Slow Down… or Else By David Galland, Managing Editor, The Casey Report

On a whim following our Denver Summit – and despite truly abysmal weather – Casey Research CEO Olivier Garret and I cabbed it down to a local public golf course for a quick nine holes. Afterwards we were returning to the hotel through a neighborhood best described as poor, but not disreputable. While our cab made its way down a side street, a radar gun-wielding policeman leaped out of the bushes down the block, pulled the trigger, and waved our immigrant cab driver to the curb. The offense, we soon learned, was going five miles an hour over the speed limit in a school zone… well after school was out and with no other children in sight.

Waiting for

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TODAY: Medvedev's state of the nation address warns opposition against using democracy to rock the boat; talks up modernization. Media unconvinced President can match word with deed. Topol-M problem for START replacement talks;  Litvinenko suspect Lugovoi willing to speak to London prosecutors?; is Russia really cracking down on nationalists; Putin world's third most powerful according to ForbesIn President Medvedev's second state-of-the-nation address, highlights of which can be found here, he warned opposition politicians not to use democracy as a way to 'destabilize the state and split society'. The fact that the speech emphasized long-term goals, related to cutting time zones, technology and industrial modernization, heralds a call for re-election argues one analyst, quoted in the Moscow ...

TODAY: Youtube policeman faces slander investigation; Omsk students threatened with expulsion; Committee to Protect Journalists urge global attention to threats against media in Russia. Merkel thanks Gorbachev; Medvedev approves new military bill; advocates abolition of death penalty. Delay for Gazprom eyesore?; Nobel Prize winning physicist dies; Kalashnikov goes on; gangsters' idea of cemetery chic. Corruption-highlighting policeman Alexei Dymovsky is now facing three investigations after posting a video address to Putin lamenting the state of the police, including an Investigative Committee examination of whether the policeman's accusations hold any truth; another investigation is against Dymovsky himself, for slander.  Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev has already ordered an investigation into the Novorossiisk police force and suspended Dymovsky ...

Bob has an opinion article in today's edition of the Guardian stressing the importance of linking human rights with foreign relations during David Miliband's visit to Russia this week, and elsewhere in the same paper, Mikhail Khodorkovsky's mother has issued her own appeal to the foreign secretary.

At least one report confirms that Khodorkovsky's case will indeed be discussed.

Miliband has started on this path already, apparently. He met with human rights activists today where, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Libery, he "expressed his concern over the killings of activists of nongovernmental organizations in Russia and the pressure that is being imposed on civil society."

Miliband also pressed Russia to

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Charlie Rose sits down with Andrew Ross Sorkin to discuss the global economic crisis and the players who inhabited the story. Ross Sorkin is an award-winning American journalist and author of a new book Too Big to Fail. He is a financial columnist for The New York Times and is the newspaper’s chief mergers and acquisitions reporter. He is also the founder and editor of DealBook, a financial news service, published by The Times. Ross Sorkin began writing for The Times in 1995 under unusual circumstances; at the time he started writing for the paper, he hadn’t yet graduated from high school.

Click here or on the image below to view the video.

Source: Charlie Rose, October 19, 2009.

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In a case brought to light by Hermitage Capital Management's campaign to expose state corruption in Russia, Viktor Markelov has pleaded guilty to 'fraud by prior collusion by a group of persons and in an especially large amount' in a Moscow court.  Hermitage, meanwhile, has sent out a new letter to six government agencies alleging that senior Kremlin officials have 'conspired with a private gang' to steal $230 million from the Russian treasury.  Bloomberg and The Times of London report the figure as $381 million, the Moscow Times as less than a quarter of that sum.  AvtoVAZ workers are rallying for the company's nationalization.  Swiss engineering firm ABB says it is reassessing its business model in Russia, owing to increased operating costs.  Is Russian oligarch Mikhail D. Prokhorov planning to buy a ...

According to ITAR-TASS, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has commented that Russia does not object to selling energy resources using domestic currencies.  How done is the Russia-China gas deal? wonders the the FT.  Gazprom will buy 500 million cubic meters of gas from Azerbaijan next year.  The Times has a piece on the 'take-and-pay' system which is now causing friction between suppliers and buyers.  Norway's Aladdin has signed a five-year contract to provide gas from a field in the Komi republic to a Gapzrom subsidiary.  ConocoPhillips is apparently 'non-committal' on a possible sale of its 20% stake in Lukoil.  Serbia expects as much as $13.4 billion to be invested in modernizing its energy sector by 2015, and is working with Gazprom.  Iraq has given a consortium led by Eni the right to develop its ...

TODAY: Did Clinton get what she wanted?; media reports possible silence for sanctions deal; START treaty progress.  Georgia accused of abetting al-Qaida; Putin 'satisfied' with job.  German official castigates Medvedev for investigation into Stalin-researching historian; the man of steel's grandson loses battle with newspaper; psychological perils of police force and military; mafia boss funeral. According to the Moscow Times, Hillary Clinton received a 'cool welcome' from Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the crucial issue of sanctions on Iran, with Russia still resisting.  Clinton apparently 'brave-faced' it, saying, 'we did not ask for anything today. We reviewed the situation', and added 'Russia has been extremely co-operative in the work we have done together'.  Reports have circulated that the ...

The Financial Times enumerates Gazprom's problems: are its ambitions to increase production any more than pipe dreams?  Competition for energy reserves in the Arctic Circle could prompt friction between Russia and NATO, a new commander at the alliance has warned.  Bloomberg reports that the holder of the world's fourth-largest gas reserves, Turkmenistan, is ready to export natural gas to European collaborators if they build a pipeline across the Caspian Sea to transport the fuel.  According to Oil and Gas Eurasia, Russia needs a total of $310 billion to fully carry out its program for the analysis and exploration of its continental shelf, a deputy natural resources minister has announced.  Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko has said that Russia has been invited as an observer to the December meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.  Finnish environmental ...

TODAY: Lavrov keeps eagle eye on Georgia; Netanyahu's fears about Russian rogue scientists; Chubais takes the fall for hydropower plant disaster.  Litvinenko widow despairs over apparent British moves towards rapprochement.  Luzhkov-Baturina to take Nemtsov to court. UN report pessimistic on Russia's demographic decline; Ban Ki-moon voices approval for ecological care.According to the Moscow Times, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says that Russia will survey shipping in the Black Sea to monitor Georgian 'provocations' which are a 'serious concern'.  Jorg Himmelreich in the International Herald Tribune suggests that much analysis of last year's Georgia-Russia conflict has overlooked the crucial matter of President Bush's Georgia policy.  Spokesman Andrei Nesterenko says that he believes that the ratification of the Lisbon treaty would benefit ...