Re: Analysts - Putin to Launch Systematic Campaign Against Oligarchs

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 5/26/2004 9:41:46 AM Central Standard Time, nomorebounces@xxxxxxx writes:

Bingo.

The Putin position seems to be that, if you do what the state wants, you can have all the money you want. If you cross the state, you go down. Hard.

We will see what happens to the shares of Yukos that were frozen. I am 90% sure that they will either be renationalized or go to a proxy for the state.

Really, those KGB guys who were muzzled while the Yeltsin people were looting the country must be having the time of their lives. They have incriminating material on so many people... All it takes is a signal from above, and they run and do their thing like happy little attack dogs. It's almost a thing of beauty.

Allegedly, when Putin had his famous meeting with the oligarchs in 2000, he brought a case of kompromat (compromising materials) just to remind those present that he was KGB (now, FSB), that the KGB knows things, and that they had better know their place.

Reply

 

The first law of all politics on earth is that "politics are local." If you are Putin then local politics means the corporation that is Russia.

 

Pardon, but I am a communist worker - second generation auto, and have spent some time over the last 30 years looking at the Soviet Union. I am also a former trade union leaders which gave me access to very clear data about production, reproduction and the material projections of that section of the bourgeoisie connected to large scale industrial production.

 

For reasons that are hard to describe . . . comrades simply do not believe me when I state that in the top level meeting between the union and the company, the representatives of capital are brutally frank. Their lives and careers are depended upon their frankness with their industrial counterparts. Both parts of this labor capital relationship - as organized labor, is mutually interdependent.

 

I understand men of responsibility like Putin. He has a mandate that neither Bush Jr. or Clinton for that matter can claim.

 

Politics at its base line is the art of the possible. What makes Pen-L extremely interesting and exciting for me is that I can leave the orbit of ideology and "get down" to the hard nasty business of economic interest and money.

 

Putin is running a corporation called Russia. He is not playing a game.

 

Putin has more credibility than Bush and a much larger popular mandate.

 

And he looks fucking good . . .  and calm . . . on television.

 

Melvin P.