While my editor was busily working away yesterday, Ariel Cohen had an opinion piece run in the New York Times.  Upon seeing the headline and lede, I was worried that we were going to see yet another one of those "there's a rift between Putin and Medvedev"-type articles which we have seen so much of over the past year, but Cohen is a little more careful than that in his argument.  Of course Medvedev's "Forward, Russia!" article and the quip about the blood tests have clearly illustrated that he feels, or wants us to believe that he feels, that he is a different kind of leader from Putin.  However, as Ariel's op/ed points out, this is all just a rhetorical exercise for the time being, so long as the reformers are without influence.

Some symbolic rifts have also

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TODAY: Biden in Georgia expresses support for freedom and territorial integrity; Russia-NATO Council meeting pragmatic.  Body of missing Russian activist  Andrei Kulagin found, second murder in a week.  Nobel laureates plead for justice for Estemirova; Russia says no to UN probe into her death. Mikheil Saakashvili wasted no words in condemning Russia in his meeting with US Vice President Joe Biden.  Biden pledged his support by sending out an 'unequivocal, clear message to all who will listen and some who don't want to', in an apparent tacit reference to the Kremlin.  'We refuse to recognise that Abkhazia and South Ossetia are not part of Georgia', Biden told the BBC.  Resurrected discussions of the expulsion ...

Der Spiegel has a fascinating article about a piece of historical documentation which has been uncovered, revealing whether it was Walter Ulbricht or Nikita Khrushchev who came up with the idea of building the Berlin Wall.

Khrushchev, at any rate, stepped up the pace. "We will give you one or two weeks to make the necessary economic preparations," he told Ulbricht. "Then you will convene the parliament and issue the following communiqué: 'Beginning tomorrow, checkpoints will be erected and transit will be prohibited. Anyone who wishes to cross the border can do so only with the permission of certain authorities of the German Democratic Republic."

Khrushchev wanted to convince the East German population that the wall being built would protect them from Western spies, and he said that the

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There is an interesting op/ed in today's Moscow Times by Michael Bohm, which disputes some that the goals of Strategy 2020 require no readjustment given the damage caused by the economic crisis.  Naturally, our eyes our drawn to Bohm's comments about administrative barriers and the weakened environment for rule of law which holds back entrepreneurs and small companies from revitalizing the country - two trends which are especially highlighted by the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. As long as Russian bureaucrats (and competitors) are free to terrorize businesses by creating "administrative barriers," extorting bribes and raiding, economic growth in the real sector will always be insignificant. To his credit, President Dmitry Medvedev is backing a new law to assist small businesses, which will, among other things, limit the number of government inspections of businesses. Most likely, however, these limitations will be easily sidestepped when ...

Gold and silver did virtually nothing throughout Far East and early European trading. But that all changed at 9:30 a.m. in New York, when JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) pulled its bids and the prices of both metals fell off a cliff. What makes these guys look even more ridiculous is the fact that they pulled exactly the same procedure at exactly the same time on Monday…to the minute! These guys have no imagination at all.

They might as well signed their autograph on gold and silver charts all over the world…”da boyz were here!” Here’s the gold graph…which looks like the silver graph.

click to enlarge

As for silver, it did manage to ‘lose’ 20 cents in overnight trading before the bids got pulled at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time. Here’s the silver graph…which looks like the gold graph.

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Leave it to the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal to put Dmitry Medvedev on par with Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his Evian speech. Like the overly sensitive victim of a schoolyard bully, the more Washington reacts to overt anti-Americanism, the more it pleases the provocateur. In a particularly intriguing passage, Mr. Medvedev in Evian noted NATO's plans to expand, and "quite naturally," he said, "we regard these actions as directed against us." Then, perhaps anticipating criticism, he said, "Sovietology, like paranoia, is a very dangerous disease, and it is a pity that part of the U.S. Administration still suffers from it." Some thought Mr. Medvedev would lower the volume on former President Putin's anti-U.S. outbursts. Instead, it appears he is joining such other anti-American stalwarts as Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in concluding that international forums are mainly venues for ranting about the ...