While the West Watches Crimea, Putin Cleans House in Moscow

[undiegrinder]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by greyl (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: New Republic

Yesterday, Russian journalist Leonid Ragozin wrote here about Putin’s renewed crackdown on the media: What began just days before the Olympics with a Kremlin attack on Dozhd, the last independent television station in Russia, has now extended to Lenta.ru, arguably the best news site in Russia. On Wednesday, the site’s editor-in-chief was fired and replaced with a Kremlin loyalist, and the whole staff quit in protest. Yesterday, the Kremlin went full-China on the Internet, the holy of holies of the Russian opposition. Using some flimsy legal pretexts, it banned access to various oppositional news sites, to the website of Moscow’s biggest radio station, and to the blog of Alexey Navalny, who is currently under house arrest. Last week, the owner of Dozhd announced that, due to the clampdown, the channel is going to close in a couple months.

(snip)

But that’s not all. In fact, terrifyingly, it’s not nearly all. Yesterday, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the pseudo-nationalist pseudo-parliamentarian, proposed banning the letter Ы (usually transliterated as “y” into English, as in NavalnY or, say, blinY) from the Russian alphabet because it was too “Asiatic.” The day before that, Vladimir Yakunin, head of Russian Railways, the biggest company in the country, proposed spending “trillions of rubles” on a “Trans-Eurasian Development Belt” that would take certain non-Western, non-Anglo-Saxon values into account. Yakunin added that the West had foisted onto Russia a form of economics—in which, judging by the number of Russian billionaires, it’s been quite successful—that was all growth for the sake of growth, and which annihilated Russia’s intrinsic spirituality. (It’s also a strange statement for a man whose children live in the very heart of the Anglo-Saxon West: London.) And that’s all happening with the backdrop of thousands of mysterious men, armed with state-of-the-art weaponry and dressed in uniforms that look very Russian but that Putin insisted they had “bought in a store.”

Westerners rightly know Russia as a font of absurdity, but lately, it’s been hard to keep up: I’ve been trying to write this post for a solid week now, and have been constantly derailed by the increasingly bizarre and worrying developments coming from the Trans-Eurasian Development Belt.

Read more: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117007/while-west-watches-crimea-putin-cleans-house-moscow

---

I'm struggling to take heart in the knowledge that although America DOES seem to be electing an increasing number of crackpots to public office, at least none of them has proposed banning a LETTER of the ALPHABET ... (yet) ... although illiteracy could be a factor.

[TwilightGardener]

1. I'm back to the Putin/syphilis theory. Or he is a secret admirer of

Kim Jong Un.

[amandabeech]

4. His internal polling numbers must be atrocious.

Really, he does seem to be absolutely frightened of any questions about his leadership and any independent thought whatsoever.

There was an article in the NYT last week reporting that Putin has stopped talking to anyone but a few cronies from the St. Petersburg branch of the KGB. More moderate voices are nowhere to be found.

Putin is in an echo chamber and he is making sure that all Russians are in there with them.

[2banon]

2. posting New Republic here?

Anyone reading "the New Republic" at least since the run up to the Iraq Invasion should know it's Neo-Con propaganda.

[go west young man]

3. It's unbelievable how DU has spun in reverse.

Ten years ago we were all united against the Neo Cons and now posters put out the neocons drip, drip, drip to attempt to keep the anti Russian propaganda rolling. And even after the New Republic's push as the mouthpiece for the Neocons Iraq war destruction. As if these tidbits of Russian DUMA daily madness are newsworthy. The obvious goal of the neocons is to keep that ridiculous Cold War ball in the air so they can feed their interests..not ours. DU needs to wake the fuck up and get back to what it used to be about. These Cold War pro war pushers need to take a hike.

This is not LBN by the way. This is an article in a rag.

[amandabeech]

6. Putin's takeover of Crimea, a region of an autonomous country,

is enough anti-Russian propaganda in and of itself. None of the New Republic, the NYT nor the Washington Post can add to that. The action speaks for itself.

[EX500rider]

7. +1000

[amandabeech]

8. Thanks! n/t

[go west young man]

11. Something for you guys.

From Andrew Levine. The article sums up well why so many at DU think like you do, unbeknowingly to your own detriment.


http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/14/putins-demonizers/

Excerpt: why is Putin demonized?

I would venture that the fact that Putin is the leader of Russia has more than a little to do with it.

Even in what Gore Vidal aptly called the United States of Amnesia, it registers at some level that, a century ago, Russians moved history forward; that they broke free from the capitalist system.

The Communists who led the Russian Revolution then went on to organize and oversee the construction of a historically unprecedented, ostensibly socialist, order. It was a valiant effort – undertaken in an economically backward country and in the face of the relentless opposition of far stronger enemies.

Tragically, what they concocted turned out to be a mixed blessing at best. Seven decades later, it all fell apart.

But Communism – in Russia, and then in Eastern Europe and China — was a living presence throughout much of the twentieth century; its effects on politics and reflections on politics were profound.

Even in a country and at a time when Republican-leaning states and regions are described as “red,” the memory of Communism lingers at some level.

Putin is no less pro-capitalist than anyone else in the liberal fold, and he is as fine a conservative leader as one can be in today’s world.

The east –the Russian part as much as the Chinese – is no longer even remotely red (except perhaps in the sense that Republicans are), but the memory persists in our collective consciousness.

And so, when a Russian leader becomes an obstacle in America’s way, the empire strikes back. Step one is to vilify the leader. And if there is anything our foreign policy establishment and our compliant corporate media are good at, vilification tops the list.

Demonizing Putin may be useful in the short run to the empire’s “bipartisan” stewards.

But, they are dealing with someone more formidable than themselves, and they are getting in over their heads. It is a cynical and dangerous ploy from which incalculable harm could follow.


ANDREW LEVINE is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What’s Wrong With the Opium of the People. He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

[amandabeech]

13. I call them as I see them.

I didn't like what Bush did in Iraq and I don't like what Putin is doing in Crimea.

If that's to my detriment, then fine.

[go west young man]

15. Your detriment is all the dollars

going to the MIC for all their new "Cold War" contracts. All because the media was able to convince you to get shaken up about a region that has nothing to do with you. Instead of money for social programs that may help you, you choose to believe the "Red Scare" BS and lose out in the long run. Enjoy your wishful thinking. In this regards there are similarities to Iraq...the media was able to spin quite a few gullible people then too.

[amandabeech]

17. For some reason you think that those of us who disapprove

of military action automatically favor military action and believe the "Red Scare."

I think that you are the gullible one.

[2banon]

14. I was raised during the first two decades of the cold war..

You appear to have a deeply personal interest with internal affairs of Russia. Maybe you should go there and organize for reforms that you'd like to see happen.

But fomenting anti-Russian propaganda here, during this critical time, in my view is tantamount to saber rattling, imo, which speaks for itself.

[Cha]

20. Exactly amandabeech.. those who are pumping up RT have the

gall to whine about The New Republic?

[kitt6]

12. Go west young man;

I have to agree with you. I now call it "Group Think."

[go west young man]

16. Thanks...

sometimes I post my thoughts like this because I'm a bit sadly nostalgic for old DU and dislike what it has become. I miss the days of critical thinking against all things war related. Cheers.

[Cha]

18. Funny.. I call your group.. "group think".

[DeSwiss]

10. +1000

[Tarheel_Dem]

5. LGBT's, non-government approved media, Georgia, Ukraine....who's next?

Maybe Hillary wasn't so far off in her Hitler assessment. Too bad she took it back.

[Cha]

19. I think she was dead on.

hey Tarheel.

[2banon]

21. You know, this country isn't completely LGBT friendly, and in fact have a long way to go before it

will ever be. LGBT members of my family live in a very progressive community, so it's safe for us. but the wide swath of this country is extremely bigoted, laws on the books against gays are still there, and just because we've made great strides just in the past few years, doesn't make us an ADVANCED society.

If the LGBT community really wants to go on a crusade against leaders of other countries that are bigoted, indeed worse, may your attention and rage be directed to the worst of the worse, specifically on the Continent of Africa, just for starters.

[blackspade]

9. Crazy.

[greyl]

22. Locking, not breaking news nt

Last edited Sat Mar 15, 2014, 11:01 AM - Edit history (1)