Trooper Wrote:OUGwave Wrote:Trooper Wrote:Does Russia have an equivilant to Halliburton?
The fact that you even ask that question tells me you don't know **** about Russia.
Sometimes you have to fish around to find out what is known.
Apparently you consider yourself somewhat of a cosmonaut, how about sharing some wisdom comrade?
The point is that you shouldn't be talking about what you obviously are so ignorant of, particuarly when it comes to comparing them favorably with the United States in any way.
I won't say that Russia has a Halliburton, because that is unfair to Halliburton. Halliburton isn't some evil corrupt company. In fact, I'd venture to bet that you don't even know what they do. Do you? What business are they in? What do they sell/provide? Who are there competitors? Some Halliburton program managers have skimmed money off the top of government deals (for themselves, not for their firm), and those wrongdoings were outed by who? The firm. Some Haliburton managers of a Nigeria project were part of a larger consortium of firms in the country who considered bribing Nigerian officials--an entirely common business practice in Nigeria--but ultimately did not. Who discovered that the consortium talks had taken place and then subsequently reported it to the authorities? The firm. Arguably Halliburton is the best example of how a responsible firm should conduct itself in the United States. It self-polices. They have not committed one corporate excess AS A COMPANY that the leadership of the corporation was aware of and didn't report to authorities themselves.
They have a PR problem, in that liberals like you have turned them into some kind of mythological evil conspiratorial company, and then used their name to evoke a rhetorical strawman. To you, Halliburton is just a stand-in for the foil of an evil conspiratorial corporation you need to make your liberal Oliver Stone narrative about the world work. It is the same thing you did with the word "Neo-cons" in our earlier debate, using the term to play some role as an evil group of people that controls our government as part of your liberal narrative, not even knowing where the ideology comes from, what it says, or the political history of the people who subsrcribe to it. Kudos for smearing the name of a good company, and all of the good people that work there and stakeholders (and stockholders) in its future success, as well. Bravo.
It's something you liberals do all the time. You invent artificial realities to support your Oliver Stone view of the world. I bet you thought that JFK was an accurate depiction of Kennedy assassination, and Fahrenheit 9/11 is an accurate depiction of why we went to war in Afghanistan (Had to get that oil pipeline in Kabul, right?).
Even though your kind doesn't care about the facts, and jumps to assume a reality that fits your skewed fantasy narrative before you have the facts, I'll offer you some information on the relationship between Russian businesses and the government.
Post-Communist Russia is what political scientists call an Oligarchy, that is it is a political system in which a few, powerful, monied interests control and manipulate the entire political system for their own benefit. Instead of going into great detail myself, I'll direct you to what is considered the seminal book on the Oligarch's control of post-Communist Russian political life: "The Oligarchs" written by former Washington Post Moscow correspondent David Hoffman.
Here is a webpage where you can read reviews of the book from the most respected newspapers in the world (the Post, the NY Times, the Times of London, The Telegraph, etc): <a href='http://www.theoligarchs.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.theoligarchs.com/</a>
The reviews are worth reading, they paint the picture of Oligarchy better than I can. Here's a salient piece from a 2002 Washington Post article on the book:
Quote:As they were emboldened, their arrogance, greed and ambition became limitless, and the violent, unsavory tactics they employed would have made John D. Rockefeller cringe. In the context of a collapsing economy and desperate need, all too visible in the streets of Moscow, where pensioners were selling their household possessions in order to survive, Khodorkovsky and a colleague announced a credo shared by all of the oligarchs: "ourselves for ourselves." The representatives of the faltering Russian state, themselves no strangers to ruthlessness, had their own motives for encouraging the oligarchs' rapacious manuevers, whether personal greed or the desire to destroy the remnants of communism (always a useful phantom) no matter what the cost.
In this "embrace of wealth and power," as Hoffman calls it, one outrage followed another. For example, in the notorious "loans for shares" scheme, the Russian government received cash loans from the oligarchs in exchange for shares in resource-rich state enterprises -- both sides fully aware that when the loans were not repaid these "crown jewels" of the Russian economy would fall into the oligarchs' hands for what was in effect a pittance. There are no heroes in this tale.
This isn't rumor or innuendo by Hoffman. The book is just one work which I find explains things well. All this stuff happened. It's a culturally accepted part of doing business in Russia. Putin is trying to take down Mikhail Khodorkovsky right now on tax evasion, mainly because he actually sees Khodorkovsky as a threat to his power as President.
In short, Russia ACTUALLY IS the Cronyist, oligarchical state you accuse the United States of being in your fantasist liberal charicature of Haliburton and the administration, which is why it strikes me as deeply IRONIC that you would compare RUSSIA favorably with the United States vis-a-vis corporate control of government policy.
Instead of just believing applause lines at Democratic rallies, why not actually go out and read a bit about the facts next time? Cleverness will never be a substitute for having the facts at your command.
