Emelianenko wins, Putin is booed

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

It is. But that doesn't mean it's a democracy. The other side of that coin is that the US is less of a democracy than most Americans want to acknowledge.

But the reality is that Putin will win and nobody really has a shot at changing that. Not because people aren't allowed to vote or because those votes aren't actually counted but because nobody who would actually provide serious opposition is allowed to compete (see Khodorkovsky, see Prokhorov, see Medvedev).

But how is that so very different from the US. We may not know who the next president will be, but there is a short list and in the end, the result of the election will not greatly affect the direction of the country. Even if someone with truly different ideas were elected (Ron Paul, for instance), bureaucracy, seniority, and corruption will make sure that nothing actually changes. Do you really think that anyone could shut down government departments or balance the budget? Democracy is an illusion, and not only in the FSU.

Hey SMR...get back to me when Obama and the likes start imprisoning their competition. Until then please spare us the BS.

Could it be that Russia is more of a Democracy than the West wants to admit ?

Could it also be that pigs have wings and fly when the moon is full? Ummm no. Try again.

[SMR 368]

Hey SMR...get back to me when Obama and the likes start imprisoning their competition. Until then please spare us the BS.

The fact that Obama probably couldn't imprison Romney doesn't mean you live in a democracy. Let me know when you can actually influence your government in a meaningful way.

As far as Russia being more of a democracy than the west likes to imagine, I'm not talking about freedom to oppose the government at the highest levels. As I said, anybody that could provide serious opposition is not allowed to compete (with varying levels of persuasion, coercion, or forceful removal). What I do mean is that in Russia (can't speak about Belarus), people enjoy a significant level of personal freedom as to how they live their everyday lives, whom they talk to, what they say, what they read, where they go to church, how they spend their money, where they go, etc. Nobody is going to hunt down a crowd of people because they boo'ed during the prime minister's speech. Everybody has better things to do.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

the Philosophy of Democracy is always open to interpretation - is there currently a pure / true Democracy out there: NO ; YES, Russia is currently a form of Democracy without a doubt despite how the West spins it ; YES, the USA is an experiment in Democracy dating back to 1776 and Yes the American general public has been told that the USA is the ideal Democracy and that is sad. Quick example : Freedom of Press - How can there be three major NEWS networks on US Media ( CBS, NBC & ABC ) that report the news on a nightly basis but yet all three report the same basic point of view ? We even have major cable news networks now that provide a " slightly " different point of view but generally slanted Right or Left depending on network, but translate into the same point of view. ? Will the internet and independent minded individuals eventually break down this situation ? Change is unfortunately painfully slow.

The ' short list ' in the US is pathetic ( Romney / Obama in 2012) and it is amazing how quickly we criticize Russia, Putin.... the democracy in the USA has evolved into this polarized DEm vs Rep and I doubt back in 1776 this is what they wanted. A third of even fourth Party : Independents and / or Libertarian etc... would be interesting to see if something like this could break the DC deadlock.

To me it seems that Politicians have forgotten that they are elected to serve the people; right now Politics in the US is another form of Big Business and Congress-People, Senate-People etc.. are all in it for the dollars. They get a nice Salary, Pension and Health Benefits above and beyond what even Middle Class America gets for only serving 2 , 4 or 6 years - sad... The American public needs to wake up and stop be so complacent.

dont be dis-illusioned Democracy has to Evolve and to be Worked at ; it is not a given.... IT EXISTS in many forms !

Democracy in the US has tanked...it's sold out to big business. But what Russia has is anything but democracy. You can spin it like Tsar Putin and call it a "controlled democracy" but that's nothing more than bs for suckers to swallow.

You need to do some research on what goes on in Russia and politics if you want to post about it. In fact I'm going to give you one example of many like it. And don't forget, Tsar Putin "appoints" the governors for each and every Oblast including the mayors of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/world/europe/04detain.html?pagewanted=all

Russian Mayor Irks Security Agency, and Suffers

By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

Published: July 3, 2010

LISTVYANKA, Russia — On the edge of this Siberian village is a resort with a veiled guest list and armed guards at the front gate. When local officials have expressed unease about what goes on inside, the reply has always been the same: do not interfere.

Two and half years ago, the village’s mayor, Tatyana Kazakova, had enough. A major construction project at the resort had exposed a hot water main, threatening the heating supply for the entire village as temperatures plunged to 30 degrees below zero.

Ms. Kazakova was not a typical bureaucrat. She was one of the most successful businesswomen in this vast region, a real-estate magnate with a blond ponytail who represented a new breed of Russian entrepreneur.

She filed a lawsuit against the resort, and asked the regional prosecutor to open a criminal inquiry.

A criminal inquiry was indeed opened — against Ms. Kazakova.

The resort belongs to the F.S.B., the main successor to the Soviet-era K.G.B., and the F.S.B. arrested her and had her prosecuted.

She is now on trial in a case that has already become a disquieting example of the power of the security agency in today’s Russia.

More than 25 agents have delved into every aspect of Ms. Kazakova’s life, carrying out what they have termed a “counterintelligence operation.” Masked special service officers with automatic weapons have raided her associates’ homes. More than 250 witnesses have been interrogated, and 67 volumes of evidence have been amassed, according to the trial records.

Even a prominent Kremlin official has declared that Ms. Kazakova is being persecuted, and so has the human rights ombudsman here in Siberia, who is a government official. Yet the F.S.B. remains largely untouchable.

“Why are they doing this, who fears me?” Ms. Kazakova, 47, asked in a letter that she passed to her lawyers last year. “Why are they keeping me in jail, when I pose no threat?”

The F.S.B., which protects national security and investigates major felonies, has never publicly explained why it decided to devote such resources to pursuing the mayor of a village of 1,700 people. She was charged with abuse of office and election irregularities, crimes that the F.S.B. rarely scrutinizes at the local level.

After her arrest in March 2008, she was held in a cell at Pre-Trial Detention Center No. 1, a jail in the Siberian regional capital of Irkutsk that was once used by Stalin’s secret police. For nearly two and a half years, she was denied all contact with her fiancé, mother and three children, including a 15-year-old daughter who has a neurological disease.

Late on Wednesday night, after The New York Times made repeated inquiries to the F.S.B. about the charges against Ms. Kazakova, the judge in the case reversed previous decisions and agreed to release Ms. Kazakova on bail. The next day, Ms. Kazakova embraced her family for the first time since 2008.

The judge is expected to issue a verdict in Ms. Kazakova’s trial within the next few weeks. Her lawyers say, based on how the trial was conducted, that the judge does not seem open to the possibility that Ms. Kazakova is not guilty. She could face several years in prison.

Russia is a freer society than its Soviet predecessor, and the F.S.B. is smaller and less intrusive than the K.G.B. But the agency still functions mostly in secret, with an intimidating reputation and almost no oversight from other branches of government.

Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, the country’s paramount leader, is a former director of the F.S.B. and a former K.G.B. officer, and since his rise to power a decade ago, the agency has wielded tremendous influence in government and industry. Mr. Putin has appointed many former agency officers to senior positions. They are known as the siloviki, from the Russian word for “force.”

The agency has regularly faced criticism for undertaking politically motivated inquiries, especially those involving opposition politicians. It has also prosecuted scientists and academics for what it has contended were illegal transfers of classified information abroad.

And now, the Kremlin seems bent on making the F.S.B. even stronger. Parliament, controlled by Mr. Putin’s party, is in the process of approving legislation that would allow F.S.B. agents to warn people that their activities were “unacceptable” and leading toward a crime. The K.G.B. once employed a similar practice against Soviet dissidents.

The F.S.B. would not comment on Ms. Kazakova. Regional prosecutors said her arrest had nothing to do with the security agency’s resort. But they could not explain why in many other municipal corruption cases in the region, the F.S.B. was not involved, and defendants were treated far more leniently.

“There are laws in Russia, but the security services are beyond any laws,” said one of Ms. Kazakova’s lawyers, Dmitri Dmitriyev. “They act with total impunity. They can undertake special inquiries, collect information on people, violate fundamental human rights, put people in prison, keep them there as long as they want, manipulate judges and manipulate prosecutors. This case is just a demonstration of all this.”

Ms. Kazakova’s longtime companion, Dmitri Matveyev, 40, who had lived with her for years, wanted to marry her after her arrest, but the judge in the case would not allow it. After Mr. Matveyev gave an interview to The Times, he said he was visited by two F.S.B. agents, who instructed him not to speak to The Times again.

“I told them that I am not going to listen to them,” Mr. Matveyev said. “It has been two and a half years, and that has been a long enough period of silence. That is why I am going to talk.”

Getting Things Done

Ms. Kazakova made her fortune operating hotels and markets in Irkutsk, earning praise for her savvy all the way to the Kremlin. She then turned her attention to Listvyanka, a downtrodden fishing village on Lake Baikal, an environmental masterpiece that by some estimates has 20 percent of the world’s fresh water.

She built a hotel here, and after her election as mayor in 2006, promised to spur an economic revival. She planned a major vacation complex, called Baikal City, and even proposed building a residence for the Russian president.

She prided herself on getting things done, but her political opponents called her headstrong and domineering. Her family said she spent more than a million dollars of her own money building a municipal government headquarters for Listvyanka and modernizing utilities and other services. Those figures could not be confirmed independently. Still, the revival of the village was widely praised around Siberia by leaders of Mr. Putin’s governing party, and residents said the changes were notable.

“I am sorry to say that before, we didn’t even have toilets,” said Igor Skripkin, 72, a retired basketball coach. “Now, we have hotels and workplaces. It is all because of her.”

When the F.S.B. resort, which is also a rehabilitation center, began renovations and expansion, it would not divulge its plans to local officials. It said the work was being done under an “antiterrorism program” and thus had to be kept secret, according to court records.

After construction exposed the hot water main, Ms. Kazakova contacted the resort’s director, an F.S.B. colonel named Valery Trifonov, but he dismissed her concerns and told her that she had no right to involve herself in the resort’s activities.

Though the resort appeared to eventually take efforts not to damage the water main, Ms. Kazakova complained that two major fires there had also threatened her village. And she took her most provocative step, appealing to the regional prosecutor in February 2008 to investigate. In her complaint, she said the resort never received permits from the village for its projects, and frequently violated safety rules.

She accused Colonel Trifonov of “threatening the lives of not only those who vacation at the resort and its workers, but also the lives of those people who reside in Listvyanka.” She even sent a complaint about Colonel Trifonov to F.S.B. headquarters in Moscow.

The next month, Ms. Kazakova was arrested by a squad of F.S.B. agents at the regional airport after returning from a business trip to China.

The F.S.B., in conjunction with the regional prosecutor, accused Ms. Kazakova of fraudulently awarding a $120,000 contract for utilities maintenance to a company that Ms. Kazakova secretly controlled, and said the work was never done.

“The fact that she really did something for Listvyanka, thank God for that,” said Vladimir Salovarov, a regional spokesman for the investigative committee of the Russian prosecutor general’s office. “Let her keep doing this. But there is another side to this. You shouldn’t break the law.”

Asked whether the case was related to the F.S.B. resort, he said, “That is absolute garbage.”

Two of Ms. Kazakova’s trial lawyers, Aleksandr Gliskov and Ilya Shcherbakov, said the allegations were fabricated. They said the utilities contract was delayed because of typical weather-related and bureaucratic problems. They pointed out that the company, Kommunalshik, had returned the $120,000 to the village budget even before the charges were brought.

Kommunalshik’s founder, Irina Mikhailova, denied that Ms. Kazakova had rigged the bidding or had anything to do with the company. Ms. Mikhailova said she was arrested by the F.S.B. and transferred in an unheated railway car to a jail 400 miles away. She was held for nine months while the authorities pressured her to corroborate the charges against Ms. Kazakova, she said.

She said investigators threatened to send her to Kolyma, which is 2,000 miles away and was once notorious for its gulags, if she did not cooperate. “They said I would rot in jail,” she said, but she refused to cooperate.

Without Ms. Mikhailova’s help, prosecutors relied mainly on two former Kommunalshik employees, who testified that Ms. Kazakova had a financial interest in the company. Ms. Kazakova’s lawyers described the former employees as disgruntled.

The F.S.B. also scrutinized the village election two years before, which Ms. Kazakova won, 618 votes to 541. She was accused of illegally registering 136 people who did not live in the village.

There are no records left from the election, so prosecutors acknowledged in court that they did not know whether any of the 136 people actually voted. Nor have they presented testimony that these people had been asked to register personally by Ms. Kazakova.

While election fraud is rampant in Russia, the F.S.B. has not typically devoted its resources to investigating electoral malfeasance even in more prominent districts or races.

The agency’s investigation of Ms. Kazakova seemed so unusual that when its regional head, Maj. Gen. Sergei Staritsyn, held a rare news conference, journalists peppered him with questions about it. Two asked why the F.S.B. was involved in such a “trivial” case.

“Your question demonstrates a deformed attitude toward such types of crimes,” General Staritsyn said. “Such facts must not be perceived as trivial.”

Kept From Her Family

In Russia, the authorities wield strict control over the conditions of suspects in pretrial detention, including when to approve medical care and visits by family members. Often, this power is used as a weapon to obtain confessions or to weaken suspects so that they cannot mount a defense in court.

For nearly two and a half years — from her arrest in 2008 to her release on bail on Thursday — Ms. Kazakova had been barred from seeing her three children, mother and fiancé in jail. The judge in the case, Yekaterina Maslova, and prosecutors would not allow it.

Ms. Kazakova’s youngest child, Darya, 15, was apart from her for so long that in recent months, she could barely remember her mother’s voice. “When I come home, it’s so empty without her,” Darya said in an interview in May. “I miss her so much. I want to sit next to her, to hug her and to kiss her.”

The law enforcement authorities had also barred Darya from leaving the country to receive crucial medical care. She has neurofibromatosis, an inherited neurological disorder that is not curable and causes noncancerous tumors to appear throughout the body. Local doctors had recommended that she go abroad.

Ms. Kazakova’s mother, Olga Falomeyeva, 74, burst into tears when she recounted the many times her requests for jail visits had been rejected. She salved her grief by harvesting vegetables in her backyard garden and preparing Ms. Kazakova’s favorite dishes, which she sent to her behind bars. In her rulings, the judge had said that because Ms. Kazakova’s oldest daughter, Olga Kazakova, could be called as a witness, permitting any relatives to see Tatyana Kazakova “could influence the course of the judicial process in the criminal case and could affect the determination of truth in this case.”

The issue of pretrial punishment has drawn widespread attention in Russia in recent months after scandals surrounding two defendants who died in custody in Moscow. One of them, Sergei Magnitsky, was ensnared in a tax fraud case, and investigators sought unsuccessfully to get him to testify against his client, a London-based fund, Hermitage Capital Management, that was once a major investor in Russia.

After those two deaths, Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, called for better treatment of defendants accused of nonviolent economic crimes. But the authorities in Irkutsk did not relent until Wednesday, only after receiving questions from The Times.

Last month, before the judge’s decision to grant Ms. Kazakova’s bail, Mr. Salovarov, the spokesman for the investigators, was asked about the family’s assertion that visiting rights had been denied for nearly two and a half years. He said the family was lying.

“The accusation that we have not granted permission for visits for relatives, it is absolute nonsense,” he said.

But Mr. Salovarov was directly contradicted by documents from the jail itself. A Kremlin official, Pavel Astakhov, the federal children’s ombudsman, has also supported the family. Mr. Astakhov has called the treatment of Ms. Kazakova a “major injustice.”

“I just don’t understand how this can be reasonable in this particular case,” Mr. Astakhov said in a letter to the chairman of the regional court system.

The regional human rights ombudsman, Ivan Zelent, has said that Ms. Kazakova has grounds for filing an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

Once, in the spring, prosecutors did agree to allow Ms. Kazakova’s mother and Darya to attend her trial. But when they arrived at court, the judge was taken aback. “Who is that?” the judge asked of the prosecutors. When told that it was Ms. Kazakova’s mother and daughter, the judge demanded that they be removed.

Ms. Kazakova, who was being held in a large cell in the courtroom, as is customary for criminal defendants at trials in Russia, cried, “Momma! Momma! Take off your coat and sit down!” The judge ordered Ms. Kazakova to be silent. And her mother and daughter were escorted out.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia

List of journalists killed in Russia

[Anya n Charles 0]

Could it also be that pigs have wings and fly when the moon is full? Ummm no. Try again.

But if you put Lip Stick on that Pig you could get it elected to the White House..... I'd have to say - don't have to try again, Democracy is not Black and White and doesn't have rule book

[Anya n Charles 0]

Democracy in the US has tanked...it's sold out to big business. But what Russia has is anything but democracy. You can spin it like Tsar Putin and call it a "controlled democracy" but that's nothing more than bs for suckers to swallow.

You need to do some research on what goes on in Russia and politics if you want to post about it. In fact I'm going to give you one example of many like it. And don't forget, Tsar Putin "appoints" the governors for each and every Oblast including the mayors of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

again Democracy has " evolved " to the state it is currently in - whether you view it as broken or something positive is a matter of opinion . . . we may agree here slightly as in my opinion Democracy in the US "is" Big Business. As far as " controlled democracy " : Democracy in the USA = 200+ years vs 20+ Years in Russia. If the USA had made the initial progress Russia did in the first 20 years of our democracy we very well could be better off today.

Look at some of the Judges appointed by US Presidents - some eye opening rulings against not only local politicians but common people in the USA would make you realize your posted article from the ever non-political NYT is tame . . . it happens in the USA just very neatly and swept under the rug very nicely. do some research my friend ....

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

But if you put Lip Stick on that Pig you could get it elected to the White House..... I'd have to say - don't have to try again, Democracy is not Black and White and doesn't have rule book

I'l tell ya what. If and when I do choose to get a lobotomy, you will be the first to know about it. Until then if you want to compare imprisoning and/or murdering anyone and everyone that the US president views as a threat...and that includes journalist, human rights workers, business owners/heads of corporations...then you post it on here please. Until then I'm going to stick with; imprisonment on a set up trial and/or murder is > then a smear campaign against your opponent.

Just fyi I wasn't born yesterday and I do believe putting a bullet through your opponents head or having them beat into a coma or having them sent to prison is far worse than smearing your opponent in a public debate. And don't even make me bring up Tsar Putin's NASHI Hitler Youth. That's an entire thread in itself.

And btw all the citizens of Belarus want to thank Tsar Putin for financially supporting Badka Lukashenko in his ever loving quest to continue on as Dictator of all Belarus.

Try again, but this time bring some reality with it.

[Anya n Charles 0]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia

List of journalists killed in Russia

I'm sure we could did up a list of the Democracies supported by the West and subsequent Journalists Detained / Jailed / Tortured / Killed under these .. and if would dwarf this list . . .

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

I'm sure we could did up a list of the Democracies supported by the West and subsequent Journalists Detained / Jailed / Tortured / Killed under these .. and if would dwarf this list . . .

Ya, and we can start with the Caucus regions and/or Syria right? We are taking Russia and the USA so don't try to change the subject in mid race. Now you want to compare democracy in the US vs Russia's system? Let's do it. Again putting a bullet through someones head on the streets of Moscow seems far worse than smearing your political opponent in a debate and/or press. Now which one do you think is worse? Being put in prison on trumped up charges, being beaten into a coma, having a bullet put into your head or being smeared in a debate?

I'm waiting to see this one.

I just thought of a grand idea. President Obama can make trumped up charges on Exxon Oil stick in a dirty court and then he can nationalize it but only after he makes his best friend CEO of the new company. Then he can bank millions off of it along with his FSB cronies. What a grand idea...why did Tsar Putin never think of doing that? Oh ya he did, and he called it "Gazprom" with his puppet Medvedev as Chairman of the Board for Gazprom..right before he anointed him "pseudo President of All things Russia".

Edited November 23, 2011 by Why_Me

[Anya n Charles 0]

Ya, and we can start with the Caucus regions and/or Syria right? We are taking Russia and the USA so don't try to change the subject in mid race. Now you want to compare democracy in the US vs Russia's system? Let's do it. Again putting a bullet through someones head on the streets of Moscow seems far worse than smearing your political opponent in a debate and/or press. Now which one do you think is worse? Being put in prison on trumped up charges, being beaten into a coma, having a bullet put into your head or being smeared in a debate?

I'm waiting to see this one.

I just thought of a grand idea. President Obama can make trumped up charges on Exxon Oil stick in a dirty court and then he can nationalize it but only after he makes his best friend CEO of the new company. Then he can bank millions off of it along with his FSB cronies. What a grand idea...why did Tsar Putin never think of doing that? Oh ya he did, and he called it "Gazprom" with his puppet Medvedev as Chairman of the Board for Gazprom..right before he anointed him "pseudo President of All things Russia".

I got a better grander story : NEVER has any US Politician or President been supported or brought to power by dirty money or after leaving Office NEVER has any US Politician made or received money for doing anything illegal and if they did they All got caught and brought to justice and were made to give the money back and went to prison. . . . and Lived Happily Ever After ...

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financial-crime/8621347/Crusading-Russian-lawyer-Sergei-Magnitsky-beaten-to-death.html

Crusading Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky 'beaten to death'

Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer who died in jail after investigating Russian police over an alleged $230m (£144m) tax fraud, may have been beaten to death, the Kremlin's human rights council has claimed in a report.

By Philip Aldrick6:10AM BST 07 Jul 2011

An earlier draft of the report by President Dmitry Medvedev's Investigative Committee concluded that the charges of tax evasion used to arrest Mr Magnitsky were fabricated by the same police against whom the lawyer had testified, but the latest claims are far more damaging.

The lawyer, who had been crusading against state corruption while working for UK-based hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management before his arrest in 2008, died in prison after 11 months' pre-trial detention. He developed pancreatitis and was denied medical help.

According to the report, instead of receiving urgent medical treatment on the day of his death, Mr Magnitsky was handcuffed and isolated by eight psychiatric nurses. An ambulance was kept waiting for more than an hour outside the prison and he died 15 minutes before the crew were given access.

"Before his death, Mr Magnitsky was completely deprived of medical help. Additionally, there are grounds to suspect that Mr Magnitsky's death was the result of a beating," the report said. "His relatives afterwards found that he had broken fingers and bruises on his body. Moreover, there is no medical record for the last hour of his life."

Valeri Borshchev, a member of the committee, put it more strongly. "We have concluded he died of beating. It was real torture to beat an ailing man with truncheons," he said.

Mr Magnitsky has become a symbol of the fight against corruption in Russia, inspiring demonstrations, a documentary and a play. Europe and the US are now threatening to ban entry for 60 senior Russian officials linked to his death, and Switzerland has frozen their assets.

The policeman who arrested Mr Magnitsky on the "fabricated" charges has now been taken off the case, though it remains open. The officer was recently promoted.

The committee said the case against Mr Magnitsky was marred by an obvious conflict of interest, because it was conducted by the same investigators he testified against. It also accused a judge of committing the lawyer to pre-trial detention without just cause.

The report is likely to be seen as a test of President Medvedev's resolve as he has vowed to weed out corruption. He said the report would be handed to investigators.

Edited November 23, 2011 by Why_Me

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

I got a better grander story : NEVER has any US Politician or President been supported or brought to power by dirty money or after leaving Office NEVER has any US Politician made or received money for doing anything illegal and if they did they All got caught and brought to justice and were made to give the money back and went to prison. . . . and Lived Happily Ever After ...

Try murder. It's what that murdering KGB PIG is best at. Dead is when you don't wake up anymore for the fact you are no more. Here's some names for you and they are just a few of a long list that that murdering KGB mafia PIG had a hand in.

Anna Politkovskaya

Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova

Natalia Estemirova

Edited November 23, 2011 by Why_Me

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

While your at it, you can save the bs about Russians being new to democracy. All of Eastern and Central Europe have done fine with democracy...every country but the RUB countries. Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine have all managed to make a mockery of democracy for the fact it's not part of their culture. Europeans can manage democracy, yet Central Asians seem to have a problem with it. I blame this on 300+ years of Mongol rule and the Muscovy Khanate.

Russia is not going forward, it is setting a record going backwards. Butchering your opponents in cold blood is not "going forward" it is regression in big leaps. Look at Poland, the Baltics, Bulgaria even if you want to see how people manage to not be murdered yet still challenge the incumbent. Only the brain dead and ignorant buy into the words; "controlled democracy".

Edited November 23, 2011 by Why_Me

[slim 1,525]

I wish P&R would stay in P&R.

This forum is for guns and pie.

[ONA 133]

I wish P&R would stay in P&R.

This forum is for guns and pie.

Don't worry, it will turn into guns and pie eventually