Yukos' main shareholders are ready to negotiate on ceding control of the oil company to the state if jailed founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky is freed, key Yukos shareholder Leonid Nevzlin said Monday.

Nevzlin said his offer comes amid mounting Kremlin pressure aimed at forcing the core group of shareholders out of Yukos.

"The Kremlin does not want to see the shareholders of Menatep as owners of a controlling stake in Yukos. This is what I hear via intermediaries almost every day. Such proposals are made, as are threats of a personal nature," Nevzlin said by telephone from Israel, where he lives in self-imposed exile.

He would not elaborate on what the threats were. He also refused to identify the intermediaries, but said he was waiting for the Kremlin to appoint an official mediator.

"I have opened the door for negotiations," he said.

Nevzlin, as well as other core Yukos shareholders, who have all been charged with fraud or tax evasion or both, hold a 44 percent stake in Yukos via the Group Menatep holding company. The stake is currently worth $14.6 billion.

Nevzlin, however, qualified his proposal, saying it was only a starting point for negotiations. He said talks on ways to hand over the stake could only take place if Khodorkovsky was freed on bail or under house arrest.

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Xodorkovsky goes against Putin, Xodorkovsky goes to jail. This is one of the last of the big Oligarchs from the Early 90s. He'll get out, lose his assets, and move to Israel, or London and have tea with Berezovsky. To charge someone with tax evasion in Russia is somewhat absurd. You might have heard about the flat tax there... but the reality is that the tax load, not including money that must be paid to the FSB for protection, is something like 50%. Tarifs on EVERYTHING. The tax code is so complicated... no one can pay up how much is owed, because its not certain how much is owed.

This is more of Putin the President becoming Putin the dictator. The Russian people escaping from "freedom" into bondage. Gangster capitalism has been traumatic. Where will Putin lead them once he has his iron grip?

Nevzlin Offers Shares for Freedom

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of oil giant Yukos, was seized by special forces at a Siberian airport Saturday. He was sent to Moscow and charged with a $1 billion (30 billion rubles) fraud and tax evasion.

Yukos -- as well as Russian businessmen and politicians -- said the arrest of Khodorkovsky, whose wealth was estimated by Forbes magazine at $8 billion and has funded two liberal opposition parties, was politically motivated.

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Putin bags another Oligarch. He's really consolidating his power. He effectively ended freedom of the press when he toppled Berezovsky's media empire, and renationalized the last independant television station... and then following Nord Ost, he has threatened to revoke freedom of the press for "bad coverage" when he is criticized. Now out goes Xodorkovsky. There will be more to come. Putin will never step down as President. When Bush says he can see into his soul, I believe it. One motherfucker to another.

The Oligarchs are all evil, bad men. Thieves on probably the largest scale the twentieth century has seen. But where Putin conquers, he does not bring reform. He replaces the toppled gang with his own... the FSB. The domestic branch of the former KGB.

Russia markets rocked by arrest: Putin bags another Oligarch

] His research shows that not only are suicide terrorists
] significantly more educated than their peers, they are
] also significantly better off. According to Krueger,
] although one-third of Palestinians live in poverty, only
] 13 percent of Palestinian suicide bombers do; 57 percent
] of bombers have education beyond high school versus 15
] percent of the population of comparable age.
]
] The Defense Intelligence Agency also gave me profiles
] of all these people they were interrogating at Guantánamo
] Bay in Cuba. They divide them into Yemenis and Saudis.
] The Yemenis are sort of the foot soldiers. And they found
] that the Saudis, their leaders especially, are from
] high-status families. A surprising number have graduate
] degrees. And they are willing to give up everything. They
] give up well-paying jobs, they give up their families,
] whom they really adore, to sacrifice themselves because
] they really believe that it's the only way they're going
] to change the world.

These people are not stupid, nor poor, nor desperate. While there are reasons to focus on education and poverty in places like West Bank/Gaza, the idea that its going to prevent people from deciding to become suicide terrorists is apparently wrongheaded.

An interested oped on Religion in this article too...

Everything you know about terrorists is wrong.

] So the fact that she's been undercover for three decades
] and that has been divulged is outrageous because she was
] put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an
] area where people she meets with overseas could be
] compromised. When you start tracing back who she met
] with, even people who innocently met with her, who are
] not involved in CIA operations, could be compromised. For
] these journalists to argue that this is no big deal and
] if I hear another Republican operative suggesting that
] well, this was just an analyst fine, let them go
] undercover. Let's put them overseas and let's out them
] and then see how they like it. They won't be able to
] stand the heat [...]

Daily Kos: Plame's former classmate vents

] In a hotly contested lawsuit before a federal appeals
] court, two peer-to-peer companies are about to gain a
] vast army of allies: America's librarians.
]
] The five major U.S. library associations are planning to
] file a legal brief Friday siding with Streamcast Networks
] and Grokster in the California suit, brought by the major
] record labels and Hollywood studios. The development
] could complicate the Recording Industry Association of
] America's efforts to portray file-swapping services as
] rife with spam and illegal pornography.
]
] According to an attorney who has seen the document, the
] brief argues that Streamcast--distributor of the Morpheus
] software--and Grokster should not be shut down. It asks
] the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the April
] decision by a Los Angeles judge that dismissed much of
] the entertainment industry's suit against the two
] peer-to-peer companies.
]
] Among the groups signing the brief are the American
] Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research
] Libraries, the American Association of Law Libraries, the
] Medical Library Association and the Special Libraries
] Association. The American Civil Liberties Union, in one
] of the group's first forays into copyright law, has
] drafted the brief opposing the Motion Picture Association
] of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association
] of America (RIAA).

Librarians to the rescue!

BusinessWeek Online: News from C|Net.com

more comentary on the Jose Padilla saga, this one is a puletser (yeah yeah i dont spell) prize winning jurnalist chastising the media for not giving any coverage to the Padilla case...

when exactly did the we all deside the government didnt need checks and balances any more...

no-one cares about civil liberties or reason 1502-B why i hate people

teh good

The Arrogant Empire by Fareed Zakaria

] "In the process if they (the Iraqis) actually fight, and
] that's one of the assumptions, clearly it's going to be
] brutal, dangerous work and we could take, bluntly, a
] couple to 3,000 casualties," said McCaffrey who became
] one of the most senior ranking members of the U.S.
] military following the 1991 war.
]
] "So if they (the Americans and British) are unwilling to
] face up to that, we may have a difficult time of it
] taking down Baghdad and Tikrit up to the north west."
]
] McCaffrey said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had
] misjudged the nature of the conflict. Asked if Rumsfeld
] made a mistake by not sending more troops to start the
] offensive, McCaffrey replied: "Yes, sure. I think
] everybody told him that."

Barry McCaffrey: 3,000 casualties to Baghdad

] You will probably not hear about the roughly 400,000
] Iraqis we killed during that bully outing. You will almost
] certainly not hear about the retreating column of almost 50,000
] Iraqi soldiers that were incinerated on the highway from Kuwait
] on the orders of war criminal-turned-Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey.

More good stuff from Barlow. But he kinda idealizes Brazil here... I think he missed seeing the millions of people stuck in the favela?

JPB offers a (mostly) reasonable critique

"LAHORE, March 24 (Online): The next target of US after capturing Iraq will be replacement of religious government in Iran with a secular government as the US forces in Afghanistan have already started implementation on action plan in this regard."

Iran to be US next target: CIA Report - PakTribune