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![[Review]
Is Iraq a Safer Place Now Compared to What it Was Like During Saddam Hussein’s Regime?
Wael Al-Sallami: I’m an Iraqi native. I was born in 1988, just four months before the end of the Iraq-Iran war, then survived the Iraq-Kuwait one and the American attack as a 3 year old, I lived through the economical blockade which was enforced by the US and did absolutely nothing to Saddam, while severely harmed the Iraqi people in so many ways, and then finally survived yet another war in 2003 and went through the horrific times that took the lives of so many good people.
But was it really safer back then? Did the Americans really help Iraqi people? Was it worse before 2003?! I think those are all misguided questions, and here’s why:](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4t2i0sX6D1r206ioo1_1280.jpg "[Review]
Is Iraq a Safer Place Now Compared to What it Was Like During Saddam Hussein’s Regime?
Wael Al-Sallami: I’m an Iraqi native. I was born in 1988, just four months before the end of the Iraq-Iran war, then survived the Iraq-Kuwait one and the American attack as a 3 year old, I lived through the economical blockade which was enforced by the US and did absolutely nothing to Saddam, while severely harmed the Iraqi people in so many ways, and then finally survived yet another war in 2003 and went through the horrific times that took the lives of so many good people.
But was it really safer back then? Did the Americans really help Iraqi people? Was it worse before 2003?! I think those are all misguided questions, and here’s why:")
[Review]
Is Iraq a Safer Place Now Compared to What it Was Like During Saddam Hussein’s Regime?
Wael Al-Sallami: I’m an Iraqi native. I was born in 1988, just four months before the end of the Iraq-Iran war, then survived the Iraq-Kuwait one and the American attack as a 3 year old, I lived through the economical blockade which was enforced by the US and did absolutely nothing to Saddam, while severely harmed the Iraqi people in so many ways, and then finally survived yet another war in 2003 and went through the horrific times that took the lives of so many good people.
But was it really safer back then? Did the Americans really help Iraqi people? Was it worse before 2003?! I think those are all misguided questions, and here’s why:
Price is what you pay; value is what you get.
—
Warren Buffett
Alan Greenspan: The Great Enabler
EXCERPT: By the time Alan Greenspan left the Fed in 2006, Americans had lost trillions upon trillions of dollars in two gigantic bubble scams, and we had gone from being a nation with incredible stored wealth in personal savings to being a country that collectively is now way over its head in hock, with no way out in sight. As of this writing (2010), America’s international debt is in the region of $115 trillion, with our debt now well over 50% of GDP. This is debt on a level never before seen in a modern industrialized country.
It sounds facile to pin this all on one guy, but Greenspan was the crucial enabler of the bad ideas and greed of others. He blew up one bubble and then, when the first one burst, he printed money to inflate the next one. That was the difference between the tech and the housing disasters. In the tech bubble, America lost its own savings. In the housing bubble, we borrowed the shirts we ended up losing, leaving us in a hole twice as deep.
Alan Greenspan c. 1974
The Moment When America’s Ridiculous Pity-the-Rich Attitude Started
Is Russia Still a Communist Country?
Answer: No. And neither is it a “traditional” or “classic” dictatorship. There is a distressing concentration of power at the very top of the federal government (Russia is a federation), the power of local governments continues to erode, the government exerts more control of the media than is customary in a liberal democracy, some commentators believe that we are witnessing the beginnings of a cult of personality (of Prime Minister Putin), and many experts and laypersons believe that the government has repressed, sometimes violently, members of the opposition.
Thus, an objective way to put it is to say that the Russian Federation has SOME features that are more consistent with an authoritarian regime than with a liberal democracy. Where on that spectrum it lies, however, is a very controversial topic and reasonable minds disagree. The same has been said about states widely considered to be true liberal democracies, like the United Kingdom, Germany, and even the United States.
As to its history, yes, when the Russian Federation (then called the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) was part of the Soviet Union, it was indeed a “Communist” country according to the widely accepted definition of that term. In a purely technical sense, and using the terminology of Communist parties, no state has ever achieved true Communism; rather, states like the Soviet Union were in a transitional socialist stage of the transformation to true Communism. But this is really a distinction without a difference. The Soviet Union was an authoritarian one-party state controlled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. To most people, that’s Communism.
In addition, applying the term “socialist” rather than “Communist” to the Soviet Union and its cold war satellite states creates confusion when discussing many modern European liberal democracies. For instance, the currently ruling Labour Party in the U.K. describes itself as a “democratic socialist” party rather than a “social democratic party.”
Ultimately, what this discussion demonstrates is that labels can be deceiving and are often quite useless unless carefully defined. The one word answer to your question is simply “No,” but no one would learn anything from that.
Igor Sechin
Igor Sechin (b. 7 September 1960, Leningrad) is a Russian official, considered a close ally of Vladimir Putin. Sechin is often described as one of Putin’s most conservative counselors and the leader of the Kremlin’s Siloviki faction, a statist lobby gathering former security services agents.
In the 1980s Igor Sechin worked in Mozambique. He was officially a Soviet interpreter. It is believed that he was a resident spy.
According to Stratfor, Sechin was “the USSR’s point man for weapons smuggling to much of Latin America and the Middle East” and he reportedly served with GRU agent and arms smuggler Viktor Bout.
According to Stratfor, “Sechin acts as boss of Russia’s gigantic state oil company Rosneft and commands the loyalty of the FSB (formerly ‘KGB’). Thus, he represents the FSB’s hand in Russia’s energy sector.”
Since 27 July 2004 he has been the chairman of the board of directors of JSC Rosneft, which swallowed up the assets of jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Yukos. Khodorkovsky has accused Igor Sechin of plotting to have him arrested and plundering his oil company: “The second as well as the first case were organised by Igor Sechin. He orchestrated the first case against me out of greed and the second out of cowardice.”
Igor Sechin: The Kremlin’s Oil Man
[11.11.09]
EXCERPTS: He’s been depicted as Darth Vader in the Russian press and described as “the scariest person on Earth.” Igor Sechin’s official title is deputy prime minister, but within Russia, many consider him the most powerful individual in the country after Vladimir Putin. (Yes—that means he’s more influential than the president.) […]
Rosneft drills in Chechnya in cooperation with a Chechen government oil company. As Russia has attempted to increase its access to Chechnya’s high-quality crude and its petroleum transportation network, a number of unusual incidents have occurred over the last few years that improve Rosneft’s position, including the seizure of ports, the transfer of oil assets and violence. Rosneft has not been directly implicated in these events.
Igor Sechin and BP CEO Tony Hayward (2012)
Putin’s Dark Lord Keeps Power in Oil Patch
[05.2012]
EXCERPTS: Russia’s leaders have unveiled a new government that is notable in the absence of one prominent figure: Igor Sechin, the dark lord responsible for dismantling the oil empire of oligarch-turned-prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Sadly, Sechin’s departure does not augur a fresh start. Rather, it demonstrates where the true power in Russia lies. Hint: It’s not in the government. […]
Sechin’s move offers a glimpse of the true nature of power in today’s Russia. Being a minister does not count for much in a country run by a close-knit group of Putin’s friends and business associates. It is the resources one commands, and the phone numbers one can call, that determine one’s true influence.
“Power lies where oil lies,” wrote columnist Dmitry Butrin in the daily Kommersant. “Where is the oil? We won’t tell you, but all the right people know.”
Sechin Renews Dealmaker Role Beyond Kremlin
[05.2012]
EXCERPTS: The cross-border alliances Rosneft signed this year with Exxon, Eni and Statoil to explore Russia’s Arctic and Black Seas were overseen by Sechin. They include plans to tap unconventional oil resources that will be critical to Russia maintaining record crude output and geopolitical clout.
The three foreign oil majors together may invest $7.7 billion in initial exploration of their offshore ventures with Rosneft, their Russian partner has said. Those deals came after Putin on April 12 proposed legislation to cut initial tax payments for offshore developments to win investors. The Russian shelf may attract $500 billion over 30 years, Putin said. […]
“If anybody had any doubts about Sechin’s control over Rosneft this puts it to rest,” Ronald Smith, a Moscow-based oil and gas analyst at Citigroup Inc., said by e-mail. “He’s right back where he’s been for a long time.”
Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Asked why he didn’t flee Russia before his arrest in 2003, he shrugs. “Naive ideas about justice?” he says.
Jailed Oil Tycoon is ‘Perfect Martyr’
“Khodorkovsky”, a documentary about the former billionaire chief of Yukos Oil Co., grabbed headlines even before its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival when thieves stole it from the director’s Berlin apartment.
It was the second attempt to steal the movie, according to Cyril Tuschi, who has been working on it for five years. Funded by German television, the film portrays Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 47, as a man who has evolved, as the press release puts it, “from a perfect socialist to a perfect capitalist and finally, in a Siberian prison, becoming a perfect martyr.”
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of punk band Pussy Riot, behind bars during a court hearing in Moscow
Putin Spokesman Condemns Protests Against Russian Orthodox Church
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY
