Russian 'election'
 

I won't be able to stay up late and see who won, can someone post that for me?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43088445
Yeah, apparently not.

Trump in an upset win.

Exit polls show Putin taking about 75% of the vote.

Big surprise. :shifty:

:haha:

As I've stated on more than one occasion on this forum....Putin is a democratically elected dictator.

RIGGED

And the winner of the 2024 Russian election is...PUTIN.

America lets people choose between Antrax and Ebola, Russians could vote for Ebola, and Germans get the Antrax anyway that they have deliberatedly voted against.

:88)

Ancient Greeks heard only 5-15% of their city residents - the male, free and wealthy ones - in hearings and for majority votings. Only these few were "citizens" eligible to raise their voice and cast their vote.

It's not rigged. Since there are no other candidates, the partaking 73 percent indeed must have voted for him :03:

No surprise.. anyway after what happened after 1989 the west is to blame for a good part. Should i really quote Sky :hmmm:, well in this case:

"What many already forgot is that Putin, when he took over from Yeltzin, has ended the chaos of the era after the Sovjet Union's fall. Initially, Putin worked for and tried to bring Russia closer to Europe, on equal eye levels. But then the West betrayed him two times. First the Western predators tried to extract as much loot from the weak new-Russian economic environment as possible and tried to keep the new Russian state and its adminsutraiton out of stable control, and second the West promised to not move up towards Russia'S borders, and naive as they were at that time, the Russians believed that. They got betrayed, and Putin learned to lessons. First, give the West the opportunity to erode and abuse Russia'S wealth and economy, and it will do so, and second: Western promises and verbal agreements do mean nothign and are not worth the air it takes to speak them out.

Putin delivers on the Russian desire for national pride. He sorted out the hostile economic sell-out of Russian property and ecnomy at the cost of allowing oligarchic crime and corruption taking control of parts of the economy again while making it clear by setting several examples that these oligarchs are tolerated, but better do not take on the state itself in their greed, else they, individually, have to pay the highest price. All the revitalising of the Sovjet cult and Stalin cult needs to be seen in the light of all these factors that the West allowed to form and that the West even supported. The West is not as innocent as it claims in creating the situation as it is today. Putin initally did not start to go this way - he reacted to the bitter lessons he got taught by the West - by fallign back to proven Sovjet controlling schemes and reactions."

(from: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...4&postcount=73)

May i add that Putin is meanwhile a prisoner of his own politics. Who else should govern Russia and hold extremists, terrorists and crime at bay? Can a real democratically elected government without having to fear "secret service cleanings" deal with it, or would it all go the way of the Weimarer Republic?

Sorry but I wave the B.S. flag on the 'not one inch' westward NATO expansion broken promises excuse. Even Mikhail Gorbachov said the agreement was to allow for the timely removal of Russian forces from East Germany and former Soviet bloc countries, that's it, end of story. Russia got time to peacfully remove itself from Eastern Germany and in return left you Merkel.

Number two NATO expansion westward is based on invitation and the acceptance by independent nations. Those independent nations DO NOT require the permission of Putin.

Poor little Russia, horse crap. They made their bed now lie in it.

^ Nonsense. First it should read eastward expansion, but i guess in Trump times words have no meaning anymore :O:

Timely removal of russian forces from east Germany alright, the Russians did it. Included in this treaty is the Nato's promise not to expand eastward, but to create a cordon secure, not touching the russian or the west german border.
Later the "outstretched hand" of the West disguised the dagger in the other hand, trying to destabilize and trying to take over what was left of the Soviet Union.
They indeed made their bed in trusting, and now lie in what came of it.

LOL oops ummm yes looking at the globe North up that would be 'east'ward expansion

yes well i thought it was a glitch, np :salute:
And initially it was not Merkel, but Kohl who was left to Germany. Complete standstill for decades to come.

(Google translation)
"A unified Germany, anchored in a changed (political) NATO, whose treaty area is not shifted east."

This is a memorial note of the US Secretary of State James Baker after a conversation on 9 February 1990 with the Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom he summarized the "final result" of the interview.

As the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (FAZ) further reported on Tuesday, the historian Mary Elise Sarotte of the University of Southern California at the annual convention of American historians in New York presented and explained this generally unknown fact.

"That meant: Nato should not even be extended to the territory of the GDR. Baker left a letter for Kohl, who visited Moscow a day after him. Accordingly, he had asked Gorbachev before the choice whether he would prefer a non-aligned Germany without US troops or a Germany with Nato bond and the assurance that the alliance area should not 'one inch' grow, "adds the FAZ.

Kohl then made an offer to Gorbachev on the Bakers line, with which he obtained Soviet approval for reunification. The failure of Gorbachev had been to give written confirmation of the freezing of geopolitical status.In addition, an initial secret note published in 2009 on Genscher's statement of 10 February 1990 on Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze reads:

"BM (Federal Minister): We are aware that joining a united Germany with NATO raises complicated questions. For us, however, it is clear: NATO will not expand to the east. "Genscher remembered what had happened in 1956 in the Hungarian uprising: Parts of the insurgents had announced that they wanted to join the Western alliance, and thus Moscow had the pretext for a military intervention delivered. As far as the GDR was concerned, Genscher explicitly added: "As for the remainder, the non-expansion of NATO, this applies in general."

A year or two ago it was very easy to search the intardnet and find the Gorbachev interview. I read it several times and once posted a link on subsim. He stated quite explicitly there were no promises made that would prevent east ward expansion of NATO after the transition.

Funny, today all I read are articles which inundate the net accusing NATO of broken promises. Though I must admit I only went back 6-7 pages looking for the interview. Seems we are force fed information designed to influence our thoughts.

I found the old post but unfortunately I didn't post a link to it. Must have been back in the day before Sailor Steve got on us for not posting links and using those ***** asterisks. :D


old post: According to Mikhail Gorbachev former secretary general of the Soviet Union said: “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years."

All that was agreed upon was until Soviet forces had completed their withdrawal from the former GDR, only German territorial defense units not integrated into NATO would be deployed in that territory.

There would be no increase in the numbers of troops or equipment of U.S., British and French forces stationed in Berlin.

Once Soviet forces had withdrawn, German forces assigned to NATO could be deployed in the former GDR, but foreign forces and nuclear weapons systems would not be deployed there.

And yes, maybe trust could have been an issue especially when dealing with the siloviki I would say are one reason why western business closed up shop and left the region and those that remain, remain wary. Maybe too its not so much about trust but about compatibility.

The West gave Russia its word, and then showed that this was worth nothing. You may say now: "Your own guilt, you stupid Russians", but do not be surprised that they learned the lesson and never give a dime for any of your future promises, announcement and lip confessions again.

I know that it was not signed in a treaty that NAOT shoudl stay away. But NATO told the Russians: if you stick to your word, we stick to ours. They did what they said they woudl do, and pulled out - and NATO broke its own word and moved in.

That lesson sank deep. Got fooled once, never get fooled again.

And Gorbatchev - that is a topic in itself. Dont get me started. He was not the only one doing a lot of talking at that time. I recall that even American and NAOT diplomats later admitted that according assurances were made in spoken words. And I also recall that one American could not resist to lecture the world on the difference between a verbal assurance, which in his view obviously can be ignored any time, and a written treaty.

That today nobody wnats to hear this anymore and treats it as if it never happened, is clear. Nobody likes to admit that he played unfair. And it was the time when the victory of the West was declared, and the end of history was announced, and everybody in the West was full of his ego, and the defeat of socialsim was celebrated.

Well, there is news. Socialism is stronger than ever in the past 100 years in Europe, and Sovjet cult celbrates a great revival in Russia.

Russians, Russia, and Putin maybe a lot of things but stupid isnt one of them. I may be wrong but I percieve by this talk here we should feel sorry for them and find ways to blame ourselves for the current world order. I find it to be a load of poop.

Nonsense.

But America's self-perception is extremely self-centered and always has based on the sometimes unspoken but often spoken-out premise that the US is the best of nations in the world.

To see things through the others' eyes is really no strength of the US, and never was. That one does not need to learn the world'S other languages since the world learns America's language instead, adds to a feeling that America is America up to its borders - and abroad.

But I can understand where in this specific case of Russia your suspicion about Germany and its view of Russia is coming from. Germans traditionally are extremely Russophile indeed, and it has been like this already since the time before WWI. And Germany'S calculation for its policy towards Russia in the past 15, 20 years, has been a house pof cards that in principle already has collapsed. German diplomats just do not want to see and admit the failure. Its a pattern in German foreign diplomacy to never admit misperceptions, Germany does the same towards Turkey.

Please note that I am too sober and not socialist enough to fall for this cheap kind of Russophilia. Relations I had to Russians on perosnal level are somethign vey different than poltical issues between states, and as your former ambassador to Germany once said so nicely and to the shock of the Germna public watching him on TV: "States have no friends, states have interests". I try to describe Russia'S ionterests not by the ambitions of the West and what the West thinks Russia should want, but by trying to see things thorugh Russdias - and Putin's - eyes. That may give the impression that I admire or like him. I don't. By this approach I just get a different perception than from watching state propaganda TV and Western diplomatic blabla. Putin is effective, while the West claism and boasts and gets few things done right, syria and Crimea are two good exambples. The Russians kick the sh1T out of people there - not because Russians are sadistic or genetically predetermined to be like this, but because this is how you win wars instead of benevolently loosing them. I realise the effectiveness. Morals - have little to do with it. The wars the West has done in the ME in the past 27 years, in my books are all strategic defeats, and getting trapped in labyrinths we still cluelessly run around in.

So do the west take him seriously or what?

But there were seven (7) other candidates :o



http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_enLWf3Qki8...tombstones.jpg

^@MrQuatro yes, there were other candidates.. nice picture :haha:


@Jim: Yes absolutely, we should take Putin seriously, which means we have to listen to what he says. I guess he indeed is not for a weapon's race because
a) he is already strong enough, an arms race would be an entirely western act to catch up for years to come, and
b) while the russian economy is far from collapsing (by all sanctions, Russia is so big and can provide almost all by itself, except some advanced western "decadent" western luxury maybe :03:), Putin has no interest in spending more than necessary, for weapons.
Deterrence is going on, sure. US builds a rocket to hit any place in the world within minutes (b.t.w. circumventing the early alarm systems of defence), Russia of course will also build one. And it did.

I also think that we should not bedevil him. If we give him a chance to get out of his pariah corner (where we the west west put him, after robbing and breaking our word, as a good part of the world sees it), he can be a dependable partner, at least in trade. The more the exchange, trade-wise and cultural, the sooner a civilian society can grow, in Russia.
He just is not as simple and direct as the US in his talk, but wraps his will and intentions in words that can be easily overheard, by people who hear what they want to hear.

While i can "understand" how the secret services like to have the good old cold war times back, could it be there are some inner powerplays in the UK, about how to handle today's situation? Falling back to 1980ies politics does not make much sense in this brave new world. China is much more dangerous than Russia, in a lot of ways.


@Skybird: you wrote "But America's self-perception is extremely self-centered and always has based on the sometimes unspoken but often spoken-out premise that the US is the best of nations in the world. [...]
To see things through the others' eyes is really no strength of the US, and never was. [...]"

Very true, but then they never had to learn it the hard way. Filter-bubbles.
Still, it surprised me that combover Caligula could win a presidential campaign based on the premise the US were not yet selfish enough :O: