this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2025
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The idea of hurting the Green Party in the elections as well as depressing support for environmentalism in general appeals to you, does it?
Pretty interesting.
If that's the interpretation you walk away with, you may be beyond repair.
Spray foam is cheap. Dirt cheap. The idea that it can be used in interesting ways; I'll take it.
Honestly looking at Russian espionage and interference techniques seems like a good starting point for any citizens who want to oppose their government’s actions. Anti-Trump Americans might want to take notes.
For just $4.99, you can have a tool that can functionally disable any number of things:
https://www.lowes.com/pd/GREAT-STUFF-Gaps-and-Cracks-12-oz-Straw-Indoor-Outdoor-Spray-Foam-Insulation/3012216
They literally found the people who did it, and found the trail of evidence that led to the Russians, and the explanation for why they didn't want the Greens in power.
I think what they're saying is "I may not agree with why they did it where they did, but I can imagine reasons and places where the tactic would be a good thing."
idk, I can't think of any use apart from "giving enviromentalists a bad image", except for it being a minor inconvenience. Salt in the fuel is way more inconvenient :)
Nobody said you have to pin it on environmentalists.
No, but there aren't many people that could serve as scapegoats for messing with combustion cars as easily as them
Why would a tactic that's deliberately designed by successful professionals to depress support for environmental causes, for pretty obvious reasons if you take a look at it, be a good thing to employ?
The tactic disables vehicles. If a vehicle needs to be disabled, and expanding foam is handy, Bob's your uncle.
No it doesn't. This tactic disables vehicles for a few minutes, until someone fixes it, and is likely to produce a permanent opposition in the person whose vehicle was minorly vandalized to anything activist or environmental.
Green Party people getting elected, and then enacting policies which curb emissions or reduce dependence on ICE vehicles, disables vehicles.
Of course, if you were talking about some other kind of activism which is designed to more permanently disable certain vehicle for certain specific reasons, there are a lot more semi-permanent ways of doing it than this. This is tailor-made to be useless and annoying, which is why the Russians liked it so much, and made sure to leave a card by the Greens taking credit for it.
Yeah, pair of diagonal cutters on valve stems is definitely more immediately effective. And it does look like the vehicle would still start if there's any kind of exhaust leak.
But if your aim is to annoy, this is a less destructive way of doing that.
I'm truly fascinated to find someone out here saying, "Nothing to see here! Please disperse."
I had interpreted the same way as them too lmao
What a load of crap.
The Greens are under attack from every other party like no other, and are polling very stable.
You should also know that the person you're talking to was talking up the Greens in the US, saying that it makes perfect sense for people to support them instead of Democrats and saying we needed to reform things to try to get them in power, back when that was the electoral message that would produce a particular impact on the electorate. It's only in Europe that they have nothing good to say about the Greens. They also contrasted Trump's environmental policies favorably to Biden's, who they said was causing all kinds of environmental problems.
https://ponder.cat/comment/332122
https://ponder.cat/comment/332206
https://ponder.cat/comment/332283
For all I know that user may indeed be sus, but not because of those comments, which don't say what you claim they say:
The first comment wasn't "talking up the Greens;" it was accusing the Democratic Party of disregarding leftists. It did not say that people should not vote for Harris; it only explained why they might make that choice. Furthermore, it cast that schism between leftists and Democrats as a bad thing that would lead to disaster, which is the opposite of advocating for it. Especially in retrospect, his criticism of the Democrats was correct, and so was his prediction that Harris would move further right and then lose.
The second comment did not say that Trump's environmental policies were better than Biden's; it said that the pandemic was a good example of degrowth. At most it was a fatalistic "the outcomes under Trump will be better for the climate because he'll fuck everything up so bad that the whole economy will grind to a halt" sort of argument.
In the third comment, he was arguing against protest-voting for third-party candidates under our current first-past-the-post voting system.
Frankly, I think @federalreverse@feddit.org acted hastily and should double-check your "research."
You're right in that the comments weren't talking up the US Greens specifically and I did act a little hastily. However, I did also look at the things they post, they are pushing very different narratives in quick succession and they're trolling a lot, especially in comments. This is a selection of just posts:
Both the election manipulation and the AI flag-truck meme I find rather irresponsible, especially when posted without comment. Similar for the pro-Trump article which in my eyes really needs commentary.
However, their comments don't follow a single pattern, they are apparently not always trolling, and they do consistently say they're from Texas.
Anyway, unbanning, I guess. Thanks to you too.
Don't get me wrong: for all I know, maybe a ban is justified. I just didn't think those particular comments previously cited were enough to do it, and I'm glad you investigated further.
What I said was:
I think that's every piece of my statement, and where it is supported in the links I gave. Your summaries are also wrong in places, I think, but mainly I want to focus on where every piece of what I said is backed up somewhere in the citations I gave, instead of getting into an extended tit-for-tat.
Talking them up in the US makes perfect sense if you are a Russian bot, because it steals voters from Democrats and makes it more likely for the GQP to win
They literally found the specific people who did it, and found the trail of evidence that led to the Russians, and the explanation for why the Russians didn't want the Greens in power.
It's also fascinating to me that the Russians are for people voting for Greens, in places where they can't gain power, and against it in places where they might actually come to power and enact some of these extremely-sensible policies that are on their web site.
Yeah, I have as much trust of the German government as I do the Russian government. The idea that someone working in the GRU or whatever is trying to do regime change by texting people asking them to spray foam in people's exhaust pipes is absurd. If I believed they actually did this, I would not be able to take the Russian CIA seriously.