In Pitchfork’s serious-minded look at the Russian band Pussy Riot (whose supporters in their legal battle against the amassed forces of Vladimir Putin will be protesting tonight), riot grrrl icon Kathleen Hanna admits to an idiosyncratic view of 1990s TV. When describing the process by which Russian authorities took legal recourse Read More
In February, a punk riot band from Russia with the very late-90s name Pussy Riot were arrested when they desecrated one of the most powerful cathedrals in Moscow. The trio infuriated the Orthodox Church by staging a “prayer” of profanity-laced, anti-Putin sentiment. The three women were charged with “hooliganism” (which is a thing), and have yet to be released on bail.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich could be looking at anywhere from 3-7 years of jail time, even though President Putin himself said that he did not agree with the severity of the sentence.
The whole tale is long and sordid, and as much about Russia’s own hooliganism over its citizens as it is about censorship, but hey look over here Madonna’s shown up! Read More
According to data uploaded by Anonymous and reported on by both the Guardian and Russian news portal Gazeta.ru, Russian strongman and bare-fisted tiger boxer Vladimir Putin’s long reach extends even to the darker corners of the Internet. If Anonymous’s treasure trove of emails from a Russian youth group called Nashi is any indication, Mr.Putin has his own paid crew of trolls and bloggers policing Putin-centered media. The Guardian gives a breakdown of some of Nashi’s covert, Putin-loving tactics: Read More
Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta will team up with WikiLeaks to expose corruption in Russian government, reports Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
”Assange said that Russians will soon find out a lot about their country and he wasn’t bluffing,” Novaya Gazeta said. “Our collaboration will expose corruption at the top tiers of political power. No one is Read More
The word around the Red Square is that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has left his wife for Alina Kabayeva, a 27-year-old member of the Olympic gymnastics team.
Hot stuff! Putin’s probably sicced his old KGB buddies on the those with loose lips, seeking to quash the rumors. But the release of a certain magazine Read More
When Russian Prime Minister took the stage at a childrens’ cancer fundraiser in St. Petersburg Friday, he had an announcement to make. “Like the majority of people I cannot sing nor dance,” the usually tough-as-nails ex-KGB ruler told the star-studded crowd. “But still love doing it.”
And with that a backup band tore Read More
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev handed out top state honors to the ten spies who worked in the U.S. as undercover foreign intelligence agents, the New York Post reports. The ceremony would have been your average, run-of-the-mill award reception at the Kremlin if not for the appearance of Anna Chapman, the heart-stopping espionage pin-up Read More
In 1985, at age 22, Garry Kasparov was the youngest world chess champion in history. Now, almost a quarter of a century later, Mr. Kasparov has retired from chess, taking up politics in its stead as a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin and a public enemy of the Kremlin. (He once declared of the current Read More
When voters return to the grim task of assessing John McCain’s credibility, they may turn to The Nation, which has just exposed yet another highly embarrassing episode in the career of his campaign manager, superlobbyist Rick Davis. This time the issue is not just another special interest represented by Davis, of which there are many Read More
In a lengthy, front-page article today, the New York Times investigates how Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has increasingly deployed the Kremlin-controlled TV networks as a political tool to silence his opponents.
In particular, the article takes a look at the existence of a so-called "stop list," which the Times describes as "a Read More
