Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Saturday’s announcement of the scheme to restore Vladimir Putin as president of Russia was about as surprising as April’s announcement of the campaign to reelect Barack Obama as president of the United States. Actually, the only thing noteworthy about Putin’s announcement is the stupefaction pundits around the world are expressing about the way Russia’s incumbent president, Dmitry Medvedev,… Read more.
Putin to rule for life Last week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi chose an ominous way to bond. During a joint press conference in Moscow, Berlusconi announced funding for research that will extend life expectancy to 120. Putin quipped: So we will be prime ministers [or president in Putin’s case] until at least the age of… Read more.
Jean Gregoire Sagbo gives new meaning to the term, Black Russian. Because henceforth when that term is uttered, the reference might be as much to him, the first black to be elected to political office in Russia, as to the eponymous drink. Granted, his election is more akin to the first black being admitted to… Read more.
As great a celebrity as President Obama has become, I really did not expect coverage of his Moscow summit to compete with the obsessive, predatory and wholly redundant coverage of (plans for) today’s Michael Jackson Memorial. But nothing demonstrates the tabloidization of the news media quite like the fact that even coverage of Sarah… Read more.
Russian President Vladimir Putin made Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko an offer he could not refuse: he told Yushchenko that if Ukraine’s 47 million “orange revolutionaries” wanted to continue receiving gas from Russia to cook their food, heat their homes and drive their cars, they would have to pay four times as much for it. When… Read more.
As much as I would like to comment on the latest feats of athleticism at the Beijing Olympics, I cannot in light of ongoing developments in Georgia. And nothing troubles my conscience and geopolitical consciousness more in this respect than the prevailing ignorance I find amongst so many American colleagues and friends about the origins… Read more.
[T]he US and EU have been effectively checkmated. Because, despite Saakashvili’s bellicose rhetoric about dire consequences if Putin does not retreat from his “large-scale military aggression” in Georgia, he knows that neither he nor his Western allies dares lift a finger to back up their words with action. And this fact is only reinforced by the U.S.… Read more.
For years, I’ve warned about the Putinization of Russia — a calculated campaign by Vladimir Putin to dismantle the democratic reforms championed by his predecessors. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll recognize this as the work of a neo-Stalinist president bent on reversing the strides made by Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Gorbachev, in a… Read more.
