Putin's Russian Economy and Shale Production, Fake News, and Election Hacking

[dvduval]

Some may not like this, but I believe US shale production is something we can't ignore in the face for more nefarious Russia acts of agression, from trying to secretly steal elections, invading other countries, and feeding the terrorism that not only scares everyone, but drives up oil prices.

But Putin is on the ropes if we can just push this situation over the edge by driving down oil prices. His existence is based on oil.
https://www.ft.com/content/206d3a7a-47b0-11e7-8519-9f94ee97d996
Everything thing he does is about oil. I watch this everyday
https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities
Putin needs oil prices to go up, and he is doing everything he can to do it.

He tried to make an agreement with OPEC ministers to limit production, put US shale producers have become more efficient and are taking up the slack from decreased production. The price is below $50 at this moment, and US shale wells are increasing in number putting further downward pressure on oil.

Meanwhile, China, the US (at least most of it), and many members of the Paris Agreement are putting more and more alternative energy online daily. I think I read china is putting 6 football fields worth of solar online every day. The gigafactory is coming online. More electric cars are rolling off the assembly lines.

But Putin wants to stop all these things. He wants to interfere so countries are not able to wean themselves off of oil. He wants Venezuela to be a failed state. He wants the same for countries like Iraq and Syria. He is probably happy to see the rift between Qatar and other arab counties. Increasing nationalism and division (with fake news) in Europe and the US are great because it means we are more likely to support attacking middle eastern countries, further deepening divides in the oil producing nations.

And of course, by dividing the electorate it means we can't get anything done, while he infuses more strife in our world to drive up the price of oil.

I hope more people will realize that we must call him out and the Russia election hacking thing is very much about this.

[Igel]

1. Russia is not on the ropes.

With those kinds of approval ratings, Putin's not on the ropes. He'd win by a margin if elections were held today that would make Obama's electoral victory seem like a razor-thin margin.

If Putin goes down, consider who'd replace him. Russia would see itself as losing to the US and NATO, which would make their hatred all the more visceral and vehement. Their replacement may not be as cunning when faced with opportunity as Putin--I'm not going to go with "smart"--but I suspect he'd be more angry and likely more aggressive. Putin played his hand well; the liberals and intellectuals were kept sedated with relative freedom while he nailed down the political and economic system, and only later turned on the arts. (I'm reading my first book with an advisory that says it's for people 18+; previous things I've read that were explicit about drug use, gay sex, prostitution, and murder, often in very, even brutal graphic terms had no such advisory. I'd rather expect it to be translated and printed in a small press run by next year at the latest; I think I read that Aleshkovsky has a committed, steady translator.)


I'd also say that among the things you've got right you're also attributing to Putin more than a couple very un-Putin-like ideas. Most of them ring false. Consider gut reaction after considering Russian and Russian culture for 35 years, and following Putin since he was going to be the winner in his first election. That was in 2000, and I was reading his speeches and interviews in 1999. I preferred El'tsyn; corruption was way down, the economy was on the mend, employment was even increasing (this is counter the common wisdom; the common wisdom on this point, bluntly put, is an ass, reliable statistics don't lie but media reports spin like a neutron star). In this I was in agreement with pretty much every liberal Russian I met for the next decade: I disliked him and what he said and stood for through Bush II's ludicrous utterances and Obama's naivete.

Putin's done a Saddam, a Stalin, a Tito. Heck, even a Chavez. He's hollowed out the political center, leaving his opponents as caricatures that the majority will not easily support unless the situation gets very dire, and even then if played well the left won't be seen as viable. He occupies a spot close to the left-side of the majority that remains, and that majority is decidedly right of center. Yet to his right are communists, national bolsheviks, out-and-out nationalists, and a variety of other blocs that, frankly, make Putin look like a plush teddy bear. Some of them, frankly, scare me. (Just for laughs, my favorite are the national bolsheviks, a nifty mix of German-style fascism with Soviet-style socialism; if you'd asked me 40 years ago, I'd say that was impossible. Russian inventiveness isn't to be taken lightly.)