Putin the Terrible

Putin the Terrible Macleans.ca - World - Global: “Can anyone control the forces the Russian president has unleashed?CHARLIE GILLIS September 3, 2007 A couple of weeks back, while news readers were averting their gaze from photographs of a shirtless Vladimir Putin fishing in Siberia, two videos circulating on the Internet laid bare a different, much more chilling, portion of the Russian body politic. The first was a crude bit of agitprop thought to originate with the Nashi, a Kremlin-funded youth movement loyal to Putin whose work involves denouncing the president’s critics as fascists, homosexuals or foreign-controlled traitors.The eight-minute clip, which eventually found its way to YouTube, was ostensibly meant to persuade draft-eligible teenagers to seek a career in the army. But its true object was to foment paranoia. Images of U.S. soldiers marching on unidentified soil flashed across the screen, while a narrator warned that America aims to ‘colonize’ Russia for its oil. Former Soviet satellites in the ‘Stans and eastern Europe were depicted as beachheads for an impending invasion. One animated segment portrayed worm-like tentacles emanating from the United States and creeping around the globe through former Soviet republics like the Baltics, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. ‘They are right next door,’ the voice-over said. ‘They will take any available opportunity to take us over.’ “

Remember when certain people said it was the war to end all wars? If you don’t that war was World War I. The wisest man who lived said there in nothing new under the sun and mankind keeps proving him correct. Just wait a decade until the Nashi gets into position of power in Russia with a modern military.