[lbo-talk] Re: thug billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky

[Joseph Wanzala]

The arrest of Russian thug billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky has caused the 
disgusting American media to go into a frenzy, practically accusing Putin of 
returning to the days of Stalin. Apparently, Khodorkovsky has liberally 
spread his ill-gotten loot around American think tanks, and has courted 
American business interests at the highest levels, which probably explains 
the attitude of the American media. There is the additional fact that 
turbo-capitalism is the new state religion in the United States, and rich 
people are the new Gods, with billionaires the godliest Gods of all. The 
thug billionaires who own the disgusting American media can't understand how 
it is possible for a fellow thug billionaire to be arrested and be deprived 
of his loot. What is the world coming to when a rich man - a God who walks 
amongst us - is subject to the laws that mere mortals are subject to? 
Doesn't Putin understand that the reason billionaires are rich is because 
laws don't apply to them? I would be shocked if you could find a billionaire 
in the world who has not broken enough laws on the way to making his fortune 
to be properly subject to lifetimes of imprisonment. Khodorkovsky should 
count himself lucky he is merely in jail, and hasn't had his head lopped off 
and put on a pike as a warning to others. People seem to have forgotten the 
enormity of the crime which took place in Russia. Billions and billions and 
billions of dollars worth of public assets were given away with the 
connivance of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats to a small group of 
criminal businessmen (the process was popularly called 'prikhvatizatsiya'). 
Many of the economic problems of Russia can be ascribed directly to the 
withdrawal of much of the looted money from the Russian economy, deposited 
in banks in Switzerland, Cyprus, and Israel. The looting was one of the 
largest crimes in world history. Rather than speculate on conspiracy 
theories about what Putin is really up to (and isn't it interesting that 
they are not 'conspiracy theories' if right-wingers discuss them), isn't it 
possible that Putin simply feels that he now has enough political power to 
enforce the laws of the country he is supposed to be running? It's funny 
that the disgusting American media is up in arms about the arrest of 
Khodorkovsky, while Ken Lay is still a free man. Which country is more 
totalitarian: the one that enforces its laws against its biggest thieves or 
the one that doesn't?

from 'xymphora'.

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