Putin to step down in 2021 - Parkinson’s disease.

[blackcat]

Not sure what happened there. You might have just gone a bit hard with your criticism of Taibi, it was basically defamation. I can't say I've seen the inconsistency in his reporting of Russiagate and related issues. He's been getting the big picture of the story right for at least 18 months. It's such a complex issue, with so many layers, I'm not going to write off a journalist with his track record because he wasn't on it initially.

In my post you quoted I was just referring to some credible journalists from the left who would back up all of the claims I was making, it wasn't an exhaustive list. The level of intellectual rigour applied to most discussion about politics tends to be to dismiss any competing claims by accusing partisan bias so I was trying to demonstrate that credible people on the left have arrived at the same conclusion (and that there is bi-partisan support among the credible journalists and analysts).

Alexander Mercouris (The Duran), who identifies as someone from the left but it's irrelevant because he a geopolitics guy, and Lee Stranahan, who is openly a Trump supporter / conservative / libertarian depending on what is being discussed, are the most comprehensive in their analysis of Russiagate and it's reach back to the Maidan Revolution, Uranium 1 scandal and the geopolitics of that part of the world (and related issues).

Interesting thing about Putin, being tagged in a Putin thread, is that the heart of the west's conflict with Putin is that Putin kicked American and European carpetbaggers out of post Soviet Russia of the 90s. At it's heart, the conflict is about money and nothing else. US politicians from both sides, intelligence, academics were siphoning billions of dollars out of 90s Russia which was a complete disaster. Putin kicked them all out and brought the Russian oligarchs under his control (or kicked them out if they couldn't be brought to heel). These people all turned there attention to Ukraine as a result, by the way. The media does not trumpet anti-Putin propaganda at every turn, because of any understand Russian culture, politics or post-Soviet history.

I have no doubt that at some point Putin has been a genuine strong man because that is what would have been required to rescue Russia from the oligarchs, gangsters and carpetbaggers who ran the place in the 90s. I am extremely sceptical, to the point of entirely disbelieving, of the claims that he has ever done anything to a political opponent for the simple reason that he just doesn't need to do it. He's been outrageously popular because Russians remember the Soviet Union and remember the 90s and Putin has essentially given them the stability associated with the Soviet Union (rightly or wrongly) but has revived the conservative and religious roots of the country as it opens up into a free country.

It's a pretty standard logical fallacy when it comes to analysing the actions of Puntin. He's smart enough to manipulate the US and Europe and to be seen as the global puppet master, the Bond-villain-like bad guy who is blamed for everything that can go wrong, but then he'll also make rookie errors which always lead a perfect trail of crumbs back to the Kremlin. There is no way the man who has so comprehensively outmanoeuvred the west for 20 years, and the gangsters who controlled Russia, makes the strategic errors he has been accused of. There is no way he extends himself to murdering irrelevant politicians which unnecessarily turns up heat on him exposing Russia to further sanctions (the purpose of which is to squeeze Russians economically to the point that they turn on Putin). The invention of claims against leaders in countries the US and Europe want to control is not unique to Putin/Russia. I assume you have read what the UN engineers who investigated Assad's gassing of his own people all reported. It still makes me laugh that the White Helmets, an Al-Qaeda affiliate, have won an Oscar.

Take the recent Navalny story, for example. Navalny is built up to being something like an opposition leader because he tends to reflect social justice attitudes that resonate in the West. For a start Russia is a deeply religious and conservative country and the cancer of social justice as we know it is not a thing in Russia (this is similar among most of the Eastern European countries and the heart of conflict between Poland, Hungry, etc and the EU). But even more significantly, Navalny is not the opposition, he's not even close. The opposition, based on shares of votes at elections, is the Communist Party and a nationalist party (who doesn't think Putin is enough of a Russian strongman, by the way). To give you an idea of who Navanly is, I'd compare him to Corey Bernadi or Xenophon but that problem with the comparison is that both, despite irrelevance to the bigger political picture, represent a view that ultimately speaks for a significant portion of Australians (and I make no comment about that either way). Navalny does not but he has been set up as a challenger to Putin to create a motive for Putin to assassinate him.

Then there is the continued use of Novichock. Not only is it strange that the most deadly nerve agent can't seem to kill anyone it's always the perfect link back to Putin. If you were watching this as a story in a Netflix drama, and using your brain at the same time, you'd get frustrated that the set-up is too obvious to be credible. And yet, Novichock was wheeled out a second time after it couldn't kill the Skripals. In relation to the Skripals, I'm asking, again, why Putin would encourage the latest round of sanctions to attack a double agent he released back to the West (and who could not have any operable intelligence because he has been out of the game so long).

I'm not naïve and suspect Putin has gotten extremely heavy handed with gangsters and the remnants of the systems the oligarch's had in place which have impeded what he has been trying to do. While that sort of violence, possibly extending to assassination, is not a good thing I'm going to justify I can guarantee you that if the media even knew the names of these people, and who they were, I doubt there would be any interest. Why else is it irrelevant social justice warriors who are built up to being Putin's opposition. If you think there is some alternative to Putin which wouldn't have resulted in anything other than Russian becoming essentially a failed state under the gangsters you don't really know anything about the last 30 years of that country. Look at what the west has done to or allowed to occur in Ukraine.

Hersh said Skripal was an operation by Soviet expat Belgravia(oligarch) mafia, cos Skripal was giving info to either MI5(domestic) or MI6(foreign) intelligence on the oligarchs , they came into access of some nerve agent (it could have been Russian, but not thru official sources, so not cheka/kgb/nkvd)

...will complete reading reply above... but Mate, StephenFCohen, Gessen, were saying this pre-AlexanderDowner->Papadopoulos
this was a HRC, Mook, Podesta, deepstate job, Taibbi was years after the story was <live> for all credible tolks.

 

[blackcat]

Interesting thing about Putin, being tagged in a Putin thread, is that the heart of the west's conflict with Putin is that Putin kicked American and European carpetbaggers out of post Soviet Russia of the 90s. At it's heart, the conflict is about money and nothing else. US politicians from both sides, intelligence, academics were siphoning billions of dollars out of 90s Russia which was a complete disaster. Putin kicked them all out and brought the Russian oligarchs under his control (or kicked them out if they couldn't be brought to heel). These people all turned there attention to Ukraine as a result, by the way. The media does not trumpet anti-Putin propaganda at every turn, because of any understand Russian culture, politics or post-Soviet history.

the JeffreySachs Harvard economists who came in under Yeltsen to do a interation deux Chicago(Freeman's Chilean Chicago boys) and restructure the economy under Washington's version of the ideal western capitalist model, but this just served to crush the people. Sachs now with his own Columbia specialty faculty The Earth Institute.

Intersting tale on the boffins with Sachs going to a market to gauge price shift in chickens eggs, a perishable good. Boffins believe in top down dictuts can determine a behaviour, versus allowing a market behaviour to manifest tabula rasa *yes, I appreciate the State were previously assigning prices, and Sachs is just recording relative elasticities in price change pending the health of supply.

re:academics and oligarchs, i saw math professor boris berezovsky in a Balaclava cafe about half a dozen years ago which was about half a dozen years after he topped himself in moscow, he cranium was dna of Plato's theory of forms, the most perfect circular dome, that one could spot that a hundred yards away.

 

[BrunoV]

Hersh said Skripal was an operation by Soviet expat Belgravia(oligarch) mafia, cos Skripal was giving info to either MI5(domestic) or MI6(foreign) intelligence on the oligarchs , they came into access of some nerve agent (it could have been Russian, but not thru official sources, so not cheka/kgb/nkvd)

...will complete reading reply above... but Mate, StephenFCohen, Gessen, were saying this pre-AlexanderDowner->Papadopoulos
this was a HRC, Mook, Podesta, deepstate job, Taibbi was years after the story was <live> for all credible tolks.

Cohen and Hersh are great (as are most of the other people you've referred to - I'm not familiar with them all). Cohen was a real loss. I was hoping that he might have been approached to assist with Russia policy in a second Trump term.

 

[blackcat]

BrunoV right, ofcourse he does not have to authorise murders like Anna Politkovskaya, that is soooo far beneath his station. So he is mayor of moscow after he is cheka, because was not a finger pointed to him at the

Cinderblock apartment towers bombing that he was maybe tied to, was this a smear from intelligence agencies from the West, or legit, because they wanted a false flag to going into Chechnya
history commons went down before

Vladimir Putin

Seymour M. Hersh · Military to Military

Barack Obama’s repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and that there are ‘moderate’ rebel...

www.lrb.co.uk

 

[blackcat]

Cohen and Hersh are great (as are most of the other people you've referred to - I'm not familiar with them all). Cohen was a real loss. I was hoping that he might have been approached to assist with Russia policy in a second Trump term.

i assume you know tho, as Aaron Mate and Max Blumenthal has said, all tiers of dialogue and access waswere denied to Cohen, they hated him at his wife's The Nation, Katrina Van Heuval, he was effectively cancelled. Things have really changed in the last decade, this is myriad of factors, the major one the Sinos, but 2000 is merely chronology asymmetry and 2016's final chapter of HRC and Cameron, the wests economic growth model undermined by pyramid growth structure demands, one trilllion in T-Bills owed to Sinos, and Current Account deficits to Sino exporters.

So idiot boffins at WEF get their voice and shut down because the Medical institution is shuddering.

 

[blackcat]

white helmets

aka chatham house

 

[blackcat]

Then there is the continued use of Novichock. Not only is it strange that the most deadly nerve agent can't seem to kill anyone it's always the perfect link back to Putin. If you were watching this as a story in a Netflix drama, and using your brain at the same time, you'd get frustrated that the set-up is too obvious to be credible. And yet, Novichock was wheeled out a second time after it couldn't kill the Skripals. In relation to the Skripals, I'm asking, again, why Putin would encourage the latest round of sanctions to attack a double agent he released back to the West (and who could not have any operable intelligence because he has been out of the game so long).

I'm not naïve and suspect Putin has gotten extremely heavy handed with gangsters and the remnants of the systems the oligarch's had in place which have impeded what he has been trying to do. While that sort of violence, possibly extending to assassination, is not a good thing I'm going to justify I can guarantee you that if the media even knew the names of these people, and who they were, there would be no interest. Why else is it that irrelevant social justice warriors who are built up to being Putin's opposition. If anyone thinks there was some alternative to Putin which wouldn't have resulted in Russian becoming essentially a failed state under the gangsters you don't really know anything about the last 30 years of that country. Look at what the west has done to or allowed to occur in Ukraine.

the prominence of Pussy Riot is a confection of the West, yeah, i appreciate that. prominence qua prominence, for international and western consumption, their traction at home not the same.

MI5 or MI6 doubled down in UK tv, Channel 4 (State owned channel) documentary attempting to retry Skripal d'affaire, I think ABC Australia tv had it one 4 Corners, or coulda been Foreign Correspondent, risible, but this well after Turnbull expels the Russian diplomats in the embassy in Canberra <eyes_roll>

 

[Chief]

i think the Essendon folks deleted a post of mine, i found a post of mine seatching Aaron Mate then got to an Essendon politics thread and i wore the wrong colours (chrissakes folks)

BrunoV
Seymour Hersh, Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, Aaron Maté, Glenn Greenwald, Tony Kevin, Masha Gessen, Aaron Scahill, Stephen F Cohen, Peter Thiel, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Victor Davis Hanson, David B Collum, Noam Chomsky, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Scott Horton(Tx.), Abby Martin, Michael Tracey, Pepe Escobar, Bill Binney (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), Tom Drake, Ed Loomis, Daniel Ellsberg, Ray McGovern, J. Kirk Wiebe, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Matt Taibbi*(supergrass)

how many Australians besides Tony Kevin, because i did search and found those who threw their lot in with Canberra and the expulsion of Russian diplomats in the Turnbull administration; David Manne and Guy Rundle threw their lot in with the RussiaGATE agitprop conflagration, tis utter BS cherf, utter bovine scatology*/grammar

Chief

I think you just scared the locals on an oppo team board.

 

[BrunoV]

the prominence of Pussy Riot is a confection of the West, yeah, i appreciate that. prominence qua prominence, for international and western consumption, their traction at home not the same.

MI5 or MI6 doubled down in UK tv, Channel 4 (State owned channel) documentary attempting to retry Skripal d'affaire, I think ABC Australia tv had it one 4 Corners, or coulda been Foreign Correspondent, risible, but this well after Turnbull expels the Russian diplomats in the embassy in Canberra <eyes_roll>

I never got around to completing the exercise but I was mindful during the height of the Syria conflict it was often the case that when Russians and Syrians made an advance that it tended to coincide with some hit piece on the ABC about Putin's attitude toward gay marriage or Pussy Riot or some other issues that is completely irrelevant in Russia.

When I see the real life script of Russiagate, Ukraingate, the Skripals and Navalny play out I can't help but think that it highlights the complete failure of communism as an economic system. There is no way the CIA or MI6 are competent enough to have brought the Soviet Union down.

 

[DaRick]

I never got around to completing the exercise but I was mindful during the height of the Syria conflict it was often the case that when Russians and Syrians made an advance that it tended to coincide with some hit piece on the ABC about Putin's attitude toward gay marriage or Pussy Riot or some other issues that is completely irrelevant in Russia.

When I see the real life script of Russiagate, Ukraingate, the Skripals and Navalny play out I can't help but think that it highlights the complete failure of communism as an economic system. There is no way the CIA or MI6 are competent enough to have brought the Soviet Union down.

Yeah, the Soviet Union fell for a number of reasons:
- War in Afghanistan demoralising the populace and agitating secession movements (since many of the soldiers were not ethnic Russians but rather Tajiks/Uzbeks, etc.)
- Loss of belief in the overlying ideology (Communism), partially due to Gorbachev's reforms exposing more people to Western/US culture (which looked attractive by comparison, as per the 'grass is greener' effect)
- Deteriorating ethnic relations in the border regions, leading to secession movements and brutal wars
- The 80's oil glut
- The Soviet Union getting suckered into an unwinnable arms race by Reagan

The CIA/MI6 would have at most played an incidental role in a few of the above.

 

[blackcat]

I think you just scared the locals on an oppo team board.

yep, i figured, did not appreciate i was good-faith, Lance Uppercut be in my corner if I petitioned him

 

[blackcat]

When I see the real life script of Russiagate, Ukraingate, the Skripals and Navalny play out I can't help but think that it highlights the complete failure of communism as an economic system. There is no way the CIA or MI6 are competent enough to have brought the Soviet Union down.

an intuitive paradox, is not actually, that the Soviets had the best chess players and mathematicians, iinvariably autistics, jewish, male, defies pavlov instinct that the Americans end up winning, Gregori Perleman v John Von Neuman the Hungarian American ,

Americans at the Physics program of Manhattan Project in the wood cabin in Los Alamos and its chimera Lawrence Livermore half were grads of the older Ivy's in New England and have diaspora refugees, but this was pulling all intellectual talent from Weimar and Gottingen math which beats any other modern math school like Princeton Advanced Inst, MiT, Harvard, UKCambridge (see: Operation Paperclip)

How one German city developed – and then lost – generations of math geniuses

Anti-Semitism brought down one of the world’s greatest centers for mathematical research.

theconversation.com

see: Singapore, they have the best results in world wrt highschool international baccalaureate, and their top two universities are ranked higher than anything on the Continent (Europe), this mebbe cos A levels at StPauls and Westminster are not entered in like Singapore, and continent having different technical institutions like Max Plank

so how could Washington eclipse Moscow? primacy of economics, brinksmanship and Red Queen Effect engaged in arms race , Moscow collapsed because they allocated resources beyond their means.

hat nod/wink, America owe the Sino's one trillion in bonds, T-Bills, this year may not be about 2016 and Cameron and HRC, it could be the Thucydides trap by other means like the politics aphorism from Clausewitz. As I have said before, from either side of the political equation, Eric Weinstein and Peter Thiel uttered similar refrain (growth plateau) , no real surprise since EW is PT's chief at his VC firm Founders Fund. #NiallFerguson
We dont hear about a new Bretton Woods by mere coincidence

how many John Von Neumann's would their be in China and India if given the opportunity? #Ramanujan

what political system is the correct one to elicit such genius like JVA and Perleman and Newton . An economics maxim of crowding-out in private/v public capital market competition, it really is a fluke if we can elicit said genius in the urban life of strobe lights and stimuli. Peter Yates on Lateline Business (he of Macquarie Bank and Kerry Packer's chief at PBL) said "we like our country/rural hires(employees/employment) which I took as personal preference for this person, and I deduce they were not doing 200% extra-curricular activities and tennis and piano lessons at MLC or Scotch or Xavs. Crowding out.

Peter & Oliver were Xavs boarders I think, from Riverina and pastoralist stock.

Contra Mundum medusala

 

[blackcat]

When I see the real life script of Russiagate, Ukraingate, the Skripals and Navalny play out I can't help but think that it highlights the complete failure of communism as an economic system. There is no way the CIA or MI6 are competent enough to have brought the Soviet Union down.

Bruno you may be one who actually knows the veracity(or not legit) of the line that sounds damn apocryphal, but like many an apocryphal aphorism it is actually more true in its record.

<supposedly> during Brezhnhev administration a diplomat is doing a study tour, a Russian diplomat is doing a study tour of the states of America, and he asked his American handler, how do you publish all the same thing each day in your newspapers, seeking an answer his curiosity about the equivalent dictuts to Izvestia and Pravda . (60's ?)

It sound awfully apocryphal, and my ex-Soviet homies in Melbourne do not know this uniquely American gobbet

anyone else hear this?

Bueller?

 

[blackcat]

same talking-points in media, youtube wants to throttle this crap, one would have seen this multiple times if they consume youtube media

 

[blackcat]

Best In Show actor if you like dogs is in Ferris Bueller

he is a doppelganger of Ed Witten maths and physics extraordinaire with quite the melliflious timbre

 

[Ned_Flanders]

Best In Show actor if you like dogs is in Ferris Bueller

he is a doppelganger of Ed Witten maths and physics extraordinaire with quite the melliflious timbre

View attachment 1013304

real life is actually more interesting (heard a poddy discussing him just recently)

they asked him to just riff about something boring, and it was his choice to discuss Smoot-Hawley off the top of his head. The reason he knew it, his Dad was Herbert Stein, an economist at the Enterprise Institute. In addition to hearing this s**t from borth, he was a former lawyer for the FTC and Nixon staffer. was also suspected (incorrectly) of being Deep Throat!

 

[Chief]

how do you publish all the same thing each day in your newspapers

“Because of evidence.”

 

[blackcat]

Yeah, the Soviet Union fell for a number of reasons:
- War in Afghanistan demoralising the populace and agitating secession movements (since many of the soldiers were not ethnic Russians but rather Tajiks/Uzbeks, etc.)
- Loss of belief in the overlying ideology (Communism), partially due to Gorbachev's reforms exposing more people to Western/US culture (which looked attractive by comparison, as per the 'grass is greener' effect)
- Deteriorating ethnic relations in the border regions, leading to secession movements and brutal wars
- The 80's oil glut
- The Soviet Union getting suckered into an unwinnable arms race by Reagan

The CIA/MI6 would have at most played an incidental role in a few of the above.

not one of those factors, but the confluence of all in the same timeframe coming head2head w the State in non-brinksmanship brinksmanship[sic], became too great a burden.

one of my friends, his father, my friend's father was in Stalin's army in WWII, from Kazakhstan, landed in Kiev post The Second World War, was Soviet, then emmigrated with his son, my friend, after he comes here in early 90s, the tail-end of Fraser's diaspora after Berlin Wall. Then he completed his life in the cinder-block Housing Commission in South Melbourne, I think ABC and foreign correspondent did a piece on those apartments and the ex-Soviets that make their home there. He is no longer with us, late 90s (late ninety years old), a truly remarkable life.

 

[blackcat]

real life is actually more interesting (heard a poddy discussing him just recently)

they asked him to just riff about something boring, and it was his choice to discuss Smoot-Hawley off the top of his head. The reason he knew it, his Dad was Herbert Stein, an economist at the Enterprise Institute. In addition to hearing this sh*t from borth, he was a former lawyer for the FTC and Nixon staffer. was also suspected (incorrectly) of being Deep Throat!

yes, he died just recently did MarkFelt

 

[blackcat]

“Because of evidence.”

nope, but good try cherf

#papersofrecord
#establishment see:JudyMiller

 

[blackcat]

- The Soviet Union getting suckered into an unwinnable arms race by Reagan

the whitepaper pre-existed Reagan and was a tenet of the Joint Chiefs in the Pentagon

Its culmination was Reagan, and they were getting mediocre(wrong) intelligence as feedback.

 

[DaRick]

Not sure what happened there. You might have just gone a bit hard with your criticism of Taibi, it was basically defamation. I can't say I've seen the inconsistency in his reporting of Russiagate and related issues. He's been getting the big picture of the story right for at least 18 months. It's such a complex issue, with so many layers, I'm not going to write off a journalist with his track record because he wasn't on it initially.

In my post you quoted I was just referring to some credible journalists from the left who would back up all of the claims I was making, it wasn't an exhaustive list. The level of intellectual rigour applied to most discussion about politics tends to be to dismiss any competing claims by accusing partisan bias so I was trying to demonstrate that credible people on the left have arrived at the same conclusion (and that there is bi-partisan support among the credible journalists and analysts).

Alexander Mercouris (The Duran), who identifies as someone from the left but it's irrelevant because he a geopolitics guy, and Lee Stranahan, who is openly a Trump supporter / conservative / libertarian depending on what is being discussed, are the most comprehensive in their analysis of Russiagate and it's reach back to the Maidan Revolution, Uranium 1 scandal and the geopolitics of that part of the world (and related issues).

Interesting thing about Putin, being tagged in a Putin thread, is that the heart of the west's conflict with Putin is that Putin kicked American and European carpetbaggers out of post Soviet Russia of the 90s. At it's heart, the conflict is about money and nothing else. US politicians from both sides, intelligence, academics were siphoning billions of dollars out of 90s Russia which was a complete disaster. Putin kicked them all out and brought the Russian oligarchs under his control (or kicked them out if they couldn't be brought to heel). These people all turned there attention to Ukraine as a result, by the way. The media does not trumpet anti-Putin propaganda at every turn, because of any understand Russian culture, politics or post-Soviet history.

I have no doubt that at some point Putin has been a genuine strong man because that is what would have been required to rescue Russia from the oligarchs, gangsters and carpetbaggers who ran the place in the 90s. I am extremely sceptical, to the point of entirely disbelieving, of the claims that he has ever done anything to a political opponent for the simple reason that he just doesn't need to do it. He's been outrageously popular because Russians remember the Soviet Union and remember the 90s and Putin has essentially given them the stability associated with the Soviet Union (rightly or wrongly) but has revived the conservative and religious roots of the country as it opens up into a free country.

It's a pretty standard logical fallacy when it comes to analysing the actions of Puntin. He's smart enough to manipulate the US and Europe and to be seen as the global puppet master, the Bond-villain-like bad guy who is blamed for everything that can go wrong, but then he'll also make rookie errors which always lead a perfect trail of crumbs back to the Kremlin. There is no way the man who has so comprehensively outmanoeuvred the west for 20 years, and the gangsters who controlled Russia, makes the strategic errors he has been accused of. There is no way he extends himself to murdering irrelevant politicians which unnecessarily turns up heat on him exposing Russia to further sanctions (the purpose of which is to squeeze Russians economically to the point that they turn on Putin). The invention of claims against leaders in countries the US and Europe want to control is not unique to Putin/Russia. I assume you have read what the UN engineers who investigated Assad's gassing of his own people all reported. It still makes me laugh that the White Helmets, an Al-Qaeda affiliate, have won an Oscar.

Take the recent Navalny story, for example. Navalny is built up to being something like an opposition leader because he tends to reflect social justice attitudes that resonate in the West. For a start Russia is a deeply religious and conservative country and the cancer of social justice as we know it is not a thing in Russia (this is similar among most of the Eastern European countries and the heart of conflict between Poland, Hungry, etc and the EU). But even more significantly, Navalny is not the opposition, he's not even close. The opposition, based on shares of votes at elections, is the Communist Party and a nationalist party (who doesn't think Putin is enough of a Russian strongman, by the way). To give you an idea of who Navanly is, I'd compare him to Corey Bernadi or Xenophon but that problem with the comparison is that both, despite irrelevance to the bigger political picture, represent a view that ultimately speaks for a significant portion of Australians (and I make no comment about that either way). Navalny does not but he has been set up as a challenger to Putin to create a motive for Putin to assassinate him.

Then there is the continued use of Novichock. Not only is it strange that the most deadly nerve agent can't seem to kill anyone it's always the perfect link back to Putin. If you were watching this as a story in a Netflix drama, and using your brain at the same time, you'd get frustrated that the set-up is too obvious to be credible. And yet, Novichock was wheeled out a second time after it couldn't kill the Skripals. In relation to the Skripals, I'm asking, again, why Putin would encourage the latest round of sanctions to attack a double agent he released back to the West (and who could not have any operable intelligence because he has been out of the game so long).

I'm not naïve and suspect Putin has gotten extremely heavy handed with gangsters and the remnants of the systems the oligarch's had in place which have impeded what he has been trying to do. While that sort of violence, possibly extending to assassination, is not a good thing I'm going to justify I can guarantee you that if the media even knew the names of these people, and who they were, there would be no interest. Why else is it that irrelevant social justice warriors who are built up to being Putin's opposition. If anyone thinks there was some alternative to Putin which wouldn't have resulted in Russian becoming essentially a failed state under the gangsters you don't really know anything about the last 30 years of that country. Look at what the west has done to or allowed to occur in Ukraine.

Thought-provoking post, and one that I don't disagree with much of.

I will note that I tend to identify as left-wing and anti-Trump, so I agree with the regulars here on many issues. However, I generally disagree with them on Putin and Russia. I suspect the key difference is that I've actually discussed Putin with FSU citizens, whereas I suspect that a lot of the regulars here form their views based on Australian/Western media (which is IMO anti-Putin across the political spectrum). That the only Australians in politics who say anything good about Putin are opportunistic shock-jocks who usually have no idea what they're talking about (read: Hanson) doesn't help.

On the US hating Putin, my thoughts have long been that the US is naturally competitive and so has never really gotten out of the Cold War mindset, nor have they stopped seeing Russia has a threat to 'compete' against. So how does the US win this competition? Simple - by destroying Russia as a polity. You've already noted that Yeltsin was doing a sterling job of this, so the US effectively fixed the 1996 election to keep him in power.

Unfortunately, good things can't last forever, and as we both know, Yeltsin eventually had to appoint Putin as his successor. By Russian standards, this was actually a reasonably safe bet for the West - Putin is ostensibly more liberal than most of Russia's population, and he was initially interested in courting the West, to the point of apparently contemplating NATO membership. Additionally, Putin had routed the Chechens pretty decisively where Yeltsin failed miserably, partially because he proved himself fairly shrewd at manipulating divisions between the more nationalist/Sufi Chechens and their more globalist/Salafi brethren. He'd do the same thing with both domestic oligarchs and foreign financiers, courting some while expelling others. He'd then turn on the foreign financiers (like Bill Browder) as soon as his rule was stabilised.

I've already expounded RE my take on the West's response to Russia and Russia's role in the Georgia/Ukraine conflicts in the post that I linked so I won't do that here. I will just add a few more observations RE what you said:

- The US would have you believe that 90's Russia was a Western liberal democracy. It wasn't. It was maybe a touch more democratic than Putin's Russia, but bear in mind that you were still dealing with a man who was eminently willing to shell his own Parliament with tanks, which to my knowledge neither Putin nor any Australian PM has resorted to.

- Ukraine has always been a kleptocratic basketcase. Even Yanukovych was disliked by Putin because he kept making overtures to the West. Of course, Western involvement post-2014 has made everything worse. It was really weird to see a neo-con like McCain effectively being on the same side as the neo-Nazi elements of Maidan, but I guess anti-Putin sentiment makes for strange bedfellows.

- Could Putin be held responsible for the murder of some journos and dissidents? Yes, although IMO indirectly - I'm sceptical that he'd directly order a journalist or dissident's murder, if only because 1) Putin impresses me as neither a Leninist ideologue nor an impulsive Trump-esque leader, 2) he has always been quite secure in power and 3) the geopolitical ramifications of such would not be to his benefit, nor would he win more domestic approval. Beyond noting that more journalists died on an annual basis during Yeltsin's time, a lot of murdered journalists were snooping around the Caucasus, an area where both Russian security forces and Chechens were operating. It is indeed plausible that some journo found something which potentially undermined some local FSB/GRU/OMON unit, and that they responded by capping him without Putin's permission.

- However, I view Chechens as quite an aggressive, insular people who are not particularly welcoming towards non-Chechen Russian citizens and in many cases only see themselves as nominally being Russian citizens (not without cause given how they've been treated at times by the Soviet/Russian state). Historically, they have certainly not been above kidnapping and/or murdering 'targets of interest', like Russia's envoy to Chechnya prior to the Second Chechen War. Their leader, Razman Kadyrov, effectively runs a fiefdom which makes Putin's Russia look like a Western liberal's paradise. So one gets the impression that he sees snooping journos as 'targets of interest'. I suspect that Anna Politkovskaya was one such individual, given that while she had certainly annoyed Russian security forces in Chechnya, 1) she was even more critical of Kadyrov than Putin, 2) Kadyrov had directly threatened to murder her and 3) Chechens were involved in her murder. Politkovskaya was not IMO well-known enough in Russia to threaten Putin's position, while Russian citizens seem to be more blase about military impropriety than Westerners, a situation exacerbated by their generally low regard for Chechens to begin with.

Putin is IMO culpable for these murders in the sense that he often seems to look the other way when Russian security forces or Kadyrov 'take care of business', probably because 1) bringing attention to Russian security forces based in Chechnya would not please the insular Chechens and 2) politically undermining an ally who has a tight grip on a historically troubled region and thus potentially provoking further conflict is not in his best interests. Westerners would understandably find this behaviour to be immoral, unethical and sleazy, but Putin's behaviour is understandable in context.

- RE your point about Putin apparently being smart enough to constantly get one over the West, but yet being dumb enough to injure or outright murder dissidents with expensive, rare materials that could easily be traced back to the Russian state, Litivenko is another good example, given that he died of polonium poisoning. Putin was also accused of his murder by both Litivenko's associate Berezovsky and the UK, neither of whom liked Putin. Berezovsky because Putin kicked him out; the UK because of their ties to the US. Also, unlike (say) Leon Trotsky, Litivenko was not a household name in Russia and could not seriously undermine Putin's standing with the Russian public.

- Another theory that has always bemused me is how supposedly "Putin did the apartment bombings to start a war in Chechnya". Never mind that Putin wasn't the most popular figure within the FSB (Primakov was), or that the Chechens have proven themselves more than happy to commit terrorist attacks (both before and after 1999). Also let's just disregard how the Chechens had already started the war by invading Russian territory. You may as well argue that Bush did 9/11.

- I reckon that Putin is popular in Russia for the following reasons: 1) he helped revive Russia's economy, albeit with help from oil, 2) he's seen as a guarantor of economic and personal security after the chaotic, dysfunctional 1990's, 3) he's managed to keep a multi-ethnic federation unified and 4) he understands the social mood regarding issues like homosexuality (which Russians do not like).

- I personally think that Putin does not run a genuinely authoritarian regime ala China or even Iran, never mind an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia, but rather a hybrid regime with some notably authoritarian leanings. Polity IV describes Russia as an anocracy (neither truly democratic nor autocratic), and I think that's accurate, although I'd say it's on the autocratic side. Freedom House's rating of Russia (as being as unfree as Vietnam, which in political terms is basically China with a few more civil liberties) is IMO a joke and has been for a while.

- Corruption remains a serious problem in Russia, and it's well-known that Putin has at times had to make deals with oligarchs and criminal elements to get things done, but it is no longer Yeltsin's kleptocracy (that would be Ukraine). IMO it's more like that of a typical Eastern European country - a serious problem, but at least not actively destroying the country.

EDIT: I don't mean to pry, but out of curiosity what are your links with the FSU (apologies if you've already mentioned it!)?

 

[blackcat]

That the only Australians in politics who say anything good about Putin are opportunistic shock-jocks who usually have no idea what they're talking about

ex diplomat Tony Kevin is exception

 

[blackcat]

but Putin's behaviour is understandable in context.

words echoed by StephenFCohen when talking about Ukraine too

 

[DaRick]

ex diplomat Tony Kevin is exception

Unfortunately wasn't familiar with. Thanks for the rec, will check him out.

words echoed by StephenFCohen when talking about Ukraine too

Particularly with Crimea.