[vdaniuk]

Oil brought quality of life in Russia to a pretty nice level, despite Putin corrupt government, not because of him.

Most people conform to a majority opinion. Its dangerous to be publicly against Putin and new russian militarism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence

And right, you all "saw" what happened to Ukraine, it's not that Russia annexed Crimea and supports separatists in the east, nope.

[insuffi]

Just like it was the russians in Odessa that burned all those people alive? Please.

Russia barely supports anyone in the east. Even NY times(the newspaper that was fully pro Iraq war) went in, talked to the separatists and found out they're just pro federalization.

Your blind hate for Putin is apparent. You'll start blaming earthquakes in Oklahoma on him soon.

[BugBrother]

I ask one question to recognize astroturfing from the Putin junta:

If you check the larger democracy indexes, they have started to show Russia as "authoritarian" now, i.e. not democratic at all.

Is that a Western conspiracy?

[mark_l_watson]

Well define democracy.

I have a good friend who is an Israeli citizen and he has been complaining for the 20 years I have known him that his country's politics are so warped by the people he calls 'the rich American assholes' (like AIPAC) who fund the right wing in Israel that sometimes his country does not seem to be such a good democracy. Imagine a whole lot of external money being injected into the politics of your country - you would probably not like it either.

As for my country, the USA: we are certainly a democracy but there is so much cheating via gerrymandering, etc. that I feel like we have lost something very precious since the end of the second world war when our financial elites started to step up their game.

[BugBrother]

Why should I define democracy, chemical entropy or anything else which I am not an expert on -- and lots of academics have put much time and energy into defining?

Look up democracy index and freedom index on wikipedia, which I referenced.

Russia has fallen a lot further on the central ones of those, as I wrote. I asked if that ALSO was a Western conspiracy, which the Russian media are full of.

The POINT was -- the paid Russian propagandists aren't allowed to write that. They mostly go away.

It seems the whole internet quality suffers, not only HN, from those Russian astroturf trolls in most languages.

(Israel is not only beside the point -- as I've heard it described, if you put three Israelis in a room you'll find at least four hard opinions on most any subject. :-) The same goes for the media. In general, democracies put under pressure from terrorism aren't pretty: By definition, terrorism scares the voters. That results in that the governments throw out the law books, because they want to get reelected. See Germany, USA, Italy, Israel, Britain, etc.)

[insuffi]

Read the nytimes article, and look up videos from the Odessa massacre.

[BugBrother]

So you refuse to criticize the Putin junta for being non democratic? Thanks, that is all I need for an opinion about you.

[I guess it is time for you to use another account to lower the HN quality? :-( A quick browsing through your comment hostory is mostly USA criticism and pro-dictators, mainly Russia. Very little to none of programming or development. ]

How is the weather in Moscow, by the way? (St Petersburg? Some military base somewhere?)