Exactly...'everyones' on the take from the top to the bottom..and they get it too! And it's not even hidden it's "understood"
Posted on 12/11/2014 5:20:43 PM PST by Greetings_Puny_Humans
The Land of Magical Thinking: Inside Putin’s Russia
Snip...
In Russia, “corrupt” is not an adjective. Corrupt is a noun, a proper noun, the word for the name and nature of the place.
Corrupt crony capitalism is familiar everywhere. But in Russia the corruption is so pervasive that even the cronies have to pay bribes, not just to the higher-ups but to the lower-downs.
Pomerantsev visits a TV studio owned by Kremlin-connected moguls. It’s in a shabby warehouse on the wrong side of town. There’s no sign or address on the metal door. Inside is a dirty little room with a drunk guard.
Pomerantsev goes down a dark corridor and up two flights of dingy stairs to another unmarked metal door. Behind that is a modern, well-lit, busy Western-style production facility. But there’s an inconspicuous door here as well, with a secret code pad. And behind thatis a more modern, better-lit, even busier production facility with an even less conspicuous door with an even more secret code leading to the real offices of the moguls, where the real business accounts are kept.
All this is to foil the tax police. Who come anyway. One of the moguls tells Pomerantsev that “the tax police were much happier taking bribes than going to the trouble of stealing money that had been paid in the orthodox fashion.”
Snip...
In Russia, small town girls go to the big city and get ruined, but that’s what they’re trying to do. Really trying. They go to school for it.
The students take notes in neat writing. They have paid a thousand dollars for each week of the course. There are dozens of such “academies” in Moscow and St. Petersburg, with names such as “Geisha School” or “How To Be a Real Woman.”
If a girl with potential studies hard, “she earns the basic Moscow mistress rate: the apartment, $4,000 a month, a car, and a weeklong holiday in Turkey or Egypt twice a year.”
In return, she’s available to her “sponsor,” as he’s called, any time, any day.
Nice girls, of course, don’t do this. They go to the big city and become supermodels. Like Ruslana did. She was an ethnic Russian from Almaty, Kazakhstan. Ruslana was “discovered” at sixteen, world-famous at nineteen, and two days before her twenty-first birthday she jumped off a roof in New York. Pomerantsev gives us (although, in a way, he almost doesn’t need to) the heart-breaking particulars in between.
snip...
Pomerantsev recounts the ordeals of dodging the draft in Russia. And it must be dodged.
Where he will be sent depends on the bribe the soldier pays. Some will go to Chechnya, to Ossetia, to the death zones . . . But if you pay in time, you’ll avoid those. What no one will be safe from is hazing . . . dozens of conscripts are killed every year, hundreds commit suicide, and thousands are abused. (Those are just the official statistics.)
There’s the “most desperate and most expensive remedy: the bribe to the military command.” Or a week every year pretending to be sick or injured. “Annually the hospitals fill up with pimply youths simulating illness.” But you have to pick the right disease or disability “because the ailments that can get you off change all the time.” Alternatively, you can stay in college until you’re too old for the draft. “Russian males take on endless master’s degree programs until their late twenties.” Not a good student? There are schools for that as well as for mistresses. “Dozens of new universities that have opened . . . to service the need to avoid the draft.” You can even spend a month in a psychiatric clinic. “But you will also have a certificate of mental illness hanging over you for the rest of your career.”
snip
Anyway, this brings us to the frightening question posed by Pomerantsev’s book, a question he only implicitly asks.
What do we do about a gigantic, depraved, immoral, lunatic country armed with nuclear warheads?
More at link above. It only gets worse and worse the more you read.
And just a second ago you just morally equated Ukraine and the United States with Russia. This is very "black and white." No, you are not complex, you are very simple to understand.
The revival of the Orthodox faith is meaningless if killing those of other faiths becomes the norm, as some reports from occupied Ukraine are saying
There was just a comment at another FR post regarding the murder of western influenced Evangelicals in the Ukraine by the Orthodox powers.
The reality is that all the churches have weak and prone to failure human beings as members and that even includes the Bible-based churches, like it or not.
Yes criminal organizations are trafficking these women and girls, lead by the Russian govt/mob including into the US.
The US govt is not a human trafficking organization, the Russian govt is.
Other churches are not criminal genocidal organizations from which satan spreads his evil and death, like ROC.
The list of Christ led activities of the ROC is zero, it is evil through and through, and this is why Putin worships within it’s halls.
No wonder then the ROC does not want to deal with talks with Rome then. Now I get it.
Thanks. More here .
But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. (Ephesians 5:13)
~Other churches are not criminal genocidal organizations from which satan spreads his evil and death, like ROC.
The list of Christ led activities of the ROC is zero, it is evil through and through, and this is why Putin worships within it’s halls.~
Yep, you know they are plotting terrorist acts at ROC churches in Michigan. There are weapons stored and church-goers are preached to hate freedom and all things American.
I have seen this movie too.
Original Clancy’s novel had it other way of course, but we all know that movies must go for realism in the first place so nothing is wrong with it... /s
I don't know if they're plotting terrorist attacks in Michigan, but the Russkies are certainly plotting them in the Kremlin, with the backing of their KGB-terrorist supporting priests.
What I find hypocritical is that one, two or three, commenting on here do ordinarily adhere to Christian church of any kind in principle or practice - only in meaningless words. I call them hypocrites. Once meaningless, ALWAYS meaningless.
Always the Kremlin tool aren’t you?
I paid plenty of bribes when I went to Ukraine to get married. No matter that I followed the instructions to the letter, I would always be missing some important document or signature, a situation that could be quickly remedied for a small "gift".
I'm still paying bribes from America. I paid a bribe to get a job for my brother in law. Cheaper than continuing to send him money. That's how the place works.
Exactly...'everyones' on the take from the top to the bottom..and they get it too! And it's not even hidden it's "understood"
While it pains me to admit, it's almost efficient. As they say, time is money, and sometimes when you need something done, it's quicker and easier to just grease a few palms and make it happen.
Unfortunately true. Mainly due to Russia spreading their syphilis over there for so long.
Oh another lets blame Russia for people sleeping around...LOLOLOL...
Ukraine does very well without Russia’s help in respect to drugs and sexual diseases.
Check out Odessa one of the principal hubs of the international sex trade. Blighted by police corruption and organised crime, the city has become a marketplace where women are bought, sold, deceived, abused, and in many cases trafficked to a hellish life abroad.
Here’s the thing about the Ukrainian sex industry – it is unregulated ....An extensive 2008 study that looked at sex workers’ lifestyles in Ukraine noted that 39% of Ukrainian sex workers do not use condoms regularly, and that 22% of them are also drug users. Most sex workers who do not use condoms report that they are pressured to do so by their clients.
The Ukrainian Institute of Social Studies estimates that 50,000 women engaged in commercial sex work in Ukraine last year. The actual number probably is much higher, considering the fact that there are many women who will also turn a so-called trick on the side, as a way of supplementing a low income. The same institute estimates that every sixth Ukrainian sex-worker is a minor.
By syphilis I didn't mean literally spreading sexual diseas... but being under influence/control of Russia... and their overall... “culture”...
Just look at ex-commie countries that turned to west after the cold war and those that stayed under Russian influence, including Ukraine... there's the difference...
Well there really isn’t much difference between those in Ukriane and those in Russia as I see it....the people basically have the same abused past history and have great difficulty handling “freedom” because they tend to be a dependent people and therefore adjusting, taking respossibility for their own affairs is something foreign to them. They’re govenment dependent.....BTW we’re becoming this as well if things continue.
“We are a lot closer to a corrupt, crony-capitalist authoritarian state than some would like to believe.”
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Off hand I can’t think of a reason to say we are not already exactly that. Corruption if obvious and rampant, crony capitalism is built into our whole legal system and it has been estimated that the average citizen in the USA commits three felonies against federal law every DAY without even knowing it. It is not even remotely possible to be a law-abiding citizen in this country no matter how hard you may try. Anyone who thinks he can do it is simply not paying attention.
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