from there, and was forced to flee to Uzbekistan.
| konart wrote:
| Russia is the second largest producer anyhow.
|
| https://www.worldometers.info/gas/gas-production-by-country/
|
| Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan (lowerest of them all,
| placed 24) combined produce less than 1/3 of the amount Russia
| produces.
|
| Also wiki (not the best source maybe, but whatever):
|
| >Gas for northern Europe largely came from the Nadym Pur Taz
| (NPT) region in Western Siberia, but these large fields are now
| in decline due to depletion.
|
| >Since the early 2010s Gazprom has been developing replacement
| gas fields in the Yamal Peninsula area of the Russian Arctic.
| As of 2020, Yamal produces over 20% of Russia's gas, which is
| expected to increase to 40% by 2030.
|
| >The shortest pipeline routes from Yamal to the northern EU
| countries are the Yamal-Europe pipeline through Poland and Nord
| Stream to Germany. During the winter peak Gazprom does not have
| the capacity to redirect flows to the central pipeline corridor
| through Ukraine, built for the NPT gas flow. Gazprom intends to
| decommission some pipelines, over forty years old with high
| maintenance costs, in the central corridor as NPT production
| declines
| kgeist wrote:
| >most of gas Russia sells to Europe is actually not Russian,
| but coming from Central Asian vassal regimes at less than a
| penny per cube, and then resold at incredible markups to Europe
|
| >Without Kazakhstan, no "Russian" gas for Europe.
|
| Do you have some links to back it up?
| sushibowl wrote:
| It doesn't add up for me. Central Asian sources are less than
| 1.5% of GazProm total production, and Gas production of
| Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan is dwarfed by Russian fields.
| Further, output from Russian fields in Siberia is on the
| decline and new fields are being developed in the Yamal
| Peninsula to replace these, so no Soviet era oil rigs at all.
|
| https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/0...
| baybal2 wrote:
| It does not add up to me, and any Russian who knows where
| Russian government gets its money.
|
| In 2009, I heard accounts of up to half of gas coming to
| Europe being Central Asian
| kgeist wrote:
| I'm from Russia and it's the first time I hear that
| almost all Russian gas actually comes from Kazakhstan,
| considering that my hometown literally sits on a pipe
| which connects Western Siberia to Europe. Sounds like
| some conspiracy theory to me, honestly. But I'm ready to
| change my mind if you provide some links.
| a2tech wrote:
| Turkmenistan has almost endless gas and would LOVE to sell to
| Europe at anything even remotely close to the open market rate.
| But Russia dictates the cost of the gas they buy from TM and
| since they have no way to bulk export their gas except to
| Russia, they're pretty much stuck.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I think it is very interesting _how_ these countries fall off the
| internet...
|
| Specifically, if I was a country leader who wanted to turn off
| the internet, I would get my minister to call up all big ISP's
| and tell them to disconnect everyone. The ISP bosses tell their
| tech people to do it. And what do those tech people do?
|
| Well, if I were in their shoes, I would head to the billing
| system and mark all customers as 'bill overdue, not eligible for
| service' or some similar status.
|
| That gives me the ability to allow certain customers to still use
| the service (eg. the president and his mates).
|
| Yet that _isn 't_ what we see... The actual BGP routes go down...
| That suggests to me that the story might be more like "army
| storms ISP headquarters, ripping out cables till their phone
| internet stops working".
| capableweb wrote:
| No, what actually happens in practice is that the backbone
| connections to the outside gets disconnected (by the
| government) without the involvement of ISPs. Certain users who
| still want to access the internet has access to it via other
| means, sometimes even satellite connections.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| This reminds me of how Gorbachev kept informed about the coup
| that was happening around him via the BBC World Service on
| shortwave. I wonder if there's a market for re-instating such
| services in areas that are prone to internet outages?
| londons_explore wrote:
| The BBC still does longwave radio, receivable in most of
| the world, partly for strategic political reasons that you
| describe.
| iso1210 wrote:
| World Service can be picked up on Short Wave from a long
| distance from the transmitters
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2x9tqt6mc05vB2S
| 37j...
|
| https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/schedules/freque
| nci...
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| That's cool, I'll have to have a listen on a nearby SDR.
|
| Interestingly the World Service's old mediumwave
| frequency 648 kHz is now being used by none other than
| the famous pirates Radio Caroline. They still use their
| radio ship, though the studios link over 4G to a land-
| based transmitter now to save fuel. Those guys would
| definitely have featured on HN quite often if it'd been
| around then, the engineering and hacker spirit that went
| into their operation was insane.
| iso1210 wrote:
| I listen to WS in my car in the UK via DAB. I knew
| someone from student TV who worked on DRM for BBC R&D for
| a while - DRM being "Digital Radio Mondiale", or Digital
| Shortwave.
|
| DAB struggled to gain traction over the last 20 years, I
| don't know anywhere near enough about shortwave
| transmissions in general to know if DRM has any chance,
| but a quick look doesn't look very impressive compared
| with normal shortwave.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I'll miss that when they shut it down, I'm too young to
| have actual nostalgia for longwave as a primary way of
| listening to the radio but but I enjoy having Test Match
| Special on crackly old longwave as background noise when
| I'm working. I always liked how you can hear the
| lightning from miles away if it's stormy. I've also got a
| friend who still sometimes uses the Shipping Forecast on
| longwave when he's on smaller boats in the North Sea!
|
| My understanding is that the longwave service is very
| expensive to run (on the order of hundreds of kW) and the
| only thing keeping it alive is the fact its carrier wave
| is used to switch over old electricity meters to night
| rates. AFAIK the energy companies subsidise it rather
| than the BBC and when everyone's on a smart meter it'll
| probably go off air. Having said that, I suspect the Venn
| diagram of 'people who'd be miffed about 198 kHz going
| quiet' and 'people who regularly write to their MPs' is
| basically a circle so maybe it'll last years after its
| execution date like the Irish longwave service has.
| int_19h wrote:
| I'm not sure if that's still the case, but BBC longwave
| broadcast was also used as one of the checks that British
| nuclear subs are supposed to use to determine that a
| large-scale nuclear attack on Britain has taken out their
| command (and thus it's time to open
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort).
| kingcharles wrote:
| How, though? The backbone connections are still terminated at
| ISPs and interchanges. Somewhere an engineer still needs to
| either remove the routes in software, or pull a bunch of
| cables out.
|
| Unless you're saying that the president himself has all the
| major backbone connections running through his office?
| senectus1 wrote:
| hmmm we have ppl in Kaz. Suddenly Starlink sounds like a useful
| tool in the back pocket.
| hippich wrote:
| at least in Belarus one can _receive_ from the sat but can not
| _transmit_ to the sat. precisely for that reason. i would not
| be surprised that in the rest of former USSR countries there
| are similar laws.
|
| nonetheless, looks like protesters there are successful despite
| cut internet.
| OldManAndTheCpp wrote:
| Not being able to send means they can't use Starlink in
| Belarus, right? There's no ability to send e.g. HTTP GET, so
| you can't actually use the internet. Right?
| wrinkl3 wrote:
| I've been thinking about Starlink too. Rural Kazakhstan should
| actually be pretty good for reception with all that barren
| steppe.
| baybal2 wrote:
| It's a complete shutdown, likely somebody pulled the plug on the
| sole cable which connects the country to the Internet.
| SilasX wrote:
| Wait, so the South Park scene was actually accurate for some
| countries' internet?
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=zAJbOygaJ0o
| iso1210 wrote:
| I remember trying to get internet in Kabul when we expanded
| an office there about a decade ago, there was one fibre over
| the khyber pass to Pakistan, and I seem to remember the
| connections north and south to Uzbekistan/Iran relied on a
| ropey copper ring circuit with c. 100mbit of connectivity -
| for the entire traffic.
|
| That episode was released in 2008, a lot of countries in
| Africa then had just one subsea circuit, if that, before
| WACS, before EASSy. If I remember right, even bandwidth out
| of Austrailia cost a fortune.
| capableweb wrote:
| Most countries do have something similar in place where they
| can turn off the outside connections if needed. I don't think
| it has happened yet in any western country, but those safe-
| guards are in place at the edges of the national network.
| f311a wrote:
| The government had initially tried to calm protesters by
| conceding a reduction in the price of liquefied natural gas
| (LNG), setting it at 50 tenge (EUR0.1) per litre, compared with
| 120 at the start of the year -- a significant increase in
| a country where the minimum wage is 42,500 tenge (EUR98.7) a
| month.
|
| The price of the gas has doubled (the link does not mention it).
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| >the minimum wage is 42,500 tenge (EUR98.7) a month.
|
| Surprising. Ukraine, where I'm from, has a minimum wage of
| EUR200 despite being resource-poor and simply poor-poor, if you
| go by relatively objective measures like GDP per capita with
| PPP. But oil-rich Kazakhstan seems to really keep their hoi
| polloi on a lean diet.
| sofixa wrote:
| It's all a matter of costs and standard of living.
|
| Oil (and generally resource rich countries) have a tough line
| to thread between spreading the riches among the population
| without making the said population dependent on that sharing
| ( e.g. Venezuela) and hoarding at the top. Most fail
| miserably, and honestly the only one i can think of doing a
| great job is Norway, and it was mostly by accident.
| int_19h wrote:
| The reason why Norway is an exception is largely because
| its liberal democratic political system was already well-
| developed by the time it became a heavy oil producer.
|
| https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs?t=758
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Norway already had a rich modern economy before they struck
| oil.
| qnsi wrote:
| what about US?
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Resource curse. Economies that depend on a single extraction
| resource tend to be pretty stagnant and rife with corruption.
| There's also the issue that they need to discourage local
| consumption of the export resource, since local consumption
| doesn't enrich the country, even if the locals need to
| consume to not freeze to death.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Strongly recommend reading Kelptopeia: How Dirty Money is
| Conquering the World
|
| Covers the current situation in Khazakhstan. One of the most
| chilling chapters deals with what can happen to protestors in
| Khazakhstan.
|
| Even more chilling, how the ruling elite manipulate the
| international press.
|
| If you don't hate Tony Blair already, this will help you cross
| that line in a big way.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Kleptopia-Dirty-Money-Conquering-Worl...
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| I assume the Tony Blair hate is based on the Iraq War?
|
| I don't get it.
|
| Prime Minister in the UK cannot go to war without parliament's
| approval.
|
| Parliament approved invasion with 412 to 149 votes.
|
| Is Tony Blair the scapegoat?
|
| Can someone explain?
| freeflight wrote:
| The UK parliament ain't the only relevant institution here.
|
| The invasion of Iraq was an open and blatant breach of the UN
| charter [0], it was an illegal war of aggression based on
| lies.
|
| Lies that were so blatant that the whole situation lead to
| the largest global protest event in human history [1].
|
| And that doesn't even go into the direct consequences of
| that; Refugees all the way into Western Europe, among them
| many disgruntled people who felt wronged, serving as
| potential recruits for an AQ that had by then become world
| famous thanks to the US.
|
| What that lead to were the first major Islamic terror attacks
| in Western Europe [2], among them the 2005 London bombings by
| AQ, which were a _direct_ response to the UK participation in
| invading Iraq, just like the 2004 AQ attack in Madrid, Spain.
|
| In that context it's not really difficult to see why Tony
| Blair is such a controversial personality.
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-
| war_prot...
|
| [2] https://www.datagraver.com/case/people-killed-by-
| terrorism-p...
| danjac wrote:
| Tony Blair was the head of government and leader of the
| ruling party. Had he decided not to take Britain to Iraq,
| then the UK would not have taken part in the war and there
| would not have been a vote in Parliament. At the end of the
| day, the buck stopped with him.
|
| Would lack of UK support have been sufficient to deter the
| US? Who knows, probably not given the neocon lunatics in the
| White House at the time. Harold Wilson's decision to keep the
| UK out of Vietnam was in retrospect a wise decision, and no
| doubt Blair would have had a better reputation had he made
| the same choice.
|
| That all said, Blair's post-PM career seems to involve
| toadying up to every dictator left on the planet (in marked
| contrast to his successor Gordon Brown's work supporting
| refugees and global vaccination) so maybe his reputation is
| well-deserved after all.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Had he decided not to take Britain to Iraq, then the UK
| would not have taken part in the war and there would not
| have been a vote in Parliament._
|
| Not only that, the 2005 London bombings most likely
| wouldn't have happened, that was direct retaliation for UK
| participation in the "coalition of the willing", willing to
| invade and occupy Iraq as part of a "crusade" on terror.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Parliament has the power to remove the Prime Minister, and
| it's _possible_ that they would have done so if the Prime
| Minister failed to come to the aid of a historic ally. PM
| 's have had no-confidence votes, or been pushed out of
| office before one would occur, over lesser issues.
|
| That aside, Parliament doesn't have to authorize via
| binding vote on these matters. They get a debate
| opportunity by normative convention, but any vote they took
| to override would not be binding unless they were willing
| to remove the PM.
|
| Nonetheless I think it's fair to place a sizeable portion
| of the blame on Parliament: They can't decide to go to war,
| but they do have some levers of power that would stop it,
| if they were willing to remove their PM. I certainly don't
| know where I put % blame here, but I'm equally sure
| Parliament was checking complicit on the issue.
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| > Had he decided not to take Britain to Iraq, then the UK
| would not have taken part in the war and there would not
| have been a vote in Parliament.
|
| I don't get this.
|
| He cannot just "decide to take Britain to Iraq", since the
| UK Government cannot start a war without Parliament's
| approval.
|
| He came to the Parliament with the available intelligence
| at the time, and after days of debates, 412 people voted in
| favour of the invasion.
|
| I would understand the hate if he knew the "irrefutable
| evidence" shown to United Nation by the Secretary of State
| was a lie at the time of the vote in Parliament.
|
| But as far I know, he wasn't aware of that.
|
| Is this just a blind hate of a scapegoat? Why are the other
| 411 people given a pass?
| danjac wrote:
| > He cannot just "decide to take Britain to Iraq", since
| the UK Government cannot start a war without Parliament's
| approval.
|
| Had Blair decided not to go to war, there would not have
| been a vote. He was leader of the Labour Party and
| instructed his whips to ensure MPs voted for war.
|
| > He came to the Parliament with the available
| intelligence at the time, and after days of debates, 412
| people voted in favour of the invasion.
|
| We now know, from the Chilcot inquiry, that Blair knew
| the intelligence was poor and either deliberately misled
| Parliament or allowed his belief to blind his judgement.
| Either conclusion is damning.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Did Hutton ever apologise to the BBC. He skewered them
| when they claimed the dossier was perhaps not quite fully
| trustworthy
| ineedasername wrote:
| UK Parliament does not get a binding vote on going to
| war. Their recourse, if they disagree, is to remove the
| PM altogether.
|
| Admittedly, I'm not sure there's much of a meaningful
| difference between the two. If an MP doesn't want to go
| to war, I'd think that a big enough difference if opinion
| to vote no-confidence. As such if a majority of
| Parliament didn't want to go to war, they may have taken
| that step.
| detaro wrote:
| > _He cannot just "decide to take Britain to Iraq", since
| the UK Government cannot start a war without Parliament's
| approval._
|
| Declaring war and deploying troops is a power held by the
| Crown (which will do it on request of its government).
| Parliamentary approval is not required, parliament merely
| can hold a no-confidence vote and remove the government
| afterwards if it disagrees.
|
| The Afghanistan war just a bit earlier was debated in
| parliament, but not actually voted on by parliament.
|
| For Iraq, there was a formal vote for the first time, but
| again, not a formal authorization that would have had
| legal force - although loosing it realistically would
| have collapsed Blairs government once he committed to
| having the vote. (And also made any Labour MPs voting
| against it not just the MPs who were against the war, but
| also the MPs who forced their government to fail).
| tialaramex wrote:
| Starting wars does _not_ in fact require parliamentary
| approval.
|
| In 1999 Blair used "Queen's Consent" (the notional
| requirement that consent of the monarch must be sought in
| order to substantially alter their powers, but in practice
| these are _government_ powers and so consent is sought from
| the _government_ ) to get rid of a Bill that would actually
| have required this, the "Military Action Against Iraq
| (Parliamentary Approval) Bill".
|
| This isn't because Blair couldn't have won a vote and
| disposed of the bill but because he knew it would be
| _embarrassing_ and indeed the embarrassment anyway resulted
| in the (non-binding) Approval bill you cited which has 412
| Aye votes.
|
| Even _having a vote_ ( "Division") is embarrassing. It forced
| Labour members who might have told their electorate over and
| over that they oppose war to choose, stick by their
| principles that war is abhorrent, and risk deselection for
| coming out against the stance of their government and many
| populist pro-war newspapers, or, bend over, vote for the
| government and hope voters forgive them when it inevitably
| all goes wrong.
|
| Now, ultimately Parliament is sovereign and so you can argue
| everything "requires parliamentary approval", but only in
| sense that silence signifies approval because as a sovereign
| entity it _could_ intervene but it does not.
|
| If Parliament _really_ didn 't want the UK to go to war it
| can in principle get rid of the Prime Minister and install
| one who won't start a war. If the Speaker tries to stop them
| (e.g. by refusing to recognise a member who stands to propose
| "That This House Has No Confidence In Her Majesty's
| Government" so as to bring down the Prime Minister) the
| Commons can convene "The Committee of the Whole House" which
| is identical to the Commons except that they're picking who
| runs things, whereupon they can get rid of that Speaker,
| choose a new one, reconvene the Commons and call No
| confidence. But it isn't going to do that in fact.
|
| Even for Brexit, while there was majority opposition to the
| obviously disastrous "No deal" plan, there was no majority in
| support of any other definitive course of action, including
| replacing the Prime Minister, all that was done was more
| kicking of cans down the road, until there was no more road.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| "On 6 July 2016, Sir John Chilcot announced the report's
| publication, more than seven years after the inquiry was
| announced.[3] Usually referred to as the Chilcot report by
| the news media,[4] the document stated that at the time of
| the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein did not pose an
| urgent threat to British interests, that intelligence
| regarding weapons of mass destruction was presented with
| unwarranted certainty, that peaceful alternatives to war had
| not been exhausted, that the United Kingdom and the United
| States had undermined the authority of the United Nations
| Security Council, that the process of identifying the legal
| basis was "far from satisfactory", and that a war was
| unnecessary.[5][6][7] The report was made available under an
| Open Government Licence."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Inquiry
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Reminds me of when our Canadian PM at the time, Jean-
| Chretien, stood up to Blair and Bush who visited him.
|
| https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique/politique-
| canad...
|
| "Their proof wouldn't even convince one of the local court
| judge here!"
|
| "If we begin to remove every dictator, who's going to be
| next? Why not Robert Mugabe? They told me he's not the same
| than Saddam. Well of course he doesn't have oil!"
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Chretien was fully prepared to join in until it became
| very clear from protests and polls that the Canadian
| public wasn't going to stand for it. They hadn't fully
| committed to non-involvement until then. And even then,
| there was still support for the "allies" just not direct
| military involvement.
|
| Many people may not remember or may be too young. Those
| Feb and March protests were the biggest protest ever in
| history across the whole western world. "According to BBC
| News, between six and ten million people took part in
| protests in up to sixty countries over the weekend of 15
| and 16 February." (WP) Police estimates for London, UK
| were 750k, but they were likely higher.
|
| I left work one evening when they first began bombing and
| marched through the streets of Toronto and the energy was
| crazy. The following saturday protest was 100,000 people
| at least and a lot calmer, but outside the US embassy the
| atmosphere was intense, angry and electric. It was much
| larger in Montreal if I recall.
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| Yes, I still remember Colin Powell image showing
| "irrefutable evidence" in his hands to the United Nations,
| which ended up being a lie.
|
| But again, did Tony Blair know it was a lie and misled the
| Parliament?
|
| I remember the Chilcot report, but never read it. It's on
| my reading list now!
|
| But from your quote, I don't see anything related
| specifically to Tony Blair?
|
| Again, my point is, the executive power (Government/Prime
| Minister) came to the legislative power (The Parliament)
| with a motion to invade another country.
|
| Both powers were using the same intelligence that they
| believed were genuine at the time, debated it for days, and
| then decided with 412 to 149 votes to start the invasion.
|
| Why Tony Blair is singled out, for something in hindsight,
| and the other 411 people are given a pass?
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| > But again, did Tony Blair know it was a lie and misled
| the Parliament?
|
| Yes. This is why the British troops were under-equipped
| because Tony Blair was intentionally holding back the
| knowledge that the choice to invade had already been made
| but he couldn't do this while also requesting parliament
| to fund war funding.
|
| He was holding two narratives open at the same time. The
| public one where everything was above board, following
| all approved channels, ratified by the UN and due to WMD
| that he used to gain approval from the UK and a private
| one where it was clear the UK would go to war with the US
| regardless of what transpired.
| jl6 wrote:
| Worth noting that MPs don't vote entirely independently,
| but rather are marshalled (using a variety of implicit
| threats) by the party officials to vote in support of
| party leadership. Many of those 411 would have been
| backbench MPs with scarcely more access to government
| information than the general public. So they probably
| either believed what the government were saying about
| WMDs, or were incentivized to vote for war by the party
| machine. I wouldn't give them a pass as such, but it's
| several steps removed from the culpability level of Blair
| (who in turn was a rung down from Bush, incentivized to
| support the USA in much the same way as the British MPs
| were incentivized to support the PM).
| [deleted]
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > Why Tony Blair is singled out, for something in
| hindsight, and the other 411 people are given a pass?
|
| My very simplistic understanding is that he is singled
| out because he was responsible for pressing on it and the
| thing was voted based on the "evidence" he was
| presenting.
|
| My understanding is also that Bush, Powell, Rice and
| Rumsfeld are treated equally to Blair by some people.
| wahern wrote:
| > My understanding is also that Bush, Powell, Rice and
| Rumsfeld are treated equally to Blair by some people.
|
| That's unfortunate. The fact of the matter is that it was
| Cheney and Rumsfeld who _personally_ architected the lie.
| Bush, Blair, et al, deserve plenty of blame for
| abrogating the duties of their leadership, but the
| history lesson here is that you don 't _ever_ let people
| like Cheney and Rumsfeld through the front door. Not
| because they 're malicious (I admittedly always found
| Rumsfeld's politics beguiling), but because they're
| instigators and prime movers that won't hesitate to abuse
| power for their desired ends. An ounce of prevention is
| worth a pound of cure.
|
| Notably, the Bush campaign and administration had plenty
| of warning (including from conservatives) about who they
| were inviting into their inner circle. That, of course,
| makes Bush doubly culpable for a failure in leadership.
| But Bush's failures are of a different kind, and if we
| equivocate with those of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their
| undersecretaries, we'll have learned nothing.
| GordonS wrote:
| > Both powers were using the same intelligence that they
| believed were genuine at the time
|
| Didn't the US and UK both _fabricate_ "evidence"? Even
| then, it was obvious to _many_ observers that the
| evidence simply wasn 't credible, and the only outcome
| was disaster.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Certainly "Sexed up" the evidence, the entire Dodgy
| Dossier killed the BBC - Greg Dyke (the Director General
| / CEO, who was on holiday at the time) had to resign
| because of it.
|
| The Hutton Report claimed that the dossier was not sexed
| up (as the BBC claimed) and that it's all the BBCs fault.
| A few years later, Chilcott report basically said that
| the government did lie.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| The irrefutable evidence in question was nerve gas stored
| in glass bead configuration.
|
| Now, you may ask yourself why would Iraqi scientist store
| WMD in glass beads, when those shatter easily and offer
| nearly nothing in return (maybe WMD doesn't react with
| glass, but then just use a glass canisters)? Was that some
| anal fetish or something?
|
| It's because "" The source "" used Michael Bay movies as
| inspiration.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jul/08/it-was-such-
| obv...
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| It wouldn't surprise me if the UK and the us sold these
| weapons to them, then it's easy to claim "look they have
| these weapons".
| Ygg2 wrote:
| I find it being fiction more likely than that both UK and
| Iran agreed to buying nerve agent from the Michael Bay
| movie.
| from wrote:
| I read stuff like this (not this book specifically) from the
| OCCRP or ICIJ occasionally and I'm beginning to have my doubts
| about all of it. It's always based on innuendo and insinuation.
| Like "the grandson of this Nigeria politician is one of the
| directors of some Delaware company that also has a director
| that was arrested for customs fraud in Morocco. He also didn't
| respond to our phone calls. Therefore he is a 'potentially
| corrupt shadowy official'". And the call to action at the end
| of course is always to increase financial surveillance despite
| the current already heavyhanded approach massively failing.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| maybe its failing because people who own money and thus
| influence resist the regulations.
| xwolfi wrote:
| Yes, you know how it is when you start knowing something you
| start realizing journalist reporting of it, while not
| entirely false, is quite imprecise and simplifying ?
|
| I work in an investment bank, on the trading floor, and when
| I hear reports on how we're supposed to be and act, I feel it
| is so different from how people actually are and think. For
| instance, they ignore incompetence and always assign to
| malice, they think being legit is less important to us than
| robbing money, they always describe us as amoral, parasitic,
| conspiratorial. It's an enticing narrative each time, but
| except when they have actual email exchanges (like the
| Millenium emails during the Maddoff SEC investigation - that
| painted the right picture, professional, missing information,
| imperfect but not anti-blue collar conspiracy lol), I can't
| really trust it anymore.
|
| The FinCEN files by BuzzFeed were so trash, it was surreal to
| hear... We gave regulatory reports they leaked irresponsibly
| about suspicious activity by our fee-paying clients we are
| forbidden to tip off by refusing to talk to them, and we're
| now "hiding crime", maybe even "facilitating" it, tsk. They
| warned a lot of people that day, good job.
| sofixa wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation. I've just bought the book, but
| before diving in, out of curiosity, what's the link with Tony
| Blair?
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Sounds like a great opportunity to experiment with mesh networks
| ?
|
| (Especially these days, with millions of smartphones around, each
| one being able to work as a Wi-Fi router !)
| iso1210 wrote:
| Sounds like a great opportunity to ensure you've got water,
| fuel and food safely stockpiled (secretly)
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| This is hacker news, so cans of Pringles (not for eating),
| Soylent, (and yes, water, Soylent doesn't go well with Red
| Bull, sigh...). Fuel only for powering hardware, meatware can
| survive from hardware's waste heat. (/s)
| r721 wrote:
| Recent updates:
|
| >President Tokayev says that he is the chairman of security
| council from now, instead of Nazarbayev
|
| https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1478713537065369601
|
| >The building of the Almaty Police Department has been seized by
| protesters, according to several Orda.kz sources. Weapons also
| captured
|
| >Big proliferation event in Kazakhstan, hundreds of small arms
| will flow on the streets
|
| https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1478723503918653440 (UPD:
| unclear whether this is confirmed, according to some sources
| assault on police department is ongoing
| https://t.me/sputnikKZ/13893 (in Russian))
|
| UPD
|
| >Almaty airport(IATA: ALA, ICAO: UAAA) has been reportedly seized
| by protesters. Evacuation of employees ongoing
|
| >The press service of Almaty International Airport(IATA: ALA,
| ICAO: UAAA) confirms the lost of control. "There are now about 45
| invaders at the airport"
|
| https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1478747716356345861 (source
| in Russian: https://t.me/orda_kz/13180)
| r721 wrote:
| >Kazakh president appeals for help from Russia-led security
| bloc
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/finance/news/kazakh-president-appe...
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Amazing how quickly a protest can become a revolution in some
| parts of the world.
| ineedasername wrote:
| If there aren't constitutional mechanisms in place for
| peaceful transfer of power-- along with a tradition of mostly
| following the norms and conventions around the constitution--
| it can all go wrong pretty quickly.
|
| People may get very frustrated with democratic governments,
| but the mechanisms that well established democracies have for
| the peaceful transfer of power offer a much needed release
| valve on this sort of pressure.
|
| But it takes time to establish the foundations for this.
| Heck, the US had been around for most of a century and still
| had a failed revolution (well, it's called a the Civil War,
| but that's mostly because it failed. I'm sure if the US South
| had won, they would have viewed it very much as a successful
| revolution in the same way the original colonies did when
| they seceded from Great Britain. Yes, there are subtle
| differences-- Great Britain was somewhat of an absentee
| overseer, and colonies are not quite the same as states.
| Admittedly this makes the gray area resolve closer to Civil
| War.)
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Its to be expected in very poor countries with a dictatorship
| masquerading as government.
|
| The people don't have first world problems which they
| complain about from a chair on the internet.
|
| They live harsh lives with zero perspectives and are somewhat
| grateful the government doesn't turn more violent or
| oppressive .
|
| Then some event triggers a no point of return scenario where
| the people fear prison or death less than the potential
| future.
| q1w2 wrote:
| I think it is a bit naive to think this is a grass roots
| "protest". This might be a knock-on effect after the US
| withdrawal from Afghanistan. Nazarbayev was a Soviet man, so
| it's possible this is a western intervention. It's also
| possible that Islamic interests are using the gas crisis as
| an opportunity to establish a new islamic state there also.
|
| ...but regardless of who may be have helped organize this
| sudden protest/coup, it's important to remember that Russian
| politicians have recently made comments about taking back
| land given to Kazakhstan during the Soviet days. The northern
| portions of the country hold the 25% of the Kazakh population
| that is ethnic-Russian - which includes much of the area just
| up to the capital of Nur-Sultan, also in the north.
|
| https://thediplomat.com/2021/04/is-northern-kazakhstan-at-
| ri...
| tdiff wrote:
| As a conspiracy, as Kazakhstan crisis happens just before
| Russia/NATO summit, it may not be as simple as a "price
| protest".
| petre wrote:
| I just wonder what made the government raise the price of
| gas? Kazahstan sits on a gas mine. Why would they risk such
| a full scale protest just now? Greed?
| holoduke wrote:
| Can happen everywhere. Wait what happens if you cut down food
| supply to a rich nation like for example the Netherlands.
| Within a week people will kill each other for food.
| [deleted]
| thejackgoode wrote:
| It's completely off topic but the example is hilariously
| terrible -- the Netherlands are second largest world food
| exporter
| zwkrt wrote:
| Per capita? I find that really surprising!
| Vinnl wrote:
| Not per capita, in absolute numbers, a couple of years
| ago at least [1]. That said, there are different ways to
| measure; this is by value. You could also imagine e.g.
| measuring by calories.
|
| Presumably, per capita it's number one.
|
| [1] This tiny country feeds the world - https://www.natio
| nalgeographic.com/magazine/article/holland-...
| desdiv wrote:
| I'm not sure which metric GP is referring to, but by
| total value of food exports they're 7th in the world.
| Extremely impressive for a country of only 17 million
| people.
|
| [0] https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/
| WLD/Yea...
| kaybe wrote:
| It helps that most things I've seen so far are pretty
| high value per volume such as more expensive vegetables.
| adriand wrote:
| It's probably because the Dutch diaspora has succeeded in
| getting their children hooked on stroopwafels (syrup
| waffles), salt licorice and those amazing dense raisin
| buns that seem to be approximately 50% raisins... I for
| one am happy to continue supporting their export economy!
| bserge wrote:
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| freeflight wrote:
| Don't even need shortages of anything basic like food, in
| some places it's just enough to ask people to follow common
| sense rules, and as a result to that people will take to
| the streets, people will try to overthrow governments.
|
| This does not only apply to the US, with the January 6.
| "insurrection", it even happened in places like Germany [0]
| and recently Romania [1].
|
| It's a combination of entitlement, and 2 years of pandemic
| forcing many people, and their businesses, into dire
| economic situations.
|
| Such dire economic situations can trigger regime change
| anywhere, completely regardless of "democratic
| institutions" or all these other nice sounding words.
|
| Because most people don't really want that much; As long as
| they have a job that allows them to put a roof over their,
| and their families heads, and food on their tables, that
| long the vast majority of people couldn't care less if the
| government they live under is considered "democratic" or
| "authoritarian".
|
| These are way too high and abstract concepts for the vast
| majority of people to care about. They are too busy with
| every day live, working to pay rent and getting food on the
| table.
|
| But what happens if they don't have the work anymore to pay
| for rent and get food on the table? Then they will take to
| the streets, they will demand change, completely regardless
| of what kind of regime they live under.
|
| Even the Roman Empire already knew this; panem et ludos
|
| Give people enough bread and circuses, and they couldn't
| care less about what happens on the higher levels above
| them or how they are being wronged in rather intangible
| ways.
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53964147
|
| [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/21/romanians-
| protesti...
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| So apparently one group of oligarchies are winning over the
| other.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| By the point you're seizing small arms from police stations
| you're toeing the line between riot and revolution
| lgeorget wrote:
| As a Frenchman, it's also what we are taught about the French
| Revolution. One of the goals of the attack on la Bastille on
| July 14th 1789 was to seize the weapons there and march upon
| the rest of Paris and Versailles.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Powder and shot, more specifically. They'd seized cannons
| and small arms from the Hotel des Invalides, but the under
| manned commander had transferred all his powder to the
| Bastille before the mob stormed his position.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Apparently most of the government has been deposed as the
| president attempts to cling to power:
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/rare-protests-draw-resi...
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| >President Tokayev says that he is the chairman of security
| council from now, instead of Nazarbayev
|
| This is a huge deal. Conventional wisdom was that Nazarbayev,
| an unchallenged strongman for almost 30 years, only gave up the
| day-to-day duties of running the country to a younger sycophant
| but retained the ability to make "higher-order" decisions via
| his chairmanship of the security council - one of the models
| which Putin might follow as well, since he cannot ever simply
| retire.
|
| This either means Nazarbayev doesn't want to be associated with
| the fall of Tokayev and will attempt to feign conflict with him
| to retain power in case shit goes south, or perhaps Tokayev
| just used the situation to perform a "forced retirement" coup
| against Nazarbayev.
| r721 wrote:
| It's also unclear (judging from my twitter feed and a few
| liveblogs I follow) where Nazarbayev is currently located
| (and what he thinks about this mess).
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| I wonder if finally someone (Russian/China?) convinces him to
| go down and retire? After all he has been there for three
| decades, and maybe the other countries are not exactly happy
| about his way.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Nazarbayev is 81 years old. It doesn't seem likely he'll
| emerge as the new ruler, even with Russian backing. ...but he
| might lend legitimacy to any new leader the Russians try to
| muscle in.
| rasz wrote:
| >>The press service of Almaty International Airport(IATA: ALA,
| ICAO: UAAA) confirms the lost of control. "There are now about
| 45 invaders at the airport"
|
| That is a weird place to stage a protest. Im getting little
| green men flashbacks
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_green_men_(Russo-Ukrain...
| int_19h wrote:
| It should be noted that Kazakhstan is often mentioned as one
| of the potential flashpoints when it comes to Russian
| irredentism. This map shows why:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_demography_of_Kazakhsta.
| ..
| Guessnotgauss wrote:
| That map makes no sense in relation to your comment. The
| country is mostly ethinic Kazak, and peoples similar in the
| sense they are more Turkic than Slavic. Calling them
| Russian seems weird, making a case for irredentism even
| weirder considering they wont have the same idea as what is
| the "motherland."
|
| Russia trying to recreate the USSR, I can see. They will
| start with the states the West is concerned with the least.
| kgran wrote:
| >Russia trying to recreate the USSR, I can see.
|
| USSR? Nope. Russian Empire? Maybe. Any resemblance to
| USSR, IMHO, requires at least some kind of Marxism
| derivative and state-planned economy.
| freeflight wrote:
| Wasn't considered a weird place when the people of Hong Kong
| did that [0]
|
| [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/13/asia/hong-kong-
| protestors...
| petre wrote:
| Euromaidan mk2. Putin now has a new problem on his hands, ahead
| of the Jan 10th talks on Ukraine with the US and now the EU as
| well. This is just great timing.
| jabej wrote:
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Westerners should protest about energy prices? If anything,
| Westerners ought to be paying far higher energy prices in the
| form of carbon taxes.
| tlear wrote:
| I am sure this will work great and not lead to historic route
| at the next election. Notice how fast Biden got on trying to
| contain the gas prices?
|
| You have to understand that massive slices of society whole
| lives depend on gas prices being in certain range. They are
| not going to go eat cake.. they WILL do something about it.
| redanddead wrote:
| How so? And by Westerners do you mean NA + EU or NA?
|
| What about Australia?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Even the EU has a lot of poorer member states. "Far higher
| energy prices" in Lithuania or Romania would be unbearable
| for the local population. Few people are ready to silently
| freeze to death in the name of climate protection.
| screenbreakout wrote:
| In my city Cluj Napoca (Romania), I would welcome higher
| petrol prices, which might lead to less trafic and I'm sure
| the more needy could be helped with some form of subsidy
| from said taxes...
|
| A SUV tax would probably be more efficient... btw I don't
| know how many of you know this but on Fridays public
| transport is free in Romanian cities...
| adventured wrote:
| By a dramatic margin the most polluting nations in all
| respects are non-Western nations. Your tax premise is
| backwards accordingly.
|
| Insert retort: yeah but that's just because the West
| outsources its pollution. No, in fact 'developing' countries
| like China are self-contained pollution monsters. In order to
| fulfill their own gigantic consumer demand, China has to be
| the world's most polluting nation with how they've structured
| their grid and industry. Exports to eg the US are a small
| share of China's emissions problem and getting ever smaller
| as a share of the problem.
|
| China is about to become the world's largest economy and gets
| 60% of its energy from coal, while they aggressively build a
| lot more coal power plants and their emissions continue to
| skyrocket (despite already outputting more emissions than the
| US + EU combined). While US and EU emissions continue to
| contract (their consumer demand growth + economic growth is
| largely net stagnant anyway), China will again double its
| emissions output, guaranteeing the planet will be partially
| destroyed (if the climate predictions are at all accurate).
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Well, yes, and for the USA is likely different but for some
| EU countries the CO2 embedded in imports from China is now
| larger than their own CO2 production, so that's not
| something that can be neglected...
| [deleted]
| democracy wrote:
| 30 years under the dictatorship... my heart is with the people
| and I hope for the best for the country!
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Before that 70 years of communist dictatorship. Before that
| centuries of Russian Tsar dictatorship, and so on...
| osipov wrote:
| q1w2 wrote:
| The most likely government to be installed will be an islamic
| state, so I would not be very hopeful.
|
| Also, Russia might intervene militarily and annex the norther
| half of the country - as they have recently made comments that
| the Soviets gave them too much land.
|
| It is far more likely this will end badly for the average
| Kazakh citizen.
| levvolk wrote:
| > The most likely government to be installed will be an
| islamic state,..
|
| The suffix "-stan" is very suggestive, isn't it? After all,
| there are Pakistan and Afghanistan -- massively Islamic
| countries.
|
| Similarly, Thailand ends in "-land", yet no one thinks
| Thailand is in Europe despite the fact that England,
| Switzerland and Poland are all European.
|
| Islam in Kazakhstan is non-pure, non-literalist and heavily
| tinged/influenced by local shamanistic traditions and old
| Soviet ways unlike that in Middle East.
|
| Pure Islam in Kazakhstan would look jarringly out of place.
| int_19h wrote:
| Kazakhstan is one of the most secular countries in Central
| Asia (20% self-reported as "irreligious" in a 2019 poll), so
| I find that rather unlikely.
| yladiz wrote:
| What do you mean by Islamic state? Something like in Iran, or
| something like in Turkey? I'm not sure what your sources are
| but if you mean something like in Iran it's extremely
| unlikely to happen in Kazakhstan. Russia taking some land is
| more likely but Russia would likely prefer better relations
| with Kazakhstan due to their gas and economic ties, and
| annexing that land isn't really that important compared to
| Ukraine.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| Live data is available on Cloudflare Radar for Kazakhstan here:
| https://radar.cloudflare.com/kz?date_filter=last_24_hours
| capableweb wrote:
| Better view of the current situation (last 6 hours shown,
| instead of last 7 days):
| https://radar.cloudflare.com/kz?date_filter=last_6_hours
| mirages wrote:
| debian.org jumped to the 14th most visited according to that
| page coming from the low 400th
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Two possibilities:
|
| 1) People are looking for Linux resources as it might help
| them evade censorship or set up local networks
|
| 2) Residential traffic dropped but servers aren't affected
| and so Debian-based servers' update traffic now represents
| a much larger part of the country's total traffic
| bmicraft wrote:
| It may also be that debian.org is just whitelisted
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Most likely 2 since most people don't have internet RN.
| But I don't know who exactly still have; I assume most
| non-backbone civil servers got cut out too.
| baybal2 wrote:
| T7-VIP1 is a personal aircraft of Nazarbayev family.
| https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/t7-vip1
|
| The news are there that he fled the country to Switzerland, got a
| boot from there, and was forced to flee to Uzbekistan.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| Curious as to how you know that the T7-VIP1 is a personal
| aircraft of Nazarbayev family?
| thempes123 wrote:
| y04nn wrote:
| That made me remember reading about it, there is a satellite
| broadcast of the blockchain, by Blockstream [1] started by Adam
| Back I think. Not sure if it really works or is used/usable.
|
| [1]: https://blockstream.com/satellite/
| gruez wrote:
| >Turns our there isn't much use for it if you unplug the cable
| huh?
|
| Not really. Bitcoin transactions are typically around 500
| bytes. Smuggling that out via alternative means doesn't seem
| too hard. As for the blockchain itself (for verifying
| transactions), there's this:
| https://www.blockstream.com/satellite/
| thempes123 wrote:
| [deleted]
| fsflover wrote:
| During a local revolution, crypto is as useless for
| transactions as regular money. However, it will not loose its
| value unlike the latter.
| StringyBob wrote:
| Do wonder what Russia's reaction will be. Not wanting to belittle
| the impact on people's lives from geopolitical turmoil, but
| amongst other things Baikonur Cosmodrome is inside Kazakhstan -
| where a lot of the Russian space launches are from.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Numerous Russian politicians have recently said that the
| Soviets gave Kazakhstan too much land, and that the northern
| portion of the country which holds the 25% ethnic Russian
| population, should return to Russia.
|
| This seems like a possible opportunity for Putin to annex more
| territory.
| StringyBob wrote:
| I expect Putin's forces will now move in to secure the
| country, and will never leave
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(page generated 2022-01-05 23:01 UTC)