[Laughs_Last]

This is why protesters need to make signs that convert into shields and pikes, so that they can form-up into phalanxes.

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Twilight', '.')..many of the participants appear to be members of the Russian nazi party...

[Twilight]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zardoz', 'I')'m sure that's a typo and you mean Communist Party.

[Plantagenet]

One group thinks Hitler was great and the other thinks Stalin was great.

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Twilight', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zardoz', 'I')'m sure that's a typo and you mean Communist Party.

[Twilight]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zardoz', 'A')re you having trouble differentiating the Hammer and Sickle from the Swastika? What are you talking about?

[Plantagenet]

The "National Bolshevik" party....that is utterly appallling.

As undemocratic as Putin is, the National Bolsheviks look like they would be considerably worse.

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Twilight', 'Y')ou didn't click the wiki link, did you?

[Laughs_Last]

When the Nazi Party is using free speech to protest in favor of democratic reforms, you know your country is messed up.

For a party bodied by angry young men, it looks like they've got their propaganda photos on target. (Jail bait, ironic )

[Zardoz]

I love Moscow in the spring.

[Eli]

I thought the protest was a combination of opposition groups?

Putin would get a lot more international support if he portrays it as a protest by a bunch of Nazis. Everyone hates those guys.

I think anyone who says the don't like Putin and think he is the best gets their head kicked or they just end up dead.

He is one evil sonofabitch as far as I can tell.



That girl is twenty years old, I would bet money on it.

[The_Toecutter]

You may be staring at America's near future in this topic.

[gg3]

Interesting. Nazis using a communist symbol.

Good catch, Twilight. They had me fooled at first glance also.

Yes, Putin should have come out and said these were nazis.

As for that girl in the propaganda photo, IMHO the way she's looking off to the far right of the picture gives her eyes an appearance that makes her look like an ET.

The reason Bush and Putin are such good friends is that both of them are authoritarians who believe in unfettered executive power. Fortunately for us, Bush is hardly as capable as Putin. If he was, we would be in far deeper doodoo. Be thankful for small favors. And if you don't feel motivated to vote next year, go back and look at those photos.

[Twilight]

It has long seemed like the moderates have disappeared from politics over there. Putin is a semi-dictator, so in the West the opposition is commonly assumed to be progressive and is often portrayed sympathetically in the media, but they are mostly wannabe-dictators themselves. If they had the chance, they would use democracy as a means to an end and then scrap it. The smaller parties are generally extreme - nazis, fascists, imperialists, communists, while the privately-funded ones aren't just fronts for big business, but by default, mafia-influenced big business. The real not a figure of speech type of mafia which kills people.

The market for a progressive party promoting a Western-style two-house two-party system is gone, and I think it was the duration and extent of the economic collapse that killed it as much as renewed political repression. Liberalism lost credibility soon after it became a by-word for asset-stripping and capital outflow. Now the politics of the country itself are sick, it goes a lot wider than pointing a finger at any one group. Replacing Putin's party means taking your pick from a list of even worse people. Like the House of Saud, it's a bad deal, but all the same you'd be scared of it coming to an end abruptly.

And right on, collapse any of our countries fast enough, and the political centre ground is going to be a lonely place. The politics of compromise don't appeal to hungry people once proud.

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Twilight', '.')..The market for a progressive party promoting a Western-style two-house two-party system is gone, and I think it was the duration and extent of the economic collapse that killed it as much as renewed political repression...

[Twilight]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zardoz', 'D')id it ever have a realistic chance in a crippled nation that has no democratic tradition? Are the Russians simply culturally unsuited for it? After centuries of Czarist repression, then 70 years of Soviet-style communism, perhaps Russians have been reduced to damaged goods, so to speak. Their psychological state as a group may have made it impossible for them to ever have anything but corrupt authoritarian rulers.

[Grifter]

And probably Europe too if you think about it.

Putin steps up missiles warning

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')ussian President Vladimir Putin has warned that US plans to build a missile defence system in eastern Europe would raise the risk of "mutual destruction".

[dissident]

It was only a matter of time before the west was going to set its sights on another fossil fuel rich country. Control of the middle east isn't enough. But Russia ain't no Iraq. It is much stronger relatively speaking today than the USSR was at the start of WWII. The west has a snowball's chance in hell of winning this "cakewalk". Better focus on energy conservation and alternative sources instead of wallowing in delusions of world domination.

[OilIsMastery]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... fer=europe

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')ug. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Georgia, a key U.S. ally, said it has ``incontrovertible evidence'' Russian jets fired a missile onto its territory and called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to condemn the attack.

The Security Council ``has to be resolute in condemning an attack on the territory of a sovereign country,'' Georgia's Deputy Ambassador to the UN Irakli Chikovani said yesterday.

Georgia said two Russian SU-24 fighter jets crossed 75 kilometers (46 miles) into its territory Aug. 6 and fired a precision-guided missile that landed, without exploding, about 60 kilometers west of the capital, Tbilisi. Chikovani called the incident an ``act of aggression.'' Russia's military denied any aircraft entered Georgian airspace.

[OilIsMastery]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... ines-world

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ikolai P. Patrushev, head of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the domestic successor to the Soviet-era KGB, told an anti-terrorism meeting that Tuesday's incident meant security measures against extremists and terrorists must be strengthened in the run-up to parliamentary elections in December and a March presidential election in which a successor to Putin is expected to be chosen.