Sergei Magnitsky, 37, was a courageous lawyer who fought the corruption in Russia and went public with his accusations. The result was first his arrest on tax evasion charges and then his death in a Moscow prison. Now, President Dmitry Medvedev has fired the prison head and 19 other officials. However, there will apparently be no investigation into his original arrest or its connection to his allegations against government officials.
The case is viewed as another in a line of cases where whistleblowers and public interest advocates have been arrested or ended up dead in Russia. For a Washington Post article on the issue, click here.
Western colleagues of Magnitsky at Firestone Duncan call it a cover-up where Russian officials want to avoid answering questions about the use of arrests to crackdown on critics.
He did have a “pancreatic ailment” but heart failure was listed as the cause of death.
For the full story, click here
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/world/europe/russia-drops-charges-against-doctor-in-jail-death.html?hp
Carlyle Moulton: “I don’t think it will be very long before the same kind of thing is happening in the USA.”
Given my vantage point, it’s already happening in the USA.
“No one actually says openly that one of the purposes of keeping drugs illegal is to prevent upward social mobility by the members of the Negro underclass threatening the hold of privileged whites on the higer status that they have achieved”
Carlyle,
Yes that is my point. Most economic policy we see in the world is aimed at maintenance of the plutocratic status quo. As for moving to Australia when things go really bad here in America, my sense is the only Aussie advantage would be your plethora of land and relatively small population. However, an influx of foreign emigres probably would not be greeted with fervor by all of you and if America goes all the way bad, Australia no doubt would tend to closely follow as the world returns to the days of true feudalism.
Mike S.
My previous post was a response to you, but I forgot to include your name.
I still think some of the arguments for micro-economic reform made by economic rationalists make sense, but the later results of globalization are tending to disillusion me. Maybe there are other factors besides purely economic ones and the concentration on the latter is leaving them unaddressed. Rule of law is one but I am not sure that Russia is much worse than the US in this respect. Law in the US is pay to play which puts its protection out of the reach of most citizens. Solving disputes with hit squads as in Russia may be more efficient.
Some of the institutions like the World Bank may have been captured by powerful vested interests and the policies they enforce may not be intended to improve the lot of the citizens of the nations which they “help”. Their apparent failure may really be their actual success in doing what they were actually intended to do, much like the apparent failure of the US drug laws. No one actually says openly that one of the purposes of keeping drugs illegal is to prevent upward social mobility by the members of the Negro underclass threatening the hold of privileged whites on the higer status that they have achieved, but I bet that some do discuss this when in the safe company of similar right thinking people.
Byron.
Putin may also have thought that Bush is a decent man, if so he was wrong.
I don’t think it will be very long before the same kind of thing is happening in the USA. Prof Turley and all Turley posters, I suggest you should lay the groundwork to flee to Australia when unabashed rule by Junta and death squad arrives. It will not be long in coming and it could last for a period as short as ten years or as long as forty. The reason that I don’t suggest the UK as a flee to destination is that under the rotten New Labour Britain has followed the US well down the path to Hell.
Australia does not have nice things like the US 1st and 4th amendments but democracy here is not a decayed as it is in the US.
Those of you who voted for Democrats and for Obama now know that you have been conned. When Obama is whacked it may really be by a lone nut and not by a conspiracy. It is now clear that Obama and the democrat senators and congressmen that you elected last year are every bit as much loyal servants of the kleptocratic ruling class as were Bush and the Republicans. There would be absolutely no reason for the ruling class to fear Obama, but he will probably still be assassinated by an idiot egged on by Limbaugh and Beck who believes the nonsense about a Kenyan born Muslim terrorist sympathiser. At least when Obama gets taken out there will be no reason to mourn as people did for Kennedy. Of course Kennedy may have been an illusion as well, it may be that assassination saved his reputation, that he may not have been as principled as people think that he was.
I wonder what Vince Foster and this man had in common. Oh yeah, one was placed in prison with trumped up charges but both are dead….
If a human is kicked or punched repeatedly in the upper abdomen, then rupturing of the pancreas is very likely; a bit more than clinical pancreatitis.
One view of human history is the amount of blown opportunities that have repercussions that expand the damage. When Gorbachev, not Reagan, caused the final fall of the Soviet, there existed a country ripe for positive reform. When asked for aid in changing the economy G.H.w. Bush sent a bunch of Chicago School of Economics morons who aided in developing a dysfunctional society, ruled by criminals and ambitious former communists, who were in reality apolitical sociopaths. This has led to the elevation of Putin, who is running the country in the same way it has been run for centuries by Tsars and Communists. The cast of characters change, the ersatz political philosophy is renamed and the people of Russia are still brutally oppressed.
BIL–
It’s almost here! Officer Ken Roth told me he HEARD it coming across the sea with his extra-auditory abilities.
Coming soon to a government near you!
another sin of W’s, he thought Putin was a decent man. What a schmuck, Bush not Putin.
That “I looked into his eyes” stuff was a crock of sh . . .