In the NYT, Masha Gessen, author of a biography of Vladimir Putin, summarizes a long interview with the late Boris Berezovsky:
Berezovsky’s account had some holes, but he stuck to it his entire life. Whatever his exaggerations or omissions, he played a significant role in Russia’s transition from Boris Yeltsin to Putin. What strikes me is that years later — and up until his death — he still thought it had been a brilliant idea.
Berezovsky claimed to have been the mastermind behind picking a man with no public face, a former K.G.B. agent, to succeed Yeltsin as the president of Russia. He also said it was his idea to manufacture an entire nonideological pseudo-political pseudo-movement to serve as the new president’s base of support. Berezovsky also had another brilliant idea, which to his regret Putin did not grasp: creating a fake two-party system, with Putin at the head of a socialist-democrat sort of party and Berezovsky leading a neoconservative one, or the other way around.
Well, that's pretty interesting. In fact, the last sentence above might be the most interesting one to appear in the NYT this year. But judging from Google, about the only other websites quoting it have names like Korean Jobs Forum.
By the way, what would be an enthralling fake controversy for the fake parties to fake argue over while they mutually loot the country for real?
Well, it's all too sci-fi hypothetical for me to think about. Obviously, it can't happen here.
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45 comments:
"or the other way around"!!!
AKAHorace
Oh, the first commenter beat me to it.
A fake two party system... now where have I seen that before.
Robert Rubin = Berezovskyan
Sons of Single Moms = Putin
We've already got a pseudo-movement that acts as a lighting rod, drawing off people's passions and energies: gay marriage, panics over ghostly sightings of sheets, multi-culti demagogues, gender wars, tolerance fanatics crazed by hate, slut walks, the whole icky brew. Leftists used to consider the working class the vehicle for change to a more egalitarian society; now they look down on them and in fact try to undermine them. Thus supposed lefties can also be rich folks pushing for their brand of social justice and feel noble about themselves, certainly superior to the proles. Won't cost them any money, just the kind of leftism they prefer. They've probably swung over to gay marriage since as a group they've become decadent and spoiled. What good is money and power if one can't have the occasional bacchanal? Let the masses fight over the question of what bathroom a transgender should use, they'll just party on. The population is just there to send in their taxes and to provide cannon-fodder.
And imagine if these two fake parties created a 'Steve' who seems to exists solely in cyberspace (plus a head shot photo or two), but who few have claimed to have seen in person, just to complain about them-as well as a group of cyber-commenters.
• Gay marriage
• Gun control
• Abortion
• The place of the Ten Commandments on money
• What minuscule fraction of the budget to give Israel, Egypt, and other random places
• Marijuana
• Flag burning
• Which party loves Latinos even more than the other?
Don't forget Berezovsky funneling millions to Chechen terrorists in the form of ransom payments. A third, external leg to his putative stool.
This guy made Jay Gatsby look like a piker.
Indeed, the Repubs and Dems have perfected the art of social issue catnip. They have Americans at each others throats over what are, essentially, trivial issues. Be it abortion, birth control, gay marriage, "equal pay" for women, yak yak, they have perfected the art of pitting the populace against one another on these issues. To the point where the vast majority of voters pull the lever because of these issues.
Meanwhile, both parties are looting the treasury, flooding the nation with riff-raff, waging endless war, crushing entrepreneurship in favor of crony capitalism, and ever so steadily raising the temperature to boil on the repressive police state.
But it's a good thing we're all fighting over gay marriage, because if not we might just get together and hang them all from the lampposts.
I like Putin. I think he represents ordinary Russian Slavs a lot more than my government represents me which I view as hostile to straight white males.
Some say the Right is finished and the Left has won. But what is today's Left? Is it for the masses of workers and regular folks OR is it for the global elites mainly made up of Jews, gays, privileged 'creative' types, and handpicked mulatto allies?
And just what is the Right? American conservatives have been telling the GOP what they want, but all they get is more slouching toward 'gay marriage', more wars for Israel, more bailouts for Wall Street, more push for 'amnesty'--and nothing done about affirmative action and disparate impact, both of which were expanded by Bush II.
What kind of Left ignores the workers of America who lost their jobs to other nations and see their wages decline with influx of masses of immigrants? What kind of Left expends most of its energy in the name of 'gay marriage' and 'vagina'-screaming by privilege feminists who attend elite schools who, in their pampered-spoiled brat privilege, have nothing to do and consider having to pay for birthcontrol pills as 'war on women'?
What kind of leftist culture is obsessed with discussion about TV show GIRLS where idiots do nothing but screw and talk trivial BS? Or SEX AND THE CITY where rich privileged urban hos have nothing on their minds but money, cosmetics, and hopping from bed to bed with rich guys?
It seems like everything is converging. So, both rightism and leftism are effectively dead. American Right cares more about Israel and winning over hip hop Republicans than serving the white people who are the main supporters of the GOP. If anything, GOP is apologetic that so many whites support it. Okay, you don't want white support, then don't expect any in the future.
And then you got the Democrats with all them funny gays. Gays once used to take pride in how 'radical' and different they were. Now, they are so eager to out-Ozzie-and-Harriet and out-Fathers-Knows-Best straight people. What kind of leftism has gays as the main object of sympathy, and what kind of 'subversive' gay culture has gays trying to act like Mr. Rogers Neighborhood?
The wholesome gay executive of PHILADELPHIA and all-American gays of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN should have been clues as where we're headed. It's almost like gays are the 'new conservatives' while GOP is trying to be the new liberals.
So, it's all converging. Conservatives and liberals are all becoming convergatives.
Chicago,
some of these issues make sense (full disclosure, I smoke weed and have a lot of gay/fag hag friends). The trouble is that the left has made lifestyle, sex and race central issues as they make good drama. The right is as bad with their dramatics about free enterprise and the evils of any form of govt control.
Both sides make a fuss about politicians with interesting sex lives, and talk a lot about leadership, perhaps again because this makes good drama.
And yes, you are right, while the this goes on, the mass immigration, deindustrialization and gradual social break down make the masses more maneagable.
AKAHorace
"Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!"
This single "catch" justifies a month of visits to this blogsite...
"This single "catch" justifies a month of visits to this blogsite..."
I got it from an anonymous commenter on a previous Berezovsky post.
The Derb on Russian vs Anglosphere political elites:
Russia’s post-Soviet rulers are certainly very wicked people. They have sucked their country’s precious natural resources out of the ground, sold them on world markets, and pocketed the proceeds, leaving Ivan and Katya to trudge through freezing mud for a lousy wage or starvation-level pension.
But are they more wicked than the Anglosphere’s rulers, who have swamped their own people with millions of hesperophobic welfare-dependent foreigners from regions of low mean IQ and high mean criminality—mullahs, muggers, and moochers—just for the satisfaction of humiliating their own domestic enemies? Will they, in the long run, have done more to destroy their nation than our rulers have done to destroy ours? History will tell.
"By the way, what would be an enthralling fake controversy for the two fake parties to fake argue over while they mutually loot the country for real?"
Anonymous has a good list:
• Gay marriage
• Gun control
• Abortion
• The place of the Ten Commandments on money
• What minuscule fraction of the budget to give Israel, Egypt, and other random places
• Marijuana
• Flag burning
• Which party loves Latinos even more than the other?
To which I would add:
* Federal support for education (Race to the Top)
* Tiny adjustments in marginal tax rates (on earned income alone), aka big government v. small government
Spengler makes a good point about Putin and people like him. After Stalin, and then the deadly dull grey period of Brezhnev, and then Andropov, what else could Russia expect BUT ex-KGB men? The only people who would survive would not be Le Carre's "Karla" a monstrous fanatic but rather, low and cunning gangsters whose principal virtue was survival by flattery, blackmail, and extortion.
Berezohvsky was flattering and deluding himself. He could have emigrated immediately to say, Canada, and been the obscure teacher of Russian Literature, at some college, and there would have been no major changes.
The only men with ability, connections, money, and brains were men just like Putin. The journalist Misha Glenny in "McMafia" makes the same conclusion. Random chance could have produced a nicer or worse version of Putin, but some variation was all that would be produced by Stalin, Kruschev, Brezhnev, and Andropov.
And politics in Russia are very, very real.
"• Gay marriage
• Gun control
• Abortion
• The place of the Ten Commandments on money
• What minuscule fraction of the budget to give Israel, Egypt, and other random places
• Marijuana
• Flag burning
• Which party loves Latinos even more than the other?"
This isn't really fair to the Democrats. In fairness to them, they have run on, and implemented substantive (if ultimately destructive) policies -- for example, Obamacare. It's generally been the Republicans who have run on social issues in lieu of offering better alternatives to Democratic ideas.
Obamacare is a good example here. Republicans (goaded on by their autistic/libertarian wing) stupidly focused their opposition on the insurance mandate, when that's one of the reasonable, common sense aspects of the law (how else to prevent free-riding when you're making insurance companies cover people after they get sick?).
Of course, being Democrats, their "Affordable Care Act" has actually made health insurance more expensive. But they already won the election on it. Republicans would have been better off offering their own solution and running on that (and also pointing out that if we enforced our immigration laws, we would eliminate maybe a third of our uninsured population).
Indeed, the Repubs and Dems have perfected the art of social issue catnip. They have Americans at each others throats over what are, essentially, trivial issues. Be it abortion, birth control, gay marriage, "equal pay" for women, yak yak, they have perfected the art of pitting the populace against one another on these issues. To the point where the vast majority of voters pull the lever because of these issues.
Meanwhile, both parties are looting the treasury, flooding the nation with riff-raff, waging endless war, crushing entrepreneurship in favor of crony capitalism, and ever so steadily raising the temperature to boil on the repressive police state.
Still got ooooone more Russian Doll to go.
The media who makes the whole thing possible, and calls the shots, really. Both parties would have to adjust if, say, Steve were suddenly in charge of the media.
What kind of Left ignores the workers of America who lost their jobs to other nations and see their wages decline with influx of masses of immigrants?
Yeah, it gets old having people assume you're a conservative when you take a dump on "lefties." Actually, that's a lie, I get a kick out of telling lefties I'm not a conservative, right after I've rhetorically knocked all their teeth out and they're lashing out against conservatives. But my point is, I'd be fine with a racially nationalist leftism in charge. Go ahead,
Both sides make a fuss about politicians with interesting sex lives
By interesting, I take it you mean "subject to blackmail." That's the problem with adulterers and homosexuals and deviants in office, you know; we trust these people with state secrets and authority. We have to know they aren't being blackmailed into divulging those secrets or abusing that power on account of a honey trap run by flinty-eyed Israelis, Chinese, etc.
Will they, in the long run, have done more to destroy their nation than our rulers have done to destroy ours? History will tell.
If the cutoff date for consideration is today, then the answer is absolutely "no." A country can easily rebound from economic rape. Demographic rape is something altogether different.
On the NYT piece; ever notice how major pieces on the "Russian" Jewish oligarchs always have at least one Jewish author?
"I like Putin."
Lee Kuan Yew is a more impressive autocrat, IMO. Russia has raked in oil money for most of the past decade; beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg, how much has the average Russian benefited?
Politics in Russia are real, on the one hand the Pussy Riot folks want to be pretty much just like the West, feminism, disdain for traditional Christianity, mass movements of the Third World into Russia, demilitarization of the nation, the idea of the Sex Pistol's "Safe European Home." To those people, that's a good thing.
And Russia is FILLED with people from the Caucuses, and the Stans, and even Iraq, demanding Muslim norms rule everything (and traditional and non-traditional Christianity get junked). Up against this are the various ultra-nationalists who Putin has used as goons and then turns around and jails. As the mood fills him.
Corruption is MASSIVE and Putin has these huge spending plans requiring as the FT calculated, world oil to be at least $130 a barrel. If not more. Putin has seemed to fear most of all a movement from the ultranationalist side, which explains his co-opt and jail strategy. The Pussy Rioters get a lot a press, but are pikers compared to the Ultranationalists. Here is a sense of the guys Putin is scared of.
Most of these guys are from criminal networks, jail does not scare them, they have extensive contacts and friends there; they'd like to be where Putin is, and if Putin cannot provide critically his police and army with more money and better living, he's toast.
Yes there really is politics in Russia and they are really about something.
Does anyone have any idea what gays will shriek about next year after they get their gay marriage? Since it's not actually about marriage, but about subjecting everyone to the eternal shit test, what's next on the agenda?
On the NYT piece; ever notice how major pieces on the "Russian" Jewish oligarchs always have at least one Jewish author?
How many more centuries do Jews need to live in Russia and interbreed with locals there before you'd feel comfortable dropping the scare quotes around the adjective Russian?
Though we mock the GOP elites in trying to woo browns and blacks, maybe we are missing the bigger picture.
It could be that the gop elites are trying to do that to win over Jews, rich gays, and affluent liberal whites. One thing gop elites know is that southern white votes aren't enough for them to win. Also, gop elites know that the masses of white cons tend to be mediocre.
To win over Jews and rich whites in the north, gop has to shed its 'racist' image since Jews and educated/successful whites see 'racism' as the greatest evil. Also, Jews and rich whites in the north are now into gay sainthood. So, gop has to change there too. Also, there are lots of rich and powerful gays.
Also, Jews, rich whites, and gays don't wanna be seen as rich and privileged. That makes them seem greedy and crass. Their moral vanity and class anxiety--of being targeted as the 1%--makes them wanna be associated with 'progressive' causes.
Gop message to the rich is 'we love you, we admire you, and we worship you cuz you guys are so successful and rich.' Gop thinks this will win over most rich and successful people, but most rich people say to the gop, 'just go away! you're bringing us the WRONG kind of attention. We wanna be associated with nobles causes and seen for our good hearts than eyed with envy/resentment for our big fat wallets. we don't wanna seem like that fat stupid philistine nouveau riche pigs like rush limbaugh or donald trump.'
So, gop elites could really be trying to change its image to attract Jews and the rich northern whites than to really win over blacks or browns'.
A country can easily rebound from economic rape. Demographic rape is something altogether different.
They're tied together, though. Post-Soviet birth and death rates were affected by the looting during the 90s.
Western birth rates have been lowered due to economic changes, and this has been used to try to justify more immigration.
Berezovsky's proposal to create a fake two party system was too radical for Russia. They are used to the one fake party system.
It could be that the gop elites are trying to do that to win over Jews, rich gays, and affluent liberal whites. One thing gop elites know is that southern white votes aren't enough for them to win. Also, gop elites know that the masses of white cons tend to be mediocre.
To win over Jews and rich whites in the north, gop has to shed its 'racist' image since Jews and educated/successful whites see 'racism' as the greatest evil. Also, Jews and rich whites in the north are now into gay sainthood. So, gop has to change there too. Also, there are lots of rich and powerful gays.
The GOP has already been trying to win over Jews and rich whites to no avail. They have been pushing trade and tax policies that have made Jews and rich whites even richer. And of course they go to wall for Israel.
The GOP needs to win over middle and working class whites in the Mideast and Northeast who have taken a beating due to the GOP's trade and tax policies that favor the Jews and rich whites. If the GOP could get the white masses in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and New England to vote like they do in the South, they'd be OK.
Speaking of GOP outreach, for those of you who missed it, here is a great piece (with links to news articles) showing that the GOP has been promising to increase minority outreach since at least 1977.
Some say the Right is finished and the Left has won. But what is today's Left? Is it for the masses of workers and regular folks OR is it for the global elites mainly made up of Jews, gays, privileged 'creative' types, and handpicked mulatto allies?
Your mistake is in assuming that the Left was ever "for" laborers in the past, or that it's "for" homosexuals and NAMs today. The Left is never "for" any particular group of people (except maybe the few running the Party); it's about destroying traditional authority structures. At one time, peasants were numerous and in some places oppressed, so they were used to attack the king. Then factory workers were used to attack economic hierarchies. Minorities are used to attack traditional white/European structures of society. Now gays are used to attack the two-parent family structure. That doesn't mean the Left cares any more about gays and minorities than it did about the factory workers it now gleefully replaces with illegal aliens; they too will be discarded when they're no longer useful for attacking anything.
The right is as bad with their dramatics about free enterprise and the evils of any form of govt control.
Good grief, you'd think Ayn Rand were personally running the GOP and Fox News, the way people talk about "the right." Can anyone name just one mainstream Republican or conservative who opposes "any form of government control"? For bonus points, make it someone a few of us might have heard of.
Since a U.S. Congress Critter can be bought off with a small wad of frozen money, I'd say that the U.S. doesn't even do corruption correctly.
I think [Putin] represents ordinary Russian Slavs
Word is that's mostly show. Kind of like most ideologues along those lines (Chavez, Obama, etc.), they talk a good game while impoverishing the people they pretend to represent.
This isn't really fair to the Democrats. In fairness to them, they have run on, and implemented substantive (if ultimately destructive) policies -- for example, Obamacare. It's generally been the Republicans who have run on social issues in lieu of offering better alternatives to Democratic ideas.
I call bullshit on this. The Democrats did anything but run on PPACA (and the Republicans were stupid enough to select as their presidential candidate practically the only Republican who was in no position to contest the issue; genius). Instead, they went around screeching about binders of women and gay marriage, precisely because they want to get the electorate worked up about trivializing social "issues".
QED, dude.
"The GOP has already been trying to win over Jews and rich whites to no avail. They have been pushing trade and tax policies that have made Jews and rich whites even richer. And of course they go to wall for Israel."
But GOP is now figuring out that it cannot win over Jews and rich whites by kissing their butts. Jews and rich whites might want such affection behind closed doors but not out in the open. When GOP does that in public, the message is Jews and rich whites are so great, rich, wonderful, and powerful and we love them for their deserved power and privilege. Jews and rich whites don't want that kind of attention and publicity. They don't wanna be worshiped as the 1%.
They want people to see them as 'caring' and 'compassionate'.
So, paradoxically, for the GOP to win over the rich Jews and rich whites, it must show that it's full of 'compassion' and 'caring' for the 'oppressed' and 'disenfranchised'.
Now, some might wonder... but wouldn't Jews and rich whites worry if GOP sides with the non-whites against the rich class? No, because the rich folks already have the game rigged to protect their own privileges. Just read Ron Unz's article on how the Ivy Leagues are rigged for Jews and libs.
"This isn't really fair to the Democrats. In fairness to them, they have run on, and implemented substantive (if ultimately destructive) policies -- for example, Obamacare."
Weren't Ownership Society, No Child Left Behind, Huge Aid to Africa, and Wars to Spread Democracy not 'substantive' enough for ya?
Cali Corishev: the Old Left in America had a pretty good record of making sure the rising tide of productivity lifted all boats (especially those of the people doing most of the actual productivity). When America took a sharp turn to right beginning in the 1970s with the end of the Bretton Woods system (and continuing through the Reagan era and beyond) was the beginning of a substantial looting of the productive public.
Link.
Big business and government are the same thing, often staffed by the same individuals. That's the core reality that every shill for oligarchs worldwide wants to annihilate in your mind. The entirety of their propaganda is devoted to that end. For decades, they have propounded the myth that the two irreconcilable camps in the world consist of heroic producers on the one side (oligarchs, whose interests the public is near-ubiquitously urged to identify with) vs. evil bureaucrats on the other (e.g., FDRs and Putins pacifying grandpa with a guarantee of a little old age insurance after his lifetime of helping to turn the commonwealth's gears). In reality, they are playing for the same team, the same system - which will, by 2100 Anno Domini, fall of its own weight, in an economic, social, and ecological dégringolade possibly unmatched in living memory.
Cail Corishev wrote:
Your mistake is in assuming that the Left was ever "for" laborers in the past, or that it's "for" homosexuals and NAMs today. The Left is never "for" any particular group of people (except maybe the few running the Party); it's about destroying traditional authority structures. At one time, peasants were numerous and in some places oppressed, so they were used to attack the king. Then factory workers were used to attack economic hierarchies. Minorities are used to attack traditional white/European structures of society. Now gays are used to attack the two-parent family structure. That doesn't mean the Left cares any more about gays and minorities than it did about the factory workers it now gleefully replaces with illegal aliens; they too will be discarded when they're no longer useful for attacking anything.
This is very prescient. The people who created and brought Communism into being were fundamentally selfish, power hungry, very deceitful and without conscience. High IQ criminals, really. It is difficult for fundamentally honest people to not want or tend to take people at their words, so we mistakenly think that these people actually cared about the various classes they exploited in their will to power.
If there is a silver lining to this cloud, it is how many of these cut-throat, lying murderers ended up being killed in turn by their own party, in the Great Purge etc. along with their families as well. Even Stalin himself was probably murdered.
Cail Corishev: the Old Left in America had a pretty good record of making sure the rising tide of productivity lifted all boats (especially those of the people doing most of the actual productivity).
Blind squirrels, nuts.
To the extent that there was an Old Left that encouraged any kind of rising tide, it wasn't much of a "Left." The whole purpose of the left is to tear down the power structure, which you can't do very well if the people at the bottom are comfortable and well-fed. Real leftists want everyone poor and desperate and ready to revolt, not everyone rich and satisfied.
Cail Corishev is right.
The Left wants everyone poor and desperate so they are ready to revolt at a moment's notice.
The Left invented the Civil Rights movement as a cover to destroy the white union wage structure, simply because an $8,000 a year white union worker was more expensive to bribe than a $2,000 a year black share cropper.
The Left then followed the '64 civil rights act with the '65 immigration reform act, making sure no gains would go the free blacks.
Leftists are nothing but scum.
They are doing the same thing now to teachers. Because most teachers are white, they are using education quality as an excuse to go after them.
I remember an old movie The Great McGinty, you should review it. An hour and a half polisci course and fantastic acting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_McGinty
CC, no true Scotsman. There are many "lefts." Non-totalitarian and non-nihilist lefts aren't called "left"; they're called "old-fashioned Americanism" instead. For example, the 8-hour work day was a socialist program that aroused significant business opposition, but try telling a squirrel that.
The only people who liken the Social Security Administration to the Khmer Rouge (or German's current social programs to Hitler's war economy, etc.) are Randroids and silly people like Bill O'Reilly and his fans, who repeat diluted versions of such stuff.
Outside those circles, suspicion of leftism in general is, after all, deserved. The more vocal world-savers of the XXth Century committed their genocides in the name of "The True Left." (I think psychos latch on to any popular rebellious tendency.) Here's a good left-critical blog musing by Bob Wallace, who was booted out of Libertardianism for being a realist.
I think [Putin] represents ordinary Russian Slavs
Since the rise of Vladimir Putin, there have been following changes:
Pensions are now paid on time and in full.
Russia's total fertility rate has increased from 1.16 to 1.70, and Russian women are no longer aborting the majority of pregnancies. (In 1999, there were 1,214,689 live births and 2,181,15 abortions; in 2011, there were 1,793,828 live births and 1,124,880 abortions.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#After_WWII.5B37.5D.5B38.5D.5B39.5D
Every economic indicator – GDP, GDP (PPP), and per capita GDP – have increased significantly. Russian GDP (PPP), for example, has increased from $1T in 1999 to 2.4T in 2011.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Russian_economy_since_fall_of_Soviet_Union.PNG Per Capita GDP (PPP) has increased from 6314 (international dollars) in 1998 to 15612 (international dollars) in 2010.
http://www.indexmundi.com/russia/gdp_per_capita_%28ppp%29.html
All of these changes are unpopular with the Russian Jewish “liberals,” American journalists, and CIA-backed “civil society” groups who demand that Putin do the following: impose pension “reform” to further impoverish the elderly; encourage Russian women to have no child and to exercise their “right to choose;” and to allow Western banks to run the economy like they did under Yeltsin.
Anonymous said...
How many more centuries do Jews need to live in Russia and interbreed with locals there before you'd feel comfortable dropping the scare quotes around the adjective Russian?
---
???
What makes you think that jewish communities in Europe were historically in the habit of mixing with the non jewish populations that they lived amongst ?
Jews nowadays are outmarrying a lot but it's a really, really recent phenomenon.
The genesis of the european jewish population itself was a mixing event between middle easterners and southern europeans, but that happened more than 1500 years ago and between that time and the 20th century, the jews pretty much kept to themselves.
. . . and we will always refer to him as "Tea Party favorite Dmitri Medvedev"
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