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Tag Archives: Harding

Russia – Khodorkovsky Relaunched

22 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by commart in Politics, Russia

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Harding, Khodorkovsky, Putin, Russia

There is no amnesty, however, for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former Russian oligarch in jail since 2003.

Pussy Riot and Arctic 30 amnesty is a Putin masterstroke ahead of Olympics | World news | The Guardian – 12/18/2013

* * *

Khodorkovsky pledge: Freed tycoon won’t challenge Putin or return home – YouTube – Posted 12/22/2013.

I missed it!

Of course, I wasn’t looking for it.

It appears Luke Harding didn’t see it coming either four days ago.

But that was so last week.

Then too, perhaps President Putin on the 19th caught Mr. Harding’s but-you-forgot in his spyglass and decided to converse without direct words.

Who knows?

Putin does and my bet is he’s not talking about his thinking.

______

Khodorkovsky happy and hopeful after 10 years as Putin’s top prisoner | World news | theguardian.com – by Luke Harding – 12/22/2013.

Russian dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky speaks out – CNN.com – 12/22/2013.

Opinion: Don’t be fooled by Putin’s release of Khodorkovsky – CNN.com – by Masha Gessen – 12/21/2013.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky leaves Russian prison after Putin signs pardon – CNN.com – 12/21/2013.

Former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky freed from prison – latimes.com – 12/20/2013.

BBC News – Putin ‘to pardon’ jailed former oil tycoon Khodorkovsky – YouTube – 12/19/2013

# # #

Dark Spaces – Darker Empires

06 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Free Speech, Political Spychology, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

contemporary feudalism, criminal enterprise, criminal societies, Harding, mafia state, political psychology, political spychology, politics, Russia, secret societies, spies, spying, Wikileaks

Arms trafficking, money laundering, personal enrichment, protection for gangsters, extortion and kickbacks, suitcases full of money and secret offshore bank accounts in Cyprus and Switzerland: the cables unpick a dysfunctional political system in which bribery alone totals an estimated $300 billion a year, and in which it is often hard to distinguish between the activities of government and organized crime.

Harding, Luke.  Expelled: A Journalist’s Descent Into the Russian Mafia State.  P. 233.  Guardian Books, 2011; New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012.

* * *

Among the most striking allegations contained in the cables, which were leaked to the whistleblowers’ website WikiLeaks, are:

• Russian spies use senior mafia bosses to carry out criminal operations such as arms trafficking.

• Law enforcement agencies such as the police, spy agencies and the prosecutor’s office operate a de facto protection racket for criminal networks.

• Rampant bribery acts like a parallel tax system for the personal enrichment of police, officials and the KGB’s successor, the federal security service (FSB).

WikiLeaks cables condemn Russia as ‘mafia state’ | World news | The Guardian – Luke Harding – 12/1/2010.

In the list excised, there are more bullets (no puns intended).

Related: BBC News – Wikileaks: Russia branded ‘mafia state’ in cables – 12/2/2010.

* * *

Snowden’s father, Lon, also expressed his gratitude to Russian President Vladimir Putin for protecting his son from the legal consequences of having violated his NSA confidentiality obligations.

*

Human Rights Watch analysts also took note of the irony of the Kremlin coming to the defense of a self-styled champion of privacy and free speech rights.

“He cannot but be aware of the unprecedented crackdown on human rights that the government has unleashed in the past 15 months,” Rachel Denber, the rights group’s expert on Russia and other former Soviet states told the Associated Press by email.

WikiLeaks cheers Snowden asylum in Russia; rights groups dubious – latimes.com – 8/1/2013.

* * *

Is it just a coincidence that former NSA analyst Edward Snowden, a valuable intelligence asset, ended up in the hands of Russia’s security services?

Or did WikiLeaks, the “anti-secrecy” organization that has taken responsibility for Snowden, send him there in collaboration with the Russians?

Did WikiLeaks Sell Out Snowden To The Russians? – Business Insider – 9/3/2013.

______

Who do you trust?

Throw away God; give up on one humanist ideology or another: what’s left?

Money.

Are governments businesses?

Who do they serve?

Among those served, what are they serving?

* * *

In the capitalist democracies, most expect private businesses to keep proprietary the business processes, relationships, and technologies that enable their sales, investment strategies, and accumulations of wealth distributed back to stakeholders or to the public in the form of consumer spending.  As regards governments, they may be expected to keep secret fundamental military and security edges involving security intelligence and operations.  These days, whether with billions networked through criminal pacts or blacked out for “black ops” budgets, governments, known criminal or not, would seem to be transitioning into deeply feudal empires — not of, for, or by The People but of, for, and by Some (Very Enriched) People.

______

Spanish police arrested four people Friday suspected of laundering large sums of money from Russian criminal gangs as part of a network they said may be linked to Semion Mogilevich, one of the FBI’s ten most wanted fugitives.

The arrests took place in the Mediterranean coastal town of Lloret de Mar near Barcelona, which has a large Russian community and is popular with tourists from the country, police said in a statement.

The four are suspected of tax fraud, document falsification and money laundering.

Spanish police break Russian mafia money laundering ring < Spanish news | Expatica Spain – 1/25/2013.

* * *

MOTHERBOARD: Let’s start with public perception. People believe the Taliban is fueling the drug trade in Afghanistan. To what extent is this true, and why is it so widely believed?

 The Taliban are players in the Afghan drug trade, but minor ones in relative terms. Perhaps the best way to demonstrate this is to look at the value of the annual drug trade within Afghanistan, which is about $3 billion. The Taliban capture only about 5 to 10 percent of those profits. The bulk of the profits is appropriated by other groups, such as traffickers, government and police officers, as well as warlords.

What’s Wrong With the Taliban-Heroin Narrative: A Chat With Julien Mercille | Motherboard – n.d., 2012.

*

Web searched first-page reference to data on the Taliban’s narcotics trafficking seems to trail off for 2013, but relayed at the bottom of this post, there’s combat footage from early 2013 posted just six days ago.

Reference Pakistani Political Attitudes, Taliban, Arab Influence, Heroin, Cash, UAE, and The Marines | BackChannels – 11/11/2013.

No pun intended here either: the impression as regards the latest admixtures of crime and politics is getting rich.

According to American national intelligence watcher Tim Shorrock (reference: Spies for Hire), the annual bill for U.S. security-oriented intelligence efforts approximates $52 billion, not that the distribution is known.  The social integration of the state’s population with its defense and security sectors may suffice for trust — are we going to trust our neighbors or not? — but the informational dark space created by the development of a large population of government-employed or contracted secrets keepers may not bode well for democracy.

Who is getting that intelligence budget?

On what basis?

To what end?

Shorrock’s sturdy journalism illuminates many paths in the national security intelligence complex, but as seems true today in Russia, the public may be told that it’s being served, but given the enormity of the spooky business and its continuing growth in its institutional aspect, public also has room – more cause – to suspect otherwise.

This is not to impugn the American intelligence community: by and large, we still trust our neighbors.

With help from books like Spies for Hire, the privileges known to the free press and more affirmed than not (so far as I know — and infringements by government gets play in the press pretty damned quick), and the web, it’s not that hard getting a glimpse of the cobbling developed to counter the narcotics trade, the terrorism business, and other contributors to international crime.

Still, the more a government privileges a class with secrets-keeping powers, the more paranoia it may inspire in those who are not of it.

* * *

But, without naming names, Medvedev said Russia should be careful about freeing people convicted of crimes like hooliganism – the charge in the Pussy Riot case – and theft, which was the indictment against Khodorkovsky.

“Our people really are not much inclined, for example, to conduct acts of amnesty for individuals involved in violent crimes, for individuals who committed crimes against society, including hooliganism,” Medvedev said in a TV interview.

Putin dampens amnesty chances for Khodorkovsky, Pussy Riot | Reuters – 12/6/2013.

In political Russia, it appears deflection has become a high art.

The Khodorkovsky case has become legend and no realist expects more from the Kremlin then in its realpolitik the continued expression of absolute power that has dogged the matter from before the arrest stage and forward.

▶ Khodorkovsky – Official Trailer [HD] – YouTube – Posted 11/28/2011.

I’ve chided Pussy Riot (no, children, we do not take bawdy shows into churches without a big, friendly invitation) but most watchers feel the Kremlin’s punishment back-to-the-gulag! vulgarity bespeaks itself of criminal callousness.

In Medvedev’s above cited statement, the infantilizing of the Russian people by way of a paternalist stance should be as clear to neutral onlookers as the heightened projections of criminality.  “Pussy Riot” may indeed be a vulgar noun, but the girls are not the evil ones; as for Khodorkovsky, he appears to have leaned westward with Yukos and in the direction of integrity (gasp!).

Since the late 1990s, Khodorkovsky had taken steps to transform Yukos along the lines of western business models. These steps included the introduction of corporate transparency, the adoption of western accounting standards, the hiring of western management, the creation of an independent board of directors with a corporate governance subcommittee, corporate growth through mergers and acquisitions, and increased western investments. These actions had marked Khodorkovsky as an outspoken leader who was pro-western and challenged the non-transparent means by which government and business operated in the Russian energy sector. These practices, along with the possibility of Yukos selling a major stake to Exxon Mobil or Chevron, deeply unsettled the Kremlin.

Legal | Mikhail Khodorkovsky – as viewed 12/6/2013.

With Russia as with Syria as with, not so oddly, Islamic Jihad in large part, one may expect the patina of legitimate cause to wear away before the eyes of a widening and more profoundly comprehending global public.  Even so obvious, so visible, however, one wonders about the better options available to that same public.

One may note that Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has survived decades in power without a shred of statewide legitimacy left intact, but the crowds of those patronized, the money involved (for himself and those to whom he distributes spoils) has proven sufficient to lead him into his 90s with probably a fairly good night’s sleep.

No conscience?

No cares.

# # #

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____________

Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner's own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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