In a week that has been jam-packed with news and opinion on the meaning of the guilty verdict and harsh sentence handed down to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, I am struck by the extraordinary clarity of these latest events.  There have been few other moments over the past seven years and two trials of this legal embarrassment which have so lucidly expressed what Vladimir Putin wants vs. what the law demands, and laid bare the roots of authoritarian justice.  Almost as important as the outcome was the particularly outrageous way it was carried out.  As journalist Julia Ioffe pointed out, the verdict illustrates the “large and growing arrogant impudence” of the Putin system, where the logic of street thugs is institutionalized at the highest level of politics:  “Any sign of compromise is weakness, and any sign of weakness starts the countdown to your demise. How do you show strength and leadership in today’s Russia? Be brazen, be rude, be ruthless.”