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Chemist Jailed In Russia For Giving Expert Opinion In Court
scibri writes "Think the imprisonment of Pussy Riot is a miscarriage of justice? Check out the story of their cellmate: Chemist Olga Nikolaevna Zelenina heads a laboratory at the Penza Agricultural Institute. She is an expert in the biology of hemp and poppy, and is a sought-after expert in legal cases involving narcotics produced from these plants. Last year, she was asked by defense lawyers to give her opinion in a case involving imported poppy seeds. The prosecutors didn't like her evidence though, and now she's in prison accused of complicity in organized drug trafficking."
I would think that maybe this is not related to that particular case or is it? I realize with the whole Pussy Riot thing was blown way out of proportion but I would think that this sends a chill down the backs of every citizen in Russia today if it's true.
I didn't see in the article what the formal charges were, just "charged with complicity" socould she have helped some other organization and also, why didn't the prosecutors corroborate or refute the evidence she presented with another analysis of the poppy materials?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Comrades Put down the Vodka for a moment and THINK.
If anyone involved with drug prohibition actually thought, there would be no drug prohibition.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
How about gruel-born double-standards?
I've been wondering what all this hysteria about Big Bad Russia is about for some time now. Surely Russia is no Shambhala, but the US is a veritable litigation shit-hole slaughterhouse. We, here in the U.S. of A., imprison more people than any other nation. We have a privatized prison-industry and trade virtual crime-futures on the stock-exchange. Closer and closer we are coming to a re-introduction of prison labor, all while a repugnantly large portion of incarcerated citizens live in cages for victimless crimes.
My advice to anyone itching to don the Good-Guy Badge and storm the palace of bacchanalian litigation, is to look no further if you are a US citizen. In no way do I suggest that pointing fingers at corruption is error; but we really do have some house-cleaning of our own to do -- and to recklessly embrace hypocrisy may not be wise.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
No it didn't. They basically killed off everyone that had the connections to establish a cogent civil order, because civil order cannot meet the demands of mob rule, which is what the revolution became.
It indeed did end when the peasant classes refused to listen to the revolutionaries, as they woke up to the festering hell they had created, and the endless witch-hunts the revolutionaries were inciting in trying to hypocritically enforce their own wills over others, and branding any resistance "tyrany". In the end it wasn't at all about equal treatment in the courts, equal opportunities to own land, etc.. it was about vying groups of revolutionaries denouncing each other, and killing each others' supporters until the population basically just ignored them, and went about living.
In many respects, napolean's conquest actually helped bring order to this torn up france, and fostered reconstruction. The vacuums in local politics enabled the grassroots democracy that slowly sprang up however.
I agree though. The revolutionaries had gold on the brain. Not philosophy, nor intents on equality.