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May 8th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
In fact, as Mr Putin was standing in the Kremlin promising to strengthen
democracy, riot officers were purging the city of peaceful demonstrators
against his rule; dragging them out of pavement cafés and “cleansing”
parks. At least 120 were arrested. That followed violent clashes between
police and marchers at an anti-Putin rally on Sunday, which left about 80
people injured, and 450 detained.
Mr Putin first became president in 2000, and stayed on for a second four-year
term in 2004. In 2008, a constitutional limit on a third consecutive stint
forced him to vacate the throne to his protégé Dmitry Medvedev, although the
older man remained the Alpha Dog of the pair.
In the early days, Mr Putin was popular; a fresh face, a hard worker and not a
drunk like the tottering Boris Yeltsin. There were warning signs, of course:
the brutal war in Chechnya, the castration of parliament, the rise of nasty
jingoistic youth groups like Nashi. But most Russians seemed willing to give
up a degree of freedom in exchange for rising prosperity after a tumultuous
period following the Soviet collapse in 1991.
Two or three years ago that pact began to crumble. Standards of living have
climbed under his rule but Mr Putin’s mantra – stability – no longer has the
mesmerising power of the past. For many a poverty of opportunity and
fairness has become intolerable.
A decade and more of promises to break the nexus of bureaucracy, nepotism and
corruption have yielded little result. One protester at the mass anti-Putin
demonstration in Moscow on Sunday gave a vivid example. She runs a summer
ecology camp for children, but its trips have become so throttled by endless
red tape that it’s hard to even take the kids to the woods and fry some
sausages.
A sense of gnawing injustice over such indignities can transform into rage:
the government’s blatant fixing of elections in favour of Mr Putin in
December and March caused just such a response.
For the time being, Mr Putin is in control again. On the surface, the protests
of 100,000 people – the biggest since the fall of the USSR – which broke out
over falsified elections forced little change. The opposition, a pick ‘n’
mix of liberals, leftists and nationalists lacks gravitas or a clear
political programme. It too, has shown aggression.
Yet Mr Putin is weakened. He got (an albeit fraudulent) 63 per cent in the
March presidential election but some of his recent statements indicate he is
dangerously out of touch with the urban middle class in Moscow and other big
cities. Calling peaceful protesters against December’s election fiasco “Bandar-logs”
– after the unruly monkeys from Rudyard Kipling’s jungle book – and
suggesting he was their preying python foe was downright sinister.
Ever since he came to power, the clans in Mr Putin’s circle have reflected his
own conflicted persona. Inside the Kremlin, hardline military and security
veterans face off against liberal-leaning lawyers and economists.
Deep down, Mr Putin may recognise the need to squeeze out graft, wean Russia
off oil and gas, and allow fresh forces to gush into the political void he’s
created. But as dissent grows, the fear is that he will instinctively revert
to coercion in order to preserve his rule.
If that happens, the best case scenario is a seething, divided society. The
worst is more bloodshed on the streets of Moscow.
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