Digg Townhall Tonight!
Tune into the live Digg townhall tonight at 5:00pm PST/8:00pm EST.
Free speech in Russia - little reason for hope
indexoncensorship.org — The setting said it all. We were sitting in the first floor breakfast room of a hotel beyond Moscow ’s outer ringroad waiting for Garry Kasparov, the closest Russia gets nowadays to an opposition leader. The day before we had been in a banqueting hall overlooking Red Square, for a lavish three-hour lunch with President Medvedev.
geekchic- 22 diggs
- digg it
- socialexpert, on 09/19/2008, -0/+1Freedom of speech as meaningless hype? The whole point of media freedom is to make the government accountable to its electorate.
- geekchic, on 09/19/2008, -0/+1I wouldn't say that is the "whole point" of a free press, but it is one of them.
- DarkRellik, on 09/21/2008, -0/+2I've said this before, and I'll say it again. The thing is, the people of Russia are TIRED of change and uncertainty. From Perestroika, to the stormy privitization of the economy, to the 1990s financial collapse - Russians have been in economic hell and back many times, and now they want promise and certainty.
Sure, politics are now a one-way street under Putin, but almost all Russians (I've spoken to family and friends) don't really care because their quality of life is increasing year by year - noticeably. Even the Russian GDP is growing by quite a bit, year by year. I'm not saying that Putin's politics are right, but I'm saying that his politics are helping Russians live their lives better and better.
After all, isn't that what a politician is supposed to do under a democratic system? And if what he's doing is working - why not keep voting for him and his party? =
Check out the new & improved 
© Digg Inc. 2008 — Content posted by Digg users is