People power, Russia style: Small-town lessons about Russian democracy – Yahoo News
“The local amber operators live in the Baltiysk area, they know the place and the people, and in a variety of ways they take the local population’s interests and needs into account. They ran the district council, but nobody claims they were doing a bad job of it,” says Vladimir Abramov, an independent political expert. “They were mostly members of United Russia and big supporters of Putin.”
So the businessmen put the military structure (which had basically dissolved) to work manufacturing a product positioned in the world’s market, and Putin’s culture followed those businessmen back to their town and voted. It voted to make a decision, but not to change a position. In other words, they are still with Putin and the system seems to be working.
But did the businessmen create barriers that controls the velocity between those in the town and those in the global market, or did they try to build a fence around the town and whose gate only opens to the few?
For me a gate, which is what every good fence needs, is no good unless it’s there as an ornament. Those in the know (know how to open gates) seem to build close to the gate, and, in a way, those building close to the gate are in charge of the structure. I am just saying, I think those living close to the gate can become barriers too easily jumped over and too limiting in letting the few move around the barrier that represents, in this case, those voting. On the other hand, the town is dealing with a natural resource similar to oil, so maybe a closed system is not too bad, as long as the gate is well guarded. As we have seen in the Ukraine, if those guarding the gate are weak, the system doesn’t last long.
If including the military culture within a Capitalistic system creates fences or barriers, I don’t know the answer. The system inside the Russian town maybe Communistic or not, but the financial advantage in the world goes (so far) to the Capitalists.
But this business model the Russian businessmen of the town used is very similar in structure as what the Chinese used in Pakistan. In the Chinese system it seemed to be a winning strategy, but since I last looked, I don’t know if the Chinese model built barriers or fences.
In the Chinese model, they hired all ex-military higher-ups to run their manufacturing and the Chinese kept their economy going by keeping their people working. The business model had, what is called, a Cheap Trick. A Cheap Trick is basically a structure-building narrative with an advantage. The advantage in this case was that the military leaders took charge of the Chinese (I am thinking mostly Chinese workers) manufacturing facilities after serving in the Pakistani military as generals. Normally such a thing would raise some eyebrows with thoughts of nationalizing the manufacturing in Pakistan.
But the move in hiring these ex-generals were thought to be on the up and up. There was no pretext to hide this fact locally, nationally, and globally, and the global Capitalist responded favorably.
Perhaps in the successful Chinese model some events could give us clues as to what kind of structure we are dealing with inside the model’s environment. Maybe one event, The Red Mosque Massacre, could show us either barrier or fence building.
After the inhabitants of The Red Mosque made a violent attack on a Chinese massage parlor (Who knew massage parlors were even available in Pakistan?), the Pakistan Government responded to the Chinese request, to protect Chinese citizens, by making the inhabitants of the mosque, who were mostly the women who perpetrated the attack on the massage parlor, a target to be massacred.
So in that instant, there was mostly fence building going on, as the Pakistani Army, in effect, isolate the Chinese from the people inside the mosque and surrounding environment.
On the other hand, as the article points out, nobody seems to be jumping over the Putin barrier, so maybe the Town’s model will be just as successful, as that used by the Chinese in Pakistan, but at a smaller magnitude per event.
via People power, Russia style: Small-town lessons about Russian democracy – Yahoo News.
Last month the Air Force declared its variant “ready for combat,” and most press reports lauded this as a signal that the program had turned a corner. But a memo issued from the Pentagon’s top testing official, based largely upon the Air Force’s own test data, showed that the declaration was wildly premature.
The protesters are using sun umbrellas, and I am not sure what the strategy of the police is, to handout soft drinks?
The Image 