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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (84275)	12/8/2011 9:19:05 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 218347

Spring comes to Moscow – the tug of war begins By Konstantin von Eggert “New microchips will help locate the deer with previously unheard of precision and track it during the long winter nights”. When I switched on the television on Tuesday I could hardly believe my eyes. The rest of the world was watching scenes of riot police attacking pro-democracy demonstrators in Moscow. The name of Triumphalnya Square, where the rally was taking place, was topping Twitter trends. But the main story on state-owned “Rossiya 24”, Russia’s only 24-hour TV channel, was the microchipping of polar deer. It was a testament to the way Russia’s leadership is handling the first real political crisis of the Putin era. Clumsy attempts to deny or hush up unpleasant reality, veiled threats mixed with vague promises of concessions, diatribes against perceived foreign interference – it all recalls Milosevic’s Belgrade in 2000 or Mubarak’s Cairo in 2011. The question on everyone’s mind is: “Are we seeing the ‘Russian Spring’ arriving, against all odds, in winter?” My answer is: yes – but it might well have a pattern different from the Arab revolutions. It will all depend on the protesters’ ability to organise, maintain momentum and present authorities with clear but realistic demands. It seems a crucial day will be Saturday, when a major rally is expected in Moscow. Vladimir Putin still has formidable financial resources, and the police has not yet hesitated to tackle the protesters roughly. The opposition is still split between the so-called “systemic” parties, to be represented in parliament, and the “non-systemic” groupings that are driving the street protests. The population, though increasingly restless, wants the system to improve, not another revolution. All this favours the Kremlin. However, other factors are eroding the regime’s ability to respond to the situation coherently. Firstly, the United Russia party’s ratings have been falling for more than a year. But the government expected its usual combination of cash injections and vote rigging to maintain its previous parliamentary majority. People’s willingness to turn out and vote for any party but United Russia took the regime by surprise. The vehement reaction to the usual practice of stuffing the ballot boxes was also unexpected. Mr Putin and his team seem to have no “Plan B”. Courts hand out sentences to protesters – but Russia is not Belarus and Mr Putin is not Alexander Lukashenko. While activists in Minsk serve five-year terms in tough prisons, their Russian counterparts get 15-day spells in city police jails – which merely boost their credibility. As previously apolitical celebrities rushed to the rally, some carried off to police vans in fur coats, one Moscow wit twitted: “Soon you won’t be received in polite society without a spell in a jail”. This is another bad sign for the Kremlin. It is losing credence with intellectuals, bohemians and with a swathe of thirty-somethings, who have moved from political indifference or even support for Mr Putin to principled opposition. These people are not numerous, but they are educated, travelled, internet-savvy and forward-looking. They are irretrievably lost to the Kremlin and United Russia – and with them the majority in the nation’s two capitals. This is very significant. Both the Bolshevik coup of 1917 and the great anti-Communist revolution of 1989-1991 were decided by active minorities in Moscow and St Petersburg. This was also the last election in which the government could rely on state-controlled TV to set the agenda. Internet penetration in Russia rose to more than 50m daily users in 2011: people are increasingly reading news from independent sources and comparing opinions with little or no state interference. State media must either ignore the facts, damaging their already shaky credibility, or present what is really happening – and thus contribute to the critique. Finally, as presidential elections approach in March 2012, attention turns to Vladimir Putin. The Duma vote became a referendum on his bid to offer the masses more of the same – stability and shelter from the economic storm in exchange for six more years of doing as he pleases. And a significant number told him “No thanks”. He now has only three months to present the public with a “Putin 2.0” – a near impossible task. If the March election becomes the usual shadow contest with officially approved opponents, it would further undermine Mr Putin’s popularity. If the election is opened to real competition, he will have to undergo real criticism and even take part in real TV debates – something no Russian president has ever done. This raises the risk for the famously risk-averse Russian prime minister. Yet taking it seems the only option left to the Kremlin, if it wants to stem a crisis of legitimacy engulfing the regime. One could argue that a heavy crackdown remains possible. If this option is chosen it would fatally undermine the Kremlin’s standing with the people – and soon prove useless. One cannot run an effective dictatorship in a country where corruption has become the main instrument of governance. The water cannon trucks, brought this week to Moscow to disperse the demonstrators, remained inactive. Putting them back in the garage would be a wise thing to do. The writer is a commentator for the commercial radio station Kommersant

To: TobagoJack who wrote (84275)	12/8/2011 1:40:30 PM
From: Canuck Dave	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 218347

Jaysus man, my Canadian bank is on that list. Time to get serious about gold holdings? CD

To: TobagoJack who wrote (84275)	12/8/2011 1:51:24 PM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 218347

Nothing new: "Britain’s Big Bang is another example of artificial booms created out of rosy predictions." Message 26371240 bang The result? "the lax London-based unregulated and unsupervised system which has allowed such unprecedented, leveraged monsters as AIG, Lehman and now as it turns out MF Global, to flourish until they end up imploding and threatening the world's entire financial system, and..." Amigo I was awake 23 years ago...