5.2.12
confused students - unable to understand, not having experienced american politics like i have...
protest against criminal leaders (Putin, Bush)
france - running against Finance
alternative energy as economic weapon.

Soldjenitzsin - infinite progress impossible?
The German left party proposes a thirty hour work week.

living abroad --> living in another body, outside of yourself. new perspective.
new perspective, ayn rand, the bum sitting outside in the cold (should I give her my entire salary, the unlucky gypsy?), taxing the rich, socialism vs. capitalism. adam slarke. glenn beck.

debates. argumentation. logical sabotage! (Where's the certificate?! ; global warming --> green energy) global warming or global cooling? science = religion. faith!

15.2.12
I've been thinking about political sabotage recently. The idea struck me as something rather original at first, but has since changed into something perhaps more everyday than one would care to believe.
The thought came to me first when I heard that there was a small group of Americans who have once again brought up the issue of Barack Obama's birth certificate. Many Americans had argued shortly after Obama's election that he didn't have any right to the Presidency because he hadn't been born in the country, which is required for the job. Before recently hearing of this issue's resurgence, I wasn't sure if Obama had actually gone through the trouble of digging up his birth certificate to calm these people down. Evidently he hadn't. In fact, if he had given it any attention, you might have expected his opponents to find some other cock-eyed reason why he should be evicted from office.
The issue is foolish to such a degree, that not only can I see it not going anywhere for those who brought it up, it rather struck me as something possibly advantageous for the Obama administration, for if his opposition can come up with no better argument for his replacement than rumours about his birth certificate, then the opposition effectively has no argument. This is where the sabotage comes in.
Instead of spreading more legitimate arguments against the Obama administration's policies, like that the amount of money it spends, supporters of Obama could actually support the stupid arguments that arise and are guaranteed to go nowhere. So if you like Obama, you might slyly rock the political boat in your favor by posing the question in your community: but where's the birth certificate?
There would then be a national movement calling for Obama's impeachment on account of his inability to produce a birth certificate, which proves his ineligibility for his job. The birth certificate would become priority number one for the conservative party, and everyone would be in a rage around next October when suddenly Obama would have a press conference which he finishes with a by-the-way remark along with an original copy of his birth certificate.
The wind in his opponents' sails would be entirely extinguished just in time for the election, all according to the plans of those liberal spies in the conservative ranks who provided the wind in the first place by raising hell about Obama's birthplace.

22.2.12
Do you think that sort of sabotage actually takes place? Living in Russia, I sometimes suspect the authenticity of some political arguments I hear every once in awhile. What kind of argument is that? Where did it come from? For example, on one of the state radio stations, they conglomerate all the political advertising into a two minute bit that they repeat several times a day. In those two minutes, they have ads for five of the six presidential candidates, Putin included, whereby Putin's ad strikes me as worlds more convincing than any of the others.
The communist, Mr Z., is advertised with some sort of light, space-age techno music with talk about how the people are denied any political power, and how Mr Z. stands for bringing the government ot the people and so on, and then the ad closes with "He who's against, supports," which I guess is supposed to mean that whoever is against Putin supports Zyuganov, but the punchline mentions neither of the two candidates directly. Maybe I don't understand Russian enough to catch the intended meaning of the line, but as it is I can't help but imagine George Orwell in his grave laughing heartily at such an obvious contradiction.
Then there's Vladimir Djirinovski, who I call Mr. J, or the Joker, which I find to be an appropriate title, considering what many Russians I know think of him. He's quick to call anyone in politics a thief and hulligan, and, it seems, will promise anything if he thinks it's popular enough, which, to be fair, is really what a politician is supposed to do. On the other hand it's clear that he doesn't stand for much, he has no foundation, he only wants more power. His advertisement features him barking at all the thieves and hulligans in politics these days and closes with the punchline: vote Mr. J, or things will get worse!
Putin's advertisement opens with the question "So why are you voting for Putin," and then there's a random person, maybe a well known actor or media figure explaining why he thinks Putin is the right man for the job. Maybe I've been brainwashed into not hating Putin, but I find his ad much more effective.
So I wonder, why do those other candidates, not only Mr Z. and Mr J., have such stupid ads? Maybe the ads I hear on the radio aren't paid for by the respective politicians in the first place, but by the state radio station itself. If that were the case, would the candidates be able to do anything to stop them? Probably not in this country. What if a political party practiced subversive advertising in the U.S.? Can an organisation that's rich enough to do so run an ad that is, in effect, detrimental to the candidate whom it ostensibly supports? How could that candidate request the media outlet to cut the ad if the candidate didn't pay for the ad in the first place? The funding may have come from an unknown source, and even if the ad were openly against the candidate, there's nothing he or she could do to break the contract between the funder and the media outlet... As I write this, it strikes me as something political compaigns have possibly been doing for ages. Have I been enlightened, or struck with a case of political paranoia?
Getting back to Russia, there are some Russians who would go so far as to say that Mr. J is employed by the ruling party, United Russia. He's there to attract any opposition, even though he clearly doesn't have a chance of winning. Taking this conspiracy theory further, some say the whole lot of them are in bed with Putin. They call themselves the opposition, but in effect support Putin by not giving Russian citizens a viable alternative for a ruler.

9.3.12
I haven't written in so long. I haven't had any desire, which is strange since a lot has happened since my last entry. The Russian presidential elections were last weekend, and Putin won handily as predicted. That the results matched many predictions to such accuracy has surely lead many Russians further into the conviction that the elections were predetermined long beforehand, something I don't like to believe, but can't effectively argue against.
Anyone who has followed this event in the west will surely have heard of allegations of election fraud. If you listen to the state radio over hear, and sometimes I think I'm the only one who does, then you might not hear about them so easily. But there are other radio stations which don't shy away from talking about them. I've heard of a few fraudulent voting practices, for example that voters were paid to vote for a certain candidate. They only had to take a picture of their completed ballet and show it to their employer, who would then give them 500 rubles for voting correctly. I've also heard that it was possible to vote more than once, in fact not that difficult. I understand that every voter has a voter ID which they have to show to get a ballot, but that nothing stops them from driving to two different polling stations and getting a ballot at both. And then you hear about buses filled with voters arriving at various stations, and you can't help but wonder if they were on a road trip the whole day, driving to and from various polling stations.
I suppose any of that kind of cheating might have played to Putin's advantage, but I still think any one of the opposing candidates didn't stand much of a chance, even if Russians voted as conscientiously as those back in the land of the free and the brave, because all the opposing candidates fought each other at least as much as Putin. If the opposition could somehow unite behind one candidate, then you'd get Putin shaking in his parka, as it is, he had his way with all of them.
Something I really didn't like about the elections is that there weren't many debates. I know Americans might be tired of hearing about debates, since there have been so many in the Republican party, but I would say there were not enough here, and most importantly, of all candidates, Putin didn't debate anybody! He was challenged on a few occasions, but he always excused himself, saying that he had valuable work to do - you know, Premier Minister stuff. There may have been a debate featuring one of United Russia's representatives, but Putin didn't find it necessary to come down from his throne. I for one really wish he had, just to see how his policies stand against those of the other candidates. I suspect that Putin would have risked a lot if he had agreed to debate anybody, perhaps in particular the upstart business man, turned politician, Proxhorov. Depending on how the opposing candidates performed in a debate with Putin, Russians might have seen that Putin is human, that he's not right all the time, that he has made mistakes, and that someone else might have a few proposals better than his own.
Comparing this with America, will our election be any better? Sure, I don't think there will be much voter fraud (though how can we be sure?), and in regards to the debates, the incumbant President is politically forced to debate whomever challenges him, but in a two party system, that's no surprise. There won't be a debate featuring the incumbant President along with candidates from all the other parties. Was Ralph Nader ever allowed a debate with either George Bush or Al Gore, let alone with both of them at once? I don't think the democrats would have allowed that. And this year, will there be a candidate from the Tea Party in a debate with both Obama and the Republican candidate? Probably not. In this respect, our elections don't strike me as completely democratic either, but I guess that's just the way things work in my homeland - now I almost sound like a Russian.