Liberty! Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!” The person who said that was Marie Jeanne Roland. They were her last words. She was four months short of her 40th birthday when, sharp at half-past three on a dull November afternoon in Paris, the guillotine cut her head off. The charge for which she […]

by John Helmer - Friday, February 21st, 2003
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Last week, when we last visited Mikhail Fridman and Viktor Vekselberg, the controlling shareholders of Tyumen Oil Co. (TNK), we found them in the shrubbery desperately trying to sell off their loot. For more than a year, they had been offering minority-sized stakes in the oil company. But, after doing their due diligence, Chevron-Texaco and […]

by John Helmer - Friday, February 14th, 2003
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It was during the brief period of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which began in 1921, that Lenin and the Soviet authorities had the thought that, in order to improve the redistribution of wealth, it was necessary to generate some wealth to start with. This hilarious idea produced a dazzling display of satirical writing by […]

by John Helmer - Friday, February 7th, 2003
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