Russian Oil Web, Looming Drama with Ukraine and Russian Cracker Culture.
Posted At : June 25, 2006 3:57 PM
| Posted By : Cyrill Vatomsky
Related Categories: KSCO Radio Shows,Russia,Podcasts
Related Categories: KSCO Radio Shows,Russia,Podcasts
Embassy of the New Wrold Order Boradcast on KSCO AM 1080. June 25th, 2006.
Unfortunately, I forgot to disable a compressor limiter during this recording so there is a bit of hum in the background, audible more during pauses, my apologies.
Opening the show with a bit of observations of Blitz Wolfer’s show on CNN. First, Hamid Karzai, hinting pretty transparently that Bin Laden and the Gang might be in Iran. But Wolf, ignores it, harassing the Afghanistan’s President with a Newsweek article about how horrible life in Afghanistan is. The same Newsweek that published the web exclusive article about poor rating GWB and the US enjoys in Europe.
Then Madeline Allbright accuses the Bush Administration not having any policy towards North Korea. This is from the same incompetent person that was running US foreign policy during the Clinton years when policy towards North Korea was outsourced to the worst former US president - Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter, that had been beaten like a kid in the world poker game by of all people, Leonid Brezhnev, then went on the be completely fooled by the North Koreans. And Madeline Allbright has a gall to accuse anyone of having no policy. What a colossal example of incompetence and hypocracy
Also, Russ Feingold , the senator from Wisconsin, the person responsible for one of the most damaging violations of the US Constitution via his anti free speech legislation AKA McCain-Feingold suggests an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. He says that the terrorists will leave Iraq as soon as we will.
Then, here is the meat of the show that turned out to be mostly about Russia. First is the issue of Russia’s attempts of using its oil and gas supplies as well as its position of a conduit and transit of oil and gas from the Central Asia to blackmail Europe and strong-arm its neighbours. There are four directions Central Asian oil and gas could go:
- East towards China
- South via Iran
- Across the Caspian Sea and then through Azerbaijan, Georgia or Turkey to either Black or Mediterranean Sea
- Via Russia and its infrastructure.
Chevron, Russia, Kazakhstan invested huge funds in building the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, that connects Kazakh oil to the Russian infrastructure, but, it is a private company. Russia only owns 24% of it. So it is not under its total control. This Russia does not like. Putin has been nationalizing oil and gas via attacks on Yukos, then privatizing it back after his cohort Igor Sechin got the control of Rosneft. CPC is apparently becoming an inconvenience for Putin’s desires to use oil and gas supplies as a means of blackmail.
Elsewhere BTC pipeline was built between Baku and Ceyon in Turkey. This completely bypasses Russia and Iran, which neither of them likes. Kazakhstan is making moves to use this pipeline, infuriating Putin’s administration.
Now, Transneft, another government monopoly that controls all Russian pipelines wants to invest in yet another pipeline from Bulgaria to Greece. That’s the same Transneft that was on the list of recipients of the oil vouchers from Saddam Hussein, together with Sechin’s Secretariat of the President and Rosneft.
A web is being cast on Europe with some peculiar complications that come with latest remarks from Yulia Timoshenko, the presumptive new Prime Minister of Ukraine.
"All the relations on gas supplies to Ukraine now require further deep revision and review. And, of course, we must build new agreements on a friendly basis with the Russian Federation, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan," Tymoshenko said.
Gasprom immediately warns Europe:
"We are very concerned about today's statement by Yuliya Tymoshenko on the revision of a gas deal with Russia. It is an alarm bell ringing for Europe. I would like to remind you that the agreements signed in January included a deal on transit, as well," Kupriyanov said. "This is the document that rules the gas supplies to Europe. Any carrying out of the threat sounded today in Ukraine is a road to a new gas crisis. Yuliya Tymoshenko's words show again that Ukraine is the weakest link in the chain of supplying Russian gas to Europe."
This is a clear blackmail and a wedge Russia tries to drive between Eastern and Western Europe. Europe will have to make a difficult choice. It will have to honor it’s expressed commitment to democratization of Ukraine and Eastern Europe, or completely surrender to the strong arm twisting from Russia that controls so much of the energy supply to Europe. European history and events like Munich does not give much of the hope for the former. It will be a major drama in the nearest future – will Europe support Ukraine and pay a price or will it support Ukraine in words only and in fact will sell it down the river.
Final subject was Russia itself. I have discovered a very brave blog La Russophobe. The woman that writes for it does seem to be the only person that understands how miserable Russia is, how dangerous it is. In an exchange between Russia-following blogs she seems to be the only person to understand and state low oil prices will not change Russia towards democracy.
So, in his words, if you truly want to fight authoritarianism in Russia, turn off the lights every time you leave the room!
And a retort.
La Russophobe can't agree. In fact, she thinks the opposite is true. The Putin regime will remain in power one way or another, either literally or figuratively, and it will use either the carrot or stick to do so. High oil prices make it possible for Putin to use bribery rather than blunt trauma, but the less revenue available to him the more likely Russia will have to rely on the stick, and hence the more likely it will degenerate into even worse totalitarianism.
She seems to be the only person that digs it. The only thing that lower oil prices will do is that Putin will have less money to build nuclear submarines to fight the war in Chechnya.
I continued reading her web site and she, inadvertently pushed me to a peculiar conclusion. I compared current Russian culture with what Thomas Sowell describes in his Black Rednecks And White Liberals as the contemporary urban black ghetto culture. Patterns of behaviour between the general culture of Russia and the ghetto black culture that Sowell traces through Southern White culture to the cracker culture in Europe, like lawlessness, reckless disregard for life, attraction to gewgaws, drinking, self amusement over savings are extremely difficult to ignore.
Here is a summary by Anthony B. Bradley, Research Fellow of “Action Institute”
The dominant social, moral, and cultural values among Southern rednecks that Sowell highlights, and that have been explained in works such as Grady McWhiney’s Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South, include aversion to work, proclivity for violence, contentment with little to no education, sexual promiscuity, short-term thinking, drunkenness, an anti-entrepreneurial spirit, reckless pursuit of excitement, and wild music and dance. Rednecks had touchy pride, what you might call today a “bling-bling” vanity, a boastfully dramatized sense of self, and little self-control.
Oh, the Russian community will hate me for this. Considering how unapologetically racist lots of Russians are, to compare their culture to that of ghetto blacks?
And the final last comment refers to the Brussels Journal exposing European leaders as incapable to admit the defat of their constitution, trying to do an end run and force it one everybody by fiat.
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Bookmarks:
Blogs
- Robert Amsterdam
- Publius Pundit
- Russian Blog
- La Russophobe
- Sean Guillory
- Vilhelm Konnander
- Accidental Russophile
- Russia from the Inside
- David McDuff
- Edward Lucas
- Siberian Light
- Scraps of Moscow
- Russian Standard
- ZheZhe [dot] us
- Ruminations on Russia
- Nosemonkey / Europhobia
- Marginalia
- The Oil Drum
- Hello Estonia
- The Observer Blog
- WaPo World Opinion
I also believe a more comprehensive study would show that Russians tend to be a good deal better educated than the typical poor white-trash American. In fact, most of the Russians (that I know) are even a good deal better educated than the typical white upper crust American.
Lastly, guns and firearms do not play such a prominent role in Russian culture as they do in gun-rack-in-the-back-of-a-pick-up-truck white southern US. Criminals in Russia are typically armed, but most private citizens tend to be a good deal more passive and unarmed (again - in my experiences and travels). Firearms are more of a way of life in the Southern US - and when combined with drinking and low-education, fun and games may follow.
Then again, I might have become jaded or tainted by my conversations with my brother - a Fort Worth police sargeant.
The biggest problem with such comparisons comes from the simple fact that you are drawing from different pools. Unless you go and spend some time in Russia in an area at least similar to a "white trash" or any color trash populated area in the US, you have a "type mismatch".
The other side of the coin is the Russians from big cities, with university degrees and often from semi-bohemian surroundings coming to US and finding themselves on a much lower social level. Their general education is usually better, so they make a vocal claim that Americans are less educated.
Finally, guns are not the core of the cracker culture. You seem to be superficially concentrating on a symbol rather then on a cultural trait. Knives and fists can substitute for guns just fine, depending on availablility, since it is more of an application of violence and reckless disregard for life that is important here.