12 Friday Aug 2016
Posted in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, International Development, Russia
Tags
Russian economic officials seem to be working to instill a sense of quiet resignation in the population. They readily admit the economy is not in good shape and promise nothing. They habitually talk expectations down, not up. Their favorite debate subject is whether the recession has bottomed out. Their favorite expression is “the new normal” of lower oil prices and sluggish growth.
Get the rest of the story – An Economy That Did Not Want to Grow – The Russia File – August 2016.
04 Thursday Aug 2016
There is no justice.
There is money.
There SHOULD be conscience, principles, virtues, and values tempering HOW we earn / produce money and apportion its spending, but nature has no rules and languages within which we culturally define and suspend ourselves may offer or encourage awful options for channeling behavior.
Juxtapose the Glory of the Sochi Winter Olympics with the then Early Destruction of Syria.
For the tyrant and the civilization represented: what’s wrong? Where’s the problem?
The mass murdering of challengers and rivals confirms power.
That’s natural, isn’t it?
Of course, it’s not the only way to go, and the developed open societies and diversified economies of the west have proven that.
Perhaps our experience of the world only picks up the reflection of the character of its global business and political elites.
The talk-about inspiration for the post was a piece by Kevin Sieff on Luanda, Angola appearing in The Washington Post, August 2, 2016: “An oil boom made it the most expensive city in the world. Now it’s in crisis.” The poster had complained about petro-state corruption and celebrity perfidy in accepting gigs at private parties paying $2 million in fee.
(Perhaps BackChannels and its editor should take a break right about here — and both may but will forge on another moment).
Who is to say that states from Angola to Burma to Moscow to Tehran should not be feudal or medieval in character?
Should there not be dictators — or other singular powerful personalities — who build worlds around themselves and produce spectacles — in Syria, an entire theater of politics and war — for others?
The “responsive and responsible” governments of democratic open societies (of the west — but, really, anywhere similar ideals and related practices prevail), don’t just obtain money and spend it capriciously or selfishly, and while they certainly produce in their constituencies people who would do that, they may also demand greater virtue on the part of their own business and political elites.
In the modern atmosphere, economic development and urban and rural planning PLUS the integration of public and private interests in development becomes so common and transparent as to become invisible to most people most of the time.
The modern Everyman need not worry about roads and sewers, water pipes, electrical supply, and communications infrastructure and all other such basic building blocks because all contribute some (and many do work in related industries) all of the time.
Boom-and-bust has always been the rule for mining towns and “petro states” but more responsible spending around them may also ease conditions when prices fall or the lode done run out.
The modern communities of Democratic open societies get a very different effect from that kind of broadened cooperation and inclusion.
Posted to YouTube October 20, 2014.
Result: no “ghost towns” — real ones or sets — that aren’t productive.
And fun!
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09 Thursday Jun 2016
Two points of reference:
Shinkman, Paul D. “Beware Appeasement With Russia.” U.S. News & World Report, June 9, 2016.
Keep in mind the extreme duality presented by the Concert in Palmyra, for example, and the savaging of Syria by a tyrant accompanied by the incubation and encouragement of ISIS as a useful foil and poker chip for playing over the course of perhaps the World’s Grandest and Most Romantic Political Theater.
While burdening the west (and NATO) with the fallout in refugees and terrorists from the Syrian Tragedy and pestering the same through its activities in Ukraine, an assortment of “frozen conflicts”, and its investment in “information warfare” online, Russia has been also (as Obama long ago suggested) growing its economy, the first fruits of which have been given pretty good play in Bloomberg.
About to this point, the image of a Moscow hard hit by dramatically reduced oil revenues and sanctions and by years of capital flight driven by corruption has held steady, but now we see The Bear has been planting all along.
Neither Russian artistic and intellectual high culture nor developing business success (finally!) can or will ethically or morally offset what Putin’s regime has done to degrade the lifestyles of Russians en masse (so far) nor erase the barbaric and contemptible way it has measured the worth of the lives and freedoms of others in Crimea, Syria, and elsewhere.
For whatever may have happened to Putin early in life, one may glimpse a Putin’s revenge taken against the enemies of the Soviet, perhaps old imperial Russia as well, and what he might brand as traitors to Russia in Eastern Europe — those who have joined with NATO — for while he has delivered refugees and terrorists and the confusions of RT and other state-controlled media operations to their lands and airwaves (and computers), he has placed the productive capacity of the state in the state-controlled private hands, and as the same wish to make a lot money, the tomatoes are going to be pretty good for eating (or throwing).
Note too that in the encouragement of Far Right and Far Left political organizations worldwide, Putin & Co. have blended with the tomatoes a heady mix of hippie values — what could be more pure than tomatoes irrigated by mountain waters? — and fascist nationalist dreams rooted in ethnolinguistic pride.
While NATO may prepare for and block greater Russian imperialist adventure, its more immediate and perhaps more real headache may involve meeting the challenge posed by Moscow’s autocratic, barbarous, and criminal “allowances” within Russia and far beyond its borders.
Posted to YouTube 2/3/2016.
AFP. “Millions more Russians living in poverty as economic crisis bites.” March 21, 2016.
Pomerantsev, Peter. “Russia and the Menace of Unreality.” The Atlantic, September 9, 2014.
Ragozin, Leonid. “Putin’s Core Support Begins to Waver.” Bloomberg Businessweek, June 9, 2016. (Added 6/10/2016).
Tolokonnikova, Nadya. “Criminal Godfathers and Dirty Birds.” Huffington Post, February 3, 2016.
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18 Wednesday May 2016
One has not to choose sides at all: one may choose integrity.
This is about where the modern Palestinian alternative narrative began: https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/quote-manipulation…/
The world’s community of “Kremlin watchers” well know the history of domestic political policing and the manipulation and stage managing of foreign conflicts, and that not much more different than what we’re witnessing today in Syria.
While Putin has been charming in Israel and inclined to accuse Ukrainians of anti-Semitic drift, one of the ploys involved in “information warfare” in the Crimean Stall, Russia has unfortunately had a long history with that brand of hate, and it surfaced in the Soviet’s approach to middle east politics.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/ftac-tip-to-the…/
International and Palestinian Solidarity continue to preach and promote “Sovietese” — the tired language of the Far Left and what I’ve called the “New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left” — and that’s coming from a modern liberal’s voice.
This a listing of the Board of Directors of a wealthy real estate development corporation anchored in Gaza:
http://www.padico.com/Public/English.aspx?Page_ID=631…
They are each real persons, profit minded, some educated in the United States. The public generally doesn’t hear much about the extent and nearness of private wealth in Gaza. There are embarrassing financial reasons for that — there are no ethical or moral arguments for not increasing investment levels throughout Gaza in the cause of peaceful trade.
Final note regarding the true economics of the privileged in socialism: both Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal have developed reputations as billionaires. “Arafat’s millions” remains a popular look-up on the web, and “Abu Mazen” may be following in similar steps.
What would be wrong with having “Two Narratives for Two People”?
🙂
One of them would remain forever hateful and wrong — and manipulated by the most heartless bastards on the planet, the kind that produce child soldiers, that force noncombatants into harm’s way, that skim up their wealth from legitimate businesses, that run smuggling operations not in their people’s interests, and that create and spread lies guaranteed to keep their people muzzled and truly occupied (by themselves) and preoccupied (with “the Jews”).
In the title of this piece, “thin wall” refers to a boundary in information warfare. It is the boundary between the creation, promulgation, reach and protection of Soviet-style propaganda under the cover of socialism and human rights and the potential intrusions of political observation and analysis naturally generated by the democratic and open societies.
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17 Monday Aug 2015
Posted in International Development, Links
Tags
Posted to YouTube 8/17/2015.
After so many years of conflict watching where the behavior on exhibit in the field seems only to become more depraved and the surrounding politics more duplicitous, sadistic, and twisted, it may help to remind that the greater world, perhaps with the help of a greater God, goes around so many disasters of human and natural origin to deliver critical aid and services to those in need.
“Peace and development” means many things, takes many forms, and in the life of our own wild species has limitless potential in design.
I’m not going to pull down the volumes by Lester Brown, George McRobie, and E.F. Shumacher and others that grace my library shelves, at least not right now, but it’s good to check every now and then this other side of conflict.
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02 Thursday Jul 2015
19 Friday Jun 2015
“My Ecuador” is likely to remain virtual and experienced through Windows.
However, for my correspondent, Ecuador is home, and when he writes in relation to, ” . . . the soldiers try to occupy the strategic places, highways, bridges, airports, refineries, power generation stations, generating dams . . .” and says “we will close the office now and . . . try to buy food in the supermarket, store, and black market . . . .” I’m inclined to believe him.
But he’s just one source.
The closest corroborations in the news:
As has happened in other spaces in relation to the post-Soviet neo-feudalism, reliance on oil revenues and the tumble in wellhead rates has turned out a big kick in the seat of the pants.
It appears that what has brought Ecuadorans out into the streets en masse is not primal hunger and resentment of the capitalist yankee running dog pig — China’s deep into the state these days — but the fearsome will to bequeath hard-earned private gains to progeny without fear of plundering by the state!
According to my source, some military appears to have mobilized, but the arguments and resolution of economic issues to come may play behind the increasingly pale phantom of the bankrupt Soviet, the revanche neo-feudalism in place in Moscow today, and the teetering of the Maduro regime in Venezuela. Clearly, the authoritarian experiments dressed up in socialist talk have failed their states.
The shame is the same: some affected states, Ecuador among them, are simply rich in cultural charm, labor, and natural resources but burdened by leadership that fails to grow the kind of internal economy that might make short work of living comfortably on the land while producing the craft-for-export industries certain to at least help fill in the shortfalls from the gross export of mineral wealth.
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18 Wednesday Mar 2015
Tags
Ecuador’s president Raphael Correa will not meet with Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro this month, says a BackChannels source.
The decision, if true, follows on a rapid economic decline in Venezuela involving increasingly visible dictatorship and political repression and a kind of stink that devoted socialist leaders, either in heart or speech, may apparently wish to avoid.
Only three months ago, Maduro visited with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani in Tehran and then in Saudi Arabia with then Crown Prince Salman (twelve days later, the same would become King Salman) to navigate some way between opposition to the west and cooperation with Iran’s opponents in exchange for loans:
“We’re finalizing a financial alliance with important banks from Qatar that will give us sufficient oxygen to help cover the fall in oil prices and give us the resources we need for the national foreign currency budget,” Maduro said, adding that the two nations had also “strengthened the ties of cooperation to open paths for cultural and touristic exchange.”
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11157 – 1/12/2015.
Recent related faux socialist grandstanding by President Correa:
. . . the US “Has ‘double standards’ and sustains good relations with absolute monarchies, without democracy” while Venezuela has to face the usual elites causing interference to see if they can destabilize the government. “When will they understand that Latin America has changed. Here you will find sovereignty, dignity, unity,” he said.
He called Washington’s position “a disgrace” and stressed that “Latin America must speak out in opposition to such arrogance, unilateralism and imperialism.”
Bloomberg Business comments:
Correa, who has long allied himself with Chavez’s socialist ambitions and declared three days of mourning to mark his death, is now deviating from policies that saw him use Ecuador’s oil wealth to finance record spending. Maduro’s refusal to break with the currency controls and gasoline subsidies embraced by Chavez is deepening concern that Venezuela, which gets about 95 percent of its export revenue from oil, will run out of money as soon as this year.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-15/bondholders-spurning-chavezs-venezuela-disciple-andes-credit – 1/14/2015.
Since late February, Maduro’s course in political repression has been making headlines: Washington Post – “Venezuela and Cuba: Partners in repression”; Yahoo! Maktoob News – “Venezuelan teen dies after being shot at anti-Maduro protest”; Wall Street Journal – “Venezuela Cracks Down on Dissent”; NPR – “Venezuela’s President Sees Only Plots as His Economy Crumbles”, etc.
From the NPR piece:
. . . in blaming the U.S. for nearly all his problems, Maduro is crying wolf, says Xabier Coscojuela, editor of the Caracas newspaper Tal Cual.
“I’ve lost count of the number of alleged plots to overthrow or kill the president,” Coscojuela says. “It’s something like ten over the past two years. But there is no credible evidence in any of these cases.”
The politician as feudal lord, “state capitalist”, or incredibly privileged socialist (or nationalist) has to enjoy the psychological fruit of his own excesses — none of these presidents (for life) live in shacks (or pass time at spinning wheels) — and the results in real politics of a state-enforced magical economics that turns out entirely piratical.
This too comes from NPR:
Simon Nobile, 72, runs the Capri pasta factory in the capital Caracas, which was founded by his Italian-born father in 1940. Capri’s two plants crank out 11 million pounds of pasta per month.
They could produce nearly twice that much. However, Nobile says a government policy designed to help the poor forces him to sell half of his inventory for just five cents a pound.
“There is no incentive because price controls mean that you lose money. So the more you produce, the more money you lose,” he says.
While “inclusion” numbers among the six primary global virtues promoted by this blog, it takes some careful planning to channel much needed cash to the floor of an economy and sustain that traffic across time.
It doesn’t happen by magic.
The process need not dehumanize, humiliate, or subjugate, but it may need to be responsive and responsible to labor involved and the many productive capacities and cultural and environmental boundaries of place.
The drop in oil prices was the deep voice of international capital speaking, which irrupted as if from nowhere and in counterpoint to the rhythms of local and visible Venezuelan politics. When international capital spoke, it dashed all the local plans, because the slow time-frame of the Bolivarian government’s plans for economic diversification and the turtle steps of the Venezuelan opposition’s march towards the upcoming elections suddenly were no longer viable.
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11264 – 3/11/2015
Chris Gilbert’s mention of “economic diversification” plays up that will-o’-the-wisp — there is always talk of it, but when one goes to find it, it’s less there than it should be — facing at least several autocratic governments reliant on mineral proceeds for fueling their economies.
In 2012 it looked like the politician’s spectacular career was winding down. Suddenly, he was back on top. People With Money reports on Tuesday (March 17) that Maduro is the highest-paid politician in the world, pulling in an astonishing $96 million between February 2014 and February 2015, a nearly $60 million lead over his closest competition.
http://en.mediamass.net/people/nicolas-maduro/highest-paid.html – 3/18/2015.
Chavez’s family now reportedly owns 17 country estates totaling more than 100,000 acres in the western state of Barinas, as well as assets of $550 million stored in various international bank accounts. Residents in the same region wait as long as three hours for basic provisions at grocery stores.
National Assembly Speaker Diosdado Cabello, a close confidant of Chavez and member of Maduro’s United Socialist Party, has allegedly amassed “a private fortune” through corruption and ties to regional drug traffickers. The Miami Herald reported accusations last week that Cabello received at least $50 million in bribes to overlook lucrative public contracts that were overpriced, according to a recent lawsuit.
Maduro said those who distort events in Venezuela are “on the side of the 1 percent.”
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/nicolas-maduro-fact-check/ – 4/2/2014.
The politics of foreign despots at a glance . . . the reason I find what I do (with simple search terms like “Maduro, wealth”, and a click of the mouse) is because I know the anchors of the image — the image of post-socialist now neo-feudal dictators AKA “malignant narcissists” — have their record in yesterday’s news and the factual data conveyed through it.
A joint new study by three leading Venezuelan universities — Andres Bello Catholic University, Central University of Venezuela, and Simon Bolivar University — shows that 48.4 percent of Venezuelan households were below the poverty line in 2014, up from 45 percent of households in 1998, before late radical leftist President Hugo Chávez took office and benefited from nearly a decade of soaring world oil prices.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andres-oppenheimer/article9311450.html – 2/4/2015.
Venezuela has some of the world’s largest proven oil deposits as well as huge quantities of coal, iron ore, bauxite and gold.
Yet most Venezuelans live in poverty, many of them in shanty towns, some of which sprawl over the hillsides around the capital, Caracas.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-19649648 – 3/11/2015
Poverty is no joke: no dignity; no freedom; no growth; no future.
Whether the “unit of analysis” is individual, family, or community makes no difference. The restraints and punishments (for political dissent) suffocate soul and spirit.
To redress grievance and repair requires some accurate — not paranoid — comprehension of involved economic, political, and psychological forces and variables, starting with the character of the leadership in place: as it stands today, the feudal-medieval principle continues to invite to its portals conflict and revolution, the differences between a 12th Century despot, a 19th Century czar, and a 21st Century dictator yielding the same result in economic and social modeling across geopolitical space and time.
However, social — and perhaps liberal, humanist, and socialist — expectations have changed markedly since medieval days, and people become simply more rapidly aware of their own potential — and the potential of where they live as a base for living and producing for themselves and others (at fair rates) — and equally apprised of real cultural, political, and social impediments to achievement, and those same may include a piratical nobility.
“We used to produce rice and we had excellent coffee; now we produce nothing. With the situation here people abandoned the fields,” says Jesús López, in reference to government-seized land that sits idle. “Empty shelves and no one to explain why a rich country has no food. It’s unacceptable,” adds the 90-year-old farmer from San Cristóbal, on the western state of Táchira, bordering Colombia.
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/sep/26/venezuela-food-shortages-rich-country-cia – 9/26/2013.
The so-called “socialist” scapegoating of the west, the Jews, the capitalists, and so on simply runs into its own true common feudal Orwellian political reality: dens of thieves, after all.
According to this measure, the number of Venezuelans classified as poor shot up in the last year by 1.8 million people. Roughly 6 percent of all Venezuela’s 30 million people became poor in the last year alone. The situation is even direr when one looks at extreme poverty, i.e., the number of people whose income cannot even buy a representative basket of food and drink. In the last year alone, the number of extremely poor Venezuelans rose by 730,000. They now reach close to three million people, or roughly 10 percent of the population.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/04/poverty-shoots-up-in-venezuela – 6/4/2015 –i.e., published almost a year ago, and, for sure, things cannot have gotten better.
http://lainfo.es/en/2015/03/17/presidents-arrive-in-venezuela-for-alba-meeting/ – 3/17/2015
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/venezuelas-president-nicolas-maduro-center-addresses-leaders-during-photo-001757098.html – 3/17/2015.
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