The IMF, Rubles and the Russian Economy

[Snowygerry]

Well the bear takes the money too because gas is sold for money. So it’s kinda like you’re paying them to destroy Ukraine. That’s awesome! I love NATO.

Selling raw resources is the lowest form of economy, just ask Marx or Engels, if not Congo would be the richest nation on earth, not Luxembourg

 

[Joij21]

Hmm that's true! So on the one hand NATO gets to ask for more money because of the destabilizing situation, and on the other hand the civilian governments continue to engage in trade that enables and prolongs a destabilizing situation, therefore creating more reason to increase NATO funding and thus, fulfill all those lucrative military contracts. Now I get it. Man, war really is a business!

But remember our sanctions are working! Russia will collapse any minute now! The few merchants who still trade with them are so inconsequential that we simply won't have to ever impose a full embargo!

 

[Joij21]

Selling raw resources is the lowest form of economy, just ask Marx or Engels, if not Congo would be the richest nation on earth, not Luxembourg

Still enough to give them the bare minimum amount of money to buy guns so they can go kill some Rwandans. That's the more accurate comparison here to describe this war, and the Ukrainians are the Rwandans.

 

[Ajidica]

Still enough to give them the bare minimum amount of money to buy guns so they can go kill some Rwandans. That's the more accurate comparison here to describe this war, and the Ukrainians are the Rwandans.

This is so wrong I literally don't know where to begin.
Like, the First Congo War was started when Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania got together and thought that invading Zaire was a splendid idea. The Second Congo War was largely started when Rwanda re-invaded the Congo because their puppet proved to be too independent and looting the Congo was a great idea. Rwanda has been backing and providing active support to Congolese rebels to this day.

 

[Crezth]

This is so wrong I literally don't know where to begin.
Like, the First Congo War was started when Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania got together and thought that invading Zaire was a splendid idea. The Second Congo War was largely started when Rwanda re-invaded the Congo because their puppet proved to be too independent and looting the Congo was a great idea. Rwanda has been backing and providing active support to Congolese rebels to this day.

This is like the most basic and anemic way to describe it you could possibly muster. Thought invading Zaire was a splendid idea? Well why was that? Who was in charge? What was on the line? Wait, what were they looting again? What are the economies of these places based on anyway?

 

[Ajidica]

Wait, are you getting salty I didn't provide enough detail about a very complex topic in what was largely a PC+1 post to someone else?
Don't have the time right now to go into as much detail as I could on the subject (work, then traveling all weekend) but I'd direct you to Gerard Prunier's Africa's World War if you are curious.
Very briefly though, in the 90s Mobutu and Zaire were seen as embarrassing Cold War dinosaur by the "New Leaders" crowd like Museveni and Kagame who talked a good game about democracy. Rwanda was (quite understandably) very sensitive about the ex-FAR/Interahamwe genocidaires just across the Zairean border in the Kivus and that they might form an army-in-exile waiting to take advantage of a crisis just like the ruling RPF did. Uganda was concerned about other guerilla groups (can't remember their name) operating out of Zaire and Mobutu's support for anti-Uganda forces operating out of Sudan. Burundi was also there but they were too small and irrelevant to be worth mentioning. Into this situation, Julius Nyerere, the Tanzanian ex-president but de-facto controller of Tanzanian foreign policy met with Museveni and Kagame and they decided on an invasion of Zaire as a solution to their problems. It would eliminate the Rwandan and Ugandan security concerns and remove a Cold War embarrassment.
So Nyerere riffled though his contact list of ex-'freedom fighters' hanging out in Dar es Salaam and settled on Laurent-Desire Kabila to lead the AFDL, the Rwandan-Ugandan proxy in Zaire. Kabila had just enough revolutionary credibility from his participation in the Simba Rebellion to cover up his thoroughly disreputable character. The AFDL faced little resistance; indeed, it has been said that the biggest enemy faced by the AFDL was the poor quality of Zairean roads. Ultimately Mobutu fled the country in disgrace and Kabila was set up as leader.

Relations between Kabila and his Rwandan/Ugandan allies (but principally with the Rwandans who were more organized than the Ugandans) deteriorated almost immediately. Eventually Kabila ordered the Rwandans out of the country and war erupted, drawing in just about every one of the DRC's neighbors, and countries up and down Africa who found themselves sucked into the fighting. These parties were motivated in part by political concerns, but also, such as for the Zimbabweans, as a potential money-making opportunity.

 

[Crezth]

Okay now talk about AFRICOM, the World Bank, and the IMF. Tie it back! I don't want people to be off topic and all.

 

[Ajidica]

I'd rather talk about Paul Kagame, Seth Sendashonga, Joshua Nkomo, Fred Rwigyema, and Patrick Karegeya.

 

[Joij21]

I'd rather talk about Paul Kagame, Seth Sendashonga, Joshua Nkomo, Fred Rwigyema, and Patrick Karegeya.

What @Crezth is trying to say is that the reason the Zaire regime was what it was (to cause so much concern for stability by neighboring powers) is because it was a fascist stratocratic one which was only capable of rising into power in the first place through dialectical pressures with the previous ruling civilian government class via class tensions stemming from the role of local foreign owned businesses and the military's perception (which birthed the stratocratic class which would trigger this diadic class conflict) that such businesses were disrespecting the Congolese military's ability to be logistically ready to patriotically defend the nation by sending the resources and wealth elsewhere without anyway to improve their own infrastructure and supplies to adequately generate enough tax revenue to fund the military. This then also fueled additional paranoia that it was a conspiracy by such foreign businesses to weaken the Congo's military so they could be fairly weak in order to make possible "recolonization" by Europe easier.

More specifically white European ones that never left after the Congo Crisis and were still mercantilistically extracting the Congo's resources and sending it to those capitalist's industry & retail zones on the European continent (which also trades back and forth with the U.S. meaning American capitalists benefitted from such an arrangement as well)

However since it was a mercantilist and foreign grown extraction operation, there were no incentives from such foreign capitalist pigs to then return the manufactured & refined goods produced as a result of these raw resources nor a willingness to share some of the profits made via the extraction, refinement, then selling off via mass consumerist retail systems of said products.

Also with no adequate local "home grown" capitalist class for the stratocracy class of Zaire to work with (which would naturally have a more local nationalistic focus instead of European focus to insure those goods get processed via local factories into infrastructure and war supplies that can support the publicly funded military through a conventional private-public military industrial complex relationship), they naturally took a general anti-capitalist stance despite otherwise being fascist which would otherwise make them natural class allies of a capitalist class.

This also explains why despite immediately nationalizing all of the foreign business (so they could have it support the logistical readyness of the stratocracy, which all stratocracies will naturally do since they are always paranoid of foreign invasion, being comprised of top brass military types) they were also hostile to socialist groups (because military top brass types in stratocracies see socialism as degenerate and likely to breed weakness by allowing the weak to receive safety net subsidies and breed, since many military guys tend to be pro-social darwinism via the "character building" of war).

In other words the Rwandan Genocide is just the result of a series of unfortunate events created by Capitalism and it's system of perverse incentives on the global geopolitical scene, time after time to rely overwhelmingly on mercantilist zones of raw extraction to fuel the businesses of it's core which in turn leads to radicalization and anomie induced regimes rising to power in such hinterlands. Thus creating endless military & conflict based crises.

 

[Crezth]

I'd rather talk about Paul Kagame, Seth Sendashonga, Joshua Nkomo, Fred Rwigyema, and Patrick Karegeya.

So no material conditions or economic relationships, gotcha.

Listen to Joji.

 

[r16]

interesting . Even if ı don't understand a word out of them all , is there any claim that all those African warlords just went to war without first consulting the CIA and all other agencies ?

 

[Joij21]

Similarly we can see that Capitalism once again and it's perverse incentives are to blame for the Ukraine conflict.

Mainly through Western capitalists purchasing Russian gas which in turn helped fund the various oligarchs within Russia who owned gas companies which were selling the gas. The revenues generated by these oligarchs in turn allowed them to financially back Putin in the 1990s and early 2000s to use him as their personal bulwark to help consolidate their interests and turn their holdings into literal fiefdoms by utilizing the regime/cabal Putin would set up for them to look the other way as far as regulations, taxation, and investigations into disappearances of business rivals goes.

Ukraine just so happens to have vast gas deposits in those eastern regions whereby Putin decided to engineer an ethnic conflict so as to anschluss the region from Ukraine and give to his gas company financiers especially after the oligarchs lost control over the previous regime in Ukraine which was just giving those companies the gas no questions asked in return for bribes. The Zelensky regime added uncertainty to the future control of those deposits which forced the oligarchs to push Putin towards war to secure it direct.

Putin and his fascist cabal simply would not exist without Capitalism on the global level funding them into the upper echelons of power within the Kremlin, period. And in an alternative timeline whereby Capitalism did not exist in the World then it's likely that all of which has transpired would have completely been avoided from the get go.

 

[Hygro]

This crezth-joij team is great and I hope it grows.

 

[r16]

the initial Oligarks are the reason Putin exists . To drive them out . True that he has created his own ... But yes , good coverage to lull .


edit: And oh , uh , hundreds of thousands of ... are common points of talk in many places around the world .