A good summary of where we are on the Politkovskaya case

Yesterday, Der Spiegel had two long depressing articles about Russia. I blogged about one (Putin and his teddy bear changing places) but the other one is equally important. It is a summary of where we are on the Politkovskaya case and it does not constitute happy reading (does anything about Russia?)

Five years after the murder of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow, the identities of the presumed killers are now known. A picture is emerging of a web of intrigue involving the Chechen mafia, shadowy intelligence agents and a corrupt police officer with a gambling addiction.

The journalists try to unravel all the different strands in Chechnya and Russia but wonder whether any of the big shots (if I may use that word in this context) will receive the sort of punishment they deserve.

After his arrest in August 2007, Lieutenant Colonel Ryaguzov admitted that he had obtained the journalist's home address from an intelligence database for a middleman. He later revoked his statement. He was released and is still on the FSB's payroll today.

In a country with an independent judiciary and a vital democracy, ties between the criminal underworld and law enforcement agencies would have led to hearings before parliamentary subcommittees, public protests and high-level resignations. In Russia, however, even many investigative journalists and most opposition politicians are too afraid to speak out about the Politkovskaya murder.

Thanks to the research done by Novaya Gazeta, the case is now being revisited in a second trial. It is clear that a single killer could not have been behind the murder. It was too carefully and professionally prepared for that. It is unclear, however, who exactly hired whom. Did Russian intelligence agents hire the Chechen mafia, or did the mafia hire the intelligence agents? The identity of the person who ordered the killing also remains a mystery.

The Chechen trail peters out in Achkhoy-Martan, where a poster sings the praises of the autocratic Kadyrov. Politkovskaya had accused him of committing torture and murder. In 2006, she called him a "coward armed to the teeth."

No one seems eager to examine the possible connections between Kadyrov's men and the mafia group in Achkhoy-Martan, which prepared the murder together with Lieutenant Colonel Pavlyuchenkov. Even Novaya Gazeta isn't sending its Caucasus expects to Chechnya anymore to look into the case. "Since my mother died, Chechnya has been a blank spot on the map," says Politkovskaya's son Ilya. "No one dares to report from there anymore."

No, this is not the Soviet Union, let alone its Stalinist manifestation, but the system is now considerably worse than the Tsarist autocracy was, certainly in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

This is also very funny

A reader has sent me a link to the list of demands from the Occupy Wall Street mob. Incoherent to the point of complete insanity. Even the ridiculous demands of the sixties had more brainwork behind them.

Mark Daniel, the author, among other books of an entertaining history of UKIP has cut across discussions as to whether this bilge was sub-Marxism or moronic Marxism with the word Lennonism. These idiots, he said, get their notions from the songs of a drug-crazed pop-star's writings. A word that needs to be used more often.

Commentary thinks this could be a disaster for the Democrats in a way that the Tea Party was supposed to be for the GOP but was not.

Another trade war with Canada?

The Wall Street Journal reports

The European Union's executive body will propose that oil extracted from sands should be treated as dirtier than conventional oil, a move that will inflame a spat with Canada, a major producer of oil from sands, an EU official familiar with the matter said Tuesday.

The European Commission, which has executive powers within the EU, agreed Monday to set a higher value for carbon-dioxide emissions from tar sands compared with crude oil extracted from conventional wells, the official told The Wall Street Journal.

This would discourage the use of oil from sands in Europe, where companies have an obligation to cut their CO2 emissions by 2020. To do so they will have to use the cleanest fuels.

Monday's decision is likely to deepen the EU's dispute with Canada, which is negotiating a free trade agreement with the bloc and says such a provision discriminates against one of its key exports.

Is this a random decision to ensure that European countries use oil from the Middle East in preference to oil from Canada? Just asking. Glenn Reynolds asks even more bluntly: "I wonder which Arabs bribed which officials?"

Was Medvedev ever a reformer?

Did he ever intend to implement the various liberal and constitutional ideas he spoke of or was he always merely a seat-warmer for Putin? A long article in Der Spiegel, which is very well worth reading, thinks the latter. This blog does not disagree. The outlook for Russia is poor.

More grandstanding

For some reason this sort of nonsense is taken seriously:

BORIS JOHNSON is not reading from David Cameron’s script at the Tory party conference in Manchester. While the Prime Minister described a "modern and compassionate" party on Sunday, the Mayor of London went wildly off-piste by discussing his new demand for tough laws against swearing at policemen.

Johnson is to address the conference this week and as a true darling of the party he will be a major attraction. His words will be carefully scrutinised for signs of friction with Cameron, or of increased ambition.

So Boris Johnson is ambitious. Well, well, well. Any stories about dogs biting men or supermodels taking drugs? No? Well, I guess one about an ambitious Tory politician will have to do.

Apparently, he is grandstanding at the party conference. I am shocked, I tell you, shocked. And there is a biography that shows a continuing rivalry between the two, Cameron and Johnson. Are we going into another stage of the "political rivals in one party" soap opera, last seen starring Blair and Brown? Surely not. (Excuse me while I yawn.)

Meanwhile BoJo as he is known by the hacks, has been boasting about his achievements as Mayor of London and telling us to re-elect him. As the alternative to him is Ken Livingstone, I see no real problem about that re-election. But is Hizonner the Mayor going to boast about this?

Tube drivers in the capital will see their pay go over the £50,000-a-year mark under a four-year wage deal negotiated between London Underground and union leaders.

The Rail Maritime and Transport union began consulting on a four-year pay deal, which LU said offered the prospect of no industrial action over wages until at least 2015.

Under the deal, staff will get a 5% pay increase this year followed by RPI inflation plus 0.5% in the subsequent three years.

Industry sources said that if RPI inflation stays reasonably high, some tube staff will receive a pay rise approaching 20% by the end of the settlement period.

This will not be popular in London and among people who struggle into London to work here, work a darn sight harder than those drivers and mostly for considerably less money.

Bob Crow has been crowing:

General secretary Bob Crow said: "We saw major movement from LU and we now take this improved offer back to our local reps.

"In these days of austerity we have shown … trade unionism is the best defence from attacks on jobs and living standards. I doubt you will find a better offer than this anywhere else in the public sector."

He is, of course, one of the prominent supporters of the People's Pledge Campaign that is fighting for that referendum we are likely to lose. All of a pattern, I'd say.

From that conference in Manchester

This is the last week of political grandstanding, known as the party political conferences. We just have to get through it.

I am quite pleased, as readers will know that the Boy-King has again said that there will be no in/out referendum on EU membership. There is no question in my mind that we would lose. Whenever any eurosceptic tells me with great pomposity or sincerity (take your pick) that we are bound to win I suggest one or two questions that are bound to come up in the campaign and ask him or her how he or she will reply.

For instance: exactly how do we effect that exit? What are we to do with all the deals that now go under the EU's umbrella but will no longer exist once we are out? I am not talking just about trade deals, which will have to be re-negotiated but about other matters, such as student exchange. Whenever I raise that one people look horrified, not having realized just how much of our life is now governed by the EU.

These are not insuperable barriers - everything can be renegotiated in a different framework and, probably, more advantageously to us but until we understand and have a plan how we proceed, we shall lose any referendum.

This morning I was once again told by e-mail from Bill Cash's office (no link to the text but it is not private communication):

In the most recent YouGov poll, almost half of the British public would vote for Britain to leave the European Union if there were a referendum on British membership. In fact, 47% would want Britain to leave the EU compared to 33% who say they would vote for Britain to retain its membership. This means the British people do want to see a real change.

Do these people really think that 47 per cent for withdrawal so long before the other side has even bothered to campaign is of any significance? That figure is not high enough and will become even lower as the arguments so few of us can actually answer will pour forth from well-funded sources.

In case, somebody wants a few arguments about the extent of our trade with other EU countries (which can and will be renegotiated if we ever get to leave), here are some. Interesting figures that show, unsurprisingly, our famous trade agreements to be not in our interest; and the refusal to tell the truth how much of that trade is actually with other countries but goes through Antwerp and Rotterdam.

It was ever thus

A good piece by Brendan O'Neill in which he lambasts the stupid, spoilt rich kids who are running Occupy Wall Street. But his idea that this is something new is peculiar. What of the various protests of the sixties? Were they really working class or particularly well supported by the majority of working people? Not in the West. What of the silly anarchists of West Berlin, a movement that eventually morphed into the Baader-Meinhof gang? Hardly working class?

Does he really think there is something peculiarly novel about this:

Occupy Wall Street claims to be a mass workers’ movement, but it’s nothing of the sort. It is in fact a tiny, self-selected group of self-righteous, mostly middle-class activists who have failed to win over large sections of the American public to their “cause” – which isn’t surprising when you consider that on the rare occasion that these trendy banker-bashers talk about the American public, they do so with a metaphorical peg on their snouts. An article on the Occupy Wall Street website claims “the working class in this country has been brainwashed by MSM, Fox News and the Right-wing propaganda machine”. It says everyday Americans, being stupid, do not understand what socialism is, because “they have been emotionally brainwashed against it”. And so it falls to the cool, fashionable, oh-so-enlightened activists of Occupy Wall Street to help “de-programme people against the brainwashing they’ve experienced”. That is, the oiks must be re-educated by the hipsters. The little people must have their minds cleaned out by their moral and fashion superiors. Occupy Wall Street mashes together the outlook of Kim Jong-Il with the politics of Susan Sarandon, giving rise to a weirdly hippyish yet authoritarian gathering of slackers-cum-elitists.

There was this chap called Lenin who, following in the footsteps of Marx, Engels, Chernyshevsky and Plekhanov, proclaimed that the working class could not possibly sort out its own problems and trade unions were merely distractions from the real revolution. What was needed was a vanguard of middle class (or classless, as he preferred to call them) revolutionaries who formed a party, created a revolution and led the working class to the bright future, incidentally murdering, torturing and impoverishing them. The only difference is that this bunch of nonsensical lay-abouts will not get to lead a revolution.