Georgia in Crisis: Major Fighting Erupts with Russia

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#201

Sadly, for you, Kitty, it isn’t just about your opinion. Even if you do wish to consider yourself prosecuter, judge and jury.

Everyone knows how wonderful the USA is. Not only have American citizens been raised on a diet of ‘Peace, Justice and the American way’ but the rest of the world has had to endure it also. Mainly through the brainwashing machinations of Hollywood. Of course, this is rather good for America as it helps a number of states remain united by promoting an attitude of ‘why exchange this Utopian society for something less’ i.e. a break up of the union - be grateful that you’re not still enslaved under the tyranny of King George! :roll:

The hypocricy of it all is truly alarming to those who moved mountains to get there only to find that it’s a sham. :frowning:

For example: we speak of the corruption of organised crime in Russia - but who set the standard for organised crime if not the U.S. ?
Deniable, of course, because J Edgar Hoover was an Arse-bandit who was being blackmailed by the Mafia and, therefore, had to deny that organised crime existed so that the organisation of which he was the head wouldn’t have to investigate it. Then there is this rubbish about the ‘Untouchables’ (who might have been touched by Hoover), whom Hoover used as an excuse for not investigating organised crime as he didn’t want his men (the said ‘Untouchables’ which implied incorruptable) to be corrupted by the criminals which they might have had to investigate. So, for decades, the Mafia was able to organise and consolidate and now they are beyond the law. So much so, that they practically run the country after generations of education, networking and politicing.

Now you talk about Russia not being welcome in joining the international community, as if you have the authority to say who and who may not become a part of the international community, Are you kidding?..who the Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo are you?

This isn’t even cold war prejudices as the differences between Russia and the US go back further than WW2. What it is, is the bleating of somebody who feels threatened by a new challenger, a new kid on the block.

In reality, Russia isn’t even your problem - China is!

Finally, let’s face it most of the top, successful Americans didn’t get to where they are for standing on their feet but, rather, getting down on their knees, taking some meat and giving some head!

I offer my apologies to all decent and upright Americans if my comments are offensive to them. :frowning:

#202

Of course not, there’s no profit in doing so.

But US companies have done that sort of thing for a couple of centuries, at least, both nationally and internationally. It’s simple economics, supply and demand, and if one has the monopoly, then one manipulates the situation to further one’s own profit.

Perhaps you ought to go back to business school and try for an MBA. :slight_smile:

#203

Doesn’t sound like the Russians are practising good economics in Georgia/South Ascetia either…

Maybe your advice should be directed at the Kremlin…

MY point was that nobody really wants to do business with Russian companies, and there are sound reasons for this state of affairs that are firmly in the hands of the Russians themselves.

Russia must change it’s business practice to suit the global reality, not the other way around. But as always, they just don’t “get” capitalism…

Once again, it’s the leadership that bears the responsibility for this…the same tired old men running the country the same shoddy way they have since 1917…

#204

BTW…U.S. China relations have ALWAYS been on a different level to Anglo/Soviet…

America is to be the principle benificiary of the economic bonanza that Chinese markets represent…the relationship is already set…

We in the West have a mutual dependancy on Chinese markets, just as they are dependant on us for the constant supply of raw materials to make it all happen…

Russia is just a second rate business community, and will continue to be so until THEY change their outlook…

Just telling it like it is…

Remember…good U.S./Chinese relations go back a LONG way…but confrontation with Russia is still quite possible in the near future…work it out for yourself which way the Chinese will go…it’s easy to see the “lay of the land” for the immediate future and for a great many years to come…

Whilst that trade relationship exists, so to will there be a big ideological fence between Russia and most of the rest of the global business community. This is something only RUSSIANS can alter…sad fact.

All the oil in the world won’t matter if you cannot extract it efficiently, or refine it on a scale worth talking about…Russian industry has always concentrated on prestige projects for national pride, rather than attempting to cater for the market concerned…you certainly don’t need a degree in economics to understand this…

Furthermore, the moment you think the West is not your cup of tea, you are free to leave…just shut the door as you go out thanks. I’ll take the U.S. offer any day of the week. We Aussies REMEMBER 1941-45…

So should you…

#205

What are you talking about? :roll:

#206

And the rest of the world wants to do business with Exxon and Halliburton?

And the US shouldn’t change its business practices to suit whatever is the global reality?

The Russian oligarchs and others get capitalism just fine. Only they’re operating like the American robber barons a century ago, who founded the magnificent American economy which fucks up the rest of the world with shit like moronic sub-prime mortgage lending.

I don’t see why the Russians shouldn’t be allowed the opportunity to fuck up the rest of the world by emulating the practices which made America great. Sauce for the goose, and all that. :twisted:

Unlike that refreshingly innovative dork known as Dubya and his cabal?

Yeah, right!

#207

True.

America ignored China until Nixon realised it was there in a capacity other than as part of the international communist conspiracy against America and the West.

Australia is rather more dependent on China and exporting raw materials to it than the US is, which is why we may survive the current international economic problems caused by overpaid fuckwits in America giving home loans to people who had no hope of repaying them. It might also be why China will, in time, replay 1942 with us if we deny it the raw materials it needs from us to sustain its growth.

I don’t think so.

Russia is, and always has been, a huge economy which, finally, is being allowed to find its place in the international market on competitive terms.

A nation which managed to win the space race against America is not second rate by any standards.

So, morons like Sarah Palin saying that the US should go to war with Russia over Georgia couldn’t do anything to alter the conflict between Russia and the rest of the world? :rolleyes:

Russian industry managed to put a dog and a man into space with considerably less resources than the Americans who at the time were fully occupied blowing up their rockets on their launch pads.

What do we remember about 1941-45?

American naval victories in the Coral Sea and Midway, and the land victory in Guadalcanal, which undoubtedly contributed to our survival.

But primarily because America wanted us as a base to strike at Japan. I don’t have a problem with that, because all nations act in their own interests. But the Yanks weren’t down here because they were in love with us at the levels which made the decision to put them here, whatever the pleasant relations may have been between us and their men who had a simpler view of the reason they were here.

As for fraternal relations, check out what America did in controlling aspects of the war in the Pacific and SWPA to get control of civilian air routes from Australia to America during the war, and what MacArthur did to deny Australian forces their proper recognition for fighting the first war against Japan while he was denigrating our forces at every opportunity and extolling his rather unimpressive forces at the same time.

#208

Well, to be fair, the US has rarely had a modern organized crime force that was homegrown. Most of it was transplanted from other nations whose gangsters were able to come here to enjoy of lax, corrupt police completely ignorant typically WASP police in the 1800s, until the Irish took over the job here.

La Cosa Nostra would be the prime example. Most sophisticated Organized criminals came from Sicily, and then later -other ethnic criminals followed the immigrants such as the Asian Triad gangs, of the El Salvadorian M18…

Deniable, of course, because J Edgar Hoover was an Arse-bandit who was being blackmailed by the Mafia and, therefore, had to deny that organised crime existed so that the organisation of which he was the head wouldn’t have to investigate it.

Hoover may have been a tail-pipe commando, a “switcher,” or an enormously repressed, but perverted hetero. But the one thing that is sure is that he had the US’s largest collection of pornography of all stripes from confiscations and raids, and personal access to nearly all of it!

But the idea that the Mob was “blackmailing him” is probably off-base. I detest what a prick he was, but Hoover more likely ignored the mafia because he feared his “uncorruptable G-men” being lured by the big money and bribes as the cops in the American city police departments were, especially the detectives, all throughout the first half of the 20th century…Thusly, he ignored organized crime until RFK forced his hand…

Then there is this rubbish about the ‘Untouchables’ (who might have been touched by Hoover), whom Hoover used as an excuse for not investigating organised crime as he didn’t want his men (the said ‘Untouchables’ which implied incorruptable) to be corrupted by the criminals which they might have had to investigate. So, for decades, the Mafia was able to organise and consolidate and now they are beyond the law. So much so, that they practically run the country after generations of education, networking and politicing.

The Untouchables were not with the FBI, they were under the Treasury Dept. I believe, and were investigating rum-running. But Al Capone was brought down by the IRS for tax fraud, not Eliot Ness or the FBI…

#209

Typical!

Now you’re going to get stuck into the Irish, like everyone else does. :rolleyes: :wink:

Like Tammany Hall was their fault, the poor dears. :wink: :rolleyes:

Next you’ll be accusing the Kennedys, Rockerfellers, Fords, Du Ponts and other successful immigrants of naughtiness. :shock:

Shame on you! :wink:

#210

Ha! The Irish Mob and perhaps the Jewish Mob were perhaps the only truly “American” organized gangsters that did not have an expressly organized criminal element in their home countries. The Irish were too far removed and the Jews didn’t have a country. But these mobsters were actually incorporated into the ethnic Italian mafia, then supplanted…

But I don’t know if you South Asians and Euros know this, but the stereotypical US police officer as shown in a 1940s vintage cartoon or film typically had an Irish accent. Because police work in the mid to late 1800s was dangerous and the Irish were the only ones desperate/dumb enough to do it…

#211

In any case, the knock on the Russian Mafia that operate largely in New York City or LA is that they’re so problematic because they’re so smart. Many Russian gangsters supposedly have PhDs or were ex-KGB/military making them highly trained and skilled criminals. In any case, they keep beating up our Russian import NHL hockey players who respectfully decline gangster’s generous offers to take a percentage of their million dollar salaries off their hands…

#212

Yes, we know it from those films.

The Irish cop was a good man but true, although with a penchant for helping himself to apples. :smiley:

#213

I think you had your own “Irish Coppers?” And after reading the Wiki on “Mafia,” your own Sicilian/Italian mobsters…:slight_smile:

#214

Actually, more seriously, America followed the pattern we had here, where the bottom level Jews and Irish elevated themselves through education and, in the case of the Irish, local government.

My father was half Irish and rose well above his likely station because the Christian Brothers, as part of a policy designed by Archbishop Mannix of fierce Irish and anti-English heritage, schooled boys to get into the public service. My father did rather better than that and got a university scholarship when university was reserved for the select few and his parents could never have hoped to be able to afford the university fees.

In America and Australia Jews tended to go into business and the Irish, as intended by a conscious program by the Christian Brothers and others under Archbishop Mannix’s tutelage, went into public administration.

So that even twenty years ago there was a public office here which had names like Mannix, Doherty, Murphy, and sundry other Irish Catholic names. Now they’re just as likely to be Indian, Pakistani, or Arabic names.

#215

Mate, we have such a spectacularly disgusting collection of multi-racial shit down here that anyone who isn’t wearing spray tan and sunglasses on their empty skull looks out of place.

Oooops! :shock:

Sorry! Given the intent of anti-discrimination laws, I meant that in a non-discriminatory way which can’t offend anyone wanting to deny that my country is being steadily fucked over by people of swarthy appearance with an unhealthy affinity with knives and so on. :frowning:

#216

Some Russian oligarchs episodically resembled American robber barons only in the early and mid 1990s.
Today Russian oligarchs resemble old Russian nobility that received lands and Russian slave-serfs from tsar and got bound to serve to the tsar regime.The modern Russian capitalism is absolutely different from the American one at any stage of its history, it is close to the Asian tradition.
Any Russian oligarch somehow neglecting the existing Russian practices will lose all his assets and status in Russia.

#217

It was the Soviet Union but not the Russian Federation. The level of the Russian Federation is close to the one of Pakistan, Brazil and Mexico rather than to the one of the US.

So, morons like Sarah Palin saying that the US should go to war with Russia over Georgia couldn’t do anything to alter the conflict between Russia and the rest of the world?

The Russian federation still exists only because morons like Sarah Palin opposed the idea of the disintegration of the USSR and later the Russian federation.

Russian industry managed to put a dog and a man into space with considerably less resources than the Americans who at the time were fully occupied blowing up their rockets on their launch pads.

The Soviet one. You speak about a different state

#218

The thing is that there are no ethnic Russian Maphia. Unfortunately, persons with true PHDs go to the US just to work honestly and ex-KGB employees live very well at home.

#219

Look, I’m not going to sink to political correctness. Russian business practice has been sub-standard for many decades. Further, if this backwardness has allowed better competitors to muscle in on “their” markets, then whom do we blame?

All I know is, when it comes to supply of raw material, Russian business caters to it’s own needs first…we all have to do things their way, or they cut off the supply…DESPOTISM.

Russia achieved their Space program at the expense of other areas in the economy…national prestige over the wellbeing of the people, and it took a more than significant proportion of their gross national product, unlike the U.S. that could run the Space Race, maintain a military industry AND an overseas export market without sacrificing things at home…NATIONAL PRESTIGE FIRST AS ALWAYS,

When you spend 20% of what your country makes on your armed services for the same National prestige, there is something dreadfully wrong…U.S. consumption for the same reasons resulted in no more than 5% expenditure…America could afford a Space Program, Russia could not…

As for putting a dog in Space…it DIED for the lack of a return voyage…at least the American chimps were returned to Earth…

Russia wants to be taken seriously as a world power…we only take them seriously as DESPOTS…something that has not chamged in this modern period…

As for Australia’s dismissive treatment by Macarthur et al, we are big enough here to ignore stuff like that and get on with it…not worried about “National Prestige”…maybe 300 million Russians should take a leaf out of our political book.

When I meet a group of Russian oil workers that can work unsupervised, Ill let you know…

#220

I’m sure you are correct, Nick, but does that make any difference? It was in the US that they were able to reach their full potential.

Hoover may have been a tail-pipe commando, a “switcher,” or an enormously repressed, but perverted hetero. But the one thing that is sure is that he had the US’s largest collection of pornography of all stripes from confiscations and raids, and personal access to nearly all of it!

But the idea that the Mob was “blackmailing him” is probably off-base.

Disagree, the idea of him being blackmailed explains his lack of action against them far more than the fear of corruption. But your opinion is as good as mine.

The Untouchables were not with the FBI, they were under the Treasury Dept. I believe, and were investigating rum-running. But Al Capone was brought down by the IRS for tax fraud, not Eliot Ness or the FBI…

Thank you for that, Nick, I’m sure I knew it really. I’ll stick with my previous comments.

By the way, once JFK was assassinated, RFK was rendered impotent and Hoover continued on his sleazy way.

Sleaze happens every where, not just in Kremlin, my reason for my comments were merely point out that no country is whiter than white, and America n particular, and not just for the sake of Yank-bashing…C’est la vie!