Posts Tagged ‘streetwise professor’
Always the Last to Know
Dmitri Medvedev-prime minister of Russia, at least until Putin needs a sacrificial victim to blame for some failure, that being the main role of a Russian PM-claims that Russian business has not been harmed by the Magnitsky controversy:
Medvedev said the whistleblower’s death in jail, for which no one has been brought to justice, was being used by Kremlin critics to score points but was of no import to business leaders.
. . . .
“It does not interest anyone, except maybe certain citizens who are trying to use it to accumulate political capital,” said Medvedev, who was president from 2008 until Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin last May.
“Not a single businessman raises this issue,” he told state television in an interview focusing on his role in the forum. “But unfortunately it has become a factor in political life.”
Biznessmen have a different story-off the record, which is part of the point:
With international concern spreading after the 2009 death of Sergei Magnitsky, some Russian tycoons are worried their legitimate cross-border money transfers involving anything from industrial investments to luxury properties will get hit by red tape.
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We Must Be Doing Something Right
June 27, 2012
Russia is outraged-outraged!-that a US Senate committee had the temerity to pass the Magnitsky Act:
Moscow expressed outrage on Wednesday over a U.S. Senate panel’s approval of a bill that would penalize Russian officials for human rights abuses, and warned Washington that adoption of the sanctions would force Russia to respond in kind.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act,” named after a Russian anti-corruption lawyer whose death in 2009 while in pre-trial detention drew widespread condemnation.
Despite broad support in Congress, the bill’s future remains uncertain, partly because the Obama administration is unenthusiastic about a measure that Russia says would be an unwarranted intrusion into its internal affairs.
“The effect on our relations will be extremely negative,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted by state news agency Itar-Tass as saying.
“We are not only deeply sorry but outraged that – despite common sense and all signals Moscow has sent and keeps sending about the counterproductive nature of such steps – work on the ‘Magnitsky law’ continues.”
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Disgraceful, Craven, and Cowardly
Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng is now pleading for asylum in the United States, literally hours after he left the US embassy in Beijing, under the terms of a stitched together deal which supposedly guaranteed his safety and the safety of his family. His presence in the embassy was a huge embarrassment, especially in view of the impending visit of Hillary Clinton and Timmy! for talks with the Chinese leadership. Reports strongly suggest that the US pressured Chen to leave, and at the very least, did nothing to push back on Chinese threats (delivered to Chen) to beat his wife to death.
So the United States government did something exactly analogous to turning over a fugitive slave, to avoid a conflict with the slaveowner, or in response to the slaveowner’s threat to whip the slave’s wife to death.
This is disgraceful, craven, and cowardly
Obama claims that human rights are raised at every meeting with the Chinese. I can imagine the conversation now: Obama: “You need to respect human rights.” Chinese official: “Mind your own business.” Obama: “Now we have that out of the way . . . ”
Deeds speak far louder than words. The immediate and panicked capitulation shows clearly that Obama has no real interest in human rights, and is unwilling to risk the slightest displeasure from the Chinese. Not that he has succeeded in the latter: the Chinese are shrilly demanding an apology for us letting Chen step onto embassy grounds.
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By typical Russian, whatabout, chutzpah double standards, yes the treatment of Bout is inhumane
Just when I thought that Russian chutzpah could never surprise me, something like this comes along:
A federal court handed Bout 25 years in prison on Thursday for conspiring to sell weapons to Columbian guerrillas who were actually US federal agents in disguise.
. . . .
The ministry claimed the US had used “unbearable conditions” in detention as a means of physically and psychologically pressuring Bout during his trial. “Long before the verdict, the authorities declared V.A. Bout a ‘merchant of death’ and little short of an international terrorist, while the prosecution was built entirely on his imputed ‘criminal intent’,” it said, adding: “The Russian foreign ministry will take all necessary efforts to return V.A. Bout to the Motherland.”
This from the country that uses psychological pressure and physical torture and literally-literally-unbearable conditions to coerce those they want to break.
Three prominent examples: I could spend days assembling many more.
Example 1. Today is the 6th anniversary of the arrest of Vasily Aleksanyan. Aleksanyan worked for Khodorkovsky and Yukos. The Russians wanted to compel him to testify against Khodorkovsky. How? Here’s how:
During Aleksanyan’s imprisonment, his health rapidly deteriorated due to HIV-related illnesses. He became almost blind and developed cancer of the liver with metastasis into the lymph nodes. He also became ill with tuberculosis.
Despite the grave medical situation demanding urgent antiretroviral treatment and chemotherapy in a hospital, he was denied both. The prosecutors also ignored three injunctions by the European Court of Human Rights on 27 November 2007, on 6 December 2007 and on 20 December 2007.According to Aleksanyan, the prosecutors are demanding false evidence against other Yukos executives from him before starting his medical treatment. On 26 December Aleksanyan made public a statement asking for help from human rights advocates.
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