Posted on 01/05/2006 10:37:37 AM PST by Sleeping Beauty
Vladimir putin is one of those "Communists"
Putin also wants to see a communist Mexico (he also wants to see Russia return to the USSR)
Since the neos have been in power, neoliberals and neocons, Latin America has gone further and further left. Now we have outright communist governments operating the the western hemisphere. These people have been brought in to power in part due to the economics of "free trade". The US taxpayer funds corrupt governments in the form of aid-with-trade, unstopped illegal immigration and billions of dollars in remittances to those countries, in exchange for Foreign Direct Investment and other 'trade agreements' that benefit only the multinational corporations and the corrupt politicians that shill for them. So with funding from the US and no requirements relating to increasing the personal freedoms and individual liberties of the peoples of these countries, communists have had a field day.
they also ignore the treats from China and Russia.
I'm not sure Russia will participate openly. At least not until we appear to be falling.
But we lack friends, for sure.
Yep.
I pinged you over there.
Notice how they are all mouthing off at once now, from S.A. to M.E. to China and now Putin?
I'm sure it's just hot air, right?
I forgot to say that the Topel M SS-27 is road mobile, and thus can be put on a contanier ship and sent to Venezuela for launching.
Remember that the Russians also have that capablity. Also, the Russians stole the signatures for our subs.
The same principles apply with Russia, however Russia is taking a hybrid approach simliar to Stalinist times, while allowing a free market
Took me a while to go back and see what was written in order to reply to this intelligently.
What Russia is doing is simply copying the Chinese example, hoping for similar results. The Chinese Miracle is nothing of the sort; rampant economic growth in a country unaccustomed to it is easily explained -- there simply was NO investment in China prior to the 1970's, and since that time, it has increased exponentially. There simply is too much wealth laying around that the government cannot help BUT distribute. In simplest terms, we're talking about an economic climate in which the installation of a vending machine, as little at 10 years ago, was a radical departure. That vending machine assumes the following; a) disposible income exists somewhere, b) someone had the money to invest in a vending machine, c) someone has figured out that vending machine and disposalbe income can combine to produce a profit.
If you live in rural China, that vending machine can be reasonably represented to stand for 1,000% economic growth. We're talking about places that are so remote and so backwards that even small advances have astronomically disproportionate results.
The construction of a road, for example, in a region in which roads were heretofore unknown, represents massive economic activity; now you have people working, they are getting paid (even at what westerners would consider starvation wages) and, naturally, the road will help to bring goods and services to an area that had none of that in the past. It does not guarentee that there will be goods and services running along it, or that local businessmen will locate their corporations along it, or that even the local population can use it (what happens when you build a road and the nearest factory is 100 miles away, and you have no car, train or other efficient means of transport? What use is the road, then, except as a means of government exerting more control over you by making it easier to transport troops or police into your area?).
The Chinese, for all intents and purposes, looked north in the days of Gorbachev, saw what glasnost had done to Russia and decided the same would not happen to them. What apears to be capitalism is simply the government finding a new way to mollify the masses. They're working. They're making money. They have access to a bare minimum of the conveniences we take for granted, but which are novel in China. They can be presented with the trappings of material wealth, in a Western sense, without being given any RIGHTS, in the western sense. The vast majority of Chinese are willing to go along with it. For now. Mostly because what came before it is too terrible to contemplate for most of us.
The same is true of Russia with one, marked difference; the real economic growth in Russia is not controlled by the government (as it is in China) and not shared (at any level) with the general population. That wealth is the private province of selected government officials, organized crime gangs and politically/militarily connected people. Putin HAS to be that reactionary because he has litterally thousands of people building their own little kingdoms within HIS kingdom.
Oh, some other points as to why planned economies often fail.
They fail, mostly, because there is a distinct lack of innovation, or, because the innovatory (is that even a word?) instinct gets stifled by bureaucracy and custom.
I can cite three examples of fascist states, with planned economies, going tits up; Germany, Italy, Japan (we'll consider Japan fascist, although there was more to it than that, for the sake of this example):
In the case of Germany, discounting the strategic reasons for defeat, we can see that while the Germans were certainly innovative (first operational jet fighter, rocket propulsion, first assault rifle, etc), that innovation tended to get squashed by political factors. Let's take, for example, the ME-262. It was first designed in 1940 and flew in 1942. Hitler ordered it to be redesigned as a bomber (he was obsessed with the offensive), which slowed production of the fighter version (which was even more urgently needed) untill 1944. By that time, lack of materials, fuel, and a shortage of trained pilots, ensured that no more than afew hundred ME-262's got into the air, at the height of the Allied bombing campaign.
Innovation stifled by the will of the dictator.
In the case of Italy, the Italians possessed (at the time) the 4th largest Navy in the world. It was technically superior to the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean theatre (both in numbers and quality) and had a Naval Air force which was second to no other European power. Italian domination of the Med should have been no contest. However, Mussolini had forbidden the Italian Navy to contest the seas with the British for the simple reason that the fleet, which had been built at great expense, was simply too valueable to risk. It was this thinking that had also helped doom the Kaiser's fleet in the First World War. When the Italian Navy did find itself engaged by the British (Capa Matapan, for example), it found itself 'outgunned' not by British ships but by British determination to fight a decisive sea battle. The Italian fleet spent the majority of the war in port, and could not guarentee the passage of men and material to Nroth Africa, nor could it prevent the British from reinforcing it's forces in North Africa, with disasterous results.
A technologically superior weapon simply cast aside because it was built as a political showpiece, by order of the dictator.
As for Japan, this is even a more marked example of a lack of innovation, or even simple logic, but this was based more upon institutional custom and lack of co-ordination than it was a lack of true innovation. At the beginning of the Pacific War against the Western Allies, the Japanese Army, Navy and Civilian industries all maintained separate merchant fleets. These ships were dedicated to each of the services and could not be used for any other purpose. So, when a Japanese Naval transport stopped in Java (for example) to drop off spare parts or aviation fuel, if there was no designated Navy cargo to bring back, the ship returned to Japan empty. It would not be allowed to bring back Army troops for redeployment or perhaps pick up several thousand tons of Javan oil for Japanese industry. This lack of co-ordination was cultural. The Army, Navy and Industry were simply asked by the government "How much shipping do you need?" and given what was available. That these needs were always underestimated was source of shame to the people who had come up with the figures to begin with, and in Japanese culture, there is nothing worse than being wrong, never mind being grossly wrong. So, nothing would be said to the higher ups, and the thought of asking a rival service to borrow some of it's shipping or to better co-ordinate it, was simply impossible.
Japan lost the war (one of the reasons why, anyway) because it's culture did not allow (in a sense) for the rectification of a simple, reasonable mistake. It went to war without the ability to adequately supply it's far-flung empire, especially after the American submarine campaign got under way in earnest.
Mexico then will buy 10 million Kalashnikov rifles from Russia.
What? They haven't already done that? Where do the cartels get their uzis?
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