Update on the Putin-Yukos update

Atrios links this commentary on the Putin-Yukos deal which goes along swimmingly, with the exception of the most recent bit of information.

From Matthew Caserta:

I’ll give Putin this: He has balls. Unlike Boris Yeltsin, who dropped to his knees for every greasy hood with a dollar for eight consecutive years, Putin decided to make an example of Misha. In America, we settle these disputes by giving the F-117 contract to a different company. In Russia, the methods are a little different: an untimely car accident, an exploding briefcase, a mysterious fatal illness contracted after a routine phone conversation. Absolutely the most civilized of these options is imprisonment and seizure of assets. This is the route Putin took with Khodorkovsky. In response to the latter’s decision not to abide by the laws of gangsterdom, Putin decided, for once, to enforce the laws of the state.


Okay, but there's a little twist, if that's the case. And that is that Putin did not seize Yukos' assets. Not yet he hasn't. And his statement from Italy would make it seem that he won't. Yes, I know. People lie. We shall see.


Many of us who spent the 90s in Russia became aware over time that the aim of the United States was to create a rump state that would allow economic interests to strip assets at will. The population in this scheme was to be good for consuming foreign goods produced abroad with Russia’s own cheaply sold raw materials. The aim was a castrated state, anarchy, a vast, confused territory of captive consumers, cheap labor and unguarded oil and aluminum.

...Some of us who came home after seeing this began to realize that the same process is underway in the United States: the erosion of the tax base, the gradual appropriation of the tools of government by economic interests, a massive, disorganized population useless to everybody except as shoppers. That is their revolution: smashing states everywhere and creating a scattered global nation of villas and tax shelters, as inaccessible as Olympus, forbidding entry even to mighty dictators.

No doubt.

Like I said - games that you (and I) aren't invited to play. Hide and watch. You didn't even used to get to do that.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.