Vladimir
Putin is, in a sense, the adopting father of his country. He took office after
Yeltsin's hand was placed on his shoulder, and has led the new Russia
almost ever since. even so he is more like Ulysses S. Grant running a
country recently in chaos with great transition and an unsettled
civil economic structure. Total control really wasn't possible for
Grant and neither is it for Putin. He just barely got a little income
tax in place to help pay for the cost of government.
Geraldo
Rivera on Fox didn't know the difference between the K.G.B. and the
G.R.U. One is the former state security apparatus of the former
Soviet Union and the other is Army intelligence. I will give you five
seconds to guess which is which.....ready? The answer is the G.R.U.
is Army intelligence.
President
Putin has had to be lax and strict at the same time in encouraging
development of a free market with the most strong from the former
Soviet Union taking over state enterprises and privatizing them. It
was a very wild economic transition done live and the process is far
from complete. Issues of taxation and redistribution of wealth,
creation of new businesses and legalizing private property and trying
to let people have some while not letting people freeze to death or
starve in a harsh environment would be challenges for anyone.
Then
Russia had the problems of the west seeking to wrest former
territories from Russia and a left-leaning corporatist media that
might really have preferred that a socialist government had followed
the end of communism instead of what may be some sort of market based
economy eventually.
The
former Soviet state had a three part government of KGB, Communist
Party and the Military. In the New Russia it is quite possible that
Vladimir Putin cannot or does not exercise complete control over
military intelligence, or at least it is not so totalitarian that
Edward Snows, Aldrich Aimes and Chelsea Mannings don't appear to work
free enterprise on-line hacking for fun and profit like the legions
of western hackers and governments have. Didn't President Obama have
the U.S.A. actually hack into Chancellor Merkel's private spaces and
record noises for intelligence, fun and profit? I don't think the
practice is rare. Maybe the Brits and French have hacked the White
House. France did sink the Rainbow Warrior, yet that wasn't too
subtle.
It is
better to normalize relations and not have the crass media Putin
bashing they are accustomed too. It is an excellent Orwellian daily
hate that is not good for the nation or the ecosystem that each can
be advanced with constructive engagement with Russia.
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