The media are busy painting Vladimir Putin as a shrewd politician,they don't report the speeches he gives that reflect his support for Iran's nuclear weapons program.Did you hear or read that on February 7, 2007 Putin - in an interview with Al-Jazeera,when asked about the Iranian nuclear program - said,"We know the position of our Iranian partners".No, you didn't.

[Excerpted from an article by Jeb Babbin,"Our Enemies' Words".

Elaib Harvey: "Either way, the new agenda of the mainstream press is extraordinary. Paris Hilton yes, Joseph and Big Brother yes. Even bunches of people in Rostock who hate the west yes. The descent of Russia into a new gangster dictatorship, way too complicated."

I actually find that Russian foreign and domestic affairs receive adequate attention on major Western media outlets, especially the issue of NATO expansion into East-Central Europe and the American proposal to build anti-missile sites and radars in Poland and the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, the grand public and media outlets of the West are quite frankly bored with reports of authoritarianism in China and Russia, let alone undeveloped states. Though the West is aware of the internal politics of China, Russia and Belarus, only the European Union leaders, to their credit, seize upon every incident with condemnation. Why? Because we are only concerned with how Russian and Chinese political and economic expansion affect us. Though we Westerners never tire of criticizing ourselves to the point of absurdity, the remainder of the world, gripped in vicious cycles of order and chaos for decades if not centuries, ceases to be interesting except where our national interests are concerned.

On another note, I did find that the BBC did an excellent job of covering the G8 protests, and presented the demonstrators as violent hooligans, which they generally were, and took note that if the G8 summit is indeed useless, why would anyone protest it?