Quote:
Originally Posted by MaDalton
so basically Russia is an anarchy and the only thing you cannot do is openly criticize it (as a journalist or political opposition) because that gets you silenced.
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Since I'm an anarchist, I love it
However anarchy doesn't mean high level of crime. Moscow is 4x times bigger than NYC, but murder, rape and robbery cases are not that big as there. If you kill or rape, you will be caught and money won't help to avoid the prison. On the other hand, insignificant crimes like tax evasion (not punished by prison time for a stand-alone person), working w/o a license, disorderly conduct (e.g. public sex) or prostitution is something our police don't really care about. You can't get 15 years in prison for that like in the USA. Also our police doesn't shoot civilians. Russia a rather safe and free place to live with its own rules. You can drink beer and smoke in public places even if it's forbidden. You can smoke a pot because there is no punishment for drug use (only distribution is illegal), but you can't kill, rape or rob. So once again: I'm ok with that. I know the rules and I feel pretty well with them.
As about criticizing of government. Yes, you can't do it in federal media (not completely of course, but very limited). However you can do it via independent media (e.g.
TV Rain is an extremely anti-Putin channel and it's the only news source I'm watching on TV). Also there is a ton of similar sites in the Internet. For example,
Navalny, who openly calls Putin a thief and wants to jail him for life, has got 27% of votes on latest elections of Moscow mayor. That's him in the federal court:
Note his laptop. There is written: "ВОР" (a thief), with Putin's face in the middle.
Navalny and evil Russian police:
Even police loves him. When his office is being searched by fabricated reason, the officers are asking for an autograph and listening his lectures about Putin's corruption - no j/k
So the political situation here is not as simple, as your media tries to show you. We have a strong opposition and a lot of people (including me) support it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MaDalton
edit: And I think we can also agree that it is very helpful to create outside enemies to get your own people behind you - like Putins approval rates confirm
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Yes, the same as Bush Jr. did to get 97% approval rating (Putin can even dream about it). I don't want to say that current Russian president is somehow better or worse than Bush, Obama or Clinton. Same shit - different faces. All politicians are like that.