Kremlin propaganda holds that it is the US State Department that organized the 2011–2012 anti-Putin rallies across Russia—the largest pro-democracy demonstrations since 1991. Russian opposition leaders who visit the US are accused of “treason.” Just as in Communist times, all human rights and democracy causes are declared to be part of the West’s “anti-Russian” agenda, and those who oppose the current regime, by implication, are deemed to be a Western “fifth column.”
Kremlin Crooks: Putin’s ‘Patriotic’ Hypocrites | World Affairs Journal
Is it true?
Just this morning, I dipped into this creatively, intuitively: Syria – Owned by Old Relationships, Old Ideas, Old Menace | BackChannels
So this theme — Putin’s Russia as a piratical state — has been on my mind.
At times, and of the two presidents of interest this week as regards the debacle in Syria, it has been Putin who has seemed the more open (then, say, Clinton on Benghazi) and more moderately progressive of the two (one may note that the promotion of secular values would seem a part of the defense of the Assad regime).
And then too Putin appears to back a real monster — a regime capable of devouring its own cities and gassing its own children — in Syria while yanking RT from the brink of critical, dispassionate, insightful, self-assessing journalism and placing it back firmly in the propaganda business:
The United States, Britain, and France are unwavering in their assertions that the Assad government and the Syrian Arab army were the perpetrators of the chemical weapon attack, despite no evidence to substantiate these claims. These governments seem to be sure that Damascus is guilty on the basis of it preventing a UN investigation team from visiting the site, and when investigators eventually did reach the area, it didn’t matter to them because they argued that the Syrian government had destroyed all evidence of wrongdoing.
Assad’s opponents have constructed a deeply cynical and hysterical political narrative that Western leaders are now parroting in unison.
Western logic on Syria: ‘We need to bomb it to save it’ — RT Op-Edge (8/27/2013)
When the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left lets go of the Vietnam War — the barricades, glory, lingo, and long hair (well, maybe that’s neither here nor there) — it will again something new and humanist instead of peacocky old script.
My opinion aside, the “western logic” on Syria might not disagree — Russia gave UN 100-page report in July blaming Syrian rebels for Aleppo sarin attack | McClatchy — but it might also ask what if instead of “deeply cynical and hysterical” (was somebody in the intelligence reporting channels caught crying and throwing a hissy fit?), the west’s multiple separated (x nation x department) intelligence analysts were NOT being ordered to The Party Line (whose? which one?) but were quite appropriate relaying their best, most comprehensive observations and assessments.
The western intelligence communities certainly have a problem with the Syria chemical weapons stories, but it’s one familiar to police worldwide: a crime may be evident but clues seemingly absent.
The art of committing a crime, including, say, a war crime, and methodically obliterating its chain of evidence, probably all the way back to the tire tracks of the launcher, wants for a mafia-minded spirit.
Again, something happened, and, mysteriously, no one saw it — or no available and credible witness seems to have seen it.
* * *
AFP: Russia orders Stalin-era leather coats for Putin guards 6/10/2011:
Soldatov suggested the elite service wanted to highlight its “elite status.”
“They want to distance themselves from the rest of the army, which most of them despise,” he told AFP.
Who are Vladimir Putin’s pals, the Night Wolves? | World news | The Guardian 4/11/2013:
Frankly, if I had to get into D.C. myself, I too would rather wear jeans and a leather jacket than suit up in gray flannel.
Foreign Policy also brings up a note on how Putin’s relationship with the Night Wolves as worked out as April 11: The strangest thing about Putin’s appearance on Finland’s secret criminal blacklist | FP Passport
Still, the descending cloud barely warrants a look-up, for web searching strings involving “Putin” and a variety of socially negative adjectives (no need here to list them) yields fair entertainment if not enlightenment.
Putin Bullies Billionaires as Mafia Festers in Judah Book – Bloomberg 7/3/2013:
Under Putin, the Kremlin has become a court, where favorites strain to please, and the price of a minister’s post is $10 million. Meanwhile, with 350,000 employees, the FSB, successor of the KGB, has grown bigger than some European armies.
May we assume the FSB will be a force for the good of the Russian people and of mankind as well?
I’ve unfortunately / fortunately just recently learned how to drag a URL to the composition page of my blog, so herewith and with dates added (where conveniently found) just a few relevant titles:
Has Vladimir Putin Always Been Corrupt? And Does it Matter? | Wilson Center
Putin Critic Navalny Steps Up Corruption Charges in Mayoral Race – Bloomberg 8/13/2013
Putin’s Self-Destruction | Foreign Affairs 6/9/2013:
Putin’s anti-corruption effort could very well suffer a similar fate. Today, he faces his own rights-based problem: Russian elites believe that they are entitled to rob the country blind. Indeed, it is an essential part of their informal contract with Putin. They are so convinced of the sanctity of this bargain that they are ready to oppose the anti-corruption effort tooth and nail.
Putin’s Russia: A mafia state | The Economist 12/7/2010
Explosive Video Documents Depth of Putin’s Mafia State | World Affairs Journal:
It is no longer possible to distinguish where organized crime ends and the state begins in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. An extraordinary 17-minute video just exhibited by the anti-corruption website Russian Untouchables shows how an elite crime syndicate headed by a longtime gangster, Dmitry Klyuev, and including active agents of the Russian Interior Ministry and Moscow tax offices, managed to steal close to $1 billion from state coffers in fraudulent tax claims.
The New Russian Mob – NYTimes.com 3/27/2013:
But it also turns out that much of the hot money held in the Cypriot banking system is Russian. Russian companies like the low taxes that come with having entities in Cyprus. Because of the wink, wink, nod, nod relationship between Cyprus and Russia, rubles deposited in Cypriot banks are as untraceable as dollars once were in Swiss bank accounts, according to Dmitry Gudkov, an opposition politician (about whom more in a moment).
BBC News – Putin’s Russia ‘now a mafia state’ 2/29/2012
Garry Kasparov: ‘Putin’s just like Al Capone’ – Telegraph 22/26/2011
Putin’s Watch Collection Dwarfs His Declared Income | News | The Moscow Times 6/8/2012
The good news if you click on the link directly above, you will be reading The Moscow Times; the bad news is for how long one could muckrake on this theme — and, frankly, how silly it all gets. Of course, also with the watch story and much else — leather jackets, watches . . . — the means and values reflected would seem the very mirror, nothing less, of the western glamorization of wealth.
You might say,
What happens in Moscow stays in Moscow.
_____
Sure it does.
* * *
Hollywood writers know this old saw: “The good guy isn’t always good; the bad guy isn’t always bad.”
‘I, Putin’: An Inside Look at Russia’s Aging, Lonely Leader – SPIEGEL ONLINE
In the photo section of the above cited post, this note appears:
“The world is used to images of Putin as a virile master or Judo and no-holds-barred political infighting. But the films shows Putin in a much different light, as a lonely, exhausted man cut off from the world by his job and stubbornly fending off physical decline. “Politically speaking, he’s light-years away from me,” Seipel says. “It also took me a while to gradually understand what makes him tick. Still, I can’t say that I disliked him as a human being.”
While there is a 45-minute clip available for watching on YouTube, it presents in German.
I am not to judge Putin.
One may leave that to Russia’s voters and the complex of relationships and values that today inform Russian society.
If as the quotation from Foreign Policy suggests, “Russian elites believe that they are entitled to rob the country blind,” the goose may run short one day on golden eggs.
Or not.
Or not for a long time.
* * *
Vladimir Putin Full Length Documentary: The Putin System (posted to YouTube 11/7/2012)
Says a critic at 0:0:28: “There is only one word for the KGB personality. The word is ‘control’.”
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* * *
“You’ve got to hand it to the West, we’ve taken something from them,” he said, as he recalled “packs” of 300 to 500 bikes blasting through Moscow at night, leaving traffic police helpless.
“But we’ve rethought it and took a completely different path,” he said.
Indeed, the club has become a polar opposite of this “outlaw past,” especially since 2009, when Putin, then the Prime Minister, first attended their bike show.
Russian Bikers: From Kremlin Ally to PR Liability | Features & Opinion | RIA Novosti 10/30/2012
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