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Today's
Stories
January 21, 2004
Dave Lindorff
Iraq Election Blowback
January 20, 2004
Stan
Goff
State of the Union, MLK and 30 mm DU: Another
Embittered Rant by a Former Soldier
Dave Louthan
Inside the Mad Cow Plant: a Worker Speaks
Out
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Havoc in the Cornfields
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti--Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A
Visit to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil--Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How
2004 Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No
Stan for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's Non--existent
WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo--Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A
Record to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the Cuban
Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red
Alert 2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti--Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The
Washington Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
|
January
20, 2003
Looting the Russian Economy
Putin
and the Clans
By ALEXANDER
LUKIN
What's
happening in Russia today could be described as the consolidation of
an authoritarian regime, or in more popular jargon, the rise of a dictatorship.
The so-called parliamentary elections last December only confirmed this
assessment. I might be accused of alarmism -- after all, many newspapers
are still printing what they like; only a few oligarchs have been thrown
in jail without due process, and they were undoubtedly guilty of something
anyway; the borders are still open, and a number of political parties
are still in operation.
Unlike
certain former dissidents, I am not inclined to label as a dictatorship
any regime in Russia that fails to install me in a top leadership position.
The regime that took shape during the Yeltsin years, for example, was
not a dictatorship, though you would be hard pressed to call it a democracy,
either. The Yeltsin regime has been characterized in many ways -- I
prefer to call it "clan democracy." Various types of clans
-- territorial, ideological, political, sectoral, criminal etc. -- existed
under socialism, and flourished in the late-Brezhnev years. But back
then the clans were held in check by the centralized party-state apparatus.
When that apparatus collapsed these clans emerged as the main powers
in Russian politics, and divided the fragments of the party-state apparatus
amongst themselves.The separation of powers was an unknown concept in
the Soviet Union. From Soviet political culture, the post-Soviet clans
inherited the notion of political competition as the process of establishing
absolute power, and began battling for control of all available resources.
However, under Yeltsin the Kremlin, which had become the most influential
clan of all, had no pretensions to absolute power, preferring to play
the role of arbiter between rival clans and at times seeking their support.
Putin's
team clearly understood that this system was incapable of solving the
country's most pressing problems, and so they set out to create one
of their own. Just what that new system would look like wasn't immediately
clear, but today it is obvious that under Putin the Kremlin's main aim
has been to curb and eventually to destroy the clan system and to restore
the power of the centralized bureaucracy. In order to achieve this,
the regime began an ongoing battle with the clans and the gradual imposition
of direct control from the Kremlin. The president's program includes:
restoration of control in Chechnya (the staunchest of the territorial
clans) and throughout the regions; striking a blow against the corporate
empires of Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky (the most independent
economic clans), as well as the empire of Mikhail Khodorkovsky (which
was getting "out of control"); and the extermination of all
independent political parties (political clans).
What's
behind this policy? Putin may sincerely believe that a powerful bureaucracy
is the key to economic growth. There were plenty of Pinochet supporters
among the "democrats" of the Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras, and
especially among the economists of the Chubais-Gaidar school. Or perhaps
Putin, in keeping with Russian tradition, simply loves power itself.
The man on the street doesn't much care one way or the other, what matters
is simply that in destroying the clans -- a task whose time has surely
come -- the current leadership is using its power to create not the
rule of law (which requires the separation of powers, etc.), but an
all-powerful centralized state apparatus. This entails the curtailment
of such quasi-democratic institutions left over from the 1990s as a
relatively free press and elections, a somewhat independent judicial
system, and so on. Replacing the clans with the bureaucracy will entail
a gradual destruction of independent political and civic life. After
all, in Yeltsin's Russia the clans were the sponsors of the independent
media, political parties and of Russia's fledgling civil society.
From
Putin's point of view, any manifestation of independence (criticism
in the press, independent court decisions) can only be explained as
the work of oligarchs attempting to influence the regime. But in a state
that functions in accordance with the law, influencing the government
is not a crime so long as it occurs within the limits of the law. And
although the oligarchs did indeed acquire excessive power in the 1990s,
replacing them with an all-powerful bureaucracy is inconsistent with
the goal of joining the so-called civilized world. A regime run by billionaires
who came by their wealth illegally during the Yeltsin years is obviously
a bad thing. But in terms of democratization, the power of hundreds
of faceless and equally corrupt functionaries is far worse.
If
the process now under way is not stopped, an increasingly strict authoritarian
regime will emerge in Russia. Following on from the destruction of openly
feuding clans, we will see the annihilation of those clans (Moscow,
Tatarstan, etc.) that have quietly striven to preserve their autonomy.
After that, the regime will turn on organizations and individuals that
it considers even potentially capable of independent thought, finally
eliminating everyone even remotely capable of collective action. This
is how the Stalin and Hitler regimes developed.
Several
scenarios are possible for the economy. The most likely is stagnation,
which has always accompanied absolute bureaucratic power in Russia.
In fact, stagnation has already set in. There was limited economic reform
in the early months of Putin's rule, but the regime quickly chose the
path of least resistance: burning through the windfall profits from
oil and gas exports. Russia's chronic problems are not being addressed:
reform of the housing sector, the armed forces, the judiciary and law
enforcement are all on hold. GDP growth, driven by high oil prices,
is misleading. The education, public health and social welfare systems
continue to disintegrate. The list could run on.
Meanwhile
this regime of chekists, trained in the Soviet era in the necessity
of effective "ideological cover" for any operation, pays lip
service -- partly for domestic consumption but mostly for Western ears
-- to the rule of law, democracy, the separation of powers, free and
fair elections, and so on.
Another
scenario involves limited economic growth driven by a favorable global
economy, increased influence of reform-minded economists in the government
and more decisive action from the president. This scenario seems less
likely as the backers of bureaucratization (the clan of St. Petersburg
siloviki) are clearly in the ascendant, and historically in this country
bureaucratization has never led to economic growth.
Neither scenario offers much in the way of political stability, however.
Stagnation would lead to a political crisis more quickly than limited
growth, but even the latter -- as seen in such economically successful
dictatorships such as South Korea, Taiwan and Chile -- leads to the
downfall of dictatorship. And in many cases, dictators and their corrupt
henchmen have been called to account.
Having
taken full control of the Duma, the government, the regions, the parties
and the media, the president has removed all potential scapegoats. From
now on it will be extremely difficult for Putin to shift the blame for
a dip in the standard of living or any other crisis. Even in the best-case
scenario, some discontent is inevitable. And from now on, every broken
water pipe will have a direct impact on the president's own popularity.
His current sky-high poll numbers should fool no one. Gorbachev and
Yeltsin were just as popular in the early years of their tenure. Even
after four years in power, the "democrats" considered there
was no alternative to Gorbachev as leader of the Soviet Union.
Alexander
Lukin is an independent political analyst,This is the first
in a series of two articles by him.
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