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Monday, December 12, 2011

When Will This Spring End?

I note that opportunist Mikhail Dmitrievitch Prokhorov is suddenly running for the presidency of Russia. Who is this Prokhorov? Why, he is the owner of the New Jersey Nets. He is also a billionaire from Russia, born in 1965, who got to be a billionaire in the chaos of Russia’s transition to “democracy” at age 28 when, having managed to become head of the Management Board of the International Finance Company, he “acquired” a state-owned bank that just happened to own vast mining properties that he later sold. Well, enough already.

It looked for a while as if Russia were sensibly abandoning its “democracy” in favor of order, but what with the virulent Arab Spring spreading its spores all over the world, things appear to be unraveling there. Headlines speak of Russia’s “awakening,” the protests against Putin are led by a punk rock band called The Last Tanks in Paris, and the Last Tanks are helped by a rap group called Rabfak whose symbol is a skeleton’s hand giving us the finger. Billionaires, punk bands, and university students. Rock on, comrades, rock on.

1 comment:

  1. I think Rabfak's symbol pretty well sums up things at present.

    It is just like Iraq: things will be so much better after we have taken out Saddam... only no one ever told us it would take at least a generation for things to even think of getting better.

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