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Pinnochio Putin and Porky Pies!?
Re: Russia Turning into Dictatorship under Putin
by rogerhb » Tue 04 Apr 2006, 22:42:18
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('HonestPessimist', 'N')ope, I got a problem with morons like you defending the worst human rights violators.
Ah, you mean like US supporting Shah of Iran and Pinochet and happily supplying Saddam until he overstepped the mark in Kuwait. Imposing sanctions that kill thousands, yes, I'm against human rights violators.
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers." - Henry Louis Mencken
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rogerhb - Light Sweet Crude
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Re: Russia Turning into Dictatorship under Putin
by rogerhb » Tue 04 Apr 2006, 23:45:50
Regarding comparisons of Castro and Chavez....
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dave Lindorff ', 'E')ven the comparisons between Chavez-the twice-elected leader of Venezuela-and Castro, the aging dictator of Cuba-are tendentious at best. Cuba, desperately poor and the victim of decades of U.S. trade embargo and subversion policies, has admittedly on occasion offered at least rhetorical support for anti-U.S. rebels, as in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Chavez, while openly espousing anti-imperialist views and seeking to challenge U.S. dominance in Latin America, has never been accused of fomenting rebellion in the region. Indeed, if there is anything about Castro's Cuba that Venezuela under Chavez has been emulating it has been Cuba's commendable practice of furnishing of doctors and teachers to needy regions of Latin America.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dave Lindorff ', 'E')ven the comparisons between Chavez-the twice-elected leader of Venezuela-and Castro, the aging dictator of Cuba-are tendentious at best. Cuba, desperately poor and the victim of decades of U.S. trade embargo and subversion policies, has admittedly on occasion offered at least rhetorical support for anti-U.S. rebels, as in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Chavez, while openly espousing anti-imperialist views and seeking to challenge U.S. dominance in Latin America, has never been accused of fomenting rebellion in the region. Indeed, if there is anything about Castro's Cuba that Venezuela under Chavez has been emulating it has been Cuba's commendable practice of furnishing of doctors and teachers to needy regions of Latin America.
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers." - Henry Louis Mencken
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Re: Russia Turning into Dictatorship under Putin
by Russian_Cowboy » Wed 05 Apr 2006, 00:42:40
I am amazed at how vociferously people discuss topics they have very vague idea about. I do not know what is going on in Venezuela in detail, but I can definitely add a lot more stuff on Putin.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dreamtwister', 'A')nd to bring us back on topic, Putin may be a would-be dictator, but he's a thousand times better than Yeltsin. Yeltsin's policies destroyed the post-collapse economy (but he took pretty good care of his friends), saw billions of dollars worth of military hardware to literally walk off the shelves (much of it finding it's way into the hands of people we now call terrorists), and allowed rampant corruption of a nature so severe, that when 51 members of Yeltsin's inner circle were brought up on charges (45 convictions), Yeltsin proceeded to FIRE the chair of the anti-corruption committee. He even violated the constitution HE WROTE less than a year after he wrote it when he fired the Supreme soviet and the Congress of People's Deputies.
Putin, on the other hand, won his second term in an election that was declared fair by international observers (although the state-owned media did a lot of one-sided campaigning and probably tainted the results). The country has gone from being bankrupt, to being a legitimate economic power. Criminals at the head of major corporations (not just Yukos) have been arrested and tried for various crimes
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dreamtwister', 'A')nd to bring us back on topic, Putin may be a would-be dictator, but he's a thousand times better than Yeltsin. Yeltsin's policies destroyed the post-collapse economy (but he took pretty good care of his friends), saw billions of dollars worth of military hardware to literally walk off the shelves (much of it finding it's way into the hands of people we now call terrorists), and allowed rampant corruption of a nature so severe, that when 51 members of Yeltsin's inner circle were brought up on charges (45 convictions), Yeltsin proceeded to FIRE the chair of the anti-corruption committee. He even violated the constitution HE WROTE less than a year after he wrote it when he fired the Supreme soviet and the Congress of People's Deputies.
Putin, on the other hand, won his second term in an election that was declared fair by international observers (although the state-owned media did a lot of one-sided campaigning and probably tainted the results). The country has gone from being bankrupt, to being a legitimate economic power. Criminals at the head of major corporations (not just Yukos) have been arrested and tried for various crimes
I can name dozens heads of major corporations who are known to have been engaged in criminal activities. But arrested were ONLY those "heads of major corporations" who contended Putin for power and who stood in the way of the centralization and consolidation of power by the Kremlin. These people believed that the distribution of power among many different rivals in Russia was here to stay, but they were wrong. Democracy did not work out in Russia, it caused a lot of instability and troubles, and now (unlike what we saw in the Yeltsin's times) all the important business decisions have to be approved in the Kremlin, people can no longer elect their governors, NGOs are banned and the mass-media controlled by the secret services. All the potential leaders of opposition against Putin (Lebed, Yevdokimov, etc.) have misteriously died.
So, under Putin, Russia no doubt has built at least a mild version of fascism. As far as the corruption is concerned, it stayed the same or even got worse under Putin than it used to be under Yeltsin. This conclusion comes from my own experience in dealing with Russian officials now and back then. At the very least, do not expect the corrupt "51 members of Yeltsin's inner circle" (that you mentioned before) to be convicted and serve their sentences in prison.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dreamtwister', '
')and perhaps most importantly, the people aren't waiting in bread lines any more.
The bread lines were gone in 1992, or 14 years ago. The present economic program was also developed under Yeltsin at the end 1998 and it did drag Russia out of the economic crisis even before the prices of oil and gas went up. This program has been followed ever since and Putin's team has not proposed anything meaningful in response to the changing economic and political conditions during the 6+ years of Putin being the president.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dreamtwister', '
')Of course, none of that forgives his actions in Chechnya, but let's be honest with ourselves. No major world power has ever existed that did not engage in war crimes.
Putin had no choice with the war in Chechnya after it became a big terrorist training camp, people kidnapping gangland, and money laundering machine at the same time. But similar to Yeltsin, Putin's policy in Chechnya was very inconsistent. After killing tens of thousands Chechens and creating millions of enemies of Russia in the muslim world, Putin did way too little to recover Chechnya from the war and create jobs for those who stayed alive.
In conclusion, I would strongly disagree that Putin is better than Yeltsin, at least, in the long run. I guess, most of the posters here are similarly mistaken about Chavez.
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