The Dangerously Appealing Style of the Far Right

The Forty-Eighth Newsletter (2023)

by Vijay Prashad / November 30th, 2023

Emilio Pettoruti (Argentina), Arlequín (‘Harlequin’), 1928.

Before he won Argentina’s presidential election on 19 November, Javier Milei circulated a video of himself in front of a series of white boards. Pasted on one board were the names of various state institutions, such as the ministries of health, education, women and gender diversities, public works, and culture, all recognised as typical elements of any modern state project. Walking along the board, Milei ripped off the names of these and other ministries while crying afuera! (‘out!’) and declaring that if elected president, he would abolish them. Milei vowed not only to shrink the state but to ‘blow up’ the system, often appearing at campaign events with a chainsaw in hand.

The reaction to Milei’s viral video and other such stunts was as polarised as the Argentinian electorate. Half of the population thought that Milei’s agenda was madness, the sign of a far right out of touch with reality and rationality. The other half thought that Milei displayed precisely the kind of boldness required to transform a country mired in poverty and skyrocketing inflation. Milei did not just win the election; he won it handily, defeating the outgoing government’s finance minister, Sergio Massa, whose stale, centrist promises of stability did not sit well with a population that has lived with instability for decades.

Milei’s proposals to solve the downward spiral of the Argentinian economy are not unique, nor are they practical. Dollarisating the economy, privatisating state functions, and suppressing workers’ organisations are pillars of the neoliberal austerity agenda that has plagued the world for the past several decades. To debate Milei on this or that policy misses the point behind the ascendancy of the far right across the world. It is not what they say they will do to solve the world’s actual problems that matters so much as how they say it. In other words, for politicians like Milei (or Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and former US President Donald Trump), it is not their policy proposals that are attractive, but their style – the style of the far right. People like Milei promise to take the country’s institutions by the throat and make them cough up solutions. Their boldness sends a frisson through society, a jolt that masquerades as a plan for the future.

Fátima Pecci Carou (Argentina), Evita Ninja, 2020.

There was a time when the general mood of the international middle class centred on guaranteeing convenience: they hated the inconvenience of being stuck in traffic jams and queues, of being unable to get their children into the school of their choice, and of being unable to buy – even if by credit – the consumption goods that made them feel culturally superior to each other and to the working class. If the middle class was not inconvenienced, then that class – which shapes the electorate of most liberal democracies – would be content with promises of stability. But when the entire system convulses with inconveniences of one kind or another – such as inflation, the rate of which was 142.7% in Argentina at the start of the elections in October – then the assurance of stability holds little weight. The political forces of the centre, such as of Milei’s opponent, are trapped in a habit of speaking about stability while their country burns. They promise little more than incremental destruction. In this context, timidity is not always attractive to the middle class, let alone to workers and peasants, who require a bold vision rather than a fixation on mild cost-of-living increases alongside taxation holidays for big businesses.

This timidity is not merely about the character of the political force that seizes the moment. If that were the case, then merely shouting louder should win the centre-left and left votes. Rather, it reflects the increasing timidity of the centre-left and its political platform, deflated by the immense stresses and strains that have damaged society at the neurological level. The precariousness of employment, the state’s retreat from providing care for its people, the privatisation of leisure, the individualisation of education, and other strains have, together, produced overwhelming social problems (not to mention the impact of the climate catastrophe and brutal wars). The political horizon of large sections of the centre-left has been reduced to merely managing this decaying civilisation (as our latest dossier, What Can We Expect from the New Progressive Wave in Latin America?, points out). The persistent failure of governments to solve the problems of society has made politics itself foreign to large sections of the public.

Two generations of people have been raised in the world of austerity, sold falsehoods by technocratic experts who promise to improve their social condition through neoliberal economic growth. Why should they believe any expert who now cautions against the economic cannibalism promoted by the far right? Besides, the erosion of education systems and the reduction of the mass media into a gladiatorial contest have meant that there are few avenues for serious public discussion about the troubles facing our societies and the solutions needed to address them. Anything can be promised, anything can be implemented, and even when neoliberal agendas create catastrophic outcomes – as with Modi’s demonetisation scheme in India – they are touted as successes and their leaders are celebrated.

Neoliberalism has increased not only the precariousness of the global majority, but also sentiments of anti-intellectualism (the death of the expert and expertise) and anti-democratisation (the death of serious, democratic public education and discussion). In this context, Milei’s triumph is less about him than it is a product of a broader social process, one that is not exclusive to Argentina but holds true around the world.

Raquel Forner (Argentina), Mujeres del Mundo (‘Women of the World’), 1938.

Pillars of neoliberalism such as the privatisation and commodification of state functions created the social conditions for the rise of twin problems: corruption and crime. The deregulation of private enterprise and the privatisation of state functions have deepened the nexus between the political class and the capitalist class. Granting state contracts to private enterprises and cutting back on regulations, for instance, has provided immense avenues for bribes, kickbacks, and transfer payments to proliferate. Simultaneously, the increased precarity of life and the evisceration of social welfare increased the volume of petty crime, including through the drug trade (as demonstrated by a Tricontinental research project on the war on drugs and imperialism’s addictions, which will bear fruit soon).

The far right has fixated on these problems not in an effort to address the roots of the problem, but to achieve two results:

1. By attacking the corruption of state officials but not of capitalist enterprises, the far right has been able to further delegitimise the state’s role as a guarantor of social rights.
2. Using the general social malaise around petty crime, the far right has used every instrument of the state – which they otherwise decry – to attack the communities of the poor, garrison them under the guise of crime prevention, and rob them of any self-representation. This attack is extended against anyone who gives voice to the working class and the poor, from journalists to human rights defenders, from left politicians to local leaders.

The far right’s misleading representation and weaponisation of corruption and crime has placed the left at a deep disadvantage. On these issues, the far right has an intimate relationship with old social democracy and traditional liberalism, who generally accept the content of the far-right agenda, objecting only to their brash approach. This leaves the left with few political allies when it comes to these core battles, forcing it to defend the state form despite the corruption that has become endemic to it through neoliberal policy. Meanwhile, the left must continue to defend working-class communities from state repression, despite the real problems of crime and insecurity that confront the working class due to the collapse of employment and social welfare. The dominant debate is framed around the surface-level realities of corruption and crime and is not permitted to probe deeper into the neoliberal roots of these problems.

Diana Dowek (Argentina), Las madres (‘The Mothers’), 1983.

When the election results came in from Argentina, I asked our colleagues in Buenos Aires and La Plata to send me some songs that capture the current mood. Meanwhile, I buried myself in Argentinian poetry of loss and defeat, mostly the work of Juana Bignozzi (1937–2015). However, this was not the mood they wanted to put forward in this newsletter. They wanted something robust, something that reflects the boldness with which the left must respond to our current moment. This mood is captured by the rapper Trueno (b. 2002) and the singer Víctor Heredia (b. 1947), crossing generations and genres to produce the moving song Tierra Zanta (‘Sacred Earth’) and an equally moving video. And so, from Argentina:

I came into the world to defend my land.
I am the peaceful saviour in this war.
I will die fighting, firm as a Venezuelan.
I am Atacama, Guaraní, Coya, Barí, and Tucáno.
If they want to throw the country at me, we’ll lift it up.

We Indians built empires with our hands.
Do you hate the future? I come with my brothers and sisters
from different parents, but we don’t stay apart.
I am the fire of the Caribbean and a Peruvian warrior.
I thank Brazil for the air that we breathe.

Sometimes I lose, sometimes I win.
But it is not in vain to die for the land that I love.
And if outsiders ask what my name is,
my name is ‘Latin’ and my surname is ‘America’.

 

A New Mood in the World Will Put an End to the Global Monroe Doctrine

The Forty-Seventh Newsletter (2023)

by Vijay Prashad / November 28th, 2023

Tagreed Darghouth (Lebanon), from the series The Tree Within, a Palestinian Olive Tree, 2018.

Every day since 7 October has felt like an International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, with hundreds of thousands gathering in Istanbul, a million in Jakarta, and then yet another million across Africa and Latin America to demand an end to the brutal attack being carried out by Israel (with the collusion of the United States). It is impossible to keep up with the scale and frequency of the protests, which are in turn pushing political parties and governments to clarify their stances on Israel’s attack on Palestine. These mass demonstrations have generated three kinds of outcomes:

1. They have drawn a new generation not only into pro-Palestine activity, but into anti-war – if not anti-imperialist – consciousness.
2. They have drawn in a new section of activists, particularly trade unionists, who have been inspired to stop the shipment of goods to and from Israel (including in places such as Europe and India, where the governments have supported Israel’s attacks).
3. They have generated a political process to challenge the hypocrisy of the Western-led ‘rules-based international order’ to demand that the International Criminal Court indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli government officials.

No war in recent years – not even the ‘shock and awe’ campaign used by the United States against Iraq in 2003 – has been as ruthless in its use of force. Most horrifying is the reality that civilians, penned in by the Israeli occupation, have no escape from the heavy bombardment. Nearly half (at least 5,800) of the more than 14,000 civilians that have been murdered are children. No amount of Israeli propaganda has been able to convince billions of people around the world that this violence is a righteous rejoinder for the 7 October attack. Visuals from Gaza show the disproportionate and asymmetrical nature of Israel’s violence over the past seventy-five years.

Vincent De Pio (Philippines), Back to the Future, 2012

A new mood has taken root amongst billions of people in the Global South and been mirrored by millions in the Global North who no longer take the attitudes of US leaders and their Western allies at face value. A new study by the European Council of Foreign Relations shows that ‘much of the rest of the world wants the war in Ukraine to stop as soon as possible, even if it means Kyiv losing territory. And very few people – even in Europe – would take Washington’s side if a war erupted between the US and China over Taiwan’. The council suggests that this is due to the ‘loss of faith in the West to order the world’. More precisely, most of the world is no longer willing to be bullied by the West (as South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor put it). Over the last 200 years, the US government’s Monroe Doctrine has been instrumental in justifying this type of bullying. To better understand the significance of this key policy in upholding US dominance over the world order, the rest of this newsletter features briefing no. 11 from No Cold War, It Is Time to Bury the Monroe Doctrine.

n 1823, James Monroe, then president of the United States, told the US Congress that his government would stand against European interference in the Americas. What Monroe meant was that Washington would, from then on, treat Latin America and the Caribbean as its ‘backyard’, grounded by a policy known as the Monroe Doctrine.

Over the past 200 years, the US has operated in the Americas along this grain, exemplified by the more than 100 military interventions against countries in the region. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US and its Global North allies have attempted to expand this policy into a Global Monroe Doctrine, most destructively in Western Asia.

Stivenson Magloire (Haiti), Divided Spirit, 1989.

The Violence of the Monroe Doctrine

Two decades before Monroe’s proclamation, the world’s first anti-colonial revolution took place in Haiti. The 1804 Haitian Revolution posed a serious threat to the plantation economies of the Americas, which relied upon enslaved labour from Africa, and so the US led a process to suffocate it and prevent it from spreading. Through US military interventions across Latin America and the Caribbean, the Monroe Doctrine prevented the rise of national self-determination and defended plantation slavery and the power of the oligarchies.

Nonetheless, the spirit and promise of the Haitian Revolution could not be extinguished, and in 1959 it was reignited by the Cuban Revolution, which in turn inspired revolutionary struggles across the world and, most importantly, in the so-called backyard of the United States. Once again, the US initiated a cycle of violence to destroy Cuba’s revolutionary example, prevent it from inspiring others, and overthrow any government in the region that tried to exercise its sovereignty.

Together, US and Latin American oligarchies launched several campaigns, such as Operation Condor, to violently suppress the left through assassinations, incarcerations, torture, and regime change. These efforts culminated in a series of coups against left-wing forces in the Dominican Republic (1965), Chile (1973), Uruguay (1973), Argentina (1976), and El Salvador (1980). The military governments that were subsequently installed quashed the sovereignty agenda and imposed a neoliberal project in its place. Latin America and the Caribbean became fertile ground for economic policies that benefitted US-led transnational monopolies. Washington co-opted large sections of the region’s bourgeoisie, selling them the illusion that national development would come alongside the growth of US power.

Oswaldo Vigas (Venezuela), Duende Rojo (‘Red Elf’), 1979.

Progressive Waves

Despite this repression, waves of popular movements continued to shape the region’s political culture. During the 1980s and 1990s, these movements toppled the military dictatorships put in place by Operation Condor and then inaugurated a cycle of progressive governments inspired by the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions and propelled forward by the electoral victory of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998. The US response to this progressive upsurge was yet again driven by the Monroe Doctrine as it sought to secure the interests of private property above the needs of the masses. This counterrevolution has employed three main instruments:

1.  Coups. Since 2000, the US has attempted to conduct ‘traditional’ military coups d’état on at least twenty-seven occasions, with some of these attempts succeeding, such as in Honduras (2009), while many others were defeated, as in Venezuela (2002).

2. Hybrid Wars. In addition to the military coup, the US has also developed a series of tactics to overwhelm countries that are attempting to build sovereignty, such as information warfare, lawfare, diplomatic warfare, and electoral interference. This hybrid war strategy includes manufacturing impeachment scandals (for example, against Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo in 2012) and ‘anti-corruption’ measures (such as against Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner in 2021). In Brazil, the US worked with the Brazilian right wing to manipulate an anti-corruption platform to impeach then President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and imprison former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2018, leading to the election of far-right Jair Bolsonaro in 2018.

3. Economic Sanctions. The use of illegal, unilateral coercive measures – including economic sanctions and blockades – are a key instrument of the Monroe Doctrine. The US has employed such instruments for decades (since 1960 in the case of Cuba) and expanded their use in the twenty-first century against countries such as Venezuela. The Latin American Strategic Geopolitics Centre (CELAG) showed that US sanctions against Venezuela led to the loss of more than three million jobs from 2013 to 2017 while the Centre for Economic and Policy Research found that sanctions have reduced the public’s caloric intake and increased disease and mortality, killing 40,000 people in a single year while endangering the lives of 300,000 others.

Maya Weishof (Brazil), Between Talks and Myths, 2022.

End the Monroe Doctrine

US attempts to undermine progressive politics in Latin America, underpinned by the Monroe Doctrine, have not been entirely successful. The return of left-wing governments to power in Bolivia, Brazil, and Honduras after US-backed right-wing regimes illustrates this failure. Another sign is the resilience of the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutions. To date, while efforts to expand the Monroe Doctrine around the world have caused immense destruction, they have failed to install stable client regimes, as we saw with the defeat of US projects in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nonetheless, Washington remains undeterred and has shifted its focus to the Asia-Pacific to confront China.

Two hundred years ago, the forces of Simón Bolívar trounced the Spanish Empire in the 1821 Battle of Carabobo and opened a period of independence for Latin America. Two years later, in 1823, the US government announced its Monroe Doctrine. The dialectic between Carabobo and Monroe continues to shape our world, the memory of Bolívar instilled in the hope of and struggle for a more just society.

Sheena Rose (Barbados), Agony, 2022.

Today, the ugliness of the war on Gaza suffocates our consciousness. Em Berry, a poet from Aotearoa, New Zealand, wrote a beautiful poem on the name Gaza and the atrocities being inflicted upon its people by apartheid Israel:

This morning I learned
The English word gauze
(finely woven medical cloth)
comes from the Arabic word غزة or Ghazza
because Gazans have been skilled weavers for centuries

I wondered then

how many of our wounds
have been dressed
because of them

and how many of theirs
have been left open
because of us

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. Read other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay's website.

 

"The Third World War has begun - peace is an illusion"

Hopes for a peace agreement with Vladimir Putin are "mere illusions," Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine told British Telegraph.

SOURCE: THE TELEGRAPH TUESDAY, JULY 5, 2022 | 

EPA-EFE/ORLANDO BARRIA

Tymoshenko, who came to power as prime minister during the first Ukrainian rebellion against the Kremlin, warned that any deal that would cede part of Ukraine's territory to Vladimir Putin would only encourage Russian President to further seize the country.

The only solution, according to Tymoshenko, is to "finish" it with the complete destruction of the Russian army, despite the evident increase in the number of dead Ukrainian soldiers, writes the Telegraph.

According to the British newspaper, her remarks are a kind of rebuke to Western leaders who hinted that giving up parts of Donbas would be a necessary compromise for peace.

France and Germany are open to the idea of ​​handing over part of Ukrainian territory to Russia, despite harsh comments after the G7 summit when French President Emmanuel Macron said "Russia cannot and must not win".

Tymoshenko fears that as the economic cost of the conflict for Europe rises, the initiative to push Kyiv towards a peace agreement will become increasingly popular. "I am surprised that some countries continue to advocate a policy of giving in to Putin. This is unacceptable for all of Ukraine. A peace agreement is an illusion, the only way out is victory in the battle. Any peace agreement will be the first step towards the next war," she said.

Tymoshenko added that despite the losses, Putin wants to prolong the war in the hope that divisions within NATO will eventually emerge. She supported Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky's appeals for the West to send as many missiles as possible to Ukraine in order to somewhat balance power in Donbas.

These days, Ukrainian forces are reportedly losing up to 100 soldiers a day in Donbas.

Foto: EPA-EFE/ SERGEY DOLZHENKO

The political career of Yulia Tymoshenko very well outlines the unstable post-Soviet path of Ukraine, a period divided by internal conflicts, as well as Moscow's interventions, writes Telegraph.

In 2004, Tymoshenko participated in the Orange Revolution, which led to mass street protests that nullified elections rigged in favor of pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych. Tymoshenko was then called the Slovenian "Joan of Arc", and her braids were copied on the world's fashion runways.

However, the Orange Revolution quickly turned into internal strife, allowing Yanukovych to take power in 2010. Tymoshenko was then sentenced to seven years in prison on charges of abuse of office. She said the charges were politically motivated, and she was acquitted after the second pro-Western uprising in Ukraine in 2014, when Yanukovych fled to Russia.

Tymoshenko lost to Zelensky in the 2019 election, but supported him after the Russian invasion in February. The former Ukrainian Prime Minister believes that it is very likely that Russia will try to occupy other neighboring countries, primarily Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, as well as the Scandinavian and Baltic countries.

"My advice to those countries would be to not waste time and start building strong armed forces and become NATO members if they haven't already," she said. Tymoshenko also believes that Putin is ready to use nuclear weapons.

"He is ready to cross all lines and play against all rules, that is the source of his strength," Tymoshenko said.

TYMOSHENKO EVITA OF THE UKRAINE

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for EVITA UKRAINE 

EVITA OF UKRAINE
Interview
Yulia Tymoshenko on war in Ukraine: ‘It’s a chance for the free world to kill this evil’

Exclusive: Former PM discusses ‘cold, cruel’ Vladimir Putin and the west’s response to the Russian invasion

Yulia Tymoshenko in Kyiv in early March, two weeks after the Russian invasion. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Luke Harding and Dan Sabbagh in Kyiv

THE GUARDIAN

Wed 8 Jun 2022 

Ukraine’s former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko has described Vladimir Putin as “absolutely rational, cold, cruel, black evil” and claimed he is determined to go down in Russian history alongside Stalin and Peter the Great.

In an exclusive interview, Tymoshenko dismissed the suggestion that the Russian president was “crazy”. “He acts according to his own dark logic,” she said. “He’s driven by this idea of historic mission and wants to create an empire. That’s his hyper-goal. It comes from a deep inner desire and belief.”


Tymoshenko, a leader of the 2004 Orange revolution and twice prime minister, had several one-on-one meetings with Putin. They held negotiations in 2009 after Putin, then prime minister, turned off the gas supply to Ukraine. Tymoshenko stood for president in 2010, 2014 and 2019, finishing second twice and then third.

Close up, Putin was “always cautious” in what he said and always suspicious that he might be being taped, she said. “He is from a KGB school,” she said. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February, he made no secret of his belief that there was “no such nation as Ukraine, and no such people as Ukrainians”, she said.

His ambitions went beyond seizing Ukrainian territory and toppling its pro-western, pro-Nato government, Tymoshenko suggested. His geopolitical aim was to take over Belarus, Georgia and Moldova as well, and to control central and eastern Europe including the Baltic states, just as Moscow did in Soviet times, she said.

Yulia Tymoshenko and Vladimir Putin in Yalta, Ukraine, in November 2009. 

Photograph: Aleksandr Prokopenko/EPA

Tymoshenko was in Kyiv on 24 February when Russia launched a multi-pronged attack in the early hours. She said peacetime political rivalries and grudges immediately vanished. That morning she went to the presidential administration together with other senior opposition figures and met Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whom she ran against in 2019.

“We hugged each other and shook hands. Everyone was shocked, pale and afraid. None of us planned to leave Kyiv,” she said. “Everyone knew we should stand until the last. We agreed to support our president and our army and to work for victory.” Zelenskiy’s decision to remain in the capital and to “overcome his fear” was important, she said.

As Russian bombs fell, Tymoshenko took refuge in the basement of the modern office building belonging to her Batkivshchyna political party in Kyiv’s Podil district, which was hit several times by missiles. Asked if she was ready to shoot Russian soldiers, she said: “Yes. I have legal weapons. The Kremlin put me on a kill list, according to sources. We were prepared.”

The Russian government had always considered her an enemy, Tymoshenko said. She pointed to her support for Ukraine’s membership of the EU and Nato. In the 2010 presidential election she stood against Viktor Yanukovych, who was backed by Moscow. She blamed her defeat on the outgoing president at the time, Viktor Yushchenko, a one-time Orange revolution ally.

The following year Yanukovych had Tymoshenko jailed in a case widely seen as politically motivated. “Putin and Yanukovych imprisoned me. Yanukovych was never an independent player. He was always Putin’s puppet,” she said. She got out of prison in 2014 when Yanukovych fled to Moscow after the Maidan anti-corruption protests. Weeks later Putin annexed Crimea and instigated a separatist uprising in the east of Ukraine.

Protesters in Maidan Square, Kyiv, in February 2014.

 Photograph: Emeric Fohlen/NurPhoto/REX

Tymoshenko spoke in her downtown office decorated with the Ukrainian flag and photos showing her with western leaders including Margaret Thatcher. She praised the “unbelievable unity” of the “anti-Putin coalition” and singled out the UK and Boris Johnson for special mention, as well as the US, Canada and Poland. “We see Britain as a part of the broader Ukrainian family,” she said.

Last weekend France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said it was important not to “humiliate” Putin – a phrase interpreted as meaning Ukraine should sacrifice some of its territory in exchange for a realpolitik deal with Moscow. Tymoshenko said France and Germany – criticised for slow-pedalling on arms deliveries – should not be ostracised as Europe grappled with its worst security crisis in decades.

But she said Ukraine’s international partners had to understand that the only way to end the war was to crush Russian forces on the battlefield. Without naming anybody, she said they should not become “co-conspirators with evil”. She added: “There is no such thing as a peace agreement with Putin because it doesn’t lead to peace. It would lead to a new war several years later.”

The stakes for her country were existential, she said. The Kremlin’s objective was to “depersonify” Ukraine, stripping it of its language and culture, and leaving it weak and “atomised”. The civilised world had a unique opportunity to stop Russia and to prevent it from spreading “war, corruption, blackmail, disinformation and unfreedom,” she said.
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Russia had largely given up on the pretence that it was only targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure, Tymoshenko said. The murder of civilians – in cities in the Kyiv region such as Bucha and Irpin, as well as in other areas – was cruel and deliberate, she said, with Russian soldiers following Moscow’s instructions.

“It’s an inseparable part of their genocide against the Ukrainian nation,” she said. “What happened in Mariupol was even worse than in Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel. I’m convinced we will be able to take back Mariupol and to uncover the scale of the horrible killings there. It was a tragedy, a human catastrophe of an unthinkable scale.”

Considering her words, the veteran politician concluded: “This is a great battle for our territory and our freedom. It’s a historic chance for the free world to kill this evil.”

Queen Of EuroVision

Not since Dame Edna have we had a Queen worthy of her name......And if these creeps are protesting I say go Verka go....

Ukrainian nationalists are protesting the nation's official entry in the Eurovision Song Contest - a single by drag queen Verka Serdyuchka.

After all it's not like she is really imitating the real Queen of the Ukraine; Evita Tymoshenko.....


Ukraine aims for Eurovision glory

Ukraine is tipped to win with Dancing Lasha Tumbai

Twenty-four nations will compete in Helsinki on Saturday to win this year's Eurovision Song Contest.

Eastern European states dominate the finals after they scored a near clean sweep in Thursday's semi-finals.

Ukrainian drag queen Verka Serdyuchka is the bookies' favourite, just ahead of Marija Serifovic from Serbia.

UKRAINE

Artist: Verka Serdyuchka
Title: Dancing Lasha Tumbai

Hello everybody!
My name is Verka Serdyuchka
Me English don't understand!
Let's speak DANCE!

Seven, seven, ai lyu lyu
Seven, seven, one, two
Seven, seven, ai lyu lyu
One, two, three!

And the Ukrainian entrant was accused of slipping in a reference to the 2005 Orange Revolution by using the phrase: "Russia goodbye".

It later transpired the artist, a drag queen called Verka Serdyuchka, was singing "condensed milk" in Mongolian.

Eurovision’s got American Idol beat

Russian slam or reference to Mongolian ‘churned butter’?
But that spat pales in comparison to the current controversy surrounding Ukraine’s cross-dressing entry, Verka Serdyuchka (real name: Andrei Danilko).

VIDEO: Verka Serdyuchka's performance of "Dancing Lasha Tumbai"

The controversy surrounds one phrase of Serdyuchka’s song, where it sounded like the singer was saying "I want to see/ Russia goodbye."

Serdyuchka’s management has since denied any anti-Russian sentiment in the song and has said that the phrase is actually "I want to see/ Lasha tumbai," in reference to the Mongolian for "churned butter." Mongolian speakers have debunked this translation, though, and the real meaning of lasha tumbai is still a mystery.

This could be costly for Ukraine in a contest where friendly relations count for a lot of points (I guarantee you that Greece and Cyprus give each other top votes). Not to mention that Serdyuchka could be out-dragged by Peter Andersen, a famous drag queen who is representing Denmark.

Ukraine's extravagant drag queen vows to bring smiles to European song contestions.

On stage, Verka Serdyuchka portrays herself as a simple village girl living her dream. Not all her countrymen are beguiled by her charms.

Serdyuchka, a drag queen whose real name is Andriy Danilko, takes her extravagant costumes and ribald song-and-dance routine to Helsinki next week to compete for Ukraine in the annual Eurovision song contest.

When she gets there, a busload of Ukrainian protesters plan to confront her: Serdyuchka, they complain, makes this former Soviet republic look like a nation of philistines, tasteless peasants shaped like sacks of potatoes - not sleek, chic Europeans.

"Guys, let's not quarrel," said an exasperated Danilko, a comedian who dresses like a man when he's not in character, adding he was "sick" of all the criticism.

The 33-year-old performer, whom Ukrainians chose to represent them at Eurovision in a popular vote in March, said some Ukrainians are taking the annual pop song extravaganza - and the fun-loving Serdyuchka - too seriously.

"Let's dance," he said. "That's the message Serdyuchka is sending to Europe."

Danilko dreamed up his stage character more than 10 years ago, following a long Soviet tradition of male comedians impersonating over-the-top females for big laughs. He got them, and Serdyuchka became a hit across the former Soviet Union.

Audiences loved her risque humor, her bouncing dance routines and her colorful costumes - she appears onstage laden with gaudy costume jewelry, heavy makeup and elaborate headgear, including rhinestone-studded berets.

Serdyuchka won hearts by making good-natured fun of her homely looks and large size, and singing about the single woman's yearning for love. In one song, Serdyuchka sings: "Beauties have it good, everybody likes them ... But I am ugly. They ride in a car but I ride in the subway."

"She is a Ukrainian Cinderella," Danilko said. And the way he sees it, this is her chance to go to the ball.

Olexander Lirchuk, a disc jockey in Kyiv, fumes. His Europa-FM radio station is leading the protest against Serdyuchka's appearance at Eurovision, arguing that Ukraine should send a band that can showcase the country's hip, young talent.

Lirchuk rallied about a dozen protesters and burned the performer in effigy. Now he and some other Serdyuchka critics plan to continue their protests in Helsinki.

"Serdyuchka is in poor taste," he said, motioning toward his svelte co-DJ, Yuliya Vladina: "Look, that's a real Ukrainian woman."

Many Ukrainians, though, embrace the performer and his character, homely and awkward as she may be. Some say Serdyuchka even has the best chance to win the Eurovision contest, which is judged by television viewers from all 42 countries that participate.

"Serdyuchka fits Eurovision 100 percent," said lawmaker Dmytro Vydrin.

The annual Eurovision contest is no stranger to outlandish acts. The Finnish band Lordi, which performs in monster masks, was the shock winner of the competition last year with "Hard Rock Hallelujah." Israeli diva Dana International - who was a man until a sex-change operation - won the contest in 1998, triggering a bitter rift between Israel's secular majority and its ultra-religious minority.

Ukraine was thrilled to win in 2004, just a year after its debut in the contest; a singer called Ruslana - known for her leather-and-fur outfits - triumphed with an energetic piece called Wild Dances. As the winner, Ukraine got to host the event the following year, and as a measure of its importance in this nation of 47 million, President Viktor Yushchenko attended and presented the prize. Ruslana later won a seat in parliament.

Some accuse Danilko of dabbling in politics as well. He caused an uproar with the song he plans on performing. Many listeners say the lyrics include a veiled insult to Russia, with whom Ukraine has had tense relations since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Some hear the words "Russia, Goodbye," - but Danilko insists the phrase actually is "Lasha Tumbai," which is Mongolian for "Whipping Cream."

Danilko insists that he and his alter ego just want to have fun.

As he prepared for the contest, he filmed a daring video in which Serdyuchka and her mother - who wears a headscarf and goes by the name Mutter - visit a disco where they take turns playing with special glasses that reveal the crowd of young dancers in their underwear.

"I wanted to show that Ukrainians have the best bodies in the world," said Danilko.


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Crisis in the Ukraine

Despite all the protest flags and mobilizations of party faithful the reality behind the political crisis in the Ukraine stripped of the rhetoric;
a privatization putsch.

Competing Oligarchs and their political parties vying for the transformation of the Ukraine from State Capitalism to Monopoly Capitalism.

The death of the Orange Revolution and the continuation of the capitalist revolution in the Ukraine.

Although the two leaders are separated by such ideological differences as whether Ukraine should join NATO or more closely align with Russia, much of the wrangling has been widely viewed as efforts by their financial backers and power-brokers seeking to protect business interests. Several business groups are known to be vying for influence over lucrative enterprises — for example, ventures connected to the country`s natural gas transport system.

Yanukovich has signed up to a government programme that is broadly in favour of a market economy and a pro-western foreign policy. The government will try to complete talks on joining the WTO before the end of this year; it will allow private sales of agricultural land; and it will start to negotiate a free trade area with the EU. Those who have met Yanukovich recently report that he has made a big effort to spruce up his style and become a more "western" politician - perhaps his American PR advisers have helped.

Expensive Enemies
Even these expenses pale, however, in comparison with the real cost of the ongoing struggle for power. Viktor Yanukovych's return to power last year was not only his personal triumph and that of his Party of the Regions – it was also a victory for the many business interests associated with the prime minister, particularly the company System Capital Management (SCM), which belongs to Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in Ukraine; the corporation Interpipe, headed by Leonid Kuchma's son-in-law Viktor Pinchuk; and the group UkrSib, which belongs to Alexander Yaroslavsky and Ernest Goliev.

Consequently, businessmen sympathetic to the prime minister's opponents, the Our Ukraine and Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko parties, have been cut out of the loop. Incidentally, the last few months have seen privatization actively moving forward in Ukraine under the supervision of the government Property Fund (FGI), whose leader Valentina Semenyuk is a member of the Socialist Party, which is a partner in Viktor Yanukovych's "national unity coalition." Coincidentally or not, the decisions that the FGI has been making lately have been unfavorable for businessmen associated with Yulia Tymoshenko. The noisiest scandal involved the recent privatization of the holding company Luganskteplovoz: although Privat Group, which is owned by long-term Tymoshenko associate Igor Kolomoisky, wanted to bid on shares in the company, the FGI ruled that only two Russian companies, Demikhovsky Mashinostroitelny Zavod (Moscow Oblast) and the managing company of Bryansk Mashinostroitelny Zavod (both companies are controlled by the group Transmashkholding), would be allowed to participate in the auction. When Luganskteplovoz eventually went to Bryansk Mashinostroitelny Zavod for $58.5 million, the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko (BYuT) charged that the deal was illegal and initiated a parliamentary investigation lead by BYuT deputy Andrey Kozhemyakin, the head of the Committee for Privatization Issues.

The fiercest battles over privatization still lie ahead, however. This year the FGI is preparing to auction off shares in Ukrtelekom, and Mr. Akhmetov's SCM has already expressed interest. The Ukrainian government has also given its consent to a broad privatization campaign in the electrical energy sector. Shares will be offered for sale in numerous government-owned regional energy companies, including Prikarpatenergo, Lvovenergo, Sumyenergo, Chernigovenergo, and Poltavaoblenergo, and experts are already predicting that SCM, Interpipe, and Privat will fight tooth and nail over the spoils.

Such a state of affairs does not sit well with the rest of the heavyweights in the Ukrainian market, who are now determined to see a change in the current political landscape. In large measure, the actions of Yulia Tymoshenko and Our Ukraine are driven by the expectations of businessmen claiming offense at the hands of the government. "Yanukovych is lobbying not only for the interests of Akhmetov but also for those of Russian business, which the Luganskteplovoz affair shows," believes Vadim Karasev, the head of the Kiev Global Strategy Institute. "If BYuT and Our Ukraine succeed in getting early elections called and form a coalition that ends up holding the reins of power, the oligarchs standing behind them, i.e., Privat, will also win. That is the cost of dissolving the Rada – Ukraine as a business asset."

OP-ED by Anders Aslund, International Herald Tribune (IHT)
Europe, Thursday, February 10, 2005

The economic programs of the two presidents are remarkably similar. Both
advocate a free but social market economy. Both countries have a flat
personal income tax of 13 percent. Ukraine needs to catch up with Russia
in market economic legislation, but with rising authoritarianism, the role
of the state is growing in Russian business.
.
The critical issue is the property rights of the oligarchs. Putin has given
up much of his initially good economic policies by ruthlessly going after
one oligarch, leaving the property rights of others in doubt. Yushchenko
must avoid repeating his mistake. Yet he campaigned for the re-privatization
of Kryvorizhstal, the last, biggest and most controversial privatization in
Ukraine. Having been bought by Ukraine's two wealthiest oligarchs (Rinat
Akhmetov and Viktor Pinchuk), it is a palatable political target. The
challenge to Yushchenko is to limit re-privatization to the politically
necessary and then sanctify property rights. For economic growth,
Ukraine needs more privatization rather than re-privatization.
.
Ukraine's "orange revolution" has made democracy look modern again.
Yushchenko's challenge now is to balance calls for social justice with the
need for secure property rights. -30-

Foreign Affairs - Ukraine's Orange Revolution - Adrian Karatnycky

Corruption accelerated after Kuchma's election as president in 1994. The former director of the Soviet Union's largest missile factory, Kuchma brought with him ambitious and greedy politicians from his home base, the eastern city of Dnipropetrovsk. The greediest of the crew was Pavlo Lazarenko, who, in June 2004, was convicted in U.S. District Court of fraud, conspiracy to launder money, money laundering, and transportation of stolen property. Lazarenko, currently free on $86 million bail, was accused of having stolen from the state and extorted from businesses hundreds of millions of dollars between 1995 and 1997, when he served for 12 months as first deputy prime minister and for 7 months as prime minister. When the scale of Lazarenko's corruption became known, some Ukrainian leaders were outraged. But Kuchma could not have been surprised. In 2000, his former bodyguard leaked hundreds of hours of transcripts of the president's private conversations. On the tapes, Kuchma is heard dispensing favors, paying massive kickbacks, and conspiring to suppress his opponents--making it clear that the president sat at the head of a vast criminal system.

Several factors facilitated Ukraine's massive corruption. High inflation meant that until the mid-1990s, many cross-border financial transactions were conducted using a barter system, which was easily falsified to understate the amount of goods traded; resources that were exported to Russia ostensibly for energy often brought huge kickbacks instead. Wide-ranging privatization also enabled government insiders and cronies to buy state enterprises at bargain-basement prices. Steel mills, today worth several billion dollars, were bought for a few million. Regional energy companies fell prey to the same forces. The tax inspectorate was another weakness in the system, as the government manipulated it to gain financial and political advantages: competitors could be harassed or forced out of business by inspections and fines, and oligarchs could easily evade paying taxes.

In general, the oligarchs were able to operate their businesses without fear of independent oversight. Under Ukraine's constitution, local government officials are not elected but appointed by the president, who allowed oligarchic groups to create local enclaves headed by their allies. In the Zakarpattya (Transcarpathia) region, local and central government officials enabled one oligarchic consortium to amass vast fortunes from the lumber industry by stripping the forests of their trees. Now, parts of this once richly forested mountain region have been dangerously depleted, compounding the problems caused by deforestation in the Soviet era.

Over time, several Ukrainian oligarchic clans became dominant in the young nation. Medvedchuk, who became presidential chief of staff in December 2002, represented the Kiev clan, which controlled regional energy and timber companies and invested in broadcast media. The Dnipropetrovsk clan, which invested in the energy pipeline industries, included Viktor Pinchuk, now Kuchma's son-in-law. A powerful group from the eastern coal-mining Donbass region included metallurgy baron Rinat Akhmetov, the postcommunist world's second-wealthiest man, with a net worth of $3.5 billion.

Each interest group established its own political party in parliament. The Kiev clan ran the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (United). The Donetsk oligarchs created the Party of Regions, the ranks of which included a local governor who later became prime minister: Yanukovich. The Dnipropetrovsk group created and backed the Labor Party. And the influence did not stop there. The oligarchs owned or controlled their own national broadcast media and local and national newspapers. Each was capable of massively funding political campaigns in the emerging pseudodemocratic system.

In the late 1990s, the oligarchic clans largely remained under the control of Ukraine's powerful president. But in 2000-2001, Kuchma's power began to weaken as the wealth of the robber barons grew significantly and Kuchma's personal corruption and criminality started coming to light. Eventually, Kuchma even faced a vigorous opposition campaign to impeach him for his role in an abduction that ended with the murder of the investigative journalist Heorhiy Gongadze. But the campaign stalled as the president and his backers blocked efforts to institute the legal procedure needed to formally make the charges.

CHANGES

It was this turbulent period that saw the metamorphosis of Yushchenko from colorless central banker into charismatic opposition leader. In December 1999, pressure from Western donor countries seeking deeper economic reforms resulted in his appointment as prime minister. As chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine in the 1990s, Yushchenko had tamed rampant inflation and introduced responsible fiscal controls. In taking the reins of the government, he was determined to impose fiscal discipline and rigorously collect tax revenues and privatization receipts. To achieve these goals, Yushchenko needed to crack down on Ukraine's crony capitalism. He formed an alliance with one of the system's own--Yulia Tymoshenko, a former energy mogul who had run afoul of the Kuchma regime. With Tymoshenko's help, Yushchenko managed in just a year to recoup more than $1 billion in revenues that had been siphoned off by energy oligarchs.

Ukrainian society was also experiencing profound changes of its own, including the rise of a significant middle class in Kiev and other urban centers. In 2002, thanks in part to the ongoing effects of policies enacted by Yushchenko when he was prime minister, GDP grew by 5.2 percent; the next year, it increased 9.4 percent; and in 2004 it grew by 12.5 percent. From 1999 to 2004, Ukraine's GDP nearly doubled. Although this growth mostly benefited a narrow circle of oligarchs, it also spawned many new millionaires and a new middle class. These new economic forces resented the latticework of corruption that constantly ensnared them--from politically motivated multiple tax audits to shakedowns by local officials connected to business clans.

For Richer and For Poorer

The FSU's troubled relations with its wealthy

To Ukrainians, the wealthy are like thieves who stole all the money they had in the bank, along with the titles to their homes, then drive up in luxury cars and threaten to beat up their families if they don't pay the rent.

Take Renat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest man with $2.3bn, now under investigation in a murder case going back a decade. Rather than face questioning, he skipped town. Now the authorities have raided his company in search of evidence. Of course we all hope that if Akhmetov does go to court, it will be for legitimate reasons, the court proceedings will be fair, and the outcome will be just. Yushchenko said rule of law would be a priority, but the strange lack of closure on the case against Borys Kolyesnykov, Akhmetov's fellow Donetsk tycoon, makes it seem as though the Ukrainian justice system is still not up to doing its job.

What goes on in the court may or may not be just, but what the average voters see is the following: in the course of a decade or so, while ordinary Ukrainians lost all their savings, this man made $2.4bn. Did he create any companies? No, he bought them or cobbled them together from other companies. Did he rebuild the crumbling businesses of Eastern Europe? No, they're still crumbling. Did he create new processes, invent new machines, formulate effective new management strategies? No, no, and no. Akhmetov did not make his money on innovation. He and the people like him are not like capitalists as I know them from Silicon Valley, they are like the Marxist ideal of capitalists: people who make money without adding anything. Like robber barons without Rockefeller Center, or the Carnegie Endowment, or new railroads, for that matter. [update: Reader dlm has rightly reminded me how deeply connected the philanthropic work of, for example, Carnegie was connected to his belief in Christian charity. Of course this is also something that is not yet a strong positive influence in Eastern Europe after decades of state opposition to Christianity.]

The “evolving oligarch”

Business oligarchs like Fridman continue to power the Russian economy — and to hold the fate of minority shareholders in their hands. According to a December 2001 study by Brunswick UBS Warburg, a Moscow-based investment bank, eight financial-industrial groups control the 64 largest private companies in Russia. Among the prominent oligarchs cited in the study alongside Fridman and Khodorkovsky were Roman Abramovich (Russia's second-richest man, who is merging his oil operations with Khodorkovsky's), Oleg Deripaska (who owns the largest aluminum producer in the country) and Vladimir Potanin (who used part of his oil proceeds to corner Russia's nickel output). Critics contend that this concentration of wealth creates barriers to competition, makes it more difficult for new businesses to get started and offers portfolio investors very limited choices on the local equity markets. The big financial-industrial groups “aren't acting very differently from monopolies anywhere else,” says Christof Ruehl, chief economist at the World Bank's Moscow office.“

Defenders of the Russian capitalist model argue not only that it isn't broken but that it doesn't need fixing. Only China's economy is expanding faster, they note. Besides, say the optimists, oligarchs have moderated their hard-boiled approach to business. But skeptics remain. “With Russia's kind of growth, it's hard to convince people that business and banking reforms are urgent,” says Stephen Jennings, chief executive officer of Renaissance Capital, a leading Moscow-based investment bank.

Fridman is often cited as a paragon of the evolving oligarch. “He played some rough games earlier in his career,” says Marshall Goldman, a Harvard University economics professor whose recent book, The Piratization of Russia: Russian Reform Goes Awry, offers a scathing vision of buccaneer capitalism. “But nowadays he looks like one of the more enlightened entrepreneurs.”
Nothing better illustrates Fridman's progress from notoriety to celebrity than his dealings with his new partner, U.K. oil giant BP. Even though BP once sued Fridman for seizing valuable petroleum fields for which the British company had paid close to a half-billion dollars, this past June BP signed a deal to pay $6.15 billion — the largest foreign investment in post-Communist Russia's history — for half of Fridman's TNK, which controls the same oil fields. Between these two bookends is a rough-and-tumble saga about “learning to do business in Russia — the hard way,” says Robert Dudley, the BP vice president who has been named chief executive officer of the joint venture, TNK-BP.

Speech before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on March 12, 1999:

Dimitri K. Simes
President, The Nixon Center
Author, After the Collapse: Russia Seeks Its Place as a Great Power

Russian robber barons were not builders. Russian robber barons were manipulators who knew how to build connections which would allow them to privatize on the cheap without paying almost anything, and then they would immediately open bank accounts in Switzerland. Thus, they were taking money from the country, and because of that they were very afraid to have any one as Russian president who was not one of them. From that standpoint, Yeltsin was a deal. He had presided over the privatization; he could be counted upon to protect their interests. These same people who were Yeltsin’s official advisors were in charge of major networks. You’d have the money going from Russian central bank, to private banks, and the private banks would immediately give the money to Yeltsin’s campaign. There was really no difference between the Russian state treasury and Yeltsin’s personal campaign chest. That’s how those elections were conducted.

The Decision to restructure to a Market Economy was made by Soviet Intellectuals

Soviet intellectuals studied both their economy and that of the West closely and made a conscious decision for change. Once the decision to change to a market economy was made, these same intellectuals had little to say about the actual restructuring:

When I [Fred Weir] came here seven years ago at the outset of perestroika, there was very little belief in socialism among the generation dubbed the golden children. These sons and daughters of the Communist party elite had received excellent educations, had the best that the society could give them, and only aspired to live like their Western counterparts. Many had high positions in the Communist Party, but were absolutely exuberant Westernizes, pro-capitalists, and from very early in the perestroika period, this was their agenda.... People who thought they were going to be the governing strata in a new society are [now] losing their jobs, being impoverished and becoming bitter. The intellectuals, for instance—whose themes during the Cold War were intellectual freedom, human rights, and so on—had a very idealized view of Western capitalism. They have been among the groups to suffer the most from the early stages of marketization as their huge network of institutes and universities are defunded.53

Those golden children of the communist elite are undoubtedly quite silent as they gaze at their once proud country lying prostrate at the feet of imperial capital. The population of Russia has been falling at the astounding rate of 800,000 a year, birth rates have plummeted to the lowest in the world, and only 1-in-4 children are born healthy. There are dramatic increases in the number of children born with physical and mental impairment, disease is rampant, and the average lifespan of Russian men has fallen from 65 years to 58, below that of Ghana.54

Sale of the Century by Chrystia Freeland is a highly recommended masterly study on the collapse of Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union.55 However, as a correspondent for the Financial Times when doing her research, the author focuses only on finance and politics and ignores other crucial factors. Ignored were: basic economics, Russia’s highly motivated labor ready to make the transition to capitalism as addressed above by Fred Weir, the National Endowment for Democracy’s funding and management of Yeltsin’s election, the American election specialists orchestrating of that election,r the Harvard Institute for International Development’s advising Russia’s “young reformers” throughout that collapse, and how the massive imports of consumer products both collapsed the economic multiplier and sucked the wealth out of Russia.

Without the economic multiplier as money from wages circulates, a country essentially has no economy. Yet, while intending to document the full history of the attempt to restructure the Russian economy, the author fails to notice that the “young reformers” paid no attention to primary production in Russia. These neophytes were so immersed in classical Western philosophy that they thought all there was to establishing capitalism was to create rich capitalists by giving title of valuable resource industries and banks to a few “oligarchs,” who, without a doubt, pulled off one of the greatest thefts of social wealth in history.

In the West, preventing the rise to political power of labor is a primary consideration. Thus the highly motivated “golden children” (the latest generation of leaders) who were ready to restructure Russia’s economy were never given the opportunity. Instead, the neophyte agents of capitalism (the “Young Reformers”) were intent on the obviously impossible job of telescoping the 70 years of the age of American robber barons into less than 10 years. The “golden children” running Russia’s economy wanted to restructure to capitalism and would have understood how to do so. But labor in charge of any part of an economy is anathema to theorists of Western philosophy. So the only people offered a serious opportunity to buy Russia’s productive industries for a fraction of its true value were the new “oligarchs” with no experience in running any part of the Russian economy. Without any background on running industries or much of anything else, these oligarchs were expected to become the leading capitalists of Russia.

No country has ever developed under the principles imposed upon post Soviet Russia. In fact, economic protections for the developed world are all in place and functioning and no wealthy nation would consider subjecting their economies to such harsh economic medicine as was imposed on Russia. To double, triple, and quadruple prices while shutting down industry right and left and destroying consumer savings would be taught as a recipe for disaster in any economics class.

The easiest way to understand the failure of the restructuring of the Russian economy is by outlining a sensible restructuring plan:

(1) The massive savings of Russian citizens should have been protected;

(2) Industry and media shares should have been distributed to all citizens;s

(3) modern consumer product industries should have been built, the bonds to be repaid from profits (the workers being owners would help insure those profits);

(4) until those industries were established and the economy competitive, import restrictions should have stayed in force;

(5) as fast as those modern industries came on stream, Russia’s obsolete huge factories would have reduced production and shut down in stages;

(6) an inescapable society monthly collection of landrent, as per Chapter 24, should have been placed into law, including royalties on natural resources such as oil, minerals, timber, and communications spectrums;

(7) citizens should have received title to their homes through paying landrent taxes in monthly payments (they had massive savings with which to do that);

(8) farmers, businesses and industry should also have been given title to their land with the legal responsibility of paying landrent to society;

(9) locally owned banks (better yet credit unions) should have been put in place to fund consumers, farmers, and producers;

(10) and, with those massive consumer savings and financing available, retailers would spring up automatically and this would be the ideal moment to establish an efficient distribution system as per Chapters 27 and 28.

There are many other factors to consider but the above would have been the foundation of a workable restructure plan. Subtle monopolization of technology is the biggest barrier. Virtually any successful restructure plan must provide access to technology, resources and markets and Russia’s massive resources could have been bartered for that technology as opposed to its current hemorrhaging to the West. Patent licensing could have been imposed by law. This is accepted as legal in international law, was being tested in court with AIDS drugs in South Africa, and the major drug companies capitulated rather than go to trial.

The reason these suggestions were not followed is obvious, labor would have ended up with enormous wealth and political power. If they had been given the chance, those egalitarian trained and idealistic “golden children” could have established democratic-cooperative-(superefficient)-capitalism as opposed to today’s dependency on the periphery of imperial-centers-of-capital. If that had happened, the secret that no power-structure in the imperial centers had yet given their citizens full rights would have been exposed.

See:

Back in the USSR

Oligarchs

Tymoshenko 'Evita'of the Ukraine

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