February 2, 2010

Environmental Activism in Russia - Different in Kind, or Just Degree?

Hatched by Dafydd

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov -- personally appointed by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin -- has ordered the wholesale demolition of houses in a Moscow neighborhood, based upon ambiguous land-title laws dating from the Soviet era; erstwhile residents are simply tossed into the street in subzero temperatures, while bulldozers obliterate their homes, whether "mansion" or "quaint cottage."

But here's the real kicker, Luzhkov's professed reason for decreeing such destruction:

Mr. Luzhkov, who in his 18 years as mayor has not been given to tolerating affronts to his authority, has stood firm. In an interview published Thursday in the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, he called the residents “impostors” squatting on land that he said was zoned to be a park. “These cottages are located in a protected environmental zone,” he said. “The city has been saying for years that construction in this area was forbidden.”

The reality is quite another story -- a story of corruption, greed, raw power, and tyranny. (Corruption and tyranny in Russia? Say it ain't so, Uncle Joe!) We continue quoting:

Critics have accused the mayor, whose wife is a billionaire real estate developer, of using ambiguous land laws to acquire prime property and resell it to private interests. Just over a year ago, several dozen similar homes were destroyed in a neighboring community that was in the same nebulous legal situation.

So let's add it all up. We have:

  • A feigned and spurious exercise in environmentalist zeal by "watermelons" (green on the outside but red to the core) --
  • -- designed to cover up what appears to be naught but a tawdry land-snatching scheme --
  • -- enabled by corrupt but well-connected "nomenklatura," whose rank and whose friends in high places make them unassailable under the law, such as it is.

Say... sounds like tactics employed by every radical environmentalist movement in the world, from ELF to ALF to Greenpeace: They live for the chance to burn down a housing construction site or file a federal lawsuit expropriating private land to declare it a "preserve" for gnat catchers, snail darters, or Delta smelt.

Enviro-mental cases have colluded with the Obama administration and other Democrats to prevent us from drilling for oil in ANWR, in the Gulf of Mexico, in Colorado, or indeed anywhere else. They misuse and abuse litigation and "action directe" (fancy phrase for eco-terrorism) to stop nuclear-power plants, freeze construction, put the kibosh on animal testing of pharmaceuticals, ban the exhalation of carbon dioxide, and outlaw Capitalism.

In fact the only real difference I can see in the two situations, here and in Russia, is that in the United States, the watermelons have the ear of the government; whereas throughout Europe, the watermelons are the government.

Take a good look at Moscow, where the mayor throws Baba Yaga into the snow so Mrs. Mayor can buy the land for a song and make another cool billion. That's Barack H. Obama's America... if we let him.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 2, 2010, at the time of 8:26 PM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: dasbow

Unfortunately, this situation already exists in America. Remember Kelo?

The above hissed in response by: dasbow [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 3, 2010 10:49 AM

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