#1441
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +
cross-posting the Financial Times NATO propaganda piece from the oil thread

Moscow must act to get sanctions lifted or the economy will struggle, writes Anders Aslund

....The CBR appears helpless because it is. Whatever it does, the Russian economy will be destabilised. On December 12, the CBR raised its key policy rate by 100 basis point to 10.5 per cent, but the rout of the rouble continued. In the night of December 15, the CBR tried to play catch-up BY hiking its interest rate to 17 per cent, but the rouble’s collapse accelerated. Sergey Aleksashenko, former deputy chairman of the CBR, has called, in the Russian media, for a drastic rate increase to 100 per cent. If the CBR intervenes, its reserves will swiftly run out. Currency controls are likely but they have never been effective in Russia. No monetary policy can offer a cure, because the basic problem of frozen liquidity remains.

The liquidity freeze, the falling oil price and the financial havoc will inevitably damage the real economy. President Vladimir Putin has emphasised that as long as the rouble falls with the oil price, the rouble revenues of the state budget remain about the same. However, as Mr Aleksashenko has pointed out, the problem lies on the expenditure side of the budget. The cost of imports rises sharply with a falling rouble, and this will hit the state budget as well as all the components of GDP.

The current financial meltdown is bound to cause major damage to the Russian economy. On December 15, the CBR forecast a GDP decline of 4.5-4.7 per cent in 2015 if oil prices remain at $60 per barrel.

Since the root cause is the western financial sanctions, the only realistic cure is to have these sanctions lifted. The Kremlin can accomplish that by fully and credibly evacuating its troops and armaments from eastern Ukraine. No other action is likely to have a significant economic effect.



#1442
Post rating: +

While Medvedev is issuing weak proclamations about the ruble crisis, Putin's appointee to the Central Bank says that this is a good opportunity for "adaptation" and "to face new reality" (without bothering to say what she means by "new reality"), and leading Russian managers and bankers are calling the (their own) attack on the ruble perfectly "rational," the fact is that, while the West is behind it, Russian (quasi)state funds have been leading the charge. That is to say neither the sanctions nor the oil price nor economic fundamentals can or do explain the speed and steepness of the fall of the ruble. This means that the explanation needs to be sought in the agency, in well organized plan and activity, which go beyond mere speculation.

Some in Russia already call what is happening "the West's economic or currency blitzkrieg."

Here are few basic factors that have to be stressed:

  1. Russia under Putin's leadership has not implemented any significant internal economic defensive countermeasures in the face of the West's unleashed hybrid war.
  2. Responses to Western sanctions have also been very limited, piecemeal, and largely unreciprocated. The lack to response was, moreover, presented by the Russian leaders as a sign of the Russian government's virtue, maturity, partnership and good behavior.
  3. Thus, for most part, it has been "business as usual" for the Russian government in the face of existential threat and crisis.
  4. Medvedev is a perfect "liberal"--a product of the "privatized Soviet apparatus"--who understands politics as business or as business is understood by a Russian liberal.
  5. In fact, the Russian government has been planning to unleash and pursue more liberal, anti-social policies and more privatizations.
  6. When it comes to Surkov who was tasked by Putin with matters pertaining to Ukraine and about whom Strelkov complained so much, it has to be said that far from being, a bad, nasty boyar who went rogue, Vladislav Surkov is Putin or, to be more precise, Putin's hand and Putin's extension. In some way, Surkov has a greater liberal arts education. But the fact that Surkov is mainly a PR mastermind or one dealing with what is called in Russia "political technologies," says a lot about how the Kremlin approached and handled Ukraine and the conflict there.


Russian leaders are now assuring the public that the current crisis of the ruble is really nothing new or special, that such fluctuations have been here before. Partially, this is correct, in other sense, it is also very dishonest and misleading. For the crisis of the ruble is part of the intensified regime change effort launched by the US and NATO. If Strelkov once said that "by taking Crimea Putin started a revolution from above," the attack on the ruble launched both from without and from within (and perhaps primarily from within) does seem like a beginning of a Russian Maidan and/or of a counterrevolution from above.

Instead of helping to fix the situation, Putin's promise of absolute amnesty for stolen wealth and theft, which Russian mafias and oligarchs took abroad, made in his December 4 speech helped to pave the way to the crisis. Not only such a "policy" can be read as an untimely voiced sign of desperation (and how bad things were), but it also signals abandonment of principles and a morally grounded position, much like is Lavrov's declaration that Crimea ought to be seen now as a unique, special exception. Exception from the rules and principles. When one runs out of principles and reasons or from them, one starts asking for the privilege to be granted a special exception, a special treatment: Please, forgive us, we want to follow and obey your rules! For we don't have our own principles anyway!

In this connection, Dugin also declared that stopping the stunning offensive at the beginning of September in Donbass for the sake of the Minsk Deal was a "tragic mistake." http://dnr-news.com/stati/10244-obval-rublya-podgotovka-maydana-v-rossii-i-ataki-nato-na-donbass.html

So, if I put my cherished Socratic bias aside and look at the crisis of the ruble as a political economist, who once I thought I was, I would say that these seem to be key factors behind it:
  1. Significant limiting of access of Russia and Russian business to the Empire's fiat money or new lines of credit and financing.
  2. The fact that the Russian financial system is not really a system, but clearly a colonial part of the Empire's financial system and neither Putin or Medvedev did anything to change it.
  3. If in the 1980s and the 1990s, the Soviet and Russian elites threw their loyalties with the West and became "partners" (in their mind), many today's Russian oligarchs and managers are not that much different; they are doing what the West wanted them to do.
  4. Much of the attack on the ruble is from within--by Russia's state corporations and monopolies.
  5. I would also suspect a large and accelerated capital flight from Russia--compliment of the Russian oligarchs and Western intelligence services.
  6. Some might also possibly suggest that the melting of the ruble might be also a sign of a "deal" over Donbass, which Lavrov's latest statements suggest together with the stated result of the sudden meeting of Putin with Hollande, the Penguin, at Vnukovo" in the form of "unambiguous commitment to territorial integrity of Ukraine." And that would mean--judging from the statements and demands of the US, EU, and Kiev--also REPARATIONS. And if reparations (however crazy it may sound), we would be talking about very, very large amounts of money.


One can think here of the planned conference on a financial package for Ukraine or this seemingly strange and also relevantly recent interview of a possible British insider (MI 5?) Tim Bell: "Make Putin pay!" And the first figure which Bell gives is $500 billion.
http://russian.rt.com/inotv/2014-12-09/CNN-Vityanut-Putina-iz-yami



So, if I put my cherished Socratic bias aside


Catchphrase

#1443
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +
you would think the opponents of empire would quit hitting themselves, quit hitting themselves, quit hitting themselves
#1444
Post rating: ~
I think a third world war (which will totally never happen because hurrrr) might be beneficial in the long term...
#1445
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +
the swedes, who recently found and then lost a magical disappearing hypothetical russian submarine in their waters, reported a few days ago that a russian jet occupied airspace at an unknown distance from one of their passenger jets. the western press reported that thankfully, this was not as bad as back in march, in case, the press worried, you might have forgotten what happened back in march, or you remembered it and were overly worried about this being connected to what happened back in march, when a SAS flight took off from copenhagen and a russian flew right over their heads and barrel rolled and came back and flipped all of them off individually and spray painted "ARSENAL IS GAY" across their windshield
#1446
political car tune
Post rating: ~
maybe arsenal should quit waffling and just come clean
#1447
Post rating: +

wasted posted:

I think a third world war (which will totally never happen because hurrrr) might be beneficial in the long term...


yeah. i mean, the first two involved the slaughter of millions of mostly working class people, and cemented the power of western capitalists. but third time's a charm

#1448
Toronto
Post rating: +
People all over the world are now discussing whether a third world war will break out. On this question, too, we must be mentally prepared and do some analysis. We stand firmly for peace and against war. However, if the imperialists insist on unleashing another war, we should not be afraid of it. Our attitude on this question is the same as our attitude towards any disturbance: first, we are against it; second, we are not afraid of it. The First World War was followed by the birth of the Soviet Union with a population of 200 million. The Second World War was followed by the emergence of the socialist camp with a combined population of 900 million. If the imperialists insist on launching a third world war, it is certain that several hundred million more will turn to socialism, and then there will not be much room left on earth for the imperialists; it is also likely that the whole structure of imperialism will utterly collapse.

-Mao Tsu-Teng
#1449
Post rating: +

Petrol posted:

wasted posted:

I think a third world war (which will totally never happen because hurrrr) might be beneficial in the long term...

yeah. i mean, the first two involved the slaughter of millions of mostly working class people, and cemented the power of western capitalists. but third time's a charm



On the other hand: They destroyed the old regime in Europe rather thoroughly, to put it mildly.

And without them neither decolonization or socialism as world force in its own right would have come about.

So there is that.

#1450
Post rating: +
We are already in a state of world στάσις
#1451
Post rating: ~
Just not everyone knows it yet.

The question is not if but when this general condition will become conscious of itself, on the level of not just of public opinion and the movements of shifting forces in the ground but law, the presentation of a public and global definition of what is occurring/has occured. so comprehensive and compelling that even its enemies will be forced to acknowledge its reality, and react accordingly.
#1452
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +

RedMaistre posted:

without them neither decolonization or socialism as world force in its own right would have come about.

actually socialism is inevitable, due to marxist science. but thanks.

#1453
Post rating: ~

RedMaistre posted:

Petrol posted:

wasted posted:

I think a third world war (which will totally never happen because hurrrr) might be beneficial in the long term...

yeah. i mean, the first two involved the slaughter of millions of mostly working class people, and cemented the power of western capitalists. but third time's a charm

On the other hand: They destroyed the old regime in Europe rather thoroughly, to put it mildly.

And without them neither decolonization or socialism as world force in its own right would have come about.

So there is that.


Except the old regime wasn't really destroyed, and the world is bigger than Europe anyway. As for decolonization and socialism, only a severely bastardized version of either became very widespread, and only in the service of western imperialism.

#1454
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +++++

Petrol posted:

decolonization and socialism, only a severely bastardized version of either became very widespread, and only in the service of western imperialism

that's a ban

#1455
Post rating: +

getfiscal posted:

RedMaistre posted:

without them neither decolonization or socialism as world force in its own right would have come about.

actually socialism is inevitable, due to marxist science. but thanks.



*Profound Bow to the honorable Marxist Schoolmen* If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come.

Being already departed, present, and to come is God's Racket, and His alone.For everything else, there is politics.

Catechism completed.

#1456
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~
did anyone see the latest episode of selfie? it was called, "Perestroika"
#1457
Post rating: ~

Petrol posted:

RedMaistre posted:

Petrol posted:

wasted posted:

I think a third world war (which will totally never happen because hurrrr) might be beneficial in the long term...

yeah. i mean, the first two involved the slaughter of millions of mostly working class people, and cemented the power of western capitalists. but third time's a charm

On the other hand: They destroyed the old regime in Europe rather thoroughly, to put it mildly.

And without them neither decolonization or socialism as world force in its own right would have come about.

So there is that.

Except the old regime wasn't really destroyed, and the world is bigger than Europe anyway. As for decolonization and socialism, only a severely bastardized version of either became very widespread, and only in the service of western imperialism.



The Tsar, the Kaiser, and the Emperor, among others would beg to differ about the first bit. You can fake success, but you can't fake death, humiliation, and exile. The proof lies in the absence.

Bastard children > Platonic non-existent children.

And in any case, absence is far more useful than any positive achievement, if only because construction requires, first and foremost a place to build.

#1458
Post rating: ~
(and of course the world is bigger than Europe, the collapse of monarchies in Europe had worldwide consequences. Particularly if you consider the insider-outsider case of the Ottomans)
#1459
Post rating: ~
Stand up for Bastards

Edited by RedMaistre ()

#1460
Post rating: ~

RedMaistre posted:

The Tsar, the Kaiser, and the Emperor, among others would beg to differ about the first bit. You can fake success, but you can't fake death, humiliation, and exile. The proof lies in the absence.



The nature of European royal power has certainly changed, but in many cases only superficially. The Bourbons and Windsors for example are still going strong, while others like the Hapsburgs have simply become a kind of supra-bourgeoisie.

RedMaistre posted:

Bastard children > Platonic non-existent children.

And in any case, absence is far more useful than any positive achievement, if only because construction requires, first and foremost a place to build.


But we don't have absence, we have the bastards, i.e. proactive regression, which actually makes things harder.

My point is not that everything's hopeless, but instead of seeking the comfort of silver linings in history, maybe it's better to think about how and why revolution failed.

#1461
Post rating: +

Petrol posted:

RedMaistre posted:

The Tsar, the Kaiser, and the Emperor, among others would beg to differ about the first bit. You can fake success, but you can't fake death, humiliation, and exile. The proof lies in the absence.

The nature of European royal power has certainly changed, but in many cases only superficially. The Bourbons and Windsors for example are still going strong, while others like the Hapsburgs have simply become a kind of supra-bourgeoisie.

RedMaistre posted:

Bastard children > Platonic non-existent children.

And in any case, absence is far more useful than any positive achievement, if only because construction requires, first and foremost a place to build.


But we don't have absence, we have the bastards, i.e. proactive regression, which actually makes things harder.

My point is not that everything's hopeless, but instead of seeking the comfort of silver linings in history, maybe it's better to think about how and why revolution failed.



Perfidious Albion is a special case in and of itself. Though it was indeed democratized through the experience of world war i, world war ii, and the 20 years of turmoil that connected the two conflicts.

As long as you have acknowledged that royal power has indeed "changed" than we are more or less on the same page.....Going from divinely sanctioned rulers of a multinational empire to just another group of well connected bourgeoisie among others in a world that has during the same period of time become bigger and more crowded with competing capitalists and rival social actors: that does not really represent a positive gain over the course of century for a dynasty, one would think.

Regression relative to what....? Critique is the shadow of whatever exists; its not the goal, or an eternal present by which history can be faulted with backsliding from itself.

And when I said absence was useful, I meant that it was useful for the bastards. Because who else is there to enjoy the aftermath?

Certainly they don't need anyone's blood letting...

Millions of people die and millions more are permanently blighted precisely in order that a monstrously corrupt and all too human progeny no one foresaw or wanted will have room to live in.

And among that progeny is us. I doubt Saint Just, Robespierre, et al would have been too happy if they knew that the virtuous republic never panned out, while one of the distant results of their Grande Revolution was...whatever you would call this exchange, its context, this forum, the interlocutors themselves....

We are not Manfully Sentimental Neo-Spartans. Or specimens of Homo Sovieticus, for that matter. And it says more about those ideals that they failed than it does about us.

The bastards are themselves simultenously the only success stories to be had and the immanent critique of the earlier, more "heroic" periods that bought them about. They explain why revolutions fail, why they have to fail, and why they are obliged to fail order to bring anything to fruition.

So what you are trying to do and what I am trying to do is probably not that different.

Edited by RedMaistre ()

#1462
Post rating: ~
Well, I think we are mostly on the same page then. I am still wary of writing off the heirs of fallen royal houses so easily, but since I'm getting downvoted I think I'll save my energy. Suffice to say it's not something I raised for philosophical reasons.
#1463
Post rating: ~
Sorry about the WWIII comment Petrol, it just seems it's what the bosses have been flirting with for a year now. Let's return to the halcyon days of the Euromaidan conflict: "Donbass must be exploited as a resource, which it is. I don't claim to have a quick solution recipe, but the most important thing that must be done - no matter how cruel it may sound - is that there is a certain category of people that must be exterminated."
#1464
Post rating: ~
I forgive you.
#1465
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~

getfiscal posted:

apparently NATO is trying to build a rapid response force for eastern europe. that's got to be a stupid internal bloat project. one article said that they were having trouble cobbling together the forces for it. NATOs budget projections are all dumb. they want canada to double its defence budget. the US isn't going to waste its military budget on europe.



#1466
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +++++
cbc interviewed a british-russian guy and this was one of their questions:

"Could the Gorbachev period of the late 80s then, be seen as an aberration in Russian history with its values of idealism, humanism, liberalism?"
#1467
Post rating: +

Petrol posted:

RedMaistre posted:

Petrol posted:

wasted posted:

I think a third world war (which will totally never happen because hurrrr) might be beneficial in the long term...

yeah. i mean, the first two involved the slaughter of millions of mostly working class people, and cemented the power of western capitalists. but third time's a charm

On the other hand: They destroyed the old regime in Europe rather thoroughly, to put it mildly.

And without them neither decolonization or socialism as world force in its own right would have come about.

So there is that.

Except the old regime wasn't really destroyed, and the world is bigger than Europe anyway. As for decolonization and socialism, only a severely bastardized version of either became very widespread, and only in the service of western imperialism.

Hey dude who you callin bastard.

#1468
Post rating: +

RedMaistre posted:

We are not [...] specimens of Homo Sovieticus



speak for yourself

#1469
Post rating: +


http://en.ukraina.ru/news/20141224/1011604100.html
(resolution passed)
#1470
Post rating: -----
Yeah well it was a dumb resolution. Russia brown-baiting Ukrainian neoliberals in the service of its own neoliberal oligarchs.

Edited by blinkandwheeze ()

swirlsofhistory was probated until (Dec. 25, 2014 18:25:33) for this post!

#1471
Post rating: ~

swirlsofhistory posted:

Yeah well it was a dumb resolution. Russia brown-baiting Ukrainian neoliberals in the service of its own neoliberal oligarchs.



why is this idiot back

#1472
Post rating: +

swirlsofhistory posted:

Yeah well it was a dumb resolution. Russia brown-baiting Ukrainian neoliberals in the service of its own neoliberal oligarchs.



epic fail

#1473
Post rating: +
Hello, All! *waves* If you post in this thread, while your tax dollars are:

  • going directly to cleansing "subhuman" children from the blood & soil of NATO hinterlands,
  • igniting nuclear war with your mortal racial fantasy,
  • pouring into a vast propaganda apparatus that apparently produces baseless equivocations that are so far outside the realm of evidence that they end up in degenerate Sony war propaganda,

then:

  • you *will* have to provide some sort of evidence for your ludicrous claims, or face teh probation balloon, because this is a No Nazi Zone.


Thank you and a good night.
#1474
political car tune
Post rating: ~
who the fudge are those abstaining a-holes?

also donald, wtf with canada.
#1475
hi
Post rating: +
pro-Kiev atrocities are finally being picked up on by AI:

http://amnesty.org/en/news/eastern-ukraine-humanitarian-disaster-looms-food-aid-blocked-2014-12-23

Pro-Kyiv volunteer battalions are increasingly blocking humanitarian aid into eastern Ukraine in a move which will exacerbate a pending humanitarian crisis in the run up to Christmas and New Year, said Amnesty International.

“As winter sets in, the already desperate situation in eastern Ukraine is being made even worse by the volunteer battalions preventing food aid and medicine from reaching those in need. It is no secret that the region is facing a humanitarian disaster with many already at risk of starvation,” said Denis Krivosheev, acting Director of Europe and Central Asia for Amnesty International.

“These battalions often act like renegade gangs and urgently need to be brought under control. Denying food to people caught up in a conflict is against international law and the perpetrators must be held to account.”

Amnesty International has received information that the pro-Kyiv battalions, which include Dnipro-1 and Aidar, have blocked aid entering territories controlled by the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR).

#1476
Post rating: +
I saw a tiny lil bit of a al jazeera news bulletin yesterday. They were talking about new syria peace talks proposed by russia and to be held in moscow. The host was asking a reporter in London how seriously this would be taken, since "Putin is at loggerheads with many western leaders right now", and the reporter said it was a "complete sham" since Putin supports the Assad regime and the talks cant possibly be neutral. Then I jammed a piece of glass in the eye of my penis and the searing pain provided a blissful distraction from the fact Id voluntarily watched AJ for like 5 minutes
#1477
hi
Post rating: +
in another thread i posted this:

HenryKrinkle posted:

...and FWIW, there are neo-reactionary/neo-fascist blogs out there that do promote a pro-Kiev/anti-Russian line.



and sure enough i come across this personality:
http://leejohnbarnes.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/leejohnbarnes

turns out he's the former legal director for the BNP:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lee_Barnes

here he is defending FEMEN as a proud defender of white Ukrainian womanhood:
http://leejohnbarnes.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-great-femen-lie.html

here he is attacking nick griffin & other "nationalist" parties for their pro-Putin stance:
http://leejohnbarnes.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-ephialtes-griffin-strategy.html

here he is explaining why he thinks Putin is an enemy of white nationalism:
http://leejohnbarnes.blogspot.com/2014/03/putin-enemy-of-nationalism.html

#1478
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
"All of us still clearly remember the Soviet invasion of Ukraine and Germany," he said. "We need to avoid it."

"Nobody has the right to rewrite the results of the Second World War," he added. "Russia's President Putin is trying to do exactly this."

yatsenyuk lol: http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150109/1016706636.html
#1479
[account deactivated]
#1480
political car tune
Post rating: +

getfiscal posted:

yatsenyuk


more like yatsenYUK... oh it's already like that, nevermind.