I just wonder how much of this Russians actually believe.

If it gets worse, maybe someone is going to have to step in.

I wonder what provisions the Russian Constitution contains for removing a President who become insane during his term of office?

Maybe Medvedev has a team of discreet lawyers who are making a case. In the past Medvedev sounded like a sane person who was living in the early 21st century.

At this point, to condemn Putin would be to condemn God, at least according to the Patriarch.

The beliefs about homosexuality being a weapon sent from from the West, about pretty much every single "evil" thing coming from the West, were things that I heard so often while living in Russia.
And all such conversations were had with reasonable, educated, relatively wealthy city dwellers.

In my utterly subjective opinion based on my time in Russia, the Russian people either believe these things or are afraid to speak against them.
There is a lot of complex psychological things at play here, too. In particular with the way Russian people believe they are perceived by the rest of the world. It makes them defensive and quite unified.
Also remember that, unlike the United States, in Russia there really is only one game in town when it comes to religion.
If almost every Christian in the United States belonged to the exact same denomination, we would be much more unified behind a leader that had been anointed by that same denomination.

to criticism from the outside to the point of being a little paranoid.

I used to be very involved in figure skating here in the U.S. There are many Russian coaches in larger, and some smaller, U.S. cities. Some of them were very nice; others thought that only Russia and Russians deserved to live on the planet. Many of them thought nothing of petty theft or dishonesty. But none of them really "got it" about the U.S. and how people think here. I had a Ukrainian/Russian mix roommate for a while. Socially he was living in the '50s. He was so hopeless that I couldn't get mad at him, but I did counsel him on how to behave at work so as not to get into trouble with HR. He laughed at me, and then tried to get me to pay him $20 a month to keep him from stopping the washer and dryer when I was using them. The landlord stepped in then. I have been thinking of him lately, but not enough to get back into contact with him. So I can believe your comments on Russian society.

I've traveled some to western Europe, lived with a French exchange student and have met many western Europeans and Brits living in the NYC and DC areas. The gap in socially acceptable behavior was not nearly as great, and what gaps developed were managed civilly.

Your point about the problems of a single dominant religion taken seriously is interesting. Perhaps that is some of the problem with strong Muslim countries, as well--it's not all the religion, but the fact that everyone believes the same thing. I have read that the Russian Orthodox Church was instrumental in pushing the law that excludes Roman Catholicism and the many varieties of Protestants from seeking converts in Russia.

Thanks for replying!

One of my Business English students in Russia had visited the United States.
He told me that, by far, the most amazing thing he saw here was a laundromat!
He said he took pictures inside, came back to Russia and shocked his friends and family with his report on the laundromat.
I asked him what was so strange about a laundromat and he said that such a thing was completely impossible in Russia.
That there would be total chaos. People would take each others clothes out, steal or break the machines, etc. That five minutes after the grand opening the whole place would be shut down.

I just did a search through the journal I kept while living there because I knew I had written about this laundromat story.
Thanks for jogging my memory with the story about your roommate!
Too funny.

of Russian laundry craziness!

Have a good evening.

Insideous animal cruelty, too!

to this post number 4

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4606499

military action. I think it's kind of ridiculous to assume they were all trained considering they didn't even resist when the Russians took over some of Crimea. I don't know a SF person in the world who would let that happen.

Group think can make a bad situation much worse. We have only to recall the shrub to see the problems of an uninformed and uninterested president surrounded by groupthink to see what bad results can occur.

hear. His advisers are different now, not the same people from his first term. That would explain a lot.

Merkel has floated the idea that international monitors could go to Crimea to make sure that ethnic Russians were being treated well and replace the "militias."

It would be a way out if Putin could be persuaded to go for it.

I thought that Medvedev had some possibilities. He didn't seem like the standard Stalin-clone post-Soviet like Putin, but someone who wanted to move Russia a bit into modern normalcy. He also seemed like he wouldn't fit in with a Village People cover band--unlike Putin. Not that I had anything against the Village People.

Perhaps he might like to retire to a nice teaching position at one of our universities before he drinks the polonium.

But I can understand how the Poles feel.

The history isn't good. There was a long period in which there was no Poland on the European map. Russia, Germany (Prussia) and Austria-Hungary carved it up I think twice between 1700 or so and WWI. Poland reappeared after WWI, but WWII in Europe started when Hitler invaded Poland from the west and a few days later the Soviet Union (Russia) invaded Poland from the east.

After WWII, Poland reappeared on the map, but its boundaries were moved to the west a couple of hundred miles.

Poland abuts the Kaliningrad district of Russia which is the old East Prussia, but Kaliningrad is cut off from the rest of Russia, and as I understand it, is overrun with the Russian mafia. Poland does border Belarus, which is a vassal state of Russia with an old-fashioned dictator in charge, and Ukraine. If Russia moves at all Poland becomes very nervous.

Poland is a member of NATO, and although NATO does not want to get into a war with Russia, I have a hard time believing that if Poland were invaded NATO would not fight. Even the Germans, who have strong commercial ties with Russia and get a large percentage of their oil and gas from Russia would probably feel threatened.

choice. That's why Putin desperately wants to break NATO.

negotiate until Putin walked into her office in Berlin.

I understand what you're saying, though.

Report: CIA Paid Poland for Black Site

CIA officials paid Polish intelligence $15 million for use of secret prison, says Washington Post

Read more: Poland: Debate Over CIA Black Sites Reignited by Fresh Report | TIME.com http://swampland.time.com/2014/01/24/report-cia-paid-poland-for-black-site/



The ex-Israeli soldier who led a Kiev fighting unit
'Delta' has headed 'the Blue Helmets of Maidan' of 40 men and women - including several IDF veterans - in violent clashes with government forces.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/1.577114

Sort of throws a wet towel on reports that the current Ukrainian government is run by Nazis.