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Skip to comments.Putin at Fateful Crossroads on Ukraine, Says Illarionov
Posted on 07/05/2014 3:06:42 AM PDT by Greetings_Puny_Humans
Putin at Fateful Crossroads on Ukraine, Says Illarionov
Editor July 5, 2014
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Andrei Illarionov, an economist and former advisor to the Putin administration, posted this blog at Ekho Moskvy 07:49 on 5 July, possibly before the news of the fleeing of the Slavyansk separatists and Col. Strelkovs demobilization order had reached him (see our Ukrainian Liveblog), although this news has not been confirmed. Translation by The Interpreter.
Operation Strategic Blackmail
In the last 48 hours, the Russian authorities have implemented a special operation unprecedented in scale and resources used to blackmail Western leaders, the Ukrainian leadership, and Russian society with the purpose of stopping the Ukrainian armed forces from suppressing terrorists in Eastern Ukraine.
As a result of the four months of aggression against Ukraine, Putin has found himself poised at a fork in the road that could prove deadly for him:
1. Refusal of massive military support of the terrorists (now it is virtually exclusively in the form of direct armed intervention into Eastern Ukraine) means the loss by Putin of massive support and the provoking of a rebellion/uprising/coup in Russia against him as the national traitor of Novorossiya with likely loss of power and possibly his life.
2. The invasion of regular Russian forces into Eastern Ukraine will cause a confrontation with the West and de facto the whole surrounding world to such a level, that it will guarantee the crushing of Russia and an inevitable Nuremberg/Hague/Sevastopol for the organizer of the largest aggression in Europe since 1945.
The fundamental difference in these two threats consists of the fact that the second is guaranteed, but remote, whereas the first is uncertain, but then immediate.
Putin started all of this trouble. He's been a narcissist bigger than that idiot Obama. Now, he's too much of a punk to call it off and too worried about his personal wealth to go forward.
Can a mod fix the link? Somehow I managed to use the wrong link from the interpreter to an entirely different article. Correct link is this:
Putey has stepped in it this time. His own parliament has voted to take the authority to go forward in the Ukraine away from him. He's already dipped into his egg money just putting troops on the border. He does not have the money to play the imperialist game and he misjudged the international backlash. Now he is floundering around trying to back out of the swamp with his hide still intact.
——Now he is floundering around ——
He achieved his goal.
He has Crimea and has permitted the Western leaders to cry victory..... win win for Putin
He has the cake and is eating it too
That is not what happened there. Parliament in Russia is noting but a rubber stamp and does everything Putin tells them to. He has had the right by Russian law to invade anything since 2009. When he had the parliament draw a law mentioning invading Ukraine it was just to scare Ukrainians. When he told his parliament to revoke this law it was because he is scared of possible Western sanctions and hoped this gesture will give pussy Western leaders an excuse not to enact them.
Here is an article exploring it in more detail: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118387/vladimir-putin-ukraine-he-can-still-invade-whenever-he-pleases
Pootin does seem to have Crimea at the moment——but without drinking water. For a guy who can't afford gas for his Bears that has to be a major problem?
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What about the most damning perception of US tech grads, and US tech pros in general: Are they indeed lagging behind the international competition?
I think theres a pretty strong sense of that, Lewis says. Of course a lot of this is, folks abroad have lower expectations. They expect to work more hours for less pay. Whereas folks here look at the ultra-wealthy and think, Why not me?
This perception may not match the reality. I suspect that, once on the job, American tech grads will work just as hard, produce code thats just as good, with maybe a little bit more of a cowboy attitude, Lewis says. Cowboy, in this sense, meaning freely inventive rather than submerged in a strict team approach.
This cowboy ethic casts the tech hiring question in a new light. While Vineet Nayar of HCL may think of American grads as unemployable, his firm may in fact be a poor option for US developers.
The entire conversation is apples and oranges as to whether or not an American developer would work out well in HCL. Probably not HCL is far more regimented, Lewis says. Americans dont generally deal well with regimentation. I tend to think of it as one of our cultural virtues.
For offshore outsourcers, their development models sheer predictability the exact opposite of the cowboy mode is central to their sales pitch.
In contrast, If you are an [American-based] employee programmer, youre more likely doing Agile development, youre doing Scrum, youre doing high interactivity stuff where the quality is just a quarter of the story, he says. Your ability to interact with other human beings to understand what they need is a bigger part of the story. So its fundamentally different.
Foreign-born tech experts with H1B visas have long been viewed as competent and inexpensive alternatives to American talent. But Borough says that over the last 5-7 years, companies have changed their view on this group.
We used to hire lots and lots of contractors with a visa, no problem. We were never going to hire them permanently, we wanted them to do a job, she says. This is really dominant on the East Coast, in the insurance, banking and healthcare sector.
Tech employers are now shying away from this, Borough says, because sheparding foreign workers through the Byzantine green card process is just too expensive and time consuming.
This isnt, however, good news for American IT staff. More and more of my customers are outsourcing to third parties in India, Argentina, and Manila. They would prefer to outsource than hire H1B candidates here.
There is a ray of hope for US IT staff. As the recessions deepest dip recedes, firms are now willing to consider permanent, domestically-based hires. Its not contract they want one perfect guy to add back to the team, Borough says. Because of the tight job market, that one hire has to be exceptional, has to be almost walking on water. As the economy keeps improving, a cohort of contractors will then be hired; only after that cycle is completed will more fulltime staff be brought on board.
When that long awaited period of fulltime hiring happens, will it favor the American-born IT professional, those with years on the job?
Again, a nagging perception challenges these US staffers.
The [Indian] folks came over with more training, with more education, Borough says. The education system in India is amazing, and it is in their deep, deep value system that education and intelligence is the top value, not money. These immigrants kept a good work ethic, and they did not overspend. Therefore theyre not overpriced in the market.
In contrast, My 35- to 45-year-old homegrown American citizens have settled in, and they havent continued their learning, she says. Not that theres any problem with their work ethic. They do work, theyre working a good 10 plus hours a day some more than that, since were all virtual now. Yet theyre burdened by the classic hyper-busy American lifestyle, including kids sporting events (practically a part time job, she notes) and countless other obligations. Theyre not going on for their advanced degrees or reapplying themselves as a whole into recertification until they get unemployed.
Their Indian counterpart has somehow been able to continue his education even while churning through a marathon work week. I believe they stayed curious all the way through and I dont believe they got themselves so wrapped up into the culture, Borough says.
Of course, as Borough conceded, any comparison of American and Indian IT staff resident in the US must acknowledge a key demographic trend. Indian-born tech pros who immigrate to the US tend to be among the most professionally advanced in a country of one billion people. Only the better Indian IT workers tend to make it to this country. So comparing these elite staffers with the general US tech workforce is necessarily limited.
The point, ultimately, isnt that one group or another dominates the IT job market. Its that the market over the last ten years has changed profoundly and is now fully international. That means that the American educational system must operate at a higher level if the US is to keep up. It also means that for those workers already in the IT workforce, the global footrace runs a little faster every year.
Workers in New York compete with workers in New Delhi. IT pros in downtown Chicago must be ready and able to work (virtually) with staffers in Poland or Vietnam or Manila.
Every American no matter what their field - needs to understand that they are competing in a global labor market place, Lewis says. I suspect that most Americans entering the work force now havent completely figured that out.
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Influx of Injectable Drugs to Boost Uptake of Disposable Syringes Worldwide
A rise in the number of patients infected through unsafe injections has driven the need for sophisticated syringes, especially the disposable variety. Improper handling of conventional syringes can cause the spread of deadly viruses such as HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 42% of hepatitis C cases and 33% of the hepatitis B cases can be attributed to unsafe and used injections. Therefore, the current outlook of the global disposable syringes market looks positive.
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July 15, 2010 Other Projects – A Moccasin
When I came back from New York, somehow I had the' fixa idea' that I want to make a moccasin. So I teached Melinda (my pattern designer and apprentice) how to make the pattern (not easy at all, I can tell you), and we started a moccasin project. Here is the first few pics about the result.
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