Posted on 12/21/2006 5:36:38 PM PST by Proud_USA_Republican
The Kremlin has moved decisively to take back ownership of Russia's oil-and-gas assets, taking effective control of Royal Dutch Shell's Sakhalin-2 project and issuing a chilling warning to BP about its future in the country.
President Putin personally oversaw the signing of a deal in which Shell will hand over control of Sakhalin to Gazprom, while a key Kremlin official warned BP that it has no choice but to accede to Russian demands with its latest project, or face crippling sanctions. Shell and its Japanese partners accepted a $7.45bn (£3.8bn) cash payment for a stake of 50pc plus one share in the project in the far north-east which was until yesterday the biggest single foreign investment in Russia.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Am I to surmise from this statement that if it hadn't been for BP and Shell taking advantage of poor Russia that Putin would not have taken the democracy option off the table? ==
I do not understand the connection.
Now the wealth is back in the hands of the state, just as in communist times. If Putin was a capitalist, he would sell the assets on the open market for a profit to private interests. Instead he acts no different than his comrades Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales. The oligarchs at least operated under the pretense of capitalism. Putin has cast the mask aside and doesn't even pretend to be capitalist, consolidating Russia's assets in the hands of his fellow KGB apparatchiks, vile and disgusting traitors to Russia one and all who oppressed the Russian people and enslaved them to Soviet Communism for decades. Putin does not even regret his loyal service to the satanic KGB which slaughtered his fellow Russians. He is proud of his loyalty to the EVIL EMPIRE and refuses to repent of his crimes.
Now the wealth is back in the hands of the state, just as in communist times. If Putin was a capitalist, he would sell the assets on the open market for a profit to private interests. Instead he acts no different than his comrades Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales. The oligarchs at least operated under the pretense of capitalism. ==
Joe I understand what you mean. But for me as for the majority of Russians the oligarkhs are worser then Putin' apparatchiks. Th eoligarkhs is the pure mafia. The bandits who for sake of profits will "sell thier mother to whore house" as they say.
The mafia style rulings and mafia style killings, thefts and so on that is russian oligarks like Khodorkovskii and Berezovskii with Gusinskii. DO you like the country rulled by Mafia? For me the better if she is rulled by Putin' apparatchiks.
Putin has cast the mask aside and doesn't even pretend to be capitalist, consolidating Russia's assets in the hands of his fellow KGB apparatchiks, vile and disgusting traitors to Russia one and all who oppressed the Russian people and enslaved them to Soviet Communism for decades. Putin does not even regret his loyal service to the satanic KGB which slaughtered his fellow Russians. He is proud of his loyalty to the EVIL EMPIRE and refuses to repent of his crimes.==
It is not that simple. I'll try to explain you Joe. KGB was the bunch of the directorates (the agencies). The most of them are just same as you had in United States. Like the coast guards/immigrations or secret service which defended the goverment persons. Or "like NSA" the soviet goverment communication agency was the part of KGB too. Along with the intellegence and the counter intellegence - both were the parts of KGB.
Only one agency accually was the oppressor of people - the 5th Directorate of KGB. This one is dissolved now. And where to those operates went how do you think? To the oligakh mafia. SO taht ius where those oppessors are today.
Other directorates was trasformated into the independent goverment agencies like: SVR, FSB, FSO, FAPSI and the border guards. Putin in turn served in the predessesor of SVR. He was recruited after the univercity where he was graduated as the lawyer. You may get the picture as afr as you know that in american univercities the headhunters from goverment agencies like CIA or FBI prawl too. So he was just young lawyer turned to spy. Nothing to worry about:).
You should know also that the most bunch of Stalin oppressors the most notorious was executed during Kruschev rule and those oppessors mostly belonged not to KGB (GPU in that times) but to MVD/NKVD (the ministry of internal affairs in that times). SO if one really hates the oppressors of russian people one should hate russian police(militia) which was the part of MVD:).
Yeah I realize that Putin really returns the russian treasures into hands of goverment means the apparatchiks but in reality they are not that corrupt and greedy as the oligark mafia. SO from 2 evils I choose the lesser - Putin goverment.
The connection appears to be that once he convinced the Russian people that the big oil companies were screwing Russia and kicks them out, he then has the OK from the people to rig all the elections. He gained political capital by saving the Russian people from the evil capitalists and so he should now have only those who agree with his methods in power? We in America would not want to have one man with that much power. We rebelled against the king of England 230 years ago and made our own government.
The connection appears to be that once he convinced the Russian people that the big oil companies were screwing Russia and kicks them out, he then has the OK from the people to rig all the elections.==
Screwed elections? Putin?:) Putin has teh apporval rate at about 80% right now. He doesn't need to screw no elections. Or to kill no political opponents. Because he would win any elections lanslide.
You may as well ask me if I prefer Trotskyites or Stalinists! Oligarchs or Putin it is just the same! The oligarchs are simply commies who pretend to be capitalists who split up Russia's assets amongst themselves. It was never really a free economy, it was simply the continuation of communist rule under a new name. Now Putin casts aside the pretense and openly nationalizes the property, declaring "capitalism has failed, socialism is the only answer," when capitalism has never even been tried! The oligarchs Putin hasn't thrown in jail work hand in glove with the siloviki. Fridman, Vekselberg, Deripaska, they are all agents of Putin's corporate socialist state! Only the ones who tried to sell their property to someone other than the Kremlin have been sent to Siberia!
I agree to a point with your tagline about the Western MSM. They have their agenda, but here we have alternative media. In Russia, the State is taking over the free voice of the media. You are losing your freedoms my man, and there is no one left in the media to tell you what is going on. You only here the point of view of the central government.
There can be no serious political alternatives in Russia to Putin because it takes money to mount a campaign. Enterprises and businesses there have to pay exorbitant bribes to licensing agencies, tax services, militias, and courts just to stay in existence. If anyone did become a political threat to the Duma they would be taxed out of existence or taken over by the central government. This is not freedom my friend.
I think the Russian people expected to have the type of democracy that takes many years to attain, without any of the heartache that inevitably happens to get to that point. In that way they are much like Westerners: they want everything now!! No patience- too bad for you, too bad for the world.
"Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture or human happiness or quiet conscience" Isaiah Berlin
You may as well ask me if I prefer Trotskyites or Stalinists! Oligarchs or Putin it is just the same! The oligarchs are simply commies who pretend to be capitalists who split up Russia's assets amongst themselves. It was never really a free economy, it was simply the continuation of communist rule under a new name. Now Putin casts aside the pretense and openly nationalizes the property, declaring "capitalism has failed, socialism is the only answer," when capitalism has never even been tried! The oligarchs Putin hasn't thrown in jail work hand in glove with the siloviki. Fridman, Vekselberg, Deripaska, they are all agents of Putin's corporate socialist state! Only the ones who tried to sell their property to someone other than the Kremlin have been sent to Siberia!==
I agree with your opinion on oligarkhs. I hate them much more then you. But on case of Putin I respectfully disagree. I admit that his policy consists of some discrepancy and he HAD to jail all of those you are named: Fridman, Vekselberg, Deripaska, Abramovich and so on. I do not know WHY he did not that. For me it is the MOST failure of Putin policy for which he is to be critisized forever.
I can speculate that Putin maybe decided that he took out the most odious (Khodorkovskii, Berezovskii, Gusinskii) but tolerate others as the lesser evil. Who knows.
I do not agree that the russian economy is socialistic. I think it is quite opposite. There are almost none social garantees now. I can compare what I see today with what I saw during soviet times. Be sure during soviet times there were the real socialist state with huge social garantees. But not today.
In Russia, the State is taking over the free voice of the media. You are losing your freedoms my man, and there is no one left in the media to tell you what is going on. You only here the point of view of the central government. ==
I understand what you mean. But just check the number of russian nartional TV channels here: http://www.corbina.tv/transmission/. Each icon is just one federal level TV network like Fox, Abc, NTV and so on. It is about 21 now and keeps growing. It doesn't include no regional TV stations at all.
It is only TV stations. But in Russia we have 10 times more radio stations. If you turn to RUnet the russian segment of internet that you may multiply that number to 100 easily. They say that today RUnet has few dozen millions of web sites and it doubles itself each years.
Do you really think that all this controlled by goverment? It is laughable:))).
Western firms must beware of Kremlin
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=DBNK00E0QASZDQFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2006/12/22/urussia122.xml
(SNIP)
No-one believed the charges of massive environmental damage — allegedly totalling $50 billion dollars — levelled at Shell. Indeed once an agreement was reached to give the state gas giant Gazprom control of Sakhalin-2, it was quickly signalled that the environmental probe would be dropped: natural resources minister Yuri Trutnev blithely declared that nature on Sakhalin was now expected to recover "shortly".
Why did they agree to the contract initally if it was unfait? Thye must have planned all along tobe the scummy thieves shey are now showing themselves to be.
Screw Russia, i hope BP pulls out now, and sabotages everything left behind. I would be willing to take some losses so Russia gets crapola, and i am a stockholder in BP.
You're a sick man, and a hater! Russia was ripped off by the "oligarchs", who stole all of Russia's resources when they bribed the alcoholic Yeltsin. When you take something worth $100 from a child, and pay him one dollar, you're the thief. I could care less about BP or Shell; those are international conglomerates with loyalty to no one, and if you invested in BP that's your problem, not mine. Investing means taking risks!
Then why did they agree with the deals if they didn't do do will ill intent?
It's laughable you call me a hater over this, and your shows you think of russian businessmen as inept and stupid. You may want to seriously reconsider how you portray them in the future.
I am well aware ivesting involves risk, but it's done within the law. Those who violate contracts should be fully prosecuted, and crimes of this egregious nature and magniitude will likely get the perpetrators killed, or at least should.
I think you're a nasty character, and you don't spell too good. Where'd you go to school? Killing people for breach of contract? You're quite obviously not a Christian. Get a life!
and you don't spell too good.
ROFLMAO! You will never get the irony of this statement.
I wrote "good" instead of "well" so you would understand it, based on your spelling. That "real world" you live in is not where I, and I think the majority of Americans want to live.
You don't be doesn't too spell too no 'count.
It's pretty pathetic when a person has to resort to personal attack because they have run out of "legitimate" arguement.
yeah, especially when they pick on people that can't too spell no too good.
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