My only thoughts on Putin until about a year ago were that he was involved in some kind of unfair election. I didn’t even bother to ask myself the usual question: “Where did you get that idea?” He’s a Russian, Russians are bad. I was told that for fifty years, it must be true.
Then I dug a little deeper. The election protests against him were funded by the usual suspects, who then turned around and splashed it all over the corporate-controlled news media that we all say we distrust, but that we all listen to! Why do I say the protests were funded by outsiders? Check out the expensive signs the protesters carried-I was a graphic artist, trust me, there was a lot of money there. Real grass roots demonstrators carry lots of handmade signs.
Then Putin clamped down on NGOs; tax exempt non-profits. I was a non-profit director and did good deeds-darn that meany Putin! Turns out these NGOs are frauds, where bazillionaires join their tax-exempt money to CIA funds to influence geopolitics. He demanded to see the NGO’s financial records. Good! We should do that in the USA, actually.
But didn’t he lock up political opponents? That’s not nice. Well, he locked up oligarchs-they even called themselves oligarchs! Not for being oligarchs but for trying to run the country. He told these crooks to go their make money but stay out of the government. They refused. He locked them up. They hired western lawyers and public relations firms to garner sympathy. Dang, why don’t we throw our oligarchs out of the government and lock them up if they refuse to go?
And what? He’s a Christian? The leader of Russia? Has hell frozen over? Yes, yes and that’s just a metaphor.
But then he passed some horribly hateful law against gay people, right? The law actually says “anti-traditional family propaganda targeted at children will be punished by a fine. This caused a big furor? Do gay people have plans to “target children” in any way? But some thugs beat up gay people in Russia. Really? That’s bad. It’s bad in US, UK and Australia, too…it’s bad everywhere.
From the Guardian: (which is not Pro-Putin)
If Putin is indeed waging war on Russia’s LGBT community, then why has he not followed the example of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, which has just introduced a new law that stipulates jail sentences of up to 14 years for gay people? Or India, the world’s largest democracy, where the supreme court recently reinstated a colonial-era ban on gay sex? If he wants to get really harsh, of course, Putin could look to Saudi Arabia, whose habit of executing homosexuals has done little to break up what Barack Obama has called the “long history of friendship” between Washington and Riyadh. This, of course, is the same Obama who has“no patience” for Russia‘s gay propaganda law.
The latest is that he has invaded Crimea. Once again Americans are lapping up the drivel from the media we already know is a mouthpiece of the US state department. For what’s really happening read this.
I was glad when Putin stopped the NATO love-bombing of Syria. Months earlier Russia had sent a report to the UN detailing the rebel’s use of gas in Syria. Where is the in-depth reporting on that?
Dear friends, I fear we are being lied to. AGAIN.
“Oh, so you love Putin? You trust him?”
Don’t be silly, we shouldn’t use the same criteria to judge a world leader as we use to choose a spouse.
But we really need to get away from this Manichean black/white, good/evil mindset.
The world is a bit more complicated than that.
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