Its just power and wealth up to its old ancient tricks.

Its a war all right, a clash, not of civilizations, but within civilizations, between the governed and governments. Humans have probably been fighting this war since it climbed down out of the trees.

‘Leaders’ everywhere seem to be consolidating their holds on power, along with a concurrent increase in military and security forces and a decrease of civil liberties. There’s probably a bunch of multi-national wealth behind the trend.
Soon enough I expect we’ll start seeing our leaders begin to give official recognition to one another. The next thing you know they’ll all be on the same board or council dictating terms from there.

I think the only way to stop the war, between us and them, is to get in-between power and wealth in a manner that makes our government completely and utterly transparent. The way to do that is outfit our elected representatives with cameras and microphones and hard-wire these to the Internet, while we still have time.

Let’s watch this test-case closely for clues to how Bush might try the same thing next November. The Russian population may even honestly support Putin’s remaining in power as they probably feel the need for a proven, forceful leader to counter the U.S.‘s aggresive world agenda. Then, Bush can point to Putin’s move as proof that the U.S. needs an equally-forceful leader to counter this new de facto Russian dictatorship and voila! It’s Cold War II, fought with proxy terrorist groups instead of proxy countries so it can be everywhere, constantly.