In Praise of Putin

[DrEvil]

Dr Evil’s been watching way too much CNN or whatever the equivalent of CNN is in his country.

I wish all countries in the world had leaders as brilliant and practical and tactical as Putin. The world would be a far better place. Oh gosh does that make me a “fascist?” Hardly. Especially if you knew me.

I know, right. Blowing up apartment buildings full of your own citizens so you can launch a brutal war does wonders for your popularity ratings!

Wait a minute! That sounds exactly like 911, doesn't it?

[Belligerent Savant]

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The game of overt optics:

Coronavirus: Russia sends plane full of medical supplies to US

Critics likely to claim Moscow will exploit goodwill gesture as public relations coup

Russia has dispatched a cargo plane with masks and medical equipment to the US after Donald Trump accepted an offer of humanitarian aid from Vladimir Putin to fight the coronavirus outbreak.

The plane, a Russian Antonov An-124-100 military transport, left from Chkalovsky airfield outside Moscow on Tuesday night and will arrive in the US on Wednesday after refuelling at Shannon airport in Ireland. Footage from the plane broadcast by Russian state television showed stacks of cardboard boxes in the cargo hold.

The delivery is likely to stir controversy among critics of Trump, who have said Putin will portray the goodwill gesture as a public relations coup and use it to bolster Russia’s efforts to escape sanctions for meddling in the 2016 US elections.

Masks and other medical equipment are also in short supply in Russia, where the number of infected with coronavirus rose by 440 on Wednesday to a confirmed 2,777 cases. The Moscow mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, warned Putin last week that the official tally of cases underestimated the severity of the outbreak.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... lies-to-us

[DrEvil]

Not my point. Websites with their own Race/Ethnicity sections overflowing with articles with headlines like "The White Man's Burden" and "In KILL BILL, White Rednecks Raped A Comatose Woman. In Real Life, All Known Offenders Against Comatose Women Are Black" are garbage. If the article Sounder posted is true then it shouldn't be hard for him to find a better source for it.

I think it's worth the extra effort not to post from blatantly racist websites. If this is the only source available then at the very least I would expect a big disclaimer up top acknowledging the nature of the site so people can decide for themselves whether they want to give the racist scum the extra traffic.

I found nothing whatsoever objectionable in the exact article that Sounder posted. I hate racists, but what I hate even more is people who immediately react to messages they don't wish to consider by reflexively objecting to the messenger.

To some degree, it is not surprising to me that articles that dare praise Putin or Russia in any way are now currently relegated to sites that can be blithely dismissed for one reason or another. US corporate media would not really have it any other way. Would they?

I did address the contents up-thread (short version: I don't trust Putin. If the article was about Trump you would be trying to ferret out the hidden agenda and how the ptb profits from it, but since it's about Putin it's taken at face value, which I find naive, at best).

My issue was and is linking to blatantly racist websites when there's non-racist alternatives hosting the same damn article.

Putin being in opposition to the US does not make him a good guy. He's just a made man trying to overthrow the boss.

Some keywords: blowing up apartment buildings to justify a brutal war in Chechnya, supporting far-right organizations all over Europe, banning "homosexual propaganda" and censoring books containing gay characters, sucking up to conservative religious nutjobs, assassinating troublesome journalists, repeatedly arresting opposition politicians on trumped up charges. What a swell guy.

[JackRiddler]

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It's a mug's game for people down here, where we are, to be picking "leaders" to "like" or "support" among the remote, high-flying and sometimes crashing monarchical figures like Putin, or all the presidents and potentates whom we will never meet let alone get to influence by anything other than removing them if we can. Most of the time it's a way to declare yourself helpless, more often toxic. Sometimes it's harmless, sort of like a variation on sports fandom. The fewest are ever worth your allegiance or apologetics, and they tend to get deposed, or shot. Often you do need to defend one or another of these monster-beings against attack by even worse ones, to prevent greater calamities, as with Stalin against Hitler. But there's no need therefore to declare yourself a Stalinist, is there?

I would never praise Putin, much as I might consider a series of the Russian state's actions since he seized power to have been defensible necessities. First of all, it was a seizure of power. It was conducted covertly, so as to end a disastrous regime, but it involved an inexcusable original crime -- Moscow 9/99, the one even Putin's habitual haters never mention. I wonder why. Orchestrated on his behalf, I expect. So he could at least partially "drain the swamp" of the oligarchs around Yeltsin, and prevent the possible demise of Russia. His regime since has had a global defensive justification, given what the Americans were up to and are still up to. Go tell that to the Chechens he bombed after 9/99, see what they think. Tell that to the earth generations who will bear the consequences of the fossil fuel economy, in which Russia continues to be at the forefront. If only the country had the physicists and a modern technological know-how to move itself away from that insane planet-destroying shit, right? But what I find both inexcusable and petty is the Western alt-rightish praise for what they assume (in part correctly) to be the Putinist cultural program of homophobia, renewed Christianism, "traditional family values," anti-Westernism, ethno-nationalism, anti-"cosmopolitanism," anti-imperialism, etc.

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[alloneword]

The game of overt optics:

Countering covert optics?

[Belligerent Savant]

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Quite, though we -- the outsiders -- can only ruminate on the activities behind the curtain.
(no, not the iron curtain - that belongs to the overt optics category)

[JackRiddler]

(Well, at least the iron grip of posts about COVID and the Global Lockdown has been temporarily seasoned with this old favorite.)

(Wait, April Fool's!)

[Harvey]

.

It's a mug's game for people down here, where we are, to be picking "leaders" to "like" or "support" among the remote, high-flying and sometimes crashing monarchical figures like Putin, or all the presidents and potentates whom we will never meet let alone get to influence by anything other than removing them if we can. Most of the time it's a way to declare yourself helpless, more often toxic. Sometimes it's harmless, sort of like a variation on sports fandom. The fewest are ever worth your allegiance or apologetics, and they tend to get deposed, or shot. Often you do need to defend one or another of these monster-beings against attack by even worse ones, to prevent greater calamities, as with Stalin against Hitler. But there's no need therefore to declare yourself a Stalinist, is there?

I would never praise Putin, much as I might consider a series of the Russian state's actions since he seized power to have been defensible necessities. First of all, it was a seizure of power. It was conducted covertly, so as to end a disastrous regime, but it involved an inexcusable original crime -- Moscow 9/99, the one even Putin's habitual haters never mention. I wonder why. Orchestrated on his behalf, I expect. So he could at least partially "drain the swamp" of the oligarchs around Yeltsin, and prevent the possible demise of Russia. His regime since has had a global defensive justification, given what the Americans were up to and are still up to. Go tell that to the Chechens he bombed after 9/99, see what they think. Tell that to the earth generations who will bear the consequences of the fossil fuel economy, in which Russia continues to be at the forefront. If only the country had the physicists and a modern technological know-how to move itself away from that insane planet-destroying shit, right? But what I find both inexcusable and petty is the Western alt-rightish praise for what they assume (in part correctly) to be the Putinist cultural program of homophobia, renewed Christianism, "traditional family values," anti-Westernism, ethno-nationalism, anti-"cosmopolitanism," anti-imperialism, etc.

.

I share your caution. I do wonder if these unreconstructed attitudes and memories of 'Russia' are still useful to me. I can't begin to have an opinion on Putin which I'd consider throwing into any discussion since everything I know about him is filtered through the combined madness of the Anglosphere. I think of Jeremy Corbyn as presented to me through its compound eye. I think of the foulness of what was done to Syria, for example, whenever I am asked to consider Assad as an abomination. Is Chechnya ripe for re-evaluation? Anyone?

[alloneword]

. But what I find both inexcusable and petty is the Western alt-rightish praise for what they assume (in part correctly) to be the Putinist cultural program of homophobia...

I wonder whether these 'alt-right' types are enraged when they realise that the draconian sentences metered out in Russia on those falling foul of the 'anti-gay-propaganda' laws are broadly equivalent to those handed out in the UK for failing to pick up after your dog?

I'm sure they're still angered that the 'golden age' of homosexual discrimination in the UK ended way back in 2003, with the repealing of laws pretty much identical to those in Russian that attract such attention. Hell, they probably still lament the UK's eventual pardoning, three long years ago, of those previously convicted for participating in 'homosexual acts'.

For sure, though, Putin's a cunt. But he's their cunt.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Not my point. Websites with their own Race/Ethnicity sections overflowing with articles with headlines like "The White Man's Burden" and "In KILL BILL, White Rednecks Raped A Comatose Woman. In Real Life, All Known Offenders Against Comatose Women Are Black" are garbage. If the article Sounder posted is true then it shouldn't be hard for him to find a better source for it.

I think it's worth the extra effort not to post from blatantly racist websites. If this is the only source available then at the very least I would expect a big disclaimer up top acknowledging the nature of the site so people can decide for themselves whether they want to give the racist scum the extra traffic.

I found nothing whatsoever objectionable in the exact article that Sounder posted. I hate racists, but what I hate even more is people who immediately react to messages they don't wish to consider by reflexively objecting to the messenger.

To some degree, it is not surprising to me that articles that dare praise Putin or Russia in any way are now currently relegated to sites that can be blithely dismissed for one reason or another. US corporate media would not really have it any other way. Would they?

I did address the contents up-thread (short version: I don't trust Putin. If the article was about Trump you would be trying to ferret out the hidden agenda and how the ptb profits from it, but since it's about Putin it's taken at face value, which I find naive, at best).

My issue was and is linking to blatantly racist websites when there's non-racist alternatives hosting the same damn article.

Putin being in opposition to the US does not make him a good guy. He's just a made man trying to overthrow the boss.

Some keywords: blowing up apartment buildings to justify a brutal war in Chechnya, supporting far-right organizations all over Europe, banning "homosexual propaganda" and censoring books containing gay characters, sucking up to conservative religious nutjobs, assassinating troublesome journalists, repeatedly arresting opposition politicians on trumped up charges. What a swell guy.

He let a rock band go to prison for giving the shits to a church....

[DrEvil]

^^Clearly just part of a plot to make Putin look bad. Probably the Atlantic Council.

/s, just in case.

More generally on Putin, I really just wish people would treat him with the same skepticism they treat western politicians. He really isn't a good guy. He's no better than Trump, just better at it.

[Harvey]

^^Clearly just part of a plot to make Putin look bad. Probably the Atlantic Council.

/s, just in case.

More generally on Putin, I really just wish people would treat him with the same skepticism they treat western politicians. He really isn't a good guy. He's no better than Trump, just better at it.

You don't regularly advocate a similar crtitical distance to negative stories about Russia/Putin. In fact, there's a definite presumption of pro-Putin bias for merely examining the body of popular opinion pertainting to Russia (or China) without prejudice. The fact these two words 'Russia' and 'Putin' are often synonymous in popular usage should tell its own story, but somehow it does not.

[Joe Hillshoist]

The point about Putin isn't that our side is better.

It's that no one is.

The best you can hope for in the state is the sort of general incompetence we have in Australia.

[JackRiddler]

(uuuuuuuuuhhhh... if this latest thing hadn't started Australia was in contention for biggest disaster of the last five years, and you were right in the middle of it so you know what I'm saying better than I do... thanks for fighting it!)

[Harvey]

The point about Putin isn't that our side is better.

It's that no one is.

The best you can hope for in the state is the sort of general incompetence we have in Australia.

The point is the mere fact of Russia-gate hysteria. (Which to be fair, many here resisted from day one and were proved right.) It shouldn't be necessary to continually re-affirm these childish pro or anti positions, nor preface every discussion with 'Putin is a monster but...' You might agree this does not indicate a neutral baseline for assumption.