This Would Explain a Lot
From #1 SWP daughter: Young Vladimir Putin Looks Totally Like Tom Riddle (a/k/a Voldemort):
Speaking of Putin. He is reaching new levels of chutzpah in his campaign.
A couple of examples. First, Russia to Be a Top Country for Business in 10 Years:
“We need to outline a quite clear goal – to become one of the world’s leading countries with the best conditions for entrepreneurial activity within ten years,” Putin said at a congress of Business Russia, a national association of businesses.
“This is a very difficult task, because it is rather hard to eradicate and wipe out corruption, which, unfortunately, is part of the culture, or its absence,” the premier said.
Vladimir Putin, anti-corruption campaigner. Mind boggling.
Second, another related piece: “Business must return from off-shore ‘shadows‘”. This story included this bit:
“There should be absolute clarity concerning the structure of ownership, with real shareholders and beneficiaries,” said Putin.
“This is a key indicator of how civilised the business climate is, the maturity of the economy and the level of responsibility of the business community,” he added, saying his comments did not only refer to the energy sector.
Hey. Speaking of the energy sector and clarity regarding “real shareholders and beneficiaries”, how about shining some light on Gunvor! I’m sure that would be quite interesting.
And for an extended treatment as to why Putin lecturing about corruption as anything but a practitioner, see the new Milov, Nemtsov, Ryzhkov, and Shorina paper. (Five, four, three . . . )
Wasn’t he supposed to be Dobby?
Decide already.
Comment by Sublime Oblivion — December 21, 2011 @ 3:34 pm
Absolutely off-topic, but I didn’t have a better way to send the tip. You may be interested in this AW&ST article on the problems the US Navy is having with its destroyer-based BMD plans and costs, after the Poland/Russia BMD course reversal a couple of years ago.
http://tinyurl.com/88ky39n
Comment by ThomasL — December 21, 2011 @ 5:15 pm
Thanks, Thomas. Will read with interest.
HIV soaring under Putin.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/21/us-russia-hiv-idUSTRE7BK12X20111221
Comment by La Russophobe — December 21, 2011 @ 5:44 pm
Of course Putin wants an honest administration now; he has got his. Can’t have the proles trying to steal HIS legitimately earned wealth, after all.
Seriously this sounds like another advertising stunt, a cynical exercise in posturing, combined with the usual magical thinking that seems to live in many people raised in Marxist or “real socialist states. Will it and it will come – see the Great Leap forward and the Cultural Revolution, or triumph of the will in Germany. It is interesting to note how both international(Bolshevism) and national (Nazi) socialism shared this lunacy. They were both heresies from the Marxist Social Democratic movement after all, and if you want to accept Marxism as a prescriptive guide to society, you are going to let a lot of the really ridiculous epicurean philosophical baggage about the perfectibility of man and nature with which it is shot through.
Closer to home, great examples of this can be found throughout the history of the Castro regime: First there was the mass mobilization that would magically transform the sugar harvest into a bonanza – it was a disaster. Then there was Castro’s magic bull – a Brahma hybrid – that was going to make Cuba the largest cattle producer per hectare in the world. They did not get sick an die quite as quickly as regular cattle, but the usual collectivist agricultural sloth, squalor and ideologically motivated incompetence reduce output to below pre revolutionary levels so that the average meat consumption per day has dropped from the Canadian level in 1958 to below that in Honduras today. A side effect of this was the land clearing program that destroyed most of the fruit and Plantain production – and this in a tropical country. while a good crop requires effort, plantain can grow as a weed; to create fruit shortages in a tropical country took real effort. Way to go Fidel!
The soviet union had glorious examples of this too- from the stakhanovite movement (hero worker Stakhanov mined 300 tons of coal on one shift using a toothpick and his babushka’s doily collection, etc.) to reporting increasing crop yields while inflicting mass starvation in the Ukraine. Let’s not forget the Marxist and politically correct Lysenko concepts of genetics – particularly Stalin’s attempts to literally create a new Soviet man. Hitler may have had ridiculously criminal ideas on the superiority of Races, but at least had some idea of how genetics and breeding worked.
To give Putin credit, I am not sure Putin is just being a cynical ass. I also think what we see here is the mentality of a Castro, whose socialist state made him personally rich and who ran his country as an incompetently managed laifundia. in other words he may also be a self deluding psycho, having attended one to many Komsomol meetings.
Comment by Sotos — December 21, 2011 @ 6:02 pm
latifundia not laifundia – sorry,
Comment by Sotos — December 21, 2011 @ 6:03 pm
Sotos,
If you have any alternative ideas on how an agrarian illiterate country barely out of the stone age (wooden scratch plough still in use) with a shitty climate and geography, can industrialize in the span of 20 years, enough to be able to stand up to the best army in the world, I’d like to hear them.
Comment by So? — December 21, 2011 @ 10:44 pm
If you have any alternative ideas on how an agrarian illiterate country barely out of the stone age (wooden scratch plough still in use) with a shitty climate and geography, can industrialize in the span of 20 years, enough to be able to stand up to the best army in the world, I’d like to hear them.
By using (if inadvertently) that shitty climate and geography very much to their advantage when the best army in the world came knocking.
Comment by Tim Newman — December 21, 2011 @ 11:27 pm
Then why did it not work in the first one.
Comment by So? — December 22, 2011 @ 12:21 am
BTW, I think it’s just the angle in that picture. But as all great men through history, he changes and adapts:
http://bigpicture.ru/?p=237209
Comment by So? — December 22, 2011 @ 1:14 am
Here is how it’s gonna work: “You better say you are very happy with business conditions here, or else …”
Comment by Ivan — December 22, 2011 @ 1:35 am
Awfully bad time to be a Russophile!
Kremlin’s own agency decrees that Khodorkovsky was illegally prosecuted and convicted, given “punishment for carrying out legal activities.”
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/rights-council-free-khodorkovsky/450313.html
Ouch.
Comment by La Russophobe — December 22, 2011 @ 11:25 am
Demonstrates the idiocy of trying to find common ground with liberal ideologues.
They were appointed by Medvedev and they have stabbed him the back.
Comment by Sublime Oblivion — December 22, 2011 @ 2:06 pm
@so
Because the USSR had industrialized enough to produce simple but very well designed and effective weapons, outproduced the Germans in Tanks and even aircraft, had the political organization in place for mass mobilization and and the regime was bloody enough to spend their soldiers lives like water: 3 or 4 to 1 loss ratio at least.
Also note that 20%+ of USSR’s war material was sent from the US. For example if you look at the famous pictures of the Stalin Organs (rocket launchers) they were almost always mounted on Studebaker trucks on the direct order of Stalin himself. Outside of fully mechanized units, which were fewer than one would think, both the German army and the Soviets mostly relied on rail and horses. That made the Blitzkrieg tactics very difficult once one had gone more than 100-200 miles from base, while it aided the Russians as they were pushed back closer to their supply depots. See the logistical nightmare faced by the army in October and November of 1941, at Stalingrad before the encirclement, etc. Finally note that when the German’s attacked, they were already at a 2 to 1 disadvantage in manpower, and it got worse. In several memoirs by German staff officers, there are accounts of the shock they felt in 1941 and 1942 when whole divisions, armies and army groups appearrd that they had no idea even existed,
As regards to the difference between WWI and WWII, see the political organization noted above. Also while Russia was more primitive industrially than Germany, the relative difference was less than in WWI, particularly as industrialization in the USSR was concentrated on heavy equipment, steel and railroads – exactly what was needed in a war of logistics and attrition. It was also built with a huge slave labor system well in place at the beginning of the war – 1939. Germany only got going on this in 1941-2. How’s that for extracting surplus value? finally the belief in blitzkrieg delayed the full mobilization of German industry until late 1942 under Speer.
The Russians in WWII had no choice but to fight to the death. The propaganda and police machine under Stalin would have made the old Okhrana drool, and there was no political space in the USSR for any opposition. Equally important was that no credible alternative to the Stalin Regime was ever presented by the Germans to the Russian people. Simply put it was a war of extermination (lebensraum, etc.) as opposed to the very effective political strategies and alternatives actively pursued by the German High Command in WWI. Who Got Lenin to Russia – So? and how did he get there – a Eu-rail Pass? Who paid for him, and funded the SR’s, Kadets, etc. in 1916-1917? Vlasov not withstanding mo such activity could even be tolerated, given Nazi racist ideology re the Slavs.
The “virtues” that allowed Stalin to survive WWII were brutality, force, fear, rekindled nationalism (not Lenin approved) and above all the disastrous political, military and industrial mistakes of the Germans and Hitler. If WWII was a triumph it was one made by the people at a horrible cost due to the murderous indifference of their leaders.
Comment by Sotos — December 22, 2011 @ 3:24 pm
Ahem, Sublime Retardation, has it ever occurred to you that non Bolsheviks have rights?
You are a typical example of the retardation that results from studying at a left wing crank uni like Berkeley
Comment by Andrew — December 22, 2011 @ 10:20 pm
Meanwhile, the voice of the Russian people (i.e. opinion polls) indicate that liberal propaganda is failing and Putin should win in the very first round.
http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2011/12/22/what-they-say-after/
Comment by Sublime Oblivion — December 23, 2011 @ 1:03 am
Another spectacular Russian failure in space.
http://news.discovery.com/space/russia-botches-another-rocket-launch-111223.html
Comment by La Russophobe — December 23, 2011 @ 5:40 pm
Sublime Oblivion, your blog is a joke.
Comment by Andrew — December 24, 2011 @ 12:11 pm
Andrew, here’s wishing you a kinder, gentler New Year. And here’s wishing the Professor some IRONI SUDBI in 2012: Putin loses the first round of the voting in Russia this March, causing the SWP masses to gang up on my drinking buddy AK. But then Ron Paul, in a spectacular humiliation for the U.S. Establishment and media shills of both parties, defeats Mitt Romney in multiple states after winning Iowa, causing all hyper-interventionists, fiat money loving banksters and military industrial complex stooges heads’ to explode.
That at least would be something to toast to this Christmas eve. To the ghost of Christmas future for all kleptocrats, whether they sit in Moscow or Washington D.C., and above all, Peace on Earth.
Comment by Mr. X — December 24, 2011 @ 6:42 pm
“Andrew, here’s wishing you a kinder, gentler New Year.” May all your best buds head find even better, non-NGOistan paying jobs in Moscow where they can enjoy some fine Georgian wine with the other half million Georgians who make the Third Rome their home.
Comment by Mr. X — December 24, 2011 @ 6:43 pm
Hmmm, except that the Russians banned imports of Georgian wines (along with Moldovan wines) for political reasons to pressure the Georgian and Moldovan governments into bowing down before the new Sodom that is Russia.
BTW Mr.X I hope maybe you grow a conscience, and do not continue to support Russian oppression, racism, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder.
Now that would be something to toast in the new year.
Comment by Andrew — December 25, 2011 @ 12:11 am
“Comment by Mr. X
But then Ron Paul, in a spectacular humiliation for the U.S. Establishment and media shills of both parties, defeats Mitt Romney in multiple states after winning Iowa, causing all hyper-interventionists, fiat money loving banksters and military industrial complex stooges heads’ to explode. That at least would be something to toast to this Christmas eve. To the ghost of Christmas future for all kleptocrats, whether they sit in Moscow or Washington D.C., and above all, Peace on Earth.”
Ah Mr. X every once in a while you hit one out of the park. Well done, and thank you.
And С Новым годом to you, or as I am wont to slur in deplorable Russian–Snovum godom.
Comment by gardener1 — December 25, 2011 @ 2:43 am
Lol-Lol– I love The neo -Stalinist
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/reception/dolchstoss/426_23HitlerStalinStabBackIllingworthCairnsILW00259.gif
Demonstrates the idiocy of trying to find common ground with liberal ideologues.
They were appointed by Medvedev and they have stabbed him the back.
Comment by Anders — December 25, 2011 @ 5:04 am
Meanwhile, the voice of the Russian mafia indicate that sovok propaganda is failing and Putin should lose in the very first round . The old KGB mafia want Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov as the new Godfather . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWqKPWO5T4o –
Comment by Anders — December 25, 2011 @ 5:13 am
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