Anyone interested in geopolitics should take a look at how Britain is
increasing the amount of propaganda it's running in favour of top-level
mafia thugs from Russia.

Mustn't jeopardise all that business going through Gibraltar, the
Channel Islands, and the City of London, eh? Not to mention Mayfair,
Oxford University, etc.

Take two articles from today's 'Sunday Times' (below).

The first implies that before Putin was elected, Putin's wicked people
may have brought down the helicopter of some heroic British lawyer
working for exiled mafia bosses - sorry, I mean assisting
democracy-loving businessmen.

The second relates that because of nasty Putin's irrational campaign
against kind Khodorkovsky, a school for the orphans of Beslan might have
to be closed.

(In a previous article in the same Murdoch rag, Putin was accused of
plagiarising his PhD thesis from a 'clever' American. Maybe soon he'll
be accused of being a transvestite?)

Interested readers may care to note that both Putin and Khodorkovsky
have expressed their admiration for Rothschilds bank.

Putin did it by saying how much he'd like to visit their offices in the
City of London, given all the wonderful stuff they've done for Russia.

Khodorkovsky did it by signing control of much of Siberian oil over to a
Rothschild in the event of his 'incapacitation' - like if he got slung
in jail, for example.

And of course it was Rothschild who funded Khodorkovsky early on,
although that doesn't mean the KGB wasn't involved too...

The Free-Khodorkovsky-And-Save-The-Orphans story doesn't appear to have
been published in a huge number of leading newspapers. But we shall see.
Maybe a case of 'keep the idiot clients happy' rather than a serious
scandal story? But it's still drip-drip-drip, and the pace is
increasing.

The big story is Iran, and western/Israeli plans to nuke it.

The presentation of Russia and Russian issues in the western media are
determined by this.

Worth noting though, how this particular mafia boss's campaign is
focusing on saving orphans and education.

Berezovsky's involved in 'education' too, with his pal Neil Bush,
brother of the US president.

All right for the PR agencies and their MI6 pals, eh? Meanwhile, the
Kremlin too is employing western PR agencies (Ketchum, G-Plus, and Gavin
Anderson). Must be important for them, to get fully into the club at
G8...

Meanwhile, I'm reading Paul Klebnikov's book 'Godfather of the Kremlin',
the book for which he was murdered (based on the 'Forbes' article with
the same title).

It's well worth reading.

Contains stuff about how Yeltsin's 'royalties' for his 'book' were paid
to him regularly by his London-based literary agent, in cash, at his
office in the Kremlin.

Imagine if a British prime minister was receiving regular cash payments
from Moscow's 'Progress Publishers'... You know what people would say!

Klebnikov also gives info about just what level of devastation the mafia
scum, whether 'inside' or 'outside' the government, have caused in
Russia.

The fall in life expectancy is well known. Less well known are the fact
that 9% of newborn babies are abandoned, and the fact there are three
times as many abortions as live births.

The fall in living standards has been extreme.

If it were the UK there probably would have been famine by now.

Fortunately most people in Russia - where mass starvation is a living
memory - go out and plant potatoes and turnips to keep their families
alive, when their wages stop getting paid. They've got some sense. They
know the government and bosses are a bunch of bloodsoaked,
ultra-cynical, ultra-ruthless criminals. And they know things could get
worse.

In the UK at the moment, most people would sit and watch TV, or wait for
instructions from the police, school-teachers, or medics, while looking
forward to getting deeper into debt once the rumbling in their bellies
stopped.

Meanwhile in Russia, some of the exiled mafia bosses are planning
'regime change'. 

I can't recall any recent mention in the 'Sunday Times' of the fact that
Russian prosecutors are investigating Berezovsky for allegedly backing
Shamil Basayev, who commanded the Beslan slaughter.

I have previously pointed out that the British State has protected
Akhmed Zakayev, who for a long time was based in London before becoming
'culture minister' in the Chechen 'rebel' cabinet. His colleague on the
said cabinet? None other than Basayev, butcher of Beslan.

People can talk about replacing Putin constitutionally with a Berezovsky
puppet at the time of the 2008 election. (I don't know what 'colour' the
campaign might have). But I think it unlikely that 'regime change' would
happen without full-scale civil war...

Maybe there will come a time when working class people in Russia get
their act together? Because those who rob them (whether based in the
Kremlin or London or wherever) will push, and push, and push...

From: <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2179551.html>:


***BEGIN ARTICLE 1***

British lawyer hatched Putin smears 
 
 
A BRITISH lawyer killed in a helicopter crash on the south coast of
England was at the heart of a secret smear campaign against President
Vladimir Putin and his leading associates, according to a confidential
dossier.

Stephen Curtis, who died in 2004, was chairman of the security firm ISC
Global (UK) which worked for a group of Russian tycoons plotting against
Putin. 

The dossier says the company was to "discredit [Putin] and those around
him". The targets were 11 senior Russians - from the defence minister to
Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea football club. 

ISC was also tasked with creating a luxury yacht with a crew capable of
repelling an armed assault. The ship was to be a floating refuge for
oligarchs wanted by Moscow on charges of fraud. 

Curtis, 45, died in March 2004 alongside Max Radford, 34, the pilot,
when their helicopter crashed near Bournemouth airport on the way to
Dublin. 

The wreckage yielded few clues and an inquest jury last November
returned a verdict of accidental death. But a number of facts remained
unexplained. It emerged that Curtis had received threats, felt he was
under surveillance and had warned a relative shortly before: "If
anything happens in the next two weeks then it won’t be an accident." 

Even the coroner conceded that the death had "all the ingredients of an
espionage thriller". The ISC connection was never investigated or put to
the jury and the pilot’s parents do not accept the verdict. Their lawyer
called for a public inquiry. 

The dossier, seen by The Sunday Times, shows that ISC was funded by some
of Russia’s wealthiest but most wanted men. They included Mikhail
Khodorkovsky and Leonid Nevzlin, the owners of Group Menatep, the
company behind Yukos, Russia’s second largest oil company. 

Curtis, who already acted for the Gibraltar-based Menatep, was made
chairman of ISC, which received £6m from the Russians in the first three
years, financial documents show. His expertise was in setting up complex
offshore structures to disperse Yukos’s vast profits. Two former
Scotland Yard officers ran the security side. 

ISC "targeted" leading figures in Russia after Putin sanctioned the
arrest of Khodorkovsky on fraud and tax evasion charges in October 2003
as his jet refuelled in Siberia. Putin wanted to dismantle Yukos and
take it back into the Kremlin’s hands. 

Nevzlin, who is wanted for fraud offences and organising a contract
killing, moved to Israel as a wave of Yukos executives fled to London.
City lawyers were hired to fend off extradition requests from Moscow
which the oligarchs say are politically inspired. 

ISC carried out "monitoring" services to collate information on
developments in the extradition battle. Ex-SAS soldiers acted as
bodyguards to clients considered at risk of being kidnapped by Moscow. 

The company also drew up plans to customise a £30m luxury yacht, the
Constellation, to provide a safe haven for wanted executives, said ISC
sources. It was to be defended against armed assault by a "Swat" team
which would undergo "combat and kidnapping avoidance training",
according to the boat’s specification. Living quarters would be
protected by bullet-proof glass and meeting rooms pumped with "white
noise" to prevent bugging. 

The specification reveals how some guests were to be entertained. It
says: "Procedure for vetting, screening and searching Lady’s [sic] of
the night onboard. Also a need to establish a trusted agency connection
for such personnel." 

The campaign was authorised by Nevzlin who told ISC to do "the biggest
investigation ever", according to a company insider. ISC drafted a
12-page document marked "Secret", which one of its partners presented to
Nevzlin in Israel. The oligarch authorised £37m for the first phase of
the operation, the source said. 

The plan was to mount a "sensitive and delicate" worldwide operation,
feeding false or compromising information to journalists and governments
about Putin - referred to as "X" - and his associates. 
The plotters wanted "[Putin] to be removed from power" but the more
realistic objective was to force him to release Khodorkovsky from
detention by March 2004 and cut Yukos’s £5 billion tax bill. 

The document shows that besides Putin, Sergei Ivanov, the defence
minister, was to be smeared with allegedly compromising photographs.
Other targets included key figures in state-owned energy companies. 

Abramovich had angered the Yukos oligarchs because Putin allowed him to
keep his billions and travel freely within Russia. The document
recommended an attempt to discredit him with allegations of "money
laundering and bribery". Abramovich’s spokesman said last week he was
unaware of the plot. 

Curtis’s crash happened within months of the smear campaign being
hatched. Former ISC operatives say he had become "paranoid" in the last
year of his life. He had become Menatep’s managing director responsible
for assets worth £16 billion. 

An ISC source said Curtis’s "paranoia" may have had some justification:
"After Curtis’s death we swept the family home and located a small
magnet used to secure a listening device," he recalled. It would emerge
at the inquest that Curtis had reported his clients’ transactions to the
police "on many occasions". 

Putin was re-elected 11 days after the crash. ISC stopped trading last
year and was renamed RISC under new ownership. Its former partners have
declined to comment on operational matters. Menatep has been renamed GML
and its current board has no involvement with ISC. A spokesman for GML,
still controlled by Nevzlin and Khodorkovsky, declined to comment. 

Gloria Radford, the pilot’s mother, still believes her son was killed as
part of an assassination plot against Curtis. "I know there was more to
the situation than was ever disclosed. There is something terribly
wrong," she said. 


Insight: Michael Gillard and Jonathan Calvert


***END ARTICLE 1***



From:

<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2179262,00.html>:

***BEGIN ARTICLE 2***

The Sunday Times May 14, 2006 


Beslan pupils fall victim to Putin vendetta

Mark Franchetti, Moscow
 
 
 
A SCHOOL for orphans founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed Russian
billionaire, is being threatened with closure as part of a Kremlin
vendetta against the former oil tycoon. 
Last week staff and pupils at the Podmoskovny Lyceum, a private boarding
school, were notified that Moscow prosecutors had frozen its assets. 

 
 
The fate of its 160 pupils, including a group of children who survived
the Beslan school massacre and who are given free board and tuition, is
now uncertain. 

Few doubt that the move is the latest salvo in Moscow’s relentless
campaign against Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, who was
sentenced last year to nine years in jail on fraud and tax evasion
charges after falling out with President Vladimir Putin. His sentence
was cut to eight years on appeal. 

"We are very worried," said Marina Khodorkovskaya, 74, the tycoon’s
mother, who runs the school with her husband Boris. "What will happen to
the children if they kick us out? This is small-minded vindictiveness of
the worst kind. The authorities know how much my son cares for this
school. They want to break him. Somehow I thought that they would at
least spare the children. But they will stop at nothing." 

As the news of the court order spread last week, anxious children with
impeccable manners and smart school uniforms sought reassurance from
teachers and the Khodorkovskys, who live in the grounds and are
affectionately known as "granny" and "grandad". 

Founded by Khodorkovsky in 1994, Podmoskovny, which was inspired by
British public schools, is unique in Russia. More than 60 staff teach
the pupils in a high-tech building with facilities including a gym,
swimming pool, concert hall and living quarters infinitely better than
most Russian flats. 

Funding for the school still comes mainly from the tycoon’s fortune,
which was estimated at £4.5 billion before his arrest in 2003. He has
since lost much of his wealth and has been stripped of his company
Yukos, formerly Russia’s largest oil firm. 

Most of Podmoskovny’s pupils, aged between 11 and 18, are orphans. They
were picked from across Russia to study at the school, which pays £1,200
a month for their education, housing and other expenses. 

British experts have praised the school. Chris Spragg, of the children’s
charity NCH, said: "We greatly admire its work. The quality of care and
education it offers is excellent." 

Many of the pupils are children of servicemen or border guards killed in
action. Those who are not orphans come from poor single-parent families
or were abandoned. Most risk going to rundown state orphanages if
Podmoskovny is shut. 

The school, which is set on a 200-acre estate of meadows dotted with
elegant 19th- century mansions 40 miles east of Moscow, teaches many
young victims of terrorist attacks by Chechen rebels. 

One pupil who graduated last year had been wounded in an explosion in
southern Russia. Another had survived the Moscow theatre siege in 2002. 

Among the recent arrivals are seven boys and four girls from the 2004
Beslan school siege in which 330 people were killed - more than half of
them children. The eldest victim, a 17-year-old girl, has a piece of
shrapnel in her head. Another has a large facial scar from the gun
battle that ended the three-day siege. All were upset at the news of the
school’s troubles. 

"I really like it here," said Edik Varziyev, a diminutive but lively
14-year-old who survived the Beslan siege unscathed and has been at the
school since September. His twin brother Eric was killed in the siege by
a bullet in the chest as he tried to flee. 

"We don’t have schools like this in Beslan," said Edik. "The teachers
are great and the place is beautiful. Being here, far away from Beslan,
has helped me think less often of what happened. I feel calmer here. We
would all be very sad if we were sent away."
 
The court ruling outraged the Voice of Beslan, a pressure group
comprised of parents of children killed in the siege. It called the
freezing of assets "a disgraceful and immoral act by heartless people
against innocent children who have already been tragically let down by
the Russian state". 

If the determination that the prosecutors have shown in pursuit of
Khodorkovsky is anything to go by, then even the plight of the Beslan
children is unlikely to save the school. 

The former tycoon, who angered the Kremlin with his overt political
ambitions, has been banished to a uranium polluted area of Siberia. He
has twice been locked in solitary confinement and last month was
attacked while asleep by another inmate. 

His parents, who fear for his life, believe the assault was part of a
campaign to break him psychologically. "This school was my son’s pet
project," said Boris Khodorkovsky. "By coming after the school they hope
to hurt him. But we won’t let them. Until our last penny, we’ll take
care of the children. We won’t give them up."

***END ARTICLE 2***

-- 
banana     "The thing I hate about you, Rowntree, is the way you
            give Coca-Cola to your scum, and your best teddy-bear to
            Oxfam, and expect us to lick your frigid fingers for the
            rest of your frigid life." (Mick Travis, 'If...', 1968)