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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   1142 thread views

Transnational Thursday for July 25, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Last week Wall Street Journal writer Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years for espionage charges. The trial was closed so evidence was not available to the public; the WSJ and the US government have denied the charges (All the WSJ articles on Gershkovich are free from paywalls and other restrictions).

A list of other notable Americans imprisoned or formerly imprisoned in Russia includes:

Paul Whelan (former Marine charged with espionage for 16 years, arrested in 2018, his family denies he is a spy).

Trevor Reed (former Marine charged with assaulting a police officer while drunk arrested 2019, sentenced for 9 years, released in exchange for Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was convicted for drug smuggling [for cocaine was arrested in Liberia in 2010 and sentenced in the US to 20 years]).

Marc Fogel (schoolteacher at the Anglo-American School of Moscow, arrested 2021 for entering Russia with 0.6 grams of medical marijuana sentenced to 14 years).

Britney Griner (WNBA player arrested entering Russia with a hash oil vaporizer arrested Aug 2022 sentenced to 9 years, released Dec 2022 in exchange for Viktor Bout [arrested 2008 in Thailand extradited 2010 to US, sentenced 2011 to 25 years by the US for conspiring to provide arms to Columbian rebel group FARC]).

Alsu Kurmasheva (journalist for Radio-Free Europe, holds Russian and American citizenship, arrested 2023 for failing to register as a foreign agent, sentenced to 6.5 years for spreading false information, relating to a book she edited 'Saying No To War').

Biden gets a lot of flack for trading Viktor Bout for Britney Griner, but I suspect it was actually for Britney Griner and several dozen American advisors that were captured in Mariupol.

There was simply no major reason to keep a GRU officer in captivity after outing him.

... sentenced to 16 years for espionage charges. The trial was closed so evidence was not available to the public ...

Sadly, just as our invasion of Iraq makes our complaints about Russia's illegal invasions ring somewhat hypocritical, our embrace of closed trials with secret evidence in the past 20 years puts Americans in an embarrassing position when Putin uses same.

Let's not forget Belarus forcing that plane down to capture that dissident journalist vs the US forcing a plane down over Europe because the USG thought Snowden was on it. (thankfully he wasn't)

There's no shortage of examples of American hypocrisy in the exercise of power...

Although I think more and more that reflects the nature of the exercise of power than the nature of America. The nation's founders were wiser when they checked or limited it than when they exercised it.

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