_evan

Time's person of the year is always quite ridiculous to be honest. I mean they've had Bush twice since the turn of the millennium, and this is the same magazine which crowned Stalin and Hitler.

nickh

Yeah lol

Serdiuk

next year's Person of the Year is Ossamma ben laden. rofl.

nicknamessuck

you should maybe read up the definition of time's person of the year

then u might understand how Hitler could be it in the 30's

_evan

Oh please, turning a blind eye or adding a clause doesn't pardon the fact that they're fundamentally failing to the entire idea of the media. I mean did you even read any of the short [url=http://www.time.com/time/2007/poy/]discriptions on certain issues?[/url] They're obsessed with the swagger of war.

matthew-manhorn

what's wrong with stalin??? he's my idol as well

i love capitalism but i hate democracy, i like strong leaders such as stalin and putin

_evan

I guess the definition of a good leader is different for everyone..

BelarusPower

for those who like stalin it is "a good leader is the one who would murder 3 million people of his own nation and almost lead it to losing in a world war"

i somehow agree putin is a person of the year: he made much money, used gas blackmail well, made russia a more authoritarian country, made a nice party for tv zombies and doesnt look like a retard after two years of reign

bwX

He did something not many can accomplish and therefore he receives the award of "Person of the year", weither the accomplishment is good for mankind. I ought to say that Putin is doing a good job and I believe he is a good guy in the deepest. I fear not that Putin will do something he'll regret later, such as starting unnecessary wars and to put people into greater danger.
Of course, I can bet you quite a lot that Putin has been in the back of assassinations, he is somewhat responsible for the killing of a few men. That I do believe, but it was for the greater good, I guess, according to him.

matthew-manhorn

russia needs a more socialist government like Putin's policy, yeltsin's going way too fast towards democracy therefore ruined the whole russian economy

_evan

True capitalism can't exist under anything than a proper democracy by the way.

BelarusPower

russia needs dictatorship, not democracy

Serdiuk

only animals need dictatorship.

Blitztator

Soon he will tell you that Russians are animals :D

_evan

Actually I don't agree with that. I don't think democracy is for every culture, and a lot of Asian 'countries' positively thrive under dictatorship.

BelarusPower

person of the year is putin and russian of the five years is of course bush: for starting a war in iraq so prices for oil rised so russia started to get extra money on gas and oil blackmail so russian industry and economy gained strength

T33K3SS3L

At least does the russian gouverment something under putin's lead. The german politicians would talk a lot and do a few but in a way getting the most positive response, means more ppl voting for them. That's the western way of the politicans (ab)using democraty and the reason for lots of people loosing their thrust in it.

I don't think that the fact that putin acts like some kind of semi-dictator makes the success he recieved as worse as some ppl seem to think (although the oppression against any kind of opposition in russia is something that have to be stopped asap)
At least it seems as if he wants to get the success for the country and not for himself and he got great visions of the economy, another point where the typical western politician thinks in way smaller dimensions.

Nethertheless I don't know any country which fits into evan's description... an asian country which trived positively under dictatorship? Russia, Japan, India and South Korea are democraties, China is a weird mix of everything and the north Koreans don't benefit of the dictatorship... they are much more poor than most other countries. The closer east region consists of countries always beeing in fear of violence or another war, whoever rules them.
What are those countries you mentioned?

_evan

India has been a democracy how long? Same with Japan, who has been under a feudal system longer than many western powers. Many of these countries had achieved nothing for thousands of years, and when under the British Empire, thrived to an extent. The vast majority went the way of democracy but ones liked China, 'decided' to resist and continue in one form or another, a dictatorship.

Asian democracies are incredibly unstable and by no means an indication of the strength or capability of said system. You only have to look at India for proof of that. European politics is and will always been the corner stone. You look west and you've the extremeness, paranoia, and corruption of America. You look east and you've cultures still living in the middle ages, religions ruling the states and extreme poverty.

The United Kingdom, Germany and France do extremely well considering our size, density, and resources. We 'play' and influences countries who dwarf us in one way or another and do very well. Britain now, in comparison to when Blair started is a completely different country and despite the problems we do have, we're looked upon very highly by some countries.

I'm glad I'm European and English! Wouldn't have it any other way.

bobrman

My opinion about "Russia needs dictatorship,not democracy, because only strong man can rule country successfull" - this is bullshit.

bwX

That is true, but it doesn't change the fact that people live under extreme condition and isolation from the other communities around the same nation. You ought to understand that any opposer to the government in a dictatorship either gets a non-trail jail time or even get executed in order to the have the dictatorship stable. That's how they do it and it's not positive, since the dictators usually didn't get elected but took the power by force.

matthew-manhorn

Russia was in an ecnomic disaster after the collapse of Soviet Union, Yeltsin iwa stupid enough to transform a communist world power into a democratic state...just as Gorbachev said "The Americans have been doing this for 300 years while you guys are expecting us to be doing this within 3 months?"

Putin does the right job, die western pusies

matthew-manhorn

come on he's belarusian

matthew-manhorn

good point here, as a patriotic chinese i personally think democracy will never work in Asia, capialism sure does work in Asia but definately not democracy..

"Democratic countries" such as South Korea, Taiwan etc... have extremely corrupted governments which seem to look worse / as worse as their communist counter-parts (North Korea, China.)..Taiwanese always make fun of China of their "anti-democratic rule" and "poverty", but China just beats Taiwan hands down in terms of market size when China turns capitalist....I don't think democracy is a big issue in Asia since Western countries are willing to deal in Asia's growing capitalist market no matter if you're democratic / non-democratic or not......

I myself am not a big fan of democracy though, I belive in strong central governments since Asian / Eastern European people require discipline in order to be effective.

I don't care how people bash Putin and his policies, he's my role-model personally since the beslan school crises with his strong leadership, straightforward attitude, unique charisma and some unbelievable guts to go hostile against the west...which is, in my opinion...awesome

matthew-manhorn

i've been living in Hong Kong and US..and i think HK is the true capitalist place I've ever lived since you dont' have to pay for damn taxes, and earn what deserves to be earned...

matthew-manhorn

a russian democracy is the yeltsin era..good? bad? you decide

russia needs time go step towards democracy

BelarusPower

for some unknown reason national measures of all post-soviet countries change almost equally in recent years (and even dont depend on who The Great Leader is), and most amazing thing is that gdp of some countries develop even better than russian (gdp of all other countries is not less than 2%)

[url=http://www.ljplus.ru/img4/m/u/muacre/GDP_OIL.jpg]maybe this is the real reason?[/url]

red line is gdp
blue line is oil price

blank1

Russia seems to only work under authoritarian governments, it seems.

matthew-manhorn

of course, i've been investing on some eastern european stocks as well :XXX

but see, russia has like 1000x more problems than small eastern european countries for sure, and putin was able to do what gorbachev and yeltsin didn't

hey if belarus' economy is rising i think Alexander Lukashenko is a great leader too!!

hail Alexander Lukashenko!

Tentro

Putin the Best !!!

BelarusPower

what problems? small countries dont have infinite resourses and all kinds of any industry
maybe the only reason why putin is praised so much worldwide is because it favours the usa

potatoe

matthew-manhorn, when you say "he's my role-model personally since the beslan school crises"
do you realize the outcome of the crisis was a total disaster? It wasn't well managed at all, and I'm not sure Putin is unblamable on that one.
He put Russia back in the track in terms of economy and international politic, but I'm not sure Garry Kasparov and Anna Politkovskaia share Time's point of view.