From the former Bolshevik Empire that once represented all its hopes of a bright future for Snob Western Elite That Once Pretended to Care for the Working Class¹, the old school Marxists at the BBC report that Putin's puppet Medvedev won the elections, and promises that his policies will be

"a direct continuation of that path which is being carried out by President Putin."

I guess that means more spectacular murders of opponents in London through particularly nasty radioactive poisoning, more threats to send the rusty hulls of a couple of ageing nuclear attack subs out and about if the US of A follows through with it's missile shield alliances in Eastern Europe, and, oh gosh, more ageing studs 'n thugs performing various outdoor activities bare-chested.

Can't wait, can you?

Putin's third term by proxy is no surprise, and does not deserve any more attention, but it gave me the idea to dust off and reformat an old feature of my previous (2003) web digs, and resurrect it in the Red-Buttoned Flash clip above.

I hope veteran Frogboys and Froggirls will sit back and enjoy with the smile of Those Who Were There on their face. This is where we tell who's a rookie, I guess.

It should be noted that a few things have changed since 2003. A couple of those creepy crawlies graced this world by leaving it, some with a bang² like Saruman, AKA Sheikh Yassin (AKA RubberBurner) who wrongly thought his wheelchair could outrun a well aimed Israeli missile³; some with a whisper and (French) State funerals at the expense of the (French) taxpayer, like Yasser Arafat who died officially of undisclosed illness on Nov. 11, 2004 — and inconveniently of AIDS a few days or weeks before — under the constant care of the (French) State Hospitals and support of the (French) State, all the way through his afterlife.

The rest didn't change much. Bin Laden is still very likely dead (as far as I'm concerned) and we should find his desiccated mummy somewhere under the rubbles of Tora Bora, in case finding the remnants of that piece of camel dung really was the thing that mattered the most at this point⁴.

France swapped Chirac for Sarkozy, which means that rather than providing (civilian, of course) nukes to Saddam's National-Socialist Iraq, the French state is now handing out (civilian, of course) nukes to Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi's Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (Yeah, that's just Libya, for the rest of us.)

It's just that, to the lasting sorrow of the French Intelligentsia, there isn't that many Saddam's National-Socialist Iraq around anymore. Damn those Yanks.

And Putin... Well, you know about that other continuity-for-a-change already.