From Russia with Love

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

What goes for sex goes double for politics. - Kate Clinton

Like many, I had trouble logging on to Livejournal yesterday. I immediately suspected another hactivism attack from Russia and went looking for any news mention of it. 

I found this story about the upcoming election in Russia and Vladimir Putin's potential candidacy....

 

A group of young women in Russia have dubbed themselves "Putin's Army" and are advocating the candidacy of Vladimir Putin in the 2012 elections. It seems to be a self-empowered group who appear to be doing this on their own. To bring attention of this, they are sponsoring a contest that encourages young, beautiful and smart women to show "how far they would go for President Putin" in a video. They would then post the winning videos on a social website that is the Russian equivalent of Facebook. The contest would be promoted on other social networking sites such as Livejournal as well. The prize would be an iPad 2.

This isn't the first time women have used their sex appeal for political purposes. During the 2008 elections in the United States, there were opposing and combined videos of Obama Girl and Giuliani Girl promoting their candidates. The phrase that comes to mind is "sex sells". It has been used to sell everything from perfume to beer. Incidentally, I have found those two products are in no way interchangeable.


Was the last Livejournal outage a hack attack to suppress a Putin candidacy? Is the future of worldwide politics to promote candidates as commodity products using slick media and sex appeal, much like jewelry or alcoholic beverages?

Comments

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I haven't been able to post to my own journal since last night - these service outages/whatever are seemingly more frequent and definitely getting more annoying.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

- these service outages/whatever are seemingly more frequent and definitely getting more annoying.

I was pretty much out all day yesterday. I seem to be fine now.

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

I've had problems getting my LJ home page, friends page, and inbox to load, off and on yesterday. And I had to wait a reeeeally long time to see expanded threads or to post comments, but it did eventually work. I'm not sure if it really seems like a hack - it just felt like the servers had majorly slowed down. So maybe it was. I know next to nothing about hacking after all.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

The "Giuliani Girl"? I better not try to imagine this!

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Oh, and it could definitely be something like this (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/957323.html) again.

[existentme.livejournal.com]

What I am finding last night and today is that I am unable to post more than two or three line entries: long-windedness has apparently been outlawed over there.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

doing it on their own. sure, huh huh.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

doing it on their own.

I didn't see any gun barrels to their heads.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Well that proves it doesn't it!

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Found more info, seems that a lot of people do think that it is indeed initiated by Putin's election campaign.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

On second thoughts, a second DDoS attack seems unlikely to be the cause (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/26/livejournal_outage/) of this week's outage.

Btw, is it just me or "smart girls for Putin" sounds like an oxymoron? :-)

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

On second thoughts, a second DDoS attack seems unlikely to be the cause of this week's outage.

Livejournal has just admitted that it was another DDoS attack. Yay! I win......I think

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

Oh right. It's ok when GIRLS do it

[dark-weezing.livejournal.com]

I could log in, yet couldn't post or see my F-List until late last night. Insanity, and good to know it wasn't me. While I won't say "the Putin girls are master hackers," anything is possible. (Or, when I want LJ to work, it won't, and when I don't care, it works fine. Typical.)

On a similar tangent about using sexual appeal for politics, anyone remember those Obama sex fantasies stories in 2008? I wonder if those will re-appear, next year. Hmm....

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Well, he is a grey man now...

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

yeah but most women find that to be a turn on

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Hm, you have a point. Example: George Clooney.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

^ Second example.

[dark-weezing.livejournal.com]

Sam Waterston approves of this thread.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I wasn't able to load LJ from Sunday night through to Tuesday night, same with most people here it seems. Now it's still timing out when loading comments.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Yes. http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1104760.html