Is Russia reverting back to a totalitarian state?

[Poiuyt]

Journalists are starting to drop like flies (literally in the last case) and protests are being dispersed by clubbing. Putin has been gradually rolling back democracy, eliminating checks and balances, and centralizing power. It's starting to look like the old days.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/03/russian_journal.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/05/europe/EU-GEN-Russia-Protest.php

[ShortnFiery]

1. With the recent news of Pooty Putin's enemies dropping like flies ...

as well as the police clubbing demonstrators, I think they've already achieved totalitarian government.

Oh damn, I hope that we won't get more fear mongering in the future from US Presidents about "The (Russian) Threat." That cold war lasted seemingly forever.

However, things could get real frosty with Russia should Dimson choose to bomb Iran. :shrug:

[itsmesgd]

2. We are heading there just as fast as they are

We simply bought off our media, in Russia they are having a tougher time quieting their critics.

[ShortnFiery]

4. Yes, our M$M is IMO, nothing less than treasonous in the way it *filters* and *spins* the news n/t

[dkofos]

3. No more the the USA

[atreides1]

5. Ask Condi Rice

Isn't she supposed to be the expert on the Soviet Union?

[BeyondGeography]

6. Yes...Here's more proof

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070129fa_fact_specter

Putin is using the country's energy wealth to destroy anyone who dares to criticize him. Most of the population is apparently enjoying its economic bounty too much to notice right now. From the article:

<“The majority of the population, they are absolutely happy,” Alexei Volin, who served for three years as deputy chief of staff in Putin’s government and now runs a highly successful publishing house, said when we met in Moscow. “They get more money. Consumption has increased two and a half times in the last six years. People are buying cars, country houses, they are going to big shopping malls—as big as those in the United States.’’ Volin, a trim, clean-cut, forty-three-year-old man dressed in a white button-down shirt and khaki Dockers, smiled. “They are just as happy as they can be,’’ he said. “They don’t have a headache because of some political problem or the concentration of power. They don’t watch TV news. They don’t care.

<“There is another group,’’ he went on. “They are unhappy, because political life has been frozen. They don’t like the situation with Russian television or the press. Several months ago, I talked to one important Kremlin person and I asked him why is our TV news so awful and dull. And his answer was ‘Why are you watching TV? People like you should go read the Internet if you want information. TV is not for you. It’s for the people. ’ ’’

<In this context, freedom of the press doesn’t matter much and, increasingly in Russia, doesn’t exist. “Here we have this question of freedom or wealth,’’ Aleksei Venediktov, who runs the radio station Echo of Moscow, told me. It’s the one remaining station in the capital that broadcasts truthful, and even combative, news reports and live call-in shows—a genre that has disappeared from Russian television. “People chose wealth. They do not understand that freedom is a necessary condition for preserving that wealth and the security that they have come to value. To be engaged in honest reporting about delicate subjects like corruption or to travel to Chechnya is too dangerous. People don’t want it, they don’t ask for it, and they really don’t understand that they need it.”>

[Ignacio Upton]

7. Falling oil prices would be good for Russia, in this sense

It would get rid of Pooty Poot.

[BeyondGeography]

8. No question, but the long-term trend is in Pooty's favor

He's over-reaching, however, and even a temporary downturn would be dangerous for him.

[leftofthedial]

9. no. Russia is just following the repuke American example

of "democracy"

[BayCityProgressive]

10. Sort of

before people at least had thier needs met with housing, education, healthcare, food, ecteven if there were lines ect. They are now becoming a fascist state with no benefits for the people. Neo-Nazis abound. Kinda like here.

[Joe Chi Minh]

11. It sure going to be better than the tyranny of fear and violence of

the US-inspired mafia kleptocracy - with Russsia's vast natural resources sold to the most evil, foreign interests in the shape of our Western, vandal corporatists, we know and have come to love so dearly, in our own backyard.

[Joe Chi Minh]

13. Even now, according to today's Daily Mail, its estimated that there are 400 or so organised-crime

groups, whose 10,000 members control companies and politicians all over the country.

[liberalpragmatist]

12. I see it more going in the direction of pre-90s Mexico

A Faux democracy that's basically an authoritarian party dictatorship. Not totalitarian, but not free.

[Marie26]

14. Yeah

That's why Bush like Putin so much. He sees a kindred spirit.

[La_Fourmi_Rouge]

15. it's pretty much there already. n/t

[Solo_in_MD]

16. Was it ever really not one?