Most official output from russia needs a really heavy filtering. But to use the word 'bandit state' - I think it's a bit more complicated than that.
To me, a bandit state echoes a temporary institution that is held up mostly through the use and threat of direct violence. To my eyes elements of the current status harken to a russian tzardom hundreds of years back.
Strong autocratic leaders have always been a part of the political apparatus and the fatalistic psyche of the population drive individuls to yield, survive and pour their energies to something else than politics. It is also notable that russia is a typical country suffering from the curse of oil which itself is empirically a really hard thing to avoid or heal from which twists the dynamics even further.
I would suggest three brief bodies of text to explore the problem of russia to those who are not familiar with them:
And thirdly, a bit longer work that reads like an autobiographic surrealist version of Catch-22, a description of the soviet system which trained most of those now in power (Suvorov:"Inside the soviet military"): http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov12/index.html
Dude, what Western people are completely missing, is that we're being bombarded with propaganda too! The Ukraine crisis starts and suddenly Russians turn out to be massive homophobes, huh?
Putin is evil and Obama is good, right? Nevermind that the US is still torturing people in the very Guantanamo Obama promised to close.
It's just not as simple as choosing to side with "the good guys" (=The West). In reality, it's a game of politicians vs us little folks, ie. rulers vs subjects.
> The Ukraine crisis starts and suddenly Russians turn out to be massive homophobes, huh?
Suddenly? They'd been widely criticized for their new homophobic laws well before the Ukraine crisis.
Also, the US torturing people doesn't make other atrocities okay. I keep hearing countries and their fanboys say "yeah, but that other country also does bad things", or "but China is even worse!" Yeah, but that doesn't mean it's okay for your country to do the same. It means that the other country should stop. Can we stop making this a race to the bottom?
fsloth|11 years ago
To me, a bandit state echoes a temporary institution that is held up mostly through the use and threat of direct violence. To my eyes elements of the current status harken to a russian tzardom hundreds of years back.
Strong autocratic leaders have always been a part of the political apparatus and the fatalistic psyche of the population drive individuls to yield, survive and pour their energies to something else than politics. It is also notable that russia is a typical country suffering from the curse of oil which itself is empirically a really hard thing to avoid or heal from which twists the dynamics even further.
I would suggest three brief bodies of text to explore the problem of russia to those who are not familiar with them:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
Kennan's long telegram: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/documents/episode-1/ke...
And thirdly, a bit longer work that reads like an autobiographic surrealist version of Catch-22, a description of the soviet system which trained most of those now in power (Suvorov:"Inside the soviet military"): http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov12/index.html
honeybooboo123|11 years ago
Putin is evil and Obama is good, right? Nevermind that the US is still torturing people in the very Guantanamo Obama promised to close.
It's just not as simple as choosing to side with "the good guys" (=The West). In reality, it's a game of politicians vs us little folks, ie. rulers vs subjects.
mcv|11 years ago
Suddenly? They'd been widely criticized for their new homophobic laws well before the Ukraine crisis.
Also, the US torturing people doesn't make other atrocities okay. I keep hearing countries and their fanboys say "yeah, but that other country also does bad things", or "but China is even worse!" Yeah, but that doesn't mean it's okay for your country to do the same. It means that the other country should stop. Can we stop making this a race to the bottom?
zer0c|11 years ago