Monday, March 27, 2017

Anti Corruption Protests In Russia

Apparently, many Russians have learned about the Russian oligarchs who are really part of Putin's regime.  They are among the richest people in the world and many of them have laundered their money by purchasing real estate in foreign countries.  London has been a popular destination and so has NYC and Trump's holdings in Florida.  Trump may want to use his presidency to inflate his asset holdings and protect them from taxation as the oligarchs have done.  In any case, the Russian protests were widespread and the largest protests since those in 2011-2012 that Putin attributes to Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State.  The protesters were arrested in Moscow because they did not have a proper permit.  Its hard to imagine how such a pretense would work in the US, but I suspect that Trump would welcome that kind of power if he could obtain it.  My guess is that his administration is on a downward spiral due to his lying and incompetence.  He has been unable to control the media as Putin does in Russia.  The Washington Post has a new slogan which states that "Democracy ends in darkness"  in response to Trump's attacks on responsible journalism.  Trump won't win that battle in the US.  Many of his supporters prefer fake news sites but their positions are not based upon reason.  Consequently, they cannot be modified by reason.  Reasonable Americans still get their information from respectable news media.  Some of them have even shifted away from the false equivalency doctrine which the media had followed.  They felt an obligation to an give equal weight to Trump's lies as they did to more reliable new sources.  The protesters in Russia can only dream of that kind of world.

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