Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Gangsters in Government: When Sensible Opposition Becomes Dangerous
In October I reminded myself that despite the "gangsterous" ways of the current regime in Russia, there are still wiser voices there (see my blog, Oct 2014). Now another one of these voices - and a booming one - has been cut off, murdered, shot in the back.
Remember Boris Nemtsov.
Gangsters in government are on the rise. Unfortunately, gangsters scare easily. Questions scare them, contradiction is scary, opposition also. Untidy politics is dangerous. Gangster protection - "protection" - is effective. Or so they apparently think, Putin's numerous supporters.
Remember Anna Politovskaya. Remember ...
Too many more to remember. Too many never heard of.
Do not forget the few you can keep in mind.
Too many countries under the gangsters' sway. A brotherhood of gangsters - national and international - is growing by the day.
Too few righteous ones. Strangers to most of us, strangely courageous, strangely ordinary. Conveying images of a better public life.
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3 comments:
Bear Olav, If your “gangster” qualification for the current Russia is based on Karen Dawisha's book "Putin fulfilled his Kleptocracy", then you base your judgement on a mishmash or unverified sources and discredited theories. Her study plays in on the anti-Putin histeeria of the MSM and the Obama Government. A refutation of its argumentation, that Putin is a godfather of the worst kind, can be found among others in
in
- http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Frontline-Slings-Mud-at-Pu-by-Natylie-Baldwin-International_Other_Propaganda_Putin-150205-114.html
- http://natyliesbaldwin.com/
Especially the USA is not exactly a model of democracy if you objectively look at the democratic quality of the purchased and bribed ' representatives '. Who in the USA fights for democracy and transparency, ends up in prison, unless he manages to escape in time, such as Edward Snowden or Asange. And what is the rule of law if you incinerate your ' opponents ' without any due process with hellfire missiles?
06/03/2015
Dear Charles, I see you have found a statement on the part of one of Mr.
Putin's numerous and well-paid defenders. Apparently, they are all over the net. A true gangster needs a good defense. But read the recent review of this and other books on Putin in the New York Review of Books, a serious publication considered to be rather on the left side of the spectrum. And do take care not to let yourself be so easily duped.
As for US democracy, that topic is not part of the debate on this occasion.
Your view on Russia and Putin appears to me as very much one-sided and exaggerated. Wise and sensible people in East and West are thinking very different about Putin and Russia and certainly not in terms of ‘gangsterous’. To name some: prof. Stephen Cohen, prof. Mearsheimer, prof. Richard Sakwa, Peter Hitchens, prof. Noam Chomsky, F. William Engdal and many more. There is every reason to qualify America's dollar driven imperialism as gangsterous. It employs very hypocritically “democracy” as a weapon to destabilize countries or states which want to follow an independent economical and political course. By covertly fuelling dissent with loads of money the USA seeks to destabilize such countries, like it did in Libya, Chile, Venezuela, Georgia, Syria and former Yugoslavia and doesn’t care how many people die for democracy’s sake. Is this gangsterous terrorism or not?
The hypocrisy lies in the fact, that the USA meanwhile supports dictatorial undemocratic regimes like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt and Colombia with loads of weapons to suppress any democratic upheavals.
Sensible opposition inside de USA is stifled with extreme punitive measures (I am thinking of wistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Asange, John Kiriakou, Chelsey Manning). Journalists or writers who argue against the fake mishmash of unsubstantiated fact of the MSM are vilified and excluded from the Reviews of Books, but the ‘reporters’ who feed into the anti-Putin frenzy get generously paid by their papers and the CIA.
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