In (Soviet) Russia Putin criticises YOU!
I'd say, Nortrub, that most of the time that critics is fully deserved.
Well... frankly speaking, in Russia you can say whatever you'd want to, until you are not a unit of any of those propaganda and mass media bulk buying companies contracted by the Team Oval or some of the honourable congressmen. Then you get your dose of unwilling attention on Russian net forums, and it sounds like an orchestra.
[An American tourist, walking up the Red Square, speaking to the guide: "You don't have no freedom of speech in Soviet Russia. You just don't know what it is. In America, I can go to the White House and shout that president Nixon is a scumbag, and the police officer will not even pay any attention to it".
"Yes, mister, we know what a freedom of speech is! In Soviet Russia, I also can go to the Red Square and shout that president Nixon is a scumbag".]
Investigational journalism is kinda oppressed, yeah; please always remember where it can originate from. Besides, Russians had to catch up with the Western economical rules after reformatting the Soviet Union.* While, let's say, "the West" was developing its own rules of behaviour and business morals for several hundred years, the "after-Soviet" Russians had to manage doing it just in last twenty years (including the production of its own billionaires and its "middle class"), and it was hell yeah hard times... and almost each of the Russians kinda bit misses the times of the "Roaring 90s" with the unprecedented freedom to do whatever you want, with the only rule of the economy on the popular level - take as much as you are able to grasp (or sell it to the West for a fistful of glass pearls). 99 percents of the population of the country were not aware of what is really going on. Nowadays, even should they become wiser, those having a tight grip are strongly opposing any idea of transparent explaination of the true origin of "their" riches.
And, of course, Ed Snowden would be absolutely impossible in Russia (Russians have no surnames like his one), the country where the television is watching YOU. Please be sure to believe that most of the people absolutely care not that they are being monitored. Even if they really were.
P.S. The experiment is likely going to be recognised as failed in the current situation, as the country possibly obviously can stand it no more. Then, the role of the Communists Party will emerge (worldwide), and the privatisation of the Soviet producing ancestry will be declared "robbery', etc. Thank you Western leaders for the Jackson - Vanik amendment, for cheating the country after Perestroika, for the Ukraine and the sanctions. Russia is going East... this way, please.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
