Hecho del día

" The most common economic criticism of the Soviet bloc has long been its failure to use incentives. This is a half-truth. As Hedrick Smith explained in "The Russians", the party leadership used incentives in the sectors where it really wanted results:
Not only do defense and space efforts get top national priority and funding, but they also operate on a different system from the rest of the economy. Samuel Pisar, an American lawyer, writer, and consultant on East-West trade, made the shrewd observation to me that the military sector is “the only sector of the Soviet economy which operates like a market economy, in the sense that the customers pull out of the economic mechanism the kinds of weaponry they want.. . . The military, like customers in the West . . . can say, ‘No, no, no, that isn’t what we want.’”"

El texto viene de este articulo sobre el comunismo.

Hay algo extraño en este argumento y es es que no queda claro porque los líderes del partido no querían realmente resultados en toda la economía.

De todas formas, lo mencionado en este texto, asumiendo que es cierto, es un hecho sorprendente.

Según el autor del articulo, los datos vienen de: "Hedrick Smith, The Russians (New York: Ballantine Books, 1974), pp. 312–313."

Aqui esta la página web del libro en Amazon. Y aquí hay una reseña del libro.

Lo de esperar

Previsiblemente, el gobierno de Osetia del Sur ya habla de anexarse a Rusia. De vuelta a los años 30 y a la guerra fría.

Los "Don Mario" a cargo de las grandes potencias vuelven a sus andadas de siempre.

Lo que se necesita saber sobre la "guerra" entre Rusia y Georgia

"When it comes to separatist movements, the American and Russian governments have no principles whatever. They take whatever side advances their political interests at the moment. When ethnic Albanians in Kosovo sought to break from Yugoslavia, the Russians sided with ally Serbia and opposed independence, but the United States backed the separatists and unleashed its bombers. Something similar happened when the Bosnians did the same thing. (The United States gave mixed signals when the Russians moved against separatists in Chechnya.) Yet when the Ossetians and Abkhazians want to be free of Georgia, the big-power roles are reversed" (link aquí)

Creo que este es el elemento mas importante en el análisis. Lo demás es retórica de los líderos de los gobiernos de las potencias, tanto de Rusia como de Estados Unidos.

Que se declare la independencia de Ossetia y Abkhazia tanto de Georgia como de Rusia. Es el único camino correcto