From Luke Harding’s latest dispatch about the British Council:
Today, Tony Blair – who was attending a private investors’ conference in Moscow – admitted relations between London and Moscow had been “difficult”, adding: “I’ve been out of office a year, but I still remember the diplomatic language.” Blair – who had dinner with Putin on Tuesday night – said the west was still coming to terms with Russia’s new economic might. “They have a pride in Russia today they didn’t have ten years ago,” he said. “We in countries like mine have to understand that change in psyche.”
A rather useless comment, no? Sounds remarkably similar to the Kremlin line, portraying the country as a mistreated victim deserving of exceptional treatment. Why do so many people continue to ask for more respect for Russia when they already have it?
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Indeed we have so much to learn about Russian psyche.They’ve learned to be proud of the murder of Politkovskaya and the jailing of Khodorkovsky.They revel in the fact that their men don’t live to reach age 60.The beam over their lack of news reporting, political opposition and local government.The strut and preen over their $4/hour average wage, their AIDS epidemic, their fatalities by fire, their smoking apocalypse.They glow with satisfaction over the exclusion from the WTO and members Georgia/Ukraine heading for NATO.And they do all this much as Germans did when Hitler restored lost German pride after World War I.The strange thing is that Mr. Blair isn’t planning to move to Russia right away! Well, only British, probably a bit slow on the uptake. He’ll figure it out sooner or later.