James Madison
Posted on 10/30/2011 2:01:06 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Twenty-first-century Russia may look like a liberal democracy, with elections, law courts and parliament. In truth there are two parallel states. One is for show. The other is almost completely corrupt, with part of it run by a clique of secret servicemen who owe their allegiance ultimately to the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, and the small group of former KGB thugs who surround him. Stay in with them, and you stay safe. Fail to pay your dues, and you risk personal destruction. ....the so-called siloviki, the strongmen who control modern Russia, with a career background in the intelligence or security services; men whose ultimate loyalty is to Putin, himself a former director of the FSB, the new name for the notorious Soviet intelligence service, the KGB, where so many of the siloviki received their training.
Many are past masters at exploiting the criminal justice system to enrich themselves and destroy their enemies. They are said to be the ultimate rulers of Russia. By 2007, according to one study, two thirds of Putin's core team were siloviki. They drive the black Mercedes or BMWs equipped with sirens and flashing lights that cut through the Moscow traffic, and live in the expensive houses of the former KGB.
It is easy for the FSB to arrange for opponents to be jailed on trumped-up charges (as they used to say in the KGB, 'Show me the man and we'll find you the crime'.) In some cases this is because they pose a political threat to the regime, in other cases simply because the men who run today's Russia want a slice of the companies they work for.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I wonder if he is going to revive Stalin’s plan to cross apes and men to create a super army.
does seem to have the ring of truth to it.
Potemkin democracy. Ha!
The slivovarchs... Putin integrated the security services not into democracy but into capitalism.
The FSB is certainly powerful but is not as omnipotent and lawless as the old KGB.
Russian leaders since Yeltsin have turned to veteran military and security personnel simply because of the dearth of trained civilian expertise in the Russian bureaucracy.
This is slowly changing. Russia is not a dictatorship but neither is it a pure democracy. It is somewhere in between.
Other than their names and formal attributes of the supreme leadership, Allah, Putin, Ali Khamenei can you differentiate between supreme Islam and supreme Communism?
Both are at the oposite ends of the same chain. Islam claiming to be a religion and Communism denying the existence of a deity, called Islam or whatever.
When confronted by any opposition both apply brutal, deadly and corrupt punishment. Both pretend to have a free and ONLY GOOD form of administration/regulation and both claim to know what is best for us and woe betide us if we disagree.
Thanks Tailgunner Joe.
Even Communist party head Gennedy Zyuganov is part of this game (he has lots of money)...
We have the same bunch here...called SEIU, AFL-CIO, UAW, etc. Until we clean up our act, who are we to throw stones?
Thanks for the ping!
Should be no doubt; that totalitarian MO's come from a common and most evil root; whereby the individual is useful or valuable; ONLY if that person fits into an ideological reality whether by agreement/submission or force. If he does not; the individual is eliminated.
This perspective is personally damning, by it's denial of the Inalienable; and is ultimately, and singularly, morbidly, self-serving. The truth that animates these people; by whatever authoritative mantle it rests under; is heinously, inauthentic at it's core.
[Rootings - seemingly innocuous - of this totalitarian one-mind, Marxist, group think MO, manifest and ring hollow, in the follow the leader chants; offered up by the 'Occupiers'; everywhere they gather.
Have only to listen to those in Atlanta; to get the idea of just how brain-dead, these people really are; and to see, too; how this Leftist MO; is the 'egg' for very ugly realities.]
Scary stuff, actually; as these people quite imagine a intellectual elitism at work here; and despite all evidence to contrary; they imagine as well, that this 'group-think' is Democracy in action and 'at it's best'.
We have only to be thankful, that America's Forefathers, did not share same vision. ]
Communism has diety. Called Marx and Lenin. Only difference not supernatural.
Nazis made common cause with the Islamic Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during WWII. He then fled to Egypt where he continued to work for the destruction of Jews and Israel. I have read the Yassar Arafat was either his son or his nephew, which suddenly makes it all very clear.
But the Communist Party will never win power again. Is pensioner supporters will gradually die off.
Russia doesn’t need more revolutions or experiments. It needs a normal life.
Granted, the bureaucracy is venal, corrupt and arbitrary. But there is no quick fix.
And I’m not convinced constant reorganizations improve anything!
United Russia will remain the “party of power” as long as it delivers to voters prosperity and greater freedom.
That is the universal formula for political success. Its an undeniable one.
In fact, United Russia popularity is shrinking.
There are a lot of Soros’s affiliated agitators against it in Russia.
I don’t want to question their motives but their agitation is not all lies.
This atricle is a piece of agitation too. As for people mentioned it is most likely if they are guilty in their crimes. It seems like most of them had some special relations with crooked law enforcement agents and it helped them to both ruin lives of their business competitors earning illegal money and cover their criminal habits. It was comfortable for them until agents got too much on them and their bill to cover it turned to be super expensive.
Nothing specific Russian there. It is common to get caught this way for careless crooked people with money. In America they are getting screwed by mafia and lawyers. In Russia, East Europe, Mexico and other lowest middle-class places law enforcement itself is a mafia of it’s kind.
Thanks for the ping; post; thread. Interesting.
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