Category Archives: Media

Another day, more news.

But for some the news is the news itself.  As I suggested on Monday, it was only a matter a time, like seconds, that much of the Western media would be blaming Russia–which really is a metonym for Putin, Putinism or what have you–for the attacks.  I won’t spend so much time on identifying the metanarrative or metacommentary on all of this.  Others have been this already: Mark Adomanis, A Good Treaty, and Peter Lavelle.  I don’t agree with every bit of the metacommentary, but I do support the general thrust of their arguments.

One comment I will make is the controversy over what, how much, and when Russian federal television broadcast news of the attacks.  This is one angle many in the English language media have sunk their teeth in.  Frankly, I think this issue ..read more

The story of Russia’s world famous porn hacker keeps popping up in the news.  It’s not, unfortunately, because of any new examples of his brilliance.  Rather the story keeps getting headlines because of the Russian keystones’ bungling. Anyone surprised?

You’ll remember how back in January a hacker caused a traffic jam on Moscow’s Garden Ring road when he placed a 2-minute porn clip on an electronic billboard.  A month later Russian officials at the MVD’s Department “K” announced that they caught the filth bandit, a 41-year old unemployed man from Novorossiisk named Igor Blinnikov.  The MVD miraculously became impeccable sleuths.  How the partisans of good taste rejoiced.  How the rest of us cried. Our new hero had fallen.

Now it seems that poor Blinnikov has been sentenced to five years in the slammer, according to the Moscow Times.  Not, however, for the porno stunt ..read more

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 . . .

Anyway, the officials from the MVD’s Department K, which handles cyber-crime, has not released the name of the perpetrator or when they arrested him.  But this is what we do know.  He’s a 41-year-old unemployed systems administrator, alleged former pot dealer and taxi driver.  There were several reasons for his prank: “curiosity,” “to sharpen his skills,” and simply “to entertain people.”  I don’t know if he satisfied from first two, ..read more

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.

Here’s a snippet to get a taste of her raving class hatred:

Viktor Yanukovych’s victory in Sunday’s presidential election — not unlike the victories of former ..read more

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!? Well, the last question is not a simple gut reaction since RT often runs stories that are both crazy and stupid.

But then I started to think about the ad, realizing my gut reaction is exactly what it was supposed to provoke. Welcome to the world of agitprop, or agitation-propaganda, the use of images and text to incite affective reactions and posit provocative intellectual points. “Who poses the greater nuclear threat?” the ad reads.  To most Westerners, their gut tells them it’s Ahmadinejed, though the man currently has no nuclear weapons at ..read more

In Russia, you can’t hold a public gathering or protest without a permit.  Okay, a lot of places have similar laws.  I can understand this even if I don’t agree with it.  But 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.”  Nice.

The case involves Andrei Stenin, a photo correspondent for RIA Novosti, who was charged with participating in an “unsanctioned protest” in December in front of the Presidential Administration building.  If by “participating,” you mean entering the crowd to cover it, then ..read more