<DIV>I agree with you on this. My sense is that Stratfor made the wrong turn when it thought it understood the nature of Russia's oligarchs. Judging by their last note, now they are mis-reading both Putin and the oligarchs. Michael Pollak wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid"> On Tue, 26 Aug 2003, Peter Lavelle wrote: > I have always found Stratfor.com to be a bit odd - they almost never get > Russia "right" Except for one case, long ago -- they were by far the first people to get Putin right. They identified him as the representative of the "progressive reforming wing of the KGB" and largely predicted his victory over Yeltsin and the oligarchs within three days of his being appointed prime minister, when absolutely everyone else saw him as Y's latest puppet. And they never strayed from that interpretation over the next two years until everyone else caught on. Then they went straight downhill. Unfortunately, afaict, that was the only thing they got right besides Kosovo. They were pretty good on those two things, though. The Slavworld analyst world wrote them must have skipped out them after shortly afterwards. MIchael ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk</BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><hr SIZE=1> Do you Yahoo!? <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=10469/*http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com">Yahoo! SiteBuilder</a> - Free, easy-to-use web site design software