Video: Putin flies to Siberia to see devastation of flooding, spends hours listening to peoples’ problems & then castigates local officials for their  sloppy response.

Trump offers U.S. assistance fighting Siberian fires; Russia’s Deputy FM: U.S. provoking other countries to eventually abandon the dollar.

Natylie’s Place
August 1, 2019 

This kind of reminds me of Putin in 2009 paying a last-minute visit to a factory in Pikalyovo after getting a note from a local trade union leader about a plant that had been closed down due to squabbling among the owners, leaving most of town’s residents out of work and with dysfunctional infrastructure. Putin showed up and reamed the owners of the factory, including Oleg Deripaska. Putin basically told the owners to get off their duffs and get the factory re-opened so the locals could go back to work, otherwise the factory would be taken out of their control. After a sheepish Deripaska had to be persuaded to sign an agreement promising he’d do what he was supposed to do, he started to walk off with Putin’s pen. Putin exclaimed: “And give me my pen back.” A video of the whole thing went viral on YouTube.

Putin recently flew out to the Irkutsk area of Siberia in the aftermath of terrible floods that destroyed many homes, leaving people stranded with complaints that local officials were making access to any assistance difficult and confusing. This video gives you a window into why Putin is still popular among many Russians. Contrast Putin’s taking the time to personally talk to dozens of local people who gathered to ask him for help (and having his aides take down everyone’s name and number for follow-up) with Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina or Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil spill or Trump’s handling of the hurricanes in Puerto Rico. I’m also thinking of a recent incident in which a poor homeless woman encounters New York City mayor Bill DeBlasio at a gym and tries to ask him about doing more to help the homeless. He refused to address her question and gave her the brush off.

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Natylie’s Place

The arrogance and solipsism displayed by the editors of the New York Times never fails to amaze me. After spending almost 3 years doing their part to push a conspiracy theory in which Russia was the devil to blame for the fact that we have Trump, which just represented an escalated level of the vilification that has been heaped on Putin and Russia in stages since 2003, the New York Times finally decided in a July 21st oped that just maybe Washington should now try to sorta kinda saddle up to Russia just a tiny bit because…you know, China.

Really?

Allow me to provide a short explanation to the out-of-touch NYT editors about why Russia will not be trusting Washington any time soon and has decided that it will likely get better results from the continued strengthening of relations with other important and influential countries.

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Dear CCI Readers,

Regarding the article we posted, “Poll claims 10% of Russians have been tortured by the State,” we’ve had a large number of responses to this piece from Americans and Russians alike. None of them give the poll any validity at all.

The response below is from a Russian-American reader. I assume you will find it interesting. It underscores how dangerous it is for people to use one or a few words out of context to create a case of noxious slander. Millions of ordinary readers believe this disinformation, since they have no facts with which to judge. When propagandist writers are permitted or encouraged to write such pieces, it goes against everything our Founding Fathers intended for our nation.

I seriously question whether the Levada Center gave the information in this particular form and think it was more likely the twisting of words by the UK’s Independent, Moscow Times and the RFE/RL, who have been anti-Russia and propagandistic for decades.  The Levada Center in the past has been more fact-based than this article. Thank you Igor Brusil!

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Natylie’s Place
July 4, 2019
By Natylie S. Baldwin

Guards Outside of Black Dolphin Prison near Kazakh border. Photo courtesy of National Geographic.

On June 26th – 27th, the western-owned Moscow Times, The Independent (UK), and the U.S.-government funded RFE/RL all published articles about a poll put out by the independent (i.e. western funded) Levada Center claiming that 10 percent of all Russians have been tortured by Russian authorities.

I’m not suggesting that Russia is Candyland or that police there don’t abuse their authority. I’m aware that there are problems in their criminal justice system – as there are in many other nations, including in the west. If the claim would have been that 10 percent of all prisoners in Russia had been tortured, it would have certainly been in the realm of the plausible. But 10 percent of the entire population of Russia smelled fishy to me.

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Dear CCI friends,

Our September trip, CCI’s largest and most complicated ever, is requiring long hours of preparation, then travel to Russia from Sept 1 – 21. During this time, we will send you articles taken from the blog of one of our favorite writers/commentators, Natylie Baldwin. I hope you find Natylie’s articles as fascinating and insightful as we do.

Once the trip begins, we will send short articles and photo-journals from Russia to describe the first-hand information and impressions we are gleaning day by day. Stay tuned!

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