At least 9 dead after train car explosion in St. Petersburg, Russia

[Psihala]

At least nine people died this morning in a train car blast between two subway stations in St. Petersburg, Russia, state news agencies said.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...ry?id=46540044

[Sylvanz]

Is it just me or is our present leader is one of the least articulate people to hold the office? This is such a horrific tragedy; I wish his comments had been a bit more considered, and much less twitter like.

[erwins]

It's not just you. I actually wondered if the quotes were tweets, or if he just speaks in tweets all the time.

[GenYus234]

Most of his campaign and Presidential messages are the same simplistic wording as his Tweets even when they are way more than 140 characters. I think he just naturally thinks and speaks like that, it just happens to be similar to how many people communicate via Twitter. The main difference with Twitter is Trump doesn't repeat his words twice or thrice and you can't see him playing the invisible concertina in a Tweet.

[ganzfeld]

All that is true but no longer surprises me nearly as much as the fact that so many millions absolutely refuse to see that the emperor has no clothes. I know people who still think he's "Great. Just great." We always knew it was bad - this is the ULRP message board - but it's stunning to have it laid out for all to see.

[crocoduck_hunter]

I have to wonder if this might not actually be a false flag operation: Putin actually is the kind of person who'd do something like that in order to give himself emergency powers.

[GenYus234]

While he certainly would do that, does he need to?

[Mouse]

Originally Posted by crocoduck_hunter

I have to wonder if this might not actually be a false flag operation: Putin actually is the kind of person who'd do something like that in order to give himself emergency powers.

I have no problem believing this as well. Most stuff labeled as "False Flag Operations" require the participation of entirely too many people to pull it off, but this one seems relatively straightforward: have someone set up a bomb, weight for it to go off, and from there, take advantage to seize even more power. Though how much more power can Putin possibly seize, given that from the looks of it, the only thing keeping him in check is the icy hand of death.

[crocoduck_hunter]

Originally Posted by GenYus234

While he certainly would do that, does he need to?

Don't know. Guess we'll have to see what his response to this is.

[ASL]

Originally Posted by Sylvanz

Is it just me or is our present leader is one of the least articulate people to hold the office?

Maybe he's just very astute. After all, President Obama was entirely too wordy. His speeches were written to, what, the ninth, maybe tenth grade level? Entirely too sophisticated. Now Bush, he was a plain speaker. "Evil Doers," seriously? But then someone made a convincing case to me that he chose that expression because the literal translation of that phrase into Arabic (keeping in mind how important Arab allies are in the GWOT) is actually an easily understood and pretty damning characterization, whereas saying "jihadists" would tend to be translated as something like "holy warriors." So it actually makes sense from a strategic-comms-with-an-eye-toward-arab-news-media point of view...

Wait, what are we talking about now?

Oh, yeah, President Trump. Maybe he just knows his audience. But, on the subject of whether or not this is a "false flag," shouldn't we wait for some actual evidence on that? I mean, so far we don't even have evidence that it looks like Islamic terrorism, much less evidence that it was made to look like Islamic terrorism. Right?

[ganzfeld]

I hate to say the conspiracy theories are getting out of hand on both sides because, well, for one, some of the people who definitely shouldn't be spreading them work in a big mansion estate on Penn Ave. That said, without any evidence, suggesting "false flags" is counterproductive, IMO.

[crocoduck_hunter]

Eh, it was really more of an observation that this was a place where the government might actually run a false flag op rather than a speculation on the likelihood that it actually was one.