Mikhail Margelov, MP, chairman of the Russian Federation Council International Affairs Committee

Obama better get that Magnitsky Act signed into law — I know it's the weekend, but tomorrow is UN Human Rights day, and he has an opportunity to do the right thing and sign that law tomorrow and make a splash — which would go a long way to undoing his overall lukewarm human rights program for the last 4 years, and his particularly bad showing on Russia.

Let's hope that he and Hillary Clinton aren't thinking that they can withhold signing of Magnitsky as a way to get Russian cooperation on Syria — and end up with nothing anyway.

Yes, I realize the Russians are mad at the Magnitsky Act. Here's First Channel ranting and raging and supplying even Americans to rail against the law.

Don't you love that scary horror movie music that Russian TV News uses? It always makes any story they do seem terribly ominous!

But…so what? They will rage — and in fact, I sometimes wonder if this is stagecraft to make us think Magnitsky is more than what it really is. After all, our newsroom headline is unchanged: Magnitsky Still Dead. We cannot bring him back; we do not even have justice for him yet. We only have the first step on a way…

It case you don't want to waste your time watching or don't know Russian, here's the chimes sounded in this news feature:

o "Oh, those Americans are 'extending law beyond their jurisdiction'. But wait. The US is doing no such thing. It is denying people it believes to be involved in human rights crimes the *privilege* of getting a US visa to enter the US — visas are a privilege, not a right. That's essentially the only sanction. Yes, their assets may be frozen as well, but it's also a privilege, not a right, to be able to spirit your wealth out of your country.

o "Oh, those Americans are unlawful and illegal by pronouncing on a case where the investigation isn't even completed and the trial hasn't finished yet." But…Magnitsky died three years ago. The prosecution has had an awful long time. And it's okay for interested parties who have a reasonable assessment about what's going on there to identify the immediate officials and higher-ups in the decision-making tree involving Magnitsky's incarceration and death and to decide that no, they do not deserve the privilege of entering the United States or parking assets here. That's all. When they are cleared of wrong-doing, they might win back that privilege, but given their stalling, and given the fact that they've tried to try Magnitsky himself post-humously (!) and given all the journalistic investigation on this so far that identifies certain bad-actors, it seems reasonable to ban certain persons related to this case and others (like Kadyrov, the ruler of Chechnya).

Interestingly, Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, admits that the death of Magnitsky is a tragedy. For this perestroika-era liberal, the death of one man is still a tragedy, and at least not a statistic. But he still thinks that this is all driven by some evil cold-war disease or greedy capitalist imperialism.

Strangely, Andrew Kuchins of Carnegie is brought on First Channel, and basically seems to be saying, too, that Magnitsky is only driven by US financial interests. Huh? Either he's not quite edited correctly, or broadcast with not quite with enough context…or something. The retirement of Jackson-Vanik might be said to be "driven by financial interests" as supposedly it "opens up markets" and "creates jobs in America". I actually don't believe it, but it's what business people said.

But the Magnitsky part of this Congressional action isn't "driven by financial actions" — that sounds like the sort of thing Uzbekistan says when it wants to claim that the reason Westerners complain about child forced labour in the cotton industry is because they "want to defeat competition on world markets". In other words, these Soviets can never conceive of any action driven by good will and human rights, it always has to have an angle. You know, like it does for them…

Dmitry Simes has long been soft on the Kremlin and critical of any "anti-Russian" sentiment he might find on the Hill, so it's understandable he is brought on to denounce all this. But his notions of "financial interests" don't make sense, either.

Then there's Margelov, shown against a backdrop of luxurious Russian "cottages" who claims Magnitsky is just about old cold warriors leaving the scene and slamming the door on their way out, i.e. Sen. Kyl or Sen. Lieberman. Nonsense. These two aren't especially associated with the Cold War of the past, not that there's anything wrong with the Cold War in point of fact. And the vote was 92 to 4 in the Senate. That's a lot of new, young people who had nothing to do with the Cold War.

Lavrov claims this is a gross attempt to interfere in Russian internal affairs. Oh, please. It's the application of universal human rights, where it counts, in a place where not only are they egregiously abused, but the existing remedies of national or regional or international courts just can't apply and just can't work effectively — not only because of Russia's legal nihilism, pressure on judges and veto at the UN, but because other countries, even our own, think they "need" Russia for this or that.

Now, be afraid, be very afraid. Russia is going to retaliate! And it's going to make up a list of all those in the US who have violated the rights of Russians in America (or the world). Hmm, now is this some abusive mom who returned an orphan on a plane? Or is this Viktor Bout? The problem is that the Duma might not distinguish between an adoptive parent who legitimately could be tried for child endangerment, and a world-class arms dealer contributing to massive human rights abuses in places like Sudan or Syria. But hey, there's this: the Duma seems to want to make their list public, unlike our distinguished gentlemen and ladies on the Hill, who succumbed to Obama's insistence that the Magnitsky list be made secret.

So we will get to see who they think has violated human rights and gone unpunished. Chances are, they will find people already punished, like those who sanctioned torture at Abu Ghraib. Or maybe they will simply select, oh, Dick Cheney or somebody like that. To which many Americans will either give them no contest, or simply ask them to come up with the facts — at least as many as the Congress came up with on Magnitsky — and as the UN Committee Against Torture presented recently in reviewing Russia.

Meanwhile, we get a glimpse into what is REALLY torquing the Russians right now: Hillary's pushback on the Soviet Re-Union. At the OSCE ministerial in Dublin, she spoke of the need to prevent or stop the integration process. Why? Because it means Russian tyranny over other peoples. If the integration process looked like the EU, there wouldn't be any opposition to it. But it doesn't. There's no doubt in my mind that if Russia were to stop interfering in everything from the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute to the Transdniester dispute to the Roghun dispute, the world might actually find solutions. The real job of OSCE now is to contain Russia but regrettably it's now going to let Russia achieve by "soft law" through an awful "road map" process what it couldn't achieve by votes. But for that matter, the West couldn't get consensus from Russia for its part…