Precisely the reason why the rest of the world no longer pays any attention to the U.S.

when the u.s. righteously huffs and puffs about equal justice and the rule of law - in this instance via an nyt editorial - all the rest of the world can do is roll its collective eyes...

as usual in our context-free journalism, the nyt totally fails to mention that, even though khodorkovsky might be a victim of an unfair justice system, he nevertheless is a case study in oligarchy... in the u.s.-championed rush to privatization during the alcoholic rule of boris yeltsin following the fall of the former soviet union, opportunistic and criminal types like mikhail khodorkovsky managed to grab staggering amounts of former state resources - money, enterprises, natural resources, basically anything that wasn't nailed down (and even a lot that was) - for their own personal treasuries, most of the proceeds of which got safely tucked away in the u.s., switzerland and other financial havens... there was an understandable surge of outrage among ordinary russians and, when putin came to power, he was able to use the bare knuckle style he learned in the kgb to go after some of the more egregious examples and earn himself some points with the russian people... needless to say, the u.s. has been cluck-clucking ever since... i'm no putin fan, to be sure, and his methods definitely deserve criticism, but...

the other thing that the nyt totally fails to mention is that the u.s. has absolutely no room to talk... the only ones that seem to have the ability to gain any advantage of the current u.s. "justice" system are those who have the enormous sums of money and reservoirs of power to buy it... accountability and rule of law in the united states today seem to be a quaint notion left over from a dream of what the u.s. once was and still could be if we only bothered to walk our talk...

Russia's Dictatorship of Law

Russia's newly outrageous legal treatment of the former owner of the country's largest oil company is a reminder that it has yet to grasp the idea of equal justice under law.

Russia’s newly outrageous legal treatment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former owner of the country’s largest oil company, is a reminder that Russia has yet to grasp the idea of equal justice under law — especially when the Kremlin decides someone is in the way.

Mr. Khodorkovsky was convicted in 2005 on trumped-up charges of fraud and disobeying a court order and lost his company to Kremlin loyalists. Russians call his sort of case “telephone law,” imposed by the politically powerful through a call to the courthouse. With his sentence almost up, he was just tried again on suspect charges of embezzling and money-laundering. The judge is expected to reach a decision in December.

Two decades ago, the United States State Department urged the new Russia to resurrect the jury system, as The Times described this week, to put the law in the hands of the Russian people. Juries had been abolished after the Soviet revolution, along with anything recognizable as courts and lawyers. They were reborn in 1993.

glenn greenwald is turning in the final portion of his book - With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful - to his publisher tomorrow... i'm looking forward to reading it...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Faced with media censorship, Congressman Wexler pleads for Cheney's impeachment

after getting rejected by the major print news outlets, he set up his own website...

As the House Judiciary Committee continues to refuse any action on proposals to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney, three of that panel's members tried to take their case to influential op-ed pages of the nation's largest newspapers.

They were turned down by every one -- including the New York Times, Washington Post and Miami Herald -- so now one of the lawmakers has taken his campaign to the Internet.

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) on Friday launched a new Web site, WexlerWantsHearings.com to advance his call to impeach Cheney. The site hosts an op-ed article censored by the nation's major newspapers and outlines the case for impeaching Cheney.

this must be what media censorship in the old soviet union felt like, only THEY didn't have the internet...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Condi tips her hand about where her head is REALLY at

for a united states secretary of state who also happens to be ranked as the most powerful woman in the world by forbes magazine in 2004 and 2005 and number two in 2006 to make such an obvious and damaging gaffe and then to not catch herself, tells me as much as i want to know about condoleezza rice...

"The idea that somehow 10 interceptors and a few radars in Eastern Europe are going to threaten the Soviet strategic deterrent is purely ludicrous and everybody knows it," she told reporters ahead of the Oslo meeting. "The Russians have thousands of warheads. The idea that you can somehow stop the Russian strategic nuclear deterrent with a few interceptors just doesn't make sense."

perhaps she's just pining for the days when her expertise was actually relevant...

From 1989 through March 1991 (the period of the fall of Berlin Wall and the final days of the Soviet Union), she served in President George H.W. Bush's administration as Director, and then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In this position, Rice helped develop Bush's and Secretary of State James Baker's policies in favor of German reunification. She impressed Bush, who later introduced her to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as the one who "tells me everything I know about the Soviet Union."

or maybe she was distracted thinking about going shopping for some new ferragamos later in the day...



Condoleezza Rice...........Ferragamo shoe

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

The Russian oligarchs - a quarter of Russia's economy is owned by 36 men

the oligarchs created by the fall of the soviet bloc and other socialist countries meant little to me until i had the chance to learn about it up close and personal... over the past few years, i have made numerous trips to countries of the former yugoslavia and also to bulgaria, and have had the opportunity to learn just how some of these people acquired their fortunes... it's really no mystery...

in the rush to privatization, employees of state-owned enterprises were awarded stock commensurate with their position in the organization... the higher up you were, the more stock you got... no surprise, more often than not, the senior managers were also the higher ranking officials in the party... in any case, many of them took their majority stock positions, sold them off for a tidy profit, or, in other cases, simply sold off the organization's assets for cash, transferring the money to - where else? - switzerland... some stuck with the business and struggled while trying to learn to manage in a for-profit, private sector environment, and quite a few of those didn't make it...

here's a bbc reporter's look at the secret world of the super-rich oligarchs outside moscow...

Ever since I arrived in Russia I've heard tall stories of a secret city deep in the forests outside Moscow where the rich indulge their fantasies in sprawling palaces of marble and gold. It sounded like a good story. I didn't expect it to be true, let alone that I'd get an invite.

[...]

On either side of us huge mansions stood in spacious grounds. Some looked vaguely Georgian, others Victorian, one like a Bavarian castle. Vitaly, the BBC driver, turned to me, his face deadpan. "When did we cross the border?" he asked.

Svetlana's [not her real name] "cottage" was a spectacular 3,000 sq m Art Deco pile. How big is that? Big enough for an indoor swimming pool, a cinema, a bowling alley, a ballroom, and the piece de resistance, its own indoor ice rink!

"This is our newest house," Svetlana told me as we walked past a large bronze sphinx in the gardens. "My father's been building it for five years."

She wasn't sure how much it had cost, "probably 20 million," she guessed.

"So how many other houses do you have?" I asked.

"A couple in Moscow, two in the south of France, and one in Corsica," she said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

She shops in Paris and Milan, where she flies on one of her father's private jets.

[...]

A mile down the road, firmly back in Russia, I went to see Mrs Rima. The 75-year-old showed me around the one-room shack she built with her own hands.

She survives on a pension of £60 a month.

I asked her what she thinks of the rich people who live behind the high green walls.

"They're all thieves," she said. "All that money is stolen from the people."

It's a view millions of Russians would agree with. Fifteen years ago everything in Russia was owned by the state. Today a quarter of Russia's economy is owned by 36 men.

i've seen similar enclaves, although perhaps not quite as over-the-top, in both skopje and sofia...

tell me all that happened on the up-and-up...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments