[dt]MOSCOW, Jan. 20, 2004 -- [/dt][ch]An article in the Moscow Times today[/ch] summarizes the federal court hearing in Alexandria VA on Russian refugee Alexander Konanykhin. The INS abruptly revoked his refugee status in November, then arrested him and ordered him deported.
He appealed the ruling, but with lightning speed and in clear violation of due process of law the U.S. Government attempted to get him out of the country before his appeal could be heard.
“It stinks,” declared Federal Judge T.S. Ellis, who halted the deportation proceedings minutes before Konanykhin was to be hustled aboard a plane in New York and whisked back to Moscow.
In the District Court hearings which followed, Judge Ellis was set to issue an on-the-spot ruling freeing Konanykhin, according to the Times.
But the Bush White House has obviously struck a deal with Putin to get Konanykhin back to Russia at all costs – maybe to quiz him about his business relations with jailed oligarch Khodorkovsky or about his own shady past – or maybe something else. But the Putin government wants him, and in a quid-pro-quo somewhere along the line, the Bush Government has promised Putin he shall have him.
So the Administration, using the INS as its mouthpiece, made it clear that no matter what Ellis ruled, Konanykhin would remain behind bars.
Says the Bush Administration, in so many words, “We don’t care what the courts decide. He’s going to Russia.”
Put another way, “The law does not apply to me.”
[ch]When I told a Baltimore cop something akin to that [/ch]about 25 years ago, I was thrown into a paddy wagon and spent the next 24 hours behind bars.
I had to stand trial and was given a – fortunately, suspended -- sentence.
In my defense, I was not the scofflaw I was made out to be. A storm that had dumped three feet of snow on Baltimore and Washington had made law enforcement virtually impossible, and stores were being looted by celebrating mobs. Martial law was declared. I was caught on my way back home from a neighborhood bar that night in violation of the sundown curfew that had been imposed.
When stopped by the cops, I objected that I was not on the streets with the intention of looting. “Do you see any radios? Do you see any TVs?” I demanded, raising my arms for inspection. “That law is for looters. I’m no looter.”
“Book him,” ordered the sergeant. And off I went.
In my court trial, the officer testified that I had declared that “the law does not apply to me.”
I was guilty of being a smart-ass, but not of declaring myself above the law.
[ch]The Bush Administration clearly thinks they are.[/ch] And they may well be in this Orwellian state that is so deftly being fashioned before our eyes, with its announced plans for “decades of war” – allegedly against terrorism.
As a six-year resident of the reviving Russian authoritarian state, where Putin now controls not just the Kremlin, but the parliament, the courts, and most of the nation’s mass media, I have often warned my compatriots back home that “I am living in your future.”
Bush already controls the congress and to all intents the mass media. If he can only bring the courts to heel…
And what is happening in the District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, is a good beginning.
There was a popular T-shirt in America after the collapse of the Soviet system: Portraying the intertwined logos of the KGB and the CIA, it proclaimed, “Now we are one.”
How prescient.
At least there’s still Madonna. She had the balls the other night to say Bush shouldn’t be re-elected.
[ch]When beautiful Volodya and Andrei Y. dropped by[/ch] a couple of days after I gave [Shurik] his walking papers, they of course wanted to know what had happened. Volodya and Shurik are from the same home town, and had become good buddies. Volodya liked Shurik and was immensely pleased by his and my relationship.
So I recounted the long drama.
When I finished, both Andrei and Valodya asked, “Do you trust Yegor? You have the word of one competitor balanced against the other.”
“I think I do,” I replied.
Volodya said that Shurik had told him that [Yegor] had said he was going to utilize me fully, i.e., get out of me the max – not only in money, but in improving his English and every other skill I could help him with – not too different from what Shurik wrote in his own diary.
Volodya added that Shurik had also told him that Yegor had confided that he had asked me for $ 5,000 to enroll in Moscow State University, but was actually planning to enroll in a cheaper university and use the money for something else. And he had promised Shurik that, since I was only going to give Shurik $ 2,000, he would give him some additional money to make up the difference.
Shurik had also told Volodya about Yegor’s alleged boyfriend, the Dima that he denied in our final confrontation.
It certainly muddies the waters. Did Yegor really tell Shurik all those things? If so, it sounds like two conspirers divvying up the contraband. If not, why would Shurik concoct such elaborate tales for Volodya's benefit?
But I found out what I wanted to know. Had Yegor, contrary to all my judgments of his depth of character and basic honesty, painted an unfair picture of Shurik so I’d get rid of him and leave Yegor the sole beneficiary? Was Shurik the one who really loved me, and was it Yegor who is just pretending?
Andrei is the one who put the question:
“Do you think Shurik really loved Dane?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“What about all the orgasms?”
“He said they were just mechanical.”
[ch]One of Putin’s primary goals is[/ch] to re-instill a sense of nationalism and pride of country in the dispirited Russian populace. He’s encouraging the revival of Russian film-making, for instance, and in the meantime, more Russian and less American films on television.
One recent example of his efforts came to light in an interview with the Russian group “Plasma”on the music channel, MTV. Plasma is a talented and popular group, but they are guilty of the cardinal crime of singing only in English.
“Sing in Russian,” the group has been commanded.
Because they refuse to do so, the state TV channels refuse to give them a showcase, to allow them to perform on stage or on state TV or radio. As a result, few in Russia know what they look like. They know the sound, but they don’t know the image. This, of course, substantially reduces their money-earning capability as a singing and touring group.
It’s as if Swedish TV had refused to let ABBA be televised because they didn’t sing in Swedish.
If it weren’t for the ramifications, the Kremlin’s preoccupation would be amusing.
But it’s not really so different from America, where, with almost all local radio stations now owned by right-wing media moguls, it was – and still is, I’m told – virtually impossible to get an anti-Iraq war song aired. We must, after all, be united in our support of our nation’s war effort and of our commander-in-chief.
In Russia now, a popular soft-animal toy is a doll that, when you squeeze it, says “I want a man like Putin.”
Watch for the Bush model soon on your local toy shelves.
[ch]Sasha is one of my oldest and dearest Russian friends.[/ch] From the moment he walked into my classroom in February, 1999, there has been a special bond between us. First as student and teacher, then as pals and drinking buddies, and finally as best friends and fuck-buddies.
Now in his final year of pursuing the equivalent of a doctorate in chemistry, Sasha is a very competent and dedicated scientist. However, although his English is only adequate, he wants desperately to speak American English like a native. To this end he memorizes idiomatic expressions and phrasal verbs and then uses them in the most preposterous and unlikely situations. He spends hours with my Roget’s Thesaurus locking down idioms he can toss off when the occasion arises.
Sometimes I can’t help but smile, as I did today when he had me help him with a letter to his sister, an Americanized citizen with an American husband and daughter.
Dear Olga, he wrote.
[q]I have been not much over the top since the New Year. Probably it was because the weather took the starch out of me.
Right now I’m working trying to get the full low-down and it’s very time-consuming because you have to winnow any information and winkle the idea. I understand why I have such problems – because of misconduct in management of Russian science. We’re plowing the row without care about the tasks of business. We’re trying to solve one specific task. But chemistry is only a part of any problem. So we are trying to cinch the problem which we don’t know.
What has been up with Mr. Fix-It? Is he still buying up old cars with undiminished ardor? Allegedly I heard that he bought one more. What’s the model? If he comes over here, we can take a sally to the Russian svalka.
In addition I know I’m an uncle for a young lady somewhere in America. You griped that she’s very spoiled. This is because she’s being raised by kid-gloves methods. You should be more coarse with her, and to compel her to obey your directions. If she doesn’t obey your directions, you should knock her into a cocked hat.
Enough for today.
Best regards,
Sasha [/q]
