Some compare President Putin's speech at the European Security Conference in Munich with Winston Churchill's Fulton speech, others with Stalin's election speech in the same 1946. Both speeches heralded the end of allied relations between Moscow and the West and the beginning of the Cold War. Historical comparisons are attractive, but of very limited usefulness, and more often mislead thought than help to make sense of what is really going on. First of all, about the Cold War.

According to psychologists, Chicago is a city for men with complexes. At the car dealership that opened here, you can choose something very large and monstrous. There were no super -picaps in cosmopolitan Detroit at all, but in Chicago these are national dishes. The size of a large hippo to an average dinosaur.

where they can warm up and shoot at stupidity In the current list of nominees for the title of the best film of the year - no scandalous stories with atypical sexual connotation (“humpbacked mountain” and “hood” last year), nor biographical epics (“Ray”, “Aviator” and “Magic Country” in the year beforehand), nor luxurious losing fairy tales (“Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” Three years ago). The picture is not dull, but not brilliant. Everything is within the framework of decency.

In weeks - if not on days - we suddenly transferred reality already forgotten over 15 years. The United States threatens to deploy the OPs systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, and we again threaten a cheap asymmetric answer, which will nullify American efforts.

In the old days, February 2007 would go down in history. In Soviet textbooks, they would write that Sergei Ivanov’s speech in Seville, at a meeting of NATO defense ministers, and then the speech of President Vladimir Putin in Munich at the European Security Conference became a turning point in world history and marked a new round of cold war.

At least this is what the deputies of the Just Russia-Motherland faction hope for. They propose, for example, that citizens with wages of less than 5,000 rubles a month (60,000 a year) be completely exempted from income tax, and that as much as 30% be taken from those who receive more than 300,000 rubles a month. According to the authors, the law has a practical meaning, it is not their “pre-election initiative”.

But Spartak decided that outside the Moscow Ring Road in the country there is not a single decent stadium today. The Spanish "Celta" believed - and almost beat the owners in a ten -degree frost. When, last week, in the sparks, “Spartak” was rushed to the teammates from Luhovits with a strange score of 7: 3, who scored three goals Denis Boyarintsev sorted out aloud: “I would have arrived in the match with Selta. Eh, and we would drive the Spaniards on it!

A year ago, Freedom House noted that state control over most of the media in Russia does not apply to the Internet. The sale of the right to maintain the Russian part of Livejournal.com Alexander Mamut swayed this confidence, about which The New Times and talked with the creator of Livejournal.com Brad Fizpatrick. The Russian segment of the Internet had a lot of noise about your deal with Alexander Mamut and his company “Soup Fabrics”.

ALU Alkhanov became the first president of Chechnya to leave his post alive. On Thursday, late in the evening, President Vladimir Putin satisfied the petition of the Chechen leader and freed him from the powers of the head of the republic "of his own free will." The resignation became the logical result of the persecution, which the Kadyrovskaya group deployed against Alkhanov in recent weeks.

On February 9, 1946, Joseph Stalin delivered a speech to the voters of the Stalinist constituency in Moscow. It marked the opening of the anti-Western Cold Front. The Cold War ended with the bankruptcy of the USSR and its collapse. On February 10, 2007, Vladimir Putin delivered a speech to the participants of the Conference on European Security in Munich. How this will end, we don't know yet. Putin, of course, is not Stalin. But it is useful to compare quotes.

In the latest government upheavals, one can search and find a bunch of meanings: political, psychological, bureaucratic, image. That's what's not exactly there, so it's economic sense. In fact - but not formally - in the government until last week, the situation was as follows. Minister Alexei Kudrin was (and still is) responsible for finances and the budget, he is also responsible for taxes in the macroeconomic sense. Anatoly Serdyukov collected them.

What is the meaning of returning to a progressive taxation scale? And where are these numbers from? Reducing taxes is a fair idea. I would go further than deputy initiatives. You can not take income tax, for example, with those whose income is less than a subsistence level - this is now about 48 thousand rubles a year. But they offer to free up to 60 thousand citizens with annual income from the tax. Why?

The purpose of your bill is stated - to achieve social justice. The poor will not pay income tax, but the rich will be, and a lot ... There are managers, for example, in RAO UES, where people receive a salary of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and why on earth do they pay the same tax as those who receive ten times less? We know that quite a lot of management today legally receives a lot of money compared to what the rest receive. Do you think only a salary? Yes, only the salary.

... paid attention to literature, having met in his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo with fifteen young writers. The 2005 Booker Prize winner Denis Gutsko, the 2005 Debut Prize winner Anastasia Chekhovskaya, the Moscow critic Valeria Pustovaya, and the 2005 Belkin Prize finalist Igor Savelyev from Ufa were on the list of honor. The 2006 Booker finalist Zakhar Prilepin stood out from the general writers' list.

And no bastard will go through it ”(from the pioneer song of the 30s“ Button ”) In the center of Moscow, in one of the quiet lanes, a hole was dug up three years ago - they built an elite house. Apartments worth $ 1 million were sold even before laying the foundation. But they never started the bookmark: some sluggish dispute arose, although it did not reach a large-scale fight and ships. It is clear that customers - wealthy people, and often influential - is not more fun from this.