There are a lot of reasons why Russians–young Russians, young Muscovites in particular–poured out into the streets last Saturday to protest rampant election fraud in the Duma vote. For the past couple of decades, young Muscovites couldn’t be bothered with politics of any sort–they’ve been dealing with fraud-riddled elections going back to 1996, or 1993–take your pick of post-Soviet elections.
It’s all pretty complicated, and it’s been building for awhile from what I’ve been hearing from friends over the past 18 months or so, but anyway here are a few sample videos that should give you a better, closer-up sense what’s going on there, and demonstrate in a more immediate way why so many Generation-Putin Muscovites are turning on to the adrenaline buzz of political action and fighting power face-to-face. Even for the normally jaded, impossible-to-shock Muscovites, being jaded and cynical has gotten boring.
Before getting to those vids, keep in mind a couple of things here: 1) Russians tend to be tougher and more anarchic by nature than Americans and other Westerners–it’s a special kind of anarchism that comes with controlling 1/6 of the world’s land mass but only 1/10th of neighboring China’s population (and falling); 2) to quote Dr. Limonov, “The fundamental difference between the Russian character and the American: Maximalism”; 3) recent historical memory: In the 1990’s, younger Muscovites didn’t take to the streets in big numbers because Communism sucked so badly; Under Putin, younger Muscovites didn’t take to the streets because Yeltsin sucked so badly; under Putin’s second-banana, Medvedev, the sucking stagnated along with the faces and storylines–it became repetitive, and the blame belonged to the current elite. There’s no recent-bad-memory to blame present-tense misery on. 4) Muscovites are fanatical vacationers, and they tend to vacation in places that suck less than Moscow. When you have all these young travel-junkies from Moscow dreaming only of their next vacation, and meantime comparing the corruption, high prices, and the in-your-face elite that doesn’t even have the decency to pretend to put on a pretend-democratic election, it doesn’t take long for that to get converted into resentment and the urge to sucker-punch back.
So here are a few samples:
1. Medvedev vs. Kudrin (dubbed): This was the smackdown that got smacked down, and whatever else you say about this clip, it’s some of the best Raw Power-Politics I’ve seen in awhile. (To compare, in this country, folks can’t even handle it if some uppity hillbilly barks “Liar!” at a president who, let’s be honest here–lies. I was annoyed by the collective squealing when that “Liar!” shout happened, and seeing this Medvedev-Kudrin clip only reminds me what sorry excuses for human-plankton Democrats are on this score.) In this clip, President Dmitry Medvedev is doing his best to pimp-slap his “liberal” Finance Minister, Alexei Kudrin, before the TV cameras…but as it goes on, you realize that it’s President Medvedev who’s getting dick-slapped harder. Watch Kudrin’s snide expression, his barely-contained smirk that nearly breaks out into full mocking giggles.
Background: This failed attempt at a dressing-down took place a few months ago, in late September. Putin has just announced that he’s going to switch seats with Medvedev–Putin will take the presidency back, and hand the prime minister’s job to his favorite second-banana. That leaves Medvedev looking even more like Putin’s monkey than ever before, when people could at least sort of lie to themselves; and it left Alexei Kudrin, the Finance Minister and the favorite of Western bankers, spurned and bitter. Kudrin thought Putin was going to name him as the new prime minister, not Medvedev. (The same thing happened to Kudrin in late 2007–most people thought Putin would anoint Kudrin as his successor, but in the crazy intra-FSB war that went on in 2007, one siloviki faction that didn’t want a President Kudrin arrested his deputy in the finance ministry, Sergei Storchak, jailed him, and squeezed him hard, until Putin surprised all factions by anointing Dmitry Medvedev as the new president instead.) Point being, this is the second time Kudrin got stood up for one of the two top spots in Russia. So the day before this video clip, Kudrin was in Washington DC meeting with all the World Bank and IMF austerity-whores, wherein he started bad-mouthing Medvedev as some kind of deficit-spending Big Government bogeyman. What you’ll see here was Medvedev’s attempt at restoring his credibility:
COMMENT: What was supposed to be a dressing-down turned out to be humiliating open defiance: “Yeah, sure Dima, put that in an email to me, meanwhile I’ll talk this over with the guy who’s holding your leash.”
2. “You are Surkov [Kremlin] propagandists!”: This was supposed to be a major FoxNews-style “ambush” by a pro-Kremlin TV station, NTV, meant to embarrass and discredit a Western-backed polling organization called “Golos.” Until recently, Russians would lap up a TV attack-hit on an American-backed “liberal” election polling outfit like this, if only out of a knee-jerk patriotism and resentment over how the West screwed Russia in the 1990s and in Kosovo. Most Russians had about as much fondness for a “liberal” outfit like “Golos” as FoxNews zombies have for anything “liberal” in this country. But as you’ll see, the “Golos” guy, Grigory Melkonyants is no pussy. Melkonyants pretty much invents the ultimate anti-oligarch-media-ambush killer by repeating 84 times, over and over, “You are Surkov’s propagandists” [“Vii–surkovskaya propaganda!”]. By “Surkov” he means “The Kremlin”–as in, “You are Kremlin propagandists.”
Vladislav Surkov is the Kremlin’s Wizard of Oz, Putin’s psyops chessmaster and PR spin-doctor–Surkov has almost singlehandedly shaped and framed political reality in the Putin-era, going back to 1999. [Read the excellent Wall Street Journal profile on Surkov by Gregory White and Alan Cullison that you can dowload here in this pdf.] You don’t need to understand Russian to understand how deeply satisfying and funny this video is–you just need to have watched some old Bugs Bunny or one of those old John Cleese “how to annoy” clips to grasp the comedy here, as the pro-Kremlin “ambush” TV crew gets angrier and angrier, burning red with steam boiling out of their ears like Yosemite Sam as their “ambush questions like, “Do you work for the CIA?” and “Who pays you your money” are answered with the exact same “You are Surkov’s propagandists” over and over and over. Eighty-four (84) times, folks. That’s how you shove a spiny bug up Power’s ass, Russia-style. Russians are no strangers to Bugs Bunny, or to the art of annoying smug, powerful servants of the state (see under: Gogol, etc).
WATCH (this video was cam-filmed by a Golos colleague–just listen for: “Vii Surkovskaya propaganda”):
3. “Nashi” Putin Youth: Early last week, the Kremlin bused in hordes of non-Muscovites into Moscow to work out some of their latent resentment against the snotty Muscovites; Moscow is a kind of city-state fortress of European-level wealth barricaded within 11-time-zones of Third World decay. So often all it takes to get a non-Muscovite to come to Moscow and show their support for Putin is a free bus ride, a place to sleep, and the promise that Moscow cops won’t harass them, and you can raise your “Nashi” army.
First up, and probably most famously last week, is “Sveta from Ivanovo.” Ivanovo used to be known as the “city of brides” in Soviet times, because the textile industry there employed largely female workers. This video is short, so you don’t need to know Russian to get the gist of what’s happening here. “Sveta” can’t answer a simple question: What has United Russia done for her? In the middle of her stumbling, she weakly suggests, “There are more vegetables”:
And here is another popular clip last week showing out-of-towners in the center of Moscow hiding their faces as they chant “Medvedev! Victory!” This is the first time supporters of the Kremlin have felt compelled to hide their faces, out of shame perhaps–or more likely, out of fear. Whatever resentments they harbor against rich Moscow, there’s also the hick outsider’s instinctive awe and fear of Moscow, of the capital’s awesome wealth and its inhabitants’ sophistication. So these “Nashisti” kids must have sensed that they were being used, that this wasn’t the usual Putin rally, and that the same Muscovites from the Kremlin who brought them here could easily throw them under that bus if the situation demanded:
Obviously this is just scratching the surface, but it’s a start.
Anyway, in the upcoming days, we’re hoping to publish a more in-depth piece by a former contributor to The eXile. We’re also working on getting something soon from former eXile columnist Edward Limonov, who just submitted his application to run against Vladimir Putin in next year’s presidential elections–and against billionaire New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov, the guy who owns the magazine SNOB. Not exactly a 99-percenter type, Misha Prokhorov. My oh my, I could tell you stories, good stories, funny stories…I better not, better save it for some other time–.
Would you like to know more? Read “Over 10,000 in Moscow Protest Election Fraud…The 99-Percent Everywhere Is Sick of Oligarchy” by Mark Ames, and “How The West Helped Invent Russia’s Election Fraud: OSCE Whistleblower Exposes 1996 Whitewash” by Alexander Zaitchik and Mark Ames.”
Buy The eXile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia co-authored by Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi (Grove Press).
Click the cover & buy the book!
Read more: alexei kudrin, ambush, andrew breitbart, breitbart, dmitry medvedev, edward limonov, foxnews, james o'keefe, kremlin, limonov, new jersey nets, ntv, prokhorov, putin, snobs, storchak, the exile, vladimir putin, vladislav surkov, Mark Ames, Russia
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27 Comments
Add your own1. cockson | December 14th, 2011 at 7:25 pm
omg, limonov article. pure glee! thanks, mark.
2. Fissile | December 14th, 2011 at 7:56 pm
“meantime comparing the corruption, high prices, and the in-your-face elite that doesn’t even have the decency to pretend to put on a pretend-democratic election, it doesn’t take long for that to get converted into resentment and the urge to sucker-punch back.”
This Russian elite should consider moving to the USA, where despite decades of “in-your-face” no one has laid a finger on the 1 Percenters, much less sucker punched them.
3. Bradford C. | December 14th, 2011 at 8:07 pm
I’m going to need a followup to this because I see that my brain wasn’t performing at its peak capacity (interpret that how you will):
Reason is overrated, why? Because being reasonable is socially determined. All of your actions, all the courses that life could take, they’re all shaped by the social environment as much as the physical. So let’s take Sartre’s example of Mathieu: what an asshole. He manipulates his mistress into getting an abortion so that he won’t have to face the burden of bearing a child. Her wishes and desires are never taken into consideration, and she in fact points this out to him, that due to his rhetorical abilities and knowledge she never really had a choice.
Mathieu is the ultimate rational actor, and there are guys just like him all over the place from what I’ve seen. Oh sure, they’re polite, charming, interesting, maybe even attractive, but from their perspective we only exist in THEIR world, and OUR actions should fall in line with their goals or else we are of no use. According to Sartre, true freedom means becoming nothing, but who has ever truly admired a Nothing Man?
Sartre’s protagonist continues to thrive in his environment, because he meets all social expectations. The fact that he’s a self-absorbed prick who only sees others as means to his own ends is unaware to most other characters, because Mathieu’s life is beyond their perspective and so are his thoughts.
We are still living in an Age of Reason, where Nothing Men are free to manipulate society to their own ends, because by all perceivable accounts they’re perfectly fair and reasonable guys. So what about the rest of us? What are we supposed to do? Go out and protest? Demand our rights? No no no, you can’t do that now, that wouldn’t be reasonable…
4. esmerelds | December 14th, 2011 at 8:53 pm
Golos should totally rename itself Gogol. That clip is Gold.
5. Вова | December 14th, 2011 at 10:14 pm
Пойдем домой, мистер Эймс. Пойдем домой, где тепло.
С уважением, ваш старый приятель –
Вова Путин
6. Ilona | December 14th, 2011 at 11:32 pm
Ha! Putin’s party is accused of election fraud, and yet they managed to lose a considerable amount of votes in the Duma elections. What is the world coming to if the Kremlins can’t even fix elections today as they used to?
Damn the Western special democracy spin consultants!
7. matt | December 15th, 2011 at 12:39 am
More limonov please!! That sounds amazing. I’ve been re-reading the only three novels of his I’ve been able to get in English. They mean so much to me and to so many others. His old eXile articles are excellent as well, but to be able to read new stuff from him would be incredible.
8. G.A. | December 15th, 2011 at 2:22 am
Oh god I love the last clip. MEDVEDEV, VICTORY er please don’t film me, don’t film me man, MEDVEDEV, VICTORY. If they weren’t hiding in shame, I’d almost think it’s a night of the living dead.
9. Phil | December 15th, 2011 at 5:25 am
@matt Enter Limonov’s LiveJournal updates into Google Translate. The results read very much like his old eXile articles.
10. G.A. | December 15th, 2011 at 11:31 am
By the way, I keep being told by United Russia stooges that every party had its members present in every election committee, and that party leaders have signed the election results. How much truth is there to this? Can any Russian or arcane person tell me?
11. Bradford C. | December 15th, 2011 at 11:34 am
In Dedication:
To The Exiled…
DEMON’S LAMENT
———-
OR GOBELINS
VIRGINITY
…
IT PAINS ME
TO WRITE OF THINGS
SO PERSONALLY
YET I SEE IT MUST
BE DONE
FOR MUCH FAITH
IS PLACED IN MY
INTELLIGENCE
YET I AM ONLY ONE MAN
WHO CARRIES THE VOICE
OF TRILLIONS…
THEY LAUGHED AT US
WE VIRGINS…
THE KINGS AND NOBLES
THEY ALL FACED THE
SAME PROBLEMS
AND THEY FACED DEATH
IN ORDER TO FUCK OUR SISTERS
THEY BASHED IN MY FATHER’S SKULL
WITH A MACE
SO THAT MY SISTER
WOULD HAVE NO MAN
TO PROTECT HER
FOR I WAS JUST A WELP
AND THEY KNEW I WAS POWERLESS TO STOP IT
HOW I LONGED TO SEE THE BLOOD OOZE
FROM THEIR EARS
AND TO HEAR THE CRIES OF THEIR OWN FEMALE KIN
YET WHAT GOOD WOULD IT DO
WE ARE BUT SIMPLE PEOPLE
WITH THE SAME GOALS AND ASPIRATIONS
IT IS NOT WITHIN US, THE NATURE OF KILLING
ONLY THE ANGELS OF GOD CLAIM SUCH RIGHTS
MANY CRUEL BIRDS HAVE PECKED MY FLESH
TO REND THE SCALES THAT WOULD BE MY ARMOR
AND SCARRED ME WITH MARKS NAMED UNHOLY
IN TRUTH THEY WERE JEALOUS
THOUGH I COULD NEVER SAY IT
I LOVED ALL WOMEN, AND THIS SENTIMENT WAS RETURNED
YET THEY CLOSED MY EARS SO THAT I WOULD NOT HEAR IT
THEY BLINDED MY SIGHT SO THAT I COULD NOT READ THE SIGNS
SO THAT ALL I COULD KNOW WERE MESSAGES IN A BOTTLE
REACHING MY ISLAND OF LONELINESS, FROM A PLACE OUT OF TIME
HOW DESPERATELY I WISHED TO KNOW WHO SENT ME THESE BOTTLES
TO KNOW THAT PERSON WHO LOVED ME AND WAS NEITHER MOTHER NOR FATHER
NOT COUSIN OR MY FRIENDS’ SISTER
A PRINCESS, THAT PLATONIC IDEAL TO EMBRACE AND LOVE
TO GUARD AND PROTECT FROM FOUL ROGUES THAT WOULD DO HER HARM
SO MANY OF YOU WORTHLESS ASSHOLES ARE OUT THERE
BLEACHED WHITE TO HIDE YOUR SHITTY FUCKING WANTS
I DESPISE YOU SO DEEPLY, FOR DISCARDING THE WOMAN I LOVE AND BRUISING
HER SOUL WITH BARBED TONGUES
LADIES ARE SO SENSITIVE TO WORDS, DIDN’T YOU KNOW?
THEY ARE NOT YOUR FUCKING GUY FRIENDS, GUY
I WOULD SNAP YOUR KNECK LIKE A GODDAMN WISHBONE
YET THERE IS TOO MUCH LOVE IN ME FOR THAT
I WANTED FOR DEATH SO TERRIBLY
TO END THIS FOOLISH LIFE WHICH KEPT ME SEPARATE FROM MY BETTER HALF
TO BE IMPRISONED IN MY OWN MIND, IT IS A TERRIBLE FORTUNE TO BEHOLD
SO I RISKED EVERYTHING, ALL MY FUTURE TO SPIT IN THE WARDEN’S EYE
AND TO BREAK MY BONDS WHICH CHAINED ME IN ISOLATION
FOR I DIED LAST NIGHT
SHE WAS DRUNK, YET SO LONELY
THE PAINS ON HER FACE WERE PLAIN TO SEE
FOR I HAVE WITNESSED THEM IN PAINTINGS
THROUGHOUT THE AGES
IT IS THE SAME PAIN I FEEL AS I WRITE THIS FOOL’S ERRAND
THAT DEEP LONELINESS WHICH COULD ONLY COME FROM
A LONG REJECTION NOTE
SHE WAS ALREADY TO LEAVE
BUT I HAD TO SHOW HER
I BROUGHT HER INTO MY ARMS AND WRAPPED THEM AROUND THE SMALL
OF HER BACK, AS IF I COULD NEVER LET GO
THE SENSATION OF HER SINEWS STILL DANCE ON MY FINGERTIPS
I FELT NOTHING AS SHE RETURNED THE GESTURE, THOUGH I KNOW SHE FELT MUCH
ALL MY FOCUS WAS UPON MY ACCURSED LIPS AS THEY PRESSED EVER SO LIGHTLY AGAINST
HER COLLAR BONE, THE SAME ONE I BROKE AS A CHILD TO EXCRUCIATING AGONY
OH! TO THINK OF IT NOW IS THE SAME AS NOT BEING WITH SHE
THAT IS HOW I KNOW HER PLEASURE, EVER SO SLIGHTLY
FOR THE UNDEAD SENSE MUCH PLEASURE FROM THE PAINED
THAT IS MY MOMENT WHICH WILL BE LOST IN TIME
MY HAND MAY FORGET ITS SKILL FOR THERE ARE STILL MANY NAPES TO CARESS
AND WOUNDS TO HEAL
YET THIS MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE WILL FLOAT ETERNALLY UPON THE AETHER
FOR ANY MAN TO FIND
BEWARE YOUR BACK, MY FOOL
FOR IN THE SHADOWS I WAIT TO EXECUTE THE FINAL BLOW
IN AN ETERNAL FABIAN STRATEGY
GUARD YOUR LADY, SER
FOR I AM WHAT SHE DREAMS OF
12. frank | December 15th, 2011 at 12:30 pm
As an American observer to what is happening in Russia some thoughts:
If the West has been tampering in Russian politics and elections for years – and not to mention the US backed psyops color “revolutions” of Ukraine and Georgia over the last decade – shouldn’t there be more of a sense among the Russian urbanites that indeed attemtpts to infilitrate the Russsian political system are very real and they as a populace should be very wary of said Western influence?
I mean, as an American cognizant of my country’s incessant attempts and drives to globally dominate it sure seems coincidental what with the conflict in Syria and rush to war with Iran – both areas in which Russia exists as a stumbling block to the West’s drive – that now the political stability of Russia is suddenly in play.
As in Libya, as in Syria, as was in Georgia, as was in Ukraine, as was in…. ad infinitum, the US has been consistenly at work in destabilizing any and all entities that exist to block or slow its progress as an empire, so I wonder if the cynicism towards the Putin government might not seem as the most perfect of storms for the likes of Hillary Clinton and the rest of the neoliberal marauders.
Again, I’m not from Russia but having seen this same story play itself out again and again and again and again due to the vile machinations of the US and its accomplices, I am very wary whenever I see “spontaneous” outbursts in nations that are directly in the path of the US empire.
Thoughts and comments are welcome.
13. G.A. | December 15th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
@ 12.
Well first of all, Libya has actually been a western ally.
Second of all, you’re forgetting a lot of countries that have also suffered internal unrest, while being useful to US policy in some way. There’s Egypt, who has been pursuing a realpolitik foreign policy helpful to the US, and there’s Tunisia, Morocco and Jordan which are also US friendly, yet suffered upheavals.
You’re looking at the world through the lens of US conspiracy and subsequently miss out everything outside it. I am quite frankly a little bit tired by such thinking, because I come from a Central European country, where the former inept communist regime has always blamed foreign provocateurs and agents for any unrest. Every anti-regime demontration was just a bunch of extremist criminals acting on behalf of foreign embassies. It’s just so mind numbingly stupid. The people didn’t need any agents to know that the economy is shit, that the regime is brutal or that they really, really can live a much better life like the people just over the border.
Does anyone seriously believe National Bolsheviks, Communists or nationalists led by Zhirinovsky are being led by foreign interests?
Thing is, no matter how hard any foreign agency tries, you can’t have a revolution without natural causes making it happen. You don’t get thousands and hundreds of thousands of people on the street without them having a reason. United Russia DID falsify the elections. Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria and Egypt DID suffer a significant increase in food prices coupled with a demographic bulge.
Thing is, democratic regimes can overcome such upheavals by changing the rule democratically, in unfree countries you get protests and instability, because people can’t do anything else.
If you ask me, the reason why Jordan and Morocco or Algeria don’t have a full out revolution is, that they went ahead and gave people what they wanted. Hell, it’s not that much of a stretch to give them free elections or affordable bread. Notice how they subsequently don’t have revolution.
What’s the proof of US “destabilising” these countries? Where is it? If giving a couple millions to NGOs doing nansy pansy human rights stuff and telling people “fraud is bad” or “torture is bad” coincides with regimes being toppled then hell, then don’t those countries have some serious issues of their own making going on?
Right now what I’m seeing is just United Russia looking for scapegoats that could be blamed for problems of their own doings. No matter how many illuminati judeobolshevik CIA agents they summon, the problem lies entirely elsewhere. And the people know it.
14. Bradford C. | December 15th, 2011 at 4:32 pm
‘Yo Frankie boy…
EVERYBODY wants to be An American. Haven’t you heard?
THERE ARE NO -CATS- IN AMERICA
15. Eric | December 15th, 2011 at 5:31 pm
hello Matt,
Congratulations for your excellent work.
I am very interested in the writer
Edouard Limonov since I read the excellent book by Emmanuel Carrère “Limonov,” a best seller in France, named best book of 2011 by many magazines.
This allowed me to discover your magazine exile, and I bought the book through Amazon: it’s remarkable. Not only are the articles of Limonov, as well as your own.
You are a great journalist (that is the opinion of a small French journalist)
I especially enjoyed your walk with Limonov, to meet the coal miners protesting in Moscow.
Have you read the book by Emmanuel Carrere?
If you want, you can view it in French, and easily understood, because E. Carrere has a very clear style, and machine translation of Google Chrome is spectacular (this is often a sign that never fails)
http://ed-limonov.livejournal.com/516755.html
Eric from Paris
16. Duke | December 15th, 2011 at 5:52 pm
My understanding of the protests is that they were not so much anti-Putin as they were anti-electoral fraud..
What candidate has emerged as a better alternative to Putin or the communist party, and one who will avoid a 90’s-style economic free-for-all?
17. Goat_farmers_of_the_CIA | December 15th, 2011 at 6:42 pm
@13
Hey GA, what ass licking Central European little whore of a country are you from? Which of these shitty little republics that, still stuck somewhere around 1939, find it difficult to have normal relations with Germany or Russia? That still hope for the US to save them from their neighbors, which in their imagination are still ruled by Hitler or Stalin, and have massed armies at their borders? That due to some typical West Slav pettiness can’t get together and obtain some concrete independence from local and global bullies?
You would have to willingly ignore historical fact to claim that all the phony Color Revolutions that took place in the Ukraine, Lebanon, Moldova, one of the Central European ‘stans and the many attempts in Belarus were all truly spontaneous, grass-roots attempt at revolution. Have you never heard of the wikileaks on the truly pathetic, gold-bricking Belorrussian “opposition”? There’s plenty of analysis about it by Israel Shamir on counterpunch. And accepting this does not require one to take for granted that the latest revolutions in the Middle East where sponsored by American imperialists. That is like arguing that skepticism about the Warren report on JFK’ as has appeared on this website necessarily implies a belief in kooky conspiracy theories about 9/11.
There’s also the question of legitimacy when an NGO like Golos happily takes money from the blatantly Russophobe DC foreign policy elite. One can only question the sincerity of their intentions. It is also well known that the Russian Liberal elites still believe that the 90’s was post-Soviet Russia’s golden age, making it obvious that they frankly don’t give a damn about the common man on the street, and would happily lick the pus out of the hemorrhoids in Hillary Clinton’s rectum, just to get to power. Given these alternatives, Russians are facing a terrible dilemma. They are all bad – except probably for Limonov, who would give hell to both the rapacious oligarchs and the grasping, sanctimonious American empire.
18. frank | December 15th, 2011 at 7:02 pm
@13
Right, Libya was a Western ally until we decided they weren’t.
Sincerely, take a perusal of the list here detailing just the explicit destablization programs the US has been involved in especially since WWII.
Mind you this is just a list of the US involvement not including other Western countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions
Secondly, you obvioulsy aren’t familliar with USAID and how much money the US actually spends on such operations in these countries. The US spends more on its military and intelligence than the rest of the world COMBINED. For example, please refere yourself to the piles and piles of money that were literally shipped over to Iraq to buy off the various warlords. Another example, please inform yourself about the US involvement in aiding and abetting the rise of the heroin trade in Afghanistan which is now decimating the youth of which country again? Oh, that’s right, Russia. Just a coincidence I’m sure, especially after it’s been shown that the CIA shipped crack into urban US areas in the 80s and 90s.
Thirdly, don’t you think it rather odd that every single opposition party in Western Europe – Communists, socialists, Greens – that normally would be antithetical to the US led neoliberal agenda has been entirely coopted?
Quite frankly, you Europeans are blindlingly naive to what is happening to your continent.
You are all being systematically raped by the Western neoliberals and their consolidating agendas yet you still all clamor for the unity by which they seek to totally subjugate you.
At least, many in the US are beginning to understand the very real and very clear aims of the regime we live under.
Do you think the passing of a law yesterday that allows for the indefinite military detention of US civilians is a conspiracy?
Do you think waging aggressive war and killing millions of people for the last 10 years is a conspiracy?
The fact is, is that those leading the US militarily, politically and economically DO NOT CARE how many people protest or what goes on each of these countries.
They don’t care if there are legitimate reasons for the protests.
They will attempt to hijack them and as was seen in Libya and now in Syria they may very well succeed.
It is not a conspiracy. It is real and the more you Europeans remain naive to the true nature of what is happening before your eyes the worse it is going to be.
Please quit thinking that us Americans are ill-informed and conspiratorial.
We see the nature of the beast every day and let me tell you this is not your grandmother’s fascism, son.
19. old exile fan | December 15th, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Limonov is a weirdo fag.
20. G.A. | December 16th, 2011 at 2:43 am
@ 17. LOL thanks for the laughs little Putinjugend.
You seem to be doing a good job defeating yourself – if CIA involvement is all it takes to overthrow a regime, then why didn’t the alleged “goldbricking” of Belarussian opposition topple Lukashenko? Questions, questions.
@ 18. I looked at the wiki pages and a lot of it comes from what I’d consider unreliable sources, one of those sources (Guatemala) isn’t working at all. I do believe that CIA or that the US supports various democracy movements around the world, how much out of pure heart and how much out of desire to steal all the oil – I’ll leave that up to you. However your argumentation is a bit sophistic.
1. You’re saying “The US spends on defence and intelligence more than the world combined” – but that’s a really skewed argument. Going by wiki, the US intelligence services receive 80 billion dollars in total funding, the Department of Defence on the other hand has a budget of 550 billion dollars, so I hope you can see how misleading it is to say “defence and intelligence combined.
Also, do you know how much is Russia or China spending on intelligence? I for one don’t.
2. Well really you’re just asking me the same question as I asked you. No I don’t find it strange that various and completely diverse opposition groups are sticking together until the Putin falls from rule. It’s natural, it happened even in the Great October Revolution, but we probably wouldn’t call that a work of CIA.
Well maybe Putin would.
‘Cause, you know, starvation and crash of economy is no big deal, had to take the illuminati judeobolshevik CIA agents to overthrow the Czar.
3. I stopped listening after being told we’re being “raped by neoliberals”, because that doesn’t really have anything to do with our debate.
21. G.A. | December 16th, 2011 at 3:39 am
PS: @ 13. Even IF Golos is being sponsored by the US (has anyone else said so aside from Russian state controlled media?), why is the United Russia not confronting the core of the matter, election allegations, and instead just keeps yelling at the top of their lungs that they’re foreign mercenaries? If nothing happened, shouldn’t it be the easiest thing in the world to go through the allegations one by one and prove them to be false?
22. Ilona | December 16th, 2011 at 3:54 am
It’d be nice to have an eXiled in-depth analysis of the ideology and objectives of Mr. Eduard Limonov and his The Other Russia young-men-and-hot-chicks-in-black-leather-boots-fighting party.
23. boson | December 16th, 2011 at 8:22 am
@frank: and you people are under the incredibly insular impression that the cia runs the entire word. sure, the cia tries to tinker with things in lots of places, but for god’s sake there is a limit to its resources and these people are not omniscient either, they screw up a lot. things like mass protest are determined primarily by the internal dynamics of these countries, although at certain conjunctures a healthy nudge from outside can tip the balance of things, no question. but still, that’s a small factor in most cases.
moreover it’s no good just saying that prowestern neoliberals screw the population in countries of the periphery or semi-periphery, coz rhetorically anti-western nationalists (like Putin, Orban, Meciar, Milosevic) screw you just as badly, and even worse actually because of the isolation and ensuing economic turmoil they cause. so pointing out the role of prowestern neoliberals in itself is not meaningful.
24. Janez-Beograd | December 16th, 2011 at 8:23 am
More indepth analysis of Russian politics and a new Limonov article…
about fucking time Ames.
25. calripson | December 16th, 2011 at 9:39 am
The real anti-Putin sentiment in Russia is nationalistic and anti-capitalist. Reading Russian blogs this sentiment is apparent as Russians realize Putin is a faux nationalist. Also, polls show record high positive sentiment for the former USSR. The Western media presents the anti-Putin movement as urban and liberal – this is false: at no time post 1993 has more than 15% of the Russian population supported liberals. The liberals are disproportionately English speaking Muscovites in a country that despises rich, cosmopolitan Muscovites. Limonov is on to something: Russians are maximalists and the dearth of the big idea has left them deathly bored with petite bourgeoisie ideals.
26. frank | December 17th, 2011 at 8:14 am
@20
There’s really nothing like self-assured, smarmy naivete when confronting the real world, huh?
1) Let’s see, here’s a comparison of military expenditures by country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
Cleary, the US outspends most of the rest o the world combined.
Secondly, the amount you claim is spent on intelligence although very large already ($80 billion) does not include black budgets and shows your naivete and complete lack of understanding of how the United States fascist – meaning public/private – intelligence appartus works. Since the 9/11 and the founding of the Homeland Security Dept. there now in addition to the 1200 governmental departments involved in intelligence/counterterrorism there are also 2,000 private companies and NGOs which do contract work for the US. There are near 1,000,000 people in the US with top security clearances. The money funneled to these private companies and the money they spend on their own is not included in the defence budget.
These facts are from the Washington Post which details the exponential growth and sophistication of the US intelligence apparatus:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/
Note also, that this does not include the intelligence appartuses of NATO allies which only further increases the reach of US intelligence.
To really understand how the American intelligence community now operates is to realize that there no longer is a line between the governmental portion of the military-industrial-intelligence complex in the US and the private sector.
Sure, partnerships existed before but now it’s de rigueur and aboveboard.
For example, I spoke of the CIA involvement in the drug trade earlier. Last year it was found that the largest banks in America were laundering money for Mexican drug cartels.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-29/banks-financing-mexico-s-drug-cartels-admitted-in-wells-fargo-s-u-s-deal.html
Nothing was ever done about this. Nary a word in the media. A non-issue.
So, the largest institutions in the US which were secretly bailed out during the recent crisis by our central bank to the tune of over $20 TRILLION are working hand in hand with drug cartels who work hand in hand with the intelligence agencies.
Now, when we get to the level of trillions of dollars, you are beginning to understand to what lengths these people are willing to go AND how money is not really and issue. Sure, they’ll tell you that $80 billion is the budget, but if they need $5 trillion they’ll find a way. Got it?
So, when I see European democracies dancing to the tune of the ECB which has the same masters as the Federal Reserve and I see European leaders dancing to the tune of the US and NATO – see Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, etc etc – it’s quite hard not to put the pieces together.
That since 2001, the United States drive for global dominance – a plan launched decades ago – is now being waged overtly against the last remaining holdouts to their empire namely Russia and once that’s done, China.
Just take a look at where the US has been building bases and missile installations. And you think they wouldn’t also try to attack Russia internally? Then you’re must be willfully ignorant.
Again, it sickens me to see what my country has embarked upon since 9/11 – a false flag attack in my estimation – but due to – I guess – our former reputation as a good country coupled with an global propaganda system the world has never seen much of Europe and the rest of the world seems to not have really noticed what is going on in the US and seems to think our government is still rational and/or to be trusted.
I don’t blame people outside the US from not seeing all of this as it’s even harder to see all of this from the inside but be warned of what’s happening.
This time it is different. The psychopaths in this country really have begun the third World War.
It’s just that most people don’t seem to see it yet.
27. Petkov | December 26th, 2011 at 9:27 pm
to G.A. What shitty Central Euroepan country are you exactly from? Im from Bulgaria and I grew up during communism and I got to experience it first hand myself so I do have a few observations too as to why it didnt work.
True, the inept idiots in power didnt know what they were doing but the West wasnt just sitting around waiting for them to fall: they did everything to make sure Communims couldnt work economically including economic blockades, embargoes and so on.
Direct question: don’t you think Cuba and North Korea, Iran, Iraq during the 1990s and so on will be doing better if they are/were allowed to participate as full member in the world economy? So not everything is the Communists fault.
There is tons of evidence USA has been meddling in many countries for years and years. Ask sometimes the people in Central America(Nicaragua foe example) what they think about Reagan and you might learn a few things.
To claim there is no evidence of USA meddling is beyond ridiculous. The only real weapon USA had ever used that worked against Communism was the economic one and it did work marvelously in fact.
Now about Russia: Putin paid off all of Russia’s outstanding loans: Russia has zero debt now. Russia is supplying gas and oil to both China and Western Europe so plenty of money is coming in. I think these young Russians are a bit like the 1960s hippies: spoiled and not knowing what they want. As Johnny Rotten said: “I don’t know what I want but I know how to get it.” I think those young Russians have no idea what they want but they certainly know how to get it.
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