Ethical Investment & Foreign Policy

[AtW]

TinTin - you really need to re-examine what you think of Putin: I can understand what most people outside of Russia won't really give a sh1t about what Putin does to people who in large voted for him, but his ambitions are much wider than Russia itself - it is not Saudi Arabia case where backwards country can be left to itself, you are dealing with aggressive country with lots of nukes.

[ASB]

Alexi,

I guess Putin is not your best mate then. Probably rightly so.

Whist the former USSR are huge producers of Oil and Gas at the point of Putins arrival they (bizzarely) didn't make a huge amount out of it (or rather nothing like as huge as they could). Back in '99 there simply wasn't the infrastructure either to export what they were capable of producing, equally they couldn't deliver it well internally. Rapidly it seemed that they were able to improve internal delivery systems - a consequence of this seemed to be a glut of oil products on the local market at well below world prices (in '02 I recall that prices of retail fuel in Moscow were considerably less than the world price of crude).

The last few years has seen huge and rapid infrastructure development, now Moscow effectively controls a large portion of the west Gas supplies.

Certainly he did start off with substantial pouplarity, despite inflicting substantial economic pain on the population - largely through welfare reforms. Within Russia this popularity does seem to be on the wane. It'll be potentially frightening to see where it ends in if he does manage to revitalise the economy, hold the west by the balls in terms of energy supply and then wrest control of major industries (or at least those he has not yet reobtained) back into the state machinery.

[GreenerGrass]

I've reduced my exposure in Jupiter Emerging Europe (about 50% of fund in Russian stocks like Lukoil, Gazprom etc.) by 60% recently fearing the markets were going to be a bit volatile over the next 6 months.
I had first invested a couple of years ago when I realised how dependent Britain was going to become on Russian gas reserves as the North Sea ran out.
AtW, do you not think that too many people in Russia are making too much money to want to start a new Cold War?
And why is it OK for the USA to unilaterally tear up ABM treaties and treat everyone else who signed them with utter contempt?
Our so called ally is now probing the BAE bribes scandal which has absolutely **** all to do with them, apart from the fact they are jealous US warplanes are not being bought. This is the reward for Blair's lapdog loyalty to the Bush, its so pathetic its almost unbelievable, it must be humiliating for everyone involved to be shat upon like this. Maybe they'll learn a lesson.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...11/nbae111.xml

As mentioned on another thread recently the special relationship between the US and UK is a one-sided butt ****. Our own people are lied to and fed propaganda on an almost daily basis, we need to sort this out before we start lecturing other countries on how democratic they should be.
We're very good at promoting the collapse of regimes that don't support our interests, and pretty terrible at sorting out the chaotic mess that results.

If Blair and Bush negotiated an exclusive gas deal with Putin at a huge discount, they wouldn't give a toss if people were being tortured in Russia.
Talking of aggressive countries with nukes I think it is the USA we should be more worried about.

AtW, what are Putin's ambitions outside of Russia?

[TinTin]

Strong words

I really don't care what names you call me, but similar things you said about Putin have been said about Bush, Thatcher and others. Where do I start, with conspiracy theories? The twin-towers were blown by the CIA, Thatcher wanted the Falklands war to save herself, Putin was about to blow up the Kremlin, do me a favour, I am not a child.
Super-powers like the 3 left today: USA, Russia, China are not engaging in niceties, we know that. Behind the smiles, there are fighting for supremacy.
From such a high stakes game, to resort in killing a fantasist blackmailer who was on someone's payroll, living in a rent-free house also owned by that person, who - I repeat - has been refused extradition by the UK not on political grounds but on corruption and tax evasion. He has admitted becoming a billionaire as a result of his connections, also owing a vast amount of taxes but will not go back to face the charges. I put it to you that a sort of person like this can resort to anything to defend himself. He is still super-rich enjoying this country's protection and allowed to make more money while paying a ridiculous small amount of tax in the UK. I suggest we send him back to Russia in exchange for the suspect whose extradition we are seeking. Fair enough?

[AtW]

ASB: there were enough pipelines to export oil and gas in 1999 just like it is now - nothing changed much in this respect, the only change is price: Russian oil is expensive to get from the ground, I think cost is around 7-8 USD per barrel, Saudies get it at 1 dollar, which is why they were doing fine when price of oil was low, but at 15 dollars per barrel like it was before Putin not much can be done. The issue was price, nothing else - I know you are involved in the industry there, but my guess is that you are involved in processing side of things, ie making petrol from it, this infrastructure was really bad and now it is improving, however main exports have always been raw oil and gas (plus metals).

Russian people are fools. This is not my words but of well known well quoted classical Russian poet. I think the other poet formulated Russian's two main problems as: fools and roads. They were both right - Russian people, unfortunately, do not think past tomorrow and they assume that current good situation is because of Putin rather than very high oil prices - you can see on the chart that prices right now as at about the same level they were in USSR in early 80s: that time was deemed "golden" time of USSR when all was well, current situation is just like it was before.

GreenerGrass: Generally people in Russia are poor. Those who live in Moscow do a LOT better than rest of the country: this has always been the case in USSR time too - Moscow people would get much better food: my father used to travel there a lot, so everytime he got back I looked forward to it because he would bring some tasty stuff that can't be bought locally. Thinking back this was pathetic really, but these were the times of USSR and now all seems to be going back to it.

Economically right now Russia is going into abyss very quickly - previously it was impossible to get any credit, unless you were fraudster who would give kickback to the one who gave you credit, of course such credit would never be returned. Now it is different - country is rapidly getting into debt - houses in Moscow are like most expensive than in London and this says something because we all know how ridiculously priced London property is. Stock market is greatly overpriced - I am selling my shares at the earliest opportunity, I was not crazy to buy them, I just had them for free during privatisation time when every Russian citizen got free "voucher" that they could invest, many sold it for bottle of vodka and now they complain how they did not get anything.

I think USA made a number of grave errors: they lost their moral standing so scumbags around the world like Putin point out to these errors and we have situation where the evil says right things and the good side does wrong stuff like having Guantanomo Bay.

ABM treaty issue is not really big one - the mistake USA did was to try to push it unilateraly in Europe, however now it is clear that NATO realised that situation is pretty bad and who else but USA will invest billions into technology necessary for ABM to work, UK or German? No, only USA can invest, and NATOs contribution is to place it here - at the end of the day NATO is under threat as much as USA, if not more - it is closer to London from Iran than to Washington.

The West made grave mistake with Putin - I was reading up good book called "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", by Shirer, and I could see a lot of paralells with what is going on in Rusisa now - this is not amusing at all. While I don't think it will lead to direct military conflict with the West, the world will certainly be much less safer place than it could have been if Russia was democratic state that is Western ally rather than neighbour from hell it is now.

People are afraid in Russia - there is genuine feel of fear in reporting community, they know that at best they will lose their job and not get one again, but at worst they get killed: I think since Putin came to power around 20 well known journalists were killed in Russia, a lot more lesser known killed on a regional level. At least 2 members of parliament who attempted to investigate allegations that FSB (former KGB) blown up houses in Moscow in order to trigger 2nd Chechen war that put Putin firmly in power - this is not some 9/11 conspiracy theory crap, people who tried to look into it actually died violently, and even there is official statements by the police who (after first houses were blown up) arrested a few men who were unloading sacks that were later officially tested to be the explosive used to blow up houses in Moscow, and these arrested people happened to be active officers of FSB who were later released after call from Moscow's HQ - they claimed they were doing exercises of vigilance, can you fking believe this crap? So given all this the Govt still refuses to even look into that, even though hundreds of people died in those blown up houses, just what kind fking country should it be that people won't go to streets demanding investigation to take place? That country would be Russia - that's why I live here in the UK.

[AtW]

TinTin: this is all academical, what will happen is totally out of my or your hands regardless of what we say or think about it. There were some in Britain, and USA and Soviet Union who adored Hitler, until he did what he did. When the time comes and it all becomes clear we shall see who has got clear conscience - I would prefer myself to be utterly wrong, but sadly this is highly unlikely given what I know about this topic.

I guess maybe it is fate - nature does not like imbalances, so very small by size country with bugger all resources like UK will have people who will want to see the world and they will build the biggest Empire this planet seen, that still exists in form of USA, or you can have huge country like Russia with all sort of natural resources, endless forests, plains, swamps, everything - but people are just too bloody dumb to think further than tomorrow, something they will pay the price in the first place, but it is real shame that place that could have really been best in the world is in such a terrible state of affairds.

I will go back to SKA now, this topic of conversation makes me very angry and sad at the same time

[ASB]

Alexi,

Nope, nowt to do with Oil and Gas. Simply my understanding was that there were not enough pilelines to export the quantities available for export and the ports didn't have much tanker capacity. This in effect put an abolute cap on the amount of revenue that could be obtained, and in a falling market it was going downhill fast (especially as you say with the comparatively high cost of extraction).

You are quite right of course about asset prices. You can't get anything sensible in Moscow < 1mill US. Ultimately it is still a frontier economy, but it is slowly regularising. Corruption is still immense and will continue to be so for a good while. I seem to recall that Putins senior economic advisor about 2 years ago described revolution as inevitible (this was after Yukos). That perhaps doesn't bode two well for the future. I suspect that Putins sucessor may turn out to be more critical, I think Putin can't stand from next year (but I also seem to recall there was a proposal to change the rules to allow him to)

I'm sure your view is likely to be more accurate that mine, but in the 6 years I've been travelling there things do at least seem to have improved for the poeple. I expect to be in the Ukraine in a few months. I'll be interested to see what that is like these days.

[ASB]

An out of date list of journolists:-

http://www.democracynow.org/article..../10/09/1358259

Critism of the authorities is still very bad for a journos healt prospects.

[AtW]

I am pretty sure there were no such limits on export: most of it (gas/oil) is done by pipelines that were done before 2000, think one of the bigger ones was launched in Belorussia for gas to avoid having complete dependency on Ukraine where they routinely nicked gas from pipes. If you look at the price of oil in world markets (and price for gas correlates with oil): http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1947.gif you will see that the main issue was price, rather than volume of export: Soviet exports were very big at the time, I think only recently Russian's exports actually reached that point in volume terms.

Some things certainly improved in Russia - no doubt about that, for example I personally consider choice of food being much better in Moscow than here, perhaps Harrods will beat it, and one needs to discount some fake foods and the fact that it is pretty expensive even comparing to UK prices, still food wise situation is much better. But this is not Putin's achievement - he is lucky to live through long period of high prices, without this money that he uses to buy and kill opponents nothing of that kind would have happened and Russians in their stupidity equate relatively good time with the fact that it's Putin in power rather than with high oil prices, same thing that they did when Breznev was in power in 80s.

When the time comes the truth will be obvious to many, but it is real shame that people need so much evidence - you can draw a line by having just 2 points, at least using Euclides geometry, so when you get 50 points and they all match up, why demand for 2000?

[AtW]

Here, look at stats: http://www.cpj.org/deadly/index.html

Top 20 countries with kill journalists (I am sure they count only known for whole country, regional chaps dont get the hounour of being counted upon death):

Top 20 countries
1. Iraq: 98
2. Algeria: 60
3. Russia: 44
4. Colombia: 39
5. Philippines: 32
6. India: 22
7. Bosnia: 19
Turkey: 19
9. Rwanda: 16
Sierra Leone: 16
Tajikistan: 16
12. Somalia: 14
Brazil: 14
Afghanistan: 14
15. Mexico: 13
16. Bangladesh: 12
Pakistan: 12
18. Sri Lanka: 9
19. Angola: 8
Yugoslavia: 8
---------

This only counts those who were killed - but plenty died from unknown reasons, most likely poisons - detailed analysis is normally prohibited by local prosecutors.