Wednesday Links: Ramzan Kadyrov Will Find You and Kill You Wherever You Are

BOULDER, Colorado -- We have been slow to post things the past couple of weeks due to vacations and general malaise, so I have tried to include the most fascinating selections of news from the past three weeks. For this round we have more outrageous news from Russia involving political assassinations, economic nationalism, and the dumb Olympics, as well as the story of a nuclear dumping ground in my own back yard.

Newsru.com: Kill Ramzan Kadyrov. Okay, that's not what the story is about, it's just my own personal appeal to the world. The Chechen president has been sending assassins all over the world to kill his political opponents, most recently militia commander Sulim Yamadayev in Dubai. I guess he fancies himself as a regular Chechen Dick Cheney.

The Moscow Times: Screw Moody's. The speaker of Russia's parliament, Boris Gryzlov, says he doesn't trust foreign rating agencies. Now, the credit raters really shit the bed on the mortgage-backed securities fiasco, and maybe they shouldn't be trusted, but I don't need an idiot like Gryzlov to tell me that.

New York Times: Salzburg 2014. Some of Russia's biggest political attention whores have thrown their hats into the ring for the upcoming mayoral elections in Sochi, the presumptive site of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Some candidates have said they want to move the games to other sites in Russia that are more suitable; regardless of who wins, there's still a good chance that the IOC will decide to hold the Olympics elsewhere, because Sochi - and Russia - is such a basketcase.

High Country News: Don't eat the dirt, kids. Rocky Flats was one of the country's largest nuclear weapons manufacturing plants; now it's a wildlife refuge. The story of the contamination and clean up of the site does not inspire confidence.

Detroit News: Pets of Meat III. Pulitzer Prize-winning a-hole Charlie LeDuff "reports" on an urban raccoon hunter, and he serves up healthy portions of patronizing, patrician, and mildly racist commentary to go with the barbecued coon meat. And as Jossip reports, the whole story is totally plagiarized from a suspiciously similar story he wrote ten years ago about another raccoon hunter on Long Island.

Denver Post: Whole Foods is my religion. The co-conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing Terry Nichols is dissatisfied with his selection of menu items in the country's highest-security prison in Florence, Colorado. I don't think some fresh vegetables is too much to ask for when you spend 23 hours a day in a cell.

Washington Post: Barack Obama is making America so unsafe. In perhaps the least surprising story of the year, the Post reports that torturing people probably didn't yield any worthwhile intelligence and foiled no terrorist plots.

This American Life: Before it's too late. The story of Bernie Epton, the Republican nominee in the 1983 Chicago mayoral race who lost to the city's first black mayor, Harold Washington, sheds some light on the ugly turn Sen. John McCain's campaign took this past fall (act four in the program).

BBC Four: The world's greatest time-waster. This documentary tells the fascinating story of Tetris, a game born on a whim in a Soviet computing center and transformed into one of the greatest video games ever created.

Russia's Economic Crisis: Who Got the Story Right?

BOULDER, Colorado -- The Moscow Times seems to be taking an overly sunny view of Russia's economic prospects. Take a look at this story, by Ethan Wilensky-Lanford from the December 1 issue:

"IT Minds Expecting The Next E-Boom"

Now compare this with a story from the New York Times by Ellen Barry back on November 16:

"Russia's High-Tech Sector Reels"

Despite the collapsing stock market, disappearing credit, and a faltering banking sector, Mr. Wilenksy-Lanford expects a "boom" in e-commerce in Russia. He rightly identifies the serious obstacles to doing business on the internet there - low penetration rates, an abysmal postal service, and minescule credit card use, despite a few years of robust growth - but somehow, the rosy predictions of a few online entrepreneurs is enough to qualify a coming boom. The story of wireless networking supply company MeshNetics chronicled in the Times - huge layoffs and no new investment capital - is probably more indicative of the situation in Russia.

Earlier this week I mentioned a story by Miriam Elder for The Independent about Moscow's Millionaire's fair, which described how this year's event has seen fewer visitors and decreased sales amidst the downturn. Mr. Wilensky-Lanford had this headline in the Moscow Times:

"Crisis Fails To Dull Lustre of Millionaire Fair"

The story relies on event organizers and boosters. Russian horse-faced celebutant Ksenia Sobchak is quoted as saying, "Welcome to our anti-crisis event." A yacht salesman argues that people aren't too poor these days to buy luxury items, but they're just too busy to shop. The argument throughout seems to be that these super-rich are recession-proof. I am sure that the likes of Vekselberg and Potanin won't be headed to the poor house any time soon, but I doubt they are shrugging off the quarter-trillion dollars in personal wealth they have lost this past year.

It makes me wonder - has the Moscow Times adopted the policy of Russia's state-owned press, which is required to have at least 50% of their stories be "positive" about Russia?

Russian Court Slaps Moscow Times With Fine

BOULDER, Colorado -- I wonder how the Moscow Times will cope with this fine handed down from a Russian Court. From Bloomberg:

Billionaire Prokhorov Wins Case Against Former Partner Potanin

By Torrey Clark

Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov won a defamation case against his former business partner Vladimir Potanin, as the two men split up their assets this year,
the Moscow Arbitration Court said.

"I'm satisfied with the decision,'' Prokhorov said on his personal blog today. "I consider the issue closed.''

The court ruled that comments made by Potanin in an interview published by The Moscow Times on June 11 were damaging to Prokhorov's reputation, spokeswoman Maria Raben said in an e- mailed response to questions today.

The judge fined Potanin and The Moscow Times, an English-language daily newspaper, 1,000 rubles ($37.15) each, and ordered OOO United Press, the newspaper's publishing house, to print a retraction of the comments, RIA Novosti said. Raben didn't immediately comment on the report.

Potanin plans to challenge the ruling within the allotted five days, Nina Dementsova, a spokeswoman for the businessman's Interros Holding Co., said by telephone today.

"We don't understand why the court refused to review our evidence about agreements on the division of assets and how they were carried out, or hear our witnesses,'' Dementsova said.

The Moscow Times will decide whether to appeal after receiving a copy of the court's decision, Ekaterina Son, the newspaper's publisher, said by mobile telephone today.

In the interview published by The Moscow Times, Potanin accused Prokhorov of ``breaking agreements'' about selling a blocking stake in GMK Norilsk Nickel, the world's biggest producer of the metal, Onexim Group, Prokhorov's investment company, said June 16.

Prokhorov sold his 25 percent plus one share in Norilsk to United Co. Rusal in April for 14 percent of Rusal and a cash sum supported by a $4.5 billion loan arranged by the aluminum company.

Thanks to Will for this story.