KGB, Gulags, Putin is Evil…blah, blah, blah…
Just like the The Gremlins...
Which is worse: Media suppressed or Media gone wild? As loyal Russia Blog readers know, we are continually amazed by the lack of objective reporting about life in modern day Russia. Every month, Russia Blog pours over hundreds of mainstream media articles in an effort to identify the most biased, stereotypical piece we can find about the country. Recently, one publication’s coverage of Russia easily thrust itself into first place to win the coveted Shoe Award. After only limited deliberation, our distinguished panel of judges happily provides the latest award to (drumroll please)…. The Economist.
The Chinese Wall between business reporters on the one hand and the soft news writers and other chattering heads on the other is a disturbing trend. While plenty is written about the lack of press freedoms in many parts of the world, we are especially saddened when venerable journals in free countries do such a poor job of covering issues in Russia – here, however, The Economist has excelled beyond all others.
The recent conspiracy yarn produced by The Economist entitled, “Russia Under Putin: The Making of a Neo-KGB State,” is at best a Bond movie starring George Lazenby. More amazing still is the fact that just a few months ago, Dr. Daniel Thorniley, a prominent Russia expert and the Vice President of The Economist’s own consulting wing— the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)—castigated The Wall Street Journal and CNN, for their bizarro take on Russia:
“More rubbish is written and spoken about Russia than any other country on the planet Earth.”
Incongruously, the timeline-challenged article noted above makes The Economist sound less like the EIU and more like quacktogenarian Lyndon LaRouche and his hyperbolic Executive Intelligence Review. Meanwhile, Exile.ru does a fantastic job of debunking their lies in the highly-recommended critique “The Economist: The World’s Sleaziest Magazine”. The article includes great insights, such as:
“Let's leave aside for now the very strange decision to anchor an anti-silovik story to Kondaurov - a former KGB general who was a top Yukos executive (respect to the PR firm that helped arrange that).”
As one Russian reader e-mailed to Russia Blog upon reading The Economist piece:
“These KGB guys were the only educated adults left who didn't hijack the money wagon in the 90s. But think about it, who else in that age group is qualified to manage the country? Even Saint Khodorkovsky had KGB guys on his payroll. Many are highly educated, multi-lingual managers, left without jobs, but taught to aim high. Still, if you meet a lot of the old KGB guys, it is sort of like meeting Ivy League graduates. They are less impressive up close and it’s hard to believe that any of them could organize anything much larger than a dinner party…”
Again, we are pleased to present this year’s Shoe Award to The Economist. As a further token of goodwill, we are providing you with a free copy of Executive Intelligence Review, which is evidently not in heavily circulation in London. Apparently, The Economist seems to have cornered their market niche these days.
Russia under Putin: The making of a neo-KGB state
Aug 23rd 2007 | MOSCOW
From The Economist print edition
Political power in Russia now lies with the FSB, the KGB's successor
ON THE evening of August 22nd 1991—16 years ago this week—Alexei Kondaurov, a KGB general, stood by the darkened window of his Moscow office and watched a jubilant crowd moving towards the KGB headquarters in Lubyanka Square. A coup against Mikhail Gorbachev had just been defeated. The head of the KGB who had helped to orchestrate it had been arrested, and Mr Kondaurov was now one of the most senior officers left in the fast-emptying building. For a moment the thronged masses seemed to be heading straight towards him.
Then their anger was diverted to the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the KGB's founding father. A couple of men climbed up and slipped a rope round his neck. Then he was yanked up by a crane. Watching “Iron Felix” sway in mid-air, Mr Kondaurov, who had served in the KGB since 1972, felt betrayed “by Gorbachev, by Yeltsin, by the impotent coup leaders”. He remembers thinking, “I will prove to you that your victory will be short-lived.”
Those feelings of betrayal and humiliation were shared by 500,000 KGB operatives across Russia and beyond, including Vladimir Putin, whose resignation as a lieutenant-colonel in the service had been accepted only the day before. Eight years later, though, the KGB men seemed poised for revenge. Just before he became president, Mr Putin told his ex-colleagues at the Federal Security Service (FSB), the KGB's successor, “A group of FSB operatives, dispatched under cover to work in the government of the Russian federation, is successfully fulfilling its task.” He was only half joking.
Over the two terms of Mr Putin's presidency, that “group of FSB operatives” has consolidated its political power and built a new sort of corporate state in the process. Men from the FSB and its sister organisations control the Kremlin, the government, the media and large parts of the economy—as well as the military and security forces. According to research by Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, a quarter of the country's senior bureaucrats are siloviki—a Russian word meaning, roughly, “power guys”, which includes members of the armed forces and other security services, not just the FSB. The proportion rises to three-quarters if people simply affiliated to the security services are included. These people represent a psychologically homogeneous group, loyal to roots that go back to the Bolsheviks' first political police, the Cheka. As Mr Putin says repeatedly, “There is no such thing as a former Chekist.”
By many indicators, today's security bosses enjoy a combination of power and money without precedent in Russia's history. The Soviet KGB and its pre-revolutionary ancestors did not care much about money; power was what mattered. Influential though it was, the KGB was a “combat division” of the Communist Party, and subordinate to it. As an outfit that was part intelligence organisation, part security agency and part secret political police, it was often better informed, but it could not act on its own authority; it could only make “recommendations”. In the 1970s and 1980s it was not even allowed to spy on the party bosses and had to act within Soviet laws, however inhuman.
The KGB provided a crucial service of surveillance and suppression; it was a state within a state. Now, however, it has become the state itself. Apart from Mr Putin, “There is nobody today who can say no to the FSB,” says Mr Kondaurov.
All important decisions in Russia, says Ms Kryshtanovskaya, are now taken by a tiny group of men who served alongside Mr Putin in the KGB and who come from his home town of St Petersburg. In the next few months this coterie may well decide the outcome of next year's presidential election. But whoever succeeds Mr Putin, real power is likely to remain in the organisation. Of all the Soviet institutions, the KGB withstood Russia's transformation to capitalism best and emerged strongest. “Communist ideology has gone, but the methods and psychology of its secret police have remained,” says Mr Kondaurov, who is now a member of parliament.
Scotched, not killed
Mr Putin's ascent to the presidency of Russia was the result of a chain of events that started at least a quarter of a century earlier, when Yuri Andropov, a former head of the KGB, succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as general secretary of the Communist Party. Andropov's attempts to reform the stagnating Soviet economy in order to preserve the Soviet Union and its political system have served as a model for Mr Putin. Early in his presidency Mr Putin unveiled a plaque at the Lubyanka headquarters that paid tribute to Andropov as an “outstanding political figure”.
Staffed by highly educated, pragmatic men recruited in the 1960s and 1970s, the KGB was well aware of the dire state of the Soviet economy and the antique state of the party bosses. It was therefore one of the main forces behind perestroika, the loose policy of restructuring started by Mr Gorbachev in the 1980s. Perestroika's reforms were meant to give the Soviet Union a new lease of life. When they threatened its existence, the KGB mounted a coup against Mr Gorbachev. Ironically, this precipitated the Soviet collapse.
The defeat of the coup gave Russia an historic chance to liquidate the organisation. “If either Gorbachev or Yeltsin had been bold enough to dismantle the KGB during the autumn of 1991, he would have met little resistance,” wrote Yevgenia Albats, a journalist who has courageously covered the grimmest chapters in the KGB's history. Instead, both Mr Gorbachev and Yeltsin tried to reform it.
The “blue blood” of the KGB—the First Chief Directorate, in charge of espionage—was spun off into a separate intelligence service. The rest of the agency was broken into several parts. Then, after a few short months of talk about openness, the doors of the agency slammed shut again and the man charged with trying to reform it, Vadim Bakatin, was ejected. His glum conclusion, delivered at a conference in 1993, was that although the myth about the KGB's invincibility had collapsed, the agency itself was very much alive.
Indeed it was. The newly named Ministry of Security continued to “delegate” the officers of the “active reserve” into state institutions and commercial firms. Soon KGB officers were staffing the tax police and customs services. As Boris Yeltsin himself admitted by the end of 1993, all attempts to reorganise the KGB were “superficial and cosmetic”; in fact, it could not be reformed. “The system of political police has been preserved,” he said, “and could be resurrected.”
Yet Mr Yeltsin, though he let the agency survive, did not use it as his power base. In fact, the KGB was cut off from the post-Soviet redistribution of assets. Worse still, it was upstaged and outwitted by a tiny group of opportunists, many of them Jews (not a people beloved by the KGB), who became known as the oligarchs. Between them, they grabbed most of the country's natural resources and other privatised assets. KGB officers watched the oligarchs get super-rich while they stayed cash-strapped and sometimes even unpaid.
Some officers did well enough, but only by offering their services to the oligarchs. To protect themselves from rampant crime and racketeering, the oligarchs tried to privatise parts of the KGB. Their large and costly security departments were staffed and run by ex-KGB officers. They also hired senior agency men as “consultants”. Fillip Bobkov, the head of the Fifth Directorate (which dealt with dissidents), worked for a media magnate, Vladimir Gusinsky. Mr Kondaurov, a former spokesman for the KGB, worked for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who ran and largely owned Yukos. “People who stayed in the FSB were B-list,” says Mark Galeotti, a British analyst of the Russian special services.
Lower-ranking staff worked as bodyguards to Russia's rich. (Andrei Lugovoi, the chief suspect in the murder in London last year of Alexander Litvinenko, once guarded Boris Berezovsky, an oligarch who, facing arrest in Russia, now lives in Britain.) Hundreds of private security firms staffed by KGB veterans sprang up around the country and most of them, though not all, kept their ties to their alma mater. According to Igor Goloshchapov, a former KGB special-forces commando who is now a spokesman for almost 800,000 private security men,
In the 1990s we had one objective: to survive and preserve our skills. We did not consider ourselves to be separate from those who stayed in the FSB. We shared everything with them and we saw our work as just another form of serving the interests of the state. We knew that there would come a moment when we would be called upon.
That moment came on New Year's Eve 1999, when Mr Yeltsin resigned and, despite his views about the KGB, handed over the reins of power to Mr Putin, the man he had put in charge of the FSB in 1998 and made prime minister a year later.
The inner circle
As the new president saw things, his first task was to restore the management of the country, consolidate political power and neutralise alternative sources of influence: oligarchs, regional governors, the media, parliament, opposition parties and non-governmental organisations. His KGB buddies helped him with the task.
The most politically active oligarchs, Mr Berezovsky, who had helped Mr Putin come to power, and Mr Gusinsky, were pushed out of the country, and their television channels were taken back into state hands. Mr Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, was more stubborn. Despite several warnings, he continued to support opposition parties and NGOs and refused to leave Russia. In 2003 the FSB arrested him and, after a show trial, helped put him in jail.
To deal with unruly regional governors, Mr Putin appointed special envoys with powers of supervision and control. Most of them were KGB veterans. The governors lost their budgets and their seats in the upper house of the Russian parliament. Later the voters lost their right to elect them.
All the strategic decisions, according to Ms Kryshtanovskaya, were and still are made by the small group of people who have formed Mr Putin's informal politburo. They include two deputy heads of the presidential administration: Igor Sechin, who officially controls the flow of documents but also oversees economic matters, and Viktor Ivanov, responsible for personnel in the Kremlin and beyond. Then come Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the FSB, and Sergei Ivanov, a former defence minister and now the first deputy prime minister. All are from St Petersburg, and all served in intelligence or counter-intelligence. Mr Sechin is the only one who does not advertise his background.
That two of the most influential men, Mr Sechin and Viktor Ivanov, hold only fairly modest posts (each is a deputy head) and seldom appear in public is misleading. It was, after all, common Soviet practice to have a deputy, often linked to the KGB, who carried more weight than his notional boss. “These people feel more comfortable when they are in the shadows,” explains Ms Kryshtanovskaya.
In any event, each of these KGB veterans has a plethora of followers in other state institutions. One of Mr Patrushev's former deputies, also from the KGB, is the minister of the interior, in charge of the police. Sergei Ivanov still commands authority within the army's headquarters. Mr Sechin has close family ties to the minister of justice. The prosecution service, which in Soviet times at least nominally controlled the KGB's work, has now become its instrument, along with the tax police.
The political clout of these siloviki is backed by (or has resulted in) state companies with enormous financial resources. Mr Sechin, for example, is the chairman of Rosneft, Russia's largest state-run oil company. Viktor Ivanov heads the board of directors of Almaz-Antei, the country's main producer of air-defence rockets, and of Aeroflot, the national airline. Sergei Ivanov oversees the military-industrial complex and is in charge of the newly created aircraft-industry monopoly.
But the siloviki reach farther, into all areas of Russian life. They can be found not just in the law-enforcement agencies but in the ministries of economy, transport, natural resources, telecoms and culture. Several KGB veterans occupy senior management posts in Gazprom, Russia's biggest company, and its pocket bank, Gazprombank (whose vice-president is the 26-year-old son of Sergei Ivanov).
Alexei Gromov, Mr Putin's trusted press secretary, sits on the board of Channel One, Russia's main television channel. The railway monopoly is headed by Vladimir Yakunin, a former diplomat who served his country at the United Nations in New York and is believed to have held a high rank in the KGB. Sergei Chemezov, Mr Putin's old KGB friend from his days in Dresden (where the president worked from 1985 to 1990), is in charge of Rosoboronexport, a state arms agency that has grown on his watch into a vast conglomerate. The list goes on.
Many officers of the active reserve have been seconded to Russia's big companies, both private and state-controlled, where they draw a salary while also remaining on the FSB payroll. “We must make sure that companies don't make decisions that are not in the interest of the state,” one current FSB colonel explains. Being an active-reserve officer in a firm is, says another KGB veteran, a dream job: “You get a huge salary and you get to keep your FSB card.” One such active-reserve officer is the 26-year-old son of Mr Patrushev who was last year seconded from the FSB to Rosneft, where he is now advising Mr Sechin. (After seven months at Rosneft, Mr Putin awarded Andrei Patrushev the Order of Honour, citing his professional successes and “many years of conscientious work”.) Rosneft was the main recipient of Yukos's assets after the firm was destroyed.
The attack on Yukos, which entered its decisive stage just as Mr Sechin was appointed to Rosneft, was the first and most blatant example of property redistribution towards the siloviki, but not the only one. Mikhail Gutseriev, the owner of Russneft, a fast-growing oil company, was this month forced to give up his business after being accused of illegal activities. For a time, he had refused; but, as he explained, “they tightened the screws” and one state agency after another—the general prosecutor's office, the tax police, the interior ministry—began conducting checks on him.
From oligarchy to spookocracy
The transfer of financial wealth from the oligarchs to the siloviki was perhaps inevitable. It certainly met with no objection from most Russians, who have little sympathy for “robber barons”. It even earned the siloviki a certain popularity. But whether they will make a success of managing their newly acquired assets is doubtful. “They know how to break up a company or to confiscate something. But they don't know how to manage a business. They use force simply because they don't know any other method,” says an ex-KGB spook who now works in business.
Curiously, the concentration of such power and economic resources in the hands of a small group of siloviki, who identify themselves with the state, has not alienated people in the lower ranks of the security services. There is trickle-down of a sort: the salary of an average FSB operative has gone up several times over the past decade, and a bit of freelancing is tolerated. Besides, many Russians inside and outside the ranks believe that the transfer of assets from private hands to the siloviki is in the interests of the state. “They are getting their own back and they have the right to do so,” says Mr Goloshchapov.
The rights of the siloviki, however, have nothing to do with the formal kind that are spelled out in laws or in the constitution. What they are claiming is a special mission to restore the power of the state, save Russia from disintegration and frustrate the enemies that might weaken it. Such idealistic sentiments, says Mr Kondaurov, coexist with an opportunistic and cynical eagerness to seize the situation for personal or institutional gain.
The security servicemen present themselves as a tight brotherhood entitled to break any laws for the sake of their mission. Their high language is laced with profanity, and their nationalism is often combined with contempt for ordinary people. They are, however, loyal to each other.
Competition to enter the service is intense. The KGB picked its recruits carefully. Drawn from various institutes and universities, they then went to special KGB schools. Today the FSB Academy in Moscow attracts the children of senior siloviki; a vast new building will double its size. The point, says Mr Galeotti, the British analyst, “is not just what you learn, but who you meet there”.
Graduates of the FSB Academy may well agree. “A Chekist is a breed,” says a former FSB general. A good KGB heritage—a father or grandfather, say, who worked for the service—is highly valued by today's siloviki. Marriages between siloviki clans are also encouraged.
Viktor Cherkesov, the head of Russia's drug-control agency, who was still hunting dissidents in the late 1980s, has summed up the FSB psychology in an article that has become the manifesto of the siloviki and a call for consolidation.
We [siloviki] must understand that we are one whole. History ruled that the weight of supporting the Russian state should fall on our shoulders. I believe in our ability, when we feel danger, to put aside everything petty and to remain faithful to our oath.
As well as invoking secular patriotism, Russia's security bosses can readily find allies among the priesthood. Next to the FSB building in Lubyanka Square stands the 17th-century church of the Holy Wisdom, “restored in August 2001with zealous help from the FSB,” says a plaque. Inside, freshly painted icons gleam with gold. “Thank God there is the FSB. All power is from God and so is theirs,” says Father Alexander, who leads the service. A former KGB general agrees: “They really believe that they were chosen and are guided by God and that even the high oil prices they have benefited from are God's will.”
Sergei Grigoryants, who has often been interrogated and twice imprisoned (for anti-Soviet propaganda) by the KGB, says the security chiefs believe “that they are the only ones who have the real picture and understanding of the world.” At the centre of this picture is an exaggerated sense of the enemy, which justifies their very existence: without enemies, what are they for? “They believe they can see enemies where ordinary people can't,” says Ms Kryshtanovskaya.
“A few years ago, we succumbed to the illusion that we don't have enemies and we have paid dearly for that,” Mr Putin told the FSB in 1999. It is a view shared by most KGB veterans and their successors. The greatest danger comes from the West, whose aim is supposedly to weaken Russia and create disorder. “They want to make Russia dependent on their technologies,” says a current FSB staffer. “They have flooded our market with their goods. Thank God we still have nuclear arms.” The siege mentality of the siloviki and their anti-Westernism have played well with the Russian public. Mr Goloshchapov, the private agents' spokesman, expresses the mood this way: “In Gorbachev's time Russia was liked by the West and what did we get for it? We have surrendered everything: eastern Europe, Ukraine, Georgia. NATO has moved to our borders.”
From this perspective, anyone who plays into the West's hands at home is the internal enemy. In this category are the last free-thinking journalists, the last NGOs sponsored by the West and the few liberal politicians who still share Western values.
To sense the depth of these feelings, consider the response of one FSB officer to the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist whose books criticising Mr Putin and his brutal war in Chechnya are better known outside than inside Russia. “I don't know who killed her, but her articles were beneficial to the Western press. She deserved what she got.” And so, by this token, did Litvinenko, the ex-KGB officer poisoned by polonium in London last year.
In such a climate, the idea that Russia's security services are entitled to deal ruthlessly with enemies of the state, wherever they may be, has gained wide acceptance and is supported by a new set of laws. One, aimed at “extremism”, gives the FSB and other agencies ample scope to pursue anyone who acts or speaks against the Kremlin. It has already been invoked against independent analysts and journalists. A lawyer who complained to the Constitutional Court about the FSB's illegal tapping of his client's telephone has been accused of disclosing state secrets. Several scientists who collaborated with foreign firms are in jail for treason.
Despite their loyalty to old Soviet roots, today's security bosses differ from their predecessors. They do not want a return to communist ideology or an end to capitalism, whose fruits they enjoy. They have none of the asceticism of their forebears. Nor do they relish mass repression: in a country where fear runs deep, attacking selected individuals does the job. But the concentration of such power and money in the hands of the security services does not bode well for Russia.
And not very good at their job
The creation of enemies may smooth over clan disagreements and fuel nationalism, but it does not make the country more secure or prosperous. While the FSB reports on the ever-rising numbers of foreign spies, accuses scientists of treason and hails its “brotherhood”, Russia remains one of the most criminalised, corrupt and bureaucratic countries in the world.
During the crisis at a school in Beslan in 2004, the FSB was good at harassing journalists trying to find out the truth. But it could not even cordon off the school in which the hostages were held. Under the governorship of an ex-FSB colleague of Mr Putin, Ingushetia, the republic that borders Chechnya, has descended into a new theatre of war. The army is plagued by crime and bullying. Private businessmen are regularly hassled by law-enforcement agencies. Russia's foreign policy has turned out to be self-fulfilling: by perpetually denouncing enemies on every front, it has helped to turn many countries from potential friends into nervous adversaries.
The rise to power of the KGB veterans should not have been surprising. In many ways, argues Inna Solovyova, a Russian cultural historian, it had to do with the qualities that Russians find appealing in their rulers: firmness, reserve, authority and a degree of mystery. “The KGB fitted this description, or at least knew how to seem to fit it.”
But are they doing the country any good? “People who come from the KGB are tacticians. We have never been taught to solve strategic tasks,” says Mr Kondaurov. The biggest problem of all, he and a few others say, is the agency's loss of professionalism. He blushes when he talks about the polonium capers in London. “We never sank to this level,” he sighs. “What a blow to the country's reputation!”
Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
Comments
Oh, thank you, *thank you,* THANK YOU for exposing this twaddle!!! I read the original article in The Economist, and couldn't believe the bilge I was reading. Dr. Thorniley was right on the money in his take on what the West has to say about Russia -- where was he when The Economist allowed this kasha to be published?!?!
Posted by: Meg Lark | October 11, 2007 5:22 PM
Nick,
You are writing about the obvious...
I don't know if US "higher up" really believe in their delusions or if they simply propagate such fringe language for the sake of pushing the world in a pro-Western direction, the direction that subsidizes Western culture... And anyway, I think the Economist is a UK paper? Well, if so, the UK is just another lap dog for America anyway.
Regardless, the West today is so clueless, and so off target from the Iraq war, to Russia, to wmd to human rights to even what the heck capitalism is.
These looneys in the UK and the US actually think massive DEBT and sending jobs and manufacturing base to China is a good thing... These UK/US idiots actually that taking loans from China is called capitalism... that 7 million future foreclosures is progress. No wonder the same experts that THOUGHT their were 1000's of tons of wmd in Iraq are the same geniuses that believe Russia is sliding back.
Remember folks, the people writing the articles at the Economist believe Saddam did 9/11.
Jimmy Carter said it right a few days ago when he said "American's do torture".
And Al Gore has it right with his frustration that the biggest energy consumer, the US, does nothing about global warming.
And now, the US legislator passes a bill on what Turkey did 90 plus years ago is now deemed genocide back in 1915.
Gee, I'll sleep good tonight, it's really been bothering me for the last 40 years that America hasn't stamped it's opinion on Turkey.
So I ask, did the black population even have the right to vote in America back in 1915?
We still have in 2007 red necks driving around America with nooses attached to their trucks.
So while Turkey had issues 1915, you better believe blacks were still being strung up in America's 1915 - let me guess, it was for democracy?
And it took America till 1920 to ratify a new US law to give American woman the right to vote.
And now, Yankee know how wants to point at Turkey and yet again wave their brown finger and tell someone what was or what is or what should be.
It's all silly, really, it's not only funny, but at this point I laugh so hard watching George Carlin or the Whitehouse, they have really reached parity (no insult intended to Mr. Carlin)... and the article in the Economists is another example of a bunch of fakes pretending to know something yet have such a meaningless life that they need to point at others, analyze others and be oh so WHITE and offer to be the advisors, the Grand Pooba and the one that is all knowing.
The US is totally clueless about history, the present, or the future - all of it constantly gets rewritten for US growth and consumerism and hegemony... But America sure knows how to bomb Iraq baby, American sure knows how to kill Iraqi woman and children and claim it's for democracy and for securing all those wmd... and when it's all over, after dooping our beloved American soldiers into this massive con job, we Americans can't even take care of our soldiers where so many go bankrupt, and live on food stamps.
And maybe that's what it's all about. Maybe if America passes a resolution that Turkey did genocide 95 years ago that this very resolution will make the world forget for one pico-second what failures the Americans are. Maybe when America points at Russia's success and claims it's the FSB or the KGB running Russia, maybe it mitigates US failures and complete corruption.
As I write this, shaking my head for the Economist articles, I actually forgot about the fact the US is in such a shamble.
And now back to reality... $100 /brl oil, coming up in 2008... US missiles defense will be deployed but will be implemented and delivered like Iraq, Bush will go down in history as the worst president EVER, and Russia and the CIS will continue their recovery and will eventually send aid to the US as Mexico blows into a civil war around 2012.
And even if Hilary or Obama become the next president, nothing will get better in America and western views of Russia will remain the same for decades.
The economist writes what it writes not because of thought or knowledge but because of markets and merchendizing.
Posted by: Luther G. Quick | October 11, 2007 7:17 PM
Luther,
When did the Economist actually write that? At least Ames could cite chapter and verse, but guys like you just rely on unsubstantiated claims that all the anti-Americans just nod and accept as Gospel. You are just making stupid anti-American rants as usual. More people died in Grozny in 1994 than have died in Baghdad (a much bigger city) since 2003.
Come over to the real Moscow instead of the Russia of your fevered imagination - they're buying all the same Chinese stuff in America, the jobs Mexicans and Central Americans are doing in America are being done by Central Asians here, the middle aged guys are complaining "we don't build any stuff in this country, everything is imported" (sound familiar?) and Russia is indeed cash rich but running low on people - but we all know you think fewer people is better. When your homeland of Deutschland becomes an Islamic Republic around 2050, at least you can tell yourself you weren't overrun by Mexicans, ja?
The Church of Anti-Americanism requires never comparing the U.S. to other comparable countries as they actually exist, but to maybe Switzerland or the USSR as it proclaimed itself to be.
Yes our Congress is stupid, and the White House is adrift, and the American dollar is worth less than the Canadian dollar, all of which embarasses me to no end. But is America's government the entire country? Is Russia just Putin and Tverskaya? Of course not. As it is, inflation is higher in Russia, and if you go to the store to buy milk, bread, eggs and yogurt in Moscow, it costs nearly three times as much as in the evil Amerikkka, perhaps twice as much as in Manhattan. But I guess that's because of dollar hegemony or some crap like that, right?
Posted by: Captain America | October 11, 2007 9:29 PM
Yo, Captain America,
Ya know, if you really believed in your debating material, you would use your real name... but anyway...
I need to check on it, but Grozny loosing more people than Baghdad, I don't believe it... but what does that have to do with anything? You need to compare Baghdad to Grozny? why? Does it justify American failures in Iraq?
As far as Russians buying Chinese goods, well, at least Russia buys it with trade... what the heck is America doing? going deeper into debt, now that's capitalism?
And at the end of your rant you claim that America isn't the same as the American government, well, I would say Bush Jr is a spiting image of most Americans and Bush does and thinks like most Americans. Ya know, all these kids losing it in schools, going on shooting rampages, those emotions and that methodology reminds me of Bush in Iraq or missile defense systems in Easter Europe... The kids doing the shooting in America are behaving like US government - same damn thing...
And the reason the US needs missile defense is because America fears the rest of the world might be just like them (attack them). It's one big jungle out there and the US gov and population wants to run this to the end, it wants to out bomb, out market, out lie, out kill everyone else because the US is on it's death bed and it has nothing to loose. The US gov and even the FED with it's debasing of the dollar, all of it looks like a cry baby kid that looses it and starts shooting because it can't play within the very rules it help setup. And I speak of rules like the Geneva convention, ABM, monetary policy, balanced budgets, engagement of war, human rights and so forth... a bunch of friggen cry babies in America.
Posted by: Luther G. Quick | October 12, 2007 7:06 AM
Luther Quick sounds like a brand of Nestle powder...and how are things in sunny Minsk? Have you had a talk with Lushenko yet about why he can't get his act together like Putin? No, I guess not, that would require acknowledging that you might like some of the freedoms you enjoy as an American citizen instead of just hating your country.
Seriously, I point out inflation is demonstrably higher in Russia than in America, and you respond with sheer hatred of Americans? I point out that Europe's immigrants are demonstrably less assimulated, measured by their own responses to surveys and choice of a more fundamentalist brand of Islam than their parents, and you ignore it. And at least I can acknowledge that things are getting better in Russia, or for that matter, in China and India. But why does that mean that America is automaticlly losing? Who's thinking is closer to the zero sum of fascistic or communistic ideology here? Russia is doing it with trade? America doesn't trade anymore, or are we just sending money abroad and not grain, oil and gas, new drug patents socialized medicine countries rely on (but heaven forbid you acknowledge anyone freerides off of America), and software so many people like to pirate? Do Boeing and Microsoft not exist just as much as Gazprom? U.S. exports just reached an alltime high, even if I dislike what is happening to the dollar.
And on your favorite hobbyhorse, energy...why are you contradicting what Gref, Kudrin and all those guys have been saying for years now, which is that relying on raw material exports for more than half of Russian GDP is foolhardy? You seem to think being addicted to oil and gas exports is just fine, even as you propound Peak Oil theory, which probably wildly underestimates Russia (and North America's) actual reserves, by betting against human ingenuity and betting on doom and gloom. Paul Ehlrich never lost money on that one, but then again, he never was willing to put more than $10 grand on it with Julian Simon.
Bottom line - you are the anti-American mirror image of La Russophobe aka Kim Zigfeld. If I just substituted the words "Russia" and "Russians" for America and Americans, and "Putin" for "Bush", it's all the same old crap.
Posted by: Captain America | October 12, 2007 1:33 PM
Captain America,
Do a search on a new concept called "phantom GDP" by Business Week, and you will realize inflation in the Russia is lower (than the US) once you compare apples with apples... The US dollar has tanked very hard in the last decade, THAT IS INFLATION. And, the US calculates inflation with lesser entries of things like food and energy than Russia. Just brilliant, Enron would be proud...
So it depends on your accounting, or your books, chose the one that skews your numbers for you... But if you use the same books for Russia and the US, investors would jump off of buildings when they realize the US is bankrupt.
As far as Lukashenko, he's doing fine considering Belarus has little energy resources and if you swapped Putin and Lukashenko, things would be about the same in each country...
But imaging if Bush was running Russia? Or Putin was Running America?
Just for one moment, imagine Putin running America - THINK - no debt, no energy crises - no pissed off military - no space systems falling to pieces – no housing INFLATION followed by an implosion - and if Putin was running America, you can bet your ass he wouldn't invade Iraq unless he was damn sure he got a sample, at least ONE GOD DAMD GRAM of wmd before the invasion. He’d want to touch that sample before committing to that kind of war… but hey, Bush went to church back in March 2003 and god whispered into his ear that there were TONS of wmd…
Anyway, you evidently don’t read my beliefs on Peak oil and Russia's position. And even in your statement, you say "Russia is addicted to EXPORTS of raw material"... Gee, now tell me why America is addicted not only to raw material imports and finished goods, but tell me why THAT'S GOOD – America addicted to IMPORTS? And anyway, cheer up, Russia is projected to lower her raw commodities exports, and it’s HAPPENING NOW, it's in tax law and it's in the implementation of the economy... Gref and Kudrin want local consumption as apposed to exports, and it's my belief that this will exasperate peak oil for places like the US/UK/EU, but it will be just fine for oil producers and their allies... so you and I aren't at disagreement... but like a loyal American you can only see the PATTERNS of RIGHT NOW, you can’t see the TRENDS and plot into the future.
Like I said before, America is a unique and special country because only in the US can someone with down syndrome become president.
So Captain America, you want to see me speak positive about America? Well, I would, and I will vote for Ron Paul, and if by some dumb luck, Ron Paul wins, then America has a future... and regardless, if Ron Paul did win, I would still view Belarus and Russia positively as well as their leaders.
Ron Paul is the Putin for America... meanwhile, let's all get real, Americans don't want to work as hard as the Russians and Belarusians did in fixing their mess, nope, Americans want the next retard to come in, blame someone else and GIFT success to America by tuning thier 2nd mortage into an ATM machine... We learned that from the lazy ass, free riding British who like protecting Chechen terrorists.
Posted by: Luther G. Quick | October 12, 2007 3:18 PM
The article in The Economist appeared in either the September or the October 2007 issue, so it's current.
Posted by: Meg Lark | October 12, 2007 3:54 PM
Another incoherent, misspelled rant from a guy who can barely write English. No wonder no one thinks you ever actually lived in the U.S. Look, I live in America, and I regularly visit Russia, and I can tell you that food inflation in America is real - but the U.S. has a lot more domestic production to cushion the blow, whereas Russia has to import a lot more food because the Russian countryside has been hollowed out since Soviet times. Now you can call that getting rid of surplus people, and argue that fewer people are always better, but...what the heck does Putin have to do with Ron Paul? Or Bush's religious preferences? Nothing, these are just the loci of your sheer hatred for the country you claim to have lived in.
Look if I projected the current problems Russia is having indefinitely into the future, then I could paint a picture as bleak as what you predict for America - or Russia becoming a Chinese colony. And the same for Germany, your homeland, I notice that you completely ignore the Islamic question in Europe and whether Europeans are turning into dhimmis as a result of it.
The fact is, all countries and great powers have there ups and downs. To presume that America cannot bounce back like it did after the 1970s when people just like you were predicting that high energy prices and malaise had us doomed is to forget history. Russia has been terribly weak before too, and gotten strong, only to get weak again. The difference between you and me is that I don't see American problems as a gainer for Russia, whereas somehow the world you imagine is zero sum and American inflation is good for Russia. Did you know that an analyst from Troika Dialog (are they on America's payroll too?) said that worldwide food inflation was to blame for Russians paying 30% more for milk, cheese and butter this month? Or do you think Zubkov went to the supermarket in Moscow today with cameras because George Bush made him do it? You know the funny thing that surprises me about you is that you're not blaming the Fed for high oil prices and hence Russian inflation, for inflating the dollar and thereby making oil appear more expensive than it actually is...that would at least make more sense than your contradictory position that higher oil prices to kingdom come are going to stick it to America/UK and boost Russia, as if ordinary Russians will be able to afford to live in Moscow where oil is $200 a barrel. You also bet against American technology and know-how in assuming that America and Britain are too stupid to produce any alternative sources of energy, or indeed tap the 1 TRILLION barrels of unconventional oil in North America. Just keep rooting for it buddy and watch what happens when we start cooking billions of barrels of oil out of the ground in the Rockies with nuclear reactors. Or do you think the Greens will be able to stop it when oil is that expensive? I don't think so.
Posted by: Captain America | October 15, 2007 2:19 PM
Captain America,
You evidently believe that you will swoop into Russia with your cape and save them as you are so diligently doing in Iraq - Captain America. An interesting alias you must use... But you started your post yammering about my spelling, this is a clear indication that you are out of qualified debating material.
But anyway, Peak Oil will not allow the US to recover. You state or allude that the 1970’s the US recovered, well that was during energy issues that were POLITICAL (and so reversible), today’s energy issues are imposed by NATURE and nature does not compromise or negotiate. You are correct that the US produces so much food, but take note that most of it required massive energy input from fertilizers that are made from natural gas to pesticides that are made from oil let alone the massive amounts of diesel used in cultivation and transport. When the EU or the CIS produce food, the amount of food output requires far less energy input that the US. And I won't even go into the amount of steroids and antibiotics America uses in raising live stock. In assents, the EU and CIS are far more efficient & healthier… What you market about America is the BRUTE FORCE method of economics that requires dirt cheap energy resources and it needs massive amounts of it.
Russia and most CIS countries reached record crop yields this year, maybe due to global warming, who knows? But it’s also part of their recovery and much of it is do to keeping America at a distance and reversing the 1990’s of Western pillaging… Still, Bush want’s Russia to be like Iraq, remember when Bush promised that to Putin?
As far as your delusion that Western economics will tap into “1 TRILLION barrels of unconventional oil in North America”, please, dream on… You evidently need to lookup up EROEI to understand why that will NOT work. Your positive attitude will NOT change reality.
So, I ask you Captain America, I am warning people about peak oil, you are telling them not to worry. Who is doing the disservice to our beloved America if peak oil is real?
I post at the RussiaBlog to make it clear that 100% of US foriegn war/politics is about US interests (not spreading democracy or 9/11) and energy and people like you need Russia weak in order to subsidize your imploding American economy. I personally believe we can all be winners, and that the US can flourish, but people like you are too scared of change and prefer to continue raping and pillaging the entire CIS areas because of your lack of resources or IQ…
Well, today Caspian Sea leaders did a great job, especially signing the accord whereby no Caspian nation is to be used for attacking another, this is a DIRECT message to Rice in DC with her latest yapping that Russia is growing her military when anyone with an IQ above 1 knows that with all the military build up all over the world, it’s the US who has killed more children and woman outside her boarders than any other nation for the last 50 years and in the name of RESOURCES, not democracy.
Like Allan Greenspan said: “This is all about oil”.
And finaly, Captian America, the reason you keep bringing up that I'm not real is why? Maybe because you don't believe in your material? If you can't use your real name, then you don't believe in your own words or thinking.
Disclaimer: Chances are, I miss spelled something, but this is a post, not a thesis and was written in under 10 minutes, forgive me.
Posted by: Luther G. Quick | October 16, 2007 7:04 AM
Luther,
It's hard to address any points of substance, because I feel like I'm talking to a wall, and besides, your hatred of America runs so deep.
To the extent that I can respond to any matters of substance and not your hatred of America, evangelical Christians, or anyone else who does not readily accept that America is doomed...
1) You treat Peak Oil as if it were a scientifically proven theory. But just because Hubbert was correct about the U.S. does not mean anyone can predict with any reliability when the world's oil production will peak. As it is, you are arguing that high energy prices are the result of natural geologic limits, and I'm more inclined to believe that it has something to do with state-owned oil companies dominating the world market, and turning the screws now that India and China have tightened the marketplace. Just because they don't have the technical know-how (which yes largely comes from the Anglo-American oil companies you hate so much) to continue developing new fields or improve returns from existing fields in decline does not mean that the world is doomed to run out of oil, or that countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are going to become world powers while net importers like the U.S. and China will be their vassals.
2) Looking at substitutes solely from the point of view of right now ignores real alternative technologies, the fact that unconventional oil from Canada can now be tapped for $18/barrel, and naively presumes that environmentalists will continue to block nuclear power in favor of the current wasteful alternatives of biofuels, wind farms, and inefficient solar panels.
3) Farm prices continue to rise in the U.S. even though natural gas prices have declined in recent months, suggesting that while energy is important to food production, the wasteful subsidies Congress has lavished on Big Ethanol probably have more to do with it than higher ferilizer costs.
4) It did seem to me that you were blaming America for the fact that Russia is experiencing 30% food inflation right now, about three or four times the level of the U.S. At the same time, you argue that Russian and CIS agriculture is so much better than in the U.S. because it does not need so much energy to be sustainable. Yet the Russian government's own estimates are that the country imports about 30 to 40% of its dairy and meat consumption, respectively, nearly all of that coming from Europe, not America. So if CIS argiculture is so great, why do they need so many imports of basic foodstuffs? Perhaps the declining Russian population is a serious problem after all? Agriculture still requires people, and I don't know anywhere other than Luther G. Quick's rabid imagination where you can get more food production with less use of petrochemicals AND less labor. But again, you would probably blame an American dollar conspiracy for this development as well.
5) No, I am not over here trying to save Russia or presuming that I can do so. Russia will need to solve its own problems, as will Iraq once we leave, which should be very soon.
What I don't understand is why you are obsessed with trashing America or blaming all of the world's problems on one country, or why you think America's loss is somehow Russia's gain, or attribute to me the zero sum thinking that you constantly expound.
I also don't understand why you consistently ignore my pointed questions about the Islamification of Europe, or the other consequences of the European-Russian demographic decline you shrug off as not a real problem.
Again I ask you which is worse - a fiscal and trade deficit, or a deficit of people, who are never born and never exist to create the technologies and innovations that overcome these deficits? I think deep down you know the answer to this question.
If energy were the decisive question in world affairs, then Saudi Arabia really would be a world power instead of a basket case. Sure you can blame America for that one too, but the fact remains it was the technical know-how Russians developed and their expansion across Eurasia through ruthless tenacity that made them a world power, not the oil and gas fields of Western Siberia which kept the USSR afloat for a few more years in the 70s and 80s. Iran has tons of energy but can't even refine enough gasoline for domestic consumption. Chavez is spitting in America's eye but running the Venezuelan economy into the ground. Curiously, besides Russia, only the oil rich nations allied with the hated Amerikka (Canada, the UK, Norway, Brunei, Kuwait and the UAE) have done a damn thing with their oil riches, while the more neutral countries (Mexico) and the anti-American ones (the USSR, Iran) have basically either collapsed or become economic basket cases.
We could argue endlessly, projecting both America and Russia's present problems into the future, to the point that both collapse (America due to fiscal and social irresponsibility, and Russia due to not enough people and the collapse of the countryside) and all of our grandkids end up speaking Chinese (pretending for a moment that China also does not have a looming gender imbalance due to their cruel one child policy, and that the Chinese do not import a higher percentage of their energy from the Middle East than America!).
But what is the point of it, other than to satisfy some onanistic, twisted hatred of either country? That's what I can't stand, and why I continue to point out the insanity of your anti-American rants.
As for the personal stuff -I love Russians, and how they respond to adversity with humor and perseverance. Tonight I was on a trolly bus with a drunk Russian who joked that he would call Putin tomorrow and tell him about all the trams being stopped in downtown Moscow, in addition to the butter and milk getting so damned expensive with everything else in this crazy city of Moscow.
I have never rooted for Russia to fail or hated Russians the way you talk up the imminent doom of America or hate Americans (at least you're honest enough to admit you don't just hate Bush). I do not think a weak Russia is in America's best interest. A collapsing Russia would just end up with the Far East as a Chinese colony with southern Russia possibly turning into a haven for Islamic extremists. Neither outcome would be good for America, Europe, or the world. A strong Russia has always been a good buffer between Europe, China and the Islamic world, and saved Europe from being dominated by fascism.
Posted by: Captain America | October 18, 2007 1:40 PM
Captain America,
Pure nonsense... pay attention to EROEI... We could ping each other forever on this subject, but I never said CIS agro was better, I said they are getting better with respect to their recent history, but I will say when you calculate ENERGY, then their yield is HIGHER... But when you calculate in DOLLARS, then the US yield is higher… So it depends on your books… And you are confusing my HATE, I don’t hate America or Americans, I simply have a low tolerance for stupidity...
Most of what you said is delusional... Oil is now at $89, and Bush is yammering on about WWIII.
Our American economy cannot survive with out cheap energy and we will never see cheap energy again. And all this Rice, Cheney and Bush flapping of the mouth about democracy here and there or complaining about Iraq or Iran or dreaming of missile defense is about the US holding on with her fingernails to everyone else’s resources.
You assume that the $18 /brl oil from Canada makes sense, but it does NOT. $18/ brl works when everything else is static (prices). But, the price for Canadian workers will quickly double and triple, the price for strip mining, heating the tar sands, the water for the tar sands, and transport will triple and quadruple… Your $18 / brl (cost) will in just 2 years turn into $72. Why do you think they want to use nuclear power plants to turn tar sands into SUV fuel? Hint, hint, maybe because we are at the end of our ropes? Sure looks like it to me... It's got the same language and tone that US foreign policy has for Iraq, Iran, or Russia... pure garbage out of the mouths of the neocons...
Chances are your computer that you are using was made with $8 /brl oil, indirectly and directly (as the Chinese factories might be decades old, silicone, plastic made with years old machines). Our homes, schools and cars are made from energy from history, not today’s $89 / brl. And frankly most of our food today is affected by energy prices from history when you realize farm warehouses, some farm equipment and workers homes were build 10 years ago on average…
So we ain’t seen the effects (of energy) on the global infrastructure, the post 2000 capital equipment costs - YET.
As for live stock that the CIS imports, what are you talking about? Cheap stuff from Poland that even Germany doesn’t want, or are you talking about cheap American chicken in Belarus that I personally tried and found terrible… America is the most obese nation on Earth because of it’s unhealthy food – explain to me the health advantages of that. European and CIS food may not be delivered by the ton like it is in America, but it is healthier…
But anyway, probably the biggest factor effecting inflation of food prices in the CIS is actualy inflation of agro in the EU and the US... This is a global economy and unfortunatly, US inflation is spilling over... And to that, Russia and other CIS countries will rack up export duties on agro, as they should...
But, I hate to ruin your day Cap America but it looks like the World Bank announced today that Russia will be a donor nation, loaning money to the WB to help poorer nations. With people like you believing energy is unlimited and refuse to embrace change and let go of your war mongering foreign policy, eventually Russia will be sending aid to the US like Chavez has been sending fuel oil to poor American families.
I could post more put Captain America doesn’t produce any receivables for my business.
Posted by: Luther G. Quick | October 18, 2007 2:52 PM
Why don't you just join Al-Qaeda already if you hate America so much, seriously?
All those babushkas I saw on the trolley bus yesterday take no satisfaction in Americans driving fewer SUVs, all they care about is why the meat and dairy products they buy on fixed incomes for their families went up 30% in one month...and by the way, nearly all of those 30-40% of Russian meat and dairy product consumption comes from Europe, not evil Amerikkka...so who are you going to blame for that one? The Fed, for inflating the dollar? In that case, Russia is not so independent from America after all, and if it doesn't have anything to do with the U.S., then you might have to admit that America is not the Great Satan tormenting the whole world.
Maybe you could admit just for one second that higher energy prices are not so great for everyone in Russia, or that the real world is not a zero sum game where America can suffer and everyone else benefit? Who is the crazy ideologue here?
I should say that your anti-Americanism is a religion, and you are a religious fanatic, who simply assumes that anyone who disagrees with you must hold certain views. I have never argued that oil will last forever, that America should stay in Iraq for years to come, or that Russia's internal affairs are America's business and we can somehow solve all of them.
Why do you assume all of that, simply because I point out that the rest of the world has problems and suffers from high energy prices as well, and just having lots of oil will not make Chavez' petro-socialism work or make Iran, Nigeria, or Saudi Arabia world powers? And if there were a revolution in Saudi Arabia in twenty years, and Chinese troops take those oil fields, who will you hate then? Perhaps the new boss could be worse than the old boss? Perish the thought...
Even Putin recognizes you can't defend Siberia with Topol M ICBMs, it requires PEOPLE. It was Russia's talented (and occasionally ruthless) people that made it a world power, not just having oil and gas in Western Siberia. And it is having fewer educated PEOPLE, even if it has more money, that will hurt Russia in the long run if it cannot turn around the birth rate in the next generation.
Blaming one country, one race, or one group of people for all of the world's problems is a hallmark of fascist or Communist thinking. That's why I oppose what you are saying, not because I want America to dominate the world or think that other world powers will not rise with their own agendas and worldviews.
Posted by: Captain America | October 19, 2007 1:39 AM
Captain America,
Al-Qaeda?
Wow, you are out of facts, statistics and debating material.
Now the emotions kick in because reality doesn't suit you anymore.
People are starving in America and you think patriotism is smiling and talking positive about the US while putting Russia and the rest of the world that opposes hegemony and imperialism down.
With Bush ontop of the pile of ruble at the 9/11 site telling people to go about their business of "shopping". It's the nut cases, the psychopathic looneys and the fruit cakes like you who believe words can over come reality.
This is reality: http://news.yahoo.com:80/s/ap/20071019/ap_on_bi_ge/stretching_paychecks
Here are lots of people helping America by speaking the TRUTH, they must be part of Al-Qaeda acording to your dogma and politics erotica.
Tim Ryan:
http://www.therussiansarehere.com/vid/0-US-Failures/Tim_Ryan.wmv
Bill Maher:
http://www.therussiansarehere.com/vid/0-US-Failures/RealTime/RealTime.ChickenHawkDown.wmv
Chomsky:
http://www.therussiansarehere.com/vid/politics/chomsky-tailer.wmv
George Galloway:
http://www.ipenergy.com/media/GeorgeGalloway/George_Galloway-full.wmv
Ray McGovern:
http://www.ipenergy.com/media/politics/Ray%20McGovern%20-%20Ex%20CIA%20Analyst%20with%20Bush%20Sr..WMV
Jon Stewart:
http://www.ipenergy.com/media/us-failures/TDS/TDS-Gitmo-Suicides.wmv
http://www.ipenergy.com/media/dailyShow/Last_Throes.wmv
Posted by: Luther G. Quick | October 19, 2007 7:14 PM