[berntb]

This was not relevant to my point. 4 comments (in 2 places) without touching my point... :-( You are not serious, bye.

You argue also in the other comments that there are small differences between USA and Russia -- my repeated point is that the whole Western democratic world don't agree with your assessments here.

(In Sweden, a good part of the ex communists do agree with you -- at most 5-10% of the population-- but those guys have never supported a democracy in military conflict with a non democracy...)

[dleslie]

My assessment of the USA as being an Oligarchy is in good company[0]; feel free to google further.

0: http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FPPS%2FPPS...

[berntb]

Still not touching my point:

it is not NY Times/CIA claims vs Putin's propaganda. It is claims by the democratic world vs Putin's paid propaganda.

[dleslie]

I responded to that several times. It does not matter who agrees with whom about their allegations of another's wrong doing when that is not questioned.

"Russia makes Propaganda."

"That's ironic for them to say, as you're complicit in making American Propaganda."

"These countries agree that Russia makes propaganda."

"Russia makes propaganda. So does America."

And so on.

Hell, America makes propaganda wholesale with its military advisors program and huge logistic and financial support of Hollywood.

[berntb]

You started by agreeing that there were different levels of gray, now you really argue the same position as Putin's propaganda -- there is no real difference between the democracies and the dictators.

Without doing any real discussion of all the liberty indexes and freedom of press etc...

OK, enough. Bye.

[dleslie]

I'm not claiming that there's no real difference; I'm claiming that it doesn't matter who agrees that Russia engages in propaganda. That doesn't change that America does as well.

Is Russia or America worse? I don't care which is worse, that doesn't matter. They both do wrong things.