The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Already Here!

What do Snowmass, Colorado and the Cote d'Azur have in common? Just like the Texans who, when I was a child, were disliked in Colorado because they had bought up all the prime real estate for ski resorts, Russian tycoons are buying up select properties from some of the largest and most expensive private homes in the world to the most luxurious hotels along the Mediterranean. But the Russians arriving are not just the wealthy ones. No, they have also sent out the working class women, and -- lower down the totem pole -- mafia thugs. (You can see this all depicted in James Gray's films, Little Odessa and We Own The Night, which capture this world beautifully and painfully.)

Heck, even out at a lobster house at the end of Long Island, in Montauk just yesterday, the women at the window serving us were all blond Russians. Then there was the family-style restaurant a few nights earlier where the waitress could not understand what I was saying... when I asked where she was from... "Ukraine," she said smiling! We are almost all immigrants to the U.S., I thought, so why does this worry me?

In the South of France, there is a similar trend. A few summers back, a friend told me the story of a villa rented by wealthy Russians that was robbed, and did the local police get involved? No! The Russians found the robbers, flew them up in their helicopter and dropped them into the Med! Supposedly no one died and they swam to shore... but you can rest assured the Russian villas remain out of bounds for cat burglers. Kind of reminds me of Texas...

Last year during the Cannes film festival, parties were held at the chic Hotel du Cap, and at one party in particular, former French Legionnaires held back the Russian women trying to force their way inside to rub shoulders with George Clooney and Brad Pitt. This year a Russian billionaire bought the Hotel du Cap. Another one bought the Grand Hotel du Cap-Ferrat. People with homes along that stretch of the Cote d'Azur are being offered phenomenal prices for their beachfront homes.

Up in the Swiss Alps, in beautiful small villages, the Russians began moving in a decade or so ago. Now it is rumored that Putin has bought a chalet. Bulletproof windows on Hummers somehow clash against the idyllic green peaceful landscape of the Vaud, but the children of the new oil money from both Russia and the former Soviet Union must indeed be protected.

But I keep thinking, being from Texas, it really is no different than when the Texans struck black gold, or the Saudis came into their oil gazillions. Except that... it is. Why? Because although there is a bit of the gambler in every wildcatter, these were not gamblers but something closer to gangsters. Someone once said to me they were like Texans without religion. Or perhaps the religion is one that we know all too well... that of hyper-capitalism gone wild. Robber barons in our country often pay people to do their dirty work, then they sit down with their wives and families who live inside protected shells of denial. These guys wear guns to board meetings, as one friend who works in the oil business in Russia confessed, and they are not afraid to use them. The former head of BP Russia has learned the hard way that a foreigner cannot run a company while hidden away in a barricade for protection. He had to simply get out of Russia.

This all has a lot to do with something that happened as a result of the fall of the Iron Curtain, and with the expansion of NATO, the oil deals made by U.S. companies in places like Kazakhstan, the paths of pipelines, and the fact that Russia is a very proud country, one in which sadly, a great deal of racism and anti-Semitism are ever-present. The rolling into Georgia to protect Russians there must also remind us that Russia has begun to feel surrounded with the expansion of NATO troops into former Communist areas. But the new tool being used to crush the opposition is funded by a new menace, that of capitalism built on a phenomenal wealth in commodities and oil.

Remember that as you fill up your car for a small fortune at your local Lukoil station. Maybe the good ole boy Texans in the White House and the oil patch have met their match.

Comments

[dadw5boys]

I read about Russian THUGS moving into businesses owner homes and holding the family hostage till the businessman sold his business to the Russian Gang.

Give Businesses take overs a whole new prospective.

[ndem]

The founder of Google's parents also left Russia I presume. My personal experience has been a great deal of anti-Semitism in both Russia and the former Soviet Eastern European countries. But there is racism everywhere...when oil and money of this magnitude are involved greed and violence are not far behind.

[ndem]

I think the point she is making is not anti the Russians it is about watch out for the gangster economy be it Texan, Russina, whatever....do we want something totalitarian be it Bush or Soviet or do we want democracy?

[Rule Of Law]

I may have missed that, but the Russian gangs have been entrenched in Europe for a while now--watch the movie with Vigo Mortenson as a gang enforcer. I have a hard time getting excited about yet another underworld family when we have the most vicious, lawless and predatory gangs in history running the country.

[robinhood2]

Did it ever occur to you that some of these "Russians" are among the USA's most talented citizens? One of the founders of Google is from the former Soviet Union, as is one of the founders of PayPal. I guess their parents valued education and encouraged their children to go as far as they could. Not all "Russian" immigrants are connected with organized crime or were friends of Boris (as in Yeltsin). I suspect most are not.

[ndem]

Ditto. Think what she is trying to say here is that there is no difference....some do it in the guise f democracy and the free market some do it in the guise of something else....

[Rule Of Law]

Oh fear, oh terror, oh my!

If it ain't the Viet Cong, it's the Reds, if not the Reds then it's the Terrrrrsts, and if it ain't them, well why not the Reds (oooops, Russkies) again?

Doesn't anyone here feel we are being played the fools again? When does the knee jerk reflex of jingoistic hatred and military madness end? At what point will we understand that the people at the top--those 1%ers we always read about--are all members of the same club, whether the chapter is in DC or Moscow, or Beijing.

That our headlines are just part of an international agreement between the power brokers to move armies and people like a game of "Risk" for their enrichment, and that they threats we are hammered with are all what Alfred Hitchcock would call, Mcguffins?

And why is it that the short sighted flag waving my country right or wrong morons will line up one more time to go die in some foreign jungle or desert to make the Elites even more wealthy and powerful???

If no one falls for this, then the ultra wealthy--rather than relying on war, death and destruction--will have to go back to making their money the old fashioned way--stock market, tech, housing and banking bubbles and government bailouts. But there's no reason to believe that anything Russia, or China does is other than just another move on their chess board, and we are all too often the willing pawns.

[ndem]

Looks like the Texans have met their match and the Halliburtons and BPs of the world are reaping the results of what they created...and both sides have been creating a more dangerous world...there are a lot of people suffering because of the greed!

But hopefully in a democracy you can do something, (vote for Obama) about it. In places where they posion you or just hire a thug to shoot you (though that happens in Texas too...Kennedy) the oligrachs and power henchmen steal from their countries and flout their winnings...

Bush and co. will have made so much money during this reign of terror that they will be able to pay lobbyists and build their fortresses for years to come.

[jeff.mowatt]

How odd to read this now. Years after BP were called upon to explain their position with the Kremlin. When as part of TNK-BP they helped create a fuel crisis in Ukraine in line with Kremlin dictates. Then they had no answer.

Now that CEO Robert Dudley has been ejected by Russian oligarchs, he calls on UK courts to sequestrate property of their London based billionaires. That, presumably includes the retreat of Moscow's mayor and his wife's recent purchase, a 90 room mansion in Highgate.

Are we being called on to storm the Winter Palace, again?

Lets remember that we were perfectly willing to dance when there seemed to be opportunity, Haliburton trying to step in to fund after TNK had tried to eject BP earlier in 1999. Even now, we have Vanco Energy trying to pull something off with Ukraine. A strange arrangement where the Rothschilds as financial backers somehow get replaced by Russian oligarchs with bearer shares and a company registered in the British Virgin Islands tax haven.

Get the picture? Our greed motivated capitalists are setting up deals with theirs and all of us working folks get the pain. For our Londoners it's polonium poisoning, you Americans have what the article above describes and worst off of all are the people of these former soviet countries. Ukraine for instance where the gulf between rich and poor is so great that they started handing out bread cards this month. lest people drop dead on the streets.

[plebeianswillrevolt]

Capitalism --- Socialism.

Yes, the Capitalists won. And the losers turned the game back upon us and shoved it down out throat. All in three little letters O-I-L. Who saw that coming? Well, Texans for one, cause they had their share.

America is a spent match. New alliances will be formed between the untra rich americans and the ultra-rich everyone else's. Wanna guess what they will do in those new alliances. It's probably NOT universal health care and enviromental protectoin law enforcement.

[ndem]

I have noticed this trend and we must remember that to get business done in Russia, one still has to be in good with the KGB! Or the equivalent fraternal order...this money is also made in sex trafficking of women throughout the former Soviet Union...these women are not free...but simply yet another kind of commodity. It is a dangerous world....and it's now everywhere.