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Dec. 3, 2008

Steven Emerson: Yes, the terrorists are winning

Don Terry: Lifetime, no see

Dec. 2, 2008

Melanie Phillips: The Mumbai atrocity is a wake-up call for a frighteningly unprepared world

Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report: Strategic Motivations for the Mumbai Attack

Dec. 1, 2008

Max Freidlander, as told to Jacklyn C. Wadler: India Inkings

Mark Steyn: Whodunit!?

Nov. 28, 2008

Rabbi Ahron Rapps: An evil seed that didn't have to be

Melanie Phillips: Carpe diem --- or can we all relax now?

Nov. 26, 2008

Michael Feldberg: Meet the Orthodox Jew who laid groundwork for scientific development of ordnance that undergirds America's current world leadership

Andrea Simantov: Shades of life

Nov. 25, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Getting Emotional For Influence

The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman : Thanksiving feast!

Nov. 24, 2008

Rabbi S. Binyomin Ginsberg: 'I just Became a grandchild!'

Barry Rubin: Don't flatter your enemies, protect your friends

Nov. 21, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Money matters?

Caroline B. Glick: Civilization walks the plank

Nov. 20, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Bronfman's blindness

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: Portobellos add a hearty flavor to pasta with pesto

Nov, 19, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Spread the wealth? Jewish tradition and income equality

Elliot B. Gertel: 'Mad Men': Tackling prejudices or reinforcing them?

Nov, 18, 2008

Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn: The End of the Age of Reason

Jonathan Tobin: Does Barack + Bibi = Disaster?

Nov, 17, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The End of the Age of Reason

Diana West: Gulling Americans into making terror legit?

Nov, 14, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The Power of Spiritual Inertia

Caroline B. Glick: The perils ahead

Nov, 13, 2008

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: How Bush and Obama together could change the Middle East dynamic

The Kosher Gourmet by JeanMarie Brownson: Sweet and savory, crispy and meltingly tender bestilla

Nov, 12, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Tyrannical Co-Workers

Michael Doyle: High Court to consider today donated monuments that may have religious messages in public parks

Nov, 11, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Will Obama stop government officials considering institutionalizing financial jihad?

Jonathan Tobin: They Will Decide Their Own Fate

Nov, 10, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: $8 billion, modern-day Tower of Babel being built?

Barry Rubin: A letter to the president-elect from a Middle East realist

Nov, 7, 2008

Rabbi Francis Nataf: Of Children and Immortality

Caroline B. Glick: Livni's Obama strategy

Nov, 6, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: How I tricked a classroom of apathetic students into grasping the fallacy of moral relativism

The Kosher Gourmet By Gina Kim: Tips for making the perfect soup --- includes recipes

Nov, 5, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Destitute Debtors

Bruce Weinstein: 'Religulos': Bad title,even worse movie

Nov, 4, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Treasury Dept. submits to Shariah law

Frida Ghitis: A surprise for Obama in the Middle East

Nov, 3, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Who says Jews are Smart?

Jonathan Tobin: Was He Wrong About Everything?

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review April 15, 2005 / 6 Nisan, 5765

Russian Humpty Dumpty can't be put together again

By Dick Morris


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The post-communist empire that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to cobble together is coming apart, decomposed by the centrifugal forces of democracy and freedom that suck peoples from the grasp of the Russian gravitational field.

First Georgia fell away from Russian domination by ousting former Soviet Union Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. Then Ukraine bolted by protesting for weeks in the streets to force official recognition of the victory of Viktor Yushchenko, a man Putin considered so dangerous that his KGB henchmen poisoned him. Then tiny Moldova turned aside the Russian mafia and voted for an anti-Russian collection of "communists" desperately trying to survive in an orange tide.

And now, in far away Kyrgyzstan, President Askar Akayev has resigned, clearing the way for the nation's first free post-Soviet government. This, with the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania safely in NATO, means that half of the former Soviet states have joined the freedom bandwagon.

Thank the Lord. Putin represents a lethal cocktail combining unreconstructed communists, KGB secret police, Russia's corrupt mafia and the old nomenklatura that ran the USSR. At home, he has stripped local democracy by preventing the independent election of governors and eviscerated national democracy by eliminating single-member districts and hanging the entire election on party slates drawn up by people at the top. In the process, he has made a mockery of free speech and the free press by bullying and buying it, reducing its once-noisy voice of liberty to a frightened whisper. Economically, he has destroyed the independent, privatized oil industry and reinvested the government monolith with full powers.

But as Putin seeks to bring down a second iron curtain around the former Soviet Union, he overreaches and misjudges the power of liberty and freedom to win the souls of men and women. With NATO nearby to check any military intervention and the European Union ready to provide economic succor, Putin cannot compete. His vision of Moscow autocracy holds little attraction while the West and democracy occupy the dreams of his would-be subjects.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said that Russia is either expanding or contracting. It cannot exist in stasis. So polyglot are the peoples that inhabit its many regions and so diverse are its repressed nationalities that Russia is either pushing outward, keeping its people in line as it bulges toward new acquisitions, or is imploding. Kissinger's theory looks pretty valid today. Adopting Bob Dylan's phrase, if Russia isn't "busy being born," it's "busy dying."

The next frontier in the fight for freedom in Eastern Europe will be Belarus, the most populous and European of the former Soviet satellites left in Russia's orbit. Belarus, with its dictator/strongman Aleksandr Lukashenko and its 10 million people, is likely the next place for an orange revolution.

But the real question is: How long can Moscow exert its hold over its own Russian territory and over the minds of its subjects? Russia has become as oil-dependent as any Arab nation. As long as oil prices soar, Putin has the economic muscle to propitiate his people. But will bread be enough for the Russian soul? Will the centrifugal tendencies reach all the way into the Russian heartland?

As President Bush made clear in his second inaugural address, freedom is contagious and not easily contained. As Ukraine, by far the most populous of the former Soviet states, begins to move into NATO and, inevitably, into the European Union, the waves of democracy will lap at Russia's shores and the wind will blow over her cities.

Not even Putin can stop the scent of freedom from arousing the dreams of liberty. And all the king's horses and all the king's men may not be able to put Russia back together again.

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JWR contributor Dick Morris is author, most recently, of "Because He Could". (ClickHERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) Comment by clicking here.



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