Here's the quote of the week. Vladimir Putin usually saves the public tongue-lashings for incompetent officials during cabinet meetings, but today he
went totally chavista on Oleg Deripaska:
Russian Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin publicly humiliated a top oligarch on Thursday,
accusing him and other factory owners in a crisis-hit town of
greed and likening them to "cockroaches". (...)
"You have made thousands of people hostage to your
ambitions, your lack of professionalism -- or maybe simply your
trivial greed," Putin told Deripaska and two other businessmen
who own cement and alumina factories in the town.
"Where is the social responsibility of business?", he said
in the confrontation broadcast on national television.
Indeed, I most thoroughly agree with
these words from the Prime Minister -
where is the social responsibility of business? This week we have many representatives of the world's most successful and powerful corporations meeting at the
St. Petersburg Economic Forum, perfectly willing to ignore the fact that the ignominious show trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky is going on at the same time as their talks about doing more and more business with Russia.
Well, so much for the idea spewed out by the Russia apologists that Russia could not go back to the USSR.
How is this remark any different from that of a Soviet communist? The use of the image is entirely appropriate, and we even have a dissident in prison in Siberia!
Welcome back to the USSR! All those who said it could not happen have helped it to happen.