Putin’s Iron Grip Suffocates His Opponents: "an unforgiving campaign to clamp down on democracy"

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT, pg1, lead: February 24, 2008
Kremlin Rules
Putin’s Iron Grip on Russia Suffocates His Opponents
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia — Shortly before parliamentary elections in December, foremen fanned out across the sprawling GAZ vehicle factory here, pulling aside assembly-line workers and giving them an order: vote for President Vladimir V. Putin’s party or else. They were instructed to phone in after they left their polling places. Names would be tallied, defiance punished. The city’s children, too, were pressed into service. At schools, teachers gave them pamphlets promoting “Putin’s Plan” and told them to lobby their parents. Some were threatened with bad grades if they failed to attend “Children’s Referendums” at polling places, a ploy to ensure that their parents would show up and vote for the ruling party.

Around the same time, volunteers for an opposition party here, the Union of Right Forces, received hundreds of calls at all hours, warning them to stop working for their candidates. Otherwise, you will be hurt, the callers said, along with the rest of your family.

Over the past eight years, in the name of reviving Russia after the tumult of the 1990s, Mr. Putin has waged an unforgiving campaign to clamp down on democracy and extend control over the government and large swaths of the economy. He has suppressed the independent news media, nationalized important industries, smothered the political opposition and readily deployed the security services to carry out the Kremlin’s wishes.

While those tactics have been widely recognized, they have been especially heavy-handed at the local level, in far-flung places like Nizhny Novgorod, 250 miles east of Moscow. On the eve of a presidential election in Russia that was all but fixed in December, when Mr. Putin selected his close aide, Dmitri A. Medvedev, as his successor, Nizhny Novgorod stands as a stark example of how Mr. Putin and his followers have established what is essentially a one-party state.

Mr. Putin’s Russia is not the Soviet Union. For most Russians, life is freer now than it was in the old days. Criticism of the Kremlin is tolerated, as long as it is not done in any broadly organized way, and access to the Internet is unfettered. The economy, with its abundance of consumer goods and heady rate of growth, bears little resemblance to the one under Communism.

Still, as was made plain in dozens of interviews with political leaders, officials and residents of Nizhny Novgorod over several weeks, a new autocracy now governs Russia. Behind a facade of democracy lies a centralized authority that has deployed a nationwide cadre of loyalists that is not reluctant to swat down those who challenge the ruling party. Fearing such retribution, many of the people interviewed for this article asked not to be identified....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/world/europe/24putin.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print

[fasttense]

1. The free markets work best with totalitarian regimes than with Democracies.

They have IPODs but can't organize to fight corruption in government. A fair trade off?

Free market idiocy worked best in Pinochet's Chile.

[Doctor_J]

2. This sounds quite a bit like Bush's US

Russia has gotten freer, and the US has gotten a lot less free, so that we're converging. Robocalls, clampdowns on renegade news sources, nationwide networks of loyalists suppressing dissent, suspicious elections, and federal security forces carrying out Kremlin orders.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. I really don't think, and I know many here disagree, that we have anything like...

this kind of political oppression in this country. Stolen elections, interference with the press, etc., yes -- but I think we have some hope with this election of changing things. In Russia, I don't see any hope, or means of change.

[tom_paine]

4. Using "kinder and gentler" methods to achieve the same ends.

You are correct, and yet incorrect.

Bushler doesn't NEED to use that kind of heavy-handed oppresion. It would be inappropriate, given Old America's longstanding traditions of freedom, and counterproductive, as the American version of BushPutinism relies much more heavily on camoflauge to do it's totalitarian work.

However, there is a reason for the police state machinery now almost completely in place, along with the Halliburton Concentration Camps. I speculate it is for the day, perhaps a generation from now, perhaps MUCH sooner, when the camoflauge is no longer necessary, or no longer works.

It's a simple cost-benefit analysis for the Bushies. One day, there will be no more need for plausible deniability. The Bushies want to capture America unharmed, it does them no good to have dicatatorial control of a land in flames. Thus, they tread carefully, nurtured on the mother's milk of the tyrant, plausible deniability.

Thus, I believe that technically you are correct, and yet you are wrong. Although I would rather I was wrong and you right. Time will tell. For now, we are all involved in the kabuki theater of our biannual "election" farce.

But face it, America, Russia, and China, when you strip away the bullshit and the fact that, for the reason I mentioned above, we are treated the "nicest" of any of the Big Three BushPutinist States, are ruled by the same New Totalitarianism.

Don't get me wrong, I am grateful to the Founding Fathers and all who came before me, otherwise we would be treated just the same as the Russians and the Chinese by THEIR Bushies.

But I have no illusions about why. Because the Bushies might disturb the sheep, and break their shiny new toy before they have had a chance to really play with it.

And doing the Russian or Chinese versions of what they are doing would guarantee that the nation they seized, is in, shall we say "less than mint condition" before they get to enjoy the BushPutinist Way of Power.

They are doing it this way because they HAVE to. And the mother's milk of the Bushie Tyrant, plausible deniability, creates the very doubt you speak of in your post. Just enough doubt for the Bushies to seize the nation without breaking their toy.

[DeepModem Mom]

5. I always value your posts, tom -- thanks for yet another thought-provoking one. nt

[tom_paine]

6. That goes back at you 100% DeepModem Mom!

Your informational posts, as well as your opinion posts, are very worthwhile.

I have you blogrolled on my journal.

[Doctor_J]

7. Thank you Tom, you express my thoughts explicitly

Your outlook on the state of the union seems to mirror mine almost identically - I always seek out your commentary on topics like this one. We seem to have grown up with almost the same world view, even though I am from the suburbs of Chicago.

When the news came down this week that the Bushies has ordered the Dallas PD not to search for guns and Obama rallies, most took this to mean that they would like to have Obama killed. IMO, this is the LAST thing they would hope for. If by some awful set of circumstances Obama were to be murdered, this country would burn. The millions who took to the streets to try to prevent the Iraq occupation would become tens of millions, and the signs we were carrying would become torches, and CSPAN would have no choice to cover it since Life In These US would come to a halt until we got some answers.

It is FAR better for the Bushies to fix another election this November, maybe send some Anthrax to the offices of Krugman and Wexler, get a few more problem journalists fired for misbehavior, and send a few more Siegelmans to the Gualgs. No one will notice, and the fascist juggernaut will roll merrily on.

I usually like DMM's posts too, but she and the others here who think we're "not fascist yet" need to pay a little more attention, IMO

[Doctor_J]

8. You haven't been paying close enough attention then

Tonight's supposed expose' on Don Siegelman's political incarceration should be a nice barometer. It was well announced that the White House has been trying to get this story pulled for many weeks. My guess is, now that it's going to air, it will be watered down to barely recognizable level. In the teaser this week, was written - "the fundamental question is, 'Is Governor Siegelman guilty of a crime?'". This of course is nonsense. If he'd actually been prosecuted, we'd have an answer to that question. The real fundamental question is, why has he been in custody for this long without due process, and who ordered the persecution? 60Min will NOT pursue this fundamental question.

Another barometer will be the results of this year's election. Barring another theft, Obama will win by a popular landslde. Yet, the Bushes, having stolen the White House in 2000 and 2004, will not hesitate to steal this one too. And you can bet that if they do, no one in the media will utter a peep about it.

Your identification of "stolen elections, interference with the press, etc." ignores the comletely corrupted judiciary, from the SCOTUS who interfere with DC's gun laws to US Attorneys being fired for not pursuing political prosecutions and promoted for engagin in them, all the way down to local and state hacks like those involved in the Siegelman persecution.

As tom_paine says, it is likely too late to do anything about it. To this better-than-average-observant 51-year-old, it is pretty clear that some time soon we're going to wake up and wonder how we became Stalin's USSR.