Kleptocracy

And let's see how easily you guess the subject of that title....

Scroll down....

Heck why wait. Russia.

There you have this vast country, some 200+ million people living in it, although most of the country is simply empty, and a history and culture of theft. From you, from him, from the government, from the Party ... from anyone and anything that you do not personally own or control. History has it that the great despots of Russian lore simply confiscated anything that they fancied. The peasant class existed simply to support the rich. The rich simply existed to flatter and pass on ill-gotten gains to the Czar.

Then they had a little Revolution. That was all meant to stop. Only it didn't. The members of the Party took over from the aristocracy as the funnel to the Central Committee, the Tse-Ka of the CPSU. Party members took what they wanted, and the higher you were -- i.e. the sneakier and more ruthless you were -- the better you lived. No change, then, at all from the earlier "feudal" Russia. The Czar was replaced by the General Secretary who ruled with an iron fist. His family got prime positions within the government, as did all the Politburo and Tse-Ka members. Each Party Boss ensured the continued riches flowed to their family, regionally and locally. Nothing had changed with regards to system, only the actors were different, and all pretense of meritocracy vanished. Only it may have become more dangerous to the individual, riskier to express ideas and opinion, and easier to be sent to the gulag.

You see, to a large degree, the Czarist system at least had as a benefit education: the ruling elite were to a large degree well educated, well travelled, and forward thinking. The riff-raff that followed were ill-educated buffoons, blood-thirstier and less able than those they replaced. The curtain fell, creating a violent and irrational monster that threatened the world for more than 70 years -- at least in that form.

Enter the rise of the FSB/KGB/GRU clans. They were educated and adherents of the clan system. While not well travelled, they had a far better grasp of the world socio-political systems than the average Russian in the street. They understood economics and law, and more importantly, how to use the two to enrich themselves. So, when the great Gorbachev/Yeltsin upheavals came, they and their Party Boss friends were well placed to simply snatch the huge assets of the vast country. And they did. Unbelieveable wealth was created in the shortest possible periods of time, seizures enforced by criminal gangs and quasi-governmental gangs.

Less than 10 years later, we have a failed democracy -- there was simply nobody who really supported it; it was a convenient curtain for the change of guard of one set of kleptomaniacs for the next. And in the context of 2008, we have a government run by Putin with his puppet President Medvedev. All the assets of the country are slowly being stripped from the first set of democratic entrepreneurs (ex-party and industry bosses) and redistributed to the FSB/KGB clans. Legally, at least whithin the charade that passes for the Russian judiciary. You see, there is no judge that wishes to be sent to prison for "corruption" because he made the wrong call.... As has been the case all along in Russia, he who controls the camps, controls Russia.

Which, finally, gets to the point of this entry: who in their right mind would invest even a U.S. dollar (let alone Euro) in Russia? Only Russians, I'd think ... because they are the only ones who know the right people to pay off to avoid becoming the target of an anti-trust probe by the federal prosecutors. You'll head to the slammer if convicted of those sorts of "crimes." BP is not a small company -- one of the world's richest oil companies, in fact. And yet even they have fallen foul of the Kleptos. They are being squeezed out by judicial probes, allegations of tax evasion, failure to renew visas of required UK personnel, and in the end, the simple risk of a Polonium 21o enema. Shell ... well what happened to Sakhakin? Find any oil to sell?

And the Europeans are stupid enough to cozy up to this Russian Bear. They think that if they cooperate with the Russians, that they'll get an even break -- as opposed to working with those evil Americans who only want our money and economic imperialism. Idiots. The Bear wants the whole shebang! The Russians have successfully hooked Europe on cheap natural gas, the heroin of fossil fuel. It's clean (won't get you hooked, like that dirty oil), comes by pipe into your very own home, plentiful, can power cars, and provided from limitless resources by our friends in the East.

Let me give you a clue, Euro-morons, there is nothing friendly about Russia or Russians. They want your assets and best addresses. Your banks, your watches, your Mercedes, your chalets, your wine, your beaches. All of it. And they simply don't give a damn. You can bet on it.