May 4, 2009 — Contents

MONDAY MAY 4 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  America Dominates Russia

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Merrill Lynch is at it Again

(3)  EDITORIAL:  Dutch Court Finds Putin Guilty as Charged

(4)  Putin’s Russia locks up its Children

NOTE:  Kim Zigfeld’s latest installment of her American Thinker column takes Barack Obama to task for failing to address human rights and national security issues involving Russia.  It also excoriates the Western press and the Republican Party for failing to challenge Obama to do better.

EDITORIAL: USA Dominates Russia

EDITORIAL

USA Dominates Russia

One of the least-noticed facts about Russia by those who call themselves her “defenders” is that each year the USA and Russia produce virtually the same amount of crude oil.  Russia generates an income stream in foreign currency from its production which America lacks only because the American economy, immeasurably more potent and powerful than Russia’s, uses all of the country’s supplies for manufacturing and more, making huge purchases on the international markerts, while Russia is able to use only a tiny fraction of the oil it produces in its anemic, pathetic neo-Soviet industrial base.

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.  Russia also manages the economic energy it does manage to generate far, far worse than America does, leading to anemic performance that bespeaks the total lack of credentials wielded by the clan of KGB spies that govern Russia.

No clearer illustration of this, for Russia, bitterly harsh reality could be offered than to compare America’s Exxon-Mobile with Russia’s Gazprom.   Exxon posted a record profit of $45 billion in 2008. Its fourth-quarter results were down because of falling prices for crude oil, but just 33%, and it rose to the top of Fortune 500 for the year.  And Gazprom?  Russia’s entry in the competition, a monopoly run by the Russian government itself, saw its profts fall by a whopping, truly breathtaking 84% in the fourth quarter of last year.  Its total profits for the year were less than $30 billion,  one third less that of Exxon Mobile, a single private American firm, and well below the market’s expectations.

This pure domination continues in the wider economic picture.

EDITORIAL: Merrill Lynch is at it Again

EDITORIAL

Merrill Lynch is at it Again

Most Americans probably know how the once-mighty Merrill Lynch brokerage house failed spectacularly, one of the greediest and stupidest hogs scarfing at the subprime mortgage trough, and had to be sold (virtually at govermental gunpoint) to Bank of America in order to stave off a national financial disaster.

One might think, after something like that happening, that the idiots at Merrill would want to keep their heads down for a while, that at least they’d think twice before doing anything so harmful to the nation and its values.

No such luck.

EDITORIAL: Netherlands Sticks it to Putin

EDITORIAL

Netherlands Sticks it to Putin

Last week a court in the Netherlands ruled that the Russian government, specifically its Rosneft oil subsidiary, owes nearly $400 million to YUKOS Capital, a company owned by former managers of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s YUKOS oil concern, because it had wrongfully seized their assets.

The ruling will allow the court, in turn, to seize Rosneft assets abroad and was the first time that YUKOS has scored a victory in a foreign court challenging the corrupt proceedings that liquidated the company and transferred all it assets to the Russian state.

Robert Amsterdam says that Russian courts will ignore the ruling, but European courts won’t.  Russia can now expect an avalanche of similar rulings leading to billions of dollars in Russian governmental assets across Europe being seized and sold to satisfy the judgment.

And that’s not the worst of it, not by a long shot.

Russia locks up the Children

Global Voices reports:

On April 20, it was announced that President Dmitry Medvedev approved the changes to children’s rights law, allowing regional authorities to bar minors under the age of 18, unaccompanied by parents or legal guardians, from public places – “for example, in the street, stadiums, parks, squares, public transport and Internet cafes” – from 10 PM to 6 AM. Below is one of the reactions (RUS) from the Russian blogosphere, by LJ user oleg_kozyrev: