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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (775118)	3/16/2014 12:40:11 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1576807

Putin is done playing nice nice with the West. He wants the Soviet Union back. The problem is, he doesn't have that much in the way of leverage. Granted, he has nukes and is immune to invasion as a result. But he has little else. Russia's entire economy is less than Italy's. Large portions of their military has deteriorated. Now they do have a lot of oil and gas, but if that gets boycotted, Europe will survive. They won't be happy, but it could be done. Not true for Russia. Actually, Russia's economy is the eighth largest in the world, slightly larger than Italy's: money.cnn.com Its not doing as badly as it was in the 90s but its not great. All true. And what better way to divert the attention of the Russian people to that sad fact than to go after gays and restore Soviet glory by annexing the Ukraine. This is the Hitler handbook all over again. The world woke up to Krystallnacht in 1938 but well before that Hitler was scapegoating the Jews. To make up for a lousy economy, he confiscated their property as well as the property of dissidents in 1933-34. For the past 3-4 years, Putin has been going after dissident groups and gays. He has gained complete control of the Duma, shut down the free press and sealed his position as as the permanent leader of the Russian gov't. Putin even staged an Olympics much like Hitler did in 1936. How can we intellectualize away these events? Either by chance or by intent, Putin is following the path well worn down by Hitler. Crimea is gone; the Ukraine is next. And then the Baltics and Poland.