Angus Reid reports that "on Jul. 17, [Russian "President" Vladimir] Putin said the views on Russia are still being influenced by the Cold War, adding, 'There are forces both in Russia and the U.S. that abide by the thinking of the 20th century, rather than the 21st century, those who live and feed on ideas of the past confrontation'."

Yeah, well said, and one of those "forces" is Putin himself, as the Angus Reid article clearly shows.

The war in Chechnya goes on with no end in sight. Russian diplomats are kidnapped and killed in Iraq. The population continues to decline, and the average wage is $300 per month. The G-8 Summit in St. Petersburg gives Russia nothing it wanted, plus an avalanche of criticism from world leaders on how it treats NGOs and opposition forces. Universal conscription continues, with numerous horrific incidents of hazing. The national anthem of the USSR, a failed state, is revived -- a song written to glorify Stalin, a mass murderer who killed more Russians than Hitler. Television news is censored, opposition candidates are arrested, local elections are abnegated, leaving Russia "as repressive as ever" in the eyes of the world, on the same path to failure as the USSR. Russia provokes the USA, a country with twice as many people and 10 times the economic power, into Cold War II. It provides aid and comfort to known rogue terrorist states like North Korean and Iran, and it supports the terrorists in Lebanon in Palestine. Russians themselves admit they don't believe Putin when he says his security forces killed terrorist Shamil Basayev. In other words, they think their president is liar. One of Putin's highest cabinet officers publicly said the WTO would admit Russia at the G-8 meeting, then it did not happen. And worst of all, by far, alcohol, of all things, the lifeblood of Russia, has disappeared from store shelves due to the Kremlin's policies.

And what do "President" Putin's poll numbers do? They go UP?! As Angus Reid reports, from a sickening 75% in May to a totally revolting 79% in July. There are Neo-Soviet numbers, pure and simple, the most conclusive wsay of demonstrating that Russia has become the Neo-Soviet Union. Numbers don't lie, as they say.

For the life of her, La Russophobe genuinely can't decide which is more horrifying -- that these poll numbers are inaccurate, and four out of every five Russians doesn't actually approve of a proud KGB spy, and the Kremlin is just lying about it the way it lies about so much else, and the Russian population is doing nothing about this blatant lying, or that the numbers are accurate. Because, either way, you end up with a nation of dangerous lemmings.

These poll numbers conclusively demonstrate that the Russian people themselves are complicit in the rise of the Neo-Soviet Union, deserve no sympathy when its consequences start to fall on them (and oh my, how they will fall!) and cannot possibly escape the condemnation of history. When push came to shove, rather than suffer for democracy as many other countries around the world have done, Russians opted for the quick fix, the easy way out.