And hopefully not tightening so much as to shut out the west with the bad guys. Putin has his hands full, no doubt, with the leftovers from the commie days, the generals and high level officials who operated even then as a kind of mafia, and found the transition to similar positions in a kind of black-market mafia in non-communist Russia almost seamless. It has to be quite difficult for Putin to count on alliances and break the trend of people profiting heavily from their extracurricular activities. I've mentioned it in a couple of threads, and others have, too, it is time for Putin and Bush (4 more years!) to forge an alliance born of these terrible tragedies to combat terrorism. Clearly the EU and the UN are useless and only interested in establishing a kind of global communism headed by them with deep pockets and profits for themselves.
I worry more about the "civilized" world that offers all kinds of insane "help", money, police etc. Wake up and name the enemy. Radical Islam, Wahhabi scum, just repeat it all day long. No better help than that.
That is the very scary part. To even say it out loud, I've found that people are indifferent or wondering why I haven't tried the tinfoil hat. And the enemy - Islamist Terrorists - is counting on their indifference and outright support. When that CBS reporter-chick (because she doesn't deserve a more fitting title) was on the scene at Beslan at night giving more of an editorial of how Russia had it coming (I'm still livid) than actually reporting on the terror, I could practically hear the clinking of terrorist glasses happy over their 'victory'.