I'm forwarding this to the list mainly because of the last paragraph, which I've cited

[Robert Orr]

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/our-american-pravda/

 

"Consider the fascinating perspective of the recently deceased Boris
Berezovsky, once the most powerful of the Russian oligarchs and the puppet
master behind President Boris Yeltsin during the late 1990s. After looting
billions in national wealth and elevating Vladimir Putin to the presidency,
he overreached himself and eventually went into exile. According to the New
York Times, he had planned to transform Russia into a fake two-party
state-one social-democratic and one neoconservative-in which heated public
battles would be fought on divisive, symbolic issues, while behind the
scenes both parties would actually be controlled by the same ruling elites.
With the citizenry thus permanently divided and popular dissatisfaction
safely channeled into meaningless dead-ends, Russia's rulers could maintain
unlimited wealth and power for themselves, with little threat to their
reign. Given America's history over the last couple of decades, perhaps we
can guess where Berezovsky got his idea for such a clever political scheme."

 

Probably referring to this article, or similar ones:

 

http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/till-death-berezovsky-defends-b
acking-putin/

 

And this sort of thing affected Canada as well.  Apparently Gorbachev
listened avidly to his friend Aleksandr Yakovlev, ambassador to Canada while
Trudeaupia was in full swing, who painted a picture of a one-party state,
with one of the highest living standards in the Western World ..

 


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