Society
Their Modernization and Ours
By Sean at 28 February, 2010, 2:45 am
In Russia, the time of great campaigns has returned. In Soviet times, we broke new ground and planted corn. Then we fought against drunkenness and concerned ourselves with economic acceleration. We were not always successful, but certainly in the real world. Today’s Russia proclaims the slogan of modernization. But so far this modernization is only in cyberspace.
Read More >>Porno Billboard Bandit Busted
By Sean at 16 February, 2010, 10:53 pm
It just goes to show that the sleuths in Russia can work fast when the want to. Witness how it took them a mere month to catch the internationally infamous hacker who placed porno on a Moscow billboard. And get this, they caught him not in Moscow, but some 760 miles away in the southern city of Novorossiisk. If only they moved so ardently when a journalist is murdered . . .
Read More >>Yulia Antoinette
By Sean at 9 February, 2010, 11:59 pm
I wish I would have seen Yulia Latynina’s Moscow Times editorial earlier. I would have found someway to incorporate it into my post on the Ukrainian election. No matter, the op-ed stands on its own. The beauty of Latynina’s rant, Letting Poor People Vote is Dangerous, is that she’s basically saying what I think every Western liberal wants to say, but can’t because it’s politically incorrect. I guess this is one reason why we should actually thank Latynina. Such honesty, no matter how despicable, is nonetheless refreshing. It’s a rare moment when class war toward the poor hangs all out at a time when its Western warriors shroud their class turpitude with identity politics.
Read More >>Black PR vs. Black PR?
By Sean at 7 February, 2010, 11:03 pm
As the Power Vertical’s Robert Coalson explains, this is the way the game is played. Anyone familiar with Russian politics over the last 20 years, if not the last century, will not be surprised by the revelation a United Russia hatchet-men hired “spin doctors” to spread black PR to smear political opponents of UR power broker and Saratov deputy Vyacheslav Volodin. But is this latest revelation merely black PR about black PR? Yet another example of the Russian elite cannabalizing itself?
Read More >>RT’s Agitprop
By Sean at 27 January, 2010, 1:06 am
When I first saw the ads Russia Today is using in its American and UK ad campaign, I immediately had the reaction that most Americans and British probably had. Comparing Obama to Ahmadinejad? That’s like comparing Christ with the devil! Is RT crazy or just stupid!? But then I started to think about the ad, realizing my gut reaction is exactly what it was supposed to provoke.
Read More >>In Russia, Journalist = Protester
By Sean at 21 January, 2010, 8:56 am
According to Vremya Novosti, the local court in Tver district in Moscow set a “precedent which threatens to turn into new accusations that the Russian government is violating civil freedoms.” Not only is holding non-permitted gatherings consider illegal, now it’s also verboten for journalists to cover them. “According to the [court's] ruling, journalists, who enter unsanctioned protests or marches to make their reports are equated with the participants in these protests and violators of the law.” Basically, the government now has the legal means to test the philosophical question: if a protest occurs and it’s not in the news, did it really occur? This is one more verification that the powers that be are the true postmodernists.
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