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Another NYT Kremlin Slanders Story
The New York Times runs another of its Putin/Russia slander stories.
A Russian potash mining company, Uralkali, owned by oligarch Dmitri E. Rybolovlev, had some trouble two years ago when its main mine collapsed and opened up a big sinkhole. The damage on the surface is severe and it will cost hundreds of millions to reroute major train tracks and to resettle people. A first investigation found that the company was not to blame. But the government recently reopened the investigation.
The NYT describes this as a raid attempt by the Putin government to take over the company. It rumors of stock manipulation and attempts to crash the companies shares. It leaves out the information that would allow the reader to put this into the real context. Most importantly it leaves out recent news that refutes its whole story.
In Hard Times, Russia Moves In to Reclaim Private Industries
In late October, one of Vladimir V. Putin’s top lieutenants abruptly summoned a billionaire mining oligarch to a private meeting. The official, Igor I. Sechin, had taken a sudden interest in a two-year-old accident at the oligarch’s highly lucrative mining operations here in Russia’s industrial heartland.
Mr. Sechin, who is a leader of a shadowy Kremlin faction tied to the state security services, said he was ordering a new inquiry into the mishap, according to minutes of the meeting. With a deputy interior minister who investigates financial crime at his side, Mr. Sechin threatened crippling fines against the company, Uralkali.
It seems to me the meeting was not private, but quite official. The mine owner received heads up that the investigation into the accident would be re-opened. The company disclosed as much on November 6.
Mr. Sechin, who the NYT reader might by now see as a shadowy KGB agent who 'abruptly summons' firendly billionaires is a Deputy Prime Minister responsible for:
- development and implementation of state policy in the field of industry development and energy
- state policy regarding nature management and environmental protection
- implementation of ecological, technological and nuclear supervision
That seems to me to be the legitimate position in Putin's government to look into that huge mining accident investigation. But reading the NYT piece, you will never learn that Mr. Sechin is indeed the top government guy for these issues, including mining, and that decisions about the investigation is certainly within his fields of responsibility. Instead you learn of him as a 'leader of a shadowy Kremlin faction tied to the state security services'.
[Mr. Rybolovlev] further sought to fend off the inquiry by saying he would pay for some of the damage to infrastructure from the accident, a mine collapse that injured no one but left a gaping sinkhole.
His offer was rebuffed, and it seemed clear why: the Kremlin was maneuvering to seize Uralkali outright.
The offer was indeed rebuffed. A commission is still assessing the total damage.Why should the state settle when the damage amount is yet unknown?
From there on the NYT writer produces a lot of innuendos, but no fact, that would let one come to the conclusion he presents, that "the Kremlin was maneuvering to seize Uralkali outright."
Here is a typical construct he uses:
Mr. Sechin’s role in the Uralkali inquiry immediately caused analysts and investors to presume that the company was in peril. Uralkali’s stock, once highly prized by fund managers, has plunged more than 60 percent since the inquiry began, far more than the broader Russian stock market.
Could it be possible that not Mr. Sechin's role was what caused a sell off in Uralkali shares, but the simple fact that investors learned from the company disclosure that it might have to pay for several hundred millions of damages its mine caused?
As for the stock quote drop: on the left the Russian RTS index, on the right the Uralkali stock price for the last six month.
 –
Did the stock really behave much different than the general stock market?
Continues the Times:
Around the time of the meeting called by Mr. Sechin on Oct. 29 in
Moscow, there was a sharp spike in short selling in Uralkali’s stock on
the London Stock Exchange
— that is, bets that the stock would fall, according to Data Explorers,
an analytical firm that studied the securities data at the request of
The New York Times. The meeting itself was not made public until Nov.
7, at which point the stock plummeted. Within the context of the Times story, the reader will assume that some Kremlin miscreant shorted the stock. But if Mr. Rybolovlev learned about the new investigation during his meeting with Mr. Sechin, might he not himself have shorted his companies stock?
Mr. Rybolovlev is well know to take advantage of sudden events. When that sinkhole (pictures) at his major mine widened last year, it broke the rail-lines which connected a competitors mine nearby to the world markets. With the competition disabled, Mr. Rybolovlev immediately stopped new sales by his own companies to further push up market prices for his product.
But now the biggest bummer by the NYT.
It published its story on Sunday with the dateline December 7. The whole story construct hangs on the premise that the Kremlin wants to take over Uralkali.
But on December 4 Reuters reported: Russian minister doesn’t blame Uralkali for accident
A Russian minister has said that he believes that Uralkali should not
be blamed for a mining accident in 2006, and shares in the firm have
soared by 20% in London in response.
That little fact did not make it into the Times story that was published three days later.
It would not have fit the slander the NYT wanted to apply.
@ jony_b_cool #16:
it brings home how this (as well as the other GWB efforts) are the predictable-type fiascos that result from geo-politics by fanatics.
I don’t really understand how you arrive at your inferences.
As I said above, there was nothing predictable about Putin’s actions. He surprised the US government — caught them completely flat-footed — as well as members of Exxon of both political parties.
Nor do I see events as being a fiasco for the world; I think, rather, that it was a serendipitous, unexpected blessing.
The evidentiary record is clear on this: Bush’s advisors had compiled a list of seven nations that were slated for anti-democratic regime change via military means. Planning, at the level of the unchanging deep government apparatus (not political party level) was underway for all of them by people registered to both corporate-supported political parties. At the very least, Putin’s actions prevented military invasions of Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. If you prefer to dwell on the superficial level of political party, there was no mobilized Democratic opposition to any of this.
Nor do I see Bush’s Presidency as being a “fiasco,” at least for the publicly professed constituents of his “real base”: the ultra-wealthy. Bush presided over the single largest transfer of wealth in history. That act did not take place by “rash action” as you seem to infer by the use of the word “fanatic,” but by cool, organized planning, and smooth, expert implementation by many thousands of public intellectuals over many decades; it was all completely public.
For instance, the aftermath of Katrina was a test case for the breaking of unions and privatisation of jobs, the channelling of vast amounts of public money to unaccountable private corporations, the marginalization of mass dissent by focusing on individdual “dramas,” the privatisation of military control over a civilian populace, the destruction of public housing, the blaming of the poor and helpless (still comes up quite often on this blog), the forced movement of vast amounts of people, ethnic cleansing, the setting of identity group against identity group to deflect blame from leaders, the criminalization of resistance, the privatisation of land, the hiring of scab labor, the destruction of environmental laws and the covering up of public pollution, the continued jailing of thousands without charges because of a “breakdown” of the criminal justice system, the expansion of a mythologized, fantasyland tourist reality, etc. All planned out publicly (not by Bush himself) in think-tanks years ahead of time. Books were written advocating all of these policies, government studies were conducted about their likely effects, and classes were taught to students advocating these policies. Even Nobel prizes were won advocating policies which the government took. As a matter of fact, by “coincidence” National Geographic predicted much of what actually ensued in a cover story almost exactly one year prior to the actual event.
Hence, we have good reason to expect that a responsible & tolerant approach by Obama/Clinton/Biden could make a big difference.
You will have to define what you mean by tolerant.
Clinton advocated bombing Iran. Biden has advocated illegally splitting Iraq into three rump states against the will of the people; he championed debt laws which permanently destroy the lives of those who have lost jobs or had catastrophic illness. (I am one of his first victims, and my wealthy family will not have anything to do with me now for fear it will rub off on them.) Obama has voted to fund an illegal war, and continue corporate spying on Americans without recourse, among other actions. All three advocate policies which clearly violate The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and numerous statutes of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — which were adopted in response the the Nazi crimes of aggression by the US-led Nuremburg Tribunal, ironically for the original crime of the massacre of a mere 3000 Assyrian people in 63 small villages scattered around the Mosul area.
Yes, they are all “responsible” for these actions, as you point out, but I’m not sure in what sense you employ the word “tolerant.” Bush has been on record a number of times saying that we should not hate Muslims per say, and his wife has gone on record stating that a person’s sexuality, or that of one of their family members, is unimportant to their holding office. Hell, even Cheney believes that. So tolerance must be defined rigorously before I can agree or disagree with you here.
Obama is destined to ultimately be labeled the Prez who “lost” Iraq, Iran, Ukraine, Somalia, Venezuela …
I sure hope he loses Venezuela. He is on record as lying about the qualitative improvement of Venezuelan’s lives, lying about the almost unparalleled support for the governments redistributive policies, supporting the covert undermining of the government, the funding of intentionally destablizing opposition groups who overtly lie about the programs they would implement if they held the reigns of power, and being adamantly against the right of the people of that country to democratically control the fate of their own country and the allocation of its vast resource wealth.
I would fall over backwards if Obama even considered implementing anything half as democratic as the local Bolivarian councils Chavez has supported in Venezuela.
Beyond that, I, unlike you, do not identify myself with a “team.” I could not care less which President (or party) gets blamed by the Corporate media for what. 90% of what people are taught to believe about history is a fiction, and I see my role as working to clarify those fictions rather than getting twisted up in them. Howard Zinn, John Marciano, Michael Parenti, Noam Chomsky, and Doug Dowd (among others) are my highly respected academic mentors here.
I don’t know anything about you or how you have developed your beliefs. For my part, I grew up in the sixties in NYC as a moderately well-to-do educated Jew. I knew, and still know, many people my age who have climbed the rungs of power and are now second-level advisors to both parties. They all go speak at the same venues and forums, are members of the same Synogogues, Churchs and clubs, and all socialize together at the same parties. They studied at the same Universities under the same mentors. They are a coterie, united by a shared core of beliefs about the US and the world. Despite what you imply, any strong internecine rivalry — beyond the winning of a contest as if it were a sporting event which can certainly further one’s career and increase one’s earnings, is a myth. James Carville and Mary Matalin are not an oddity from out of space, but, rather, a profitable partnership.
(The elite have always been more cohesive as a group, than fractured. As a rather curious footnote, in my work research I came across the seemingly bizarre fact (that is until you understand the behavior of the elite) that the Founder of United Fruit (remember, those thugs that Smedley Butler was used to protect over in Central America) sold his house to his premier critic, John Dos Passos, who later sold the house to the man who presided over the Nuremburg Tribunal I quoted from above. And if you were a member of the elite — regardless of political persuasion — you could buy the very same house in the former working class fishing village of Wellfleet MA today for a mere $4.8 Million. If you don’t believe my personal meanderings about wealth and elite power, jony_b_cool et. al., I recommend reading The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills, and the more current by William Dumhoff. Then you can go back and fill in with some Veblen and De Tocqueville.)
Posted by: Malooga | Dec 9 2008 17:24 utc | 18
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