Today I encountered a discussion (thanks to Mike Averko who sent me the link) on who is Navlny (he is an online Russian personage who exposes corruption in Russia from a safe hideout. I don't read Navalny though I am familiar with his exposés). I wrote a commentary which got sort of longish, out-of-hand (that happens all the time) and as I felt sorry to condemn it to oblivion in the form of being just one entry among two or three hundred or so comments the post generated, I saved it and will recycle here as my own.
It is not so about Navalny as about Putin and Medvedev or rather system they represent. The system, which I will endeavor to describe in a greater detail and in a format different that a blog, is unique and is, in my opinion, misunderstood by both Russia's foes and friends.
The difference between Putin and Medvedev is insubstantial. They are Siamese twins. Their disputes and disagreements are all make believe. The ideology of Russia's Thieving Class is personal consumption (in that respect it is unique, I can't think of no other society where personal consumption was the chief motivator of the society's owners. There were states, as I mentioned before, which were largely driven by profit - 17th century Netherlands and 18th century Britain come to mind, but never was there a society which was ruled by a junta whose only reason to exist is its own personal consumption. That's what Putinist Muscovite Khanate and so grotesquely named United Russia is all about). The notions that Russian Federation junta is somewhat not fully pro-American (false) or that Americans can undermine Russian junta (they can but why would they) should be put in a proper perspective. The government-owned air carrier, Rossia (funny, the Putinistas write their state airline's name as RossiYa, with ya - like it were an Arab country), which is the equivalent of the USAF unit operating government aircraft including Air Force One, replaced all Russian airplanes with American Boeings. Not with Brazilian Embraers or Airbuses for short and medium routes but with Boeings. Come on. State aircraft procurement has always been the sign and the proof of one's political orientation. Presidential Administration (the Khanate's home office) in addition to luxurious BMWs for the viziers and Muscovite Khan's most favorite eunuchs buys only Fords. Russian Federation "Ministry of Defense" buys Ford Focuses for their stuff, not Russian cars, not Peugeots, Citroens or Fiats but Fords. Militia bosses in St. Petersburg and KGB thugs drive hummers in a manifestation of machismo and Americaphilia that is unimaginable in the US itself. Not citroens, alfa romeos, or Russian vehicles. The image they want to present of themselves to the populace and the world is distinctly thuggish and distinctly (though phony) American. There is no more americanized "elite" in Europe or Asia than the Muscovite Thieving Class. It is far more americanized than America's staunchest New European vassals. Russia keeps most of its foreign reserves in US dollars entrusted to the care of the US government while supposedly pro-American ethno-Nazi statelet of Estonia has no financial assets in the US. Russia's thieving class prefers Russophobe London over Paris or Milan or Frankfurt - that's where the Thieving Class of Muscovite Khanate buys blocks of prime real estate and keeps assets. That's where corrupt managers and overseers of Khanate's capital (city) run to when dismissed by the Khan (in time free of licking the fence of various alleged "concentration camps" on the eastern shore of the Baltic). Russia's Thieving class sends its offspring mainly to the US and Britain for " education" - not to France or Austria or Japan or China (I know a KGB functionary who is also a (state Russian) railroad kingpin whose children are all in America) - it is obviously a unbalanced one-sided relationship as I am unaware of a single instance when members of the American ruling class or its oligarchy had sent their kids to study in provincial colleges in the so-called Russian Federation, say to Ivanovo, or used deliberately russified English language for internal communications, bought Russian cars and if that were not enough also had kept all of their assets in Russia(-an Federation). This relation is far more skewed, one-sided and pathological than of any other country I can think, not even of its closest vassals like Britian, vis-a-vis the US. Neither Putin nor Medvedev ever stood up against American aggression or did anything to oppose the collective evil of the West because they cannot - how can you oppose anything in real life (babble on television is a different thing) if you moved all of your assets to the US and the EU, have kids studying in enemy countries, usually in the US or Britain, drive cars made by the enemy and have in the show of extreme affectation deliberately destroyed own industry so you could buy American aircraft for your own government use (what about spare parts in case of emergency?) . All your trinkets are supplied by the enemy. The "President" (again a word borrowed from the US English which replaced existing Russian equivalent of a person presiding over government) of the so-called Russian Federation, Medvedev openly displays his fondness for US corporate brands and promotes Apple Computer merchandise on over-the-air Russian TV (something no US president would do). The Soviet nomenklatura and criminal Moscow -based junta that usurped power in and over Russia and of which Putin and Medvedev are most visible "presiding" representatives do not care about Russia, Russian people or Russia's interests. Its sole interests are personal consumption of its "members" and the maintenance of the resource-based regime that allows extraction of private wealth from public, once Soviet but then Russian, assets. Its rule rests on a bureaucratic dictatorship that. paradoxically, is also culturally US oriented. Russia or Russian Federation is a peculiar state in precarious state - there is no ideology save for personal consumption of the Thieving Class (naturally enough. enough crumbs fall off the table down into the hungry mouths of the servants, and the population of Moscow and Putinburg and a few other major cities. hence the underlings are reasonably content as long as they don't keep Noalny's blogt). The system is reliant on imports (physical and cultural) from Russia's civilizational enemy and keeps all of its assets within jurisdiction of nations that are openly hostile to Russia. One doesn't have to be a genius to figure out that Russian Federation junta is vulnerable to any kind of boycott or asset freezing. Structurally the system is unique in historic terms because its corruption is unparalleled as it represents a mini Soviet Union within the borders of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, hypercentralized - in fact the degree of centralization is quite unparalleled, it is centralization on steroids, a geographic and political entity which has been "privatized" wholesale by the nomenklatura and the criminal classes and where every state asset, office or institution, be it an oil well or police (militia) station is turned into money making resource for the members of the Thieving Class. I cannot find a historic analogy or a parallel to /Y/EltsinPutinMedvedev's Russia. Fundamentally it is anti-Russian. It has low cultural immunity (in the cultural sense post-Soviet Russia is a patient with terminal stage of AIDS). Its Thieving Class is reliant on "abroad", primarily on the US and Britain, for its daily needs - transportation, conveniences like credit cards and banking, entertainment, education of its evil offspring, anything, and thus is pathologically shy and unable to act in the nation's interests. Under this setup when the choice is to be made between personal consumption and personal interests on one hand and national interests on the other, the personal consumption considerations always come on top - that's also unique and historically almost unprecedented. With this sort of balance, the ongoing discussion about who is better Putin or Medvedev is irrelevant, it is a no-issue-issue, while the question who is Navalny can be answered regardless of whether Navalny has made dark sides or just one. He is someone who has exposed a few minor misdeeds of Russia's Thieving Class and of the nomeklatura behind Russian Federation's illegitimately privatized illegitimate state,
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