Putin critic Khodorkovsky in Germany after pardon
reuters.com
reuters.com
I really feel for the guy. He took the stand, went to jail - but he's far from a "prisoner of conscience".
Many high profile criminals use dislike of Mr Putin in the west as a safe getaway from Russia. They commonly claim that Putin is after them and they're the opposition.
One case in point is Andrey Borodin - former president of a major bank in Russia. He made multiple billion dollar loans to himself through affiliated fly-by-night firms in the offshore. When he was caught, he fled to the UK and suddenly turned opposition overnight. Eventually granted an asylum and lives happily in Oxfordshire in his newly acquired 140 million pounds mansion.
This happened in 2011. In the 90s, when Khodorkovsky operated, things were a lot less clean. He got nabbed. Many others found a way to avoid imprisonment. A lot of them now are "respectable" businessmen ranked high up in the Forbes list.
Which is why I express my cynicism at the timing of Khodorkovsky's pardon. There must be a reason for letting him out now, so I can not help but think that Putin wanted to remind someone (or many someones) what he can do to politically inconvenient opponents.
The beauty, if one can use such a word in this context, is that the reminder comes in a form of letting a person out of the prison. So much more convenient.
This means Khodorkovsky was jailed for his economic crimes, not because of his anti-Putin stance.
Why Western media keeps referring to him as a 'political prisoner' and 'freed dissident' (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25472250)?
This is from the linked article on Radio Free Europe site.
The business environment is why there have been massive amounts of capital outflows in recent years. Everyone understands the game being played here, you get to play by Putin's rule are you get your toys taken away at the minimum or get sent to a siberian penal colony.
No, the opposite is clear.
The ECHR court "found no basis that the case against the two was politically motivated, as Khodorkovsky and Lebedev alleged in their complaint" (direct quote).
The supra-national court is in no sense a pro-Russian organisation, and the judges were perfectly aware of the political implications of their ruling. They did note several improprieties of the trial (keeping defendants in cages etc.), and even ordered Russian state to pay some compensation to the defendants, but that did not change their core conclusion.
Khodorkovsky was enriching himself by defrauding the state and the Russian public (most of the social security is funded through oil taxes). This was the reason for his prosecution, regardless of what "everybody understands" thanks to various PR campaigns.
Could it be that our journalists have zero integrity?
Some random thoughts on political situation in Russia:
Dictatorships are more efficient in handling some issues, and less efficient in handling others (lower to mid level official corruption). Are his methods correct in terms of Russian mentality? History will tell.
One thing is certain, empires of warlords often were in turmoil when they passed on [1]. I think Russia is in for interesting times when Putin will be stepping away (And taking rest of the world along with them for a ride due to Russia's status as a nuclear superpower).
[1] It could be argued that fall of USSR was catalyzed by a string of weak leaders after some of more prominent warlords passed away.
I personally come from Belarus, where a president that was democratically elected on anti-corruption charges assumed the role of a dictator. This was well expected by most of the intelligentsia: on the day of the run off election where Lukashenko's win (against another shitbird, of course, who ended up siding with Lukashenko afterwards) was confirmed my brother called us and told us to lookup 'Sulla' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulla) in a history book. The practice of using "crusade against corruption" to assume dictatorial role is as old as democracy itself.
That said Putin is far more pernicious than Lukashenko: with Lukashenko there is no longer any more of a pretense of democracy than there was under, e.g., Saddam in Iraq (there are elections with mythical sounding figures and no campaigns). Putin is far more cunning: he's able to maintain the facade of democracy while having unchecked and unelected power. With recent revelations about "enhanced interrogations", NSA and FISA kangaroo courts, US -- while light years far from turning into a Russia or Belarus -- is starting to show some of these very same dangerous signs of police state(1) tactics via plausible deniability.
I'll leave this quote out there on the topic of rule by robber barrons (which the oligarchs were plain and simple) vs. rule by thugs on a moral crusade:
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
- C.S. Lewis
(1) Here I am using the historical definition of police state: while today it's equated with totalitarianism (and neither Russia nor Belarus -- much less United States even under the worse scenario -- are totalitarian states, as anyone living in those countries who has also lived under Soviet rule can attest), the original meaning contrasted a 'polizeistaat' (rule by decree without any constitutional limitations) with a 'rechtstaat' (rights state -- constitutionally limited rule of law).
As a side note, it is unfortunate that the privatization process was botched enormously in USSR and its successor states. I always thought that the right approach to privatization should have been to follow the old Leninist slogan _literally_: factories to workers, farms to peasants, i.e., give the employees non-trivial amounts of shares/options in their workplace. Instead it became "factories and farms to corrupt middle managers and old Soviet elite".
Calling him a "prisoner of conscience" is total disrespect and offense to real prisoners of conscience who stand up and suffer for their principles (like Pussy Riot girls for example). He stood up for his wealth and power refusing to accept the reality that the new rising thief at the time - Putin and Co. - become stronger than him. He challenged Putin and lost. Will Putin be called a "prisoner of conscience" when/if some new guy send Putin to a Siberia camp?
The only reason anyone cares about them is because they also happened to criticise Putin...
It has nothing to do with Pussy Riot. You're talking out of your a##.
> Just like people who bomb pipelines and spray paint swastikas on synagogues.
the same - it has nothing to do with Pussy Riot.
former promote co-existence while latter - exclusion. How can you even put them together in one sentence?
> The only difference is the social 'acceptability' of each 'belief'. ie. it's ok to insult Christians but not Jews...
Russian Orthodox church going out of its way politically supporting Putin (and immensely benefiting from that financially and politically) isn't a doing of Jesus work, and challenging the church on that isn't an assault on Christianity.
It has nothing to do with what each supports - rather that you can't justify harmful behaviour, period.
> Russian Orthodox church going out of its way politically supporting Putin (and immensely benefiting from that financially and politically) isn't a doing of Jesus work, and challenging the church on that isn't an assault on Christianity.
Challenging the church regarding their supposed support of Putin isn't the problem, using it as a justification for illegal behaviour is. What Pussy Riot did would be illegal in pretty much every reasonably civilized country in the world.
In Canada, people spray painting political graffiti on a synagogue is a crime, even if the content of the graffiti isn't necessarily insulting to Judaism. The point is that you can't arbitrarily allow some types of crime, and disallow others based on the ideology behind it...
what harm is coming from "eco-terrorists"? Lesser availability of whale meat? I doubt whales would see it as a harm. Or people who worked for decades to restore whales population. Or people who are just disgusted by whale killings.
>What Pussy Riot did would be illegal in pretty much every reasonably civilized country in the world.
i'm wondering what do you think they did? Do you seriously think that tresspassing and non-violent disturbance of peace - the minor crimes in reasonably civilized countries - are the "2 year in prison" crimes in Russia? Or calling upon God to chase away a President is a crime "in pretty much every reasonably civilized country in the world"?
> The point is that you can't arbitrarily allow some types of crime, and disallow others based on the ideology behind it...
You seem to be saying that no illegal behaviour can be justified. Well, you've mentioned swastikas and Judaism before. That reminds about the most known and indisputable today example when illegal behavior was rightly justified - i.e doing right thing toward Jews for example was illegal in Nazi Germany and doing legal thing was terribly wrong.
You know, things like harm to property and people... Eco terrorism isn't just whale protests. Here they bomb pipelines...
> i'm wondering what do you think they did? Do you seriously think that tresspassing and non-violent disturbance of peace - the minor crimes in reasonably civilized countries - are the "2 year in prison" crimes in Russia?
What they did and said qualifies as hate speech here, so yes 2 years would be within the scope of the law.
> That reminds about the most known and indisputable today example when illegal behavior was rightly justified - i.e doing right thing toward Jews for example was illegal in Nazi Germany and doing legal thing was terribly wrong.
Really? I mean really? The laws are hardly unfair in this case...
Hate speech laws, while may sound like a reasonable thing in theory, on practice naturally allow for very selective enforcement (mostly due to their inherent vagueness - any political speech can be qualified as hate speech if there is a strong will to do so) and thus are used as extremely effective tool for oppression of political opponents by the powers-to-be while people like you (who seems to not understand or know that selective enforcement of laws is a form of tyranny and such enforcement actually voids those laws) are blinded by the fog-screen of declaration of "illegality". For example, nobody was arrested (less sent to prison) for publicly praying to God in support of Putin and his regime which is as much a hate speech toward the Putin's opponents as a public prayer to God to chase Putin away is a hate speech toward Putin and his supporters.
As result, in their application in real life, hate speech laws is mostly very unjust and unfair laws and mostly used as a tool of unjustice. A right and just action like challenging powers-to-be on their unjust actions or statement of facts unpopular with the powers-to-be may very well result in conviction under such laws. And even without actual convictions, such laws result in unjust chilling effects on political opponents of the powers-to-be.
Btw, this is why one of the greatest thing that US have and that sets US so far apart and ahead (as this thing is missing in the rest of the world) is the freedom of speech, the 1st Amendment.
I'd rather say this goes with the Zeitgeist, so your question should probably be rephrased from "why him" to "why not also Snowden".
As if there is any other kind of trial in Russia. Quick introduction on Russia trials : http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Tribunal_%28episode%29
>Germany is also trying to get Timochenko out of Ukraine
yep, one more "prisoner of conscience" of Khodorkovsky type
>so your question should probably be rephrased from "why him" to "why not also Snowden".
as i already said, there is nothing in common between Khodorkovsky and people like Snowden. Snowden challenged the State, the Order of Things on the right/wrong principles, whereis Khodorkovsky being at the time among largest beneficiaries of the Order of Things challenged a specific person for personal [beneficial] position in that Order of Things.
1: http://books.google.de/books?id=q1F4otnSovMC&lpg=PA59&pg=PA5... and the following pages
Having said that, you couldn't become a billionaire "new Russian" in the early 90's without doing something horrible, which I'm sure Khodorkovskiy has done at some point. So he probably is a criminal. However, the ONLY reason he was put in jail is that he dared to defy Putin. Everything else was bogus - charges were fabricated, judges had direct orders to convict him, etc.
That necessarily includes Putin himself, who is alleged to have amassed a fortune that's in the billions.
Let's see what happens next.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
"“Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. [...] One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
Look for Pussy Riot to be the next to be released...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2013/12/19/pussy-ri...
Chilling? That's bad for business.