While all this irrelevant claptrap about Russia is going on, a 9 year old child has been waiting 7 years for an adenoid operation in Queensland.

And that terrible woman the Leftists are always sneering at, Pauline Hanson has found out about it is going to pay for the operation.

But, never mind, you all continue to pontificate over Russia, as if your opinions on the world stage meant something.

Vlad is just waiting for your latest advice on how to run Russia.

Hi AC,

I like to think that people are equal, regardless of what they think or where they live. So when I look at Venezuela, I don't see a people unsuited to democracy being white-anted by malevolent foreigners. What I see are people like you and me being impoverished by an autocratic thug and his cronies. My concern is primarily for the hardships that these people endure.

Russia will not become a democracy in our lifetime or that of our grandkids. There is no democratic impulse in the Russia psyche - indeed the very opposite.

Nations or at least the people who make up nations have hereditary mores which have developed over centuries and millennia. The middle eastern peoples have been ruled by autocrats as far back as we can go, back to Sargon the Great or even Sargon I. Rulers change, regimes change but the form of government never changes - rule by the one or the few. The people are not only good with that but crave it. There's never been a democracy in the Middle East and there never will be unless it is imposed.

Russia is the same. From the time of the first Rus kingdom, Russian's have been ruled by autocrats and the desire for that is ingrained in their very being. They've never had a democracy and never developed institutions that might ushering in a regime which is devoted to individual liberty. They had a chance in 1917 and rejected it. They had a chance in the 1990s but as soon as things got even mildly tough, raced back to the roots by installing a new Tsar - Putin. They feel safe with a strongman in charge. Stalin killed tens of millions of them yet they wept when he died.

To be sure, it is possible to create a democracy in places where it has no tradition eg Japan. But that only happens if the old traditions are utterly rent asunder and the society can be reconstituted from the ground up.

The west has a tradition of individual freedom that goes back to Athens. The rest of the world doesn't. Russia won't develop nor import that tradition. Their tradition lays elsewhere.

The argument that democracy is incompatible with certain
cultures can be heard by defenders of autocracy around
the world.

After the Cold War ended, the process of democratization
began when the Kremlin began lifting restrictions on
Russians' ability to assemble, express themselves, and
travel abroad. But democracy did not take hold in Russia.

Yeltsin's successor Vladimir Putin was dillingently
dismantling the feeble democratic institutions that did
exist. In their place Putin patched together a facade
that displayed all the rituals and institutions of a
democracy but were nothing more than an empty shell.

We've seen how opponents were pushed off buildings. How
only government media was allowed. How journalists fled.
How demonstrators were arrested. How opponents were pushed
off buildings - how others died mysteriously, or were
poisoned. Putin poisoned and imprisoned his fiercest
domestic opponent Alexey Navalny. Putin extended his rule
in 2020. Russia became and now is -an unabashed dictatorship.
With Putin at the peak of his powers.

A democratic Russia would not
have taken issue with an alliance of democracies moving closer
to its borders. A democratic Russia would not be waging war on
another democracy, Ukraine, or threatening other European
democracies. And Russia's failure to become a democracy is
the root cause of its conflict with the West.

Putin has made it clear that his real objective in the
Ukraine is to re-conquer territories once controlled by Russia.

The potential path of a liberal democratic Russia won't
increase as time passes, not as long as Russians don't see
themselves as citizens of their own country but instead see
themselves as subjects of their ruler - a new way of thinking
in Russia is needed. This will be the country's biggest burden
in the era after Putin.

"What I see are people like you and me being impoverished by an autocratic thug and his cronies."
- That's probably what many less educated Venezuelans see too, because that's exactly what America wants them to see.

What I see are people like you and me being impoverished by a totalitarian US system.

I told you all before, it's a 'stick and a carrot' policy.

U.S. sanctions are the stick.
U.S. install their puppet rulers is the carrot.

Use the stick to bring the country to its knees.
Then use the carrot to blame everything on the existing government.
It's really simple, I don't know how you people just don't get it.

This is what 'democracy' has become, and this what I am objecting to.
Until people get a handle on this they will remain clueless about how the world really works.

What is the National Endowment for Democracy & Why it’s Wrong to Take their Money
http://www.youtube.com/live/omwCiF-Vt3Q

This is the stick:
U.S. Sanctions Have Devastated Venezuela. How Does That Help Democracy?
http://theintercept.com/2024/08/02/venezuela-election-maduro-us-sanctions-democracy/

And this is the carrot:
http://x.com/McFaul/status/1818312718698590332
"If there’s a peaceful transition to democracy in Venezuela, all sanctions will be lifted, and the suffering of the Venezuelan people will end."

In normal language:

"If you allow us to install our puppet ruler we will stop our collective punishment of your nation.
All we want is to rob your nations oil resources for the benefit of US companies.
If you let us install our leader, we will have them use deficit spending to fix the oil infrastructure in your country.
i.e. You Venezuelans will foot the bill, and we American companies will take all the profits.
If you do not accept, we are happy to have you eating cats and dogs.
It's your choice, kneel or starve."

You want people out on the streets to overthrow a non-vassal government?
- Nothing better than to starve them and deprive their children of a future, emotions will overcome ideology.
This is the democracy we so cherish.

It's the equivalent of robbing you at gunpoint, or holding your kids to ransom.

The belief that Western style democracy is impossible
in Russia. That Russians are incapable of adapting
democracy is shared not only by Putin supporters but also
by many other people including monarchists, nationalists,
communists, and many others.

People argue that Russia must follow its own culturally
determined path and that's because of Russia's
unwillingness to bend to the dictates of liberal democracies.
Russia therefore finds itself in conflict with the West.

Then we have South Korea. South Korea is an example of how a
country with no democratic traditions can transform itself into
a leading democracy within a couple of generations. Whereas
North Korea shows how the same nation can be trapped in a
dictatorship because of a drawn border.