After terrorizing the West for two generations, no one pays much attention to the Great Bear anymore. The latest unrest in Russia has merited a fraction of the headlines about the Arab Spring, Palestine or upset Muslims in Burma. The old journalistic guidelines used to be, "If it bleeds, it leads." The new journalistic guidelines are, "If it's not about Muslims, we don't care."
But the events in Russia are highly educational, not in their absurd specifics involving a female punk band and overweight thugs beating up people in their street, but in the glorious spectacle of what happens when a government mafia starts running out of money and the economy that it has been feeding off can no longer nurture its numberless ranks of official and semi-official parasites.
