{"id":261,"date":"2007-05-16T22:25:10","date_gmt":"2007-05-16T22:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/wordp\/?p=261"},"modified":"2007-05-16T22:25:10","modified_gmt":"2007-05-16T22:25:10","slug":"putins-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/?p=261","title":{"rendered":"Putin&#8217;s Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just seen a brilliant documentary of Channel 4&#8217;s More4 station. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.channel4.com\/more4\/documentaries\/doc-feature.jsp?id=14\">Death of a Nation<\/a> is a compelling look at modern Russia. The documentary shows widespread disatisfaction with &#8220;Managed Democracy&#8221; which seems to be at odds with much of the freedom and civil liberties that we associate with democracy. It puts a lot of our (&amp; my own) whinging about bipartate politics into poignant perspective. It also dismisses Putin&#8217;s presentation to the west and highlights a violent and authoritarian regime similiar to Western perceptions of the old USSR. Russia seems like a country on the brink of disaster, caught between the extremes of unchecked capitalism and dictatorial communism. No side truely in control.<br \/>\nThe documentary was narrated by Marcel Theroux, Louis&#8217; less sardonic and altogether more thoughtful brother.  I won&#8217;t discuss it further as it really needs to be watched to be appreciated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just seen a brilliant documentary of Channel 4&#8217;s More4 station. Death of a Nation is a compelling look at modern Russia. The documentary shows widespread disatisfaction with &#8220;Managed Democracy&#8221; which seems to be at odds with much of the freedom and civil liberties that we associate with democracy. It puts a lot of our (&amp; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}