Quick Policy Tip
The one on the left is Whatshisname
We here at “Upper Italy” have never thought much one way or the other about Egypt’s president, Mr. Hosni Mubarak. It’s just, you know, the rush of events…
But that was before. Then we saw this Reuters take from a few days ago:
NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia (Reuters) – What is the difference between Russia’s outgoing president, Vladimir Putin, and his successor, Dmitry Medvedev? Not very much, according to Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.
At a meeting at Putin’s official residence on the outskirts of Moscow on Tuesday, 79-year-old Mubarak told Putin that the physical similarities with Medvedev were almost uncanny.
“Your appearances are very much alike,” Mubarak said before heading in for talks with Putin.
“When going to meet Medvedev, I saw you on the television and felt at a loss as to who is who.”
As the photograph above may help to determine, there is in practice no resemblance whatsoever between Putin and Medvedev, though both have two eyes, if of a different color. Mr. Mubarak, oldish but still alive as the head of a country that tends to cancel, rapidly and painfully, leaders who don’t know their way around, was probably well aware of the fact – but he found a truly creative way of clarifying things with the guys who wear the fur hats before they ever even got near a negotiating table.
What a man!
The whole thing led us as well to this useful tip from Foreign Policy Magazine: “There’s a handy trick for telling your Russian leaders apart: Ever since Lenin, the country’s rulers have alternated between bald men and those with hair.”
Putin is the bald one, one jump (Yeltsin) from the spectacularly hairless Mikhail Gorbachev.