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The trade in caviar has a rich and colorful history, influenced over thousands of years by many cultures, societies and in the last decades by regulation. The value of caviar is historically discovered in the context of social change, political relationships and environmental change. The role of organized crime is described, as the scarcity of caviar has offered the unique opportunity to fish illegally, smuggle and trade contraband to mainly European countries with millions in profits. This study highlights that these criminal networks manifest themselves at all levels of the trade: from the poaching areas where organized criminal groups cooperate with law enforcers and possess top-notch equipment to major smuggling operations in the hands of sophisticated criminal networks. Although due to overexploitation ‘wild caviar’ is increasingly difficult to obtain, the demand in the context of exclusivity and scarcity remains intact by the upper class society desire for edible gold.
I quote
There is a ton of context and history behind this photo that should be known. I made this post yesterday, which should help explain why some Ukrainians were initially so welcoming of the Nazi invasion. Copy-pasting
This photo was taken in the city of Kharkov at the height of the Holodomor. The Holodomor refers to the 1932-33 famine that affected Soviet Ukraine, but during this time famines struck other parts of the USSR too. Most historians now believe that the Holodomor was a man-made famine that occurred due to Stalin's "collectivisation" and "dekulakization" policies. But there are still huge debates about the Holodomor's death toll, its status as a "genocide", and whether it was deliberately planned or mostly caused by Soviet incompetence. It comes up often as a point of contention between Russia and Ukraine. Denial of the Holodomor is still a thing just like Holocaust denial. Timothy Snyder (in my opinion) is one of the best researchers of the Holodomor; he believes that though the death toll is lower than most believe ("only" 3.3 million died), Stalin did deliberately starve Ukraine to target kulaks and Ukrainians.
Thus it is not surprising why Ukrainians, who suffered horrifically under Soviet rule, would welcome the Germans in 1941. Many hoped the Germans would grant them autonomy or even full independence. This was not what happened. Instead the Reichskommissariat Ukraine was set up to govern the area. The policies they enacted quickly drove much of the population into resistance. During the Nazi occupation millions of Ukrainians died. After the end of WW2, anti-Soviet resistance continued but was eventually crushed.”
How soon the Ukrainians forget, eh? Specially the Eastern ones…and also explains the antipathy of the Western Ukrainians to Russia.
So here’s an interesting article on why Russia breached the Budapest Memorandum.
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, brought renewed attention at the Munich Security Conference this month to the Budapest Memorandum, an instrument adopted some twenty years ago by Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States. The Chancellor said that the Russian Federation, by invading eastern Ukraine and annexing Crimea, “has broken its commitment to the Budapest Memorandum.” Merkel asked, “Who would give up their nuclear capability if their territorial integrity were not respected?”
It reminds me of a quote that I read way back about when an Indian General was asked about his views on the second Gulf War (the first being the Iran Iraq War), he said, if you wanted to go fight USA, best have a nuke handy. I don't think the Ukrainians thought this through, did they? If they had nukes, would Russia attack? or maybe use battlefield tac-nukes to rip out the Soviet Armies massed on this side of the Ukrainian frontier? And will Russia attack back? I don't think so.
interesting.
Which reminds me of this recent article which I read about the Davy Crockett. Which has a 0.01 kiloton payload.
![nuke-davy-crockett-600px[1]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKAYGfzmGEVKjsCE_jVb6Y0628QUjkwsZNtM0sqYwNs3qdXOzxqo8vrqkg_nI2SG9o78dTPSQ6ewYXggvNRJVdperIC6IbpJxVRq_UYHJaOXWmK_jpAmrkXyKsfO8ER5H1dLZRTpPMj7A/s1600-h/nukedavycrockett600px13.jpg "nuke-davy-crockett-600px[1]")
totally crazy, I tell you. Having nukes is so stupid, you cannot imagine…anyway, its out of the bottle now.
![Minard[1]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiil43bN_aDg9Ai-FyYexkEfMRW6_wtYX7BD2yjNPmMZwlsEu-zSXEj-xWNqHLzxssmT4gHT_N-v6p7Aue84TO4N7UR8ajeJFqbj56QIwUz2xt0WvYh4YFMgCZjm1xvxeohpWGPo6c08k/s1600-h/Minard13.png "Minard[1]")
That graph, son, is one of the greatest pieces of graphic design or brevity known to man. In a 2d imagery, Charles Joseph Minard has managed to cram in so much information that its ridiculously brilliant.
One of my problems is how can I get my salespeople to absorb a giant amount of information in a very limited time and actually do something about it which will help my clients and compete against other salespeople. It's a constant battle against suppliers who think that more is good versus sales people who are constitutionally unable to absorb any more than 3 things at one time. Which is good, I want them to sell, not spend time on data.
Fascinating, I am spending quite a lot of time thinking about data visualisation these days..
Love
Baba
This paper was a bit of a d’oh bit.
We examine the effects of subnational variations in corruption and democratization on the location decisions of foreign investors in Russian regions using firm-level panel data for the period 1996-2007. We link these effects to the level of corruption and type of political regime in the country of origin of a foreign investor. We find a relationship between attributes of foreign investors’ home countries and attributes of the regions in which investment takes place: foreign investors from less corrupt and democratic countries tend to invest in less corrupt and more democratic Russian regions, whereas those from more corrupt and non-democratic countries tend to invest in more corrupt and less democratic regions. An inference is that, in Russian regions with high corruption and with autocratic government, foreign direct investment appears driven by the personal interests of controlling regional political elites who collaborate for mutual gain with foreign investors from corrupt and autocratic countries. Our results suggest a general conclusion that origin and location of foreign investment are linked by common political culture.
well of course! Birds of a feather flock together..
I remember those days son. We were in India at that time. For supposedly a group in a country which made revolutions into an ideology, they were useless at making the coup happen.
Couple of things son. First is that coups and attempted fratricide like this are extremely dangerous not just in the short term but in the long term. When kings and presidents are overthrown by force, something happens to the national psyche and causes faith in the state to be weakened. Until and unless something extraordinary happens, once there is a coup, there is a good chance that it will happen again. Look at Pakistan and Bangladesh for examples.
Militaries therefore have to be kept under very very tight control. Read up on a classic book by Samuel Huntingdon on civil military relations if you want to know more about this.
Second is my experience with the Russians. One of my saleswomen in Russia once told me, you are lucky that you own and live your own history. Russians have always been very badly blessed with atrocious leaders and they always had a tragic history. Something about that country, that vast huge awesome country just makes one look and shake one's head. It has always promised much and delivered little. So putting your money in there should be done very carefully if at all. Strange place.
Love
Baba
Meltdown
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/20/meltdown?page=full
Meltdown
For the first time, Boris Yeltsin’s right-hand man tells the inside story of the coup that killed glasnost — and changed the world.
BY GENNADY BURBULIS WITH MICHELE A. BERDY | JULY/AUGUST 2011
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“That scum!” Boris Yeltsin fumed. “It’s a coup. We can’t let them get away with it.”
It was the morning of Aug. 19, 1991, and the Russian president was standing at the door of his dacha in Arkhangelskoe, a compound of small country houses outside Moscow where the top Russian government officials lived. I had raced over from my own house nearby, after a friend called from Moscow, frantic and nearly hysterical, insisting that I turn on the radio. There had been a coup; Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had been removed from power.
Five minutes later I was at Yeltsin’s dacha, an unassuming two-story yellow brick building, where a small group of his closest associates soon gathered. In addition to me (at the time, his secretary of state), there was Ivan Silayev, the head of the Russian cabinet; Ruslan Khasbulatov, the acting chairman of the Supreme Soviet; Mikhail Poltoranin, the minister of press and mass information; Sergei Shakhrai, the state councilor; and Viktor Yaroshenko, the minister of foreign economic relations. Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of Leningrad, and Yuri Luzhkov, the deputy mayor of Moscow, arrived not long after. Everyone crowded into Yeltsin’s small living room.
For months we had half-expected something like this. By the summer of 1991, the Soviet Union was falling apart at the seams. The economy was imploding, the deficit was ballooning, hard currency and gold reserves had been decimated, and Gorbachev’s stopgap reforms had only exacerbated the crisis. The notion of a “Soviet people,” unified under the banner of socialism, was collapsing along with it. Legislatures in the republics, which had already demanded greater freedoms within the USSR, began calling for independence. By the spring of 1991, five republics — Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, and Lithuania — had declared it officially. In Russia, democratic forces wanted an end to Soviet totalitarian rule. Our aim was not to allow the chaotic dissolution of the USSR, but to transform it into a confederation that would afford each republic considerable self-determination under its aegis.
I nearly fell out of the chair when I read about this story. I quote:
Sorsele municipality, in northern Sweden, are overjoyed in the continued interest in the area, after receiving over 900 applications from enthusiastic Russian families keen to move there.
As The Local reported in 2010, within the next five or six years, over 350 locally employed public sector employees will retire from Sorsele municipality, in the county of Västerbotten.
That's 30 percent of their workforce and it was feared that Sorsele wouldn't be able to find anyone to fill the positions.
The local authorities therefore decided to market themselves to their Russian neighbours, with the aim of boosting dwindling population figures and to ensure an influx of foreign labour.
However, there is no guarantee that the job openings will be filled by the Russians. According to Wikström, they will be competing about the jobs with everyone else.
As part of the project, which will cost about six million kronor ($891,000), the idea is that the Russians would learn Swedish before their arrival to Sweden.
The council is hoping for funding from the EU. According to them, there's plenty of housing but fewer jobs.
So far, the council reports a massive interest.
And according to the local authorities, among the 900 applicants are doctors, teachers, veterinary surgeons and engineers.
Despite one aim of the project being boosting population figures, Wikström told SVT that it isn't necessarily women of child bearing age that they especially welcome.
”Absolutely not. We want whole families with children as every community need young people,” said Wikström to SVT.
However, local authorities stressed that money from the EU is essential to make the project work.
The first Russians could then be arriving in the county of Västerbotten in a year's time.
Sweden and Russian have been fighting for a fair few centuries now although there hasn't been one for about 200 years now. Still, for Sweden to actually invite Russians into the cold frigid north is interesting. Second one was obviously the fact that the Swedish local authorities need to borrow money from my taxes to pay for this. Welcome to the wonderland of EU.
Bloody shameful, if you ask me. What on earth are these countries doing? Think about India, not only does it have high government restrictions but the people themselves are actively hostile to other religions. Disgusting.
For that matter, the UK correspondingly has room for improvement as well. It has to reduce the amount of government restrictions and also further educate its population on being more liberal to other religions. Not good.
As you might know, the United Nations is trying to push for a good solid anti corruption convention with teeth and peer review globally. If this really takes off, then it will really help the world, and most importantly, the poor who get disproportionately hit by corruption. The rich can bribe their way through these things but the poor get hurt.
But guess what? some countries objected to being peer reviewed. Who are these countries of total probity and clean hands? China, Russia, Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan and Zimbabwe. For those who are citizens of these countries, you could ask them why their representatives are against corruption eradication? Oh! I am sorry, these representatives are themselves corrupt and obviously their governments are as well. China is heavily corrupt, Russia is a byword, Algeria, Egypt and Pakistan, well, we all know about it while that wonderful world of anti imperialistic resistance, Zimbabwe is a beacon of innocence.
Bah!
I was gobsmacked and I am sure its a world wide Zionist conspiracy now. Apparently, the engines of the future of the world, Russia, China and India love Israel, besides the USA. I quote from this survey.
58 percent of Indians surveyed said that they support Israel. 56 percent of U.S. citizens expressed support for Israel, as did 52 percent of Russians, 50 percent of Mexicans, 48 percent of Chinese and 39 percent of Italians.
I am just waiting for the penny to drop and then it would be fun, lol. The very idea of people actually liking Israel and supporting it will go down like a lead balloon in many quarters, hehehehe. Although the inclusion of Italians made me scratch my head a bit…
Now I dont have any idea about the provenance of this image but looks like its a Chinese place. Now presuming that it is true, the rates are quite extraordinary and tells you about the demand and supply of various nationalities of girls and their relative costs. Now why on earth would a Malay girl be less than a Philippine girl, a china girl is the same as a HK girl and bloody hell, what’s going on with the Russian girls?
So another survey seems to come out via the BBC about how countries are perceived (in terms of their influence). These chaps went out and talked to these countries:
Looks like the USA is still not on the list of countries which is on top of the likeability list. But see who are below it, Russia, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and Iran. Hmmm, very curious, specially about the last one. I thought people would have liked Iran for showing 2 fingers to rest of the world, but the lesson I draw from the last 6 countries lack of likeability is that they really do not care about what others think of them. Which is the reason why others do not care about them.
What other bits were interesting? Well, UK was interesting, we seem to be liked much more than we are disliked????!!!!, i thought, as junior Satan, we would be equally hated around the world, but no, doing pretty well and not that much different from the first and second rates Germany and Canada. Quite chuffed about this. No?
This article is a very thought provoking one, talking about how ICC indictments are becoming more and more difficult. And if you look at the UNSC which has now been thought about as idiots for not voting against Mugabe, one wonders if this indeed will work.
Curious, no? how dictators are protected by Russia and China? Mind you, USA and UK are protecting their own goons, robbers and thugs in Pakistan, Iraq and in so many other countries. I guess, Mugabe is no longer our son of a bitch, no?
If you ever wondered what an air to air missile strike looked like, check out this video.
