Posted on 01/05/2005 11:06:58 AM PST by docbnj
When Britain's Labor government in 1946 set out to nationalize much of British industry as a matter of policy, it passed an act of Parliament, and it paid compensation. Vladimir Putin didn't afford himself any such democratic or legal niceties in grabbing Yukos, Russia's biggest oil company, though he could have. Instead, Mr. Putin seems to have made the point he wanted to make, that he is the state, and the state is above the law. *** Foreign investors puzzle over Mr. Putin and his seeming ineptitude at making Russia into Thailand writ large, a gracious and dutiful partner for trade and finance. But perhaps Mr. Putin never really had "reform" in mind. Western imaginations didn't quite grasp that Saddam Hussein fancied himself a conqueror, an empire builder, a man of destiny (and was content to limit his country's economic potential to the oil under his direct control). ...The parallels are more than a bit striking.
His popular election in 2000 was cemented by a string of five apartment bombings in Moscow and other cities, killing 243 people, which he blamed on Chechen terrorists. One bomb didn't go off, however, thanks to alert residents in the city of Ryazan who noticed suspicious individuals unloading bags of "sugar" into the basement of a large apartment block. The suspects turned out to be Russian federal security agents. The sugar tested positive as the explosive RDX.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The only good commie is a dead and buried commie.
Putin, is not above bombing his own to keep his subjects in line. The man is evil and needs to be watched carefully, especially considering his latest military alliance with China, who is now rattling sabres over Taiwan again.
While the media touts Russia's latest plans for military exercises with China as unprecedented, they are wrong. In 2001, they held joint exercises. The scenario was that China invaded Taiwan, the U.S. reacted and Russia then attacked U.S. troops with nuclear weapons. If you are watching Putin and China's actions, the scenario becomes more and more real by the day.
Please this is such a conspiracy theory filled piece of garbage. For starters RDX (better known as Hexogen) doesnt look like sugar it is never that fine a grain rather it looks more like rice and it isnt that white it always has a yellowish tint to it. Nobody would ever confuse it for sugar unless they were blind. Someone has just been reading to much of Boris Berezovskys rants.
The one thing about the Chekist mindset is that they are bloody single minded patriots almost fanatically so. These guys dont blow up their own apartment buildings. Even the old Stalinists would only go so far. Stalinism was just another form of fascism these guys thought they were doing the best thing possible for king and country even they wouldnt have blown up their own like that. They would blow up 100,000 Chechens in their sleep but not Russians. Russians would get a proper shot to the back of the head.
Unless you believe Putin is worse than Stalin and that the FSB has sunk to a level lower than the VchK or the NKVD this garbage just doesnt fly.
RUSSIAN ECONOMY FACES A YEAR OF GLOBAL LIBERALISM
Novosti ^ | 2004-12-30 19:31 | Dmitry Kosyrev
Among end-of-year figures cascading on observers in Russia (as anywhere else), one can occasionally glimpse something like 30%. This is the recommended figure for indexing public sector wages in 2005.
In the complex workings of Russian budgeting, this will mean, as Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov explained, increasing the minimum wage and much else. It looks as if many less prosperous regions will find it hard to comply with. But the upshot is evident all the same. First, traditionally low-paid public sector employees - teachers, the police, doctors and medical nurses in state-run clinics - will be paid more. Second, this will more or less compensate them for no small upheavals expected in 2005: increased housing rent, higher transport expenses, etc. The country is making great strides to become self-sufficient in these areas. Third, people in general will have more money to spend on the consumer market. On the one hand, the country can afford this - with expected economic growth of 5.8% to 6% in 2005, such an injection of budget money, according to Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref, is achievable. But extra money means inflation, which is already running in double digits - "going beyond reasonable limits", as Arkady Volsky, head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, said the other day.
Without inflation, however, the economy will find itself trapped by the strengthening ruble and weakening dollar. Throughout the whole of 2004, Russians were buying more and more imported goods at relatively lower prices from the dollar zone. Given present oil prices, this does not pose any threat to the foreign trade budget. But it does to the Russian producer, which responded in the past year with slowing growth in assorted industries.
To judge by Mr. Zhukov's 30% and other plans occasionally mentioned in ministries' annual reports, the answer to thesituation is to monetize the economy, i.e., to expand the domestic consumer market, preferably with the emphasis on incentives for Russian enterprises with money and, true, inflation.
The consumer market is today's recognized economic driving force. According to economists, it has eclipsed such formerly respected instruments of development as exports. Some four to five years ago, also on New Years' Eve, the Japanese government, it may be remembered, attempted to reactivate the stagnant economy by distributing vouchers to the population entitling them to considerable sums - up to a thousand dollars per person. In this way it tried to create a consumer boom: for the producer to start producing, people should buy goods more readily. Once set in motion, the process gathers momentum on its own. And the trick worked - now the Japanese economy is indeed more active. The other day, Robert Samuelson from The Washington Post, raised the same problem as he discussed the future of the American economy. He regrets the "fading power of forces that have shaped American prosperity for decades" - above all, strong and pervasive demand of the American consumer at home.
Mr. Samuelson cites results of the American economic year, which Russia cannot but envy. For example, the average per capita income is $40,000- exactly four times the record just set by Russia, which has reached the figure of $4,000. But he warns at the same time that Americans no longer can live on credit, because their debt is growing faster than incomes and that shares cannot yield ever greater returns and the "welfare state is growing costlier".
But, Mr. Samuelson offers some comfort by saying China, India and former Soviet republics are changing the world economy. Millions of people there are rising from rags to riches, and this offers America a new chance - "exports (and manufacturing) could become the US economy's next great growth sector". No one resents American prosperity, but as regards Russia's role in this process, it is necessary that another series of Putin-initiated reforms falling precisely in this year should succeed. However, they are running into no small snags, which are by no means concealed in New Year's Eve comments from ministers and economists. One is a gap between affluent regions like Moscow and the surrounding region (where, according to Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, real sector growth was 8.7%, and even 20% in some branches), and beleaguered republics of the North Caucasus and their likes.
The authorities also fear, and correctly, 2005 changes in education and medical care, which are switching from budget money to a more complex system of financing. As they do the above-mentioned increased costs of housing maintenance, and much else. The ideas are in general sensible, but their implementation may discourage many, at least in the first year or two. Incidentally, Vladimir Putin has before his eyes the example of his friend German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who in principle pursues the same kind of reforms and is devastatingly criticized.
But Russia is a country apart, as everybody knows. The voters hated the disastrous reforms attempted by Boris Yeltsin's first governments. The dislike of Russian oligarchs, like Khodorkovsky, is fueled from the same sources. If one looks at the cultural and political preferences of Vladimir Putin's many voters, these are all concerned with "old" values promising stability and order - including values of the Soviet era and imperial Russia. No one hastens to explain to these voters that under cover of the conservative style sported by the Putin team, Russia is carrying out liberal reforms of unprecedented scope. Let us hope that 2005 is not only the key to their implementation, but also sees no political upheavals.
The same stupidity gets said about Bush all the time.
Reality check is the second war in Chechnya was well under way when the apartment buildings got bombed. Secondly, there are plenty of Volga muslims who are as blonde and fair as driven snow, but the same Islamics none the less.
his latest military alliance with China,
You mean the war games he had with them? Gosh, does that mean he's allies with S.Korea, Japan, UK and us too? After all Russia had wargames with all four, right off the Chinese coast, last year. Further, funny you guys don't make it to the economic threads where China just got given the middle finger over the main pipeline which will now provide oil to Japan and S.Korea rather then China. Details, details.
What's best is that the same people 6 years ago were wailing about the evil out of control crooked businessmen who were close allies of Clinton/Gore. Now same said individuals are ready to crusade for the crooks. Lovely.
The neocons miss no opportunity to show themselves for the two faced whores they are.
The people in Russia vote some 70% pro right wing and people in the republican party cry that this is bad? They kicked out the rich liberal elites, the socialists, greens and communists and this is bad???? What bizzaro reality do we live in.
I wish, I think Stalin saw a kindred evil in the Chechin hearts and spared the pricks, just deporting them. He had no such soft spot for Christians though.
Imagine that, lies from the Berezovsky bribed WSJ. The WSJ lost it's credibility 3 years ago when it went on his payroll. Hopefully one day they'll regret it.
B.S. Russias are our enemies. Sure, we can 'help' each other in some ways, but neither putin nor the russians are a 'puzzle'; Only an idiot would not see the truth. The Russian bear did not die, did not give up; it hybernated to regain strenght, and its back to stay for a few more years; then, the russian military might will be wiped out. Wait and see.
So called 'russian conservative' back with another name? The russians are our enemies; stop fuck*ng lying!
Novosti, eh? Putin control it as well?
Dude, you have some serious reality issues.
Stalin was their fellow Caucasian, you know :(
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