Three-Quarter-Term Elections

Obama's back from Europe, where he managed to score rare photo ops: with Pope Francis in Rome, and with the Shinzo Ehud Abe - Park Yasser Geun-hye duet in The Hague (see "The Tripartite Summitulacra").

Historic handshake between war criminal grandson and dictator daughter - Nobel Prize winner observing (twitter.com/theseoulvillage/status/448630575683751937 20140326)

The POTUS went out of his way (literally only) back to the States to say goodbye to Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud (90), who just nominated the successor of his successor Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (79): don't expect stupendous reforms from this young Muqrin bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (69), the former head of the local intelligence agency...

So Barack Obama lets John Kerry cope with Putin's adventure in Ukraine, Park and Abe sort things out directly together, and the Saud clan stew in their own juice (now that the US of A have their own shale gas to dirty themselves with...).

Back home, the President keeps his eye on the ball: neither climate change, nor gun control, but Obamacare, The Reform That Must Work Before The November Elections, save the Senate majority, and end the House stalemate.

I bet Hillary Clinton is also praying for the success of this landmark healthcare reform. 

OFA's last call

blogules 2014
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
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Happy New Year 2015

It's that time of the year, and for the 12th time*, I have no choice but to wish you a happy next year, considering what's going to happen in 2014:

January 2014 - Following the purge of JANG, KIM Jong-un decides to execute all North Korean citizens who don't share his royal Baekdu bloodline, including his own wife. He remarries his aunt KIM Kyong-hui who, even at 67 and after her recent heart treatment and husbandectomy, manages to give him a second son. KIM The Fourth sports a goitre, a Habsburg Jaw, and the most ridiculous hairdo in the whole dynasty.

February 2014 - As he carries the torch for the final relay at the Sochi Olympics, Vladimir Putin is assassinated by a group of gay Chechnen terrorists, the Dicky Riot. The new President, Dmitry Medvedev, choses Garry Kasparov as his Prime Minister.

March 2014 - Garry Kasparov castles: Vladimir Khodorovsky moves from his tower to the Kremlin, where Medvedev checks his new mate.

April 2014 - The day before the joint canonization of John Paul II and John XXIII, Pope Francis discloses their secret ties to a powerful cult. The Ecuador Embassy grants asylum to the author of Curialeaks, and Francis eventually flies to Russia (Kasparov offered him a job as a bishop).

May 2014 - Only 10% of voters participate in the European Elections. Extreme right parties claim 75% of the ballots, extreme left parties 68%, democracy the remainder.

June 2014 - France sends troops to South Africa to contain the civil war that followed the April elections, and doubles its troops in South Sudan. Francois Hollande will consider the demands from Kenya and Nigeria, but only after deciding the size of France's contingents for Egypt and Morocco.

July 2014 - Neymar thinks he scores the winning goal for Brazil in the 2014 FIFA World Cup Final, but Aleksandr Kokorin claims a hat trick during injury time. Garry Kasparov instantly makes the coach Fabio Capello Knight of the Whistle.

August 2014 - Bashar al Assad kills only 10,000 Lebanese citizens, his lowest score since January. He asks Russia for more weapons, but Kasparov simply sends second hand spare parts from his pawn shop.

September 2014 - Scotland votes in favor of its independence. The Queen takes a diagonal direction to Moscow.

October 2014 - Red Friday, all Chinese bubbles explode at once. To prevent global panic and a collapse of all world economies, Fed chief Janet Yellen designs an alternate way of measuring wealth, Quantumative Easing.


November 2014 - Catalonia votes in favor of its independence, and for the mid-term elections, at long last, the GOP votes in favor of its independence from theocons and tea partiers.

December 2014 -  Shinzo Abe sends troops to France to contain an uprising ignited by a strike in a Simmons factory, The Mattress Spring.


blogules 2013
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
NEW: join blogules on Facebook!!! and Twitter (@stephanemot, @blogules)

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UPDATE: see the French version "Bonne Année 2015"
  
* see "Happy New Year 2010" (Jan 2009), "Happy New Year 2011" (Dec 2009), "Happy New Year 2012" (Dec 2010), "Happy New Year 2013" (Dec 2011), "Happy New Year 2014" (Dec 2012)... and in French: "Bonne Année 2009" (Jan 2008), "Bonne Année 2010" (Dec 2008), "Bonne Année 2011" (Dec 2009), "Bonne Année 2012" (Dec 2010), "Bonne Année 2013" (Dec 2011), "Bonne Année 2014" (Dec 2012).

Booz Allen is watching you. Saving Private Snowden or Saving Public Manning? (Outsourcing intel in Patriot Act times - When Big Data meets Small Government)

So I received this email*, which is supposed to make me feel guilty:

"191,537 people have signed President Obama's birthday letter.

But you're not ONE OF THEM.

SIGN THE CARD."

 
Sorry, but I don't feel guilty. And this choice of picture... Barack Obama like Cary Grant carrying that glass of milk to Joan Fontaine in "Suspicion"...

Well. I'm still ONE OF THEM, them people who subscribe to Barack Obama newsletters. So the NSA didn't have to scan my profile to find out I didn't sign the darn card: I opted in 6 years ago. And yes, I still receive Karl Rove memos - you need a good laugh now and then.

Ah! Ah! Guantanamo, can't get tired of that old Bush-Cheney joke! Actually, Obama's America invented something even better than Guantanamo in Cuba: One-man-ammo in Russia! You're afraid to face unfair justice in the US? Uncle Vlad will be happy to provide tailored hospitality in his model democracy.

No, Eric Holder hasn't choked on a pretzel yet.

Frankly, I think Saving Private Snowden is less important than Saving Public Manning. I'm not talking about poor whistleblower Bradley Manning, but about national intelligence services.

Outsourcing intel at the core of NSA is already disturbing. To a Carlyle Group affiliate. As if Israel were outsourcing its strategy to the Boston Consulting Group. Sorry, wrong example.

Outsourcing intel in Patriot Act times, when Big Data meets Small Government.

Outsourcing intel means that the Big Brother who's watching you is not the NSA but Booz Allen Hamilton.

And don't think these contractors are very careful when they handle or man this most sensitive mission. Booz Allen CEO Ralph W. Shrader said "Mr. Snowden was on our payroll for a short period of time, but he was not a Booz Allen person and he did not share our values".

In other words: "Oh, you know, that mission you hired us for, spying for America? You can trust us: we gave the job to a most untrustworthy person. Anyway, we can't afford to keep the best ones, they sell their services to foreign companies and nations. Handling confidential NSA stuff, that's pretty good on a resume when you're looking for a job in Russia, in Pakistan, or at Facebook. Non Disclosure Agreements? We do those, but only to make sure the public doesn't know how much your Government is paying us. By the way, can we renegociate this contract of ours? We believe you need new servers and software to catch up with the competition. To build their own systems, they hired people who were trained on your obsolete material and knew all your weaknesses."

Talking about weaky leaks.

McLean, Va. 795,582,003,441,637,794 data burgers served across the world.





Outsourcing intel: - #ParriotAct + #BigData + small government = #BoozAllen is watching you - Saving private #Snowden or public #Manning?
twitter.com/stephanemot/status/363709151731388416
 
#Snowden: after #Guantanamo in #Cuba, the US created #OneManAmo in #Russia The moral hazards of outsourcing intel in #PatriotAct times
twitter.com/stephanemot/status/363710368557711362





blogules 2013
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
NEW: join blogules on Facebook!!! and Twitter (@stephanemot, @blogules)

Happy New Year 2013

It's that time of the year and as usual*, I simply can't wish you a happy new year considering what's going to happen in 2012:

January 2012: after David Cameron and Nick Clegg fail to reach an agreement on the 2011-2012 bonuses for City bankers, the Poundzone implodes.

February 2012: Queen Elizabeth II mentions the possibility that she might step down before the end of her second 60-year mandate. Charles is, as always, all ears.

March 2012: Dmitri Medvedev announces the suicide of his Prime Minister: Vladimir Putin swallowed two gallons of radioactive vodka and shot himself nine times in the head. Putin nonetheless appears the next day, sporting a ten feet long green beard: "now call me Ras instead of Vlad".

April 2012: South Koreans disagree on how to handle their own security after the dissolution of the Combined Forces Command. The country splits into Southeast Korea and Southwest Korea, with Dokdo as the new neutral capital.

May 2012: Sarkozy declares himself winner of the Presidential Elections with a score of 98%, has the police shoot at protesters, and rebrands himself Nicolas The First just to be called "His Highness".

June 2012: in Vietnam, the Arab Spring rolls.

July 2012: for budgetary reasons, Greece, Spain, and Ireland compete under the same banner at the London Olympics: the Commonpoverty.

August 2012: ahead of the 18th Party Congress, China launches its latest aircraft carrier and the Occupy Singapore Strait movement.

September 2012: for the first time in Burma, a woman becomes Head of State. Hillary nominates Bill as commander in chief with just this piece of advice: "don't bask your tail".

October 2012: the Nobel Prize in Literature goes to Ben Bernanke for his bestseller, the $100 banknote (789,566,122,708,110 copies issued in one month).

November 2012: Herman Cain visits the White House to decide on which floor to install the Second and Third Ladies.

December 2012: on 2012/12/12, at 20:12:12, Pakistanese PM downloads the Doom app on his smartphone.

blogules 2011

* see "Happy New Year 2010" (Jan 2009), "Happy New Year 2011" (Dec 2009), "Happy New Year 2012" (Dec 2010)... and in French: "Bonne Année 2009" (Jan 2008), "Bonne Année 2010" (Dec 2008), "Bonne Année 2011" (Dec 2009), Bonne Année 2012 (Dec 2010).

Happy New Year 2012

Sorry but just like the previous years*, I cannot wish you a happy new year considering what's going to happen in 2011:

January 2011: volcano Eyjafjallajokull inrupts in Iceland. During this extremely rare phenomenon, billion of tons of CO2 are reabsorbed, causing unusually dry days and cold nights worldwide. In the process, the volcano also sucks about 5,167 planes from the sky.

February 2011 : the Cricket World Cup is sponsored by the Tea Party. Sarah Palin collapses during the seventh day stretch.

March 2011 : Kim Jong-il chokes on a gimchi pretzel. Two days later, his son Kim Jong-un is killed by the chief of intelligence services. The Red Army controls Pyeongyang, millions of North Koreans flock towards the South, thousands die on DMZ land mines. Three weeks later, the South announces that according to various trustable sources, Kim Jong-il might have caught a cold.

April 2011 : Prince William and Kate Middleton tie the knot around Prince Charles' neck. Camilla Parker Howls.

May 2011 : WikiLeaks exposes Julian Assange's STD lists. The 800 page book instantly becomes a New York Times bestseller.

June 2011 : inflation outpaces growth rates in China and property bubbles burst across Asia. US Dollar rallies by 2% against the Yuan : one RMB is now worth only 34,548,997 USD.

July 2011 : accompanied on the piano by Condi Rice, Vladimir Putin wins Russians Got Talent 2011 by singing a touching "I Dreamed a Stalin Dream".

August 2011 : harrassed by a Harry Potter fan working for the IRS, J.K. Rowling resuscitates the sorcerer for a second round of seven books. Daniel Radcliffe declines, but will replace Johnny Depp for the next two Jack Sparrows after the miserable failure of "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" at the box office : "I'm sick and tired of heptalogies - Sparrow movies fly by three, and I even have idle time to work for a Lucas franchise on even years. They said I had enough acting talent to play R2-D2"

September 2011 : the Rugby World Cup is sponsored by the Beer Party. Sarah Palin collapses after her sixty sixth six pack Joe.

October 2011 : in spite of an intense marketing campaign, Jonathan Franzen doesn't get the Nobel Prize for literature, which goes to George W. Bush for his works of fiction.

November 2011 : Greece is bailed out by a pool of betting companies based in Macau. France is refused the same favor. Hedge-a-bet Funds all the rage at the NYSE.

December 2011 : Obama can declare that as scheduled, there is not one US troop left in Iraq because Iraq ceased to exist on December the 5th, Iran claiming the bulk of the land.


blogules 2010

* see "Happy New Year 2011" (Dec 2009), "Happy New Year 2010" (Jan 2009)

WikiLeakified

blogule's Agence Fausse Presse managed to snatch from PeepeeLeaks a few top secret cables where several US envoys deliver their impressions about key world leaders:

- Nicolas Sarkozy : "A paranoid in love with the States, or rather obsessed with the need to be loved by Tom Cruise. Instills terror into his staff : no one dares criticize him, and he's been replacing them one by one by Oompas Loompas who call him "Your Highness", "Your Greatness", or "Dear Ladder". Now Sarkozy only refers to himself in third person."

- Silvio Berlusconi : "Like many statesmen, an eternal teenager obsessed with new conquests... which in spite of compulsive plastic surgery he needs to pay for. Told us to kiss Don Vito hello, and to thank him for his last delivery of Ukrainian blondes."

- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad : "A narcissic psychopath lunatic. Likely to be good friends with our President George W. Bush."

- Tony Blair : "Very friendly but on the threshold of annoyingness. Insisted to show us his self-flagellation stigmata. Asked again for that seance with Churchill promised by the POTUS."

- Vladimir Putin : "When he enters the room, temperature drops 20 degrees. Each of his muscles is so tensed he constantly needs to tune them like piano strings... quite an experience: his face doesn't move one bit, but every five to six seconds you can hear a 'pling' or a 'plong'."

- Muammar al Gaddafi : "Couldn't meet him: the elevator got stuck between the 4th and 5th floors of his tent."

- Hu Jintao / Wen Jiabao : "The former has the sense of humor of a prison door. No wonder he wants to get rid of the latter, a brillant man with a constant smile on his face. But last time I had tea at Wen's (as usual a very pleasant afternoon), I found out back home that he'd planted about eight hundred acupuncture needles all over my back."

- Saddam Hussein : "Didn't understand why we got rid of him after all he did for us and we for him. Didn't like our farewell gift, a beautiful Lanvin hemp necktie."

blogules 2010 - initially published on blogules VF as "WikiLeakefie".

Happy new year 2010

Sorry, but I want to forget 2009 :

January - Tel Aviv hawks perfectly used the window of opportunity before Obama's inauguration, igniting a 3rd intifada and an attack from Hezbullah. The Likud is disbanded (too far left) and on February the 10th, Yigal Amir's National Nationalist Party wins in a landslide. All Israelis of Palestinian origin lose their citizenship and their rights to the Geneva Convention but as a compensation, receive a one-way ticket to the Gaza Ghetto. Moderate Jews are considering a secession and by April, medias start talking about a civil war.

February - in order to celebrate Darwin's bicentennary, Sarah Palin burns the Library of Congress and a few science museums to the ground : "Them scientists have been lying to us for too long, and this fake Santa deserves to fry. Burn'em all ! And let's check if they taste like monkeys ! If we descend from the apes, how come I'm dumber than a moose ?"

March - Bernanke is arrested for a massive pizza scheme : he traded all the Federal Reserves with anchovies and pepperoni. China saves the US from bankruptcy but the country has a new currency : the Western Yuan. A Big Mac costs about two redbacks.

April - Gordon Brown choses the 60th anniversary of the Republic of Ireland to become the new King of Scotland. And 20 years after Tiananmen, the Politburo proposes a new deal to the Chinese People : "a slower growth but even less freedom". Wu Jintao is ousted within one day, and Wen Jiabao becomes the new Leader of the Cultual Revolution. By the end of his first 5 year plan, he should become the next Dalai Lama.

May - Alberto Gonzales escapes prison and manages to fly to North Korea where he becomes Honorary Chairman of the Waterboard.

June - Europe votes : 75% abstention and 95% NO. NB: it wasn't even for a referendum but to elect members of the Parliament...

July - No fireworks on the 4th. Need more ammos for Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia and Estonia.

August - A new Putin blitz : invades Vatican the 5th, becomes Pope the 6th, canonizes Stalin the 7th.

September - Black Thursday the 24th. Quotation suspended for the S&P500. As of today, it's still uncertain whether it will become the SubStandard & Poorer 300 or 200. The latter wording has the favor of people who want to be at least once ahead of the market.

October - The corpse of Francis Bacon, 100, paints a vivid portrait of Hank Paulson screaming on the electric chair.

November - George W. Bush collapses at the end of a gigamass in his honor. The autopsy shows he choked on the Eucharistic bread. Human right activists who wanted him to share Dick Cheney's cell find it hard to swallow.

December - The Nobel Peace Prize goes to Robert Mugabe for his role in the reconciliation between the ANC and COPE. He also gets the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his eradication of AIDS and all other human diseases in Zimbabwe (no more Zimbabwean alive to celebrate at home).

Is Iceland really melting ?

Strange. 

The first ally Iceland turns to turns to be Russia.

Not Europe, not the IMF. Russia. Without any warming.

Medvedev-Putin happily oblige.

Maybe Iceland's financial system is melting. But Russia seems to be building a stronger front around the North Pole. 

Keep your eye on the ball, Europe. Not Georgia, not Ukraine. The ball at the top of the Kremlin.

WWIII : playtime

"We've got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that, if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon".

The man who said that is a fundamentalist leader who wants to destroy peace and democracy. The man who actually provided Iran with the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon : Bush's United States of America had research documents forwarded to Ahmadinejad's Iran, supposedly with the intention of leading that country to a wrong track, but we know better, don't we* ?

If you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing this man from remaining in power : impeach Bush and Cheney before it's too late.

The Democrats are having fun putting things in order with History (genocide against Kurds in Turkey, a medal of honor for the Dalai Lama), it's time for members of Congress who really love democracy to go one decisive and much needed step further.


* see "Iran : who wants war and why" (20070925). Note that this declaration follows critics by Putin on how Bush deals with Iran, and his warnings about murder attempts (see "Archduke Vladimir Putin's assassination attempt" (20071015).

Archduke Vladimir Putin's assassination attempt

You want to watch for false flags these days. Cheney and other trigger happy hawks are desperate to ignite World War III and deliberately putting out fires with gasoline. The yet-to-be-confirmed terror attack on Putin during his yet-to-be-started trip in Iran definitely smells like Dubya's dream team spirit.

All fundamentalist doomsayers know History and remember which incident ignited WWI : the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este in Sarajevo. Back then, the Balkans were the hotspot for warmongers, and now, all the heat is on Tehran.

Vlad the Impaler knows how to orchestrate terror and is quite an expert himself in false flag operations. Russia's next lifetime Prime Minister is transferring the pressure, but off Ahmadinejad's shoulders and directly towards Bush : I know you are up to something but I cannot tell what nor when, I know you want to make people believe Iran is responsible for your dream war but I want the public to make no mistake : if anything happens to me or anyone else, you will be the one holding the smoking gun.

Forging another case for Iran

Model democracy Amerika abducted some more citizens illegally on a foreign soil. Iranians in Irak. Just the kind of peace initiatives that region needs...

Bush-Cheney already forged a case for the invasion of Irak, and they're at it again. If America doesn't wake up, something really nasty is bound to happen. Time to impeach both of those enemies of peace and democracy.

Elsewhere : the Kremlin said Anna Politkovskaya was killed by Chechen terrorists, and Russian Prosecutor - General Yury Chaika said Anna Politkovskaya could only be killed by foreign-based ennemies of the Kremlin. Does it mean that the Kremlin considers Chechnya a foreign country ? Or more simply that in this FSB dreamland, the Putin clique doesn't care anymore about the credibility of their lies ?

Hope ? Some echoes of my "Universal Declaration of Independence from Fundamentalism" in Nablus...

The Vladubyan summit : who gives a Heiligendamm ?

Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush are great democrats.
Vlad will have a puppet elected next year, change the constitution, and keep His seat warm till He returns as a perennial czar. Pharaoh may then rename the planets after Himself, ressuscite Gandhi to have a serious discussion with Himself, and shoot some journalists.
Dubya managed to get a nod from the Congress for his errands in Baghdad. Now pumped up to the max, Our Dear Compassionate Leader feels like spreading democracy in Iran (flame throwers, napalm, torture, pick your weapon).
God forbid, Persians won't have to wait for another earthquake to have Bam and other national treasures flattened to the ground. Fundamentalists are great and Bush is their prophet.
Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush are great environmentalists.
This G8 was supposed to tackle such issues as global warming or hedge funds ? Both leaders decided to change the agenda thanks to a clear and immediate threat of nuclear war. Ennemies come in handy when you are cornered by tricky questions...
Both XXth Century superpowers act as if nothing happened after the Cold War. The problem is they are not dictating the world's agenda anymore. Both Vlad and Dubya are mere dictators over their own countries, period.

Red blogule to the 2006 Cold War - Gazprom and Gazpogrom

Because Viktor Yushchenko refused Putin's diktat, Gazprom just cut their Ukrainian pipes. Vlad the Impaler wanted Yushchenko dead but could just alter his face : now he doesn't care whether people die in this indecent and unfair armwrestling contest.
Russia is back to fascism but no one seems to care. Germany ? Gerhard Schröder just joined the board of a Gazprom subsidiary. The US ? Dubya can't locate "Ukrainia" on the map of Texas and has trouble translating his one-size-fits-all terror / freedom / democracy speech in Uzbek (hell, making friends with local despot Islam Karimov fulfills his understanding of Islam agenda). France, then ? Duh ! We're not interested in human rights either... actually, we're not even fighting for our gas or oil supplies anymore since we found the best way to solve both heating and gas consumption problems : we burn our own cars.
Sign of the times, Jews are fleeing Russia. Those who didn't reach Israel's shores land in Germany, where the Berlin community is blooming a beautiful way.
Back to Red Square One. So much for the U-turn of the Century.

Red blogule to US - Japan erasers

As they celebrated the 60th anniversary of liberation from Japan and listened to Koizumi repeat the same empty excuses for an excuse as his predecessor ten years ago, Koreans learned why they couldn't get the proof of major wartime atrocities committed by Japan.
They knew the proof was in the US, they now know why it landed there in the first place : the US purchased all data related to Japan's sick medical experiments on civilians of occupied countries. Actually, they bribed the perpetrators to get the exclusivity and even granted them immunity for this favor. This completed the scandalous Hiroshima-Nagasaki cleanup : you don't sue us for using weapons of mass destruction against your civilians, we don't sue you for committing atrocities on civilians from other countries. The 1951 San Francisco Treaty put an ultimate lid on this sick stew between one of History's most fascist regimes and the World's most cynical country.
Sixty years have passed and Japan is just realizing it may have to postpone its claim for a permanent seat at the UN council. Ten years from now, all witnesses and survivors to their atrocities will have vanished. Japan's radical old guard too, but they've made sure younger generations got overwhelmed by their forgetful propaganda and textbooks.
The US ? Don't worry about them : they know propaganda by heart. Hell : it didn't take them sixty years to have most people believe they defeated the Nazis singlehandedly (if it weren't for another master in propaganda - Vladimir Putin - who would remember the lighter side of Uncle Joe ?). And if you ask US citizens about the use of WMDs or torture against civilians, they point the finger to some far away Evil.

Red blogules to Empire Strokes (Back to Back)

On one side, 440 m² and 768 inhabitants experts in holy sacraments (but don't expect a single birth nor a wedding there). On the other, 1,950 m² and 33,084 inhabitants experts in tax evasion (here again, a pensioners' heaven) : the World's two smallest countries lost their rulers.
Something to worry about for the next on the list : Gibraltar (7 km²), Tokelau (10 km²) and Nauru (21 km²). Liechtenstein has plenty of time ahead (14 th on the list with its huge 160 km², the Isle of Man is safe with its impressive 572 km² territory (42 nd spot), and "43" can have as many pretzels as he wishes thanks to his 9,629,047 km² domain (rank : 230 th). But the mother Russia of them all (16,894,741 km²) gives Putin quasi-eternity. "The Pope ! How many divisions ?" asked his role model Joe. The answer : about 4 million people flooding Roma and 1,3 billion supporters across the globe. How many will turn out for Vlad's farewell party ?
Let's not be too unkind to Putin : Russia does have quite a few divisions to exhibit. Ask him about Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan or even Chechnya.

Red blogule to the "Bush doctrine"

The big question nowadays is : was Bush right ? Is the man responsible for democracy's tidal wave in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan...?
The answer is yes, the US did play a major role, but not the way they dreamed it.
Washington did invest in the opposition in former soviet republics, and keeps laying greenbacks over Iraq (even watering them with the blood of honorable marines and local citizens, but I'm not sure it will help them grow). But the US also made their point in revealing their own weaknesses : here is an allmighty warlord getting humiliated, losing face (faith ?), uniting the international community against this negation of respect. Bush even managed to pass for the bad boy while fighting Bin Laden and Saddam. This man did everything he could to crush the Palestinian side during his first mandate. And when his top aides dare say about Lebanon elections cannot be considered democratical when held in an occupied country, how do you think Iraqis should take it ?
The world knows well the US are not likely to repeat their Iraqi failure that soon, that their military forces are far too stretched to allow one more "shock & awe" mission right now. The world knows the US are no more the center of the world, the only economical superpower. The world knows the US are weaker than ever.
But the world knows the world is watching. Not necessarily with enough strength to avoid the abuses of a Bush or a Putin, but with enough intensity to make it count.