215 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2017
    1. In 2012, the U.S. Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, which targets Russian human-rights abusers: It freezes their assets and deprives them of visas.

      . . .

      The Magnitsky Act drives Putin nuts. It means that his men can’t act as they always have, i.e., with impunity. Now there are consequences, which is a problem for Putin. Four countries have Magnitsky acts: the U.S., Britain, Estonia, and now Canada. (They passed theirs last week.)

      Browder is a driver behind these Magnitsky acts, and Putin hates him for it, understandably. Twice in 2013, he tried to add Browder to Interpol’s wanted list, and twice he failed, because Interpol knew that Putin was politically motivated. Browder is not a criminal. He is an anti-criminal, which is why Putin targets him.

      . . .

      In the wake of Canada’s new Magnitsky act, Putin has tried again. Tried for a fifth time. Interpol has accepted his request. Worse, the U.S. government seems in partnership with the Kremlin: Our government has revoked Browder’s visa. (American-born, Browder is a British citizen.)

  2. Jul 2017
    1. It is still not clear how many people attended the meeting. So far acknowledged in attendance: Trump Jr., Kushner, Manafort, Veselnitskaya, Akhmetshin and the publicist Rob Goldstone who helped set the meeting up

      I can say something relevant.

    1. “With every attempt at transparency Donald Trump Jr. digs himself more deeply into the hole of criminality,” he told me via email. “He appears to have gone into that meeting—and likely others—looking for something of value—dirt on Hillary Clinton—from sources he should have stayed away from. His judgment was bad, to say the least.”

      Trump Jr

  3. Jun 2017
    1. a more holistic view of their work, and Ukraine needed a more coherent response to the brazen, prolific organization that Sandworm had become. “The light side remains divided,” he says of the balkanized reaction to the hackers among their victims. “The dark side is united.”
  4. May 2017
    1. On March 20, 2017, during public testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, FBI director James Comey confirmed the existence of an FBI investigation into Russian interference and Russian links to the Trump campaign, including the question of whether there had been any coordination between the campaign and the Russians.[24] He said the investigation began in July 2016 and was "still in its early stages".[25] Comey made the unusual decision to reveal the ongoing investigation to Congress, citing benefit to the public good.[93]

      Comey's public confirmation of a FBI investigation.

    1. proletarianise

      Proletarianization is the social process by which people move from being either the employer or self-employment to being employed as a wage laborer by an employer.

      Marx, Karl, and David McLellan. Karl Marx: selected writings. Oxford University Press, USA, 2000.

    2. offenses.

      These offenses included suspicion of treason intent on the part of couriers if they behaved with insufficient respect to the Tsar, to common crimes such as robbery or forgery. Some of the exiles were put to work on the land as state peasants, or employed as craftsmen in towns, but the majority were drafted into the ranks of the Cossacks.

      Forsyth, James. A history of the peoples of Siberia: Russia's north Asian colony, 1581-1990. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992.

    3. economic planning regions

      The Soviet Union’s economy was one that was planned by leaders in the Party. The Gosplan was the agency that was responsible for the central economic planning in the Soviet Union. It was established in 1921 and did not have a large role at first. However, after the October Revolution and Russian Civil War, a large period of economic collapse occurred and a planned economy was necessary to stimulate the economy, increase productivity, and distribute necessary commodities. The Gosplan’s main task was to create and administer a series of 5-year plans that governed the economy of the USSR. The committee was disbanded in 1991 at the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

      Faulhaber, Gerald R., and David J. Farber. "Spectrum management: Property rights, markets, and the commons." Rethinking rights and regulations: institutional responses to new communication technologies (2003): 193-206.

  5. Mar 2017
  6. Aug 2016
    1. But second, a sense of what could have been. What if Stalin hadn’t murdered most of the competent people? What if entire fields of science hadn’t been banned for silly reasons? What if Kantorovich had been able to make the Soviet leadership base its economic planning around linear programming? How might history have turned out differently?

      I asked my brother, who writes about Soviet economics, whether he ever had this sense of sadness at what could have been. He responded that in his experience everyone who studies the period shares this feeling.

    2. First, amazement that the Soviet economy got as far as it did, given how incredibly screwed up it was.

      I feel this.

  7. Nov 2015
    1. Infrastructures, for Collier, are amixture of political rationality, administrative techniques, and material systems, and his interest isnot in infrastructure per se but in what it tells us about practices of government. Soviet electricityprovision, through this lens, is analyzed for how it reveals a system of total planning in a commandeconomy rather than for what it tells us about the effects of electricity on users in Russia.

      It's never really about what is in front of us when it comes to politics.. there is always more to it.. His theory is a tool we could study to learn about a country/society's government by looking at the infrastructure they've created.

  8. Sep 2015
  9. Apr 2015
    1. Why is it that Putin has no problem getting his message out? The reason, of course, is that most of what Russians see and hear is Putin’s point of view and Putin’s point of view only.

      Although a blant exaggaration, it's well said

    1. Интересно, что в познеровском монологе на путинском ТВ картина дебатов выглядела несколько иначе. Мэтр отечественного телевидения заявил, что дебаты закончились "почти вничью" (49% за "диалог", 51% — против), после чего пустился в рассуждения о невежественной канадской аудитории, будто бы ничего не знающей о России и находящейся во власти пропаганды. Простим господину Познеру, что он — случайно или по старой советской привычке — "подрезал" процентик у оппонентов. Гораздо важнее, что он скромно умолчал о том факте, что изначально аудитория гораздо больше симпатизировала именно его позиции, а изменение настроений аудитории — это результат дебатов, которые Познер с Коэном проиграли, а не мифической антироссийской пропаганды. Подобное поведение иначе как потерей лица не назовешь. В конце концов, нет ничего постыдного в том, чтобы проиграть в честном поединке, а вот заниматься передергиваниями — это действительно позор.