Putin in Iran: a reminder

Vladimir Putin paid Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a visit yesterday, the first Russian leader to hit Tehran since Joseph Stalin in 1943. But let's not get too carried away by the comparison.

No, we'll be cool about this. Vladimir Vladimirovich is not Koba. Yet. Although the ingredients required are there, and according to the polls, the country seems to be pining for a "strong leader" (isn't it past time to invent a new euphemism for a murderous tyrant?).

But his overt (and covert, let's not forget the KGB past and present of our hero) dealings with Iran are of more immediate concern, seeing how Russia consistently sabotages any attempt to apply pressure on Iran via the UN channels.

In his smiles yesterday with Mr. Ahmadinejad, as in his scowling at Ms. Rice and Mr. Gates, one sees the future of Russian foreign policy -- and it is beginning to look a lot like its 20th-century past.

How true.

Now I just have to recycle an old post on the subject.

Utro.ru reports on an interesting phenomenon. It appears that the northern part of the Sakhalin was covered by a dirty-yellow snow.















After melting the snow, the result is water covered by a thin film of "oily substance with a revolting smell". Samples were sent to a laboratory for analysis.

The authors of the article followed the ancient Russian tradition of assigning the blame to the most unfavorable neighbor (traditionally China).

"This case must remind us of China who, in order to jump-start its economy, is merciless to its own environment and to the ecology of its neighbors", - the article says.

But this is no more than the usual journalistic guesswork. Maybe the explanation is different?

Every self-respecting male who has ever a) lived in a similar climate and b) imbibed some alcoholic beverage, most probably knows only too well about that custom of leaving yellow messages in the snow. Only in this case it's not a mortal being that left that message.

Maybe this is a direct message to Putin? Maybe, looking from a plane or from an orbital station, we shall see something like this:















Maybe a similar message is on its way to Chinese as well? Say, in the form of a frog rain with a strange pattern. Or something...

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