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Posted on 08/04/2014 12:10:17 AM PDT by No One Special
Pieces of the civilian plane on the ground, the pro-Russian insurgents bragging about shooting down a plane (they thought it was a Ukrainian military transport), the Russian BUK missile system photographed nearby. There could be a dispute whether the RF regulars shot flight 17 down or the insurgents did, but since BUK systems do not grow on trees and are not sold at bait and ammo stores, the Russian military is guilty at least of providing the BUKs to the bandits.
You simply aren’t impartial. Putin has brought a European judicial system and a 13% income tax. And I can walk downtown at night. I own my home worth some $300,000 and I can change a $50,000 cars once a few years. And I’m not even an upper middle class.
I don’t deny that Putin gave Russia a level of prosperity not known since prior to the Bolshevik revolution. But you cannot deny that RF now has one party rule (well, unless you count the Communist party separately), has political prisoners, often on trumped-up unrelated charges, has very poor business climate due to corruption, and now is fomenting a civil war in an independent country.
Well, I would welcome an improvement unless it is a national Bolshevic or a Communist party and alikes backed by McCain or Obama.
In my opinion, the improvement should come in the form of an anti-soviet revolution similar to the Ukrainian “maidan”, which would make a clean break with the Soviet and post-soviet past and bar Communists and FSB from power. Once that is accomplished, the regathering of Russian minorities in the near abroad should proceed not through banditry but according to the international norms.
Yep, right. As if your scenario has played so well in form of so-called Arab spring. There is no viable opposition in Russia, apart from Nazis and Communists. Liberal democrats have spoiled their reputation for decades under Yeltsin and healthy American-style conservatism is not really known.
Is that a joke??
So we declare Putin's career is over and encourage his assassination? Sounds like someone has read too many novels.
Yeah I’m sure you got it all over the guy who foresaw the breakup of the Soviet Union and so advised Reagan. Not.
We have a country very similar to Russia, Ukraine, where an anti-Communist revolution already has taken place, whether or not Putin succeeds in fighting it in the east of the country. We don’t need to look at the Arabs, whose “spring” did not have an anti-Communist character anyway. Needless to say, complete de-sovietization also occurred in the countries of the former Warsaw pact. There is no reason to think that the Russian nation is under some special curse and is forever incapable of curing itself from the Soviet past.
We did something similar to Qaddafi; it wasn't a novel.
Anti-Soviet revolution is brewing in Ukraine for decades and nothing of value has come out of it. They are still Soviets, possessed by entitlement mentality, more so than Russians themselves. True motivation behind a ‘European choice’ is a prospects to become an immigrant in EU or have a longer welfare check at home for most of maidanites.
In Russia most people understand that it is not a government and foreign alliances but hard work and free enterprise which makes your wealth.
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But it is not so. The Maidan showed true heroism and genuine desire to get rid of the Soviet past. And the new government is popular everywhere precisely because it is anti-Soviet:
More here
The population supports the government even in the East:
No question, the desovietization in Ukraine is only beginning. But in Russia the Soviets are on the rise. That is the problem.
Yes, right. They can gather a 5 thousand crowd in a city under a Ukrainian flag, and on another day there is a 10,000 crowd under the Russian flag.
And another 985,000 residents still don’t give a flying carp.
Without disputing which flag got 5 and which 10 thousand, that is normal: it shows that there are both loyalists and separatists in the East, and some of them feel enough passion about it to go and demonstrate.
What is not normal is that de-sovietization hasn’t even started in Russia: Lenin idols and red flags are still gathering points for the separatists. In Russia proper there is a schizophrenic mix of soviet symbolism and that of Imperial Russia: communist pentacle and two-headed eagle, often blended into one horrific symbol of confusion. Stalin has been re-cast as more or less savior of Europe from “fascism”; the cult of the 1945 victory is clearly designed to vindicate the terror of Lenin and Stalin. That is aberrant.
Your opinion is certainly distorted by media, kinda like a Sochi Olympics.
What part is inaccurate?
A majority of people does find Stalinism as evil in Russia, and they think older Tsarist imperialism is ridiculous. Gulag Archipelago is a required read in secondary school. A myth of their popularity is propped by Russian liberal NGOS working for foreign grants. These respective organizations are funded to counter these evils and when they can’t find any real boogeys they are reporting some really weird freaks and posing them as they are a part of something bigger.
The absolutely evil part of this process is that this propaganda is not only working for external consumption. There are enough immature idiots who sees this crap in media, thinks it is cool and they start to follow this model en-masse. That is how bogeyman propaganda translates into reality.
One live example of how it works are anti-immigrant gangs in Russia. About near millennium NGOs were all around media with their BS on how are skinheads on the rise in Russia and immigrants are in danger. It was an absolute bullcrap at the time as there wasn’t any visible skinheads or concerned immigrants. But constant propaganda has somehow changed it and by mid-1990s there have been numerous racist attacks.
In light of this crap I’m really concerned about growing fearmongering propaganda on both growing Stalinism and Chauvinistic Imperialism. It might translate into reality as well. Maybe already does.
I don't depend on the Western media to find out what Russia is like. I read Russian and have a computer.
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