Some Friday's Theses on Oligarchy, Global and Russian: It Is a Tragedy, but in Their Eyes a Farce

The purpose of the US is to handle Russia the way Rome treated Carthage. The role of the latter is to pretend that they are winning, no matter what they surrender or betray--all the way down to the end.

In this, the role of every Putin's supporter is also keep excitedly applauding and laughing at the stupidity and folly of the Empire to the end. Some of them do it in earnest, others as told.


For Putin is no Hannibal. He helped Russian oligarchy in its birth and to get on its feet when working with A. Sobchak in what used to be Leningrad. Then Yeltsin picked him up, which means it was not Yeltsin at all for, by that time, Yeltsin was no longer deciding anything; he was just a place holder. Bu the analogy and precedent of Rome and Carthage still holds. Except that Rome was able to hire and recruit much of the Russian elite and oligarchy, who are keeping most of their stashed wealth in the West anyhow, and turned them into a motley crew of theatrical actors and jesters who, as we know, can act, but they are not the authors of the play. In this way, the West and oligarchy have the goods and entertainment on top of it--"bread and circus" of the 21st century. The circus part is still quite correct, but the oligarchs prefer other things to bread. Bread is plebeian, proletarian.




For the rest of us, there are still things like gardening or poetry. Or Strelkov or the Russian people or the memory of what the Soviet people did for all of us in World War II.

Global oligarchy is by no means unified. It has different wings, factions, clubs and castes that fight among each other and against each other over which of them will succeed in making more people stupid and capable to accept more lies. It is a thymotic fight for greater honor and bragging rights.

In the third quarter of 2015, the Russian government put the whole amount of its earnings from oil and gas export into US treasury bonds.

It is time to follow the leader and to do what he does.

Useless to search for wisdom elsewhere. Buy US bonds!

Please also support Ukraine's unity and integrity and please from now on also try to cooperate with the US-led coalition in Syria.

Please also support the Rotenberg tax on the truckers! Tax those working "petit-bourgeois" or let oligarch Rotenberg do it! Asking oligarchs and their private firms collect taxes for the state is fair and smart. Why? Because Putin thinks so. He so decided.

В результате на покупку облигаций ушла вся валюта, полученная РФ от экспорта нефти и газа (21,4 млрд долларов за третий квартал).

How could Moscow sign Minsk, demand and support Ukraine's unity and integrity, and maintain that the "unrecognized" DPR and LPR are Ukraine and Ukraine's-- with the DPR and the LPR still maintaining armies?

Part of the reason is that all this needs to be done one step at a time. Putin needs to sell Minsk and he and his crew have had a rough and tough time doing so. The issue is how to keep up some of the appearances, while presenting new and different facts and decisions. At this moment, both the US and Moscow appear to put their stake and hopes on the "elections" which are to come perhaps as soon as April if all goes more or less OK.

It is as with boiling a frog. If the heat is increased too fast and too obviously, the frog jumps out. If it added incrementally, the frog stays until it is cooked.