pomogite mexikanke ;)

[Wendell W. Solomons]

At 07:02 PM 4/22/98 +200, you wrote:
>------------------------
>
>From:           "Zhanna Hegai" <zhanulya at hotmail.com>
>Subject:        Need some help!!!
>Date sent:      Wed, 22 Apr 1998 04:24:16 PDT
>
>Hello, everybody!
>My friend in Mexico needs some help.  She is writing a course paper on
>Russia, or, to be more exact, on how did the fall of the communism and
>the adoption of democracy effected (or still effect) our lives here.
[..]

Greetings friends!

Uladzimir Katkouski voices this need above.

Articles in the Washington Post, the New York Times and the LA Times
are starting to understand how these events will be touching our lives.
In Europe, Spanish and Austrian dailies in paricular have been
focusing attention. Then there are the English-language web sites of
the newspapers "eXile", Moscow Times, St. Petersburg Times and Moscow
Tribune (see quote at foot of email for the ICEM website.)

'Zines are also addressing this topic. Much research is required
to ward off the ill effects which includes an ecological threat.
I am therefore sharing with the list a text of mine that was re-edited
for the EEurope Digest, a current affairs one. Please feel free to
transmit this information to anyone else who might be inclined to
research the topic

Regards
\\/

>"Jove" <jove at pacbell.net> :
>
>And then -- what? There are no real plans, there is no real understanding
>of the root causes of Russia's problems. "Reformists" from the ranks of
>Soviet nomenklatura have no real concept of what needs to be done, and
>their Wester advisers have scant understanding of the nature of the
>situation, inherited from the USSR. This is Russi'a last chance to really
>change course away from catastrophe, without a social calamity, and not
>back into the defunct Soviet economic "paradise".
>
>Kirienko is today's Gaidar -- Yeltsin seems unable to understand this, and
>others do
>not see that Gaidar was absolutely the *worst* that happended to the task
>of economic reforms in Russia. It is thanks to Gaidar that communists still
>have a little breathing time in Russia. But then, Kirienko was once the
>*first secretary* of the Komsomol for the Gorki region -- this is a rank
>parallel to the head of the regional unit of the CPSU. And now he is
>supposed to lead Russia into a non-communist, normal economy; this is like
>assigning a blind person the job of teaching Impressionist painiting
>techniques...

          Tut mozhno odnim slovom vyrazit' -- TOCHNO.

          Trezvaja mysl' imejetsja v nashej rabochej gruppe.

Bydet li Yeltsin samoderzavtsem? Grusnaja ekonomicheskaja kartina davno
jasna. Skoro reshit'sja eshe v kakuju politicheshkuju step' povela
neoliberal'naja mysl'.

| \ | / |JL|  When I hear 'economics'
|--< >--|EI|  I pull out my Mauser ...
| / | \ |SV|  Writer Arthur C. Clarke when
|   |   |UE|  Russian reforms were mentioned
|   |   |SS|  by solomons at slt.lk


Reply-To: eeurope-changes-request at blackops.org
Subject: [EECD:832] eeurope-changes digest (98/04/21 21584)

------------------------
                             EEUROPE-CHANGES-DIGEST

                         A list for people interested to know
                    what is really going on in Eastern Europe.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                        ... and the truth shall make you free ...
-------------------------------------

Message #3
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 1998 10:15:40 -0400
Subject: [EECD:830] Dominoes - Russia? Korea? Japan? And China?

Greetings!

Jerry Hough said this in a list posting on 14th April -

"Yeltsin has got himself in a box ...'

"One wonders if he will make the astonishing judgment
that his safest course is actually to institute a policy
that the Duma and population could support. Larry Summers
is once more saying that the US opposes such a policy,
this time on an official VOA editorial of US government
position. Even God is not smart enough to know why."

--------------------------------------------------------
Voice Of America Date=April 9, 1998 Title=Editorial
--------------------------------------------------------

  Russia Should Avoid Asian Model

  U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers
  recently cautioned Russia against the model some Asian
  states have followed. that model favors the centralized
  coordination of economic activity over decentralized
  market incentives. it also involves government targeting
  of particular industries. the result has been what some
  call "crony capitalism.

  "Russia's nascent capitalism has exhibited some of these
  tendencies."

(End of excerpt)
--------------------------------------------------------

Isn't six years rather too long to come home and complain
of tendencies? I personally sent Lawrence Summers a 3000
word text in July 1992 plus several faxes to warn him of
the consequences of divesting public property in Russia
in an unprepared market. Then Chief Economist of the
IBRD, two letters of that organization dated 1992 are in
my desk drawers.

Summers exposes himself to inquiry for act of commission
or omission. We have reached the stage of studying the
results in detailed testimony such as that of Janine
Wedel (George Washington University.) Next, Anne
Williamson's text at <www.bookagency.com/oligarchy.html>
reports on Lawrence Summers catalytical and convening
role in the reforms for decentralization.

  The moving finger writes; and, having writ,
  Moves on nor all thy piety nor wit
  Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
  Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

 (Edward Fitzgerald:Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam)

Fencing Out of Business
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The plateau of year 1998 brings in still more to see of
the horizon ahead for Lawrence Summers's economics.

It is common knowledge that the fraternity of thieves
shies away from legitimate business so as not to be
exposed. Professionals in international business, for
their part, shy away from associating with mobsters for
that may bring in legal and mortal embarrassment.
Consequently, mutual repulsion between the former and the
latter happens as a matter of course.

The more Summers dallies in fabricating anarchist
economic models that will not set off legitimate business
development in the former USSR, the louder his message to
the underworld that the community window remains open for
bandits to cash in. Through inviting a thieves' world
into the house, Lawrence Summers shoos away legitimate
American business. We see business executives exposed to
the hazard of inclement domicile and contamination by
crime.

Dominoes and the River Danube
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

If tried-and-tested economic models -- for instance, the
recent post-War French, German or Japanese models -- are
not considered and modified for use in Russia, then there
will be a heavy price to pay. If methods, for instance,
such as those used in the former GDR are not tried,
Russia will proceed a little further down the road. One-
sixth of the land in the world will become an El Dorado
for organized crime.

The European Union and China have been keen on using the
petroleum and natural gas resources on this territory.
Would they like to end up paying tribute to organized
crime?

Here are milestones along the road that Summers keeps
traveling:

1. The ex-Kremlinogist Richard Pipes' imagery on fencing-
out of the former USSR (as in the Aboriginal or Red
Indian-reservation prototypes ) will continue to be
thwarted by everyday transport and communications
developments. How could one stop population movement when
such vast air, sea and land perimeters are involved?

2. As the number of unpaid workers increases in the
former USSR and community health suffers, the area will
gradually become an incubator for epidemics of disease.
Today we know that includes virus mutations that cross
the animal/human barrier such as Mad Cow Disease, in the
West, or Asian Chicken Virus, in the East.

3. The human and industrial resources of the former USSR
will increasingly be used by black money for industry,
elsewhere illicit or illegal. Such activity includes, for
instance, heroin processing. Already British newspapers
report a record increase in drug-supply with the street
price for a dose of heroin falling to less than the cost
of a pint of beer (i.e., two Pounds Sterling.) As
population destabilization proceeds in the 15 former
republics of the USSR -- and labor becomes increasingly
destitute -- the British price can be expected to drop
further (Turkmenia and Ukraine now report contraction in
their economies.)

4. China has an extensive border with the former USSR. As
that country experiences more destabilization at its
periphery, that will make for an Eurasian environmental
challenge to which China will be forced to respond. China
would extract the last bad teeth in the Lawrence Summers
formula by being forced to extend its physical zone of
influence across the Eurasian continent, more towards the
river Danube in Central Europe. In a matter of social
survival, any civil government successor of Yeltsin's
will welcome China's cooperation -- for the world's
largest country territory will be protected from banditry
by the largest standing army in the world.

Therefore Lawrence Summers' task now in 1998 will be to
explain how he will block and destabilize China. Does his
strategy require tipping that country over like a domino?

Big Daddy Blast
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The game-like, anarchist approach to economics may one
day be rewarded like Timothy McVeigh was at Oklahoma
City. At home in the United States, editors may already
be following that the undue influence on international
events of today's Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers and
his aides has become a disproportionate liability to
Bretton Woods institutions and the U.S. finance ministry,
headed by former businessman, Treasury Secretary Rubin.

TIME's April 6th issue, for instance, devotes two pages
to ticking Summers and Treasury top brass off about their
advice to Japan to encourage $80 billion worth of
consumer spending in Japan. This fits in the record of
Summers' protectionist plea pandering to hypothetical
U.S. business which cannot compete on merit for sales
overseas. In the real world outside, Intel, Hewlett-
Packard, Motorola, are famous U.S.-- based transnational
corporations which enjoy enormous prestige and success.
Why not let them continue to excel in Russia too? Intel
has just demonstrated the productive way forward by going
beyond its 200 MHz MMX Pentium chip to win more acclaim
in the global marketplace with its 400 MHz BX Pentium II
chip. This speeds an ordinary PC onwards to large tasks
requiring 1000 MB of RAM and 16 GB hard disks.

Russia? Korea? Japan? And China?
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

It is in these circumstances that Lawrence Summers
persists in getting a writ of endorsement such as that of
the VOA editorial. However, a simple study of what he
puts in the editorial provides an exposure of his own
neglect and faulty economics that contributed during the
past six years to the new thieves' world in Russia.

The IMF and the FED were only recently involved in
bailing out Korea.  While Summers tries to bring in and
finger Asian economies in the editorial, he overlooks
complaining about Wall Street acquaintances whose
whispers in the market might have put big money on the
recent Asian currency destabilization trail.

Are the destabilization of the Japanese and the Chinese
economies just other milestones in his way? And does he
also intend passing out the new bailout bills to the IMF
and FED?

This game of dominoes has reached the elevation of 'folie
de grandeur.' The stakes have reached so high that they
would tend to disturb the U.S. President.

:-------------------:
 wendell w. solomons
 management research
:-------------------:

solomons @ slt.lk

RUSSIA: ACTIVISTS GO ONLINE AGAINST ARREARS.
15 Apr 98

By Brian Whitmore.

>>From Tennessee to Tokyo, workers around the world were marching
in virtual ranks with Russians during their protests last week,
thanks to an Internet-based campaign that demands Russians be
paid promptly and in full. "Wherever you are in the world, you
can not only express your solidarity with Russian workers and
their trade unions, but actively support them," reads a message
on the site, accessed through <www.icem.org>, the home page of
the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and
General Workers Unions, or ICEM.

"The Cyber-Campaign: Pay Us Our Wages!" has both English and
Russian versions. The Russian version is accessed via a bright
red ticket emblazoned with the slogan, Zaplatite Nam!, or Pay
Us! The site urges supporters to inundate the villains behind
the Russian wage arrears, or those villains who are online,
with a flood of electronic mail. The site lists the guilty
parties as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the
Russian federal and regional governments, Russian factory
directors, multinational corporations and banks. It provides e-
mail addresses for each. The ICEM shows little mercy. Take, for
example, its treatment of former First Deputy Prime Minister
Anatoly Chubais and acting First Deputy Prime Minister Boris
Nemtsov, tagged "energetic young reformers" by the Western
media, a label the ICEM mocks.

A section of the Web site titled "ask Boris" provides Nemtsov's
e-mail and home page addresses. It also quotes Nemtsov's press
secretary, Andrei Pershin, as saying that the addresses provide
an "opportunity to address Boris Nemtsov directly. All letters
will be forwarded to the staff of the first vice premier, [and]
answers will be also published on the server's pages." Chubais
fares no better on the site. Last September, the magazine
 for his
performance as Russia's finance minister. "Did he deserve these
accolades? We are not so sure. Throughout this campaign site,
you can read about the real deprivation being caused to massive
numbers of ordinary Russian workers and their families
struggling in the present economic climate," the site says.

The site invites visitors to make their own pick for the
world's best central banker and in the process become eligible
to win "Roses of Memory," a cassette of songs by Gennady
Shchevchenko dedicated to the mine workers of Russia.

The ICEM is particularly withering in regard to international
financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank. "When
the IMF comes to a country with what they call a high-level
delegation they may as well send an office boy because their
conditions are always the same," ICEM's Jim Catterson, who
helped develop the cyber-campaign, said by telephone from
Brussels. "They propose austerity programs of the type that
have caused massive poverty throughout the world." U.S. labor
leaders said the cyber-campaign is catching on among American
unions eager to pitch in to help their Russian counterparts.
Some of the largest U.S. labor unions, including the United
Steel Workers Association and the United Auto Workers, are
members of the ICEM.

Joe Drexler, a spokesman for the Oil, Chemical and Atomic
Workers Union, said his union and other U.S. unions sent
messages to President Boris Yeltsin, as well as words of
encouragement to Russian labor unions, last Thursday. "Boris
Yeltsin needs to be concerned about American public opinion,
and labor unions have influence over that opinion," said
Drexler in a telephone interview from the union's headquarters
in Lakewood, Colorado. The ICEM represents 404 industrial trade
unions in 113 countries worldwide, including eight Russian
unions, and boasts a combined membership of more than 4 million
workers. (c) 1998 Independent Press.  MOSCOW TIMES 15/04/98