Top Kremlin critic gets 25 years

Kara-Murza reacted calmly as the judge read the verdict and sentence in a quick monotone. His lawyer, Maria Eismont, later quoted him as telling her: “My self-esteem has risen: I realized that I have done everything right. Twenty-five years is the highest appraisal that I could get for doing what I did and what I believed in, as a citizen, a patriot and a politician.”

Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny has been sentenced to 19 more years in jail on extremism charges that he has dismissed as an attempt to silence him. Navalny condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine: “[Russia is] floundering in a pool of either mud or blood, with broken bones, with a poor and robbed population, and around it lie tens of thousands of people killed in the most stupid and senseless war of the 21st century,” he said.

Supporters of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Monday that they had lost contact with him and that they have been unable to ascertain his whereabouts for almost a week.

Western sanctions are meant to prevent Russia from supplying its military from abroad, but sensitive electronics are still getting through. Reporters traced several of these supply chains through Kazakhstan — and found that they run through companies newly established by Russians.

Mysterious Group of Companies Tied to Bank Rossiya Unites Billions of Dollars in Assets Connected to Vladimir Putin

Lawyers for Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich argue he should not be sanctioned because his ties to the Kremlin are weak, but new documents reveal he secretly had a years-long partnership with the Russian government in a forestry venture.

The Russian president, who cultivates a public image of abstemious patriotism, has been linked to a number of luxurious properties, including a vast palace on the Black Sea, acres of surrounding vineyards, a ski resort, and a villa north of St. Petersburg.

“It looks very compelling that Whyte has been acting as a proxy for Kostin,” said Tamara Makarenko, a veteran of the business intelligence sector extensive experience investigating oligarchs.

The family of Tatyana Golikova, the Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation for Social Policy, owns assets worth around $830 million, as Alexei Navalny’s team of investigators discovered. The list of real estate objects owned by the deputy prime minister’s family (Golikova herself, her husband Viktor Khristenko, and her stepson Vladimir Khristenko) features a house near Moscow with a floor area of 1,800 square meters, five villas in Europe, and several golf clubs. The investigators insist that she “earned” all this wealth by making vaccines for the national immunization campaign.

in Kyiv, a company called Milton Group threw a glitzy New Year’s party for its staff. To the strains of a pop-rock cover band, contortionists and fire-dancers whirled under neon lights as young salespeople revelled in the spoils of a record-breaking year selling investments in cryptocurrencies and stocks. The firm’s management distributed cash, cars, and other prizes. One star salesman got a free apartment for a year. But the real business of Milton Group was fraud. And even as its young employees partied in Kyiv, their victims across the world were losing their homes and assets.

Russia’s Syria Intervention Paved the Way for its Attack on Ukraine

Media accounts report that long-range, nuclear-capable Tu-22M3 bombers and MiG-31K strike fighter jets carrying the latest Kinzhal hypersonic cruise missiles landed at the Russian air base in Syria’s coastal province of Latakia as part of the drills. Russian amphibious assault vessels docked at Tartous for refueling and maintenance before departing to the Black Sea for Ukraine-related military drills and deployment.

Flight MH17: Trial opens of four accused of murdering 298 over Ukraine

The roar of planes is audible. Schiphol's high-security justice complex is right next door to the runway where flight MH17 took off. But no-one is expecting any of the four suspects to fly in to face justice.

During day two of the MH17 criminal court proceedings in the Netherlands, the prosecution team disclosed that the Russian Federation had challenged the authenticity of a video recording of the BUK Telar, made on 17 July 2014, near the presumed launch site at Snizhne. This video is a crucial piece in the chain of evidence showing the contiguous movement of the BUK Telar convoy

Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov wins 2018 Sakharov Prize

The European Parliament's President Antonio Tajani announced the winner. The €50,000 prize was created in memory of the late exiled Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov.

How Russia is Tormenting Political Prisoners Sentsov and Kolchenko

Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg  Sentsov and activist Sasha Kolchenko were both detained in occupied Crimea on May 10, 2014. They were accused of plotting terrorist acts, taken to Russia and convicted. Kolchenko was sentenced to 10 years in prison and Sentsov – 20 on fabricated charges and based on testimonies given under tortures.

Two other Ukrainians – Gennadiy Afanasiev and Oleksiy Chirniy – were arrested with Sentsov and Kolchenko. Afanasiev was released in a 2016 prisoner exchange, and Chirniy is still in a penal colony in Magadan.

"I no longer believe that I will soon walk free and that we will all live happily in Kyiv,” Kaplan quoted Sentsov as writing in a letter he sent her from prison.

A meeting with Oksana Shachko

Shachko was an artist from a young age. Educated in the Orthodox tradition, she made religious paintings and at the age of 8 her artistic talent earned her a place at a specialized school in Ukraine focused on painting religious icons. By age 10, Shachko was being commissioned to create church frescoes, and moved into the church full time at aged 12. As an adult, her later works subverted traditional religious iconography to create feminist art.  

"We have the immense sadness to learn the death of Oksana Shachko, promising artist that we presented in Crash and to whom we dedicated the cover of our December 2017 art issue. We also presented her work in our gallery, the 22Visconti. Oksana was an outstanding activist, co-founder of the Femen and political refugee in France because her life was in danger in her country. She had enrolled at the Paris Beaux-Arts school and her work as a painter has profoundly touched us with its light and strength. Here is the interview Armelle Leturcq did with her in November 2017."

Hard to swallow?

How it was possible?  

Perhaps the contemporary art is transformed in a mere financial product where the artist/PR count more than the "product" itself. When musiciens work hard, year after year, sometimes to achieve very little, here, in the contemporary art world, relations - artists/gallerists/curators - and the arranged image of the artist - is whats make things move further. Little surprise if Damien Hirst is "the artist" in the city of the city... It still real great artists in the world today, so we can just to compare - but the point is how it was possible to someone like Hirst get where he is now: at Tate Modern. We can just to reduce it to the british art and to the british society - where two guys were able to make a huge business with Hirst's objects and collections of objects?

Anguish in Azerbaijan

Baku, set to host the Eurovision Song Contest in just over a month, is rapidly trying to become a modern city. To do so, it is forcibly removing residents from their homes to make way for slick new skyscrapers and other development projects. Those who try to stay bear the brunt of the government's wrath.

Web freedom faces greatest threat 

Threats range from governments trying to control citizens to the rise of Facebook and Apple-style 'walled gardens'.

As concerned global citizens, we urge you to immediately drop the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Our democracy and civil liberties are under threat from the excessive and unnecessary Internet surveillance powers it grants.

Google says it increasingly fields requests from government agencies trying to use their power to suppress political opinions and other material they don't like. 

Rebellion in the Nuba Mountains *

ON MARCH 16th George Clooney, a film star, was arrested for picketing the Sudanese embassy in Washington, DC. His aim was to highlight the brutal campaign by Sudan’s government to suppress a rebellion in the Nuba Mountains, close to the border with newly independent South Sudan. * (and others)

Syrian regime accused

The UN has accused the Syrian regime of "crimes against humanity" – including the use of snipers against small children – and has drawn up a list of senior officials who should face investigation, reportedly including President Bashar al-Assad. guardian

Patients tortured by medical staff 

A video leaked from a military hospital in the embattled Syrian city of Homs has revealed horrific images of patients receiving torture, instead of treatment, by medical staff. alarabiya

A fleeing refugee tells Channel 4 News of "total genocide" and sexual violence allegedly committed by Syrian soldiers in and around the besieged city of Jisr al-Shughour. channel4

Assad is keeping his troops in the dark. To prevent them from defecting, the soldiers are deployed to new locations every few days, primarily in the sprawling, poor northern suburbs of the capital city -- with no mobile phones and no knowledge of where they are.

Russia, a longtime Assad ally, was giving Assad diplomatic cover to intensify his crackdown

The reports from Syria of the deliberate savagery of government forces as they shell, torture and shoot civilians from areas that have dared to protest against them is unbearable to read or to watch. In the city of Homs, families just like yours or mine are trapped in a city which is being shelled from early morning until darkness falls. Buildings are being obliterated as terrified inhabitants hide in cellars. There is no water or electricity and people are running out of medicines and food.

Certainly the massacre at Houla on Friday was horrible even by the standards of this conflict: more than 100 people killed, many of them young children. They join the estimated 13,000 Syrians who have died in the past 15 months, most at the hands of the regime.

Iran to execute five Ahwazis 

Iran has one of the highest rates of executions in the world. 

Putin's Mafia State

Sergei Magnitsky's mother vows to continue fight for justice.

The West must speak out against this thug - Economic growth based on gas and oil can no longer compensate for the lose of industry, education and dignity that comes from living in a mafia state. (Garry Kasparov in The Times)

Putin mingles with Berlusconi (Bunga-Bunga)

How did Vladimir Putin afford his £450,000 watch collection?

Putin's 'Luxurious Life' Set Out By Activists

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Ekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alehina – all members of the anarchic Pussy Riot punk band – have been in prison since March, held on charges of hooliganism which could eventually mean a seven-year sentence.

Ukraine Is Becoming Increasingly Authoritarian

Murder and power, Chinese style

The son of the premier Wen Jiabao, a supposed "liberal" opposed to Bo, has been linked to a dollars 100m investment fund, a story kept out of Chinese newspapers. Wen's wife is a lover of expensive jewellery. A secret US diplomatic cable, quoted by WikiLeaks, suggests influence is for sale by the Wen family.

President Hu Jintao's son has been linked to a controversial telecoms deal in Africa. When a young man died in a black Ferrari crash in Beijing last month, rumours soon had it that he was the illegitimate son of the politburo stalwart Jia Qinglin, who is said to have large property interests. And so it goes on.

Chang welcomes Bo’s downfall: “I think it’s a very good thing this guy fell because he was a huge promoter of Mao, and he did it in a very cynical way. This guy was portraying himself as an anti-corruption zealot. He was torturing people, executing people, for alleged gangsterism — true or not, these cases aren’t going through any legal process — and yet was himself very corrupt. He was one of the top guys, you can see how murky it is. Anyone who promotes the Mao era as the era most free of corruption, who knows Mao was responsible for the death of well over 70 million Chinese ... it makes my blood boil.”

Falun Gong practitioners have heard 610 Office, labor-camp, and prison staff repeat certain policies over and over: “Being beaten to death will count as suicide.” “Cremate the body immediately.” “Ruin their reputations, exhaust their finances, and destroy them physically.”

‘Partnership’ in which one partner robs the other

Joseph Stiglitz characterizes the Obama administration’s vast transfer of money and pubic debt to the banks as a “privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a ‘partnership’ in which one partner robs the other.” 

Prof. Bill Black describes banks as becoming criminogenic and innovating “control fraud.” globalresearch

Far away from funding industrial growth and development 

Banking has moved so far away from funding industrial growth and economic development that it now benefits primarily at the economy’s expense in a predator and extractive way, not by making productive loans. This is now the great problem confronting our time. Banks now lend mainly to other financial institutions, hedge funds, corporate raiders, insurance companies and real estate, and engage in their own speculation in foreign currency, interest-rate arbitrage, and computer-driven trading programs. Industrial firms bypass the banking system by financing new capital investment out of their own retained earnings, and meet their liquidity needs by issuing their own commercial paper directly. Yet to keep the bank casino winning, global bankers now want governments not only to bail them out but to enable them to renew their failed business plan – and to keep the present debts in place so that creditors will not have to take a loss. Michael Hudson

(Yes, this is very hard to swallow. It should not be saved)

New Labour imitated Mrs Thatcher in much of her rhetoric and some of her ideas. The trouble was that they learned only half the lesson. They confused the creation of wealth, of which she was a passionate advocate, with the wisdom of the wealthy, about which she was sceptical.

The Governor of the Bank of England ... launched a stinging attack on the culture of the industry he oversees, condemning bankers for high pay, immoral practices and providing shoddy service to customers.