The Oil Drum

The ethnicity or religion of the oligarchs is one thing, the economic system they have in Russia is another. There is no doubt that it is capitalism, whether the capital is in the hands of the oligarchs or in the hands of the bureaucrat capitalists around Putin.

I laugh at people who think the Jews control everything. My wife is Jewish, as is my son's wife and her family. Her mother works as a sales clerk and her father as a security guard. He was UPS driver before he retired.

There are certainly rich Jews, but at the very top of the heap here you mostly find my people -- WASPs. Unless Cheney converted? But this is all quite beside the point. Capitalism isn't about religion or ethnicity -- it's about money. The billionaires of whatever background love to stir animosities between people. Cheney has no affinity whatsoever for his Appalachian kinfolk, nor does the elite of any backrgound.

A lot of anti-semitism is aroused by Israel's criminal actions just as a lot of anti-American sentiment is aroused by the US gov't bombing the crap out of anything or - one that moves. But the Israelis are pawns in the hands of their elite just as we are of ours. Norman Finkestein points out that a lot of the Russian "Jews" in Israel are not even Jewish!

Think interests, think economics -- don't think ethnicity or religion. End of rant.