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I wonder if Hillary Clinton really believes in the pompous invective that shoots from her lips with the rapidity of machine gun fire.

We had a classic example of it just the other day when she let rip in her grating, robotic monotones over a Moscow court’s decision to jail an oil tycoon.

To be fair to Clinton, she was not alone. There was a whole gaggle of disapproving foreign ministers who poured forth their ridiculous brand of Western arrogance which has poisoned the international atmosphere for far too long.

The US Secretary of State said Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s conviction raised “serious questions about selective prosecution and about the rule of law being overshadowed by political considerations”.

Although Khodorkovsky, 47, and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, 54, were found guilty of theft and money laundering by a Moscow court, critics like Clinton say the trial constitutes revenge for the tycoon’s questioning of a state monopoly on oil pipelines and propping up political parties that oppose the Kremlin.

Clinton’s censure was echoed by politicians in Britain and Germany, and Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, urged Moscow to “respect its international commitments in the field of human rights and the rule of law”.

Now while it may appear to be quite touching to see all these Western leaders express their outrage over a trial involving the one-time richest and most powerful man in Russia’s oil and gas industry, you have to ask where were these moral guardians when other unjust legal decisions were being made in US courts, for example?

So why have the Americans and Europeans rushed to make very public and official statements so quickly on a matter of oil and gas, in another country not in their sway or control? Okay, so it is a rhetorical question!

But shouldn’t Clinton put a sock in it? The USA is still squatting in Cuba overseeing the continuing festering mess caused by one of the biggest boil’s on the face of human rights – yes, Guantanamo is approaching a decade of incarcerating men without charge or trial. At least Khodorkovsky had his day in an open court and can appeal.

Instead of sticking her nose in to other countries’ judicial processes, perhaps the US Secretary of State would care to look into her own backyard and tell us why one of her soldiers was given a mere nine month sentence earlier this month after shooting unarmed civilians in Afghanistan?

And after he’s served his sentence US army medic Robert Stevens can still remain in the army, ruled the military hearing. His defence was that he and other soldiers were purely acting on orders from a squad leader during a patrol in March in Kandahar.

Five of the 12 soldiers named in the case are accused of premeditated murder in the most serious prosecution of atrocities by US military personnel since the war began in late 2001. Some even collected severed fingers and other human remains from the Afghan dead as war trophies before taking photos with the corpses.

By comparison, just a few months earlier, Dr Aafia Siddiqui, was given 86 years for attempting to shoot US soldiers … the alleged incident happened while she was in US custody, in Afghanistan. She didn’t shoot anyone although she WAS shot at point blank range by the soldiers. The critically injured Pakistani citizen was then renditioned for a trial in New York. The hearing was judged to be illegal and out of US jurisdiction by many international lawyers.

Did Clinton have anything to say about that? Did any of the foreign ministers in the West raise these issues on any public platform anywhere in the world? Again, it’s a rhetorical question.

Of course a few poorly trained US Army grunts, scores of innocent Afghans, nearly 200 Arab men in Cuba and one female academic from Pakistan are pretty small fry compared to an oil rich tycoon who doesn’t like Vladamir Putin.

But being poor is not a crime.

Exactly how would the Obama Administration have reacted if Russian President Dmitry Medvedev criticized the lack of even handedness in the US judicial system and demanded Dr Aafia Siddiqui be repatriated? What would be the response if Medvedev called an international press conference and demanded to know why 174 men are still being held in Guantanamo without charge or trial?

Just for the record the US judicial system imposes life sentences for serious tax avoidance and laundering of criminally-received income – crimes for which the Russian tycoon has been found guilty. Sentencing will not take place until Moscow trial judge, Viktor Danilkin, finishes reading his 250-page verdict, which could take several days.

In her comments Clinton said the case had a “negative impact on Russia’s reputation for fulfilling its international human rights obligations and improving its investment climate”.

How on earth can anyone treat the US Secretary of State seriously when she comes out with this sort of pot, kettle, black rhetoric? This from a nation which is morally and financially bankrupt, a country which introduced words like rendition and water-boarding into common day usage.

My advice to Clinton is do not lecture anyone about human rights and legal issues until you clean up your own backyard. In fact the next time she decides to open her mouth perhaps one of her aides can do us all a favour and ram in a slice of humble pie.

British journalist Yvonne Ridley is the European President of the International Muslim Women’s Union as well as being a patron of Cageprisoners. She is also a presenter of The Agenda and co-presenter of the Rattansi and Ridley show for Press TV

An oil trading dispute between India and Iran has further escalated, with Tehran refusing to sell oil to India under new rules instituted by New Delhi

The Reserve Bank of India has said that deals with Iran must be settled outside the Asian Clearing Union (ACU) system used by it and other member nations’ central banks to settle bilateral trades.

Iran’s state-owned oil company has refused to accept payments for oil sales to India without guarantees from India’s central bank.

Iranian sources have confirmed the dispute and Indian sources said officials from the central banks of the two countries are set to meet on Friday to further discuss the matter.

Iran, which is under UN sanctions over its nuclear programme, is likely to want to rescue a trade that is worth about $12bn a year.

While the UN sanctions do not forbid buying Iranian oil, the US has been pressing governments and companies to stop dealing with Tehran.

Trade trouble

On Wednesday, two Indian industry sources said National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) had turned down Indian oil firms’ requests for payment outside the ACU.

“Indian firms had asked Iran to immediately nominate a bank in Europe through which payment can be made. But NIOC refused,” said one of the sources.

A NIOC source said any mechanism outside the ACU “is not acceptable” because “this exercise is in place for so many years”.

“How can India unilaterally decide to halt it without any alternative mechanism? How can you demolish a building without renting out an apartment?” the source added.

The ACU includes the central banks of India, Bangladesh, Maldives, Myanmar, Iran, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

India is the biggest buyer of Iranian crude in the group, consuming around 400,000 barrels per day between two state-owned refiners and privately-owned Essar Oil.

US Pressure

The Hindu on Thursday reported that the move is an example of India succumbing to American pressure. The report states that Indian Reserve Bank’s move is the direct result of American pressure.

By Aljazeera

The price of traded food staples such as wheat, corn and rice soared 26 percent from June to November, nearing the peaks reached during the global food crisis of 2008, according to the Food Price Index kept by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.

The price surge has continued in December, with foodstuffs and basic commodities hitting new highs and expected to climb further in 2011.

In 2008, riots broke out in at least a dozen countries as food prices hit record highs. The new surge in prices promises to unleash even greater hunger and deprivation, and more widespread social unrest, as hundreds of millions of people around the world contend with the impact of the ongoing recession and government austerity measures.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 925 million people worldwide suffered from hunger in 2010, an increase of about 150 million since 1995-97. One third of children in the so-called developing world are malnourished.

The new explosion in commodity prices is being fueled by the cheap credit policies of governments and central banks in Europe, Japan and, above all, the United States, where core short-term interest rates remain near zero. These policies, most critically the renewed turn by the US Federal Reserve to so-called “quantitative easing,” are designed to boost national stock markets and business profits by providing the banks and corporations with virtually free credit.

The Federal Reserve in November announced that it would purchase $600 billion in US Treasury securities by, in effect, printing dollars. This cheap-dollar policy has the effect of debasing the world’s primary trading and reserve currency, thereby fueling inflationary tendencies around the world and increasing the flow of hot money to emerging economies with faster growth and higher interest rates.

The impact is vastly destabilizing and exacerbates global economic imbalances. It also provides banks, hedge funds and corporations with wide vistas for speculation on commodity prices.

In the US alone, corporations and banks are sitting on some $3 trillion in cash which they refuse to invest in production and hiring. A good portion of the global surfeit of cash is being used to ramp up the prices of commodities―from oil, copper, cotton, gold and silver to food staples such as wheat, corn, rice and soybeans.

Natural disasters are also playing a role. Drought in the Black Sea region cut Russia’s wheat harvest by a third this year. Unusually hot and dry weather in Argentina and other Latin American crop exporting nations is threatening to further reduce the volume of corn, wheat and soybeans on world markets.

Such natural factors, however, are exacerbated by the impact of national divisions on the global economy. Russia responded to the failure of its crop by imposing an export ban on wheat. Similarly, India has imposed an export ban on onions. The effect of such measures is to increase the upward pressure on prices worldwide.

A major factor in the rise in corn prices is the diversion of a third of US corn production to the more profitable production of ethanol in 2010.

On the global commodity markets, wheat and corn have increased almost 50 percent over last year. Wheat prices soared to their highest level in over two years this week. US soybean futures have been rising rapidly since August, and corn ends the year at a 29-month high.

As the Wall Street Journal reported on December 24, “Traders are also anticipating that index funds will pour more money into agricultural commodities at the start of the year, pushing prices higher, analysts said.”

Alberto Weisser, chief executive of US-based Bunge, one of the biggest traders of commodities such as soybeans, told the Financial Times (December 29) that tight grain conditions would continue into the next year. “For the next 12 months,” he said, “I think you will see volatility of prices.”

Overall, world commodity prices have risen by 25 percent over the past six months. The European debt crisis and the Federal Reserve’s cheap-dollar policy have, according to the Journal (December 27), “driven investors to hard assets.”

Oil is now at $90 a barrel, nearing a 26-month high. The sharp increase in oil prices drives up transport costs for food and other commodities.

In the US, prices of gasoline at the pump are now averaging over $3 a gallon nationwide, according to the American Automobile Association. This is an increase of 20 cents from just last month and over 40 cents from a year ago.

Speaking Wednesday on the CBS network’s “Early Show,” former Shell Oil President John Hofmeister warned that gas could climb to $5 a gallon by 2012.

US copper prices reached a record for the second straight day on Tuesday. Copper is up 13 percent in December alone and 57 percent since June 7.

Gold pushed above $1,400 an ounce this week, near its record high. It is up 26 percent this year.

Highlighting the role of speculation in the commodity surge, the Wall Street Journal on Monday published a front-page article on the staggering rise in the price of silver. In the past four months, the precious metal has risen 51 percent to a series of 30-year highs, before inflation. It closed last week at $29.31 a troy ounce, as compared to $16.822 at the beginning of 2010―a rise of 74 percent.

Of the general surge in commodity prices, the Journal wrote: “Prices are rising despite over-supply and a lackluster recovery in industrial demand. Many analysts expected those factors would keep a lid on prices in 2010. What they didn’t expect was an overwhelming flow of money into the market from investors eager to ride a commodity rally.”

The newspaper quoted Stephen Briggs, senior metals strategist at BNP Paribas, as saying, “This is a story almost entirely about investment.”

The inflationary impact of Washington’s cheap-dollar policy is being felt most directly in the so-called “emerging economies,” led by China. Speculative cash from the West is wreaking havoc on prices of Chinese goods and, above all, housing costs. Housing prices in the US peaked at 6.4 times average earnings this decade. In Beijing, housing prices are 22 times average earnings.

In an attempt to stem inflation―Chinese consumer prices rose 5.1 percent in November―the People’s Bank of China on Saturday announced its second interest rate hike in 10 weeks. This poses the threat of a slowdown in China’s economic growth, which, under conditions of anemic growth in the US, Europe and Japan, has been the major factor in averting a relapse to negative economic growth worldwide.

The rise in food prices, which brings immense profits for agribusiness and speculators and untold suffering for millions of ordinary people, underscores the irrational and socially destructive nature of the capitalist market and production for profit.

By Barry Grey

It’s darkness at noon at Dharavi, the world’s biggest slum. And hope trickles like wounds simmering inside the labyrinth of hopeless inner lanes, An actor reaches out a hand, the sun is there, a cloud moves and the whole story is changed- Orson Welles Up above the sun-drenched pebbles and rags strewn 90-feet road, a huge canvas banner proclaims, “Dharavi glachit nahi hai, Dharavi Slumdog nahi hai…yeh udyogik nagri hai aur isko udyogik nagri ghoshit karna hamari maang hai,” (Dharavi is not a hovel nor is it a Slumdog… it is an industrial area and we demand that it should be declared an industrial area.)

The houses, like a patchwork box of rags, hover precariously along the gutter water, blackish, reddish and stale green. Call it tombs of poverty, worse, tombs of death, or call it the tomb of a spirit  fighting against all odds.

The swamp and wet lands which used to surround Dharavi have disappeared and in turn a garish concrete jungle has come up in the form of Mumbai’s swankiest, high-end business park — the Bandra-Kurla Complex. But the glossy buildings have not been able to infuse any inferiority complex among the ‘slum-dwellers’. Spindle-legged children peep in from the dark corridors where an uncertain sun sometimes trickles in and the red glow of cigarettes hardly reflecting on the churlish dark sluggish water flowing out from the complex layers of inside and outside drains.

The moans, the sighs, sounding like a recorded tape filtering from the wafer thin greenish walls, mingle with the sweat of lust and smell of diesel. The peacock shadows of the curtains and a woman’s dress sways in the hot turbid air and men crawl out like worms out of the oven. Bars of darkness and leopard spot darkness light up the shadowed wall, and the women, icons of prison, play with drops of blood. A picture boldly greets you displaying lust and rage along with a swirling smoke of uncontrolled human appetite for the forbidden, for outrage. The doors carry a name plate ‘Massage Parlor’, with mobile numbers etched below. Ladies with numbers, ladies like ants, sit near the white-grey froth of dark sluggish liquid outside the door. Smoking a bidi, the woman in an unadorned dress with not a stitch anywhere to spare, blushes, looks quizzically at the men scurrying, with a smile. The look betrays amnesia, hardly remembering them, while men may have remembered her and possibly discussed her with each other like anthropologists arguing for the superiority of one’s own culture, tradition and norms.

Sunken in old broken chairs, like their dreams, the guzzlers patronising the joint for years, along with waiters, curse the fan for not being breezy and disinterestedly watch wavering images on the television screen. A few youngsters wanting to graduate into manhood with hands-off mobile phones plugged into their ears like a hearing device for the stone deaf or electrodes attached for the brain-damaged, fill the beer mug in a rush; and soon a sheepish look and white beer froth spills over in tandem.

“The only change… earlier, the tannery workers used to frequent the country liquor bars; but with the Bandra-Kurla complex coming up, the Kolis have shut down their liquor distilleries and ‘aunties addas’ are now a thing of past. Today the workers from shops and other cottage industries like to drink beer… after all, the hoardings and television channels declare that drinking beer is fashionable,” a waiter says, his chain and bracelet rending the calm gold darkness of the beer bar with its gleam.

So the cottage industries are doing good? “No, in fact, the tanneries have now been replaced with junk food and papad manufacturing units. They employ only women and children. While women involved in papad manufacturing are somewhat better off than the other workers, the children are like bandhua mazdoor (bonded labourers) from Bihar. They work for over 12 to 14 hours a day and are paid not more than Rs 3-4,000 a year,” says comrade Vasant, a full-time party worker of a Left-wing ‘parliamentary’political party.

A copper light plays out shadows in the party office. Comrade Vasant rues the changing scenario and helplessness over the impotency of anger. “Nobody comes to the union office. What do we do? We need a yeda (a Mumbai slang for a mad man) to be after them… and how do we tackle the children? They are all unorganised workers and they are poor. The problem is of karuna (compassion) and law. If we try to stop it, they will die of hunger. And if we try to organise them, there are hundreds waiting in line seeking work.”

There is a silence in the communist party office and the twilight creeps in with stale tobacco smoke. Outside, the sweatshop-workshops which dot every corner and is slowly enveloping the old small-scale manufacturing sector is no different from the earlier ones. The place still reeks of furnace fumes day and night with rats running and scurrying all over.

By Prabhat Sharan

Prabhat Sharan is a Senior Journalist with interest in social, working class, wild-life conservation, philosophical and literary studies. He can be contacted at sharanprabhat@gmail.com. This story also appeared in Hardnews.

We were devastated to hear the news of the first martyr in 2011 being none other than Jawaher, the sister of the martyr Bassem Abu Rahma from Bil’in. Jawaher fainted in yesterday’s demonstration but died apparently of this toxic tear gas (a much stronger version with unknown chemicals than used in the West).

Those of you in Bethlehem area and want to get together to collect our thoughts, share our feelings etc, are welcome to come to my house tonight (Saturday until midnight). I will still go ahead and post my reflection that I wrote last night on the ending year for my thoughts are only deepened by this tragedy. You can also send condolence email to Dr. Rateb Abu Rahma: saborahmeh42@yahoo.com

Many writers came up with many ideas about 2010 and even occasionally predictions about 2011. Perhaps the most common theme among rational commentators is that this was the year were truth began to come out in such a large dose that it was hard to sustain mythology and the most common hope for 2011 is to see peace and justice prevail (no more ethnic cleansing, no more killing etc). When we mention truth we are not talking here merely about wikileaks (what is released here still remains the tip of the iceberg). We are talking about a number of studies, reports, slips, and scandals that came out that shook those in power.

Gideon Levy said in Haaretz that we may reflect on it as a year of truth for Israel, a year where the fog of mythologies cleared away and the world saw reality for what it is, that Israel is a society that does not desire peace but that is a racist society interested in more land grabs from native Palestinians. He concludes that “There is nothing like sunshine for disinfecting, so this was a relatively good year.” Others brought out the Goldstone report about Israeli massacres in Gaza. Others mentioned the smuggling of a long tape(out of thousands of cameras, computers, photos, and documents) and the testimony of survivors that showed the true nature of the criminal Israeli attack on humanitarian ships in International waters (not the manufactured tapes of the Israeli military). Palestinians talked about the scandals in the Palestinian authority and now the beginning of eth fall of corruption like with the Husseini and Dahlan affairs (both of them trying to protect themselves by threatening to expose other corruption).

In 2010, a number of events on the personal level were meaningful:

The death of both my brothers-in-laws leaving both of my sisters widows at a young age (both younger than me).

The death of other friends and inspiring personalities from Howard Zinn

We had many run-ins with Israeli occupation authorities. Arrested twice, detained twice, charged with non-existent “traffic’ violation once, gassed and pushed and harassed several times, soldiers invaded our neighborhood looking for me once.

Took trips to Italy (twice in January and June), to the US (in March), to Turkey (in July), and to Germany (November) speaking about realities under occupation (over 30 talks in total on these trips)

I gave over 50 other talks to visiting groups in Palestine (delegations from over 20 countries). I also helped put together four national and international conferences.

We finally got my book completed and published; this took much work during the year. “Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment” is already selling well and will be out in the US this week.

Participated in over 100 events of resistance some like our march through the wall from Bethlehem to Jerusalem during Palm Sunday (when even our Donkey and mules were arrested) and our actions in the last week of the year with over 80 activists from euro-

Palestine were truly inspiring and highly successful events.

We started offering services in our new clinical laboratory.

I provided consulting for laboratory in the US in clinical cytogenetics.

Taught courses at Birzeit and Bethlehem Universities.

We did field trips and research on aspects of biodiversity and chromosomes of animals in Palestine.

Supervized research by masters students some of it yielded significant and meaningful results that are of use in Palestine.

Our son visited us from the US during olive harvest and we had a great harvest, twice the output of last year.

Events at the personal level as can be seen above are not disconnected/separate from the bigger picture of happenings around us:

The Israelis constructed a watch tower at Ush Ghrab and we protested but those in power structures in the town wanted no protests

There were over 100 meaningful actions of Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions around the world.

Palestinian school students invent a seeing walking stick for the blind.

Hundreds of internationals attempt to get into Gaza with a freedom flotilla of ships. Israeli criminal gangs (pirates) attack them in International waters and murder 9 and kidnap all others. They finally released them after mistreatment and after stealing all their cameras, videos, and photos (trying to suppress the story). One video smuggled out showed Israeli commandoes executing human rights activists.

The Haifa conference and the Houston conference and the Stuttgart and other conferences around the world emphasized a one state scenario with the right of return.

Israel attacks the Goldstone report and refuses an international independent investigation of its breeches of International law.

The charade of a peace process was reignited for a while but then quickly extinguished by continued Israeli colonial settlement activities.

-Israel’s government and public continue to support open racism in both laws proposed and passed in the Knesset and those rulings in certain municipalities and in edicts issued by prominent Rabbis. From laws to demand loyalty from non-Jews to a “Jewish state” to demanding no dating or marriage between Jews and non-Jews, to denial of right to rent in cities like Safad (used to be Arab city and now Judaicized).

I send an email once a week summarizing events here in Palestine especially on popular resistance and our own thoughts and experiences and these are archived here.

So we look with pride and sadness at the year that passed and look forward to a better year to come. Like life in general, 2010 had lots of tragedies and setbacks but also lots of successes and meaningful moments. I especially appreciate that we met hundreds of new people during the year; some have become very good friends. He last week for example, we traveled around with nearly a hundred internationals to places like Al-Walaja and Bil’in that so much suffering. We were energized by the actions even though some of us were injured, some of us arrested. So we look for 2011 as hopefully a year of peace and justice. This can only happen if enough people get around ACTIONS (not mere talks), actions like popular resistance, actions like media work, and actions like boycotts, divestments, and sanctions.

Here are 50 actions you can do for Palestine in 2011.

By Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD

02 January, 2011

On October 25, 2003, Khodorkovsky (below called MK) was arrested for tax evasion and corruption, dating from when the Soviet Union dissolved and state privatizations followed. “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime,” explained Honore de Balzac. Billionaire Russian oligarchs, like MK, illegitimately amassed great wealth, avoiding prosecution during Yeltsin’s tenure (1991 – 1999).

Beginning in 1991, various socio-economic measures were implemented without public discussion or parliamentary approval. Most important were Yeltsin’s personal directives, creating a billionaire aristocracy handed the economy’s most important, profitable sectors, free of charge – literally a license to loot.

Changes began slowly under Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, though not easily. The rot is so widespread and deep. Oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky fled to London, Moscow2, taking with them great fortunes. Others staying behind wish they’d gone after Medvedev announced during an October 2008 Council to Combat Corruption session that:

“Corruption in our nation has not simply become wide-scale. It has become a common, everyday phenomenon which characterizes the very life of our society. We are not simply talking about commonplace bribery. We are talking about a severe illness which is corroding the economy and corrupting all society.”

As a result, prosecutions followed. Some 2009 examples against bureaucrats included:

— Nevelsk Mayor Vladimir Pak’s suspension and charge of embezzling 56 million rubles ($1.5 million);

— two Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) Main Directorate officers detained on suspicion of accepting over $100,000 in bribes; and

— MVD Lt. Col. Dmitry Luzgin charged with extorting $1 million from Russian Real Estate House management.

According to MVD figures, annual Russian corruption ranges from $20 – $40 billion. In 2006, Alexander Buksman, deputy general prosecutor first deputy, estimated annual corruption at $240 billion, involving business and bureaucrats. However, a combination of legal loopholes and close private-public alliances lets most offenses go unpunished.

Major Media Defend MK

On October 29, (four days after his arrest), a New York Times editorial headlined, “Putin’s Old-Style KGB Tactics,” saying:

“After laboring to project the image of a rational, law-abiding statesman, President Vladimir Putin of Russia has reverted to the vengeful violence of his old employer….(Arresting MK) was a serious mistake,” citing market plunges “on the fear that the Kremlin was showing its true authoritarian colors.”

An earlier August 13, 2003 Times editorial headlined, “Moscow Machinations,” saying:

“….nobody knows for sure whether President Vladimir Putin is personally behind the sudden crackdown on the giant oil company Yukos….What is clear is that the Kremlin’s strong-arm tactics have little to do with battling economic crime and a lot to do with power and the coming elections in Russia.”

An October 28 Washington Post editorial claimed “no one is safe from arbitrary prosecution, or from the political whims of the Kremlin, and the US State Department suggested that MK’s arrest involved “selective prosecution,” adding that “We are concerned about the rule of law, about maintaining the basic freedom of Russians.”

In fact, MK was summoned for questioning. At the time he headed Yukos and was Russia’s richest oligarch, ranking 16th on Forbes billionaires list. Today, he faces years more in prison. More on that below.

The Times railed about “masked agents” arresting him instead of pursuing him in court. In fact, he defied a court order to appear before prosecutors. Only then did arrest follow. Other allegations suggested Yukos involvement in murders or attempted ones, targeting bureaucrats or business competitors who interfered with company operations. One was committed on MK’s birthday, apparently a gift to the boss.

MK’s Background

He began as a Stalinist bureaucrat. In 1987, he used his Komsomol district committee control to organize Menatep, a commercial enterprise to promote inventions and industrial innovations. It later became one of Russia’s largest banks. In the 1990s, through ties with Kremlin bureaucrats, he used funds stolen from the state and unwary investors to amass huge holdings in formerly state-owned enterprises at a fraction of their value. In 1995 he bought Yukos assets for $300 million. In 2003, its market value was $30 billion, a 100-fold ill-gotten gain.

Why MK Was Targeted

Besides corruption and tax evasion, political motives were also in play. Allegedly he was bankrolling opposition parties, breaking an unwritten agreement to stay out of politics in return for the state keeping quiet about illicitly gotten riches.

Key also were deals he was negotiating with ExxonMobil and Chevron for up to a 50% stake in Yukos, violating Kremlin policy to keep Russian control of state resources in government or home-grown private hands. In addition, MK had White House political ties. For example, before becoming Bush’s National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice was a Chevron board member for 10 years and had a tanker named in her honor. It was then quietly renamed the “Altair Voyager.”

Another factor was public hostility toward oligarchs, so pervasive that prosecuting them is politically popular. US anger is a combination of geopolitics and defending predatory capitalism’s rapaciousness, notably because of America’s own criminal class. For decades, a Washington-corporate cabal shifted trillions of public wealth to private hands, especially to omnipotent Wall Street. At issue is shielding them at all costs so corrupt practices can continue until everything worth owning is stolen.

Before MK’s arrest, Yukos was privately held. Afterwards, company assets were bought by state-controlled Rosneft. Then, the majority state-owned Gazprom (the world’s largest natural gas company) bought oil giant Sibneft. In 2006, Putin decided against further nationalizations, but continued oil/gas industry control by having industry giants like Lukoil maintain close government connections.

Moreover, to stay in charge, state-owned Transneft controls pipeline transportation. In fact, it’s the largest Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) shareholder. Russia wants its production leveraged to control transport and refining to maintain power over EU and neighboring state customers.

As a result, the idea of selling large Yukos or other major resource company assets to foreign buyers is anathema, especially to Big Oil giants. MK also wanted Russia’s pipeline monopoly broken with a private one to shift the flow of oil. It was like declaring war on the state and got him incarcerated.

On May 31, 2005, he was convicted of fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to nine years in prison, later reduced to eight years. In March 2009, he and Platon Lebedev (billionaire, former Group Menatep CEO and close MK associate) were tried for embezzlement and money laundering. On December 27, 2010, both men were convicted, and on December 30 sentenced to 14 years imprisonment, including time served. Lebedev also was convicted in 2005.

Rallying Round the Thief

Again, The New York Times came to MK’s defense in a December 28 editorial headlined, “What Rule of Law,” saying:

President Dmitri Medvedev can prove his “rule of law” credentials “by using his pardon power to ensure that (MK) faces no additional prison time after being convicted on trumped-up embezzlement charges this week. (He’s) already served seven years as a result of Mr. Putin’s judicial vendetta against him.”

Fairness and truth were never NYT long suits, editorially defending a world-class criminal, guilty of predatory rapaciousness. On December 28, the White House said:

“We are deeply concerned that a Russian judge today has indicated that for the second time (MK) and Platon Lebedev will be convicted. We are troubled by the allegations of serious due process violations, and what appears to be an abusive use of the legal system for improper ends.”

No nation more egregiously violates rule of law principles than America at home and abroad. No other more heinously spurns human rights, civil liberties, due process, judicial fairness, and democratic values. None also are more unjustifiably self-righteous.

No broadsheet is more hypocritical than The Times, tainted by decades of supporting wealth, corporate interests, and imperial wars. Daily, its agenda is visible, arrogantly supporting power over popular interests, even mega-criminals deserving condemnation. Indeed, truth and fairness were never NYT long suits. Nor America’s.

By Stephen Lendman

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

During the 1950s I grew up in a family who rooted for the success of African Americans in their just struggle for civil rights and full legal equality.  Then in 1962 it was the terror of my own personal imminent nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis that first sparked my interest in studying international relations and U.S. foreign policy as a young boy of 12:  “I can do a better job than this!”

With the escalation of the Vietnam War in 1964 and the military draft staring me right in the face, I undertook a detailed examination of it.  Eventually I concluded that unlike World War II when my Father had fought and defeated the Japanese Imperial Army as a young Marine in the Pacific, this new war was illegal, immoral, unethical, and the United States was bound to lose it.  America was just picking up where France had left off at Dien Bien Phu.  So I resolved to do what little I could to oppose the Vietnam War.

In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson gratuitously invaded the Dominican Republic, which prompted me to commence a detailed examination of U.S. military interventions into Latin America from the Spanish-American War of 1898 up to President Franklin Roosevelt’s so-called “good neighbor” policy.  At the end of this study, I concluded that the Vietnam War was not episodic, but rather systemic: Aggression, warfare, bloodshed, and violence were just the way the United States Power Elite had historically conducted their business around the world.  Hence, as I saw it as a young man of 17, there would be more Vietnams in the future and perhaps someday I could do something about it as well as about promoting civil rights for African Americans. These twins concerns of my youth would gradually ripen into a career devoted to international law and human rights.

So I commenced my formal study of International Relations with the late, great Hans Morgenthau in the first week of January 1970 as a 19 year old college sophomore at the University of Chicago by taking his basic introductory course on that subject.  At the time, Morgenthau was leading the academic forces of opposition to the detested Vietnam War, which is precisely why I chose to study with him.  During ten years of higher education at the University of Chicago and Harvard, I refused to study with openly pro-Vietnam-War professors as a matter of principle and also on the quite pragmatic ground that they had nothing to teach me.

In the summer of 1975, it was Morgenthau who emphatically encouraged me to become a professor instead of doing some other promising things with my life:  “If Morgenthau thinks I should become a professor, then I will become a professor!”  After almost a decade of working personally with him, Morgenthau provided me with enough inspiration, guidance, and knowledge to last now almost half a lifetime.

Historically, this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898.  Then the Republican administration of President  William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to near genocidal conditions.  Additionally, McKinley’s military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure America’s economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the “open door” policy.   But over the next four decades America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the “Pacific” would ineluctably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l, and thus America’s precipitation into the ongoing Second World War.    Today a century later the serial imperial aggressions launched and menaced by the Republican Bush Jr. administration and now the Democratic Obama administration  are  threatening to set off World War III.

By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush Jr. administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and peoples living in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf under the bogus pretexts of (1) fighting a war against international terrorism; and/or (2) eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or (3) the promotion of democracy; and/or (4) self-styled “humanitarian intervention.”  Only this time the geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago:  control and domination of two-thirds of the world’s hydrocarbon resources and thus the very fundament and energizer of the global economic system – oil and gas.  The Bush Jr./ Obama  administrations  have  already targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia for further conquest or domination, together with the strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their transportation.  In this regard, the Bush Jr. administration  announced the establishment of the U.S. Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in order to better control, dominate, and exploit both the natural resources and the variegated peoples of the continent of Africa, the very cradle of our human species.

This current bout of U.S. imperialism is what Hans Morgenthau denominated “unlimited imperialism” in his seminal work Politics Among Nations (4th ed. 1968, at 52-53):

The outstanding historic examples of unlimited imperialism are the expansionist policies of Alexander the Great, Rome, the Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries, Napoleon I, and Hitler. They all have in common an urge toward expansion which knows no rational limits, feeds on its own successes and, if not stopped by a superior force, will go on to the confines of the political world. This urge will not be satisfied so long as there remains anywhere a possible object of domination–a politically organized group of men which by its very independence challenges the conqueror’s lust for power. It is, as we shall see, exactly the lack of moderation, the aspiration to conquer all that lends itself to conquest, characteristic of unlimited imperialism, which in the past has been the undoing of the imperialistic policies of this kind….

On 10 November 1979 I visited with Hans Morgenthau at his home in Manhattan. It proved to be our last conversation before he died on 19 July 1980.  Given his weakened physical but not mental condition and his serious heart problem, at the end of our necessarily abbreviated one-hour meeting I purposefully asked him what he thought about the future of international relations. This revered scholar, whom international relations experts generally consider to be the founder of modern international political science in the post World War II era, responded:

Future, what future? I am extremely pessimistic. In my opinion the world is moving ineluctably towards a third world war—a strategic nuclear war. I do not believe that anything can be done to prevent it. The international system is simply too unstable to survive for long. The SALT II Treaty is important for the present, but over the long haul it cannot stop the momentum. Fortunately, I do not believe that I will live to see that day. But I am afraid you might.

The factual circumstances surrounding the outbreaks of both the First World War and the Second World War currently hover like the Sword of Damocles over the heads of all humanity.  It is imperative that we undertake a committed and concerted effort to head-off Hans Morgenthau’s final prediction on the cataclysmic demise of the human race.

By Prof. Francis Boyle

Global Research, December 24, 2010

The start of the New Year is a good time to talk about Time. About this, we can all agree—there are only twenty four hours in a day. Zillions of companies and persons want a piece of that time from us in order to make money. But that supply of Time is not expandable. Unlike other supplies in the marketplace, this one has no give beyond twenty four hours a day.

Note the massive increase in commercial requests for our time in return for our dollars—directly or indirectly—compared to 60 years ago. Instead of three television networks bidding for our time in order to sell advertising, there are over 100 channels on any cable system. There are ever more radio stations, more online blogs and websites, more video games, more music. In 1950, there were no cell phones, no iPhones, no Blackberries, no e-mails, no text messaging, no apps, no E-books, no faxes. Entertainment fare is now 24/7 and expanding rapidly on the Internet.

But there are still only twenty four hours per day. What are these merchants expecting of the consumers’ time? Squeezing more into less time as attention spans shorten, for one. Marketing so irresistibly that people buy far more of these videos and other entertainment services than they have time to listen or to view.

Think of the VCRs and the DVDs piled up at home that have never been seen. Same for many books. The big bestseller on the universe: The Grand Design by scientist Stephen Hawking became status furniture on sitting room tables except for the one in a hundred who actually read that book.

In short, the gap between what we think we have time for when we buy these products and what we actually expend time on is setting records every day.

However, people of all ages are spending more time on casual gaming (75 million Americans is the estimate) than on solitaire or cards—apart from being addicted to competitive video games. So there is some substitution at play here.

E-mails and text messaging are taking a large slice out of the day, in part because they are so cheap and in part because they are so personal. “What gives” here is that less time is being spent on the telephone but by no means in equal measure.

So cheap and easy are modern communications that it is often harder to actually reach people than during the days of the dial phone.

How much time do we spend trying to get someone to return calls or even to react to E-mails (which are increasingly passé in favor of text-messages) during the day or week? After awhile one stops trying to make telephone contact because of the low probability of actually talking to the person you want to reach.

People are so overloaded that just getting them to respond to a friendly letter, call or electronic message requires many repetitions. The banality of abundance is at work here.

On the other hand, where you do get quick replies are from your “friends” with mutual gossip and personal tid-bits drive up the back and forth volume immensely. A 16 year old girl said that she sends 600 text messages a day and “would die without her cell phone.”

Still the sellers are more and more vigorously competing for a piece of the buyers’ time. Where is all this going? First the sales appeal may ostensibly be for the buyers’ time—eg. toys, DVDs—but it really is an appeal to the buyers’ hope or belief that he/she has the time sometime. That is what gives what economists call the “elasticity” to the seemingly finite twenty four hour day. Whether that time is devoted to the program or product is immaterial to the seller once the sale is made. The successful seller is happy.

But what is happening to the buyer? More stuff piles up. More sense of being time burdened when weeks and months pass without getting around to using the purchased goods or services. More susceptibility to buying the newest upgrade or version out of a sense of getting to now what they haven’t had time to get to before with the older purchase.

Moreover, as a society of buyers, we become ever more fractured audiences—especially for national television—and it is less likely that we see or react to the events of the day as a community.

I was reminded of this observation recently when Washington’s current outrages of endemic wars, waste and corruption rattle the public far less than Nixon’s Watergate behavior. In 1974 after Nixon fired his Attorney General and the Special Prosecutor who were investigating his involvement in the Watergate burglary and cover-up, Tennesseans sent 40,000 telegrams to one of their Senators over three days. Members of Congress, even with the ease of E-mail and Twitter, do not get that kind of meaningful volume.

When our time feels overwhelmed and the marketers are banging on our doors for more time claims, what time is there left for necessary solitude, for family and other socializing, for kids playing outside instead of being addicted to indoor screens, even at dinner, for, excuse the words, reflection and contemplation?

It comes down to whether we have any time from our absorption into virtual reality to engage reality, including civil and political realities. A Society whose people do not show up for public meetings, hearings, protests and even local folklore events is a society that is cannibalizing its democracy, its critical sense of community purpose.

Take back some of those discretionary hours from the marketers and electronic entertainers. Devote them to shaping the future for you and your children.

By Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book – and first novel – is, Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.