Saturday, May 19, 2007

Check, mate

I couldn't help having a chuckle this morning as I read Gary Kasparov imploring the EU to recognise that Russia is not a democracy.

"They should be honest," he told The Daily Telegraph at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport. "Russia is not a democratic regime, it is an authoritarian regime. Putin is not a democrat, they should recognise this."

Asking the EU to distinguish between authoritarian and democratic is a bit like asking Mussolini to realise that Hitler's Germany was fascist. After all, between Russia and the EU, only one of them has a president elected by a popular democratic vote - and it isn't José Manuel Barroso.

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