Quote:February 2, 2024 / Joseph P. Farrell

There's a strange little story out of Russia that has slipped completely under the radar of most of the lamestream propotainment media around the world, but which, thankfully, was spotted by this website's legions of article spotters and sharers, in this case, by J.R., who passed it along with our deepest gratitude. Needless to say, I think this one portends that while Western civilization seems hell-bent on self-destruction and other insanities, Russia intends to enjoy the process a bit, and amuse itself by adding a little more chaos into the mix to demonstrate the West's utter lawlessness.

That is, if my high octane speculative reading of this latest Plot of the Super-Criminal Mastermind Vladimir Putin and those pesky-never-to-be-trusted-always-shifty-and-Byzantine-Russians is true:

Russia to allocate funds for search of Soviet, Imperial Russian property abroad

Now, as articles go, this one is short, and we can even quote the whole thing. But as content  goes, I think this is a bombshell of a legal nature equivalent to William the Conqueror's invention of the writ quo warranto. We'll get back to that mediaeval writ, because I think Mr. Putin has been doing a bit of reading in mediaeval English history and law. We'll get back to that too. Here's the article:

Quote:MOSCOW, January 19. /TASS/. Russia will allocate funds for an effort to find, register and ensure legal protection of Russia’s property abroad, including property of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire.
A relevant decree, signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, will allocate funds for the purpose to the Department of Foreign Property of the Administrative Directorate of the President of the Russian Federation.

The funds will be allocated to cover expenses related to "the process of searching the real estate property owned by the Russian Federation, the former Russian Empire, the former USSR," as well as for "due registration of [property] rights" and "legal protection of this property."


Another decree allocates funds to cover the department’s expenses for maintaining and using Russia’s federal property abroad.

Now, to me it's amusing that Vladimir is the Russian form of William (according to some), because the effort of putting aside a little money to "find, register, and ensure legal protection" of Russia's property abroad, from whatever era of Russian history we might be concerned about, imperial or Soviet, seems to be to be the latest chapter in the post-Soviet, USA-led Western "rape of Russia", and Mr. Putin's ongoing domestic campaign against the oligarchs and former Communist apparatchiks that conducted that rape.  In short, it's that effort of finding and then registering that property that strongly suggests that Mr. Putin has taken a chapter from William the Conqueror's Domesday Book, and intends a process very similar to a writ quo warranto: by whose warrant?  The writ as originally conceived was simply a demand to prove jurisdiction (and thus, title and ownership); it is sort of the legal equivalent to a title search in real estate; it is a demand to prove the lawfulness of a jurisdiction, and indeed, one may  view a clear title or dead as being a subset of the legal doctrine behind quo warranto.

In other words, as originally conceived by William the Conqueror, the writ quo warranto was legal megatonnage, especially in a country like the England he conquered, with a tapestry of small private jurisdictions and privileges of nobility.

So strap in for a bit of legal fun over the next few years, and imagine the following fun scenarios:  how much money, for example, did certain large university endowments mulct from Russia through the sale of Russian state corporations or other assets, and were, in fact, those sales legal under then existing Russian and/or international and/or American or British or French law? What happens if they are found to be illegal? What will be the damages? And what if the implicated institutions refuse to pay? Were exchanges of property or territory under specific treaties or other contractual arrangements legally executed?

Russia may recover nothing from such a venture, or it may recover much.

But either way, Mr. Putin wins because he will be able to uncover yet more examples of lawlessness and corruption in Russia's principal adversaries, the very adversaries that like to pontificate unceasingly about the  rules based order and sanctity of law.