Patricide: How Young Leaders Mistreat Their Predecessors

By definition, leaders are authority figures and, as such, stand in for one’s father, especially in patriarchal and traditionalist societies. Old-school psychoanalysts would tell you that such substitution is bound to provoke one’s latent Oedipal complex and proclivity for patricide, whether actual (in the form of an assassination) or symbolic (in the form of dissent and disdainful criticism). Young, emerging leaders more often than not treat their predecessors this way: as hated parent-figures. This is especially true when the new or young leader’s childhood has been marked by the traumas wrought on by an absent, or an abusive father.

This pernicious undercurrent often mixes unsettlingly with virulent envy, the outcome of deep-seated feelings of inferiority and insecurity. The less self-regulated the new or young leader’s sense of self-worth, the more he resorts to narcissistic defenses and the more he compulsively seeks narcissistic supply (attention, adulation) to buttress his precariously-balanced personality. Narcissism is frequently tinged with sadism and passive-aggressive behaviors: taunting the older or previous leader, publicly humiliating him or her, thus showing him/her “who is boss”. The more successful the new or young leader is at defeating or subjugating his predecessors, the more it supports his belief in his own omnipotence, omniscience, and cosmic-messianic sense of mission.

Every manner of psychological defense mechanism is provoked in the young leader: denial (of the inappropriateness, impudence, and immorality of his actions); devaluation (of the older leadership, thus justifying their mistreatment); displacement (scapegoating the previous leaders for one’s own predicament and failures); fantasy (evading reality by constructing elaborate grandiose narratives and confabulations); idealization (of the nation, for instance, or of one’s own coterie or political party); omnipotence; projection (attributing to the former leaders one’s own faults, frailties, and shortcomings); projective identification (provoking the older leaders into action that is unseemly or against their best interests); rationalization and intellectualization (of one’s misconduct and misdeeds); splitting (casting the older, erstwhile leaders as evil, corrupt, and incompetent while attributing to oneself all the positive traits).

The narcissistic or psychopathic leader is the culmination and reification of his period, culture, and civilization. He is likely to rise to prominence in narcissistic societies. The leader’s mental health pathologies resonate with the anomies of his society and culture (“psychopathological resonance”.) The leader and the led form a self-enhancing and self-reinforcing feedback loop, a dyad of mirrored adoration and reflected love. By elevating and idealizing their “fuehrer”, the mob actually elevates and idealizes itself; in his ascendance they find hope, in his manifest illness – curative solace and a legitimation of their own collective insanity.

The malignant narcissist invents and then projects a false, fictitious, self for the world to fear, or to admire. He maintains a tenuous grasp on reality to start with and this is further exacerbated by the trappings of power. The narcissist’s grandiose self-delusions and fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience are supported by real life authority and the narcissist’s predilection to surround himself with obsequious sycophants.

The narcissist’s personality is so precariously balanced that he cannot tolerate even a hint of criticism and disagreement. Most narcissists are paranoid and suffer from ideas of reference (the delusion that they are being mocked or discussed when they are not). Thus, narcissists often regard themselves as “victims of persecution”.

The narcissistic leader fosters and encourages a personality cult with all the hallmarks of an institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship, catechism, mythology. The leader is this religion’s ascetic saint. He monastically denies himself earthly pleasures (or so he claims) in order to be able to dedicate himself fully to his calling.

The narcissistic leader is a monstrously inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself so that his people – or humanity at large – should benefit. By surpassing and suppressing his humanity, the narcissistic leader became a distorted version of Nietzsche’s “superman“.

Many narcissistic and psychopathic leaders are the hostages of self-imposed rigid ideologies. They fancy themselves Platonic “philosopher-kings”. Lacking empathy, they regard their subjects as a manufacturer does his raw materials, or as the abstracted collateral damage in vast historical processes (to prepare an omelet, one must break eggs, as their favorite saying goes).

But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-moral.

In this restricted sense, narcissistic leaders are post-modernist and moral relativists. They project to the masses an androgynous figure and enhance it by engendering the adoration of nudity and all things “natural” – or by strongly repressing these feelings. But what they refer to as “nature” is not natural at all.

The narcissistic leader invariably proffers an aesthetic of decadence and evil carefully orchestrated and artificial – though it is not perceived this way by him or by his followers. Narcissistic leadership is about reproduced copies, not about originals. It is about the manipulation of symbols – not about veritable atavism or true conservatism.

In short: narcissistic leadership is about theatre, not about life. To enjoy the spectacle (and be subsumed by it), the cultish leader demands the suspension of judgment, and the attainment of depersonalization and de-realization. Catharsis is tantamount, in this narcissistic dramaturgy, to self-annulment.

Narcissism is nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very language and narratives are nihilistic. Narcissism is conspicuous nihilism – and the cult’s leader serves as a role model, annihilating the Man, only to re-appear as a pre-ordained and irresistible force of nature.

Narcissistic leadership often poses as a rebellion against the “old ways”: against the hegemonic culture, the upper classes, the established religions, the superpowers, the corrupt order. Narcissistic movements are puerile, a reaction to narcissistic injuries inflicted upon a narcissistic (and rather psychopathic) toddler nation-state, or group, or upon the leader.

Minorities or “others” – often arbitrarily selected – constitute a perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of all that is “wrong”. They are accused of being old, of being eerily disembodied, cosmopolitan, a part of the establishment, of being “decadent”. They are hated on religious and socio-economic grounds, or because of their race, sexual orientation, or origin. They are different, they are narcissistic (they feel and act as morally superior), they are everywhere, they are defenceless, they are credulous, they are adaptable (and thus can be co-opted to collaborate in their own destruction). They are the perfect hate figure, a foil. Narcissists thrive on hatred and pathological envy.

This is precisely the source of the fascination with Hitler, diagnosed by Erich Fromm – together with Stalin – as a malignant narcissist. He was an inverted human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out our most repressed drives, fantasies, and wishes.

Hitler provided us with a glimpse of the horrors that lie beneath the veneer, the barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was like before we invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp and many did not emerge. He was not the devil. He was one of us. He was what Arendt aptly called the banality of evil. Just an ordinary, mentally disturbed, failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and failing nation, who lived through disturbed and failing times. He was the perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and the very depth of our souls.

The narcissistic leader prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments. His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substance, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions.

In the aftermath of his regime – the narcissistic leader having died, been deposed, or voted out of office – it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely-held empires disintegrate. Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. “Earth shattering” and “revolutionary” scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.

As their end draws near, narcissistic-psychopathic leaders act out, lash out, erupt. They attack with equal virulence and ferocity compatriots, erstwhile allies, neighbors, and foreigners.

It is important to understand that the use of violence must be ego-syntonic. It must accord with the self-image of the narcissist. It must abet and sustain his grandiose fantasies and feed his sense of entitlement. It must conform with the narcissistic narrative.

All populist, charismatic leaders believe that they have a “special connection” with the “people”: a relationship that is direct, almost mystical, and transcends the normal channels of communication (such as the legislature or the media). Thus, a narcissist who regards himself as the benefactor of the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite, is highly unlikely to use violence at first.

The pacific mask crumbles when the narcissist has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, the prime sources of his narcissistic supply, have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, the narcissist strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. “The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)”, “they don’t really know what they are doing”, “following a rude awakening, they will revert to form”, etc.

When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail, the narcissist is injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized is now discarded with contempt and hatred.

This primitive defense mechanism is called “splitting”. To the narcissist, things and people are either entirely bad (evil) or entirely good. He projects onto others his own shortcomings and negative emotions, thus becoming a totally good object. A narcissistic leader is likely to justify the butchering of his own people by claiming that they intended to assassinate him, undo the revolution, devastate the economy, harm the nation or the country, etc.

The “small people”, the “rank and file”, the “loyal soldiers” of the narcissist – his flock, his nation, his employees – they pay the price. The disillusionment and disenchantment are agonizing. The process of reconstruction, of rising from the ashes, of overcoming the trauma of having been deceived, exploited and manipulated – is drawn-out. It is difficult to trust again, to have faith, to love, to be led, to collaborate. Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of the narcissist. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

APPENDIX: Strong Men and Political Theatres – The “Being There” Syndrome

“I came here to see a country, but what I find is a theater … In appearances, everything happens as it does everywhere else. There is no difference except in the very foundation of things.”

(de Custine, writing about Russia in the mid-19th century)

Four decades ago, the Polish-American-Jewish author, Jerzy Kosinski, wrote the book “Being There”. It describes the election to the presidency of the United States of a simpleton, a gardener, whose vapid and trite pronouncements are taken to be sagacious and penetrating insights into human affairs. The “Being There Syndrome” is now manifest throughout the world: from Russia (Putin) to the United States (Obama).

Given a high enough level of frustration, triggered by recurrent, endemic, and systemic failures in all spheres of policy, even the most resilient democracy develops a predilection to “strong men”, leaders whose self-confidence, sangfroid, and apparent omniscience all but “guarantee” a change of course for the better.

These are usually people with a thin resume, having accomplished little prior to their ascendance. They appear to have erupted on the scene from nowhere. They are received as providential messiahs precisely because they are unencumbered with a discernible past and, thus, are ostensibly unburdened by prior affiliations and commitments. Their only duty is to the future. They are a-historical: they have no history and they are above history.

Indeed, it is precisely this apparent lack of a biography that qualifies these leaders to represent and bring about a fantastic and grandiose future. They act as a blank screen upon which the multitudes project their own traits, wishes, personal biographies, needs, and yearnings.

The more these leaders deviate from their initial promises and the more they fail, the dearer they are to the hearts of their constituents: like them, their new-chosen leader is struggling, coping, trying, and failing and, like them, he has his shortcomings and vices. This affinity is endearing and captivating. It helps to form a shared psychosis (follies-a-plusieurs) between ruler and people and fosters the emergence of an hagiography.

The propensity to elevate narcissistic or even psychopathic personalities to power is most pronounced in countries that lack a democratic tradition (such as China, Russia, or the nations that inhabit the territories that once belonged to Byzantium or the Ottoman Empire).

Cultures and civilizations which frown upon individualism and have a collectivist tradition, prefer to install “strong collective leaderships” rather than “strong men”. Yet, all these polities maintain a theatre of democracy, or a theatre of “democratically-reached consensus” (Putin calls it: “sovereign democracy”). Such charades are devoid of essence and proper function and are replete and concurrent with a personality cult or the adoration of the party in power.

In most developing countries and nations in transition, “democracy” is an empty word. Granted, the hallmarks of democracy are there: candidate lists, parties, election propaganda, a plurality of media, and voting. But its quiddity is absent. The democratic principles are institutions are being consistently hollowed out and rendered mock by election fraud, exclusionary policies, cronyism, corruption, intimidation, and collusion with Western interests, both commercial and political.

The new “democracies” are thinly-disguised and criminalized plutocracies (recall the Russian oligarchs), authoritarian regimes (Central Asia and the Caucasus), or puppeteered heterarchies (Macedonia, Bosnia, and Iraq, to mention three recent examples).

The new “democracies” suffer from many of the same ills that afflict their veteran role models: murky campaign finances; venal revolving doors between state administration and private enterprise; endemic corruption, nepotism, and cronyism; self-censoring media; socially, economically, and politically excluded minorities; and so on. But while this malaise does not threaten the foundations of the United States and France – it does imperil the stability and future of the likes of Ukraine, Serbia, and Moldova, Indonesia, Mexico, and Bolivia.

Many nations have chosen prosperity over democracy. Yes, the denizens of these realms can’t speak their mind or protest or criticize or even joke lest they be arrested or worse – but, in exchange for giving up these trivial freedoms, they have food on the table, they are fully employed, they receive ample health care and proper education, they save and spend to their hearts’ content.

In return for all these worldly and intangible goods (popularity of the leadership which yields political stability; prosperity; security; prestige abroad; authority at home; a renewed sense of nationalism, collective and community), the citizens of these countries forgo the right to be able to criticize the regime or change it once every four years. Many insist that they have struck a good bargain – not a Faustian one.

 

 

Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism

Interview granted to the Romanian newspaper Adevarul

Q. Do you think there are huge networks of traffic in organs that operate in Romania? How many Romanians it is estimated, in your opinion, annually sell organs?

 

A. “Huge” would be an exaggeration. Globally, about 10,000 organs are illegally harvested and transplanted each year. Donors in Moldova receive c. $3000 per kidney and in Romania – double this amount. There are c. 600 known donors in Moldova and no figures available for Romania. Still, it would be safe to assume that more than 2000 Romanian citizens have sold their organs in the last decade. Each year, about 100 Romanians sell kidneys to Israeli brokers who work with South-African hospitals and another 200-300 sell organs, mostly kidneys, to criminal rings and networks with connections to Turkey, Brazil, Italy, and the USA. Romanian organs are expensive and so organ harvesting has shifted to Asia and parts of Latin America.

 

Organ sellers – euphemistically called “donors” – are mainly poor, unemployed, and Roma. Romanians who want to emigrate or are in debt sometimes end up selling their organs or brokering such sales from prisoners, soldiers, and even adolescents. It is easy to find advertising related to organ trafficking on the Internet and even in the daily papers.

 

Q. What method is used more often in the case of Romania? Romanians who want to sell their organs are taken abroad to have their organs removed? Or, they are operated in Romania, then the organs are removed from the country? Or both methods are used?

 

A. Actually, organ sellers are often flown from other countries (even from Israel) INTO Romania. The organs are then harvested in Romania. Rarely, the organs are transplanted in Romania using fraudulent affidavits claiming that the donor and recipient are relatives. More frequently, the organs are flown to other countries, such as South Africa and Turkey, where the operations take place.

 

Many people are involved in these networks: from petty criminals to politicians and from medical doctors to businessmen. In Romania, the typical organ broker is a donor: someone who sold his kidney. Small-time criminals are also involved as well as officials in Customs and Immigration and, to a lesser extent, the Police and the Airports. Even hospital directors are in on the take.

 

A typical patient pays c. $120.000 per transplant, so there is a lot of money to divide. It is no wonder that Romania was the only country not to attend the conference that yielded the Istanbul Declaration against organ trafficking and transplant tourism!

 

Generally speaking: trafficked organs are either sold domestically, or exported to be transplanted into patients from the US, Europe, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and especially Israel.

 

Q Have you heard or seen cases in which the Romanians sold their organs?

 

A. Yes, and so have you: Robert Mihaly in 2005.

 

Q. What are the organs most commonly trafficked from Eastern Europe?

 

A. Kidneys are the most sought after, extracted, sold, and transplanted. Harvesting a kidney poses few risks to the donor. Kidneys are tiny and easy to conceal and smuggle. About 10,000 kidneys are harvested illegally each year.

 

Q. Are the rumors about harvesting organs from adopted children true?

 

A. No, they are not. Children’s organs are often ill-suited for transplantation for histological and immunological reasons. So, the stories about Israeli adoption agencies which work in tandem with Israeli doctors to extract organs from Romanian children are nonsense and merely the latest version of the medieval anti-Semitic blood libel. Still, I am ashamed to say that Israeli doctors are very prominent in the organ trafficking and transplant tourism business.

Interview granted to El Pais

Q. Why do Israelis buy more organs for transplantation than other nations?

A. Because Israeli doctors and businessmen (and, more generally, Jewish doctors in places like South Africa) are heavily involved in the trade. Jewish religion forbids the donation of organs from a living person. So, in Israel, there is an enormous shortage of organs coupled with a sizable purchasing power. It is simply easier for an Israeli to find the right connections as all the roads lead to Tel-Aviv.

Q. Which countries provide the most donors?

A. In Europe: Moldova, Romania, Belarus, Ukraine, and, to some extent, Albania, Kosovo, and the former republics of Yugoslavia (Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia). In the Americas: Mexico, Haiti, Bolivia, Peru. In Asia: Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam. In Africa: Nigeria and the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. But there are donors who hail from rich countries as well: even from Israel. Still, demand gravitates to where supply is abundant and cheapest. In Moldova and Turkey donors sell a kidney for 200-500 euros; in Romania, Romas sell the same organs for double or triple that; while Israeli donors demand up to 10,000 USD per kidney. Normally, buyers prefer Moldovan or Turkish donors.

Q. How does a person how want to buy an organ find his way?

A. Predominantly through his doctors. In a few cases, he may know someone who has had a similar procedure. There are even Internet chat rooms, bulletin boards, and forums where such information is exchanged.

Q. How many organs have been bought in the last 2 years in the Middle East?

A. Arab patients in the Gulf States, Israelis, Egyptians, Iranians and Turks are the most numerous clients for such operations. But the surgical procedures themselves – harvesting the organs and then transplanting them – take place in other locations: Kosovo, Turkey, South Africa, Morocco. In total, about 12,000 organs are illegally traded every year the world over. Middle Eastern patients account for c. 2400 of these.

Q. Has the organ trade decreased or increased in the last 10 years in this area?

A. Increased dramatically as the business has been taken over by organized crime networks, aided and abetted by businessmen, financiers, hoteliers, truck operators, politicians, customs officers, local doctors, judges, police officers, and other officials, including representatives of the international community. Everyone has been corrupted by this scourge.

Q. How much can an organ cost? (let’s say a kidney)

A. The patient pays between 100-150,000 USD for a kidney transplant, including two weeks of convalescence in a five-star hotel for him and his immediate family.

Q. How much does the donor /seller receive?

A. Donors typically receive between 1000-2000 USD per kidney (about 1-2% of the cost to the recipient patient). Many donors in distress or those who want to emigrate sell organs for much less. Retinas, hearts, lungs, even bone marrow are also harvested and sold.

Q. How much does the doctor get? How much does the clinic and the stuff performing the operation? How much the mediators?

A. A typical operation involves 2 surgeons, 1 anaesthesiologist, 2 nurses, and 1 specialist (cardiologist, nephrologist, etc.) The surgeons receive 20,000 USD each; the specialist (who only monitors the patient and serves as a consultant) about 10,000 USD; the anaesthesiologist about 5000 USD; and each of the nurses about 2000 USD per operation. The rest goes to the long chain of mediators involved. The brokers pay off everyone else: truck drivers, receptionists at the hotels; customs officers; judges; policemen; and midlevel politicians.

Q. What is the role of Turkey in all this? Are Turkey’s clinics or doctors into this illegal business?

A. Turkey is a major junction in the trafficking of illicit organs. Turkish doctors work closely with Israeli and Jewish doctors the world over. They operate on both donors and recipients. They run illegal clinics all over the world, including in Turkey, where many transplants take place as part of a phenomenon of “transplant tourism” (mostly next to Antalian resorts). They recruit donors. The whole business would be unimaginable without the Turks. Recently, Israeli and Turkish networks have started to infiltrate Russia (with the help of the Russian mafia) and the Turkic former republics of the USSR as well as Kazakhstan and through these, China. This is the next “growth market”.

 

 

Names of Collectives (Sets) versus Names of Individuals

Individuals are members of classes or sets (hereinafter referred to as “collectives”). Names of collectives are fundamentally different to names of individuals:

Individuals cannot own their names, collectives can and strive to possess their names and protect them against incursion and misuse. This is especially true in the case of brand names;

Individuals do not have exclusive names. When they do (tattooed numbers in Auschwitz; prison numbers) such exclusivity tends to be humiliating and dehumanizing. In contrast, collectives aspire to exclusivity on their names, although, in practice the enforcement of such self-imputed exclusivity may be fraught with difficulties (witness the name dispute between Macedonia and Greece). Collectives find name-exclusivity uplifting;

The names of individuals do not reveal the attributes of the bearers or referents, nor do they contain or convey any information regarding the traits or qualities of said. The names of collectives come laden with context and history and, therefore, are infused with data regarding the collective. In a sense, the names of collectives are among their more dominant and prominent attributes. This intimate relationship between names, denotats, and connotates gives rise to stereotypes;

The names of individuals do not define their bearers or referents. The name of a collective is an integral part of its definition. It is impossible to construct a workable definition of a collective without including its name in the definition, whatever its nature (lexical, stipulative, or ostensive);

The name of the individual does not determine the individual. The individual’s name also has nothing to do with his or her traits, attributes, qualities, behavior patterns, and other extensive parameters of the person named. This is different where collectives are concerned: the name of a collective is an important element in the collective’s self-determination and usually the first act on the road to autonomy, independence, and differentiation.

The names of individuals are, ultimately arbitrary and cannot be defined or explained, though they may possess semantic values. The names of collectives are always contextually “meaningful” and can always be defined;

The names of individuals are largely devoid of emotional content and provoke little or no emotional reaction in the listener. The names of collectives never fail to elicit and provoke emotional reactions;

Finally, individual names are very loosely interwoven with individual identities. In stark contrast, names of collectives are often synonymous with their identities: this is how close the relationship between the two is.

 

Monopolizing the Field of Vision: From AND Screens to OR Screens

1. Screens that Include Reality vs. Screens that Exclude It

Screens have been with us for centuries now: paintings are screens and so are windows. Yet, the very nature of screens has undergone a revolutionary transformation in the last decade or so. All the screens that preceded the PDA’s (Personal Digital Assistant) and the smartphone’s were inclusive of reality, they were AND screens: when you watched them you could not avoid (“screen out”) data emanating from your physical environment. “Screen-AND-reality” was the prevalent modus operandi.

Consider the cinema, the television, and the personal computer (PC): even when entangled in the flow of information provided by these machines, you were still fully exposed to and largely aware of your surroundings. The screens of the past were one step removed: there was always a considerable physical distance between user and device and the field of vision extended to encompass copious peripheral input.

Now consider the iPhone or the digital camera: their screens, though tiny, monopolize the field of vision and exclude the world by design. The physical distance between retina and screen has shrunk to the point of vanishing. 3-D television with its specialty eyeglasses and total immersion is merely the culmination of this trend: the utter removal of reality from the viewer’s experience. Modern screens are, therefore, OR screens: you either watch the screen OR observe reality. You cannot do both.

2. Perception and Representation in Analog and Digital Cameras

The digital camera profoundly affects the way we perceive and represent the world around us on “film”.

To start with, the user of the analog camera used to watch the world, however indirectly. All that stood between him and reality was the viewer of his apparatus. He recorded what he saw “out there”.

In contrast, the user of the digital camera watches a representation of the world on a screen. He records what he sees on the screen of his gadget. He rarely glances up to gaze directly at his subject matter.

The digital camera is more forgiving and permissive. Errors can be instantly deleted. The whole experience is characterized by an urgency and immediacy that is absent from the analog equivalent. The digital camera allows its user to experiment with cost-free and, therefore, risk-free alternatives. It transforms the whole procedure of shooting pictures into a spontaneous, even irreverent, experience. With the digital apparatus visuals are a public good.

Environmental facts that used to serve as external constraints on use of the analog camera – the quantity and angle of light, for instance – are now compensated for by special settings in its digital successor. The typical gadget provides for preset “templates” that capture the moment in an optimal manner, removing obstacles and limitations posed by the photographer’s physical surroundings.

The digital photo is never a finished product. It can be downloaded onto a storage device (a computer’s hard disk, the Internet) and there edited with software applications. Reality is thus rendered tentative and negotiable, a declaration of intent rather than a final statement.

 

Macedonia’s Hopeful Holocaust

Macedonia boasts one of only four major Holocaust memorials in the world (the others are in Jerusalem, Washington, and Berlin). For a country of 2 million people with fewer than 130 Jews and no tourism to speak of this is a curious circumstance. That Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is a bestseller in Macedonia and old people still believe in anti-Semitic blood libels renders the whole affair a travesty.

 

Like the vast majority of Jewish communities in Europe, the Jewish community in Macedonia – 7400 members strong – was completely annihilated during the Holocaust. Like the vast majority of the peoples of Europe (with a few notable and noble exceptions), the Macedonians sat back and did not lift a finger to help. Only a few brave Macedonian individuals bucked the trend. The silent majority gleefully took over the possessions and property of the exterminated Jews and looked the other way. For a definitive account of the Holocaust in Macedonia, read the book by the historian Jenny (Zeni) Lebl. For a harrowing – and, as far as the Macedonians go, unflattering – account of one survivor’s ordeal watch Eitan Oren’s documentary film about Isaac Adijes. Especially pay attention to how the local Macedonians “welcomed” Adijes when he had returned, decades later, to visit his ancestral home.

 

It has been my experience that anti-Semitism is alive and well among the Macedonians. The few Jews left here are aware of it: being an Israeli Jew myself, I have been chastised by them for criticizing the government and, potentially, bringing the wrath of the populace and the authorities upon their collective head. Rightly or wrongly, they perceive their status as precarious.

 

Yet, the Macedonians are conflict-averse and their variety of anti-Semitism is relatively benign and far from virulent. Jews are mostly feared and admired because they “rule the world and the United States, the media and the banks, and all the money in the world”. Such fear and “admiration” (which is a thinly-disguised stereotype, steeped in spite and envy) are also forms of anti-Semitism. Indeed, the Holocaust Museum – almost fully funded with the proceeds from the sale of denationalized properties of liquidated Jews, hastily declared heirless by the Macedonian authorities – is the Macedonians’ way of bribing the Jews to help them with their economic and geopolitical dire straits. Highfaluting speeches aside, Macedonia’s dignitaries – alternately bored or inappropriately smiling – said as much in the Museum’s festive opening ceremony.

 

As usual, the Jews collaborated: the “leaders” of the Jewish community took over the unclaimed funds and erected a white elephant of a museum in the erstwhile Jewish quarter. Now that the deed is done, it would be nice to see the accounting for the moneys contributed by the dead Jews and spent by the living ones in the multi-year process.

 

Anti-Semitism is a Balkan staple.

 

I was shown the same book in Yugoslavia, in Macedonia and in Bulgaria – “The World Conspiracy” – a shabby tome written by an ageing “scholar”. The main, unabashedly anti-Semitic, hypothesis (presented as undisputed fact) is that the Jews rule the world supreme: always have, probably always will. Lists of prominent Jews in the world of international finance reprinted with lists of influential Jews in the Soviet communist regime. And it all amounts to a well organized secretive machinery of illicit power, claims the author with all the persuasion of a paranoid. In here, trash magazines dwell endlessly on these and similar themes.

 

Yet, anti-Semitism is only one species in a zoo of rumours, conspiracy theories, meta histories and metaphysics. Superstitions, prejudices and calumny thrive in the putrid soil of disinformation, mis-information and lack of information. In the void created by unreliable, politicized and corrupt media rumour mills spring eternal. It is a malignant growth, the outcome of a breakdown of trust so compleat that communication is rendered impossible. This is the main characteristic of the East (from Russia to Albania): distrust. Citizens and politicians, businessmen and government, the media and its consumers, manufacturers and service providers, the sick and their doctors – all suspect each other of ulterior motives and foul play. All are more often than not quite right to do so.

 

It is a Kafkaesque, sealed universe in which nothing is as it appears to be. This acrimonious divorce between appearances and essence, facade and truth, the Potemkin and the real is a facet of daily life, of the most mundane exchanges, of the most trivial pursuits. Motives are sought with increasing urgency: why did he do it, what did he try to achieve, why had he not chosen a different path, why here, why with us, why now, what can it teach us. Information is pursued frantically, appearances discarded, data juggled, heated debates ensue, versions erupt, only to subside and be replaced by others. It is a feverish ritual, the sound of clashing exegeses, of theories constructed and demolished in vacuo.

 

At the heart of it all, is the unbearable uncertainty of being. Political uncertainty under communism was replaced by economic uncertainty under the insidious and venal form of capitalism that replaced it. Tucked in identical cubicles, the citizens of planet communism were at least assured of a make belief job in a sprawling bureaucracy or in a decrepit factory, manufacturing redundant documents or shoddy goods. Subsistence was implicitly guaranteed by the kleptocracy that ruled them and, in principle, it was always possible to ignore the moral stench and join the nomenklatura, thereby developing instant upward mobility. Corruption, theft and graft were tolerated by the state as means of complementing income. Life was drab but safe as long as one abstained from politics and subserviently consumed the bitter medicines of acquiescence and collaboration. The vast majority (with the exception of the USSR under Stalin) were not affected by the arbitrary capriciousness of history. They decayed slowly in their housing estates, morally degenerate, possession-less but certain of a future that is the spitting image of their past.

 

Under the spastic orgy of legalized robbery of state assets that passed for privatization, millions were made redundant while thousands enriched themselves by choreographed looting. The results were instability, unpredictability, uncertainty and fear. In a world thus unhinged, the masses groped for reason, for a scheme, for a method in the madness, for an explanation, however sinister and ominous. Anything was preferable to the seemingly random natural forces unleashed upon them with such apparent vengeance. Even a “World Government” (a favourite), the Illuminati (a Freemasonry-like movement but much more odious), the Jews, the USA, aliens. The greatest conspiracy theory of them all – the Phoenix of religion – sprang back to life from the ashes it was reduced to by communism. A host of mystical beliefs and sects and cults mushroomed noxiously in the humid shadows of irrationality.

 

Thus, every event, no matter how insignificant, any occurrence, no matter how inconsequential and any coincidence, no matter how coincidental assume heraldic meaning. People in these domains carry their complex jigsaw puzzles with them. They welcome each new piece with the zeal of the converted. They bellow triumphantly with every “proof” of their pet theory, with every datum, with each rumour. Things don’t just happen – they whisper, conspiratorially – things are directed from above, ordained, regulated, prevented, or encouraged by “them”. A group of 400 rule the world. They are Jews, they are the Serb mafia, or the Bulgarian. Or the Americans who plan to dominate (which obviously puts Kosovo in context). They are the rich and powerful, the objects of envy and frightened admiration, of virulent hate and rage. They are responsible. We pay the price – we, the small and powerless and poor. And it is hopeless, it has been like that forever. The disparity between them and us is too great. Resistance is futile.

 

Why was this president elected? Surely, the West demanded it. Or political parties conspired to rig the vote. Or rich businessmen supported him. What is the real aim of foreign investors in coming to these godforsaken places, if not to infiltrate and penetrate and establish their long term dominion? And wouldn’t it be safe to assume that al the foreigners are spies, that all the Jews collaborate, that the neighbours would have liked to conquer and to subjugate us, that the world is a colossal puppet show? In other words, is it not true that we are puppets – victims – in a theatre not of our making? They filter out that which does not conform to their persuasion, does not accord with their suspicions, does not fit within their schemes.

 

This deferral of responsibility brings relief from shame and blame. Guilt is allayed by symbolically and ritually passing it onto another. Fear is quelled by the introduction of schemata. These are potent psychological incentives. They provide structure to the amorphous, bring order to the chaos that is the brave, new world of the economies in transition. Flux is replaced by immutable “truths”, possibilities by certainties, threats by “knowledge”. It is a re-construction and reconquest of a paradise lost by giving up the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

 

It is this hyper-vigilance, this elevated suspicion, these instant certainties fabricated from frail pseudo-theories and conspiracies that make the Man of the East so easy to manipulate, so vulnerable, so amenable to collude in his own downfall. Bewitched by his self-spun myths, captivated by his own paranoia, under the spell of his magical, immature, thinking – non critical, non analytical, non discriminating – he is exquisitely susceptible to crooks and charlatans, to manipulators and demagogues, to the realization of the very threats he tried to fend off in the first place.

 

Here is what the DSM (“Diagnostic and Statistical Manual”) IV-TR (2000) published by the APA (American Psychiatric Association) has to say about paranoids and schizotypals:

 

The Paranoid Personality Disorder

 

Schizotypal Personality Disorder

 

 

Dancing as an Evolutionary Strategy

Dances are thinly disguised simulations of sex acts. But there’s more to dancing than bawdy ribaldry. The sweaty proximity allows the partners to exchange an enormous amount of information about their respective bodies: from joint suppleness, through spatial orientation and coordination, and down to the fine details of their immunological systems (such as the major histocompatibility complex MHC) carried by their body odours. In this sense, dancing aids and abets the forces of natural selection and eugenic breeding. Indeed, in many 16^th and 17^th century textbooks dancing is grouped with hunting, fighting, wrestling, and running.

In times past, the dance-hall was the only venue open to prospective partners to gather such fitness data. Indeed, there is reason to believe that dancing was consciously invented and designed to do precisely that. Capriol, a protagonist in Thoinot Arbeau’s dance manual “Orchesography”, complains: “(W)ithout knowledge of dancing, I could not please the damsels.” Arbeau himself is nothing if not brutally explicit:

“Dancing is practised to reveal whether lovers are in good health and sound of limb, after which they are permitted to kiss their mistresses in order that they may touch and savour one another, thus to ascertain if they are shapely or emit an unpleasant odour as of bad meat.”

Arbeau and dance masters such as Caroso actually named dances to reflect the underlying amorous, matchmaking process. Inevitably, Puritans and other spoilsports targeted the practice and its purveyors repeatedly in both England and its overseas colonies.

But dancing, as a form of health-enhancing strenuous exercise, also serves to perpetuate the species. This aspect of dancing was especially important when and where women’s movements were restricted by tradition, social mores, and religion: allowed to indulge in dances, even with their own sex, women have thus secured a modicum of sanatory locomotion.

Nowadays, dancing is often thought of as a couple’s activity. But, this is a recent development. Until the nineteenth century, dancing was a social act and the vast majority of dances involved frequently switched multiple partners, as demanded by ballroom etiquette. Thus, dancing and saltation yielded social cohesion; increased social interaction; and enhanced the opportunities for mating and cooperation.

 

The Wikipedia Cult

Interview granted to Daniel Tynan, May 2010

Q. When did the cult start?

A. I was involved with both the Wikipedia and its predecessor, the Nupedia. When the Nupedia was shelved and the Wikipedia launched, the first clusters of contributors regarded themselves as knowledge-aficionados, akin to an open-source movement. The Wikipedia did not possess the penetration and clout that it now enjoys. It was a club of gifted amateurs, to use the British expression. But as the Wikipedia expanded and attained its current status and prowess, power-hungry, narcissistic bullies leveraged it to cater to their psychological needs. Around 2003, the Wikipedia had acquired all the hallmarks of a cult: hierarchy, arcane rules, paranoid insularity, intolerance of dissent, and a cosmic grandiose mission.

Q. Approximately how many members/acolytes does it have?

A. The inner core of the English-language Wikipedia has c. 2000 members. Of these, about 200-300 members make all the important, strategic decisions. The others monitor articles and edit them, usually in order to promote and protect their own points of view and interests. This is not an informal network: it is completely rigid with a hierarchy, titles, job descriptions, remits, and responsibilities. It is a stringently edited work, not a loose forum, or a BBS. Many in the upper echelons (and in Wikimedia, the non-profit that is overseeing the whole operation) earn salaries and enjoy junkets and perks.

Q. Are there regular gatherings of the tribes? If so, when and where?  Who are its major and minor deities?

A. Wikipedia members meet regularly all over the globe, in special gatherings dedicated to the “encyclopedia”, its catechism and Weltanschauung, its regulatory (including enforcement and penal) mechanisms, and its future. Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales is invariably the star of such conclaves and fulfils the combined roles of prophet and Dear Leader. The Wikipedia’s narcissistic co-founder deserves a special analysis: he subtly misrepresents facts (claims that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, that he hold no special influence over it); Wales ignores data that conflicts with his fantasy world; he is above the law, including and especially his own laws (was caught editing his own Wikipedia entry, for instance); talks about himself in 3rd person singular; minimizes the contributions and role of others (such as the Wikipedia’s real visionary, Larry Sanger); has a messianic-cosmic vision of himself and his life; sets ever more complex rules in a convoluted world of grandiose fantasies with its own language (jargon); displays false modesty and “folksiness”; sublimates aggression and holds grudges; and, all in all, is an eternal adolescent (his choice of language, peripatetic pursuits). Wikipedia is its founder writ large: narcissistic, autistic, solipsistic, and puerile.

Q. What are its holy text(s)?

A. Authoritarian-totalitarian bureaucracies are marked by strict, rigid adherence to sacred texts – both foundational and exegetic – and by the blind and ruthless implementation of codified, arcane rules of conduct. The use of acronyms and ciphers singles out the initiated and separates them from the hoi polloi. The Wikipedia’s holy scriptures are strewn all over its Website, mainly in the Help and FAQs sections. Yet, though accessible, they are largely incomprehensible at first sight. They require months of learning and are ambiguous. This ambiguity requires frequent intervention and interpretation by a tiny self-imputed elite, equivalent to the priesthood in established religions. The decisions of these arbiters are often final and, in many cases, arbitrary. This gives them enormous power which they use intentionally to drive away competition by alienating contributors (especially experts and scholars) and intimidating newcomers (who are often regarded as potential troublemakers).

Q. Are there other cults Wikipedians share affinities with?

A. All cults are the same: they spawn a hierarchy, sport arcane rules, suffer from paranoid insularity, do not tolerate dissent, criticism, and disagreement, and ascribe to themselves a cosmic grandiose mission. No cult is benign. All cults are run by individuals with narcissistic traits and the Wikipedia is no exception.

The narcissist is the guru at the centre of a cult. Like other gurus, he demands complete obedience from his flock. He feels entitled to adulation and special treatment by his followers. He punishes the wayward and the straying lambs. He enforces discipline, adherence to his teachings and common goals. The less accomplished he is in reality – the more stringent his mastery and the more pervasive the brainwashing.

Cult leaders are narcissists who failed in their mission to “be someone”, to become famous, and to impress the world with their uniqueness, talents, traits, and skills. Such disgruntled narcissists withdraw into a “zone of comfort” (known as the “Pathological Narcissistic Space”) that assumes the hallmarks of a cult.

The narcissist’s control is based on ambiguity, unpredictability, fuzziness, and ambient abuse. His ever-shifting whims exclusively define right versus wrong, desirable and unwanted, what is to be pursued and what to be avoided. He alone determines the rights and obligations of his disciples and alters them at will.

The cult’s leader acts in a patronising and condescending manner and criticises often. He alternates between emphasising the minutest faults (devalues) and exaggerating the talents, traits, and skills (idealises) of the members of his cult. He is wildly unrealistic in his expectations – which legitimises his subsequent abusive conduct.

The narcissist claims to be infallible, superior, talented, skilful, omnipotent, and omniscient. He often lies and confabulates to support these unfounded claims. Within his cult, he expects awe, admiration, adulation, and constant attention commensurate with his outlandish stories and assertions. He reinterprets reality to fit his fantasies.

The participants in the cult are hostile to critics, the authorities, institutions, his personal enemies, or the media – if they try to uncover his actions and reveal the truth. The narcissist’s cult is “missionary” and “imperialistic”. He is always on the lookout for new recruits. He immediately attempts to “convert” them to his “creed” – to convince them how wonderful and admirable he – and, by extension, the cult - is.

Often, his behaviour on these “recruiting missions” is different to his conduct within the “cult”. In the first phases of wooing new admirers and proselytising to potential “conscripts” the narcissist is attentive, compassionate, empathic, flexible, self-effacing, and helpful. At home, among the “veterans” he is tyrannical, demanding, wilful, opinionated, aggressive, and exploitative.

As the leader of his congregation, the narcissist feels entitled to special amenities and benefits not accorded the “rank and file”. He expects to be waited on hand and foot, to make free use of everyone’s money and dispose of their assets liberally, and to be cynically exempt from the rules that he himself established (if such violation is pleasurable or gainful).

Hence the narcissist’s panicky and sometimes violent reactions to “dropouts” from his cult. There’s a lot going on that the narcissist wants kept under wraps. Moreover, the narcissist stabilises his fluctuating sense of self-worth by deriving Narcissistic Supply (adulation, admiration, attention) from his victims. Abandonment threatens the narcissist’s precariously balanced personality.

Q. Are there other ‘cults’ or splinter groups Wikipedians consider rivals (or heretics)?

A. The Internet is overflowing with stories of former Wikipedians. They all claim to have been punished and mistreated following their “heresy” and “desertion”. I can only recount my personal experience with any certainty. When I left the Wikipedia, I wrote a widely-read article titled “The Six Sins of the Wikipedia”. It provoked heated debate and I became the target of Wikipedians the world over. I was on the receiving end of threats and mail bombs; the pages of my books in Amazon were flooded with bad reviews; I was vilified and subjected to an Internet-wide smear campaign, replete with defamatory and libellous statements; my work was plagiarized in various Wikipedia articles and repeated requests to remedy the situation were denied; my entry in the Wikipedia was deleted (after I threatened Wales and his cohorts with a class-action lawsuit). I do not believe that this was a coordinated, concerted, condoned, or centrally-directed onslaught. But, it does reflect the extreme fanaticism and aggressive intolerance of the cult.

Q. How would an outsider recognize a member of this cult?

A. Easily: try to criticize the Wikipedia, question its reliability and objectivity, doubt its co-founder, disagree with the way it is authored or edited, ponder its psychopathology, muse whether it is a cult. The responses of dyed-in-the-wool Wikipedians will prove to be violent, disproportionate, fanatical, intolerant, and malevolent.

Why Do People Pay Taxes?

It is commonly – albeit erroneously and counterfactually – thought that taxpayers are intimidated into the fulfilment of their fiscal obligations and that tax collection is mainly about coercion. The truth is different.

People pay taxes because they want to belong to a collective, share a communal fate and a common lore, and enjoy the benefits of membership in the exclusive club of productive citizenry. To be a taxpayer is akin to sporting a badge of honour: it is a proof of personal integrity and industriousness, and, depending on the tax bill, a hallmark of success and prosperity. The payment of taxes bestows civil rights upon the payee: the cries “I am an honest tax-paying citizen” or “no taxation without representation” resonate in many a film and book.

To motivate wayward denizens of the realm to discharge their pecuniary obligations towards the state, governments rely on police powers, incarceration, asset forfeiture, and sometimes (for instance, in China) worse. Yet, a far more effective method would be to name and shame tax evaders and to maintain a publicly-accessible registry of tax offenders. Peer pressure and public opinion are mighty weapons and the bulk of tax delinquents who are not utterly psychopathic are susceptible to it.

To tax or not to tax: this question could have never been asked twenty years ago.

Historically, income tax is a novel invention. Still, it has become so widespread and so socially-accepted that no one dares challenge it seriously. In the lunatic fringes there are those who refuse to pay taxes and serve prison sentences as a result. When they try to translate their platforms into political power and established parties they invariably fail dismally in the polls. Still, some of what they say makes sense.

Originally, taxes were levied to pay for government expenses. But they underwent a malignant transformation. They began to be used to express social preferences. Tax revenues were diverted to pay for urban renewal, to encourage foreign investments through tax breaks and tax incentives, to enhance social equality by evenly redistributing income and so on. As Big Government was more derided and decried so were taxes perceived to be its instrument and the tide turned. Suddenly, the fashion was to downsize government, minimize its disruptive involvement in the marketplace and reduce the total tax burden as part of the GNP.

Taxes are inherently unjust. They are enforced, using state coercion. They are an infringement of the human age old right to property. Money is transferred from one group of citizens (law abiding taxpayers) to other groups. The recipients are less savoury: either legally or illegally they do not pay taxes (illegal immigrants, low income populations, children, the elderly, the ultra-rich). But there is no way of preventing a tax evader from enjoying tax money paid by others (this are known as the commons and free-rider problems).

Research demonstrates that most tax money benefits the middle classes and the rich, in short: those who need it least. Moreover, these strata of society are most likely to use tax planning to minimize their tax payments. They can afford to hire professionals to help them pay fewer and less taxes because their income is augmented with transfers (of tax receipts) paid for by the less affluent and by the less fortunate. The poor subsidize the tax planning of the rich, and the latter pay fewer taxes. Thus, tax planning is widely regarded as the rich man’s shot at tax evasion. The irony is that taxes were intended to lessen social polarity and friction – but they have achieved exactly the opposite.

In economies where taxes gobble up to 60% of the GDP (mainly in Europe) taxes became the major economic disincentive. Why work for the taxman? Why finance the lavish lifestyle of numerous politicians and bloated bureaucracies through tax money? Why be a sucker when the rich and mighty play it safe?

The results are socially and morally devastating: an avalanche of illegal activities, all intended to avoid paying taxes. Monstrous black (and gray) economies sprang up. These economic activities went unreported and totally deformed the processes of macroeconomic decision making, supposedly based on complete economic data. This apparent lack of macroeconomic control creates a second layer of mistrust between the citizen and his government (on top of the one related to the coercive and skewed collection of taxes).

Recent studies clearly indicate that a reverse relationship exists between the growth of an economy and the extent of public spending. Moreover, decades of progressive taxation did not reverse the trend of a growing gap between the rich and the poor. Income distribution has remained inequitable (ever more so all the time) despite gigantic unilateral transfers of money from the state to the poorer socio – economic strata of society.

Taxes are largely considered to be responsible for the following:

• They distort business thinking;
• Encourage the misallocation of economic resources;
• Divert money to bizarre tax-motivated investments;
• Absorb unacceptably large chunks of the GDP;
• Deter foreign investment;
• Morally corrupt the population, encouraging it to engage in massive illegal activities;
• Adversely influence macroeconomic parameters such as unemployment, the money supply and interest rates;
• Deprive the business sector of capital needed for its development by spending it on non productive political ends;
• Cause the smuggling of capital outside the country (capital flight);
• Foster the formation of strong parallel, black economies and the falsifying of economic records thus adversely affecting decision making processes;
• Facilitate the establishment of big, inefficient bureaucracies for the collection of taxes and of data related to income and economic activity;
• Force every member of society to – directly or indirectly – pay for professional services related to his or her tax obligations, or, at least to consume resources (time, money and energy) in communicating with authorities and navigating the bureaucracies that handle with tax collection on behalf of the state.

Thousands of laws, tax loopholes, breaks and incentives and seemingly arbitrary decision making, not open to judicial scrutiny erode the trust that a member of the community should have in its institutions. This lack of transparency and even-handedness lead to the frequent eruption of scandals which unseat governments more often than not.

All these malignant side-effects and by-products might have been acceptable if taxes were to achieve their primary stated goals. That they fail to do so is what sparked the latest rebellious thinking.

At first, the governments of the world tried a few simple recipes:

They tried to widen the tax base by instituting better collection, processing, amalgamation and crossing of information. This way, more tax payers were supposed to be caught in “the net”. This failed dismally. People found ways around this relatively unsophisticated approach and frequent and successive tax campaigns were to no avail.

So, governments tried the next trick in their bag: they shifted from progressive taxes to regressive ones. This was really a shift from taxes on income to taxes on consumption. This proved to be a much more efficient measure albeit with grave social consequences. The same pattern was repeated: the powerful few were provided with legal loopholes. VAT rules around the world allow businesses to offset VAT that they pay on consumables and services against VAT that they are supposed to pay to the authorities. Many enterprises end up receiving VAT funds paid by individuals who do not enjoy these tax breaks.

Moreover, VAT and other direct taxes on consumption were almost immediately reflected in higher inflation figures. As economic theory goes, inflation is a tax. It indirectly affects the purchasing power of those not knowledgeable enough, devoid of political clout, or not rich enough to protect themselves. The salaries of the lower strata of society are eroded by inflation and this has the exact same effect as a tax would. This is why inflation is called “the poor man’s tax”.

When the social consequences of levying regressive taxes became fully evident, governments went back to the drawing board. Regressive taxes were politically and socially costly. Progressive taxes resembled Swiss cheese: too many loopholes, not enough substance. The natural inclination was to try and plug the holes: disallow allowances, break tax breaks, abolish special preferences, and eliminate loopholes, write-offs, reliefs and a host of other, special deductions. This entailed conflicts with special interest groups whose members benefited from the tax loopholes.

Governments, being political creatures, did a half-hearted job. They abolished on the one hand – and gave with the other. They wriggled their way around controversial subjects and the result was that every loophole-cutting measure brought in its wake a growing host of others. The situation looked hopeless.

Thus, governments were reduced to using the final weapon in their arsenal: the simplification of the tax system.

The idea is aesthetically appealing: all tax concessions and loopholes are eliminated, on the one hand. On the other hand, the number of tax rates and the magnitude of each rate are pared down. Marginal tax rates go down considerably and so does the number of tax brackets. So, people feel less like cheating and they spend fewer resources on the preparation of their tax returns. The government, on its part, no longer uses the tax system to express its (political) preferences. It promulgates and enforces a simple, transparent, equitable, fair and non-arbitrary system which generates more income by virtue of these traits.

Governments from Germany to the USA are working along the same lines. They are trying to stem what is in effect a tax rebellion, a major case of civil disobedience. If they fail, the very fabric of societies will be affected. If they succeed, we may all inherit a better world. Knowing the propensities of human beings, the safe bet is that people will still hate to see their money wasted in unaccounted for ways on bizarre, pork-barrel, projects. As long as this is the case, the eternal chase of the citizen by his government will continue.

Sexsomnia

“I am with child” – says Mariam, her eyes downcast. In the murk he could not tell if her cheeks are flushed, but the tremor in her voice and her posture are signs enough. They are betrothed, he having paid the mohar to her family two moons ago with witnesses aplenty. She was a virgin then: the elders of both families made sure and vouched for her. At 14 years of age she was no beauty, but her plainness and the goodness of her heart appealed to him. She was supple and lithe and a hard worker. He liked her natural scents and she often laughed, a bell-like tintinnabulation that he grew fond of as her presence insinuated itself into his dour existence. By now, she has permeated his abode, like silent waters.

Yoseph was somewhat older and more experienced than his wife-to-be. Short, stocky and hirsute, his only redeeming feature was his eyes: two coals aglow above a bulbous, venous nose in an otherwise coarse face. Originally from Judea, he found himself stranded in Nazareth, an outpost, half watchtower half settlement of crude and stony-faced peasants. He traced his ancestry back to King David and wouldn’t marry one of theirs, so the locals mocked and resented him. Mariam’s tribe was also from Judea and her barren cousin, Elisheva was long married to a Temple priest. Mariam was well-bred and observant of God’s commandments. He could not imagine her sinning.

As was his habit, he laid down his tools, straightened up and stood, frozen in contemplation. Finally he asked: “Who is the father?” There were bewilderment and hurt in his voice.

Mariam shuffled her bare, delicate feet: “You are”, she whispered.

He tensed: “Don’t lie to me, Mariam.”

“I am not!” – She protested – “I am not!”

A shaft of light penetrated the hut and illuminated his table and the flapping corners of her gown.

“We are not to be married until after the harvest. I cannot know you until you are my wife. I did not know you, Mariam!”

She sobbed softly.

He sighed:

“What have you done, Mariam? If this were to be known …”

“Please, please,” – she startled – “tell no one! No one need know!”

“It is not a thing you can hide for long, especially in Natseret” – he sniggered bitterly.

“I swear before God, as He is my witness: you had me, Yoseph, you knew me at night time, several times!”

“Mariam!” His voice was cold and cutting and he struggled to regain control and then, in softer tones:

“I will not make a public example of you, Mariam, worry not. I will give you leave tomorrow privately. We need only two witnesses.”

She fell silent, her breathing shallow and belaboured.

“Mariam?”

“You fell asleep and tossed and turned all night. I could hear you from my chamber. You then came to me, your eyes still shut. You … you had me then, you knew me. It is the truth. Throughout the deed you never woke. I was afraid. I did not know whether to resist would have meant the end of you. You were as though possessed!”

Yoseph mulled over her words.

“I was asleep even when … even when I seeded you?”

“Even then!” – Cried Mariam – “You must believe me! I didn’t want you dead or I would have done to rouse you! But you were so alive with passion, so accomplished and consummate … and yet so numb, so …” – Her voice faltered.

Yoseph crumbled onto a bench: “I walk at nighttime, Mariam. I know not whence and whither. I have no recollection. People have told me that they have seen me about the house and fields, but I remember naught.”

“I saw you at times,” – said Mariam – “so did Bilha the maiden servant whom you expelled when it was found she was with child.”

Yoseph drew air and exhaled.

“Have you told this to anyone?”

“I did,” – said Mariam, kneeling beside him and laying her calloused hand on his – “When I found out, I went to visit with Elisheva.”

Yoseph nodded his approval: “She is a wise woman. Had she some advice to give you?”

“She had,” – answered Mariam.

Yoseph straightened up and peered ahead into the penumbral frame of the reed door.

“She said I have a son,” – Mariam recounted softly – “your son, Yoseph! Our firstborn. Her husband, Zacharia, had a vision in the temple and was struck dumb by it. Elisheva is pregnant, too.”

Yoseph chuckled in disbelief: Elisheva was way past childbearing age.

“An angel appeared to Zacharia and told him that she will bear a son, a great man in Israel. I had a similar dream after I have returned from her. I saw an angel, too.”

“Woman, don’t blaspheme,” – exclaimed Yoseph peremptorily, but he was listening, albeit with incredulity, not awe.

“An angel came to me,” – persisted Mariam: “He said that I am the blessed among women and that I need fear not for I have found favour with God. He knew that I am with child. He promised me – us – a son and ordered that we should name him Yeshua. He shall be great, the fruit of your loin, and shall be called the Son of the Highest and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David and he shall reign …”

“Enough!” – Shouted Yoseph – “You have gone mad, woman, you took leave of your senses! Not only do you blaspheme against God, the Holy Blessed be He, but you also incite rebellion! You will bring upon us the wrath of the mighty with your troubled speech!”

But Mariam pressed on, her diminutive frame ablaze with the crimson dusk, her hands held high:

“He shall reign, Yoseph, over the house of Yaakov forever and of his kingdom there shall be no end!”

Deflated, she crumbled onto the bench beside him, respiring heavily, supporting her bosom with one hand, the other palm again camped on his sinewed forearm.

Yoseph stirred: “How shall this be, seeing that you knew not a man?”

Mariam implored: “I did know you, Yoseph! Believe me, please, for I am not a harlot!”

He knew that. And he remembered Bilha’s words when she left his household, Hagar-like with her baby. “You are the child’s father!” – She protested – “You came upon me at night, aslumbered! I could not wake you up no matter what I did! There and then you took me and you knew me many times and now you cast me out to destitution!” And she cursed him and his progeny terribly.

Mariam beseeched:

“Zacharia told Elisheva that the Holy Ghost shall come upon me and the power of the most High shall overshadow me. Our son will, therefore, be the Son of God!” Yoseph recoiled involuntarily: this was high sacrilege and in his home, he who observed all the commandments from the lightest to the harshest!

“What did you answer?”

Mariam responded instantly: “I said to him who was surely the messenger of God: behold the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.”

Yoseph kept quiet for a few moments and then rose from their common seat:

“Mariam, tomorrow, in front of two competent witnesses, we will part. You will go your way and I will go mine. I cannot invoke the name of God, blessed be He and blessed be His Name, in vain. Not even for you and your child …”

“Our child!” – Mariam screamed – “Our child, Yoseph! Curse be upon you if you abandon us and your firstborn son as you have Bilha’s!!!”

He swerved and left the shed, forsaking her to the shadows and the demons that always lurked in him and his abode.

*****************

That night, he slept and in his sleep he dreamt an angel. And the angel regarded him with great compassion and said to him:

“Yoseph! Fear not to take unto thee Mariam thy wife for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit and she shall bring forth a son and thou shalt call his name Yeshua for he shall save his people from their sins.”

And in his slumber, Yoseph turned his face from the terrible sight and cried, the tears rolling down his cheeks into the stubby growth that was his beard and onto his blanket. Even then he knew that he would marry Mariam and father Yeshua and that he will not live to see Him die a terrible death.

---

Mindgames Tales

The Capgras Shift

I Hear Voices

Folie a Plusieurs

The Elephant’s Call

Night Terror

Anton’s Trap

A Dream Come True

Lucid Dreams

Live Burial

The Galatea of Cotard

Fugue

The Con Man Cometh – Readers Discussion

The Last Days – Readers Discussion

Putin’s Last Days?

I. Putin’s Twilight

Putin is losing his grip on power. His allies – not least former KGB and current FSB operatives – are deserting him in droves, put off by his recent economic failures as much as by his clownish and narcissistic public conduct. Erstwhile faithful oligarchs are now hedging their bets, putting feelers to the West and even colluding with the banished Khodorkovsky and Berezovsky.

In June 2010, Mikhail Kasyanov, A former Russian prime minister, offered a spirited defense of incarcerated tycoon and Putin nemesis Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In a packed court in Moscow he labelled new charges against the disgraced oligarch “absurd”.

The week before, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev criticized Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s government for suppressing information or ignoring environmental problems. He threatened to get the presidency involved, encroaching on Putin’s turf, hitherto strictly off-limits.

Yury Shevchuk, a Russian musician and Kremlin critic of renown challenged Putin for his brutal mistreatment of peaceful protesters. With elections looming, Putin was forced to dissimulate: “protests don’t hinder but, on the contrary, help” the government. “If I see that people are pointing to crucial issues that the authorities should pay attention to, what can be wrong with that?” he exclaimed, unconvincingly. “One should say, ‘thank you.’” Following this tacit admission of defeat, Russian opposition activists rallied in Moscow on May 1, shouting slogans comparing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. The authorities licenced the demonstration.

German Gref,  general manager of Russia’s banking behemoth, state-controlled Sberbank and the architect of Putin’s economic policies while he was President of Russia, said that “the first stage of economic reform, which had required a tightly held political system to push through change, was nearing an end. Russia must carry out sweeping political reforms to safeguard future economic growth” (Reuters).

As dictators the world over have learned to their detriment, a totalitarian regime is an all-or-nothing proposition. Cracks in the monolithically repressive state tend to grow into fissures and lead to a loss of power. The surest way to regime change is via political reform. Soft concessions yield harsh consequences and the overthrow of potentates and their cronies. Putin is repeating the mistake that the Shah and Gorbachev and a myriad other tyrants have committed: they hung themselves by giving the people a little rope. Putin’s days are numbered. His successor – not necessarily Medvedev – is sharpening the knife. This time, the transition may not be pretty.

II. Putin’s Background

Being a KGB officer was always a lucrative and liberating proposition. Access to Western goods, travel to exotic destinations, making new (and influential) friends, mastering foreign languages, and doing some business on the side (often with one’s official “enemies” and unsupervised slush funds) – were all standard perks even in the 1970′s and 1980′s. Thus, when communism was replaced by criminal anarchy, KGB personnel (as well as mobsters) were the best suited to act as entrepreneurs in the new environment. They were well traveled, well connected, well capitalized, polyglot, possessed of management skills, disciplined, armed to the teeth, and ruthless. Far from being sidetracked, the security services rode the gravy train. But never more so than now.

January 2002. Putin’s dour gaze pierces from every wall in every office. His obese ministers often discover a sudden sycophantic propensity for skiing (a favorite pastime of the athletic President). The praise heaped on him by the servile media (Putin made sure that no other kind of media survives) comes uncomfortably close to a Central Asian personality cult. Yet, Putin is not in control of the machinery that brought him to the pinnacle of power, under-qualified as he was. This penumbral apparatus revolves around two pivots: the increasingly fractured and warlord controlled military and, ever more importantly, the KGB’s successors, mainly the FSB.

A. The Military

In 2001, Russia announced yet another plan to reform its bloated, inefficient, impoverished, demoralized and corrupt military. Close to 200,000 troops are to go immediately and the same number in the next 3 years. The draft is to be abolished and the army professionalized. At its current size (officially, 1.2 million servicemen), the armed forces are severely under-funded. Cases of hunger are not uncommon. Ill (and late) paid soldiers sometimes beg for cigarettes, or food.

Conscripts, in what resembles slave labour, are “rented out” by their commanders to economic enterprises (especially in the provinces). A host of such “trading” companies owned by bureaucrats in the Ministry of Defense was shut down last June by the incoming Minister of Defense (Sergei Ivanov), a close pal of Putin. But if restructuring is to proceed apace, the successful absorption of former soldiers in the economy (requiring pensions, housing, start up capital, employment) – if necessary with the help of foreign capital – is bound to become a priority sooner or later.

But this may be too late and too little – the much truncated and disorientated armed forces have been “privatized” and commandeered for personal gain by regional bosses in cahoots with the command structure and with organized crime. Ex-soldiers feature prominently in extortion, protection, and other anti-private sector rackets.

The war in Chechnya is another long standing pecuniary bonanza – and a vested interest of many generals. Senior Russian Interior Ministry field commanders trade (often in partnership with Chechen “rebels”) in stolen petroleum products, food, and munitions.

Putin is trying to reverse these pernicious trends by enlisting the (rank and file) army (one of his natural constituencies) in his battles against secessionist Chechens, influential oligarchs, venal governors, and bureaucrats beyond redemption.

As well as the army, the defense industry – with its 2 million employees – is also being brutally disabused of its centralist-nationalistic ideals.

Orders placed with Russia’s defense manufacturers by the destitute Russian armed forces are down to a trickle. Though the procurement budget was increased by 50% last year, to c. $2.2 billion (or 4% of the USA’s) and further increased this year to 79 billion rubles ($2.7 billion) -  whatever money is available goes towards R&D, arms modernization, and maintaining the inflated nuclear arsenal and the personal gear of front line soldiers in the interminable Chechen war. The Russian daily “Kommersant” quotes Former Armed Forces weapons chief, General Anatoly Sitnov, as claiming that  $16 billion should be allocated for arms purchases if all the existing needs are to be satisfied.

Having lost their major domestic client (defense constituted 75% of Russian industrial production at one time) – exports of Russian arms have soared to more than $4.4 billion annually (not including “sensitive” materiel). Old markets in the likes of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Algeria, Eritrea, Ethiopia, China, India, and Libya have revived. Decision makers in Latin America and East Asia (including Malaysia and Vietnam) are being avidly courted. Bribes change hands, off-shore accounts are open and shut, export proceeds mysteriously evaporate. Many a Russian are wealthier due to this export cornucopia.

The reputation of Russia’s weapons manufacturers is dismal (no spare parts, after sales service, maintenance, or quality control).  But Russian weapons (often Cold War surplus) come cheap and the list of Russian firms and institutions blacklisted by the USA for selling weapons (from handguns to missile equipped destroyers) to “rogue states” grows by the day. Less than one quarter of 2500 defense-related firms are subject to (the amorphous and inapt) Russian Federal supervision. Gradually, Russia’s most advanced weaponry is being made available through these outfits.

Close to 4000 R&D programs and defense conversion projects (many financed by the West) have failed abysmally to transform Russia’s “military-industrial complex”. Following a much derided “privatization” (in which the state lost control over hundreds of defense firms to assorted autochthonous tycoons and foreign manufacturers) – the enterprises are still being abused and looted by politicians on all levels, including the regional and provincial ones. The Russian Federation, for instance, has controlling stakes in only 7 of c. 250 privatized air defense contractors. Manufacturing and R&D co-operation with Ukraine and other former Soviet republics is on the ascendant, often flying in the face of official policies and national security.

Despite the surge in exports, overproduction of unwanted goods leads to persistent accumulation of inventory. Even so, capacity utilization is said to be 25% in many factories. Lack of maintenance renders many plant facilities obsolete and non-competitive. The Russian government’s new emphasis on R&D is wise – Russia must replenish its catalog with hi-tech gadgets if it wishes to continue to export to prime clients. Still, the Russian Duma’s prescription of a return to state ownership, central planning, and subsidies, if implemented, is likely to prove to be the coup de grace rather than a graceful coup.

B. The FSB (the main successor to the KGB)

NOTE:

The KGB was succeeded by a host of agencies. The FSB inherited its internal security directorates. The SVR inherited the KGB’s foreign intelligence directorates.

With the ascendance of the Vladimir Putin and his coterie (all former KGB or FSB officers), the security services revealed their hand – they are in control of Russia and always have been. They number now twice as many as the KGB at its apex. Only a few days ago, the FSB had indirectly made known its enduring objections to a long mooted (and government approved) railway reform (a purely economic matter). President Putin made December 20 (the day the murderous Checka, the KGB’s ancestor, was established in 1917) a national holiday.

But the most significant tectonic shift has been the implosion of the unholy alliance between Russian organized crime and its security forces. The Russian mob served as the KGB’s long arm until 1998. The KGB often recruited and trained criminals (a task it took over from the Interior Ministry, the MVD). “Former” (reserve) and active agents joined international or domestic racketeering gangs, sometimes as their leaders.

After 1986 (and more so after 1991), many KGB members were moved from its bloated First (SVR) and Third Directorates to its Economic Department. They were instructed to dabble in business and banking (sometimes in joint ventures with foreigners). Inevitably, they crossed paths – and then collaborated – with the Russian mafia which, like the FSB, owns shares in privatized firms, residential property, banks, and money laundering facilities.

The co-operation with crime lords against corrupt (read: unco-operative) bureaucrats became institutional and all-pervasive under Yeltsin. The KGB is alleged to have spun off a series of “ghost” departments to deal with global drug dealing, weapons smuggling and sales, white slavery, money counterfeiting, and nuclear material.

In a desperate effort at self-preservation, other KGB departments are said to have conducted the illicit sales of raw materials (including tons of precious metals) for hard currency, and the laundering of the proceeds through financial institutions in the West (in Cyprus, Israel, Greece, the USA, Switzerland, and Austria). Specially established corporate shells and “banks” were used to launder money, mainly on behalf of the party nomenklatura. All said, the emerging KGB-crime cartel has been estimated to own or control c. 40% of Russian GDP as early as 1994, having absconded with c. $100 billion of state assets.

Under the dual pretexts of “crime busting” and “fighting terrorism”, the Interior Ministry and FSB used this period to construct massive, parallel, armies – better equipped and better trained than the official one.

Many genuinely retired KGB personnel found work as programmers, entrepreneurs, and computer engineers in the Russian private sector (and, later, in the West) – often financed by the KGB itself. The KGB thus came to spawn and dominate the nascent Information Technology and telecommunications industries in Russia. Add to this former (but on reserve duty) KGB personnel in banks, hi-tech corporations, security firms, consultancies, and media in the West as well as in joint ventures with foreign firms in Russia – and the security services’ latter day role (and next big fount of revenue) becomes clear: industrial and economic espionage. Russian scholars are already ordered (as of last May) to submit written reports about all their encounters with foreign colleagues.

This is where the FSB began to part ways with crime, albeit hitherto only haltingly.

The FSB has established itself both within Russian power structures and in business. What it needs now more than money and clout – are respectability and the access it brings to Western capital markets, intellectual property (proprietary technology), and management. Having co-opted criminal organizations for its own purposes (and having acted criminally themselves) – the alphabet soup of security agencies now wish to consolidate their gains and transform themselves into legitimate, globe-spanning, business concerns. The robbers’ most fervent wish is to become barons. Their erstwhile, less exalted, criminal friends are on the way. Expect a bloodbath, a genuine mafia gangland war over territory and spoils. The result is by no means guaranteed.

III. Putin: Historical Precedent

France’s Empire is very reminiscent of Vladimir Putin’s reign in post-Yeltsin Russia.

Karl Marx regarded Louis-Napoleon’s Second Empire as the first modern dictatorship – supported by the middle and upper classes but independent of their patronage and, thus, self-perpetuating. Others went as far as calling it proto-fascistic.

Yet, the Second Empire was insufficiently authoritarian or revolutionary to warrant this title. It did foster and encourage a personality cult, akin to the “Fuhrerprinzip” -but it derived its legitimacy, conservatively, from the Church and from the electorate. It was an odd mixture of Bonapartism, militarism, clericalism, conservatism and liberalism.

In a way, the Second Republic did amount to a secular religion, replete with martyrs and apostles. It made use of the nascent mass media to manipulate public opinion. It pursued industrialization and administrative modernization. But these features characterized all the political movements of the late 19th century, including socialism, and other empires, such as the Habsburg Austro-Hungary.

The Second Empire was, above all, inertial. It sought to preserve the bureaucratic, regulatory, and economic frameworks of the First Empire. It was a rationalist, positivist, and materialist movement – despite the deliberate irrationalism of the young Louis-Napoleon. It was not affiliated to a revolutionary party, nor to popular militias.  It was not collectivist. And its demise was the outcome of military defeat.

Like the French Second Empire, it follows a period of revolutions and counter-revolutions. It is not identified with any one class but does rely on the support of the middle class, the intelligentsia, the managers and industrialists, the security services, and the military.

Putin is authoritarian, but not revolutionary. His regime derives its legitimacy from parliamentary and presidential elections based on a neo-liberal model of government. It is socially conservative but seeks to modernize Russia’s administration and economy. Yet, it manipulates the mass media and encourages a personality cult.

Like Napoleon III, Putin started off as president (he was shortly as prime minister under Yeltsin). Like him, he may be undone by a military defeat, probably in the Caucasus or Central Asia.

The formative years of Putin and Louis-Napoleon have little in common, though.

The former was a cosseted member of the establishment and witnessed, first hand, the disintegration of his country. Putin was a KGB apparatchik. The KGB may have inspired, conspired in, or even instigated the transformation in Russian domestic affairs since the early 1980′s – but to call it “revolutionary” would be to stretch the term.

Louis-Napoleon, on the other hand, was a true revolutionary. He narrowly escaped death at the hands of Austrian troops in a rebellion in Italy in 1831. His brother was not as lucky. Louis-Napoleon’s claim to the throne of France (1832) was based on a half-baked ideology of imperial glory, concocted, disseminated and promoted by him. In 1836 and 1840 he even initiated  (failed) coups d’etat. He was expelled even from neutral Switzerland and exiled to the USA. He spent six years in prison.

Still, like Putin, Napoleon III was elected president. Like him, he was regarded by his political sponsors as merely a useful and disposable instrument. Like Putin, he had no parliamentary or political experience. Both of them won elections by promising “order” and “prosperity” coupled with “social compassion”. And, like Putin, Louis-Napoleon, to the great chagrin of his backers, proved to be his own man – independent-minded, determined, and tough.

Putin, like Louis-Napoleon before him, proceeded to expand his powers and installed loyalists in every corner of the administration and the army. Like Louis-Napoleon, Putin is a populist, travelling throughout the country, posing for photo opportunities, responding to citizens’ queries in Q-and-A radio shows, siding with the “average bloke” on every occasion, taking advantage of Russia’s previous economic and social disintegration to project an image of a “strong man”.

Putin is as little dependent on the Duma as Napoleon III was on his parliament. But Putin reaped what Boris Yeltsin, his predecessor, has sown when he established an imperial presidency after what amounted to a coup d’etat in 1993 (the bombing of the Duma). Napoleon had to organize his own coup d’etat all by himself in 1852.

Napoleon III – as does Putin now – faced a delicate balancing act between the legitimacy conferred by parliamentary liberalism and the need to maintain a police state. When he sought to strengthen the enfeebled legislature he reaped only growing opposition within it to his domestic and foreign policies alike.

He liberalized the media and enshrined in France’s legal code various civil freedoms. But he also set in motion and sanctioned a penumbral, all-pervasive and clandestine security apparatus which regularly gathered information on millions of Frenchmen and foreigners.

Putin is considerably less of an economic modernizer than was Napoleon III. Putin also seems to be less interested in the social implications of his policies, in poverty alleviation and in growing economic inequalities and social tensions. Napoleon III was a man for all seasons – a buffer against socialism as well as a utopian social and administrative reformer.

Business flourished under Napoleon III – as it does under Putin. The 1850′s witnessed rapid technological change – even more rapid than today’s. France became a popular destination for foreign investors. Napoleon III was the natural ally of domestic businessmen until he embarked on an unprecedented trade liberalization campaign in 1860. Similarly, Putin is nudging Russia towards WTO membership and enhanced foreign competition – alienating in the process the tycoon-oligarchs, the industrial complex, and the energy behemoths.

Napoleon III was a free trader – as is Putin. He believed in the beneficial economic effects of free markets and in the free exchange of goods, capital, and labour. So does Putin. But economic liberalism does not always translate to a pacific foreign policy.

Napoleon III sought to annul the decisions of the Congress of Vienna (1815) and reverse the trend of post-Napoleonic French humiliation. He wanted to resurrect “Great France” pretty much as Putin wants to restore Russia to its “rightful” place as a superpower.

But both pragmatic leaders realized that this rehabilitation cannot be achieved by force of arms and with a dilapidated economy. Napoleon III tried to co-opt the tidal wave of modern, revolutionary, nationalism to achieve the revitalization of France and the concomitant restoration of its glory. Putin strives to exploit the West’s aversion to conflict and addiction to wealth. Napoleon III struggled to establish a new, inclusive European order – as does Putin with NATO and, to a lesser degree, with the European Union today.

Putin artfully manipulated Europe in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the USA, his new found ally. He may yet find himself in the enviable position of Europe’s arbitrator, NATO’s most weighty member, a bridge between Central Asia, the Caucasus, North Korea and China – and the USA.  The longer his tenure, the more likely he is to become Europe’s elder statesman. This is a maneuver reminiscent of Louis-Napoleon’s following the Crimean War, when he teamed up with Great Britain against Russia.

Like Putin, Napoleon III modernized and professionalized his army. But, unlike Putin hitherto, he actually went to war (against Austria), moved by his (oft-thwarted) colonial and mercantilist aspirations. Putin is likely to follow the same path (probably in Central Asia, but, possibly, in the Baltic and east Europe as well). Reinvigorated armies (and industrialists) often force expansionary wars upon their reluctant ostensible political masters.

Should Putin fail in his military adventures as Napoleon III did in his and be deposed as he was – these eerie similarities will have come to their natural conclusion.