If I am looking down at my ballot and I have the choice between John McCain and Vladimir Putin, I’m really not sure which box I’m checking.
Tell that to the 9 million Americans withering in one of the worst criminal justice systems in the world. Even Russia doesn’t throw its citizens into solitary like we do.
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This is brutal but deserved.
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/19/confused_senator_attempts_to_publish_column_in_communist_newspaper_from_distant_past/singleton/
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Some low level assistant is packing up his stuff right about now.
"terrorize and even assassinate journalists who try to expose their corruption. "
Michael Hastings comes to mind. RIP Michael.
Great, now we have two heads of state acting like infants instead of taking care of their own problems at home.
Only two? Which two are you referring to?
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That’d be one weird campaign, too.
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Really? Googling “Russia solitary confinement” turns up a lot of hits that, at least on the surface, suggest otherwise. Do you have a source?
US has a bad system, as does Russia. US is at least starting to decriminalize marijuana which will hopefully decrease nonviolent drug offenders in prison. We have comparable rates of incarceration, US is currently higher. We also have half the murder rate of Russia. I’ve spoken to people who’ve lived/worked in both countries, I haven’t really come across people who feel safer from the government in Russia. I’m curious is others have had different conversations.
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Ha, right…
I’d be checking out emigration opportunities.
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If only Putin could get equal time with the late Weekly World News. There is a leader with an answer to the Bat-Boy menace.
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At this point, McCain is generally demonstrating himself to be an old relic with no idea of how the world currently works. Putin however, is an ex-KGB crypto-fascist who’s trying to get a dictator buddy/client of his out of hot water so that his influence in the middle-east continues. The fact that he looks like a saint for doing this is incidental, and he’s getting a kick out of the whole thing by also incidentally rubbing the US’s face in its own hypocrisy. That it gets Obama and the US government out of a stupid hole they dug for themselves is also incidental.
Please, I know that the US machine is hardly showing its most distinguished face in public, but Vladimir Putin is hardy the antidote!
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I can only hope you mean he’s packing up McCain’s stuff.
unlikely. What I meant was that the only fallout from this will be some poor schmuck who clicked submit with out doing his homework first will lose his job. This whole thing probably only had the barest input from McCain himself. It is an indictment of the man, but what else is new.
I never argued for true equivalency, as a matter of fact I made sure to make a nod to the relativistic nature of the comparison. I don’t know how you missed it.
Since we’re cherry picking incidents lets compare Pussy Riot instead to John Lennon or to the way the Occupy movement was handled or the Branch Davidians or even the politically motivated members of anonymous or Julian Assange.
Let’s consider that America imprisons 716 of every 100,000 members of its population compared to Russia’s 477. Don’t forget that these prisoners are subject to institutional slavery.
Like I said, rights are for the rich and powerful and the politicians know how to play the game better than anyone.
Perhaps America has little need to silence journalists since most of the population soaks up media from it’s approved outlets. After all, you wouldn’t want to kill them if they already say what you want them to. However, as mkind points out, it isn’t pretty when they get out of line perhaps.
For US vs. John Lennon, if you can go back 40+ years back, then I can bring in Soviet era stuff. Branch Davidians would be more comparable to how Russians dealt with Chechnya. Occupy movement certainly wasn’t always handled well, but I’d rather have been there than in the Russian Protests of 2011-2013. http://www.theotherrussia.org/2011/11/01/half-of-ralliers-detained-in-moscow-strategy-31/
As I said, US prison system is horrible, but no better than Russia. Russia sentences people to forced labor. Hastings case is troubling, but could have been an accident, whereas the systematic Russian control of the media is much more widespread, and no accident. I don’t think comparing a president being “on message” to killing journalists is a great comparison.
I guess it just depends on what flavor Kool-aid you prefer. I say the US and Russia are similar in many regards and in some ways either is worse than the other. Still, nearly anything that McCain said about Russia could be said about the US on some level.
Uhm… yeah, you already did with your link to the list of dead journalists. I merely compiled a list of my own;) I don’t care if you go all the way back to the Bolshevik revolution. My point still stands.
I wasn’t but it’s a shame you can’t see what being “on message” implies. I said that it wasn’t necessary for our country to kill its journalists because they play the game. Either you didn’t comprehend my point or you are intentionally obfuscating. The media and the administration tells us what issues we need to be worried about. Some would say that is so we don’t pay attention to the issues that affect us and the rest of the world most. I’ll try to refrain from more trite Kool-aid comments.
