CNN Charged With Censorship Over Mid-East Documentary

Last week media critic Glenn Greenwald of the UK's Guardian newspaper/website published a pair of hard-hitting articles aimed directly at CNN that received surprisingly little coverage in the United States given the severity of their charges, namely that CNN is engaging in acts of censorship to protect the patronage paid to them by foreign governments.

Greenwald's charges center around a documentary made last year about the democratic uprisings in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain called “iRevolution: Online Warriors of the Arab Spring”.  The documentary, which Greenwald describes as “unflinching”, centered on pro-democracy activists in the tiny kingdom and was highly critical of the heavy-handed government response, which ultimately put down the democratic uprising.  The Bahraini regime was criticized internationally for their methods, which included the mass arrests of protesters (including doctors who were attempting to help injured demonstrators) and the use of deadly force against unarmed and peaceful protesters.  The CNN documentary crew themselves were even detained at gunpoint by pro-regime forces intent on disrupting their attempts at telling the story of the pro-democracy activists.

“iRevolution: Online Warriors of the Arab Spring” would go on to garner critical praise along with a number of journalism awards. Yet despite this praise, CNN's domestic network would air the documentary only once, while CNN's international broadcasting arm, CNNi, the outlet for which “iRevolution: Online Warriors of the Arab Spring” was originally produced, would not air the documentary at all.  The lead journalist on “iRevolution”, Amber Lyon, complained to CNN's upper management about the network's refusal to air the documentary.  Despite being groomed by CNN to become one of their star on-air personalities, Lyon was laid off by CNN earlier this spring after her complaints about CNN's internal censorship became public.

CNN, of course, has denied any attempt at censorship, noting that they have aired many stories about the uprising in Bahrain (just not “iRevolution” apparently).  But it is here, and in a companion piece, that Greenwald lays out his most serious charge against CNN – that CNN has entered into a number of paid partnerships with governments around the world and that CNN is allowing these partnerships to color their reporting from and about these countries.

The CNN “partnerships” with the governments of countries like Kazakhstan, Georgia and Bahrain has led to the production of a series of quasi-journalistic fluff pieces: reports that are meant to look like genuine CNN reporting – using CNN journalists/personalities - but that in reality are public relations spots that allow the “partner” countries to put their best foot forward, with no contrasting viewpoints offered by CNN's stable of journalists. For example, a series of paid reports aired under the “Eye on Lebanon” banner were touted by Lebanon's Tourism Minister not for their journalistic merit, but rather as a way “to market Lebanon as a tourism destination.”   

It's not surprising then to note that CNN has a long-standing partnership arrangement with Bahrain though the Bahrain Economic Development Board, the governmental agency responsible for promoting Bahrain to the world. CNN has included Bahrain in their “Eye on...” country series, among other paid-for network programming. It is not surprising then that CNN has been reluctant to air a documentary that is so critical of the Bahrani royal family.

There is an inherent tension between advertising and journalism, with the open question always being if the news organization will shy away from coverage that could reflect negatively on their sponsors.  But what Greenwald describes at CNN is something different, the countries in question aren't merely buying commercial spots on CNN, they are, in effect, directly paying for positive coverage of their countries. Worse still, the shelving of “iRevolution” and the subsequent dismissal of Amber Lyon is troubling evidence that CNN is willing to let these sponsorships affect their journalistic judgment beyond the paid-for beauty spots.  It is a troubling accusation to make against what has long been one of the most-trusted names in modern journalism, and is a sign of how far CNN has fallen from their own glory days.

Is Canada Turning Into The United States?

Jokes about the similarity of the two countries have gone on for decades, but some recent moves by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper do beg the question: is Canada turning into the United States?

Environmental and civil rights groups in Canada are up in arms over new proposals from Harper to reform the regulations that manage Canada's natural resources.  The Harper government says that the reforms are meant to reduce redundancy and streamline the approval process for projects in Canada's energy sector, which will benefit all Canadians through lower energy prices and increased exports; environmentalists say the changes are just meant to remove environmental protections, particularly those blocking the expansion of Oil Sands operations in Alberta.  Harper's plan will have the largest impact on a proposed pipeline that will run west from the Oil Sands region through British Columbia to the Pacific Ocean, where tankers can be loaded with the heavy Oil Sands bitumen for shipment to China.  Currently, the pipeline route would have to be evaluated for its environmental impact on each watershed it will cross, and there are many of them in British Columbia; the Harper proposal would mandate that environmental approval would only need to be sought where the pipeline crossed an “official” watershed, a far smaller number.

Harper is presenting this as a net good for Canada: increased exports that will boost the Canadian economy, more jobs and more domestic energy security; opponents say that it is a massive handout to Big Oil and that environmentally sensitive, though not federally-protected, lands will be destroyed by the pipeline.  The Harper government is also putting Canadian environmental groups under closer scrutiny.  Officially, the closer look is meant to uncover donations from foreign sources, which in many cases would be a violation of Canadian law; but again, opponents say that the official story is merely a smokescreen and that the investigations are simply an attempt to silence groups opposed to Harper's policies. 

These investigations come on the heels of a new law passed in Quebec that gives authorities the power to block public demonstrations.  The law follows weeks of street protests by college-aged youth in Quebec protesting hikes in the tuition at provincial universities.  Again, the government and civil libertarians take differing views of the new law: authorities in Quebec say that the law will only be employed in extreme circumstances, noting that the tuition protests have dragged on for weeks, with the protestors refusing to compromise on a proposed deal regarding tuition and that the continuing protests are having a negative impact on the economy in a number of Quebec's cities; civil rights groups though see the new law as nothing more than an attempt to limit the public's right to free speech and assembly and to eliminate dissent.

Meanwhile, Canada is also flexing its military muscles.  Canada is sending 1,400 military personnel, along with five ships and a submarine, to participate in the biannual “Rim of The Pacific” military exercise; all at a time, Toronto's Globe and Mail notes, when the Canada's Defense Department is cutting back on its overall budget.  Canada is also in negotiations for a place in southeastern Asia to host a military “hub” as they're calling it.  The hub would be a way for Canada to have a military presence in a region that is rapidly growing in economic and strategic importance; a likely candidate is reported to be a small port facility next to an airfield in Singapore. Canada's Defense Minister Peter MacKay said that the hub would signal “Canada's intention to reassert our credentials in the Pacific.”

MacKay's announcement followed on the heels of a statement by his opposite number in America, Leon Panetta that the United States was planning to base 60% of its naval forces in the Pacific by 2020. But when you pair Canada's desire for their own slice of the military pie in southeast Asia with Harper's pro-business, and according to critics anti-environmental, energy policy, and new laws that are having a chilling effect on public protests that employ some of the same strategies as the PATRIOT Act, you're seeing policies coming out of the Canadian government that are looking very American.

Putin's Potemkin Inauguration

I was on vacation last week, so I'm still getting caught up on things that I missed while I was away.  One of those things was the inauguration of Russian President Vladimir Putin, though I don't feel so bad since most Muscovites missed out on that event as well.

Putin's inaugural was carefully crafted to impress.  Gilt-covered doors were opened by uniformed Kremlin guards to allow Putin to stride across a gleaming white marble floor, in front of a gathering of decked-out dignitaries, all under a vaulted golden ceiling to take the oath of office.  But there was something missing: minutes earlier, aerial shots on television showed Putin's limousine, guarded by a phalanx of motorcycle police, speeding through Moscow streets utterly devoid of people.  It had the eerie feeling of one of those post-apocalypse that are all the rage today.  Where were the people? (One Russian satirist even noted there were no birds in the TV shots and asked how did they drive away the birds?)  Crowds turned out for the inaugural of Francois Hollande in economically-depressed France just days later, so where were the Russians to celebrate the biggest political event of the year in Russia?

The truth is that the crowds were kept away from the celebration by design, and that for all of his alpha-male bluster, Putin is, at heart, deeply afraid of the people he pledged to lead for the next six years.  The fear isn't that someone in the crowd will try to assassinate Putin or commit some act of terrorism, but rather that they'll do something far more subversive, like boo, or wear a white ribbon.

The Putin team learned just how troublesome the general public could be last November.  Putin stepped into the ring of a mixed martial arts event being broadcast live across Russia on the NTV network to congratulate the winning fighter Fedor Emelianenko.  For Putin, a martial arts enthusiast, it seemed a quick way to score a few points and burnish his he-man image.  But the crowd of 20,000 started booing once Putin hit the ring, a public scolding broadcast live to the nation that would later become a staple on Russian social network Internet sites.  The Kremlin tried to spin the event as an unruly crowd jeering defeated American fighter Jeff Monson, though Internet-savvy Russians would later flood Monson's Facebook page with messages of support for Monson and to confirm that Putin was the target of their ire.

 It's not a coincidence that just a month later, previously politically-apathetic Russians would take to the streets in the tens and hundreds of thousands to protest allegations of fraud in December's parliamentary elections; protests against the rule of Putin that have continued through to today (the white ribbon has become the de facto symbol of anti-Putin protesters, though the Boss, with typical Putin bravado, said the ribbons looked like used condoms). 

Team Putin has learned the lesson that many other autocrats have: once the people lose their fear of speaking out against the leadership, they tend to keep on speaking.  That is why we had the odd visuals of motorcycle police escorting Putin's motorcade though deserted Moscow streets, there to protect Putin from no one, apparently.  This puts Putin in an odd position.  He has spent the past 12 years carefully crafting an image of himself as not only a Russian superman, but also as a Russian everyman, a true man of the people; yet now he fears the people for their unruliness and their unpleasant demands that he actually make good on the promises he's offered for the past decade about tackling corruption and turning Russia's legal and political systems into something more than vehicles to simply make the oligarch class richer.

In his third term in office, Putin will likely find that actually serving as the leader of a nation is much more difficult than just playing one on TV.

Paris vs. Putin

Are wealthy urban elites the latest group to turn against Russia's Vladimir Putin?  That’s the takeaway from a few articles recently discussing an unusual new phenomenon ahead of Russia's March 4 presidential elections.  It seems that well-heeled socialites are among the groups turning out in street protests against the Era of Putin in Moscow and St. Petersburg.  According to this report from Reuters, white ribbons – the symbol of the protest movement – are the hot new fashion accessory, and, in the  right social circles, there is a need to explain why your absence from the most recent public protest.  Among Russia's nouveau riche, there is perhaps no bigger socialite than Ksenia Sobchak – a model, media personality, host of the reality TV show Dom-2 (Russia's answer to Big Brother), now an unlikely addition to the anti-Putin brigade.

Sobchak's appearance at an anti-Putin rally would be like Paris Hilton pitching a tent at an Occupy Wall Street encampment, a point The Guardian hammers home in their lengthy piece on Russia's radical socialite.  But there is an important subtext to Sobchak's new-found political activism: Sobchak's father Anatoly was the mayor of St. Petersburg during the 1990s and started the political career of a young former intelligence officer named Vladimir Putin; Putin and the Sobchaks became and remain close personal friends, making Ksenia’s defection a quasi-family affair.  For her part, Ksenia Sobchak says that Putin is, at heart, a good person.  But like many other Russians, Ksenia seems to have been angered by Putin's decision to run for a third term as president after failing to deliver on promises of reform and to fight Russia's culture of corruption for the past 12 years.

Ksenia Sobchak's career as Russia's most-unlikely political radical began with a televised debate with one of the founders of the rabidly pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi (Russian for “Ours”).  Ksenia then traded in her hostessing gig on Dom-2 to become the moderator on a youth-oriented current affairs program on Russia's MTV channel called Gosdep (a Russian abbreviation for “Department of State”).  The first episode, entitled Where is Putin Taking Us? set the tone for the series by featuring a panel of figures from the political opposition typically barred from Russia's Kremlin-friendly television landscape.  That first episode proved to be Gosdep's last, despite good ratings.  Ksenia's decision to feature anti-Putin blogger and one of the de facto leaders of the opposition movement, Alexei Navalny, seems to have also been a factor in the show's cancellation.  Ahead of the March 4 election, the Kremlin is widely being blamed for a shake-up of management at Ekho Moscow the radio station which has been one of the few independent outlets on broadcast TV or radio.

Ksenia Sobchak may have lost her current affairs TV program, but she hasn't lost her fame and public persona, two factors that should make her difficult for the Kremlin to marginalize, while her desire to speak out against the failures of the Putin regime are a sign of just how deeply the anti-Putin sentiment is running in Russia today.

Hip Hop World: Russia and Uganda Edition

The website GlobalPost recently reported on the rap scene in Russia under the title “Can Rap Change Russia?”; the subject of the piece was Russian rapper Noize MC, who just spent ten days in jail for insulting police officials in Volgograd. While politically-charged rap is nothing new in the United States (think Public Enemy and NWA among others), Noize MC is blazing a new path in Russia by writing songs about corrupt officials and abusive police officers. His biggest statement to date is the song “Mercedes S666” a rap about a mother and daughter killed in a traffic accident by a bureaucrat's speeding Mercedes. The story caused national outrage in Russia over the use of flashing blue lights attached to the top of a car – the blue lights are only intended to be used by only official vehicles in emergency situations, but they have been doled out to thousands of petty bureaucrats who use them to flout traffic laws, sometimes with disastrous results.

Noize MC was jailed for ten days after performing an impromptu rap about police abuse; he was convicted of “disorderly conduct” two days later and jailed. Since his release, he has seen some of his concerts canceled, likely due to official pressure. While Noize MC may be taking Russian rap to new places, people familiar with the Russian music industry interviewed by GlobalPost say that he is the exception to the rule, and that most musicians today are content to not make waves when it comes to criticizing the government. Perhaps there's no better indication of that than the fact that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was actually nominated for a rap award earlier this year for his appearance on “Battle for Respect”, a sort of American Idol for aspiring Russian rappers and breakdancers. Putin appeared on the show to give rap and breakdancing his seal of approval for promoting a “healthy lifestyle” among young people; Putin's appearance was subsequently nominated for “Event of the Year” at the first annual Russian Street Awards, a show dedicated to rap, breakdancing and graffiti art (to their credit, the Russian Street Awards organizers decided to limit the butt-kissing to the nomination stage rather than giving Putin an award).

And while we're on the topic of world leaders and rap, Uganda's 65-year old President Yoweri Museveni could become rap's latest, and most unlikely, star. A rap of a campaign speech Museveni gave earlier this year has been set to a beat and is currently burning up the charts in Uganda. The lyrics include the lines: “harvesters, give me millet that I gave to a hen, which gave me an egg that I gave to children, who gave me a monkey that I gave to the king, who gave me a cow that I used to marry my wife,” and are based on a Ugandan fairy tale. Museveni busted out the rhymes during a campaign stop with young supporters.

Journalists Again Targeted in Russia

At the time this post is being written, Oleg Kashin, a journalist with the Russian newspaper Kommersant is lying in a Moscow hospital in a coma, the result of a savage beating outside of his apartment. Even though a number of high-profile journalists have been attacked, some murdered, in Russia during the past decade, Kashin's attack was particularly brazen; he was beaten with a metal rod and suffered numerous injuries to his head – including two broken jaws – a broken leg and fingers. Robbery appears not to have been the motive since his wallet and iPhone were left with Kashin (this MSNBC story includes security camera footage of the attack on Kashin).

And here's where on Law and Order they'd say that a pattern is emerging; Kashin was the third reporter beaten in such a manner. In November 2008 journalist Mikhail Beketov was assaulted outside of his home, and received a beating so severe it left him with brain damage and confined to a wheelchair; earlier this week a third journalist, Anatoly Adamchuk, was assaulted outside of the offices of his newspaper Zhukovskiye Vesti. Two threads link the three beatings – one, in each case along with a severe beating around the head, each journalist also had their hands smashed, in Beketov's case smashed so badly that several of his fingers had to be amputated; since journalists earn their living by typing – an act hard to do without the use of one's fingers – the beating of the hands sends a pretty clear message. The second common link is that prior to the beating each had written stories about historic, old-growth (and supposedly protected) forests being cut down for road-building projects, often involving well-connected land developers: in the case of Kashin and Beketov it was the Khimki Forest, a project recently suspended by President Dmitry Medvedev after some high-profile attention was cast on it by U2's Bono and Russian rock icon Yuri Shevchuk; in Adamchuk's case it was a similar project through the Tsagovsky Forest.

The inference most will likely draw is that in each case the journalists were attacked because of their writing about the controversial destruction of what should be protected public lands by people acting on behalf of the wealthy developers pushing the highway projects (road development is considered one of the most lucrative types of construction in Russia) either with the blessing of officials in the Kremlin or at least without the fear of angering them. Perhaps aware that this is the likely conclusion people will draw, Medvedev has pledged swift action and, according to Kommersant, has assigned “experts from the Prosecutor General's Office's Investigative Committee who have solved a number of high-profile cases” to the investigation. A bill was also introduced in the Duma that would grant journalists the same level of protection given to politicians, making an assault on them punishable by life in prison if the attack were grave enough. On the surface, both are strong actions aimed at getting justice for the victims and preventing future attacks, but Russia in the 21st century has a poor record of actually catching those who assault and kill journalists making all of the eventual arrests and punishments a moot point.

And just to add insult to injury, literally, this week Beketov was found guilty of slandering Khimki's Mayor Vladimir Strelchenko, who filed suit against Beketov for criticizing his administration for letting the Khimki Forest be clear-cut for the Moscow-St. Petersburg highway project. While the judge in the case was sympathetic to Beketov, who was physically unable to speak due to the injuries he sustained in the 2008 beating, he fined Beketov $160 for “tarnishing the honor and professional reputation” of Strelchenko, a fine he then waived on a technicality.

The Other Ground Zero Mosque

While the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has passed, the furor over the “Ground Zero Mosque” continues (still ignoring the fact that the Cordoba House/Park51 is neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero).  But hopefully this brief story from the New York Times about the other Ground Zero Mosque can put the issue to bed once and for all.

You see there already has been a mosque at Ground Zero, there was an Islamic prayer room inside the South Tower  of the World Trade Center, a room that was destroyed along with the rest of the building in the terrorist attacks. It would be nice if this little bit of knowledge served to 1) remind us that the people killed on 9/11 weren't just white Christian folk like some would like to imply (nor were they all Americans, it is important to remember that about 700 were citizens of approximately 70 other nations); 2) that lower Manhattan has had and continues to have an Islamic community that has the same right to exercise their faith as anyone else and that 3) the Islamic fundamentalists who attacked the buildings destroyed their own prayer space, holy texts (I would assume the prayer room had at least a few Korans laying about) and their coreligionists, meaning they weren't brave individuals on some sort of grand mission, but a bunch of sick individuals co-opting religious ideas to serve their own twisted world view.

A guy can always hope.

Dalai Lama Takes Up Uyghur Cause

The Dalai Lama used an address to mark his 51st year since fleeing into exile from Tibet to take up the cause of another minority group within China, the Uyghurs of northwestern Xinjiang Province. The Dalai Lama called on his followers to remember the Uyghurs “who have experienced great difficulties and increased oppression,” and said that he would “like to express my solidarity and stand firmly with them.” Last summer the Chinese government cracked down forcefully on the Uyghurs after a protest in the provincial capital, Urumqi, turned violent. Officially, more than 1,000 Uyghurs were arrested, though Uyghur groups claim that thousands more, mostly young men, disappeared following the crackdown.

And in a move that further angered the Chinese government, the Dalai Lama used the name “East Turkestan” when referring to northwest China. East Turkestan was the name of the short-lived independent Uyghur nation in Central Asia in the 1940s, which was overrun by the People’s Liberation Army and absorbed into China. As you would expect the Chinese government was not pleased by the Dalai Lama’s remarks.

The state-run Xinhua news agency called the Dalai Lama’s comments “resentful, yet unsurprising,” and full of “angry rhetoric.” They went on to say that: “(the) Dalai Lama's request for 'genuine autonomy' on one quarter of the Chinese territory is anything but acceptable for the central government.” It is an odd statement for the central government to make though since the official name of Xinjiang is the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. In reality the Uyghurs have little actual autonomy in their own “autonomous region”, thanks in part to aggressive immigration policies, which have encouraged ethnic Han Chinese to settle in Xinjiang in large numbers, making the Uyghurs a minority within their own homeland. Beijing has also leveled much of the historic old city of Kashgar – long regarded as the cultural and spiritual capital of the Uyghur people, and a candidate for registry as a UNESCO World Heritage site – under the banner of “earthquake safety” measures.

Huge Rally Catches Russian Government Off Guard

Over the past few months Russian civil rights groups have been staging a series of rallies on the 31st of every month that has 31 days. The day is meant to be symbolic – the 31st article of the Russian constitution guarantees Russians the right to publicly protest, though in practice even small, peaceful protests usually are quickly broken up by the police. In past months these 31st day protests have been small in nature, drawing just a few hundred rights activists and government critics, like former Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov. But a rally in Russia’s westernmost city, Kaliningrad, shocked authorities in the Kremlin when between 6,000 and 12,000 people turned out to protest not just a reduction in civil rights but also cuts to social programs, hikes on taxes on imported automobiles and public transit fees, and to demand the resignation of their regional governor Grigory Boos.

The Soviet Union won Kaliningrad as part of a reparations package from Germany following World War II. Even though it is just south of Lithuania, Kaliningrad was officially attached to Russia, something that was of little practical importance, at least until 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved and Lithuania and Russia were no longer part of the same country. Since then Kaliningrad has been an exclave of Russia, separated from the main body of the country, yet still strategically important since it is home to Russia’s Baltic Sea naval fleet.

But Kaliningrad residents say that being surrounded by EU member-states Lithuania and Poland make them keenly aware that their standard of living is far below that of their EU neighbors. And, they add, oft-made promises by officials in Moscow for programs to build up Kaliningrad’s economy have never been fulfilled, which helped to spark the massive rally on Sunday. Solomon Ginzburg, an opposition politician in Kaliningrad told The Guardian that the Sunday protests were even larger than street rallies in 1991 to oppose an attempted coup by KGB hardliners against Mikhail Gorbachev’s reform-minded government.

Meanwhile, Kaliningrad’s governor Grigory Boos was summoned back to Moscow following the protest. According to the New York Times, officials in the Kremlin are unhappy with Boos for not using the OMON (Russian police special units) to break up the protest before it could swell to an embarrassing 10,000 people. Last year OMON forces were flown to the Far East port city of Vladivostok to break up protests there over new taxes on imported cars (importing cars from Japan was a thriving cottage industry in Vladivostok). OMON units were used in Moscow on Sunday to disburse their 31st protests, arresting more than 100 people, including Nemtsov. But the OMON forces are struggling with a scandal brewing within their ranks.

On Monday an interview was published with a group of OMON officers titled “The Slaves of OMON”, where the officers made claims including: that they had quotas for the number of people they needed to detain per day, that their superiors often forced them to work up to 20 hours a day for as much as two weeks straight, and that they have been “rented out” to work as hired muscle to intimidate business owners and to protect prostitution rings. Officials with OMON hit back hard saying that several of the officers interviewed in the article had been fired in November and that one never even worked for OMON at all. The magazine that published the report “The New Times”, stuck by their report, and it is worth noting that the OMON charges come less than three months after the highly-publicized police corruption charges leveled via YouTube by former police Major Alexey Dymovsky. As with Dymovsky, the government is vowing to launch a “full investigation” of the OMON officers’ claims.

It will be interesting to see what the fall out will be both from the OMON charges and the Kaliningrad protests.

Chinese Reality

If you listen to the Chinese media, you would think that China is leading the fight against climate change, their navy is rescuing ships from Somali pirates and that they are keeping the world safe from the Dalai Lama. In my latest post at The Mantle, I take a look at China’s take on reality and how that plays into their efforts to control access to the Internet.

Russia's Corruption Cop Gets Busted

Major Alexey Dymovsky, the former police officer from Russia's Krasnodar region, who shot to national and international fame after issuing a plea to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on YouTube to investigate rampant corruption in the Russian police forces, has himself been charged with embezzlement while serving as a police officer. Prosecutors in Krasnodar claim that Dymovsky embezzled $800 while working as a narcotics officer.

So, are the charges true? Quite likely, but if anything that only works to reinforce Dymovsky's original claim - that Russia's police forces not only tolerate corruption, but expect it as part of the job. In his original YouTube post, Dymovsky alleged that starting salaries for police officers in Krasnodar were so low, around $400 per month, in part because ranking officials just expected younger officers to supplement their incomes with bribes.

In that way, the charges levied against Dymovsky are much like those filed against Mikhail Khodorkovsky formerly one of Russia's richest men while CEO of Yukos, formerly one of Russia's largest energy companies. In 2004 Khodorkovsky was arrested on charges of fraud and tax evasion, he would later be sentenced to eight years in prison. Some of Khodorkovsky's defenders claim the charges against him were trumped up. Actually, the charges were likely legitimate, the problem is that they could have been levied against any of Russia's oligarchs - all of whom tended to take advantage of poorly-written and rarely-enforced laws to build their mega-fortunes. Yet Khodorkovsky was singled out for punishment, the allegation is because he violated a secret agreement between then-President Vladimir Putin and the oligarch class that Putin would give them a free hand in business if they agreed to stay out of politics. Khodorkovsky made a few relatively small donation to political parties in Siberia and soon found himself being arrested by Russian security forces.

Now Dymovsky who blew the whistle on police corruption has himself been charged with taking money shouldn't have. The question is whether this is the start of the oft-promised government campaign against corruption, or if Dymovsky will be just a blue collar version of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Obama's Phantom Town Hall Meeting

I had trouble sleeping last night, so I turned on the TV and was able to catch some of President Obama's townhall meeting in Shanghai with an audience of Chinese university students. Laying in my bed I was able to do something most Chinese were not, to watch Obama engage in a Q&A session with the students.

The townhall was suppose to be one of the key events of Obama's visit to China, a chance for the country to see the new president in action. The original idea was for the event to be broadcast nationwide on China's state-run TV network. But after two weeks of negotiations, the best the White House could get was coverage on the local Shanghai affiliate station and in Hong Kong, as well as on the Internet. But if the Obama Administration was hoping that the Internet would bring the townhall to the masses, they were badly mistaken - access to streaming video via Whitehouse.gov was said to be "unreliable" in Beijing, while Chinese authorities blocked access through Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. Comments critical about the government posted to Chinese news sites were reported by several Chinese bloggers to have been quickly scrubbed by the authorities.

Perhaps all that censorship was unnecessary - the audience in Shanghai was said to have been carefully pre-screened by the local branch of the Communist party and was only about a quarter of the size Obama had hoped for. And to a degree Obama was self-censoring, soft-pedaling the topic of human rights in China. Obama did take a stand against Internet censorship, but only in reply to a question asked not by a student but by the US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman (from an email, he said, sent to the US Embassy in China). Perhaps the most effective form of censorship really is self-censorship.