An appeal from Russian citizen and ecologist Andrey Zatoka, residing in Dashoguz, Turkmenistan, to you, to me, to our dear readers, to anyone listening.

I, Andrey Zatoka, ask for your help with regard to law enforcement agencies that are repressing me.

Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда.

At the moment, I am in detention and being investigated as part of an entirely fabricated case. I am accused of causing bodily harm to someone who assaulted me without cause in a bazaar. It is obvious to me that the assault was set up with the help of a non-staff assistant to the police and that everything from the apprehension to the accusation charges were planned and organised

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Recently at the House of Journalists in Moscow a book launch event was held by Igor Sutyagin - who is well known not only as a fellow of the USA and Canada Institute, but also as one of Russia's most famous political prisoners, after getting a 15-year jail sentence on a fabricated case by the FSB.  There were a lot of people there, with majority of them being human rights advocates. There were practically no journalists, which isn't really surprising: once a person is sitting in jail in the name of the FSB, then in a state that is all FSB through and through, and to whom practically all the mass information media belong, there is

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Yevgeny Zhovtis - the political prisoner of Kazakhstan

Grigory Pasko, journalist

During the time of my brief sojourn in Almaty, I met with many people - journalists, jurists, human rights advocates - and asked of them: what do they think of the Yevgeny Zhovtis case? One thing became clear and distinct from all our talks: this human rights activist is now widely considered as a new political prisoner of modern-day Kazakhstan - a state which although masquerades its commitment to democratic principles, regularly violates the rights of her people and flouts its own laws through its deeds.

Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда.Read parts one, two and ...

In the famous film Borat, Kazakhstan is shown, to put it mildly, as a strange state. However, the government of Kazakhstan, extremely irritated by the film at the beginning, now, as they are reporting, has replaced wrath with kindness - it has already in practice felt the growing interest in its country: people have wanted to see this mysterious Kazakhstan with their own eyes and are now storming tourist agencies.

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From Russia to Almaty I flew on a half-empty airplane: Russians, apparently, know even without Borat what and how it's really like there. In Almaty itself I was amazed by two things: the almost

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[Click here to read Part 1 of this travelogue.]

Who is Zhovtis?

In recent days, the presidents of Russia and Kazakhstan met in a yurt in Orenburg. Three questions particularly worried Nazarbayev: about join control of the state border between the countries; about military-technical cooperation; about the joint construction and operation of the 3rd block of the Ekibastuz GRES-2 [State District Electrostation--Trans.] in Kazakhstan.

Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда.In consideration of the fact that things in the economy of Russia aren't going well, President Dmitry Medvedev said that "with investments and innovations it is hard for now". An understandable business that these ...

At the end of August, I telephoned the well-known Kazakh human rights advocate Yevgeny Zhovtis and asked how things were going on "the front" with the criminal case that had been opened in relation to him. Yevgeny replied that in connection with the celebration of the Day of the Constitution of Kazakhstan, the trial had been postponed until 2 September. I also asked him, as a lawyer, what the punishment could be with respect to the charge that had been brought against him of having committed a DTP [a "road transport event", known as a "motor vehicle accident" in English--Trans.], as the result of which a person died? Inasmuch as the person who died was himself at fault

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The emerging positive narrative of a favorable outlook for the U.S. economy has done wonders for the markets, particularly equities and commodities. The broad equity markets as well as most commodity groups are up smartly from their early-March lows.

Crude oil's gains have been even more impressive, given its heavy leverage to the health of the global economy. Our view is that oil should be able to hold onto its recent gains and consolidate around current levels, provided this favorable economic view remains in place.

While we have greater confidence in the staying power of the current oil rally, this does not mean that we will not see any short-term pullbacks. On the whole, we expect oil prices in 2010 to be higher than the 2009 levels, but remain significantly below the 2008 peak levels.

Crude oil's near-term fundamentals remain dismal, to say the least. Inventories in the U.S. are at multi-year highs

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The emerging positive narrative of a favorable outlook for the U.S. economy has done wonders for the markets, particularly equities and commodities. The broad equity markets as well as most commodity groups are up smartly from their early-March lows. Crude oil’s gains have been even more impressive, given its heavy leverage to the health of the global economy. Our view is that oil should be able to hold onto its recent gains and consolidate around current levels, provided this favorable economic view remains in place. While we have greater confidence in the staying power of the current oil rally, this does not mean that we will not see any short-term pullbacks. On the whole, we expect oil prices in 2010 to be higher than the 2009 levels, but remain significantly below the 2008 peak levels. Crude oil’s near-term fundamentals remain dismal, to say the least. Inventories ...

In the spirit of not suffering from confirmation bias, in today’s Notes we will try to make the bearish case against gold. So before you storm Notes HQ in Buenos Aires craving blood, hear us out. Many of our staff here love gold and have long term holdings.

This issue is entirely in the contrarian spirit of playing devil’s advocate. So put your pitchforks down. Take a deep breath. There is plenty of space to poke holes in (or rant) about our thesis by writing to info@contrarianprofits.com

So here it goes. The four reasons you shouldn’t buy gold today…

Reason 1: Did you know that the seventh largest holder of gold in the world is not a country, but an exchange traded fund? Yes, gold ETF SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) has amassed the seventh largest gold reserve in the world. This fund holds more gold than China, Switzerland, Japan, the United Kingdom or the

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Russia is far from alone in the neighborhood in its staging of show trials and corralling of political prisoners, and in fact, what is happening to human rights advocate Yevgeny Zhovtis of Kazakhstan, shows an measurably deeper level of political interference.Today began the first day of the criminal trial in a village outside of Almaty against Zhovtis, who is the director of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, one of the most authoritative and well regarded civil society organizations still operating under the government of  Nursultan Nazarbayev.  After having spent the better part of an hour on the telephone with one of Zhovtis's brave defense lawyers (see below), I strongly believe that those ...