Oil exporting People wrote:Russia has been utterly slammed by Western media, advocacy groups, and politicians. I find myself asking where were these same people in 2008 when the Olympics were in Communist China.
What I find more interesting is that when Yeltsin's Government kept Russia weak, but had even more atrocious violations than Putin's, and it was hailed by the West. Was was OSCE's terms for tanks shelling Parliament, and political parties being banned? "A step towards Democracy".
On the other hand Putin made Russia strong and a World Player. So despite him being much better than Yeltsin, he's being portrayed, as someone who, well, I'll just quote RD: "horrific, homophobic, corrupt, authoritarian, sham-democracy"
Of course there's corruption. Want to eliminate corruption overnight? You need someone like Stalin. Otherwise it's going to take time. Of course there's authoritarianism - when was something else the case? Tanks firing on Parliament? Political party being outlawed?
But you know what's nice? For the first time in a while, a candidate with a plus 55 percent approval rating, (overall,) was elected. For Russia's timid Civil Rights, even that's an improvement. Not that it'll ever be recognized. Because recognizing that would require something other than journalism that is, what's that word again? Oh yeah, "horrific".
http://exiledonline.com/how-the-west-he ... whitewash/
Ex-OSCE Mission Chief Reveals “Pressure” To Whitewash ’96 Election
“A Victory for Russian Democracy” —Title of a New York Times editorial, days after the ODIHR-approved 1996 presidential election
“Exit, Russian Democracy” —Title of a New York Times editorial, days before the ODIHR-boycotted 2007 Duma elections
In fact, he says, the OSCE and the West had made its mind up about how wonderfully free and fair Boris Yeltsin’s election was before voting even started. “The OSCE parliamentary assembly had a separate mission who were passionately pro-Yeltsin,” he said. “So you had two OSCE missions for the election, one of which arrived predisposed to say things were good.” The other was pressured to agree...While the Western media portrays the Russia-OSCE spat as a simple battle between bright democracy and dark autocracy, the Russian elite has a deeply cynical view of the OSCE based on personal experience. As Meadowcroft was not allowed to say at the time, Yeltsin’s victory in 1996 was rife with fraud. Most important to the outcome was the months-long blanket television support Yeltsin received and a “black PR” campaign against his Communist foe, Gennady Zyuganov; Russia’s print media was almost as bad. The election was not a “victory for optimists,” as the Hoover Institute’s notorious Yeltsin-cheerleader Michael McFaul wrote at the time. Rather, the technology of the fraudulent election, blessed by the West, served as the template for future Russian elections. But if few in the West know about this, it’s because the OSCE and the Western media only began to emphasize Russia’s systemic electoral fraud and media manipulation in 2003.
