Nature Lover Vladimir Putin Flies With the Cranes 285
Hugh Pickens writes "Russian President Vladimir Putin is a nature lover. In 2007, the bare-chested president rode a horse through Siberia. In 2008, he fired a tranquilizer gun at a rare Siberian tiger. In 2010, he used a crossbow to shoot darts at an enormous whale in a fog-shrouded bay to collect tissue samples. Now Der Spiegel reports that on his way east to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Putin stopped at the Arctic Circle to fulfill a mission for which the Kremlin says he prepared assiduously for a year and a half: helping to save an endangered species of crane. In a meadow some 2,000 kilometers northeast of Moscow, Putin donned a white jumpsuit and black aviator goggles before swinging himself into the seat of an ultralight aircraft and as loudspeakers played the recorded call of a mother crane, Putin lifted off and a group of orphaned white Siberian cranes followed, allowing the aircraft to lead them south toward their winter habitat. On the first attempt, only one of the young cranes followed him up, which Putin said was because a high tail wind had caused the hang glider to accelerate too fast. On the second attempt, five birds followed Putin, but only two stuck with him for the full 15-minute flight. Putin's flight, given many minutes of airtime on Russian television, provoked an array of contemptuous jokes on the Internet, one of the most popular being: 'So Putin is off to wintering with cranes. Does this mean he's not going to be back before spring?' The Russian president, however, hit back at critics telling reporters at the conclusion of APEC summit that, 'It's true that not all flew right away, but the ones that didn't fly were the weak cranes' apparently alluding to the errant ways of those involved in protests that have hit Russia over the last year."
Good ol' Putin (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Good ol' Putin (Score:5, Funny)
Except if Putin were a Bond villian, it would turn out he'd implanted high explosives into the orphaned cranes and was using this "rescue mission" as a cover for attacking Buckingham Palace and the Pentagon with explosive cranes.
Wait - you don't suppose...?
Re:Good ol' Putin (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good ol' Putin (Score:5, Interesting)
If he weren't, he wouldn't have to spend all his time desperately trying to prove that he's such a badass.
Nonsense. The guy is powerful beyond anyone's wildest dreams and is doing stuff that a) he enjoys; b) appeals as propaganda to the macho sort still prevalent in Russian.
Russia has become precisely what the left expected Reagan+Thatcher wanted in toppling the USSR: a corrupt, undemocratic kleptocracy with few new freedoms but no social cohesion or state protections, where middlemen and government have their hands constantly down each other's pants, jacking each other off while they kick the common man. It is the neocon dream realised.
Anyone who thinks that life wasn't better in Russia in the 1970s either 1) was not living there; 2) is one of the very few beneficiaries of business. (Hint: if you're a geek programmer living in Moscow, you're in category #2.) But the Soviet Russia will forever be remembered as it was in the late 1980s, which would be like judging capitalism only from the Great Depression, late 2008, the imperialist drive for profit, the Southern State free market definition of "person", Halliburton, &c., instead of all the good things it has achieved.
Re:Good ol' Putin (Score:5, Insightful)
My wife comes from Ukraine. It might not be great now was NOT better in the 1970s. I don't know where you get your facts from but I'd find a new source other than Marxism Today if I were you.
Re:Good ol' Putin (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I'm reminded of a political cartoon I saw about 15 years ago, that had 3 pictures of a depressed-looking man with a glass of vodka in his hand. The first was captioned "Russia under the Czars", the second "Russia under Communism", and the third "Russia under democracy".
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You could have merged all three panels and had one guy with one glass of vodka and just put "Russia under the Chekists".
The USSR and current Russia were not socialist or democratic paradises, they are essentially Secret Police states. Although Chekist is a term from Soviet times, you could probably say that the same thing goes for when it was under the Tsars too. People in Russia like strong authority and believe that that authority can protect them, in return, those sorts of state organizations crop up t
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A stupid monarch is a bane of all monarchies. The last Russian Czar is a perfect example. There are just a few monarchies remaining in the world, and in none of them the monarch is actually ruling the country.
I would classify Putin as "doing what he can, to the best of his abilities." I don't know all his motivations, of course. With regard to wisdom, the alternative is worse. Should we, perhaps, elect Vladimir Volfovitch? Or perhaps a hopeless idealist and a certified weakling Yavlinsky is a better cand
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Are you completely braindead as well as brainwashed? I assume you've heard of the soviet union? Jeez...
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"Implying that the Ukraine was ruled like Russia under Soviet control."
It was.
"Implying that the Ukraine is ruled like Russia now."
It is. In case you hadn't noticed the Orange revolution failed and Timoshenko is now a political prisoner of the former mafia thug - now president - Victor Yanukovich.
"which many people cannot afford."
They can afford it. I suggest you visit there one day. Sure, there are poor people but not on the scale of india or africa and they're a long way from starving.
"On a personal note
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"you must be visiting Kiev with your eyes closed."
Have you ever visited there at all? No , didn't think so.
Get back to me when you have.
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Of course there's homelessness there. There's homelessness in london for gods sake. But its hardly 3rd world level and in fact I see more beggars and street kids in london than I ever did in Kiev. Its not like I stay in some posh hotel and only notice the locals when I step over them at the entrance either. I stay with my inlaws in a standard tower block in a standard suburb and they work in factories so they're not rich. If that doesn't give me a taste of normal life there then nothing will. I somehow doub
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For starters, Ukraine wasn't a Soviet bloc country. It was a part of the USSR.
And you would be wrong. If you look at the raw data, RSFSR was essentially subsidizing other Soviet republics. The idea of "draining resources" is particularly silly, given that the territory of RSFSR is where most resources were on the first place.
You should understand that USSR wasn't a Russian imperialist project. It was a Soviet imperialist project. Russians were but subjects, same as any other nation in it. About the only adv
Re:Good ol' Putin (Score:5, Insightful)
"said his wife thought it was better in the 70s under communist rule"
Other way around. Her opinion is it was a lot worse then bar a few things here and there. She still remembers food and fuel queues and of having to be very careful what you said in public. The only people who pine for those days are deluded western communists who can spout their rubbish thanks to the free society that was never enjoyed by the citizens of the USSR.
Isn't it odd how these self style "intellectual" lefties loved the idea of communism except when applied to themselves since hardly any actually went to live in the USSR (and even the ones who did usually did only to escape being tried for treason , eg philby & co). You'd think if it was such a workers paradise they'd have been on the first plane to Moscow as soon as they were out of short trousers.
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I have a friend that lived in unkraine under the soviets and actually thought it was better. Of course he's totally insane, so there is that too.
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I have a friend who grew up in Georgia, and she tells me the common population wishes the west would take their corruption and money and weapons and get the fuck out... of course, she's a highly educated intellectual who grew up with a mother who taught university and believed in western style capitalism and a father who taught university and believed in easterns style communism, so all those pictures of the police tear gassing the population she sent me were probably photoshopped...
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Oh, it's definitely not good in Georgia now. On the other hand, it wouldn't be tear gas the police would be using under Soviet Rule.
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You'd think if it was such a workers paradise they'd have been on the first plane to Moscow as soon as they were out of short trousers.
Well, there is the teensy matter of the language difference..
Re:Good ol' Putin (Score:5, Interesting)
As a former Soviet citizen I can attest that for great many people lives indeed were better back then than they are now. Even with the food and fuel queues. What good is all the abundance if you cannot afford anything? USSR, for some time, was certainly not the worst place to live.
Re:Good ol' Putin (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you. It is sometimes hard to explain that "abundance" does not mean "affordability" - indeed, one of the reasons a product may seem abundant is that it is still sitting on the shelves because there are not enough people who can actually pay for it! It is quite different from a rationing system where everyone receives a share of everything, even though it doesn't result in the queues so frequently mentioned by propagandists.
Marx was early to suggest that capitalism would degenerate into a system where there would be vast production of items that many could not afford. On this he was quite right. Maybe he missed the potential for extending absurd amounts of credit, but that's just given us an extra problem to prolong the pain.
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Well, that is something Viol8 just does not get, see the comment about "there were plenty of shops selling electronic equipment and mobile phones".
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"What good is all the abundance if you cannot afford anything?"
Last time I visited Kiev I didn't notice anyone starving in the street and there were plenty of shops selling electronic equipment and mobile phones. Also my in-laws manage to survive and have money to spare and they're not rich , just normal people working in factories.
Re:Good ol' Putin (Score:4, Informative)
I personally know a few people living in Kiev. They hardly get buy, living on $200 per month. Sure, there are a lot of shops selling fancy stuff, but these catering to the rich people since middle class is almost not existant in Ukraine. And if you didn't notice anyone starving on the street, then you have only visited the tourist places, not the back street alleys.
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Hm, it sounds like a propaganda opportunity ripe for abuse.
"It may be shit for you, but you should just shut up and take it because it could be even worse!"
We want to get better - not compare ourselves with the worst.
FWIW, it was travel to third world countries which finally turned me from a spoilt rich kid who quite liked the West (even though I often questioned it, at least academically) into someone who despises it. The straw which broke the proverbial camel's back was a stay in Ph on business, living in
Unlikely as it seems (Score:3, Interesting)
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"(a recession deliberately started by her government to justify a reduction in worker rights),"
What utter cobblers. The recession was a result of the previous labour govns spend spend spend policy (sound familiar?) combined with bloody minded unions who went on strike or work to rule over their "rights" at the drop of a hat and made UK industry even more uncompetetive than the lazy morons had managed even up until that point. You're obviously old enough to remember the power cuts in the 70s as I am due to e
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I can't believe that most people still believe this.
Imperialist interference in Middle East -- oil crisis -- inflation -- increase income to management but refuse to pay more to workers -- strikes -- hardship -- blame response to injustice rather than cause.
The '70s, dominated at the start and at the end by a Tory government, was the start of the tedious neocon war on labour which ended up with Britain becoming the laughable shell of a nation that it is today.
You're right about one thing, though: the comple
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"I can't believe that most people still believe this."
Yes, because believing lies instead peddled by the left to justify their own botched policies is much easier isn't it.
"Imperialist "
Oh dear, we're down to student debating society level already. What next , "patriarchal" or perhaps something ending in "ist" or "ism"?
"becoming the laughable shell of a nation that it is today."
Right, because 13 years of Labour mismanagement had nothing to do with that did it. You are REALLY in denial.
"pathetic, authoritari
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"Eh? Heath was captain of the ship until 1974 - he steered us with America and Europe and set the scene"
Then wilson and callagham came along, rolled over to the unions and pissed our industry up the wall.
"What problem do you have with the word "imperialism"? It merely describes subjugation of other nations to obtain cheap resources, labour or military advantage"
Nothing is wrong with the word itself when used in its proper context. - which would generally would cover most large nations on the planet at some
Far left loon, meet far right loon. (Score:2)
Yes, the unions magically make things worse as the Bush tax cuts magically put us into recession. Fuck those poor people for wanted a say in their wages! They should slave all day and just make ME wealth while I pay them a pittance because I BUILT THIS without any help!
On the other hand, you have our pal who believes gubermint creates recessions because contracting and thus LOSING profit I would have had otherwise from better demand is better for us because I want to remove my worker's right so I can make M
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he was living in a standard engineer's apartment in a housing block, under their normal conditions, and was actually paid by the USSR government.
- my grandmother was pushed back in the queue for a new apartment (she lived in a so called 'vremianka' - temporary accommodations, that means a shack with all amenities OUTSIDE the fucking house, and it was actually in the middle of a large industrial city with a million people, where many lived this way), so she was pushed back in the queue 3 times and waited for a total of 22 years before she got a 'scheduled' apartment, a 1 bedroom actually. Not bad, ha? In a capitalist country she could have bought h
Re:Unlikely as it seems (Score:4, Informative)
my grandmother was pushed back in the queue for a new apartmen
That sounds unfortunate. Many people have to wait up to a decade for new social housing in the UK, especially since Thatcher sold much of it
In a capitalist country she could have bought herself a 1 bedroom in much less time than that just by working almost anywhere, and she wouldn't have to wait for 22 years, given the fact that in capitalist countries it was (still is) possible to get a loan, a mortgage.
Certainly not in the UK - mortgages are such that no single person on minimum wage would be able to save up for a ~10% deposit, let alone be offered a 90% mortgage.
1 was that they brought in some families from Cuba and placed them there, because of the 'Cuban brothers' who were also Communists of-course, their gov't needed to be shown how well people are treated in USSR.
Yeah, the BNP complain about immigrants taking social housing in the UK all the time too.
Another time was actually simpler than that, somebody with real connections to a local (regional) party leader wanted to have an apartment for their offspring. You think they had to wait for years for this?
Probably not. In my local town, planning corruption is awful - you can pretty much do what you want wrt/ buildings if you grease the right palms. Not sure about assignment of housing per se. Knowing an MP mysteriously seems to sort out most local hurdles in a few days, though. Feeling nostalgic yet?
7 of who got killed only on one side of the family because they had a farm... owned a shoe factory... in their possession part of a forest and a river and even a village...
I assume this was a Stalinist kulak purge. I am sorry. It would have been sufficient to nationalise these things and there was no need to harm the old owners.
As to Thatcher, she inherited a situation, which was so dire, here is what the former PM (before she came to power) said about it:
You mean that Labour's Callaghan inherited a situation made awful by Tory Heath. While Callaghan tried to reform policy (not in the cleverest manner!), Thatcher decided to destroy Britain out of irrational hatred for certain parts of society.
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Russia has become precisely what the left expected Reagan+Thatcher wanted in toppling the USSR: a corrupt, undemocratic kleptocracy with few new freedoms but no social cohesion or state protections, where middlemen and government have their hands constantly down each other's pants, jacking each other off while they kick the common man. It is the neocon dream realised.
As others have noted, what we have now does beat what it was (most especially, I might add, for those outside of Russia!), no matter which decade of the USSR you cherry pick.
Re:Good ol' Putin (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone who thinks that life wasn't better in Russia in the 1970s either 1) was not living there; 2) is one of the very few beneficiaries of business. (Hint: if you're a geek programmer living in Moscow, you're in category #2.)
Well, life in the Soviet Union was of uneven quality, on geographical as well as political grounds. There were certainly places where life was better then than it is now. There were also many places where it was worse then than it is now. I spent time in both Moscow and Leningrad (as it was then called) for a period as a foreigner in the early 1980s, and formed opinions based on what I saw and what I was told by actual Russians. I'd class it as weird as much as good or bad.
Taking the "good" side first, I saw no particular poverty (unlike most large Western cities), and the people were all fairly well-dressed and looked healthy enough. The streets were quite tidy, just like Nordic cities of today. Also, the people I met all had jobs or sinecures of some sort, and even the lowliest (cleaners) had some spare money. Basic rents were controlled and cheap, so was food.
Taking the "bad" side, those I talked to (including our translator) said that it was a privilege to live in "display" cities like Moscow or Leningrad. Moreover, if they lost this privilege, life would be much tougher in the backwoods, and even keeping well-fed could be a challenge. Internal travel was highly restricted, and our translator needed internal permission papers for every place we visited or spent the night. The reason everyone had spare cash was because there were no luxuries available, and there was not much to spend money on after paying for food and rent - except for booze. Booze was cheap and plentiful, and consumed in prodigious amounts.
Then there was the "weird" side. Whenever we went to a touristy place, we were met by well-dressed most unbeggar-like kids who were determined to haggle - they gave us badges with Lenin and suchlike, and we gave them Wrigley's chewing gum. I still have many of those badges, with their prices embossed on them from manufacture. The staff at every hotel wanted to haggle over our jeans - Levi's only, forget the designer shit - and paid up to 150roubles a pair in cash (a rouble was worth more than a dollar at the time). To break the ice when meeting groups of Russians in a business context, we learned to bring along a few bottles of vodka - it turned the event from a confrontation between potential foes into a meeting of long-lost friends after a couple of bottles were empty. On one of our first restaurant visits, we forgot to "bribe" or tip-in-advance the head waiter, so we ended up waiting a long time for a table. We were then informed that only the set meal was available, and that due to time constraints, we could not have the dessert but that the price was unchanged. The entire restaurant staff came out to indulge in "self-criticism" before we left, just to rub in the lesson and let the other guests know what cheap-skates we were...
Another anecdote: a colleague left a party early and very drunk in late winter. He woke up the next day in our hotel on the other side of Moscow, with no knowledge or recollection of how he got there (and he didn't know the way). Our translator said that probably the police found him drunk and unconscious on the street, and took him to the correct hotel based on the ID in his pocket. She said that regular Russians would have spent the night in a police cell and would have been released early in the morning (a cold shower for the hangover was mentioned, but perhaps jokingly). Apparently, the main work for the police at night was picking up drunks before they froze to death. Most of my anecdotes from that period tend toward the scandalous; that one is tame enough.
For a Westerner interacting with regular people, the weirdness overwhelmed the goodness and the badness.
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(a rouble was worth more than a dollar at the time).
- I would like to qualify this statement with an explanation. NOBODY in Russia was allowed to deal in dollars OR gold. Nobody. Such deals were punishable by law with very lengthy prison sentences and confiscation of all private possessions, sometimes also by death.
Due to this, the black market for dollars (or any other foreign money that was called the 'valuta') was almost non-existent among the general public, it was of a very limited use.
Because of that fact only, the government was able to set an artif
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Wait. These articles are able to glorify Putin in anyone's eyes? I thought by now every new piece about how he saved a puppy from a burning house serves only to further ridicule him and make fun of him. He tries so hard that it became a kind of comedy performance. With a lot of these articles, couple years ago, you could mistake them from something from Onion.com. He became a caricature of himself, an iron-fisted evil dictator who's trying so hard people laugh at him.
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He became a caricature of himself, an iron-fisted evil dictator who's trying so hard people laugh at him.
Can't be all bad if you're allowed to laugh at him in public. Personally I would like to see a cage match between Putin and Palin, the cage should be mounted on an iceberg in the middle of the barring straight so that both nations can see it.
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It's not as much compensating as fitting the expectations of the average Russian. Russia never really had democracy, an so they haven't developed a democratic culture. They don't want a democratically elected leader, they want a strong powerful one. Many of them still think nostalgically about Stalin. So if Putin wants to keep his public support, he has to constantly show power and build his cult of personality.
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What this actually proves is that humans are more complex creatures than pop psychology allows.
We find it difficult to not label things and people. And we prefer simple categories. A fascist dictator who murders people and yet has a thing for the arts and supports starving artists just isn't something we have a category for, so we focus on the one and either forget or re-label the other.
Of course it can't be that a good person does a bad thing - he was lead by circumstances into a situation he couldn't cont
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Oh please! Protests to the contrary, such people only support art as an extension of their own ego, political or narcissitic needs.
I refuse these generic, bland statements.
If you are talking about one particular person, we can evaluate the evidence and make an informed guess. But saying that all "such people" do things "only" because of (insert favourite pop psychology nonsense) is not a supportable statement.
All of us have good and bad sides. People can be loving fathers and yet cheat on their wife. Or they can be animal loving, charity-giving, very civilized guys who hit their kids or enjoy BDSM in the bedroom. People can hate porn a
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fuck putin. that is all.
those girls didn't deserve that.
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The outlandish antics- tiger hunting, shooting whales, bare-chested horseback riding... he's doing it for the same reason as the guy who buys the really expensive, shiny, loud red pickup. He's compensating for ...
I bow to your razor sharp analysis and take my hat off to you. Would you spend some of your precious time and analyse my glorious leader, the old Silvio? In his spare time he er..., well..., hunts and concurs. Although I suspect the prey and trophies are convinced to surrender with incentives. What's he compensating for?
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I suppose this is supposed to make us forget that Putin has jailed his critics, restricted the press, and rigged the electoral system to guarantee his victory?
No, no! It's supposed to make us know he does this all in AWESOME ways. As far as dictators go, and my country had its fair share of them, I'd have appreciated it if they at least had been entertaining. The way things are, Putin is posed to eventually chose his successor by organizing a Mortal Kombat-style championship. Wouldn't THAT be fun? :-D
And a real man wouldn't be so terrified by a bunch of girls in a punk band that he'd have to send them to prison for standing up to him.
Well, as I read on the case it seems they were condemned on some kind of anti-hate-speech. Russian judges don't seem to distinguish between, say, an antisemite band
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Putin has jailed his critics, restricted the press, and rigged the electoral system to guarantee his victory? The man is nothing more than a bully, and these antics just show what a small, pathetic person he really is.
Wait, are you talking about Putin, or George W. Bush?
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The real problem is, that people are strange things, we are not pure good or pure evil, we fall somewhere in the middle. Why can't we reward people for doing the right thing while punishing people for doing the wrong things.
Part of the problem is when we have hero's they will let us down, because they are human beings, Now Putin is damn close to being a nasty dictator, but you can admire his environmental activism, at the same time think that he is way to dangerous of a person to be president... Again!!
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jailed his critics, restricted the press, and rigged the electoral system to guarantee his victory?
Don't get too upset with Putin. That's pretty much par for the course in Democracy too.
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Frankly, he's not our problem. He's Russia and possibly the EU's problem.
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Hitler wasn't an immediate problem for the US. Japan was, and due to a complex set of treaties, that means once we declared war on Japan, Germany declared war on us, thus we declared war on Germany.
I think on a particular level the US wanted Germany to defeat the Soviet Union, Stalin was just as bad as Hitler. However due to Japan, that mean we needed to team up with the USSR against Germany, so we needed to wast American lives and resources, then we still had the problem with the USSR.
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Here's not "Good o' Putin." He's a kleptocratic, fascist dictator who has directly caused the death of at least thousands of innocents and whose greed and duplicitous use of right-win poplusm has caused untold millions, both in Russia and in other states, from Uzbekistan to Ukraine, from Syria to Georgia, from Estonia to Africa to suffer. Let's stop the "wink wink" bond jokes and kitsch cutesy comments and unhesitatingly and forcefully condemn this evil man AND THOSE IN THE CORRUPT RUSSIAN MIDDLE WHO CONT
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Here's not "Good o' Putin." He's a kleptocratic, fascist dictator who has directly caused the death of at least thousands of innocents and whose greed and duplicitous use of right-win poplusm has caused untold millions, both in Russia and in other states, from Uzbekistan to Ukraine, from Syria to Georgia, from Estonia to Africa to suffer. Let's stop the "wink wink" bond jokes and kitsch cutesy comments and unhesitatingly and forcefully condemn this evil man AND THOSE IN THE CORRUPT RUSSIAN MIDDLE WHO CONTINUE TO SUPPORT HIM in the strongest way possible.
Tell me, how many innocents died due to actions of military directly controlled by various US presidents?
Make a wild guess.
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Is it possible that the media that you're consuming paints such a negative portrait of him?
Putin has reclaimed many of the assets that were pillaged after the fall of the USSR. Assets bought at deeply discounted prices to the detriment of the Russian populace. I'm talking about oil, gas, etc.
I think Putin is being cast as a villain in the West because he's not allowing influential parties to rape Russia. He's standing in their way from making countless billions, and they want him gone. It's as simple as tha
In ex-Soviet Russia.... (Score:2)
President assassinates YOU!
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If anyone wanted to know what a country would look like if a Bond villain actually won, look no farther than Russia.
You mean, besides when we had Kim-Jong Il and his hirarious sungrasses?
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Libya used to be pretty good as well. In particular, Gaddafi's Amazonian Guard pushed him well into Bond Villian territory on style points alone, and his identifiable cult of personality and history of nefarious plotting were icing on the cake.
The new guys may or may not actually be less villainous; but they certainly are less colorful.
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If anyone wanted to know what a country would look like if a Bond villain actually won, look no farther than Russia.
Why not Saudi Arabia?
Or Pakistan, where a Christian girl with mental retardation is false charged with blasphemy against a religion that has no relation to her - Islam - and although she is innocent, and has been released from jail, is still facing real danger of being killed by Islamic fanatics
That, my friend, is a country where Bond villian rules.
Russia, on the other hand, pales in comparison.
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That, my friend, is a country where Bond villian rules.
Russia, on the other hand, pales in comparison.
You have to have some sort of ideosyncratic affectations and Rube Goldberg plots to go along with your general miasma of evil in order to be a 'Bond villian'. Having at least one henchman with identifiable qualities and a suitably snappy uniform for your expendable muscle is also a good idea. Neither Pakistan nor Saudi Arabia seem to remotely qualify on those counts. They get plenty of good, mundane, (halal)meat-and-potatoes evil done; but they don't really have any good cults of personality or sinister hij
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From an Animal Farm perspective, he would fly with pigs.
Two wings good, four legs bad....
And I have four for you (Score:3)
Meh (Score:2)
This crap is already plastered all over Russian news sites, now it's here as well. Thanks, dear submitter, now we'll have to wade through another round of silly jokes (because there's no other kind given the context).
I could have sworn I typed "slashdot.org" just now (Score:4, Insightful)
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The Russians have bought Chelsea and TVR...you think they can't buy ./?
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The Russians have bought Chelsea
Chelsea CLINTON??
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What's dotslash?
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In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
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He means the Russians can buy the current working directory.
Rather strangely (Score:2)
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Hasn't buying in to English Gentry been the ambition of the vulgar nouveau riche for at least a couple of centuries now? Back in the day, more than a few American industrial fortunes went into obtaining distressed-but-honorable lineages...
Re:I could have sworn I typed "slashdot.org" just (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. I read the submission twice. Then checked some comments. Then went back and read the submission a third time. I was sure I was missing something, somewhere. This has nothing to do with tech or nerds. It barely even qualifies as politics, for that matter. This belongs on Good Morning America or some other drivel.
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Either someone at Slashdot is a major league communost or Putin-apologist, or actually thinks this retread of 20 year old show science is something novel.
May we expect a piece on the cool scientific discoveries of Dr. Mengele next?
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Seriously, the guy gets to do awesome fun things.
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An ultralight, some loudspeakers, and having his antics displayed on television sets and subsequently joked about on the internet. Is this not enough tech-related material for you?
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I was waiting for the day after CmdrTaco left that I'd stop reading Slashdot, and I think I've found it.
Peace out, y'all.
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Let's say it's all publicity (Score:3)
Fuck this guy (Score:5, Insightful)
He should rather care about independent journalists - the most endangered species in Russia.
Is /. being paid for these kind of articles?
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election rigging
So who, do you think, really won election in Russia? The choices, other than United Russia, were:
1. Communists (KPRF -- YA, RLY, second largest number of seats in the parliament).
2. Clowns with disturbingly fascist tendencies (LDPR).
3. Socialists (Just Russia).
4. US-worshipping Libertarians (Yabloko).
Great (Score:5, Funny)
Kim Jung Ill - Coincidence?? (Score:2, Interesting)
These are exactly the same types of activities that Kim Jung Ill seems to excel at.
Authoritarian rule for the Internet generation (Score:2)
No, these are the types of activities that authoritarian rulers everywhere do. The exception might be some really poor African or Asian country where majority of the citizens live in rural villages whose only means of electronic communication are dirt cheap dumb phones. For the rest of the non-democratic world, the leaders have to somehow show their soft or human side. People want leaders who give the impression of being just another bloke who happened to carry the "burden" of leadership. So here you get th
Oh... he used an aircraft to fly? (Score:5, Funny)
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Except if you look closely, you'll notice the propellers aren't turning.
Yawn. (Score:2)
So, Putin action man and finder of sunken treasure (Score:2)
Fuck Putin (Score:3, Informative)
2 years in prison for a song protesting him? I hope he burns in hell and history remembers him for the despot he is!
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Ya. Putin totally deserves to burn in hell.
Putin: maybe ordered a couple assassinations, jailed some protestors for a few years
Stalin: murdered tens of millions of Jews, Germans, Polish, POWs, civilians (his own and other countries), ordered thousands of executions including his "friends" who all got "replaced" every few years, intentionally caused a famine that killed millions more...
Perspective is a wonderful thing.
2 things we know after this. (Score:2)
1) This was the weirdest slashvertisment ever.
2) If that joke is one of the most contemptuous and popular ones they need alot of practice and have a great lack of humor.
Putin this, Putin that (Score:2)
1. An Actor
2. A Power Proxy
3. A Prostitute
4. A Fool
5. Insane
6. In Extremis, Moribund, or Dead -- AKA -- Doing their job, Trying, or Successful
However, Putin is difficult to fit into any particular of my standard categories. Unlike most Big-Time politicians or leaders, he seems possibly interested in the longterm survival of his own nation -- quite unlike what seems the case elsewhere. He is one of
You Know, I have one simple request.. (Score:2)
Putin, merely a Cal Worthington wannabe? (Score:2)
Is this a cultural thing? (Score:2)
A question, in all seriousness, to any Russians in the audience: does Putin doing these sorts of stunts actually increase his appeal to voters (I presume that's why he wants publicity of him doing these things), or is the reaction more along the lines of "there goes Putin, making himself look macho again"? Obviously national leaders have hobbies, just like anyone else does, but he's racked up a long list. Sometimes it seems like he's trying to get himself into Mountain Dew commercials [theonion.com].
Russian Gaddafi/Saddam hybrid (Score:2)
If Putin was in the Middle East, he would be a hybrid of Libya's Gaddafi and Iraq's Saddam.
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The new slashdot mods are behind the curve.... (From a 12.36 Yr Slashdot Vet)
Vladimir Putin has Slashdot ID #0.
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This is not quite right, I guess Putin doesn't care about these. You see, they weren't teenage girls and they have "protested" (personally, I believe them to be simply a bunch of attention whores) numerous times before, their leader even in a group sex session while being pregnant. Nobody cared until they tried to "perform" in the church and the church is a powerful institution in Capitalist Russia.