Almost at the end of the linked video from this CNN story on the St Petersburg G8 Summit, you can hear the press conference erupt in laughter after this interchange between Presidents Bush and Putin:
Bush:
I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world, like Iraq where there’s a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same
Putin:
We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq, quite honestly.
He he. Great minds, Kim. I already linked this story on LP. It’s here:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/07/14/does-the-right-understand-satire/#comment-113555
Kewl
I’m off to bed. Night!
Well Puty can afford to chuckle, the cunning ruthless ex-KGB financial analyst Raskol leader that he is. He’s pretty much driven the creation of the world’s first 21st century post-modern big cat state.
Russia just runs off oil revenues now. It doesn’t even need its people anymore to create wealth, just as a recruiting ground for cannon fodder to protect it’s southern hydrocarbon resources against festering Islamic bandit gangs. And even then this particular job of work is getting more and more outsourced. Meanwhile Moscow has more legal casinos than any other city over 1 million people.
Like the subtle Mandarins of the Middle Kingdom, the sly petrels of Muscovy have struck a devilish bargain with their populace. Your quality of life will improve provided you don’t complain about how and why it’s improving. Yes, they’ve re- invented capitalism without all that difficult democracy shit.
The EU, the US, India and Brazil (and Australia and SE Asia) will still win out in the long run though precisely ‘cos we’re messy, brawling and creative. And along the way, fanatic crusading Islam will just dissolve away in the rising global tide the way fanatic crusading Christianity did in the expanding and expansive 18th century Europe.
As for the current ME furball, I reckon it’s like the Thirty Years War. Kill God and let them all sort it out.
Yeah what Nabs sed. I’m not overly keen on a democracy like Russia’s either. A one liner doesn’t get him off the hook.
On the one hand, Bush’s remark was arrogant and silly and dumb (whew, there’s a surprise). But on the other hand, Putin’s point-scoring was justifiably good theatre, but a little on the shallow side nevertheless.
Somehow the thing reminds me of that endless NASA-vs.-the-Rooskies joke that seems to show up everywhere on the internet these days. The story is that during the space race, the yanks spent a billion dollars to develop a zero-gravity pen, while the clever Russians simply used a pencil!
Haha! See? The Russians were smarter! They used a pencil! While the dopes at NASA spent a billion dollars (exactly why they had a billion dollars just lying around to spend is not analyzed) on research and development (always pointless and fruitless, that) of a new technology (those are useless too). Well, the pencil wins in round 59. But final score: NASA lands on moon, while Russians now have to sit and listen to lectures by chumps like Mr. Bush.
Sometimes I guess you win the knock-knock joke, but you lose the shaggy-dog story.
And the space pencil story isn’t even true.
Nice invective Nabs.
But perhaps one ought to consider the hand that Yeltsin dealt his successor.
Yeltsin donated the workable bits of the Russian economy to the world’s greediest kleptocrats.
These kleptocrats’ function in the world economy was to arrange for the export of Russian oil without any reference to the revenue interests and foreign interests of the Russian state.
And they were aided in this ambition by powerful oil interests elsewhere, notably the United States. The career of Mikhail Khordorkovsky is emblematic of this era of decay of the Russian state.
Putin has begun to establish the revenue base of the Russian state. This is not a sufficient condition for a civil society, but it is a necessary condition.
Therefore, one cheer for Putin.
Interestingly, these manoeuvres, which began during the Clinton presidency, seem to have been predicated on the proposition that flows of oil could be channelled independently of market forces and effective demand. This ambition appears to have driven much of Bush’s early strategic thinking. And it lay behind Cheney’s boast that “the American way of life is non-negotiable”.
However, the Iraq debacle and the rise of China as a consumer of oil willing and able to pay top price on the open market seem to have disabused some in the Bush administration of this hegemonist fantasy about controlling the flow of oil.
However, I doubt that the fantasy is completely dead.
Putin’s humour would be of the gallows variety, the resurrection of Dzerzhinsky is all his own work.
rog: “…the resurrection of Dzerzhinsky is all his own work.”
Anyone for Spaghetti alla CHEKA?
Putin didn’t resurrect Red Felix. The guy never carked it in the first place.
j-p-z:
Yeah, I like that.
Nabakov:
Poor Russians. First they had the Tsar, then they got Communism, and then the poor bugg*rs got Democracy and “Free? Enterprise”! No wonder V Putin is more secure in his job than are is Mr J W Howard and Mr P Costello in theirs.
And the real irony (are you taking notes here Alanis and George?) behind the whole NASA vs the Rooskies scribbling in space technologly urban myth is that using pencils in zero g is not a practical move anyway. Pencil shavings and broken off graphite tips are just one more thing that’ll float around and get into eyes and clog switches and valves. I chatted about this issue with a couple of astronauts at a space science conference and they said it’s all erasable felt tipped pens on various sizes of whiteboard now.
Also I think Putin is Dzerzhinsky. One of the most cunning people ever to dominate a nation. The first Czar since Peter the Great to understand the thinking behind spreadsheets. Ned Beatty’s big rave in Network looks even more uncommonly prescient these days in Russia doesn’t it?