Since the new war against Russia began in 2014, it has been the foreign plan that if enough pain is inflicted on the Russian people economically, especially their businessmen, they will rebel against their leaders in the Kremlin. Combined with economic warfare and fighting on the Syrian and Ukrainian fronts, the plan also calls for a home-front campaign against the corruption of Russian capitalism, its cronies in the Kremlin, and the party of thieves and swindlers which dominates the State Duma. Smith’s history demonstrates why this is bound to fail.
In time, the irony will be obvious that a century of US Government schemes for regime change in Russia have come to nought, except in one place today – that’s in Washington, DC, where a revolt against the sitting president, not seen since the American civil war, is under way. Until the American war against Russia collapses for domestic American reasons, all the war does is to make Russian regime change less likely. The unequal price Russians are paying for this war will continue growing, but the history lesson is that Putin is bound to grow stronger unless he makes Tsar Nicholas or Kerensky-sized mistakes.
Dances with Bears
Beggared for Choice – the History of Russia’s 1917 Revolutions as Guide to What Happens Next
John Helmer
Beggared for Choice – the History of Russia’s 1917 Revolutions as Guide to What Happens Next
John Helmer
And then there's reality -
ReplyDeletehttps://www.axios.com/thomas-piketty-on-the-russian-kleptocracy-2481736206.html
Thomas Piketty on the Russian kleptocracy
"...In other words, the uber wealthy in Russia have as much or more assets stashed overseas than the rest of the population combined holds in the country itself."
- so I guess we've gotten it all wrong that Putin controls Trump. Instead its the US "deep state" that makes Putin and his handful of Russian oligarchs strip Mother Russia clean and invest it in Trump Towers. Bad, deep state, bad.
I guess here the thinking is the US deep state was around in 1917 as well, caused the Revolutions, and the Czar was just collateral damage. John Helmer, another bright light indeed.
ReplyDeleteBloomberg view contributor and Russian ex-pat Leonid Bershidsky, no friend of Putin, criticizes the Novokmet-Zucman-Pikettystudy based on lack of availability of good data. The authors of the study admit this. (p 39).
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-14/piketty-zeroes-in-on-putin-s-pain-point
He recommends that the West go have Russian offshore wealth supposedly stashed in the usual places. He observes that would involve poking into secrets that powerful people in the West don't want exposed so it is unlikely to happen.
The interesting thing is that one believes the data, Russia had inequality around the same as the West prior to the Russian Revolutions, much lower until the collapse and now Russian inequality is back to approximate parity with inequality in the West. See the charts in the appendix to the study, in particular Figures 11a and 11b.
As usual, media reports greatly exaggerate what the authors of the study report, representing findings based on inference from questionable data as fact.
Correction: "go have" should be "go after."
ReplyDelete