"We are half a step away from a police state"

I have a grim facination with Russia, so this caught my eye today because it seemed just so *upbeat and jolly* in it's observation about being a whole half a step away.

We have a dictatorship in Russia, we know it's been heading there for a while but banning an opposition party on the basis that there are too few members really seems to have tipped over yet another edge.

Earlier this week I caught an interview on Womans Hour on Radio 4 with the sister of the murdered Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya. Her last book has just been published posthumously, The Guardian has a few extracts, 'Fascism is in fashion' makes a really chilling read.