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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

EDITORIAL: Reading Putin's "Mind"

EDITORIAL

Reading Putin's "Mind"

Leonid Radzikhovsky of Ekho Moskvy Russian Radio, has an interesting column in yesterday's Moscow Times. Like many others in the media, he was musing over Dictator Putin's statement to his political party adherents that those who criticize his government are only those who "scrounge from foreign embassies like jackals."

Radzikhovsky, like all the others, wondered what could possibly possess Putin to be so "aggressive" given that his party is already guaranteed to dominate this weekend's elections to the Russian parliament. Indeed, some have speculated that between Putin's cult of personality and his brazen electoral fraud, no other party may win a single seat (owing to the necessity of getting at least 7% of the vote).

One explanation, of course, would be that Putin is simply a madman, just like Josef Stalin, and unable to do what is in his own best interests. That would explain, for example, why he would crack jokes about rape in front of an official diplomatic delegation, and continue a marked tradition of ruler insanity carried along, for example, by Nikita Khrushchev when he took of his shoe at the United Nations. Radzikhovsky states: "Putin has a deeply personal and sincere dislike for leaders of the Union of Right Forces, such as Boris Nemtsov." Shades of Stalin, to be sure.

But Radzikhovsky hints at another possibility. He notes that if any party is likely to transcend the 7% threshold, it's the Communists (a fact that utterly refutes Russia having made any real progress toward democracy or having ever actually lived under its basic principles). He writes:

In a formal sense the Communists are considered the opposition, but in reality they have a lot in common with Putin's politics: They curse the West and the chaos of the 1990s, and they are faithful patriots and Orthodox Christians. They also adore the KGB and Federal Security Service and fully subscribe to the superpower mentality and its corresponding illusion of grandeur. In this way, the Communists are considered to be a "friendly opposition" to the Kremlin. The Communists' most pointed criticism, however, is that the Kremlin doesn't fight strong enough against the "depraved and corrupt influence of the West" -- a phrase that became a standard, hackneyed component of Soviet propaganda.

So perhaps when Putin made his crazy-sounding statement, he was just trying to steal some votes from the Communists, perhaps help to drive them below the 7% threshold and assist his "party," United Russia, in taking every single one of the seats. After all, Radzikhovsky seems to have overlooked the one real difference that the Communists have with the regime, namely that they don't favor the extreme polarization of wealth that Putin's government has allowed to take place, and indeed benefited from. Prices are soaring, wiping out the meager gains in personal income achieved by the average Russian and generating considerable ill-will towards the wealthy, much the same situation as existed in Russia at the early part of the last century. Maybe Putin is actually scared of the Communists, and feels he needs to steal some of their thunder and siphon off some of their votes?

And a third reason is apparent, Radzikhovsky says: By demonizing the West, Putin gives himself cover for the allegations, which are sure to come, that he has rigged the weekend elections in favor of his own party.

It's all so wonderfully convenient, isn't it? In fact, these three theories are not mutually exclusive. Maybe Putin is a madman, and it just so happens that the policies of a madman are perfect for advancing and consolidating his dictatorship -- just as they were in the time of Stalin.

So Radzikhovsky ends on the obvious, ominous note: "But all of these explanations don't answer the main question: How far will this battle against jackals be taken in a country that hates its liberals as much as it hates the West?"

It's already been taken far enough to jail Mikhail Khodorkovsky, apparently for life. Kasparov and Nemtsov have been jailed, then released, in an obvious probing to see how much the Kremlin can get away with. In a malignant calculus, the Kremlin will balance the sternness of the Western reaction to those arrests against the completeness of its victory over the weekend, and that will determine how soon Kasparov and Nemtsov (and others) go back go jail, and for how long.

Indeed, if the Kremlin views the West's response as sufficiently weak, and the elections results as being sufficiently strong, jail might be dispensed with . . . and the Politkovskaya or Litvinenko solutions adopted instead.

In the end, it makes no difference which of these explanations is correct. All that matters is that, for whatever twisted reason, Russia's so-called "president" is baiting the NATO countries into a second cold war, where he will find himself hopelessly out-gunned, out-manned and out-monied.

Those factors didn't stop the USSR from driving itself into the ground, though -- so why should they stop Mr. Putin?






6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Surely if you're a true Russophobe, you should hope that Russia becomes truly warmongering so that it can be trounced by NATO?

La Russophobe said...

Surely, you wouldn't attempt to guess about what we mean by the term "russophobe," you'd read the clear definition that is set forth in our sidebar, right?

And surely, you wouldn't spam this blog by writing comments that have nothing to do with the post you insert them on, making you look like a total monkeybrained idiot, right?

It's sad how some Russians are so barbaric that they see those who criticize them as enemies. Under that "logic" both Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky were sent to prison camps. Meanwhile, Russians elevate the likes of Putin and his KGB, which destroyed more Russian lives than Hitler, to the status of hero.

What a sad, benighted nation. It seems only a foreigner like Lenin or Peter I can hope to save them.

Anonymous said...

"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees" - Emiliano Zapata Salazar.

Holy Russia will never bend knee to the Great Satan and its minions (NATO, LR, CIA, Mossad, etc). Muahahaha!

Anonymous said...

putin's like a little dog--- he barks and barks but has no bite. so brave--picking on little georgia and estonia.
he'll help iran build nukes, but will he defend iran when the us/israel attacks?? perhaps the little barking dog will grow some balls and sign a treaty with iran promising to defend her in the event of an attack. be a true friend of iran and promise to defend her when mother freedom comes calling.......

Artfldgr said...

Stalker.. May you tell me who NATO has every trounced?

NATO is not capable of that, a ship with many captains goes in circles.

and you stalker in your idiocy have managed to put a focus on the truth! which one cant help but do when ones mind does not control ones mouth.

the leaders of russia are SOCIOPATHIC. Sociopaths of the power kind see everything in terms of power and servitude.

they have taken into their hearts nietses division. "there are only two types of people in the world, those who rule and those who serve".

here is a bit of reading for ya
http://alicelillieandher.blogspot.com/2006/05/friedrich-wilhelm-nietzsche-1844-1900.html

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a big influence on the neoconservatives, through Leo Strauss. His philosophy is associated with socialism and fascism....

.....Nietzsche, as did Machiavelli, believed in two types of people, the rulers and the ruled (2). The rulers are an elite while the ruled are characterized by passivity. Also in common with Machiavelli are his anti-Christianity, anti-democracy, anti-classical liberalism, his subordination of morality to politics, and his need for enemies.

you see, the people who argue that this isnt what it is, are arguing out of a flaming ignorance that is legendary.

if you can see that in a healthy capitalist system, there is a span of people, and no solid heirarchy. the doctor that serves the plumber gets served by the plumber in return. parity and other things make it good. which is why the system is so productive... it takes the leashes off of all the people to act on their own.

now the leaders are a bit dumb, but if your not dumb you can see what they see. in simplest terms, and i know you need the most simplest terms.

the programs and things that they put in place remove the middle.

abortion is mostly practiced by the middle, the middle are mostly revolutionaries, and mostly the ones listening ot the program.

now... if the spectrum is a combination of people of smarts, talent, skills, and a false elite (not that smart, but lowered standards make them think that their phd today was like a phd 60 years ago, and they delusionally think they write at that caliber, shen virtually no one does anymore.. after all stalker is a majority in some places) and other things, vs those who have much less ability to TRADE.

the middle are people who average out... they are capable..independent..smart enough.. and more..

the bottom is listless, whiney, incapable, lazy, etc.. (the poor imigrants that come here do better than the poor here of several generations - the immigrants move into the middle class within a few years, and are constantly replaced)

the top, are self agrandized.. they are not book geniuses, they are people manipulative geniueses.. they are not very smart as far as consequences, unless we turn to the concept of lies and manipulations and power. then they are great, cause as sociopaths they spend their whole lives developing that skill.

there is a difference between politicians in a fully capitalistic society (which there are none any more), and these.

since sociopaths hone a skill of lies, and manipulation, the purpose of which is to shortcut the 'system'.

they dont work on tradable skills, or meritocritous one (its not too meritocritous to prey on your fellow man. the dumb ones you read in the news, the smart ones end up ruling when MERIT is not used to weed them out).

their whole effort in politics is to not be accountable... merit is accountability.. it has a way to exit.. when merit is no longer the reason for the rule, then what IS the reason?

power

so a sociopath does not like capitalism, they dont want to LOSE something to gain something, they want BOTH somethings.

Holy soviet russia doesnt want to deal in freindly terms, it wants to take advantage, cheat, and literally do anything to be on top.

but the force of a truly cooperative independent middle class populace is the most productive force, all others are lesser.

and so if they have power in a system that does not or cant oust them from merit, then they are ruling from power.

the only group large enough and capable enough to oppose them is the same middle class that was the majority of the french revolution.

the poor in the past were poor because sociopathic rulers realized that when the middle gets big and such, and its free and capable, it will not be ruled by bad people.

they will be productive and fulfilled that they can start looking after other things.. that they would have the time to hold politicians to their merit, look at laws being made... (now we give to parties, and not individuals. how does russias system do it? only votes for parties, not people? we give to parties, they put up people to vote, we have no choice because the vote was in the money, not the ballot. the ballot was the tie breaker)

the west does not want russia to bend to it. what it wants is russia to enter the world of civil and free business and productivity.

the west would rather that we would not want to waste resoources on arms and things. contrary to propaganda, such things are bad for productivity and such. and only a complete moron would think that people are making out in the war in iraq. thats because tehy have no idea of how much better they would do if it wasnt that way (cause thye dont pay attention when its not a war)

to destabilize the world to jack up the price of oil, so 2 dollars of oil is worth 20 dollars because of falsely created inflated risk.

they just CANT play by any fair rules. EVER. they cant resist scheming and manipulating and such. thats totally sociopathic.

the reason is that they also get a reward out of tricking you. so the thrill of it all that keeps them this way is that they are exhaulted by having people they demean and hate, and call names like lumpen, or useful idiot.

thats contempt. they hold all other humans who are not as cold, calculating, and absent of morals, as inferior.

so they are doing the old game. remove the middle that can make and create resourves and such and oppose such rule.

remove the property and such so that this cant develope where they are not watching.

confuse and demoralize the population, so they work, but dont care.

trick the middle who are really smart and work by merit... to fade away...

and you get the two classes of a romaneeque no limits utopia.. a slave class that does all the work for the ruling class who do nothing but play, plot, and such.

they have their games, and bath houses.. the poor are freely available as prostitutes for nothing. (when in a more robust system there would be market prices for everything, and fewer willing to do that to earn something).

they can kill at a whim.. as long as it isnt a 'made' man... they can rape, or play power..

its a shame you dont see this... its not hard to see. all you have to do is look at outcomes.. china went capitalist, and wow, wiz bango, huge growht in the trillions... russia didnt, and subsistence for most is the situation.

now they have to worry that a capitalistic sociopathic state with a huge population and a need for land might not be loyal.

there is no honor among theives and this is why when they move into this realm they lose. they are low productive.. they are not to be trusted so few deal with them unless they have to, and with long sticks.

and like wwii with hitler and stalin..ultimately power hungry sociopathic people cant be trusted to work together and not try to take out the other.

this is why they lost the cold war.. even though their logic tells them that the most evil, the most brutal and amoral ahve the advantage..

but they never felt the advantage of cohesion.. they only seek its productivity gains for themselves, and so pretend to be making it WITHOUT the creation of the middle that would say "we dont want leaders that cant function well".

the poor are too dependent.. the wealthy have too much to lose.. and the common man is the most generally good and will take up arms.

after all... they have been tricked and they have taken up arms against themselves..

the game has not stopped.. no player ever stopped, and the population of the west has been lulled into thinking that such behaviors are a relic.

historically speaking, they are a deep part of us that cant be removed as they are the very key reasons for why we are the top species.

well, most of us are... stalker shows that there are allways a few cretinous throwbacks.

Artfldgr said...

Now my comments on the article.

One explanation, of course, would be that Putin is simply a madman, just like Josef Stalin, and unable to do what is in his own best interests.

Neither are madmen. It drives me nuts that people can actually think that “madmen” could actually get that far. It shows a total naivette as to reality, and what it is, is a way to fit the reality into terms that a person can handle.

What they cant handle is that a sane person can be that way. This is what happens when people try to understand a sociopath in terms of a non sociopath/psychopath. Their natural limits and genetic propensity towards the positive side has been nurtured not only by the success of cohesive groups that could function that way (now that animals no longer were the enemy), but by the culture that acts that way for the most part.

Stalin was a sociopath, Putin is a sociopath.

Loves power, no morals, no guilt, not willing to work on merit, low skilled, highly manipulative, always putting the tab off till its dissociated, willing to do whatever they think will get the response they want to orchestrate. Which is why they sometimes do really weird things. Without morals and limits they don’t know where the line of demarcation is, they can only guess. And when they miss…

That would explain, for example, why he would crack jokes about rape in front of an official diplomatic delegation, and continue a marked tradition of ruler insanity carried along, for example, by Nikita Khrushchev when he took of his shoe at the United Nations.

They are contemptuous of their fellow man, and the MOST contemptuous of those that have more than them without acting as badly as they do. they don’t think anyone deserves more than they do. they are willing to operate on two standards of which their own behavior is above reproach. Contemptuous of merit, all their techniques to power, debate, dealing, and operating in the world, are false and based in manipulation which is based in control. they are truly most scared of a merit based opponent. Their whole game is fake, false, air. it cant stand in the light as its not base on merit. (now understand why moral relativism.. if people cant tell whats moral, then they cant tell a sociopath from another person. its like putting up a large smokescreen)

"Putin has a deeply personal and sincere dislike for leaders of the Union of Right Forces, such as Boris Nemtsov." Shades of Stalin, to be sure.

The more control they have the better they feel. They often push their luck since they don’t have limits. They have a superiority complex that a self esteem based system really lets them blossom in and easily be seen by those looking.

They can be made… created… even by design… (so they can multiply themselves. hard life, no family or connections (or loyalties), etc.. doesn’t that sound like the family things they created, and the going into the prisons to start the chka, and so forth? they were and are just trying to create more, and weed out the old species (as they see it). they have ZERO empathy, ergo why socialism is based on theft presumed like robin hood to bribe those to work for them, in exchange for their own money back. With Zero empathy, it was easy for stalin to do what he did. If you had to pick an operative philosophy for a sociopath, wouldn’t it be pragmatism?

In a sociopathic system, the baddest ass rises to the top.

Which is why they want it all… they got that far… why not get the rest of it?

And when they are on top, nothing is safe.. the king of the hill is the man to take out, and there is no safety in that. So they become paranoid.

Would anyone not think that my description or analysis doesn’t fit both people?

the Communists are considered to be a "friendly opposition" to the Kremlin.

The author doesn’t understand power and the use of Hegelian dialectic of opposites that yield a new item. The thesis and the anti-thesis create a new synthesis. And they create two oppositions in order to control both the thesis and the antithesis, and insure the outcome of the synthesis.

In this case, after the election, the two can merge and what you will have is the new synthesis made up of both, but that new thing will be guaranteed to be communist oriented. communism is AFTER world socialism and the dissolution of the state, but these are not heroes who grab a weapon and safe the town. These are like dr smith in “lost in space” who say give me the gun, and I will give it back afterwards. You cant change a pickle into a cucumber. Once you hand over the gun, you cant go back, which is why they will do anything to convince the people to hand them that gun under this ameliorating false promises.


Radzikhovsky seems to have overlooked the one real difference that the Communists have with the regime, namely that they don't favor the extreme polarization of wealth that Putin's government has allowed to take place, and indeed benefited from. Prices are soaring, wiping out the meager gains in personal income achieved by the average Russian and generating considerable ill-will towards the wealthy, much the same situation as existed in Russia at the early part of the last century.

All that paragraph tells me is what the new synthesis will be made of. Put the two together and mix well, peer into the crystal ball of history for the first time it happened, watch the fireworks.

Maybe Putin is actually scared of the Communists, and feels he needs to steal some of their thunder and siphon off some of their votes?

No.. Ultimately they are on the same side. They would not exist so strong if not. So he is not afraid at all. The false fight between the two takes all the attention off of the others who are NOT to win at any cost.

demonizing the West, Putin gives himself cover for the allegations, which are sure to come, that he has rigged the weekend elections in favor of his own party.

Not quite. The way people talk and write like this, also shows some naiveté. Around the world there are a HUGE number of fellow travelers and useful idiots. Such words are for the express purpose of giving them the snippet of some reality to work off of to make the rest of their writings seem valid. It gives them a false stage to launch from in which that premise gets accepted while the rest of the writings are discussed.

Without this, a fellow traveler that knows the game, would be called an outright liar and not be able to “help the cause”. Now they can write and say so, and claim to be in line with a world leader, or so on and so forth. to which the better attempts that work get copied by others and spread around as useful idiots who use certain people as their conduit to facts (in absence of contradicting sources that say things that are negative, or force them to think about the issue rather than feel about the issue. logic goes from thought to thought, a feeling parks itself right there in the first thought)

In fact, these three theories are not mutually exclusive. Maybe Putin is a madman, and it just so happens that the policies of a madman are perfect for advancing and consolidating his dictatorship -- just as they were in the time of Stalin.

Well, not really mutually exclusive. What they are is trying to cut up a star to fit into a round hole. The round hole of an average contemporary person in which the star of a sociopath just cant be contorted to fit.

This is why the “policies of a madman are perfect for advancing and consolidating his dictatorship”. However what everyone is failing to notice is that this is the work of a cadre of sociopaths working together.. not one man.

The thing that is making everyone puzzle is that Putin is jumping the gun to be the star at the top of the tree. While there would be no planned top, they would work forward till whats happening happens and think it pragmatic.

"But all of these explanations don't answer the main question: How far will this battle against jackals be taken in a country that hates its liberals as much as it hates the West?"

Well, any hunter knows his prey. Its nature, its behavior, these things stop becoming inscrutable. Since things don’t change their natures unless they change themselves inside and out (and sociopaths are false to start with so they wouldn’t know what nature to settle down into. Is it any wonder that their ideology denies a human nature while at the same time exploiting it in those that are different?)

Historically speaking the use of the term jackals is apropos. Jackals are not very loyal in our verbal mythologies. They will lead each other to slaughter. They will have a purge.

Sociopaths can’t afford to leave other sociopaths alive.
They aren’t very good losers. (Haven’t you noticed? They aren’t good winners either)

It's already been taken far enough to jail Mikhail Khodorkovsky, apparently for life. Kasparov and Nemtsov have been jailed, then released, in an obvious probing to see how much the Kremlin can get away with. In a malignant calculus, the Kremlin will balance the sternness of the Western reaction to those arrests against the completeness of its victory over the weekend, and that will determine how soon Kasparov and Nemtsov (and others) go back go jail, and for how long.

Except that they may just get rid of them by kicking them out. Otherwise I would say your pretty dead on here. If the west didn’t whine a lot about their own, then they are free to have full reign and play games and no one will say a thing.

Indeed, if the Kremlin views the West's response as sufficiently weak, and the elections results as being sufficiently strong, jail might be dispensed with . . . and the Politkovskaya or Litvinenko solutions adopted instead.

I don’t think so. From the earliest days of the soviet state, such people with strong connections generally were pushed out, banished, etc. from the disillusioned anarchists and lots of others… the ones with fame end up west.. then write memoirs of disillusionment and warning others that it’s a lie.

Politkovskaya and Litvinenko were in the way while the ball is in play. They are not part of the west’s kitsch or even of concern. While Kasperov is a legend in many ways and the west would not sit still. PRAGMATICALLY it would not be worth the trouble, banish him, make a few statements, and let the fellow travelers discredit him. How did they do with McCarthy? (after all, he was right, and the level and number was incredible, and why we are even now deep in the…)


In the end, it makes no difference which of these explanations is correct. All that matters is that, for whatever twisted reason, Russia's so-called "president" is baiting the NATO countries into a second cold war, where he will find himself hopelessly out-gunned, out-manned and out-monied.

Your right.. the ticking of the gears is micromanaging an analysis. Reasons are useless because they need the cooperation of the person acting. All you can see is direction and a kind of flow to it. if it lands heads 28 times, and you don’t know if your name is Rosencrantz or Guildenstern, then you know something is terribly wrong.

When people talk today of the cold war, they don’t get it. read the document that started it. the cold war from the wests perspective was not a war to overthrow Russia, it was a policy of containment. Strap em down so they don’t hurt everything.

They understand this, even if the population doesn’t. so they know that a cold war is mediated by them. just as quickly as they get into it, is as fast as the west would hopefully let them out of it once they stop thrashing. Like a good brother fighting a bad brother with a temper problem, they keep holding them down, and letting them up, and holding them down and letting them up. Once they did it once and know that we will not kick em when down, or take over them, then a huge door of operative possibilities opened up to them.

this is the wests ultimate mistake.. as it leads to an infinite regression till the opponent wins or the self changes.


With Russia rearmed and such high electronics capable of being made and such, a new cold war would be a much more peaceful method to create coupe in the west. The west in its paranoia will give up its last vestiges of freedom to get rid of them in their midst. The red scare and the ability to cover it told them they can start and stop such at will, as we will not look at it in the right light. We think everything that happens is natural. Even though we know there is quite a number of agencies and numbers of workers in them that exceed several million people world wide on all sides.




Putin grabbed the throne early because we were about to cap the flow of destabilization and the money from a little oil (which incompetence can do), making a lot of money, is to stop.

I said that things would heat up, I didn’t look at Pakistan.. but look now compared to then.

And why are things working in iraq? After all, either your beating the insurgency or they are sitting tight. You wont know till later.

However, the tactic of such is not one of winning, its one of attrition. The insurgency NEVER wanted America to leave iraq, since all they needed to do was not do anything for 6 months and it would be over.

Along with everything else… it makes sense. After all, if all this destabilization noise.. from isreal, Africa, Syria, turkey, Pakistan, etc are not deterring the talk as to the dorrway IRAN, then the next best thing is to get the iraq thing over so that people get a breather and lose heart to finish the job (as they did in wwii and elsewhere).

It’s a gamble… but not as much as most think since they can ratchet it up at will again… (as they did with the communist insurgents againt turkey)

Given two oil fields of equal size and everything else and one was run by a communist (idealism) state and the other was run by a capitalist (meritocritous) state, which would produce more oil at lower costs? (you only have to look at whats happened to production in venezuella)

They can’t compete on a level field in which they can’t upset and constantly knock over the pieces resetting the game. If they cant move weapons around and pump up the perceived value of oil by increasing risk, and increase risk to keep western capitalists from operating at low cost (security, etc).

Africa is very important in this… if it stabilizes, then wealth will pour in and there will be vast alternative resources that Russia now supplies and Africa cant since you cant do business there like you can in other places. Costs are higher than in safer more stable places.

The basis of soviet power is its natural resources, not its people… so putin is scared to lose his ability to sell each gallon for twice what it would normally be worth, and the power and control that it gives him AND the cadre of other sociopathic helpers and others that follow knowing the alternative (they are always lower down and do the work and take the risk).

Its all a world wide racket.. their operative tactics and such are like the mob in a neighborhood.. breaking windows, terrorizing people, changing the economic markers rather than work merit. Bully to change sides, but then your in bed with them picking up fleas. After all, Iran is sitting there and the leaders choice there is side with Russia and let them tell you what nasty things they need done in exchange for the umbrella, or side with the capitalist who will nto work with you as long as your practices to the masses are sociopathic and such. since they cant change they have to step down, and since stepping down makes them impotent, they have no other recourse but to squat and pick the side that lets them do so.

Those factors didn't stop the USSR from driving itself into the ground, though -- so why should they stop Mr. Putin?

They wont… but this time they know they don’t have to push it to that end. They can squat on it and for a long while still have a lot of cash and such to keep stockpiling and such.

They are playing a longer term game… and most haven’t noticed that the set up is looking remarkably like the set up before wwii… economic crisis… etc.

Though this time, we don’t have the people, the will, and the friends.