Anyone seen this?

comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 2 hours, 40 minutes ago
What were you up to in Georgia btw TOOR?
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My wife is from there.

comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 2 hours, 41 minutes ago
comment by There'sOnlyOneReds (U1721)
posted 26 minutes ago
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 5 minutes ago
We're so acclimatised to terrorism stories that confirmation bias is unavoidable.

I heard somewhere that the driver was from Kyrgyzstan. (Very randomly!) I visited that country last year. A couple of things I learnt:

- There is a fundamentalist fringe in what is a pretty secular place compared to many majority-Muslim countries. So it's not out of the question that the driver is one of those who have been infected with a mixture of religious dogma, poverty and marginalisation. (By the way, Moscow isn't a great place to be as an ethnic minority scraping a living.)
- A lot of young men work lethally long hours as drivers, consuming energy drinks instead of sleeping, in order to make a bit of money for their families. It's common to go to Russia and earn as much as possible to send money home. It's very easy to imagine one of these guys being half asleep and making a tragic mistake. I had a driver who nearly fell asleep at the wheel. I saw his head
I was in Georgia in April, travelling from Kutaisi to Tbilisi. The driver was bloody falling asleep and I made him stop. My wife decided she'd drive and ten minutes later we were changing the wheel as she drove into a hole. I had to drive for two hours on the straightest road you've ever seen at 80kmh.
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You've got to love driving experiences in the former Soviet Union. If you haven't done high-speed tailgating on ice with godawful Russian pop music (in minor key with an accordion solo), you haven't really lived.
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It's even worse now as most taxis have those dvd player things. So you 'get' to watch the Russian music also. There's nothing worse than Sektor Gaza blasting out whilst overtaking at 80mph on the wrong side of the road going around a bend.

Arguments with drivers are quite common either due to them driving like maniacs, trying to rip you off or lying that they know the place you're going to and then going the wrong way and telling you that you have to pay extra due to it. I mean these guys are working simply to get enough money to buy dinner for the night. Half of the time they ask for the fare in advance so they can buy petrol for the journey. There's thousands and thousands of taxi drivers, you only have to walk onto the street and stick your arm out and you've a taxi in seconds. Contrast that to last night, for example, when I was at a Liam Gallagher and Richard Ashcroft concert and couldn't get a taxi until we walked for miles into the city centre.

The best experience I had in a taxi there was when we were driving in a crazy storm, roads were flooded everywhere. A guy in a car next to us started screaming at our driver about him driving next to him and getting drenched when the water from the flooded road went in his window. Our driver laughed at him and asked why he was driving in a bloody storm with his window down.

It feels like this is the day you're going to die everytime you get into a car there. The roundabouts are the best, it's literally just go for it and hope people get out of your way. In fact there are cameras you can watch online to see this example. I'll try find one.

comment by Bobby Dazzler (U1449)
posted 6 hours ago
comment by CurrentlyInChina (U11181)
posted 23 minutes ago
Update on the news is Th at he has been working for v20 hours with only 2 hours sleep. He said he ran as he thought the mob would lynch him.
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So he sped up, mounted the pavement and mowed 8 people down, that always seems to happen when you're tired
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Not out of the realms of possibility. Fell asleep at the wheel, foot hit the accelerator woke up but too late to react. Or half asleep, hit the wrong pedal and was slow to react due to the lack of sleep.

For example, why wait in traffic and then mow people down?

From a conspiracy point of view, it could be Russia trying to make out as an accident rather than an attack so as to show their security hasn't been breeched.

The wheels turn, he darts out then they seem to steer back up the pavement, although he does crash into the wall a bit.

Tough call.


Luckily he hits a metal-looking sign pole and the car stops. If he doesn’t hit that does he carry on?

https://youtu.be/ZteWDal_iXU

Translation of his interview.

comment by There'sOnlyOneReds (U1721)
posted 7 hours, 35 minutes ago
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 2 hours, 41 minutes ago
comment by There'sOnlyOneReds (U1721)
posted 26 minutes ago
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 5 minutes ago
We're so acclimatised to terrorism stories that confirmation bias is unavoidable.

I heard somewhere that the driver was from Kyrgyzstan. (Very randomly!) I visited that country last year. A couple of things I learnt:

- There is a fundamentalist fringe in what is a pretty secular place compared to many majority-Muslim countries. So it's not out of the question that the driver is one of those who have been infected with a mixture of religious dogma, poverty and marginalisation. (By the way, Moscow isn't a great place to be as an ethnic minority scraping a living.)
- A lot of young men work lethally long hours as drivers, consuming energy drinks instead of sleeping, in order to make a bit of money for their families. It's common to go to Russia and earn as much as possible to send money home. It's very easy to imagine one of these guys being half asleep and making a tragic mistake. I had a driver who nearly fell asleep at the wheel. I saw his head
I was in Georgia in April, travelling from Kutaisi to Tbilisi. The driver was bloody falling asleep and I made him stop. My wife decided she'd drive and ten minutes later we were changing the wheel as she drove into a hole. I had to drive for two hours on the straightest road you've ever seen at 80kmh.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

You've got to love driving experiences in the former Soviet Union. If you haven't done high-speed tailgating on ice with godawful Russian pop music (in minor key with an accordion solo), you haven't really lived.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It's even worse now as most taxis have those dvd player things. So you 'get' to watch the Russian music also. There's nothing worse than Sektor Gaza blasting out whilst overtaking at 80mph on the wrong side of the road going around a bend.

Arguments with drivers are quite common either due to them driving like maniacs, trying to rip you off or lying that they know the place you're going to and then going the wrong way and telling you that you have to pay extra due to it. I mean these guys are working simply to get enough money to buy dinner for the night. Half of the time they ask for the fare in advance so they can buy petrol for the journey. There's thousands and thousands of taxi drivers, you only have to walk onto the street and stick your arm out and you've a taxi in seconds. Contrast that to last night, for example, when I was at a Liam Gallagher and Richard Ashcroft concert and couldn't get a taxi until we walked for miles into the city centre.

The best experience I had in a taxi there was when we were driving in a crazy storm, roads were flooded everywhere. A guy in a car next to us started screaming at our driver about him driving next to him and getting drenched when the water from the flooded road went in his window. Our driver laughed at him and asked why he was driving in a bloody storm with his window down.

It feels like this is the day you're going to die everytime you get into a car there. The roundabouts are the best, it's literally just go for it and hope people get out of your way. In fact there are cameras you can watch online to see this example. I'll try find one.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

All of that rings true. Some experiences in cars I have hailed in Russia:

- the time there were two dodgy guys in the car and then we had to stop because the wheel came off
- the time we had to screech to a halt because a giant wheel had suddenly come off a bus and was bouncing across the road
- the late night conversation where I pointed out that we also had crime and social problems in the UK and the driver said "yeah, but that's all to do with the blacks, isn't it?" and I told him no, it's all Maggie Thatcher's fault.

I've ever been to Moscow and Rostov for work. I'm never going to Russia again unless work forces me.

Safe to say skin colour still means a lot there.

Never seen any racism in Russia myself but there is certainly an issue there, as there is here. They are several years behind us probably.

Even in Georgia where you'll find the nicest people you'll ever meet, there are issues. I watched a video of a Georgia girl walking in the underground, crossing the road, hand in hand with a black guy. A priest started attacking them, saying she should be with her own kind. Then again a priest basically atta led my wife one day for the same reason saying she should be with a Georgian. I find religion is the issue there, rather than the general population. Incidentally it's the same as most of Russia - Christian Orthodox.

Religion is a massive part of life there and priests are treated like kings. It's common for them to ask for money to give you happiness and to curse you with threats of sickness or some other punishment if you don't give them enough. It's why you see priests driving around in top of the range cars whilst most others are struggling. In fact when I first stayed with my wife's family there was a priest who lived in a crappy apartment close by. My father in law and his friends built him a church with massive land and a home. He invited me there to drink wine with him last time I was there, despite him being the idiot who told my wife she shouldn't be with a foreigner all those years ago. For me religion plays the biggest part in intolerance to others.

comment by There'sOnlyOneReds (U1721)
posted 2 hours, 9 minutes ago
Never seen any racism in Russia myself but there is certainly an issue there, as there is here. They are several years behind us probably.

Even in Georgia where you'll find the nicest people you'll ever meet, there are issues. I watched a video of a Georgia girl walking in the underground, crossing the road, hand in hand with a black guy. A priest started attacking them, saying she should be with her own kind. Then again a priest basically atta led my wife one day for the same reason saying she should be with a Georgian. I find religion is the issue there, rather than the general population. Incidentally it's the same as most of Russia - Christian Orthodox.

Religion is a massive part of life there and priests are treated like kings. It's common for them to ask for money to give you happiness and to curse you with threats of sickness or some other punishment if you don't give them enough. It's why you see priests driving around in top of the range cars whilst most others are struggling. In fact when I first stayed with my wife's family there was a priest who lived in a crappy apartment close by. My father in law and his friends built him a church with massive land and a home. He invited me there to drink wine with him last time I was there, despite him being the idiot who told my wife she shouldn't be with a foreigner all those years ago. For me religion plays the biggest part in intolerance to others.
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The Russian Orthodox Church is deeply compromised in its links with the power structure of the Russian state. It's never a good sign when you see the head of a religious organisation wearing a Rolex.

But in my experience racism in Russia and deeply conservative attitudes more generally have broader causes than religion. Part of it is the fact that despite the enlightened pretence, the Soviet Union was a pretty socially conservative place in many respects, and also a society in which a single truth / narrow idea of what a Soviet citizen should be like - public discourse, education, etc. were therefore hostile to liberal pluralism. Officially the country was internationalist but the non-communist outside world was demonised as evil and corrupt, and friendly client states were treated in a kind of colonial way. African students would come to Russia to study and generally were treated well but also as curiosities. A landlady of mine reminisced about an African on their course back at university, whom they affectionately nicknamed 'Snow White'. As with my grandparents' generation, it's not necessarily a case of people being evil racists. It's more one of not being used to or encouraged to think about diversity, and being shaped by prevailing nationalist myths.

All of this has been exacerbated by Putin's cynical adoption of chauvinist and authoritarian dogma to bolster his position of power.

comment by There'sOnlyOneReds (U1721)
Never seen any racism in Russia myself but there is certainly an issue there, as there is here. They are several years behind us probably
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Agreed.