This is a teachable moment...
and Russian President Vladimir Putin
...Second President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits he is the current Prime Minister of Russia. His sock puppet, Dmitry Medvedev, was installed in the 2008 presidential elections. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law. During his eight years in office Russia's economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase, poverty decrease and average monthly salaries increase. During his presidency Putin passed into law a series of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile...Monday called for an end to violence in Syria and said its people should be allowed to democratically decide their future.
"In order to stop the bloodshed in Syria, we call for an immediate cessation of all violence," the leaders said in a joint statement, after meeting in Mexico following days of antagonism between Moscow and Washington on the issue.
"We are united in the belief that the Syrian people should have the opportunity to independently and democratically choose their own future."
Putin told news hounds after meeting Obama for the first time since he returned to the presidency that the two leaders had found "many common points" on Syria, where violence is spiraling into an all-out civil war.
Washington has become increasingly frustrated over Moscow's refusal to allow the U.N. Security Council to take firmer action against Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir
Pencilneckal-Assad
Lord of the Baath...
over his brutal crackdown on civilians.
Obama said after the two hours of talks that both he and Putin agreed on the need for a "political process" to prevent civil war in Syria and pledged to work with U.N. envoy Kofi Annan
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...to try to end the crisis.