Russian Opposition Figure Thinks Anti-Putin Movement Has Faltered 144
New submitter FilatovEV writes "Interview with Russian liberal opposition politician Vladimir Milov taken by Los Angeles Times reveals a different side of the Western narrative about Russia."
From the article: "All they have for a plan is a very simple formula: Let's lead a million people out into the streets, and that will scare the hell out of Putin. He will run away, and we will grab power. But even if they get a sufficient number of people out in the street, they don't know what to do next. All they can do is chant their old anti-Putin incantations instead of offering a program of action. "
yeah and? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ever see the movie Network?
You have to get mad first...
Re:yeah and? (Score:5, Insightful)
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There are consequences to throwing out a dictator without coming up with a replacement.
But you do it anyway when the consequences of keeping him are worst.
Re:yeah and? (Score:4, Informative)
Except that they're not. The Russians were fooled once with Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Unbridled capitalism does not work. Putin is a dictator, but he is a dictator who wants Russia to remain strong and to make oligarchs subservient to the interests of the state.
It's exactly the same approach which has made China successful, except that China is about forty years behind in human rights terms: allow businessmen to get rich by doing whatever it is they do as long as they don't act against the interests of the country. By doing exactly the opposite since Reagan/Thatcher - i.e. making governments subservient to the will of big business - we are now in the shit.
I would vote Putin any day. I don't want the right to a free press which will be ignored anyway - illusions of freedom serve no purpose to anyone but the stupid.
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Amen to that !! (Score:2)
Except that they're not. The Russians were fooled once with Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Unbridled capitalism does not work. Putin is a dictator, but he is a dictator who wants Russia to remain strong and to make oligarchs subservient to the interests of the state.
It's exactly the same approach which has made China successful, except that China is about forty years behind in human rights terms: allow businessmen to get rich by doing whatever it is they do as long as they don't act against the interests of the country. By doing exactly the opposite since Reagan/Thatcher - i.e. making governments subservient to the will of big business - we are now in the shit.
I would vote Putin any day. I don't want the right to a free press which will be ignored anyway - illusions of freedom serve no purpose to anyone but the stupid.
Amen !!
Re:yeah and? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Russians were fooled once with Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Unbridled capitalism does not work.
A system where ownership of capital depends on your connections to the ruling class is not capitalism but cronyism. And that's still the system in place today.
By doing exactly the opposite since Reagan/Thatcher - i.e. making governments subservient to the will of big business - we are now in the shit.
Let me guess. A UK resident who still hasn't gotten over the Thatcher era. No one else whines about Thatcher.
As to Putin wanting "to remain strong", so did Reagan and Thatcher for their respective countries. The latter were far more successful than Putin has been.
I would vote Putin any day. I don't want the right to a free press which will be ignored anyway - illusions of freedom serve no purpose to anyone but the stupid.
Ah, so you're a useful idiot. One only needs to look at countries with a free press to see that your point of view is shit. Sure, there are blatant propaganda sources like Fox News in the US. But word gets around, be it in the "main stream media", the blogs, or whatever. One can't have genuine freedom if one doesn't have a clue what's going on.
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As to voting for Putin, his tenure in the KGB (and the relatively high rank he had when he left) makes him damaged goods as far as I'm concerned. I wouldn't vote for him just on that basis alone.
I admit that that background might make great training for dealing with oligarchs and crime lords, but anyone who thrives on such a soul-killing job probably shouldn't be anywhere near a
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What, exactly, did Putin do in the "interests of the state", other than where it happened inadvertently when doing things in the interests of himself?
And why do you state that the only other alternative is "unbridled capitalism"? I don't want that, but neither do I want Putin. Luckily, opposition has a whole spectrum of candidates who offer various positions, and some of which are moderate and to my liking.
But do keep voting for the guy who stomps you. After all, as the guy himself says, if you don't vote t
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What, exactly, did Putin do in the "interests of the state", other than where it happened inadvertently when doing things in the interests of himself?
Who knows. But it's better then it was before him. And quite normal. So he has benefit of doubt.
if you don't vote to keep him, you'll end up with someone else who'll stomp harder still. Right?
Yes. If it's not Putin then it will be communists. Liberals never get close enough.
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Who knows. But it's better then it was before him.
Buy a goat, sell a goat...
And quite normal.
A lot of people beg to differ. I don't consider it normal when the state, directly or indirectly, controls every TV channel in the country.
Yes. If it's not Putin then it will be communists.
Commies get, what, a steady 20% votes every election? They've got a single faithful bloc of people voting for them, but those are mostly aging people on pensions, and the further we go, the fewer there are of them. There is also a vocal young commie minority, but it's really tiny (same as vocal minorities on other sides of the spectrum, really).
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If he did it to all oligarchs, and seized it in the name of the state, maybe you'd have a point. But as it is, most of those oligarchs haven't fled anywhere - they're still in Russia, still in positions of power, and still enjoying all those formerly state-owned assets - Abramovich, Deripaska, Potanin etc. To remind, Abramovich bought Chelsea on Putin's watch. So long as you're ready to lick the guy's ass on a moment's notice, he's content to let you have your billions.
Furthermore, for those who were prosec
You don't want that (Score:3)
The Russians were fooled once with Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Unbridled capitalism does not work. Putin is a dictator, but he is a dictator who wants Russia to remain strong and to make oligarchs subservient to the interests of the state.
1. After the USSR has fallen apart, there was a period called primitive accumulation of capital (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_accumulation_of_capital). It was very violent and unstable, but capitalism had not yet formed. It was pre-capitalism.
2. When Putin came to power, capitalism was buried before it was born, the country spiralled into dictatorship. What it meant is that capital got redistributed again between Putins' friends and relatives. The only concern of so called government now is to en
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What the hell is Slashdot turning into? (Score:2)
From TFA:
How do your colleagues take your criticism?
Unfortunately, they took my criticism very badly and accused me of having been recruited by the Kremlin. I don't have any relations with them now. I think these people must leave the political stage and engage themselves in writing stories and blogs, exposing corruption schemes and so on, and leave the political work to those who want to struggle for power in earnest.
You, for example?
Why not? I could make a very good opposition candidate.
I do not know why TFA appears on Slashdot.
What is Slashdot anyway?
Is Slashdot a place for geeks whose interests are girls and tech.
Or has Slashdot become a place for fanbois of Western democracies?
Is Slashdot so hard up on credible stories that this type of shameless plug of a pathetic Russian politician.
TFA has nothing to do with sexy technology, nor anything about online censorship.
What the hell is Slashdot turning into?
Girls? (Score:2)
What are these girls you talk about? Only thing I know about female has to do with connectors where the female connector tends to be the "hole" where the male connector inserts into.
But what this has to do with girls, I have no idea.
Perhaps a girl came up with the labels for connectors?
Re:yeah and? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure where you get your information, but level of sanity of your source is quite questionable. I'm not going to even bother talking about facts, of which your tirade is completely void.
First of all, majority of russians support Putin. There really is no question about this, not even in opposition camps. In fact, one of the main arguments in the opposition camps is that they need to "wake up the nation to oppose Putin". Because they're not opposing him now. Heck, even western election monitoring bodies agree on this part. They just disagree with how much of a majority support Putin commands in Russia.
As a result, Putin wouldn't have to "order an army to shoot down citizens". The anti-Putin mob would be counter mobbed by local youth groups and pro-Putin hardliners, of whom there's plenty. As has happened before.
In Syria, we have a fairly open civil war between different ethnic groups in a country where one ethnic minority has successfully oppressed all other groups for decades. To even think to compare this situation to Russia requires complete of ignorance of basic human interactions. I shudder to think what kind of environment one must live in to suffer from such illusions.
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I shudder to think what kind of environment one must live in to suffer from such illusions.
The Bush White House? Commentary magazine?
Re:yeah and? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to add a few points:
-fear of what happened after "perestroyka" in a name of democracy (USSR collapse, local wars, hyperinflation, poverty, corruption to name a few)
-those opposition leaders are no better than guys in power - they want to get to the feeder, or the a fed from US, or they are fed by current powers to show how crazy opposition is.
-real democracy currently works only in a few small European countries with very educated (on average) population. In Russia fair elections and free (means controlled by big businesses) media will result in Special Olympics game of shit-throwing, so every candidate will be in deep shit and the one who will promise more free money to old people and throw more quality shit on the opponents will win.
Some of the people who were on the streets in Russia lately do not want to change Putin for somebody, just want him to behave in a manner expected from elected president and not get too self confident
I'm Russian living abroad for long time, I get my information from different sources. I do not know this "opposition leader" who gave this interview, do not understand why his opinion matters, especially to the nerds.
Lesson Well-learned (Score:3)
In Russia fair elections and free (means controlled by big businesses) media will result in Special Olympics game of shit-throwing, so every candidate will be in deep shit and the one who will promise more free money to old people and throw more quality shit on the opponents will win. .
If such is indeed the case, then congratulations for adopting what looks for all the world like American politics today. I guess all of that Cold War-era Voice of America broadcasting paid off after all.
Actually, my take on it, based on conversations with some Russian engineers I work with, is that Russia has been an oligarchy since the time of Peter the Great. Only the faces and names of the oligarchs and their "systems" have changed over the centuries. The nomenklatura will always run things via governmen
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First of all, majority of russians support Putin.
Yes, they do. Who else are they supposed to support? The opposition has been securely tacked away. Medvedev election was a clown show (watch 3:33 -- both of them were presidential "candidates" [youtube.com]. Now Putin replaced him, I did not even bother to find out of there was any "formal" opposition.
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This is definitively not a spontaneous movement.
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So you say.
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There is a reason Russia backs Bashar al-Assad to the hilt, and its ...
... Russian naval military base in Tartus [wikipedia.org]. Which, obviously, would cease to exist the moment Syria is under control of a pro-Western regime.
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Where did I say that it is "okay" or "not okay"? I was stating a simple fact - that for Russia it's a matter of protecting her direct national interests in this region, no more, no less. That you went off tangent on some rant of yours shows your biases only.
The funniest part here is that I'm Russian.
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Yeah. They can build coalitions based on selling natural resources to foreign banks and vandalizing churches with nude, obscenity-laden "performances."
Yay!
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1. Get mad
2. ?????
3. Profit!
It's always that middle step which is the problem.
Putin (Score:4, Funny)
His small talk has changed foreign policy. Sasquatch has taken a picture of him. He once ran a marathon, just because it was on his way. He is... the most interesting man in the world.
Sleepy (Score:1)
Sounds like OWS (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds much like Occupy Wall Street in the USA. Didn't like the status quo, but doomed with no clear platform or list of achievable goals.
"We want change"
"Well, what policy changes are you hoping get made?"
"We don't know"
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It was more like:
"We want change!"
"What do you want?"
"We want resolution on $Economic/Regional_Issue!"
Where $Economic/Regional_Issue is a hugely disparate, often contradictory laundry list of intractible demands.
Things like "no more bailouts!" And "bail out student loans!"
The problem was that the OWS crowd could not agree on much beyond "the status quo is unacceptable!". As such, they could not *agree* on a short list. The overall demands from all the actors in the protests were untenable.
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Re:Sounds like OWS (Score:5, Insightful)
Occupy did actually make some fairly specific demands that were entirely ignored by those in power. One of the most notable was a demand that banks and if appropriate their officers be prosecuted when they were found to have committed fraud (the Obama administration instead announced a few months ago that they were closing the investigation on Goldman Sachs without pressing any kind of charge whatsoever even though some pretty damning evidence is a matter of public record).
The vaguer message of Occupy was that the Democratic Party in the US has utterly ignored the liberals in their base in an effort to pander to Wall St and the right wing. And why should people like Obama do that, when all they need to do to get their votes is scare the bejeesus out of them by threatening them with the prospect of President Romney?
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Most (possibly all) political parties ignore their core voters because they have nowhere else to go. What are they going to do? Vote for the other guy?
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What are they going to do? Vote for the other guy?
Not "the other guy", but sometimes they vote for some other guy. That's how Clinton got elected - G.H.W. Bush and Ross Perot together got something like 68% of the vote. But Clinton was elected with 42% because Reagan Republicans self-destructed.
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And the other rejection of that argument was that Perot got 0% of the electoral vote. He stole zero votes from anyone, by definition.
The only real complaint I see in you comment is ho
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Re:Sounds like OWS (Score:4, Insightful)
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The vaguer message of Occupy was that the Democratic Party in the US has utterly ignored the liberals in their base in an effort to pander to Wall St and the right wing.
Yet the GOP panders to their most extreme right wing, even though there's no risk of losing that group.
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Well, here's the thing: Republicans pandering to their extreme right wing doesn't risk losing their big donors, because their extreme right wing wants many of the same things that the big donors want, like no taxes on investment and inheritance and no regulation of business, and the things their extreme right wing cares about like imposing Christianity on the rest of us the donors are totally fine with. For the Democrats, though, pandering to their base would involve regulating and taxing people who form ke
Re:Sounds like OWS (Score:5, Informative)
OWS was also the subject of a fairly successful smear campaign to malign the protestors as a bunch of lazy whiners, who wanted free stuff, as opposed to angry and disenfranchised people demanding culpability of the persons responsible for the financial meltdown.
There were quite a few people frm both sides of the political spectrum in OWS, which the media capitalized on. The leftwing focused more on the social aspects, and the rightwing focused more on the financial. This was presented by the media as a heterogenous group without specific charges, who were protesting nebulously. The effectiveness of this slanted coverage is evident by the language used elsewhere in this thread.
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Re:Sounds like OWS (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes you think that most of the protesters were smelly hippies? There were Iraq War veterans, 83-year-old grandmothers, unemployed steelworkers, and all sorts of other distinctly non-hippy folks involved.
Re:Sounds like OWS (Score:4, Insightful)
Haven't you seen any of the election coverage? "Liberals" don't hold the power. Independents do. Just look at the money spent on battleground states like Ohio and Iowa and Colorado. Now look at the money spent on firmly "red" or "blue" states like California, Texas, Alabama, New York.
Who are independents? Well, if you're in IT support of any kind, just imagine your most average user. Imagine the most middle-of-the-road, undistinguished, normal person. Those are your independents.
Don't get me wrong. They're not stupid by any measure. No, most of them are fairly good at what they do. They're just not really that good at anything else. Politics, understanding social issues, these are among the things they're not so good at. So to make a decision, they rely on campaign speeches and television ads and above all else, their gut feelings.
The gut feeling is often useful in small environments of few variables. It is not so helpful when it comes to large things like national economies and social welfare and things pertaining to more than three individuals with three differing interests. But it's really all they have, since they're very average and the matters at hand are very, very complex.
And they're not motivated by the wealth congregating in a smaller number of individuals. They don't care about the social ramifications of legalized abortions. Now, they'd certainly be interested if they weren't able to put dinner on their table every night, but they'd only be interested to the extent of getting dinner back on their table. They're not so interested in understanding the entire process where dinner ultimately ends up on their table, from deficit spending to farm subsidies to transportation to taxation to local education. They scratch their heads at such things. Now, bring in constitutional law, and they just turn away.
A functioning democracy (not a republic, because we went away from that a long time ago) requires an educated, well-informed voting populace. We don't have a functioning democracy because the majority of the voters are neither, largely because they have been socially engineered since the advent of the television to have no interest in either.
OWS was a failure of epic proportions. Or perhaps, in making these people look as ridiculous as they possibly could, and in allowing them a forum in which to vent, it could be considered an epic victory. Only, the people didn't win, the corporations did.
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Politics, understanding social issues, these are among the things they're not so good at.
Are you saying that voting a straight ticket because you have always voted for that party shows a better understanding of issues? I fail to see the logic in that.
Re:Sounds like OWS (Score:4, Interesting)
The vaguer message of Occupy was that the Democratic Party in the US has utterly ignored the liberals in their base in an effort to pander to Wall St and the right wing. And why should people like Obama do that, when all they need to do to get their votes is scare the bejeesus out of them by threatening them with the prospect of President Romney?
I heard Amy Goodman of Democracy Now give a good answer to that, when she introduced Ralph Nader in the 2000 election. The Republican Party has been moving further and further to the right. The Democratic Party has been moving further to the right to match them. On domestic policy, the Democratic Party is further to the right now than Richard Nixon (don't forget, Nixon's secretary of HEW was Pat Moynihan). If we continue to vote for the Democratic Party, they will continue to move to the right until there's no meaningful difference between them. We have to vote for third party candidates to tell the Democrats that they can't take us for granted.
Since that time, Obama gave us a health care plan that was literally written by the Heritage Foundation. His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, told progressives that they were "fucking retarded" for wanting the single payer system Obama promised us. He appointed Wall Street financiers to run his White House. They tossed Acorn under the bus, which was one of the best campaign organizing tools they had.
What I don't understand is why the Democrats didn't learn from 2000 that if you tell the left wing of your party to go fuck themselves, you can lose an election. Maybe it's like training a mule -- you have to hit them on the head with a sledgehammer -- again.
I think it's like a strike. You don't want to go on strike, you don't want to lose weeks or months of salary, you don't want to take a chance on having your employer move to China. But if we hadn't gone on strike over the last 100 years, we would be making Chinese wages right now, and if we never go on strike, we will be making Chinese wages.
Somebody tell the Democrats. If you tell us to fuck off one more time, we'll fuck up your election, just like we did in 1968 and in 2000.
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What utter bullshit. May I refer you to this article [guardian.co.uk] by Naomi Klein:
The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.
The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process.
No
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Sounds much like Occupy Wall Street in the USA. Didn't like the status quo, but doomed with no clear platform or list of achievable goals.
Sounds like the American revolutionaries. Did you know they didn't come up with the Constitution until over a DECADE after declaring independence? And that their Declaration of Independence had no clear platform or list of achievable goals, containing instead a paragraph of platitudes like "the right to pursue happiness" followed a laundry list of bitching about the status quo?
I guess that must be why their revolution failed, right?
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They didn't know because the Bloomberg Administration kicked them out of Zucotti Park and kept chasing them away from any other place they tried to set up.
Hell, the Bloomberg Administration wouldn't even let them use microphones. They refused to let them rent portable toilets, and then complained when they used restaurant bathrooms.
How much would the Americans have accomplished if the Continental Congress had to disband after 2 months?
OWS accomplished one good, important thing: They said that the richest 1%
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Except it's not. There are very specific demands that Russian opposition is currently making, and most of them are centered around free and fair elections where opposition parties are not barred from registering for various contrived or mysterious reasons, and where there's no widespread fraud when counting the votes.
The specific parties which make up the opposition also have their own platforms for policy changes, ranging from more vague stuff that e.g. nationalists talk about, to rather specific things th
the short list... (Score:2)
1) enact stricter enforcement and regulation on govt involvement with illegal activity. (Russians are supposedly good at being heavy handed. Cracking down on abusive behavior should be easy enough, as long as you can keep the pendulum swinging too far.)
2) legal system reforms that provide immunity to witnesses and juries concerning testimony and verdicts. Make it safe to state what is true, and not simply what is "expected", or "approved."
3) hardball removal and blacklisting of politicians, judges, and pros
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Plan of Action (Score:1)
So what exactly are you proposing then, a Russian revolution? Seriously, what *can* they do? They have no governmental authority outside of a vote, and even supposing Putin steps down (itself a ridiculous proposition) they still will have no governmental authority. All they would be able to do, without guns and ammo, is make some noise and hope his replacement listens.
They already have a plan of action and it is shout into the wind and hope people hear. Perhaps enough people will hear so that Putin won't wi
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Perhaps enough people will hear so that Putin won't win the next election
You know which party is consistently #2 in recent Russian elections, right?
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So do you prefer them or United Russia? There is also #3 (clowns with Nazi tendencies), #4 (more or less Socialists), and the rest are pretty much hated by everyone.
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But can you, guys, at least stop pretending that you would have your Utopia if only Putin stepped down and let aforementioned clowns take his place?
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Sorry, are you replying to my comment?
Only in the context of this whole "article" about opposition trying to attack Putin in hope that someone will support them.
I didn't even said anything about Putin - he is not as much a person as a... natural phenomenon. Like a fungus in a warm and moist place. Take him down, there will be someone like him - from Sechin and Ivanov to Medvedev-like faux-president. No, to make something right in this country there has to be a much more drastic change in people's minds, and that's not going to happen anytime soon.
You don't get it.
Politicians, possibly with few insignificant exceptions, are either psychopaths, bureaucrats, combinations of those two, or mouthpieces of aforementioned three. For example, Reagan was a mouthpiece (actor) of psychopaths (Social Conservative leaders), the worst kind of politician. Putin and Zyuganov are both nearly pure bureaucrats, the best ("best" as applied to "turd
Better title: (Score:1)
"Russians don't have any problems with Putin".
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Many Russians have problems with Putin. Many others do not. I do know that I have not authorized you to speak on my own behalf, and I'm still a Russian citizen.
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I mean, in more general sense -- as in, compared to "opposition".
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Opposition is Russian, too.
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So is Andrei Chikatilo, except he is more popular in Russia than current "opposition".
Excellent (Score:2)
Re:Excellent (Score:5, Informative)
Hey Moron. Learn some history. The Russian invented Communism. Ever herd of Marx
I have bad news [wikipedia.org] for you...
Funny how OP is most probably... (Score:2)
Obvious fail (Score:2)
Putin is a necessity of history. (Score:2)
Sad but true. The West has demonstrated to the russian people over the 90s that capitalism and freedom means the freedom to exploit economic power to grab from the poor. I am afraid that this lesson stuck with them. Putin mangaged to redirect the (oil,gas) companies to pay enough taxes that a once bancrupt country is debt-free. The west has the habit of shaking the hands of dictators and oligarchs without considering moral whenever there seems to be profit and the wonder why the people in the tese countri
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Hey asshole, lets not turn this into the drudgereport.
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Hey asshole, lets not turn this into the drudgereport.
Hey Spoogestain! I got nothin, just figured if we were going to start name calling I'd get my $.02 in.
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Actually, it sounds more like Occupy. The only movement that has accurately identified the problems that face us, but can't field any practical alternatives.
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In all the honesty, the problems are simply too big for a movement that small to address. It would probably require a massive consensus of most of the Western world to solve the conundrum of our current political and financial system (as they are currently essentially one system).
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Except in Russia the only "problem" opposition politicians can name is, "We can't win elections, so something must be wrong!". In reality, everyone (or almost everyone) in Russia simply hates them, and mildly dislikes Putin.
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Right, because health care was so affordable for the middle class before. That's why almost everyone was insured.
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So I assume you're trying to say that you disagree with him on the points you refer to as "textbooks".
Economics
Say what you want about the bank bailouts, but they did stop the crisis from becoming a depression.
History
Foreign Policy
The US Constitution
Those are listed because? Okay, I suppose he does continue the Bush era policy of murdering people in foreign countries (ie. drone attacks), and imprisoning people without proper trial (guantanamo).
You can try to legalize this, say the constitution, human rights, G
Re:Just like the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say repealing Obamacare is a helluva good start.
Why? I've heard many (mostly republicans) say that we need to repeal Obamacare, but why?
Do you not think providing health care coverage for everyone is important?
Do you not understand why providing healthcare insurance for everyone means that everyone (healthy or not) needs to have coverage?
Do you think that forcing insurers to accept those with prexisting conditions is wrong? If so, how will people unlucky enough to have a chronic illness obtain coverage?
What should happen to those who are unable to obtain healthcare insurance on their own when they have a serious medical condition? Are you OK with paying for their urgent treatment in the ER? Should they be left to die? If so, are you ok with paying for their burial, or should they be left to rot wherever they happened to die?
Do you worry that it's too close to "socialist" healthcare coverage? How do you feel about Medicare?
So really, what is it that bothers you so much about providing healthcare coverage?
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It'd be nice, I'll grant. However, there's a question that never really gets answered, somehow: Who's going to pay for it? AIUI, if you can't pay, it's free, and right there's a big problem because the demand for a free good is infinite.
Re:Just like the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you not think providing health care coverage for everyone is important?
It'd be nice, I'll grant. However, there's a question that never really gets answered, somehow: Who's going to pay for it? AIUI, if you can't pay, it's free, and right there's a big problem because the demand for a free good is infinite.
Obamacare is not "free" to most people -- most people will purchase private healthcare insurance. Those that can't afford private health insurance will have their costs covered by the government, much like the situation today.
But even if the government did provide "free" healthcare, it would be just as "free" as the other governmental services that most modern countries provide - fire protection services, police services, roads (taxes on cars pay only a fraction of road costs), military protection, etc.
Demand for healthcare is not infinite even if it's "free" because healthcare practitioners don't dole out unlimited amounts of healthcare - you matter how many times you beg for a head CT after you stub your toe, your doctor isn't going to prescribe one. I have practically unlimited healthcare through my employers plan, I pay only a $15 copay for each visit -- but whether my copay was $0 or $100, I don't think I would visit the doctor any more or less frequently than I do now. I don't *want* any non-neccessary drugs or medical procedures.
And you're missing the other half of the equation.... who is paying for healthcare now? We're not letting (usually) people die in the street because they can't afford healthcare, those that can't afford health insurance wait until they have an urgent situation and then they visit an ER where they know they will get care regardless of ability to pay. And when they can't pay and the ER has to absorb the cost, then the rest of us end up paying more in taxes and/or our healthcare costs to cover it. So you're paying for universal healthcare whether you want to or not, but you're probably paying more now than if you paid for more preventative care so people can have their ailments treated before it requires a trip to the ER.
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Who's going to pay for it?
Just look at how it works in all other western countries. Not that complicated really. And with the amount of money you save by not needing people paid to deny claims, you can provide better care. Yup that sentence is true.
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That's all prejudices and misconceptions about health care rolled into one.
1. Everyone is going to pay for it. Each one according to his possibilities. And you know what? It will be inversely to your actual needs. People without severe conditions will pay more than sick people in the end. Young people will pay more than the old ones. That's because being sick is by definition not being able care for yourself. To cure a sick person, you need a healthy person to take care of him. A health care system that let
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So really, what is it that bothers you so much about providing healthcare coverage?
I'll bite on this one. It's not the coverage, it's the way in which it was implemented. I know what I am paying for my healthcare at work, and I know what my company pays (it's a 25% / 75% split). So, take my plan (which, btw, is the most expensive one offered as my wife has asthma and we tend to need services more than others), and multiply that by 25 million (as my plan covers 2 people). Guess what? You could have cove
Re:Just like the USA (Score:4, Informative)
So really, what is it that bothers you so much about providing healthcare coverage?
I'll bite on this one. It's not the coverage, it's the way in which it was implemented.
So it sounds like what you're saying is that you'd support a plan where instead of a single-payer government run system, you'd like a system where people can continue to purchase insurance on their own (or where businesses could still offer plans if they wanted to). Where insurance companies could not deny coverage based on preexisting conditions. But above all, you want the government out of it, and you want private insurers to provide the coverage.
Well you're in luck! Let me introduce you to Obamacare! [wikipedia.org]
I believe that the system you describe was the failed US National Health Care Act [wikipedia.org] which was never passed.
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So really, what is it that bothers you so much about providing healthcare coverage?
I'll bite on this one. It's not the coverage, it's the way in which it was implemented. I know what I am paying for my healthcare at work, and I know what my company pays (it's a 25% / 75% split). So, take my plan (which, btw, is the most expensive one offered as my wife has asthma and we tend to need services more than others), and multiply that by 25 million (as my plan covers 2 people).
So what happens if you lose your job?
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So really, what is it that bothers you so much about providing healthcare coverage?
I'll bite on this one. It's not the coverage, it's the way in which it was implemented. I know what I am paying for my healthcare at work, and I know what my company pays (it's a 25% / 75% split). So, take my plan (which, btw, is the most expensive one offered as my wife has asthma and we tend to need services more than others), and multiply that by 25 million (as my plan covers 2 people).
So what happens if you lose your job?
I'm on a pension you insensitive clod.
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But I like how so many people in condemning Obamacare end up stating a support in national health care, just not the one selected. If there was that much support for national health care, why did it take so long to get one nobody likes?
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I hear there are hackers in Russia. And they have computers and stuff there too.
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great, do a news story about them
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
Why is this on Slashdot? Is there a tech/science/maths/nerd angle I'm missing.
To help you see the nerd angle, I'm going to answer your questions in Reverse Russian Notation:
There are many smart tech/science/maths/nerd people in Russia. Don't forget they're only the ones still putting humans in space. This is also where many of the black hats penetrating Western computers are based, because things are so bad there this is the best employment a lot of those smart people can get.
This is on slashdot because ever since Kasparov was arrested they need someone to come up with a strategy for revolution, and slashdot is full of people who are well-versed in the "Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, ???, Profit" form. With a thousand slashdot monkeys submitting thousands of random 5-step plans, someone is bound to come up with the answer. Then all they have to do is figure out which one is correct.
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Slashdot set Russia up the revolution
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It could fall under the second part of the slogan: "news that matters."
Deteriorating political conditions in and between Russia and the rest of the world, as Russia makes the dive deeper back down the rabbithole of communist dictatorial govt and secrecy, can have far-reaching implications internationally.
Take for instance, the "strained" relations between Russia and the USA, concerning the strategic missile installations being installed in the middle eastern puppet states. A fully dictator led Russia under
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I, for being one of the citizens of one of these puppet states, welcome our new nuke-wielding, choice-giving overlord.
On a serious note, US radar installations - built under the guise of "humanitarian NATO purposes", are giving rather crisp picture of geopolitical situation in ex-soviet satellite states of eastern to mid Europe. CIA prefers to buy politicians via straight, old fashioned strong-arm political tactics (think ACTA) against EU and state politicians. Russian influence, on the other hand, manife
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I think a lot of them end in failure because jets don't have windows that open.
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There are quite a few Russian nationals reading Slashdot, you know. We don't all agree on such things, though, not anymore than Americans agree on their stuff (judging by any story discussing Obama hereabouts).