What does Putin want (and whatabout it)
DaveSchmidt said:
nan said:
Even western polling showed that Putin, who is considered a moderate in Russia, was the favorite.
Can you provide any examples of the polling? I wasn’t aware that Russia permitted Western outfits to conduct independent polls of its citizens, and my online searches came up empty.
US government-funded polling organization, the Levada Center.
Here's an article about them polling Russians:
West Declares Russian Elections "Undemocratic" Because it Doesn't Like Winner
jamie said:
Meanwhile - we warned Putin of an upcoming attack and his response was: “these actions resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.”
Funny, Vlad media doesn't mention this wrote or the US warning or that ISIS claimed responsibility. Heck, you'd hard know tens of thousands of Russians are dying in Ukraine.
As I've said countless times - the Russian people deserve so much better.
It was not ISIS--it was Ukraine and/or the CIA -- they caught the guys and now there will be retribution and more people will die. This war could have ended before it started but the West was so sure they could take Russia down and fleece them again as they did in the 1990s. So they fought to the last Ukrainian. And now they are trying to mobilize even younger Ukrainians for the meat grinder. It's the West that's going down instead.
nan said:
US government-funded polling organization, the Levada Center.
Here's an article about them polling Russians:
West Declares Russian Elections "Undemocratic" Because it Doesn't Like Winner
Thank you, that’s clarifying. The link from your source referring to NED funding is from 2011. Labeled a foreign agent by the Russian government, the Levada Center stopped accepting foreign funding in 2013. The current National Endowment for Democracy grantee search page does not list Levada.
Even if it received grant money from the NED, which it apparently hasn’t for at least a decade, that funding would not have made the Levada Center a Western pollster.
I take it Nan believes Russia's elections are democratic, and ours aren't, and I'm curious what the specific aspects of Russia's elections are that she sees it as giving it the advantage.
DaveSchmidt said:
nan said:
US government-funded polling organization, the Levada Center.
Here's an article about them polling Russians:
West Declares Russian Elections "Undemocratic" Because it Doesn't Like Winner
Thank you, that’s clarifying. The link from your source referring to NED funding is from 2011. Labeled a foreign agent by the Russian government, the Levada Center stopped accepting foreign funding in 2013. The current National Endowment for Democracy grantee search page does not list Levada.
Even if it received grant money from the NED, which it apparently hasn’t for at least a decade, that funding would not have made the Levada Center a Western pollster.
I've spent a fair amount of time looking into polling in Russia and I couldn't find very much information. It seems pretty clear that western organizations polling in Russia hasn't been a thing for many years. And polling in Russia in general seems to be a pretty dicey operation in terms of providing accurate data.
Unless someone can prove otherwise, anyway.
nan said:
It was not ISIS--it was Ukraine and/or the CIA -- they caught the guys and now there will be retribution and more people will die. This war could have ended before it started but the West was so sure they could take Russia down and fleece them again as they did in the 1990s. So they fought to the last Ukrainian. And now they are trying to mobilize even younger Ukrainians for the meat grinder. It's the West that's going down instead.
You do realize that Putin has killed a lot of Muslims do you? You think he’s just gonna torture a few guys he says were trying to cross into Ukraine, and stop torturing the Tajikistan Muslims?
You really are a plant from the Kremlin.
DaveSchmidt said:
nan said:
US government-funded polling organization, the Levada Center.
Here's an article about them polling Russians:
West Declares Russian Elections "Undemocratic" Because it Doesn't Like Winner
Thank you, that’s clarifying. The link from your source referring to NED funding is from 2011. Labeled a foreign agent by the Russian government, the Levada Center stopped accepting foreign funding in 2013. The current National Endowment for Democracy grantee search page does not list Levada.
Even if it received grant money from the NED, which it apparently hasn’t for at least a decade, that funding would not have made the Levada Center a Western pollster.
NED is not always upfront with their funding since they handle regime change operations. They have been shown to scrub funding information, such as around the time of the 2014 Ukraine coup (I once posted about this but have no idea where to find it now). I can imagine they don't want to be associated with proving Putin's popularity.
Does Levada list who currently funds them? I doubt the Russians would fund a "foreign agent," even if it said it was not that anymore.
edited to add: I looked on the Levada Center's webpage (https://www.levada.ru/en/about-us/) and they are still listed as foreign agents:
"The ANO Levada Center has been included in the registry of non-commercial organizations acting as foreign agents."
nan said:
Does Levada list who currently funds them?
I don’t know.
You answered my question to my satisfaction, and I thanked you. I’m sorry the information in my reply didn’t satisfy you in return.
nan said:
Does Levada list who currently funds them?
From your ETA link: “Levada-Center conducts research for companies, universities, NGOs in Russia and across the world, as well as for international organizations.”
I assume it doesn’t do that work for free.
DaveSchmidt said:
nan said:
Does Levada list who currently funds them?
I don’t know.
You answered my question to my satisfaction, and I thanked you. I’m sorry the information in my reply didn’t satisfy you in return.
Well, you said they stopped accepting foreign funding, but it seems that is not true.
DaveSchmidt said:
nan said:
Does Levada list who currently funds them?
From your ETA link: “Levada-Center conducts research for companies, universities, NGOs in Russia and across the world, as well as for international organizations.”
I assume it doesn’t do that work for free.
No, but I doubt they are funded by pro-Russian sources. I think we can accept their polling about Putin's popularity as true. It's not that far fetched considering it currently appears to be difficult to get a world superpower leader without brain damage.
Jaytee said:
nan said:
It was not ISIS--it was Ukraine and/or the CIA -- they caught the guys and now there will be retribution and more people will die. This war could have ended before it started but the West was so sure they could take Russia down and fleece them again as they did in the 1990s. So they fought to the last Ukrainian. And now they are trying to mobilize even younger Ukrainians for the meat grinder. It's the West that's going down instead.
You do realize that Putin has killed a lot of Muslims do you? You think he’s just gonna torture a few guys he says were trying to cross into Ukraine, and stop torturing the Tajikistan Muslims?
You really are a plant from the Kremlin.
You really don't catch anything outside of your Ukraine propaganda bubble do you?
nan said:
You really don't catch anything outside of your Ukraine propaganda bubble do you?
well I’ve been paying attention to Putin for about two decades now, I’ve seen his tyrannical behavior along with his propensity for violence. He’s killed his own people, just to declare war on the people who he says killed his people. I’m sure if you’re a true putinista you would know about the apartments bombing that started the Chechen war. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’ve been following his killing sprees for more than two decades. He’s killed thousands of Muslims, probably more than we ever did. Could be one of the reasons trump loves the guy…. But not you… you have other issues.
On Terp's recommendation, I started reading Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker. Baker uses a series of observations about famous people on a timeline starting in 1914 to illustrate the descent into madness that culminated in the Second World War.
So, I had always wondered if there were Jews for Hitler. And sure enough, early in the rise of Hitler (sometime in 1932), there was a short piece on Jewish bankers supporting Hitler because he was better than the Bolsheviks and because he wasn't serious about his criticisms of Jews.
So, seeing Paul and Nan going all in for autocracy shouldn't come as a surprise. Crazier things have happened in the past.
nan said:
jamie said:
Meanwhile - we warned Putin of an upcoming attack and his response was: “these actions resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.”
Funny, Vlad media doesn't mention this wrote or the US warning or that ISIS claimed responsibility. Heck, you'd hard know tens of thousands of Russians are dying in Ukraine.
As I've said countless times - the Russian people deserve so much better.
It was not ISIS--it was Ukraine and/or the CIA -- they caught the guys and now there will be retribution and more people will die. This war could have ended before it started but the West was so sure they could take Russia down and fleece them again as they did in the 1990s. So they fought to the last Ukrainian. And now they are trying to mobilize even younger Ukrainians for the meat grinder. It's the West that's going down instead.
Why would Ukraine do something that doesn't really hurt Russia but is guaranteed to provoke a response when attacks on Russian ships in the Black Sea and on Russia oil refineries are so much more damaging.
And Russia may well have caught some of the perps, but whenever I hear of the Russians catching a "perp', I am reminded of this joke.
"The KGB, the FBI and the CIA are all trying to prove that they are the best at catching criminals
The Secretary General of the UN decides to give them a test. He releases a rabbit into a forest and each of them has to catch it.
The CIA goes in. They place animal informants throughout the forest. They question all plant and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive investigations they conclude that rabbits do not exist.
The FBI goes in. After two weeks with no leads they burn the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit, and they make no apologies. The rabbit had it coming.
The KGB goes in. They come out two hours later with a badly beaten bear. The bear is screaming: "Okay! Okay! I'm a rabbit! I'm a rabbit!"
nan - thanks for coming back. I'll go back to Vlad's prime objective which is to eliminate the Nazi scourge - worst since WWII. You seem to be well informed - how many nazis have been eliminated? How many are left? Who is their current leader? What past Nazi leaders have been killed? Do you think it's a just cause for this many Russians to die for? What land line has Vlad established as his stopping point?
nan said:
Well, you said they stopped accepting foreign funding, but it seems that is not true.
After checking your link’s 2011 citation, I said Levada stopped taking foreign funding in 2013, which was reported here, here and here. (Here, Levada’s director said foreign grants had accounted for only 1.5% to 3% of its funding.) I didn’t investigate whether foreign funding had resumed.
I also didn’t dispute the accuracy of Levada’s polling; I questioned only whether it was a Western pollster. Regarding the accuracy, a Russian dissident had this to say in a post-election article that acknowledged Putin’s polling support:
But while the figures may suggest abiding support for Mr. Putin and his agenda across Russia, the situation is more complex than the numbers convey. The leader of one opposition research group in Moscow has argued that backing for Mr. Putin is actually far more brittle than simple approval numbers suggest.
“The numbers we get on polls from Russia don’t mean what people think they mean,” said Aleksei Minyailo, a Moscow-based opposition activist and co-founder of a research project called Chronicles, which has been polling Russians in recent months. “Because Russia is not an electoral democracy but a wartime dictatorship.”
… “We see that Russians want different things from what they expect from Putin,” Mr. Minyailo said. “Probably if they did have any kind of alternative, they might make a different choice.”
Behind Russia’s Potemkin Vote, Real Support. But No Other Choices. (NYT)
So we have Nazis and Islamic jihadists living in harmony in Ukraine…I swear
tjohn said:
On Terp's recommendation, I started reading Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker. Baker uses a series of observations about famous people on a timeline starting in 1914 to illustrate the descent into madness that culminated in the Second World War.
So, I had always wondered if there were Jews for Hitler. And sure enough, early in the rise of Hitler (sometime in 1932), there was a short piece on Jewish bankers supporting Hitler because he was better than the Bolsheviks and because he wasn't serious about his criticisms of Jews.
So, seeing Paul and Nan going all in for autocracy shouldn't come as a surprise. Crazier things have happened in the past.
I'm not all in for autocracy. I'm anti-war and anti-imperialism.
So, you must be vehemently opposed to Putin's war on Ukraine - an imperialistic war intended to rebuild the Russian Empire.
Jaytee said:
So we have Nazis and Islamic jihadists living in harmony in Ukraine…I swear
And Jews. Don't forget that Zelensky is Jewish.
jamie said:
nan - thanks for coming back. I'll go back to Vlad's prime objective which is to eliminate the Nazi scourge - worst since WWII. You seem to be well informed - how many nazis have been eliminated? How many are left? Who is their current leader? What past Nazi leaders have been killed? Do you think it's a just cause for this many Russians to die for? What land line has Vlad established as his stopping point?
I'm not back; I'm just stopping by. Ukraine was full of Nazis and now their armies have been decimated, which was part of the Russian goal. Russia has won the war so the Ukrainians should be asking them to negotiate peace. There is no chance of Ukrainian victory unless we have WWIII, which is still a possibility and then we all die.
But, it's an election year here so more younger Ukrainians will be sacrificed to the meat grinder to prolong the suffering and give Russia a chance to take more territory. I'd say they will probably take Karkov and Odessa. I don't think they want Kiev, but if this terrorist attack came from Ukraine all bets are off. I don't think Putin wants to invade Europe--that's just NATO propaganda.
We have to see where this attack came from. They have the terrorists and they will be finding out.
tjohn said:
And Jews. Don't forget that Zelensky is Jewish.
Yes! Jews!
tjohn said:
So, you must be vehemently opposed to Putin's war on Ukraine - an imperialistic war intended to rebuild the Russian Empire.
No, that's the "support NATO" lie. Putin did everything he could to avoid this war, but NATO/US kept provoking him. They pulled an imperialistic coup on the Ukraine government in 2014 and then armed them to attack the Donbas. They made a mockery of the two Minsk agreements--just used them to give time to further arm Ukraine. They trained Ukraine troops. The west created an existential threat for Russia because they thought they would be easy to overthrow. They were wrong big time.
nan said:
tjohn said:
So, you must be vehemently opposed to Putin's war on Ukraine - an imperialistic war intended to rebuild the Russian Empire.
No, that's the "support NATO" lie. Putin did everything he could to avoid this war, but NATO/US kept provoking him. They pulled an imperialistic coup on the Ukraine government in 2014 and then armed them to attack the Donbas. They made a mockery of the two Minsk agreements--just used them to give time to further arm Ukraine. They trained Ukraine troops. The west created an existential threat for Russia because they thought they would be easy to overthrow. They were wrong big time.
Existential threat implies that Russia was going to be physically invaded and destroyed as a self-governing entity. However, there is no world in which any of Russia's neighbors would ever invade Russia. The reason, of course, is that Russia would be with in her rights to respond to an invasion with nuclear weapons.
Donbas, as you may recall, was and is part of Ukraine.
The simple reality is that there would be peace in the region and NATO would be more brain dead than ever were it not for Putin's revanchism.
I have to give Putin credit for doing what no American President could ever do - persuade NATO countries to spend more on defense.
nan said:
I'm not back; I'm just stopping by. Ukraine was full of Nazis and now their armies have been decimated, which was part of the Russian goal.
This IS insane. Putin just doubled down on the NAZI issue. Why don't you ever listen to what he says instead of interpreting what he thinks.
And like you I agree - he will flatten Ukraine to Odessa and take Moldova in his current land grab that he has used tens of thousands of innocent Russian soldiers to achieve. One thing I rarely hear you address.
tjohn said:
nan said:
tjohn said:
So, you must be vehemently opposed to Putin's war on Ukraine - an imperialistic war intended to rebuild the Russian Empire.
No, that's the "support NATO" lie. Putin did everything he could to avoid this war, but NATO/US kept provoking him. They pulled an imperialistic coup on the Ukraine government in 2014 and then armed them to attack the Donbas. They made a mockery of the two Minsk agreements--just used them to give time to further arm Ukraine. They trained Ukraine troops. The west created an existential threat for Russia because they thought they would be easy to overthrow. They were wrong big time.
Existential threat implies that Russia was going to be physically invaded and destroyed as a self-governing entity. However, there is no world in which any of Russia's neighbors would ever invade Russia. The reason, of course, is that Russia would be with in her rights to respond to an invasion with nuclear weapons.
Donbas, as you may recall, was and is part of Ukraine.
The simple reality is that there would be peace in the region and NATO would be more brain dead than ever were it not for Putin's revanchism.
I have to give Putin credit for doing what no American President could ever do - persuade NATO countries to spend more on defense.
Sanctions are a form of war. The sanctions were intended to destroy the Russian economy and have Putin removed from office and a more western friendly leader put in place so they could open the vulture floodgates as they did in the 1990s.
No country, including our own, would tolerate what NATO/West has done to Russia. Donbas is an area where Russian speaking people dominate and they were being attacked by their own government because they had a problem with the 2014 coup.
This whole mess is mostly the fault of the west. They were the ones who had Zelensky tear up the peace deal. They were the ones to push the 2014 coup and to arm Ukraine. They were the ones to make up the propaganda that people like you believe it's important to support spending more for military spending (NATO). NATO is a business and needs to expand to survive. It's doing a great job with the propaganda, but that's not reality.
jamie said:
nan said:
I'm not back; I'm just stopping by. Ukraine was full of Nazis and now their armies have been decimated, which was part of the Russian goal.
This IS insane. Putin just doubled down on the NAZI issue. Why don't you ever listen to what he says instead of interpreting what he thinks.
And like you I agree - he will flatten Ukraine to Odessa and take Moldova in his current land grab that he has used tens of thousands of innocent Russian soldiers to achieve. One thing I rarely hear you address.
Ukraine DOES have a Nazi problem. That's not a made up story. At the beginning of the war Putin was willing to sign a peace deal that did not take any territory except Crimea. They should have signed this. Now they are in the superior position so lots of land is gone and won't be coming back. The people in these areas are glad to be part of Russia. Russia does have losses, but they are much smaller than Ukraine's (unless you believe Zelensky's 30,000 figure). Russia will take the areas with lots of Russian speaking population. They are not so keen on Ukrainian speaking areas.
The west used (to the last Ukrainian -- as I and some others have been saying) and will soon abandon Ukraine because it's a lost cause. The West vastly underestimated the power of the Russian military or economy. The areas that are going to Russia are the lucky ones. Better to live in Russia than being owned by Blackrock.
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Meanwhile - we warned Putin of an upcoming attack and his response was: “these actions resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.”
Funny, Vlad media doesn't mention this wrote or the US warning or that ISIS claimed responsibility. Heck, you'd hard know tens of thousands of Russians are dying in Ukraine.
As I've said countless times - the Russian people deserve so much better.