What's good (and bad ) about Russia?

[onetrack]

The problem with Gaddafi is that he had the temerity to nationalise a huge British and American corporate investment in Libyan oilfields - without compensation - and from then on, pose a threat to oil supply stability to the West. 

Like all strongmen, he also wanted to play a very big part on the world stage. Perhaps if he'd compensated the British and American corporates, and was more compliant as regards a continued and guaranteed oil supply for the West, he would still be in power. 

As with all politicians of the last 70 or so years - when they initiate war, they never have any plan for what comes out of the rubble. At least the Americans did produce the Marshall Plan for Europe after WW2 - but as with all American plans, it might have had greater success, if it wasn't totally U.S.-centric.

 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mepo.12310

[old man emu]

I thought that the Yanks proposed (ie forced through) the Marshall Plan in order to prevent a recurrence of the mess created by the Treaty Of Versailles. However, the goals of the United States were to rebuild war-torn regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, improve European prosperity, and prevent the spread of communism. The Marshall Plan required a reduction of interstate barriers, a dropping of many regulations, and encouraged an increase in productivity, as well as the adoption of modern business procedures. Looks like the Yanks bear a lot of responsibility for the EU.

 

  The largest recipient of Marshall Plan money was the United Kingdom (receiving about 26% of the total), but the enormous cost that Britain incurred through the "Lend-Lease" scheme was not fully repaid to the USA until 2006. You don't get nuffin' for nuffin'. The next highest contributions went to France (18%) and West Germany (11%).

[spacesailor]

IF !.

England had That much American money !, 

Why, Ho Why were tne northern brits so Destitute ?.

Food rations untill 1953, 

AND 

Bugger all in ghe shops after that for years !.

Then the prices went up whenever there was something, TO sell..

A kick in the Arse, & off to bed WITHOUT DINNER AGAIN.

thank your maker for "SCHOOL LUNCHES ".

The only time to have a proper cooked meal.

Germany and France were getting way better treatment than the brits ever did from those yanks.

my rant. Sorry.

spacesailor

[Yenn]

The treatment the Brits got was from their own government. not the Yanks. The war cost them an awful lot but the thinking of the government was always that the average Brit was just there to provide power for industry and cannon fodder for war. The other imperative was to maintain the ruling classes. That was the main reason that I got out of England.

Russia is very similar, since the collapse of communism there is a "ruling class" headed by Putin that wants everything.

[willedoo]

Annual Rolls Royce sales in Russia hit an all time high in 2020, with over 200 cars sold for the year. It's Rolls Royce's biggest market in continental Europe and equates to about 4% of global sales. I guess not surprising with around 90 billionaires and close to 200,000 millionaires in the country.

 

It's interesting seeing the ebb and flow of billionaire statistics. For a long time Moscow had more billionaires than any other city in the world, but has now slipped to number four or five. New York is the current leader for individual cities, whereas China is the world leader in billionaires per country by a comfortable margin.

 

 

[nomadpete]

Tell me, Will

Has Russia beaten capitalism, or has it embraced it ?

 

If it isn't practicing capitalism how does their economy work?

[willedoo]

1 minute ago, nomadpete said:

Tell me, Will

Has Russia beaten capitalism, or has it embraced it ?

 

If it isn't practicing capitalism how does their economy work?

Russia embraced it in 1991 when the Communist Soviet Union was dissolved. This year will mark it's 30th. year as a capitalist country. The Soviets tried to beat capitalism but they ran out of money. I think the arms race had a lot to do with it going broke, but the 10 year war in Afghanistan was the straw that broke the camel's back.

[nomadpete]

I as because China claims to be be communist but to an outsider, they seem to embrace a capitalist economy

[Jerry_Atrick]

I believe the difference is that the CCP still retain real power over a lot of corporations - they interface to the rest of the world with a veneer of capitalism.

 

[nomadpete]

I suspect that it's the opposite, Jerry.

Capitalism might work most profitably if it's controlled by an iron fist?

[Bruce Tuncks]

I quite agree with you old K, and I visited those places when the secular strongmen were in place. They appeared to me to be progressing materially and peaceful. There is a concept called " least worst" and Gaddafi etc were in my opinion bad by our standards but less worse than what has replaced them. It may be that when they were in power, it was the best time to live in one of their countries.

[willedoo]

I can't quite figure China out. Some type of blend of capitalism and communism as far as I can see. Russia has retained some of their centralist past in that the Federal Government has a shareholding in a lot of corporations in the fields of banking, defence and resources etc.. In some cases they have a majority shareholding. All the aircraft companies are now under one corporate umbrella which is why they can develop and build war toys faster than we can. Basically less red tape and committees, and less snouts in the trough.

 

I remember the old days before we sold the farm and our government owned things.

Edited February 24, 2021 by willedoo

[willedoo]

Apologies for straying from the current topic. I was talking to a bloke today and he was telling me how Russia is broke and their military is falling apart because of it. Rip Van Winkle, I think his name was. But all jokes aside, I hear it on a regular basis and can't help wondering if they haven't read the news in the last 10 or 20 years or so. In the previous not too distant high oil price years, Russia has rebuilt their military to the point where they can now reduce the defence budget down to not much more than ours.

 

Maybe I'm missing the point as to what broke is. Russia currently has foreign exchange reserves of almost 600 billion and external debt of 470 billion. The U.S. has foreign exchange reserves of 144 billion and external debt of 7 trillion. And yet in the eyes of some people Russia is bankrupt. If they are, I'm all ears if someone can explain it to me. Or are the people claiming Russia is broke really 20 years out of date.

Edited February 24, 2021 by willedoo

[spacesailor]

Those Bureaucrat's have it All under control !.

spacesailor

[nomadpete]

Are you blaming meeja bias for this misconception?

 

 

[willedoo]

3 hours ago, nomadpete said:

Are you blaming meeja bias for this misconception?

 

 

Pete, not sure which post you refer to. If it's the one about Russia being broke, I haven't seen any media dis-information on that subject. Most of the people I hear that narrative from don't really have a sound knowledge of the country or follow the press regularly. It seems to me more like they just repeat urban myths they've heard from someone else. Most of what they say would be true if you wound the clock back twenty years.

[nomadpete]

My point being that 'news' doesn't mention much about Russia or eastern Europe. So whether an Aussie watches/reads news, how can they form a more recent impression of any matters Russian?

 

Our impressions generally are based on old memories of 'reds under the beds' and all that USA anti communist propaganda. And 50 years out of date

 

 

[willedoo]

19 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

My point being that 'news' doesn't mention much about Russia or eastern Europe. So whether an Aussie watches/reads news, how can they form a more recent impression of any matters Russian?

 

Our impressions generally are based on old memories of 'reds under the beds' and all that USA anti communist propaganda. And 50 years out of date

 

 

Yes, that's true Pete. Usually the only time the Western MSM mentions Russia is to demonise it. They've been doing it so long they don't know how to do anything else. To write anything positive would fly in the face of what they've been dishing out for years. They tell their audiences what they want to hear. There's no shortage of fact and evidence free news these days.

 

Another factor is that most people either don't bother or don't know how to venture outside the MSM bubble. It's surprising how many people get their sole source of news from the nightly TV news. Opinions become based on a 60 second news grab that they saw on the telly last night. Over the years I've noticed that anything negative about Russia gets made a big deal of in the MSM and anything positive is just not mentioned. And to be fair, most people in the West don't want to hear the positive news. They just want the latest bad news to reinforce their opinions. Less confusion that way.

 

As far as the reds under the bed attitude, that would certainly be a factor with those people I mentioned who are of the impoverished Russia opinion. The last person to tell me they are broke probably has no idea of figures like that of our Government debt as a % of GDP tipped to hit 45% this year, compared to Russia's 18%. Some are prepared to listen to facts and figures, while a minority are so blindly Russophobic that they don't want to know about facts.

 

 

Edited February 25, 2021 by willedoo

[nomadpete]

All this is wider than the Russia aspect of our media.

For as long as I can remember, our 'news' has been majority sourced from America. As an aside, I wonder how much we have paid for such a biased source. Of course all American news will be biased to their own agendas. If we only purchased British news, it would probably be just as biased towards their agendas.

 

 As you might guess, my biggest beef is media bias.

Repeated investigations into our ABC have (regardless of which political party was crying 'foul'), revealed that Australian ABC is the most politically unbiased government owned media in the wworld.Thats why both Libs and Labor have winged when ABC has exposed embarrassing stuff. I'm not saying they are perfect. They make mistakes like everyone. But they are not aligned directly with any political agenda. No matter what Murdock's media claim.

Edited February 25, 2021 by nomadpete

[willedoo]

I'd agree the ABC is the least biased. A good way to test it is read an article done by the ABC and compare it with reporting on the same issue from sources like Murdoch's drivel. The only Murdoch outlet I've seen that attempts anything like balance is news.com.au. The rest are just British tabloid standard.

 

Having interests in the subject, I often use news articles on Russia as a bit of a yardstick for assessing media bias. If any bias is there, that subject will bring it out. Our ABC does fairly good on that score, and even though they will often slip in a quick narrative reinforcing dig right at the end, overall I rate them as one of the least biased and more honest reporters.

 

In contrast is Fox News. With Putin's election campaign (the one before last), I was watching a Fox News clip on the telly. They were showing footage of violent anti-Putin riots in Moscow in the lead up to the election. It was full on, with smashed shop fronts, burning cars etc.. Within minutes it went viral on the internet that it was actually footage shot a few months before in Athens during the Greek economic protests. Fox probably thought the punters wouldn't know the difference between Greek shop signs and Russian Cyrillic signage. When they get caught out, they just claim it was a mistake and an accidental mix-up. Yeah right Rupert, we believe you.

 

 

[willedoo]

A 10 minute video showing testing of an auger drive vehicle, circa 1970. Every swamp dweller should have one.

 

 

[spacesailor]

Looks Fantastic !.

BUT

Looks limited in the payload department .

spacesailor

[Old Koreelah]

Where do i buy one?

[willedoo]

I like the way it can go sideways. It appears to perform better in the swamp than in the snow.

[Marty_d]

Hey Willedoo,

Just watched a brilliant Russian/Ukrainian movie - "Battle for Sevastopol".  On Netflix.

 

Story about Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a Russian sniper with 309 confirmed kills in WWII.

 

I started watching with no great hopes (Netflix is not known for quality movies) but it was beautifully shot and engaging.  Some of the flying scenes - Bf109 vs Polikarpov i-16 - were obviously CGI, but most of the movie was great.

 

I can definitely recommend it!

 

Cheers, Marty