Nikolay, This has happened to me and my colleague too. Often it's done by those who have a disagreement or a grudge who want to use it as a platform to smear your reputation. It happened to us on the Taking it Global network where to their credit. moderators agreed to freeze the profile as evidence for possible later use. Jeff --- On Sat, 6/9/08, Nikolay Kryachkov <nk...@mail.ru> wrote: |
What I mean is that there are some people, either mad or politically motivated who spend their time trying to disrupt, create false identities and generally try to muddy the waters. That's what I've experienced anyway. |
A wide range of subjects Nikolay, I know both Chris and I had parents who fought fascism, but our families did not suffer as did many in Eastern Europe both in the name of communism and fascism. With regard to Russia and the present conflict, you may be interested to read this: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/needtoknow/2008/08/the_conflict_we_chose.html I knew that Thatcher was Russophobic, definitely, but nothing about 35 million Russians. She did say "always beware of the Russian bear" Ironically we had our own gas at the time she was Prime Minister and her goverment oversaw the privatisation which helped exhaust supplies to the point of now being dependent on Russia. What the Washington Post article above doesn't describe, because the journalist is not aware of it, is that aside from the failure of necons and neolibs with their trickle down approach, there was a third group did not want to engineer the collapse of Russia. Unlike prior Harvard (HIID) macro attempts to deploy top-down development in Russia, they advocated a policy of targeted bottom-up micro development. |
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Nikolay, Yes true, communism was not realised in Russia, and having visited myself, I'm aware of the widespread affection for the stabilty under an authoritarian government, at whatever cost to Russian people and their close neighbours. http://holodomor.org.uk/ Fascism in Italy derived from socialism, which it has in common with the Nazi party in Germany. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html Likewise thought it claims to be anti-fascist, there's a rising tide of Nationalism and xenophobia in Russia in the Nashi movement which has a very strong resemblance to Nazi imagery. I visited apartment block in Moscow where there were problems with drug addicts, this is an international problem of varying degree. We have those in the West with debt they can't pay and in the East a grey economy with people paid unofficially which makes the finance of a mortgage difficult to justify. That at least in Ukraine where my experience is more recent and home prices are rocketing every year. Obama is part of the new position on enlightened self interest and the nurturing of Smart Power which sees the advantage of helping would-be adversaries develop, in the same we as we see self-interest in creating a world without poverty. We only nurture tomorrow's enemy. http://www.csis.org/smartpower/ And lastly, yes Russian developments for good. That was the whole point of going there and developing local economies with the aid of microcredit, the location of target markets for these developments was the other part of it. No agenda, only to demonstrate that peace is cheaper and more profitable than conflict. http://www.p-ced.com/projects/russia/ It should and can be as Tolstoy understood when he wrote that the law of love outweighs the law of violence and invalidates all mans laws. |
Yes Nikolay, It is what they say. But the actions and methods, including xenophobia and youth camps are not very far removed from those deployed by Nazis who in turn had been influenced by Soviet methods. I'm sorry to say that my progress in Russian language was poor and abandoned. Malcolm Muggeridge was one who observed both, having served at the Guardian's Moscow correspondent in 1333 and in 1939 commenting on the creation of the Gestapo from a pattern of the OGPU. "Almost Hitler's first act as head of State was to institute the Gestapo, the secret police, on the pattern of the Soviet Ogpu. By means of the Gestapo, it was possible to frighten everyone, and to make them, being frightened, subservient. Unorthodoxy, that is, not being an ostentatiously zealous National Socialist, became a crime deserving of punishment; and the said Gestapo was responsible for arresting whoever was, or might be, guilty of this crime, sentencing him and executing the sentence. In effect, the whole population was delivered into the Gestapo's hands." I'd never heard that Billy Joel song before, but it relates what I know. We had a long running "World at War" series on the BBC many years ago and the story of Leningrad was one of the most moving it was where I first heard the Simonov poem "Wait for me, only wait very hard....." I have met elderly men who served in convoys to supply Russia and to whom Russia has given medals, they know the story. They know the British came to fight the Red Army in 1919 on the side of the Czar. These are things I hear old men criticise about their own government in the past. But the point of this discussion for me is not to say what West and East have done, because there is surely wrong on both sides. If I criticise Putin, I am just as much a critic of Blair, Bush and Cheney. Now the purpose of microcredit is to offer a tool for self-empowerment and that's my reason for participating here following the introduction from Chris. In Russia it was the proven Grameen model that was deployed in Tomsk which from a population of 600,000 created 15,000 loans to launch more than 10,000 new businesses with repayment and business survival in excess of 95% over 4 years. The project completed, the bank remains and we have a proven model for delivering localised economic development. You will here more about these ideas when Bush is replaced and the term Obamanomics becomes common parlance. Grameen type microcredit does not require collateral, it it built on trust and mutual dependence. There may be better solutions in future but this has been proven even in Russia. Jeff |
Yes, in part it was, when food was exported as people starved. We all have history not to be proud of. These are the acts of governments and those controlling wealth, same as it ever was. Not a slur on any people or anything to defend. Jeff |
I brought the holodomor into this Nikolay, not as a jibe but to illustrate that just as much harm had been done before Nazism by those who were in total opposition to this ideloogy. The Nazis grew from the 1918 humiliation of Germany and a leader determined to raise his country at whatever cost and by any unscrupulous means. The economic destruction of Russia in 1998 was not a good move for the same reasons as the humiliation of Germany. You ask why a group of people can't pool their resources in business. Yes they can, and that's why I introduced Chis Cook and his open capital ideas. These are new methods whereas microcredit has a long history. The work we do in Eastern Europe aims to bring in external aid as investment. It's more likely to be suvccessful when based on concepts with a long track record. That will no doubt change as asset shared funding grows and returns successful outcones. Jeff |
--- On Sun, 7/9/08, Nikolay Kryachkov <nk...@mail.ru> wrote: |
From: Nikolay Kryachkov <nk...@mail.ru> |
Nikolay, I don't have an answer for what I don't know, regarding the funding of Hitler. There is no relationship that I know of between Irish famines and fascism. I refer only to the common ground between nations who have experienced humiliation and the political opportunity for tap into the feeling of re-asserting power. Likewise, where my family came from in Scotland, they had their homes burned down to make grazing for sheep. Not fascism but simple capitalistic greed. So I have no answer to that either, nor to the other states which became colonies of one empire. There is an article "How Harvard Lost Russia" which describes the background leading to vast sums of money disappearing, presumably into the hands of Yeltsin's cronies:- www.uvm.edu/~wgibson/How%20Harvard%20Lost%20Russia.pdf Nobody asked our founder to aid Russia. That was already under way with agreembent between US and Russian governments. He researched and chose Tomsk /Seversk and asked for it to be considered as part of the program, the last of 4 such initiatives across Russia at the end of the 90s. The strategic importance of Tomsk was not financial, but being a place with large nuclear stockpiles and could therefore be considered a risk greater than a financial one. Jeff |
<The Western currency/economic model is far from perfection and it is seen well enough when this model is being applied outside the West. Spreading this model outside the West is an attention distraction of Western public from its own problems. The cost of changes in Russia was and, as far as I know, is 1 000 000 lost lifes yearly. Can you convince the critics of the West that it is not (smart)war operation? I think it's impossible to lose Russia because it's impossible to absorb or completely destroy it. The instruments for that are not perfect and can't be perfect.> |
That's where we started with the critique of conventional capitalism. http://www.p-ced.com/about/background/ http://www.p-ced.com/about/history/ This was delivered at a point where the US was enjoying a boom and there was little interest in the effects of poverty. That position has changed radically in more than a decade. What that article refers to in losing Russia is the loss of an opportunity to turn a cold war antagonist into an ally. Russia as you say cannot be lost, but it can remain a source of many problems that obstruct us from ending poverty while we fund either side of conflict in other countries, like Vietnam for half the last century I don't know if we can convince critics that these aren't smart war tactics. We have referred to these efforts as economic smart bombs, which doesn't carry a military implication but we're already unwelcome. FSB wanted bribes from us and we refused, so our founder's visa is blocked, though others such as the British Council and BP have more recently become unwelcome too. Time will tell I guess. . |
There you have it. A comment from 1922 making the point that "to leave Russia to her own resources is folly", making the case for economic development. I see no reason to view this any differently more than 80 years later after vast sums have been spent on weapons and millions exterminated. Now we depend on an unstable source for our energy, who may decide to turn off supplies at a whim to spite or bomb the apartments of her own citizens to justify a war, to distribute polonium to enemies in other countries, imprison those who don't fall in line and murder those who report as journalists. These are facts, the acts of thugs and gangsters in an out of control country which the whole world has good reason to consider a threat. We battle with the consequences, spending money to try to stem an HIV epidemic which now threatens all Europe, trafficking of children and women for exploitation, guns to fuel our own crime. All this costs billions which could otherwise be put to good use in developing local economic conditions on a global basis, US, UK and Russia included. People can tell, you are right. We have been telling for 12 years and only now is the message getting through. That's where time comes into the reckoning. Now you've had just about all I can say. Interesting as it may be to examine history, there is other work I must get on with. If this forum is about discussing the merits of various economic models for development, that's why I'm here.. Jeff |
How Grameen issues funds is maybe something Chris can explain. Finca managed the microfinance bank in Tomsk and can be contacted for details. http://www.mixmarket.org/en/demand/demand.show.profile.asp?ett=2236 Grameen is not associated with the concept of people-centered economics although in Dr Yunus recent book "Creating a world without Poverty" he describes a model for a "social business" which takes a similar position that the real objective of business is to serve people and communities, rather than be manipulated in terms of numbers for the benefit od speculators. He advocates a social stock market for this type of business to flourish. Jeff |