The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Breaking News => Topic started by: TheSarge on May 17, 2008, 06:34:24 PM
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As ex-President Putin settles in to his new role as Prime Minister, he has every reason to congratulate himself.
After all, he has not only written the script for his constitutional coup d'etat, but staged the play and given himself the starring role as well.
Of course, he has given a walk-on role to Dmitry Medvedev, his personally anointed successor.
But the transfer of power from Putin to his Little Sir Echo, Medvedev, and the show of military strength with those soldiers and clapped-out missiles in Red Square on Victory Day which followed it last week, made it clear who is really in charge.
No decision of any significance for the Russian people or the rest of us will be made in the foreseeable future without the say - so of Medvedev's unsmiling master.
Just before he stood down as President, Putin declared: "I have worked like a galley slave throughout these eight years, morning til night, and I have given all I could to this work. I am happy with the results."
As he surveys the nation today he reminds me of that chilling poem by Ted Hughes, Hawk Roosting, in which the dreaded bird sits at the top of a tall tree musing: "Now I hold all Creation in my foot - I kill as I please because it is all mine - I am going to keep things like this.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=566931&in_page_id=1811
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One of the problems we have here on this board is we assume that folks like the idea of democracy. It would not have been that much trouble for the russians to maintain what they had. Or even build on it. But this is ridiculous.
It probably explains the DU swamp better than any single discussion
Another long round of poverty and alcoholism for the russian nation.