The Post-Partisan Emporium

  A Storied Russian Muckraker On Oil, Iran, Ukraine, and More Known for fearless journalism in the Yeltsin years, Leonid Krutakov resurfaces with an epic history of the oil business, at a time when war over energy has never been more relevant. Matt Taibbi Russian oil in the Phillipines this week In Moscow in July 1997, reporter Leonid Krutakov had a scoop. Anatoly Chubais, the Harvard-educated privatization boss and right hand of Boris Yeltsin, had been given a $3 million loan from Stolichny Bank just before that same bank — controlled by an intimidating “businessman” named Alexander Smolensky — won an auction for a state-owned agricultural property, Agroprombank. It was a great story, but Krutakov had to make an epic journey to print it. First fired from Chubais-friendly  Komsomolskaya Pravda,  he was rejected by  Moskovsky Komsomolets,  then appealed to the legendary editor of  Top Secret , Artem Borovik, before that magazine, too, turned him down. Finall...

  EU Ewwww! Talk about stepping in it Radio Far Side It’s been a week of astonishing irony. Rob Reiner, a long-time and very vocal proponent of banning guns was stabbed to death. While an interesting side show, it pales in comparison to one of the great suicides in all of human history, overshadowing even Cleopatra’s asp — and history tells us she had a fine asp at that. I’m talking, of course, of the EU’s incredibly senseless and wildly reckless flying double-gainer on its own sword. Among baffling and disastrous political blunders, this one dwarfs the competition. In fact, but for Athens launching the Sicilian Expedition in 415 BC, or the USSR invading Afghanistan in 1979, it’s difficult to come up with anything more self-destructive than the EU confiscating Russia’s money. And the reason makes it all the more unhinged. This event will go down in history as one of the most monumentally stupid things any political entity has ever done. It’s going to have profound repercussions thr...