From Peter: "I came across this hit piece that tries to dismiss Putin's popularity:
""An opinion poll can only be conducted in a Democracy with a free press," he explained. "In a country with no free press, where people are arrested for expressing their opinions, where the truth is hidden from them, where the media even online is almost all controlled by the government -- when a pollster phones people up and asks, 'Hello, do you approve of Vladimir Putin,' the answer is overwhelmingly yes."
Yet no one questions those laughable PEW polls that take place in the dictatorships in the Gulf. I guess Western back dictatorships are all free of bias."
""An opinion poll can only be conducted in a Democracy with a free press," he explained. "In a country with no free press, where people are arrested for expressing their opinions, where the truth is hidden from them, where the media even online is almost all controlled by the government -- when a pollster phones people up and asks, 'Hello, do you approve of Vladimir Putin,' the answer is overwhelmingly yes."
Yet no one questions those laughable PEW polls that take place in the dictatorships in the Gulf. I guess Western back dictatorships are all free of bias."
