Pipeline plans $8 Billion dollars
Bribes $16 Billion Dollars
Spending $24 Billion on absolutly nothing

Priceless.

I'm with Mike. It's easier to negotiate from the top. Where I differ is that decent is what refines, develops and can keep moving us ahead. Change is essential. I don't want to hear them yell “Tiimmbeerrr”. I'll take no sense of “I told ya so” and I'd like to feel as if my children won't have to deal the aftermath of our over indulgences.

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89 300E
79 240D
72 Westy
63 Bug sunroof
85 Jeep CJ7
86 Chevy 6.2l diesel PU

"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
Marcus Aurelius

HuhHuh. Russia is dead. They have nothing. They are bankrupt we beat them and have nothing to fear from them.

Remind me how we've been getting to the space station again and who has more natural resources than we do. I forget.

While the cold war is officially over, the time period denoted by the “war” served as an incubation period for both government and business to develop the packaging and selling of fear to the citizens into a high science, and develop a pattern for this kind of propaganda that continues to this day.

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...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

I wish I could learn how to phrase things like you do! You are very good at saying things in a non-confrontational way. (and I agree!)

Thanks but there are some here who would probably not agree with that assessment. Whatever humble talents I may have are due to years of observing the saintly behavior of PaulC.

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...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

If Russia can somehow emasculate the kleptocracy without engaging in another violent civil war it will be a major miracle. It looks like Russia is instead, slowly slipping into the worst unholy marriage of government bureaucracy and business interests.

B

....not unlike the USA where we’ve learned that you can be a kleptocracy as long as you support the rulers through “tax reduction” and at the same time suppress the masses by fear of rising costs.


WASHINGTON, March 26 — It was after midnight and every lawmaker in the committee room wanted to go home, but there was still time to sweeten a deal encouraging oil and gas companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/business/27royalties.html

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...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

Good grief, Tracy, do you honestly see Russia's government and businesses as not unlike that of the USA? The example you provide is so entirely different from the Russian methodology as to be unrecognizable. I suggest that you spend some time reviewing what is going on in the Rodina.

B

So you are suggesting one kind of theft is qualitatively different than another or merely quantitatively different?

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...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

I dispute the use of the word, "theft."

We have armies of lawyers mining for an opportunity to sue companies that step out of line. And they do sue and they do win.

We have armies of lawyers and many cadres of special interest groups and jealously, even poisonously antagonistic political parties that are eager to catch each other with a hand in the till.

Thus, there are both qualitaive and quantitative differences between the descent of the Russian emergent democracy into a strange mafia-bureaucracy marriage in which outside investigators are murdered.

Maintaining a sense of proportion is very important. Is the USA perfect, hell no, far from it. In my own little corner I know of all kinds of kniving and back-scratching. Most of it probably doesn't rise to the level of illegality. It sure as hell doesn't involve murder.

B

I disagree with your characterization. The thefts we describe are only a matter of scale. Due to a large scale of the hand out to the oil companies, you make the statement of the act being defensible, and by extension just. That some rationalizations are “defensible” in your term, speaks only to acceptance of things done large…. enough. The line “steal a little and they put you in jail; steal a lot and they make you king” comes to mind, but perhaps it should be “…steal a lot and give it to the rulers to keep you king” would be more accurate, if not more cynical.

But I don’t want to get into a grunt fest over the definition of kleptocracy or theft. All one has to do is look at any of the corruption that takes place in government, and it makes it hard to hide the fact, even behind a guise of defensibility.

Instead, lets talk for a moment about justice and the role it plays in human nature.

Did justice have any role in the cold war? Here we have fear mongering done on a scale never before seen. Employing the bulk of resources of many nations, in what was ultimately a hollow pursuit. The pursuit was about nothing more, and nothing less than the right to threaten to destroy each other. All parties told their citizens that they were defending their right to exist, when really all they were doing was to threaten the other guys right to exist. Fully a generation of changed ideology and even a distorted conception of justice sprang from this dark aggression called the cold war.

Despite our protestations and rigorous defense of our life style, human nature and human skills the world over really is a common denominator. As a result the logical and practical conclusion of the cold war was a stalemate. The common term we’ve come to use for the stalemate was, and is, “MAD.”

Now the irony here exists on many levels. One is that this stalemate is perhaps the greatest achievement justice has ever seen, but it has been a justice no one really wanted. This is because we don’t really seek equality nor justice; rather dominance which we call justice. Not only the USA but all nations. In fact dominance is a core goal of human nature. From dominance comes a perception of fulfillment we call security. Or so we would like to believe. When nations pursue dominance, what exactly becomes of justice? Doesn’t justice get bent to fulfill the desires ruling group? Don’t the elected officials in our culture primarily serve that group? In our society is the ruling group the groups which makes the most money? Or is justice something else? Perhaps justice is a mere ploy used advance whatever ideology is convenient for those who gain most, in whatever metric one would use to measure gain… If that is true, then at some point kleptocracy becomes defensible as a means to advance justice. That is the point you seem to be suggesting

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...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

To me, theft is a legal term and you are abusing it by applying the term to a legal and public relationship. That is a political decision and as such, can be changed by a change in the political authority. Or it can be made illegal by Congressional action. But it is currently not illegal and so, it is not theft.

Want to debate the morality of it? That's fine. It should be debated and if enough people find it immoral than making it illegal is the next logical step. But at this time it is in the realm of morality and other folks may disagree with your characterization and therefore, find it neither illegal nor immoral and thus, dispute your entire claim. And that's as it should be--public transactions should be publicly debated.

This is far and away different from the system emerging in Russia. In Russia, taking a look at corruption in government can get you killed.

Concerning teh coldwar, there again you will find you have attached your morality to a political decision. You maybe justified but surely uou recognize that the majority of the country at that time did not agree with your characterization. Were they duped? Maybe. It may also be that you have misplaced your idealism. Is either contention provable? Ii don't know. I'd like to see it attempted. But because proof is so difficult, the event must remain within the realm of political opinion, disagreement and analysis. It is not something that can be objectively proven.

Bot

I'm jumping into this thread late, so excuse me if this looks like a hijack or repetitive. It's not meant that way.

Does anyone else find it odd that the administration has been so quiet about Russia feeding our military secrets to Saddam before and during the invasion? How is that not a big deal?

Why are you concerned about this. The documents that assert that the Russians did this come from the same cache of documents pointing out relationships with Saddam and Al Qaeda. As you have pointed out vociferously they haven't been authenticated. The Russians claim this assertion is false. Why would the Whitehouse make noise regarding this?

Now, hypothetically of course, if this were true it would shed new light upon UN involvement in Iraq prior to the war and why the Bush admin. would never have received support from Russia and France no matter the circumstances. Not to mention what the other documents have to say about WMDs and operational ties betwixt Al Qaeda and Hussein's Iraq. But that's a great big "if".

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-livin' in the terminally flippant zone