AMERICAblog: China isn't the only human rights menace. Next stop, Russia.
maxstar212
· 1 year ago
The complete unravelling of the Russian economy after Gorbechev showed how there may at times have been some advantages of centralized economy led by representatives of the working people. They created a somewhat egalitarian society with everyone having a fair chance of success and a somewhat sensible division of resources. And the Soviets had developed the ability to really foster the arts--wonderful ballet and opera performers from that country. Now I hate the Soviets since I realize they had laws against Gays and Lesbians. Of course, I remember not to long ago when it was illegal to be Gay in New York City. In the 70's they used to arrest Gays here. But they were arresting Gays in Moscow into the mid 80's.
The civil rights abuse in Russia are small compared to the thousands of people who die each year because of homophobia. One of the worst things about the Iraq war is that they released the Islamic Fundamentalists in that country. They are now murdering an estimated 400 Gay and Lesbians in Iraq each year. Many other countries in the Muslim world have tremendous amounts of discrimination and murder against our brothers and sisters. I certainly think that the murder of a Gay man in Khartoum is just as bad as the murder of a straight man in Darfur. Hillary has come out strong that Gay Rights are human rights and that she would use all the power of the United States foreign policy to fight Gay Rights abuses. I am interested to hear what Obama thinks, are Gay lives as important as straight lives.
bumpkis
· 1 year ago
Ya mean this guy? Things are not always what they seem to be...
The annual Prayer Breakfast contrivance of the Fellowship Foundation is a ruse designed to provide a series of top level intelligence and organized crime meetings under the sanctioning smile of "Jesus." The person who invited Brudno, Dubov, and the jailed Khodorkovsky to the prayer breakfast was Lantos, whose wife, daughter, and son-in-law are devout Mormons. Brudno and Dubov, citizens of Israel, were assured by the FBI that it would ignore the Interpol and Russian arrest warrants, just as the FBI is ignoring the arrest warrant for Nevzlin, who is now in the United States, most likely with the acquiescence of Lantos. Lantos, who has his own connections with mob-run unions operating at San Francisco International Airport, does not seem to mind the fact that Nevzlin has been under investigation by Israeli police for illegally laundering $500 million through a Tel Aviv branch of Bank Hapoalim, Israel's largest bank.
Nevzlin also took over assets of Khodorkovsky's collapsed bank, Menatep, which was also linked to money laundering involving the Bank of New York. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev supports Putin's attempt to bring the Russian-Israeli oligarchs to justice. He told Britain's Sunday Times that it is believed that the exiled oligarchs have hidden away $1 trillion.
TomsOld
· 1 year ago
New Law. Your rights are not being abused, you have no rights
unrepentant_expat
· 1 year ago
Quite frankly, I'd like to see the leaders of Shell, BP and Chevron doing extend terms in a federal institution; and I'm not talking about Congress or the Senate. You know, as a reward for their tax plans.
hauksdottir
· 1 year ago
Gee... new claims just as a person might be eligible for parole? ANYTHING including using corrupt judges to keep a political opponent in jail? Lawyer's office raided?
Are you sure we aren't talking about American Georgia and Siegelman? I get these police states confused, what with the torture, undocumented claims, secret trials, and classified evidence.
profmarcus
· 1 year ago
let's get something straight here... mikhail b. khodorkovsky is one of the super-oligarchs that accumulated his vast fortune by looting the assets of the russian people after the collapse of the former soviet union... he is absolutely NOT a capitalist, business, free-market, entrepreneurial hero... one of the reasons mr. putin managed to grab on to as much power as he has is because he earned his popularity with the russian people by dealing forcefully with criminals like mr. khodorkovsky... putin well be attempting to consolidate his power and dialing back the clock to more repressive days, but, PLEASE, don't glorify folks like khodorkovsky... khodorkovsky and his ilk are right up there with the 19th and early 20th century robber barons in the u.s. and don't deserve to be let off the hook...
What a load of shit. Bit of research here would be good before running a puff piece like this uncritically. This guy Khodorkovksy was no martyr, ask any (real, not Khazar) Russian. and Yukos was not a private company until the drunken fool Yeltsin handed it to those he was told by American/Zionist banking interests. Putin took it back and now Russia is in way better financial shape then the great democracy of the USA. Thankfully sometimes nations stand up to you thieving bastards.
morrisjones40
· 1 year ago
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PeteWa
· 1 year ago
China isn't the only human rights menace. Next stop, the mirror.
chinahand
· 1 year ago
Sigh. John is another Khodorkkovsky fan. This piece from 2003 still stands.
America's Secret Stake in the Yukos Affair Peter Lee November 5, 2003 Who is Mikhail Khodorkovsky? Russia's richest man, principal owner of Russia's biggest oil company, Yukos, currently under arrest by Putin for some obscure financial hanky panky. Who cares? At first I didn't. I thought of Khodorkovsky merely as a distant figure rich in oil, consonants, and syllables. I was wrong. A lot of people in America care deeply about Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and I should, too. The State Department cares. On October 30, in the State Department briefing, a spokesman expressed concern that this was a case of "selective prosecution" targeting Khodorkovsky, who has bankrolled some of Putin's opponents. One would think that the State Department, given the Padilla case, the perpetual detentions in Guantanamo, and the string of US concentration camps across Iraq packed with people with bags over their heads denied due process, access to lawyers, and even basic human needs, should not be pitching rocks out of its glass house at a friendly sovereign state and ally in the war on terror conducting a criminal investigation of one of its own citizens. It is of course possible that the Bush administration is bound by a sacred oath to come to the aid of any member of the international petroleum brotherhood in need. I can imagine the scene in the Oval Office. Condi Rice rushes in and gasps: "Mr. President. An oil executive is in peril!". Our George rises resolutely from his desk, smacks his fist decisively into his palm, and declares, "Something must be done! Get me the State Department!". But other people care, too. Readers of the International Herald Tribune's op-ed page were treated to an impassioned stemwinder depicting the Yukos case as a titanic confrontation between Soviet-era dinosaurs and the gallant entrepeneurial crusaders for capitalism in New Russia. (see Russia's future and the fate of an oligarch, Leon Aron, IHT 11/1-2/03). The article does contain some interesting nuggets like the factoid that Yukos gave $45 million to charity in 2002. Faith in the disinterested generosity of oil executives with their stockholders' money being what it is, it is not surprising that the shenanigans of another energy giant — Enron — come to mind. Ken Lay's binge of influence buying included a multitude of charitable contributions — not just to charities, but to deserving politicians as well. Sure enough, the game is given away in the last paragraphs, where the author tries to wish away Khodorkovsky's legal problems with a plea for "...establishment of a statute of limitations on charges arising from the privatizations of the 1990's" and "New laws on lobbying, campaign finance and charitable contributions [that] will permit Russian business to advance openly its interests in Russian politics". Translation: Yukos' path to wealth and power was apparently paved with dirty rubles. The corporation is now caught inextricably in the net of Russian laws, and Putin has Khodorkovsky by the balls. The author of this piece, Leon Aron, is the director of Russian studies at neocon ground zero, the American Enterprise Institute. So we know that the neocons care, and not just in a generic "no billionaire left behind" way about Khodorkovsky's fate. They care enough to try and lobby for the right wing and the US government to inject themselves in a murky criminal case in a foreign country. Richard Perle cares. He weighed in with one of his hair-tearing tirades, declaring, "If the G-8 [the private club for the world's richest and most powerful countries] has any standards at all, Russia would no longer qualify"(Russian Events Leave White House Wary Maura Reynolds, LA Times, Nov. 1, 2003). Although the comparison probably doesn't do the two men justice, the neocons probably saw Khodorkovsky as a Russian Berlusconi: a pro-American, right wing fixer who would throw his immense financial weight into politics to cripple and confound America's enemies in the Russian Republic. But there was probably a darker, more dangerous game at work. One that provoked Putin, the most astute and decisive leaders in world politics, to send security forces storming onto Khodorkovsky's private jet. Khodorkovsky is not just an oil magnate. He is an oil magnate in Russia, the only great power in the world not dependent on imported oil. In fact, Russia is awash in surplus oil and will soon decide whether to export 25 million tons per year of it to Japan — or to China. Control of oil is the linchpin of the neocon geopolitical strategy. We are in Iraq to control its oil, and to be able to deny China and any other competing power dependent on that region access to that oil. How can we counter Russia's strategic superiority in oil resources? How do we prevent the geopolitical balance in Europe and Asia from tipping toward Russia and its precious crude? The answer to the Russian threat is to take the oil industry out of the hands of the government — just as we are preparing to do in Iraq. Take away the oil. Privatize it, internationalize it, and neutralize it. And what better way to do that than back the fortunes of a oil billionaire eager to protect and promote his wealth, power, and interests through a challenge to the political supremacy of Putin? In September of this year, Khodorkovsky was about to conclude a merger that would sell 25% of Yukos to ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco for $22 billion. As the Guardian reported, "...a deal with a US company would give Mr Khodorkovsky US political leverage as well as access to more western cash." (Yukos looks overseas, Guardian Sept. 29, 2003). We need explore or ponder no further. Think of it. An independent oil empire in Siberia, financed with US cash, controlling Russia's oil surplus and exports, hostile to the Russian state, aggressive in domestic politics to the point of subversion, and backed by the Bush administration. Khodorkovsky was our Trojan horse. So Putin has taken Khodorkovsky down. It is another big loss for the neocons and their vision of sustained, unilateral US dominance. It is also a huge defeat for Bush, as is shown by the disproportionate dismay voiced at this criminal case in faraway Russia. Not only because Putin has sent our overworked and underqualified NSA drudge Condi Rice back to her Soviet polysci textbooks to try to come up with a strategy to deal with a resurgent, self-sufficient new Russian empire. Because Putin decided that Bush was now a sufficiently marginalized international factor that the consequences of US dismay and displeasure could be comfortably and confidently ignored. So chalk up that Yukos affair, together with the UN debacle, the failure of the Madrid donor's conference, and our long, lonely walk with Iraq into bloody oblivion as another victim of Bush's mismanagement of our nation's affairs and interests. Who cares about Mikhail Khodorkovsky? I guess we all should. http://halcyondays.info/commentary/76.en.html
JeremyPutley
· 1 year ago
As to the means by which the oligarchs acquired their wealth being questionable, I am familiar with the argument that all of the oligarchs are thieves and crooks who should be in prison, regardless of whether they actually broke any enacted laws, because I hear it from certain Russians of my acquaintance, and I am quite ready to believe most Russians - with some eminent exceptions, such as Lev Ponomarev - think the same.
It’s the case that governments do occasionally, and without proper attention to their duty of care, allow some of the wealth under their control to pass into the hands of a few individuals. An example would be David Lange, the New Zealand prime minister in the 1980s, who announced that if he won the election he would untie the kiwi dollar and let it float. It was child’s play to short the kiwi dollar and make millions, and I observed at close quarters some of the players who did it. Norman Lamont is said to have done something similar in the 1990s with the pound. But the view that those who acquire the wealth distributed with such largesse by politicians ought to go to jail does rather ignore the fact that no laws were broken in the process.
The way to get back some of the assets so unwisely given away is to use the government’s power to enact new laws imposing draconian taxes on wealth and income, possibly including a type of “windfall tax.” This would be electorally popular and would of course not involve the abuse of the justice system to which the Russian government is now addicted.
All Comments
The civil rights abuse in Russia are small compared to the thousands of people who die each year because of homophobia. One of the worst things about the Iraq war is that they released the Islamic Fundamentalists in that country. They are now murdering an estimated 400 Gay and Lesbians in Iraq each year. Many other countries in the Muslim world have tremendous amounts of discrimination and murder against our brothers and sisters. I certainly think that the murder of a Gay man in Khartoum is just as bad as the murder of a straight man in Darfur. Hillary has come out strong that Gay Rights are human rights and that she would use all the power of the United States foreign policy to fight Gay Rights abuses. I am interested to hear what Obama thinks, are Gay lives as important as straight lives.
The annual Prayer Breakfast contrivance of the Fellowship Foundation is a ruse designed to provide a series of top level intelligence and organized crime meetings under the sanctioning smile of "Jesus." The person who invited Brudno, Dubov, and the jailed Khodorkovsky to the prayer breakfast was Lantos, whose wife, daughter, and son-in-law are devout Mormons. Brudno and Dubov, citizens of Israel, were assured by the FBI that it would ignore the Interpol and Russian arrest warrants, just as the FBI is ignoring the arrest warrant for Nevzlin, who is now in the United States, most likely with the acquiescence of Lantos. Lantos, who has his own connections with mob-run unions operating at San Francisco International Airport, does not seem to mind the fact that Nevzlin has been under investigation by Israeli police for illegally laundering $500 million through a Tel Aviv branch of Bank Hapoalim, Israel's largest bank.
Nevzlin also took over assets of Khodorkovsky's collapsed bank, Menatep, which was also linked to money laundering involving the Bank of New York. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev supports Putin's attempt to bring the Russian-Israeli oligarchs to justice. He told Britain's Sunday Times that it is believed that the exiled oligarchs have hidden away $1 trillion.
Are you sure we aren't talking about American Georgia and Siegelman? I get these police states confused, what with the torture, undocumented claims, secret trials, and classified evidence.
http://takeitpersonally.blogspot.com/
America's Secret Stake in the Yukos Affair
Peter Lee
November 5, 2003
Who is Mikhail Khodorkovsky?
Russia's richest man, principal owner of Russia's biggest oil company, Yukos, currently under arrest by Putin for some obscure financial hanky panky.
Who cares?
At first I didn't. I thought of Khodorkovsky merely as a distant figure rich in oil, consonants, and syllables.
I was wrong.
A lot of people in America care deeply about Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and I should, too.
The State Department cares. On October 30, in the State Department briefing, a spokesman expressed concern that this was a case of "selective prosecution" targeting Khodorkovsky, who has bankrolled some of Putin's opponents.
One would think that the State Department, given the Padilla case, the perpetual detentions in Guantanamo, and the string of US concentration camps across Iraq packed with people with bags over their heads denied due process, access to lawyers, and even basic human needs, should not be pitching rocks out of its glass house at a friendly sovereign state and ally in the war on terror conducting a criminal investigation of one of its own citizens.
It is of course possible that the Bush administration is bound by a sacred oath to come to the aid of any member of the international petroleum brotherhood in need.
I can imagine the scene in the Oval Office. Condi Rice rushes in and gasps: "Mr. President. An oil executive is in peril!". Our George rises resolutely from his desk, smacks his fist decisively into his palm, and declares, "Something must be done! Get me the State Department!".
But other people care, too.
Readers of the International Herald Tribune's op-ed page were treated to an impassioned stemwinder depicting the Yukos case as a titanic confrontation between Soviet-era dinosaurs and the gallant entrepeneurial crusaders for capitalism in New Russia. (see Russia's future and the fate of an oligarch, Leon Aron, IHT 11/1-2/03).
The article does contain some interesting nuggets like the factoid that Yukos gave $45 million to charity in 2002.
Faith in the disinterested generosity of oil executives with their stockholders' money being what it is, it is not surprising that the shenanigans of another energy giant — Enron — come to mind. Ken Lay's binge of influence buying included a multitude of charitable contributions — not just to charities, but to deserving politicians as well.
Sure enough, the game is given away in the last paragraphs, where the author tries to wish away Khodorkovsky's legal problems with a plea for "...establishment of a statute of limitations on charges arising from the privatizations of the 1990's" and "New laws on lobbying, campaign finance and charitable contributions [that] will permit Russian business to advance openly its interests in Russian politics".
Translation: Yukos' path to wealth and power was apparently paved with dirty rubles. The corporation is now caught inextricably in the net of Russian laws, and Putin has Khodorkovsky by the balls.
The author of this piece, Leon Aron, is the director of Russian studies at neocon ground zero, the American Enterprise Institute.
So we know that the neocons care, and not just in a generic "no billionaire left behind" way about Khodorkovsky's fate. They care enough to try and lobby for the right wing and the US government to inject themselves in a murky criminal case in a foreign country.
Richard Perle cares. He weighed in with one of his hair-tearing tirades, declaring, "If the G-8 [the private club for the world's richest and most powerful countries] has any standards at all, Russia would no longer qualify"(Russian Events Leave White House Wary Maura Reynolds, LA Times, Nov. 1, 2003).
Although the comparison probably doesn't do the two men justice, the neocons probably saw Khodorkovsky as a Russian Berlusconi: a pro-American, right wing fixer who would throw his immense financial weight into politics to cripple and confound America's enemies in the Russian Republic.
But there was probably a darker, more dangerous game at work. One that provoked Putin, the most astute and decisive leaders in world politics, to send security forces storming onto Khodorkovsky's private jet.
Khodorkovsky is not just an oil magnate. He is an oil magnate in Russia, the only great power in the world not dependent on imported oil.
In fact, Russia is awash in surplus oil and will soon decide whether to export 25 million tons per year of it to Japan — or to China.
Control of oil is the linchpin of the neocon geopolitical strategy. We are in Iraq to control its oil, and to be able to deny China and any other competing power dependent on that region access to that oil.
How can we counter Russia's strategic superiority in oil resources? How do we prevent the geopolitical balance in Europe and Asia from tipping toward Russia and its precious crude?
The answer to the Russian threat is to take the oil industry out of the hands of the government — just as we are preparing to do in Iraq.
Take away the oil. Privatize it, internationalize it, and neutralize it.
And what better way to do that than back the fortunes of a oil billionaire eager to protect and promote his wealth, power, and interests through a challenge to the political supremacy of Putin?
In September of this year, Khodorkovsky was about to conclude a merger that would sell 25% of Yukos to ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco for $22 billion. As the Guardian reported, "...a deal with a US company would give Mr Khodorkovsky US political leverage as well as access to more western cash." (Yukos looks overseas, Guardian Sept. 29, 2003).
We need explore or ponder no further.
Think of it. An independent oil empire in Siberia, financed with US cash, controlling Russia's oil surplus and exports, hostile to the Russian state, aggressive in domestic politics to the point of subversion, and backed by the Bush administration.
Khodorkovsky was our Trojan horse.
So Putin has taken Khodorkovsky down. It is another big loss for the neocons and their vision of sustained, unilateral US dominance.
It is also a huge defeat for Bush, as is shown by the disproportionate dismay voiced at this criminal case in faraway Russia.
Not only because Putin has sent our overworked and underqualified NSA drudge Condi Rice back to her Soviet polysci textbooks to try to come up with a strategy to deal with a resurgent, self-sufficient new Russian empire.
Because Putin decided that Bush was now a sufficiently marginalized international factor that the consequences of US dismay and displeasure could be comfortably and confidently ignored.
So chalk up that Yukos affair, together with the UN debacle, the failure of the Madrid donor's conference, and our long, lonely walk with Iraq into bloody oblivion as another victim of Bush's mismanagement of our nation's affairs and interests.
Who cares about Mikhail Khodorkovsky?
I guess we all should.
http://halcyondays.info/commentary/76.en.html
It’s the case that governments do occasionally, and without proper attention to their duty of care, allow some of the wealth under their control to pass into the hands of a few individuals. An example would be David Lange, the New Zealand prime minister in the 1980s, who announced that if he won the election he would untie the kiwi dollar and let it float. It was child’s play to short the kiwi dollar and make millions, and I observed at close quarters some of the players who did it. Norman Lamont is said to have done something similar in the 1990s with the pound. But the view that those who acquire the wealth distributed with such largesse by politicians ought to go to jail does rather ignore the fact that no laws were broken in the process.
The way to get back some of the assets so unwisely given away is to use the government’s power to enact new laws imposing draconian taxes on wealth and income, possibly including a type of “windfall tax.” This would be electorally popular and would of course not involve the abuse of the justice system to which the Russian government is now addicted.