Protesters were busy in the streets of Moscow today, expressing their displeasure over the results of the Dec. 4 election, which saw Putin re-elected, albeit with a reduced majority.
According to police about 25,000 took to the streets, although organizers say it was closer to a million. Western media have already given the protests a color and a name; this is the White Revolution, and it follows the template of other so-called color revolutions and the Arab uprisings in that it seems to be a social networking phenomenon.
Hopefully most Russians are too young to appreciate the unfortunate connotations of that moniker, the white revolution. Ninety years before social media sprung Arab spring there was another "White Revolution" in Russia, an armed uprising against the 1917 revolution.
That armed uprising included boots on the ground from the US and the core countries of what is now known as NATO. It was a foreign invasion, in other words.
One of the features of the White Russians was their rampant antisemitism. Russia had a long and horrific history of state-sponsored pogroms against her Jewish population.
When the Bolsheviks came to power they outlawed antisemitism. The anti-Bolshevik forces rose up, we supported them, and the Bolsheviks won. It's not something we highlight in our history books.
Ninety years later we have another White Revolution, supposedly a Facebook fueled spontaneous eruption of discontent. Today's protest was the big news of the day in our media.
When reached by satellite phone, Santa said he was disappointed in Putin, and that Putin had indeed been naughty in the lead up to the election.
"But you have to put in in perspective," Grampa Frost, as he is known in Russia, said. "Remember Florida in 2000? George didn't get a lump of coal that year.
I left him a stocking full of reindeer turds."
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