justinian said:
mai said:
Kasz216 said:
bouzane said:
''The guy before him was Boris Yeltsen. Putin I believe is more popular, though it's not that much of a differnece since they're essentially two peas in a pod.''
WHAT?!?!? They're the polar opposites. Yeltsen was pro-democracy, friendly to the West and led Russia to absolute financial ruin whereas Putin has consolodated power, stood up to America and restored some semblance of economic well-being within his nation. Personally, I am utterly perplexed that there is any opposition to Putin within Russia, it's like people forgot the extreme hardship thrust upon them by the incompetents who formerly ran the country into the ground.
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Yelstsen and He are equally as corrupt.
And though he was scapegoated for the economy, there isn't anyone who was going to end up doing well in that transition.
Putin was only benefiting from coming in at the end of the process after the pain from transitioning came about and market transitions were complete. He's only gotten in the way of Russias economy.
http://www.iie.com/publications/papers/paper.cfm?ResearchID=974
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LOL, Kaz, that's so typicall of you. Present an opinion throwing in some long and boring article as the only argumentation, practically forcing people to read it. Well, valid, but will you have a little mercy on people? Your opponents are human beings, too :D
I've made an effort over myself and read it all, couple of times stumbling over the name Nemtsov along the way, which made me worry and gave a strong sense of deja vu at the same time. And while reading through reference materials I've come across... Itogi reference. Jesus mother fucking christ... Itogi :D That's what it reminds me, an infamous Nemtsov and Milov's Itogi. Though merely a single reference, the entire article is basically a summary of Itogi, quouting it couple of times, like here, which's Aslund's key idea as I understand it: "What remains of Putin's economic legacy is only that he was lucky to reap the benefits of the arduous but productive reforms his predecessor instigated in the 1990s (Milov and Nemtsov 2008)". Really he could have never bothered to brining anything else to the references except of Itogi.
Of course, it's excusable for you, Kaz. Should you've known about Russian politikum more (the figure of the author, Nemtsov, is pretty much telling all by itself), you wouldn't touch with a ten feet pole anything that's based, mentions or refers to Itogi without an attempt to have a few laughs. Just be warned, that serious people in serious talks avoid brining up Itogi, the same way historians do not bring up Fomenko*.
* Ok, that's yet another cultural-specific example, but I believe you got an idea and can think of a better example for yourself.
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I enjoyed that (and your follow up post). I do enjoy Kasz's posts but he does have an habit of producing someone's (writer, politician, whoever) opinion without giving thought that it doesn't make that opinion factual or valid. It's just someone's opinion he agrees with.
There are many times I wanted to reply to some of his posts but just couldn't be bothered.
This is not an attack on you Kasz, and as it make's for interesting discussions, I encourage it.
They are always to sides to a coin. I travel a bit in my job and it is simply amazing how news is manipulated depending on where you are.
In the west it's played out like Putin has to cheat to win and could actually loose. By showing a few thousand people protesting in a coutry of 140m on TV just means there is opposition to him, nothing else. It's the old "who makes the most noise" trick.
The west doesn't like Putin, play him off as the bad guy. A couple years ago the west loved Gaddafi, played him of as the good guy.
Even if these elections were 100% straight and without any fiddling Putin is still very likely to have won.
As for your other post it is true that America has been meddling in many other countries elections for decades. How is this democratic? Trying to force your will on another. Imaging some other country getting involved in the US elections... then again the way things are going, who knows what the future holds.
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1) The west has NEVER played Quaddafi off as a good guy. Quadaffi has always been treated as a brutal dictator. The only thing "close" to being protrayed as good is when he rolled over because of the Bush invasions and suddenly gave up his greater weapon positions. The story then was "He's an evil dick who was intimidated by the US, which suggests his regime might fall apart by itself, because he's clearly afraid of the US for some reason."
2) All the condemnation i've seen has seemed to of been annoyance of the fact that Putin cheated even though he was going to win anyway.
3) I didn't really see anything he wrote in the entire post that actually disagreed with it. Just the source.
In otherwords, there has been no suggestion that Putin actually did change sources... and actually, the article does source quite a bit of different things in relation to corruption and other factors. (Corruption being the same, democracy going backwords.)
I mean, if you want to argue with the article... actually argue with it.
Instead he brought up refrences that happen AFTER the main point.
Which was, Putin didn't change anything related to the economy until much later... and simply instituted second wave changes that were conceived before he ever made it to power.
