Yeltsin was a callous, cruel, dangerous, greedy and violent man. The fact that he was an alcoholic only made him more threatening, not less.
Of course, he chose to direct his aggression within the borders of the RF, so everyone who was terrified of Russia only saw him being the bubbling fool.
Joke's on you buddy, I learned English through absorbing American and western-propagandized media and I turned into a first-world hating scold who speaks English with an American accent. Sounds like you don't believe yourself or your children to be capable of the same . Skill issue if you ask me.
It's also a very hard thing to break free from, when the only thing that enables governance for centuries has been clientelism and graft.
A choice many socdem governments in latam face is between uprooting all corruption and essentially doing cultural revolution with latam characteristics, leading to short term suffering for the people and resistance from these local power brokers, finally getting coup'd (with a little help from the CIA), or implement change while wielding the power structure currently in place, and letting some people skim off the top as long as it means children can eat, schools are running, and hospitals are built.
I don't understand what you meant by that comment, or if it was directed at me or the people you mentioned earlier.
It also feels to me like you have an axe to grind, and I'm not interested in participating or feeling like I have to keep explaining myself, so I'll disengage.
I think they can be classified as either hardware companies, banks, tech companies, government contractors, and agroindustry (that one's just Cargill, tho). Banks benefit from a looser regulatory landscape, hardware and tech companies suffer greatly from trade war and chip shortage created by Trump's and China's policies, and Cargill does too, only with a food and seed intellectual property angle.
It is scary snd concerning, don't get me wrong, but it seems to me all of them have an obvious reason to try to get something out of Trump or from a China-friendly Trump. Maybe it's a failure of my imagination, but I don't see why brezls would be in that same club.
I'm not interested in going to bat for any publishing house or editorial team. I have no dogs in any of these races. I just mentioned something I noticed reading the same authors, first on verso, then on jacobin, and noticing the differences, even when speaking about the same topics.
Then I just wrote some conjecture on whether this difference could be explained by each org's editorial lines or teams, which seemed the most likely to me.
Hope this clears up what I meant by the other comment.
It might be a mix of prudence and conceit. He obviously considers himself above everyone else, and that includes Trump, so he doesn't feel he needs to grovel or kiss the ring the way that others do.
It's also that a lot of his empire is based on the last bit of the American economy that's not just people exchanging money back and forth, or some sort of scam. He actually owns and builds infrastructure, and provides necessary services. What could he win by getting closer to Trump that he already doesn't have? He exploits his employees to insane levels, essentially has a monopoly on online shopping and web services, he seems to have a pretty secure position with little room to grow. And the government has largely left Amazon alone even when people have complained.
Idk about the people who went to China with Trump, but if they're bigwigs at investment banking firms, I'm sure there's a bunch of regulations and compliance stuff that he could help them get rid of, so it tracks that otherwise sensible people are now donning the red cap.
I think he chose to keep himself out of the spotlight. Bunch of Amazon money thrown to the Trump admin though, and some Amazon people in key positions, mostly labor related.
Also as you mentioned, he doesn't really have a lot to win by being friends with Trump, and rather he has a lot to lose by falling out of favor with him (as other billionaires have already). If anything it's pretty smart he keeps a cordial distance from him.
If your craft becomes instantly gaseous, you have the best thrust-to-weight ratio. It's just science.