a greater threat than socialism?
The term "plutocracy" is formally defined as government by the wealthy, and is also sometimes used to refer to a wealthy class that controls a government, often from behind the scenes. More generally, a plutocracy is any form of government in which the wealthy exercise the preponderance of political power, whether directly or indirectly.
Which is the greater threat to our Republic, socialism or plutocracy? And, Why?
It's clear that you don't grok that Socialism is just a front for a particularly nasty form of Plutocracy.
No I don't. But I understand that Soviet Communism and Marxism in China resulted in a very conservative totalitarian form of government.
what is a "
conservative totalitarian form of government" exactly?
And that the leadership in both nations were wealthy and enjoyed benefits denied to the hoi polloi. Kind of like the member of congress in our country today.
and to both snips.....dude......
A Business Martyr in Putin's Russia
After seven years in Siberia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky is about to be railroaded again.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of the Yukos oil company and once Russia's richest man, is in the eighth year of a jail sentence.
His crime? Wanting to forge partnerships with Western firms to modernize the industry. The Putin regime wanted to keep natural resources under strict control. When Mr. Khodorkovsky refused to give up his plans, the Kremlin concocted tax evasion charges against him and his colleagues. With its leader behind bars, Yukos was quickly dismantled and its parts handed out to Putin's closest allies at the state-owned firm, Rosneft.
Nevertheless, the Putin regime is still afraid of Mr. Khodorkovsky, who has added "martyr" to his formidable résumé. And so, with his release scheduled for 2011, prosecutors have brought new charges against him—he's now accused of stealing all the oil he was originally convicted of not paying taxes on. The latest judicial travesty came to a close on Nov. 2. A decision by Moscow's Khamovnichesky court is expected on Dec. 15.
Mr. Khodorkovsky's closing statement at his trial was a powerful indictment of what 10 years of Putinism have done to Russia both economically and morally. "What must be going through the head of the entrepreneur," Mr. Khodorkovsky said, "the high-level organizer of production, or simply any ordinary educated, creative person, looking today at our trial and knowing that its result is absolutely predictable? The obvious conclusion a thinking person can make is chilling in its stark simplicity: The security services can do anything. There is no right of private property ownership. A person who collides with 'the system' has no rights whatsoever."
There has been little Western coverage of this latest chapter of Mr. Khodorkovsky's plight. Perhaps this is due to not wanting to embarrass the U.S. administration, whose "reset" with Russia was called "Obama's central foreign policy achievement" by the New York Times just days after the Khodorkovsky trial ended. The drama of Cold War-style summits and nuclear treaties has made it easy to ignore the values those weapons and treaties were created to defend.
Although the Khodorkovsky verdict is imminent, there is yet time for the Western world to speak out for a brave man and his imprisoned associates, and in defense of the ideals the West professes to value.
In 2005, Sen. John McCain and then-Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden co-sponsored a resolution recognizing Mr. Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev (a colleague who was also sent to prison on tax evasion charges) as political prisoners. Now President Obama has regular meetings with President Medvedev—or "my friend, Dmitri," as he calls him, the man who could free Mr. Khodorkovsky with a stroke of his pen. It is up to the president, who in 2009 called the new charges against Mr. Khodorkovsky "odd," to live up to his convictions as a senator.
The Obama administration knows the truth. In one of the WikiLeaks documents released this week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Herve Morin, the French defense minister, last February that "Russian democracy has disappeared." But the administration has been afraid to voice this conclusion publicly.
In his closing statement, Mr. Khodorkovsky invoked one of Barack Obama's campaign themes, which means more coming from someone who has spent seven years in a Siberian prison camp. "I remember the end of the '80s," he said. "I was 25 then. Our country was living on hope of freedom, hope that we would be able to achieve happiness for ourselves and for our children. . . .
rest at-
Garry Kasparov: A Business Martyr in Putin's Russia - WSJ.com
think of why the above trail etc. took place ......do you get the point?
