Do you have any sense of whether the sanctions on Russia will change after January? I'm concerned they will be lifted but have not read/heard anything on this (but I could have missed it). Thanks.
Bravo Michael! Now, judging by the plans of US President-elect Trump and Musk, these two men not only have no humanitarian education, but want they are turning American democracy into their own satrapy following the example of Putin’s Russia. Plato’s famous paradox may work here: in a democracy, it is impossible to deny the people the right to surrender their power and sovereignty to a tyrant.
This is a dangerous challenge for American democracy, and it must respond to it. Otherwise, it will turn into a satrapy - like the collapsed USSR and today’s Russia...
The servilisation of society and the state begins with the seizure of arbitrary power, with Bonapartism. The head of state, at his discretion, creates and liquidates state executive bodies without any procedure of discussion in parliament. Arbitrarily appoints ministers and other heads of executive bodies without consulting parliament or with its servile acquiescence. Heads of state bodies dismiss officials in them at their discretion, sometimes dismissing the entire staff of employees of the state body. This practice was started in the Russian Empire by its last Tsar Nicholas II. In 1899, without discussion at the State Council, he amended the Statute on Civil Service and gave ministers and heads of departments the right to dismiss officials from service without the right to appeal in court and reinstatement through the courts. With this, he cancelled the norms of the first Russian constitutional act, adopted and signed by the Zemsky Sobor of representatives of all estates and cities - the Soborny Ulozhenie of 1649, approved by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, and turned the state into a satrapy.
The term ‘satrapy’ applies to those countries in which the head of state, modelled on ancient Persia under the Achaemenid dynasty (6th-4th centuries B.C.), appoints functional (ministers) and regional leaders at his discretion and with rights also of arbitrary power and tax collection. Now, in Russia this is how Putin actually appoints his satraps to rule the regions and ministries in Russia.
Satrapies usually end badly, disintegrating, starting with Ancient Persia and Tsarist Russia. Then Nicholas II, having taken the Liaodong Peninsula from Japan in 1898, launched the Russo-Japanese War, whose defeat and economic crisis led to the First Russian Revolution of 1905. In 1914, Nicholas II began a general military mobilisation, in response to which Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August 1914, leading to the revolution in February 1917, his abdication, and in 1918, the execution of the former Tsar, along with his family and servants, by the Bolsheviks. Prof.Nikolay Kazantsev J.S.D.
His list of accomplishments are mostly slow and steady and destructive. I’m hopeful the future will be less grim than he would like. Looking forward to the zoom talk on the 18th.
Do you have any sense of whether the sanctions on Russia will change after January? I'm concerned they will be lifted but have not read/heard anything on this (but I could have missed it). Thanks.
Bravo Michael! Now, judging by the plans of US President-elect Trump and Musk, these two men not only have no humanitarian education, but want they are turning American democracy into their own satrapy following the example of Putin’s Russia. Plato’s famous paradox may work here: in a democracy, it is impossible to deny the people the right to surrender their power and sovereignty to a tyrant.
This is a dangerous challenge for American democracy, and it must respond to it. Otherwise, it will turn into a satrapy - like the collapsed USSR and today’s Russia...
The servilisation of society and the state begins with the seizure of arbitrary power, with Bonapartism. The head of state, at his discretion, creates and liquidates state executive bodies without any procedure of discussion in parliament. Arbitrarily appoints ministers and other heads of executive bodies without consulting parliament or with its servile acquiescence. Heads of state bodies dismiss officials in them at their discretion, sometimes dismissing the entire staff of employees of the state body. This practice was started in the Russian Empire by its last Tsar Nicholas II. In 1899, without discussion at the State Council, he amended the Statute on Civil Service and gave ministers and heads of departments the right to dismiss officials from service without the right to appeal in court and reinstatement through the courts. With this, he cancelled the norms of the first Russian constitutional act, adopted and signed by the Zemsky Sobor of representatives of all estates and cities - the Soborny Ulozhenie of 1649, approved by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, and turned the state into a satrapy.
The term ‘satrapy’ applies to those countries in which the head of state, modelled on ancient Persia under the Achaemenid dynasty (6th-4th centuries B.C.), appoints functional (ministers) and regional leaders at his discretion and with rights also of arbitrary power and tax collection. Now, in Russia this is how Putin actually appoints his satraps to rule the regions and ministries in Russia.
Satrapies usually end badly, disintegrating, starting with Ancient Persia and Tsarist Russia. Then Nicholas II, having taken the Liaodong Peninsula from Japan in 1898, launched the Russo-Japanese War, whose defeat and economic crisis led to the First Russian Revolution of 1905. In 1914, Nicholas II began a general military mobilisation, in response to which Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August 1914, leading to the revolution in February 1917, his abdication, and in 1918, the execution of the former Tsar, along with his family and servants, by the Bolsheviks. Prof.Nikolay Kazantsev J.S.D.
His list of accomplishments are mostly slow and steady and destructive. I’m hopeful the future will be less grim than he would like. Looking forward to the zoom talk on the 18th.
Interesting …