Russia Strong

Russian self-propelled artillery on parade in Red Square, Moscow.

Russia has two big military holidays every year. One in November to celebrate the 1917 Revolution and one on May 9th to celebrate their victory over Nazi Germany in WW2. When the Soviet Union was still in business, they used to celebrate these two holidays with massive parades of military armaments through Red Square in Moscow. I vaguely remember hearing about these when I was a kid and people making a fuss about some new missile being revealed for the first time, along with the usual endless speculation about "what it all meant".
   When the Soviet Union collapsed, the parades stopped. Russia has been recovering and in 2008 they were feeling flush enough to restart these parades.
   I have been looking through some photos of the Russian military from a few years ago and came across some from their violent disagreement with Georgia wherein I found this excerpt:

THE psychodrama playing out in the Caucasus is not the first act of World War III, as some hyperventilating politicians and commentators would like to portray it. Rather, it is the delayed final act of the cold war. And while the Soviet Union lost that epic conflict, Russia won this curtain call in a way that ensures Washington will have to take it far more seriously in the future. This is not just because, as some foreign-policy “realists” have argued, Moscow has enough troops and oil to force us to take into consideration its supposedly irrational fears. Rather, the conflict in Georgia showed how rational Russia’s concerns over American meddling in its traditional sphere of influence are, and that Washington had better start treating it like the great power it still is. - Ronald Steel in The New York Times, August 24, 2008.

I don't like the "news", mostly because everything is presented as equally important. It's not. 99.9% of it is drivel. There are some sources that give you a better concentration, but then they usually have an agenda as well. My random walk technique suits me well enough, though sometimes I am a few years late to the party.