Music

"Pussy Riot" Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (L), Maria Alyokhina (R) and Yekaterina Samutsevich (C) (Getty Images)

Madonna Supports Russia’s Pussy Riot

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

Anonymous

Anonymous-group1

Vladimir Putin’s Army of Blog Trolls

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

Spies

Anna Chapman, Sexy Russian Spy, Honored at Kremlin

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

Kasparov to Upper West Side

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

How McCain Became Putin’s Stooge

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

Vladimir Putin's Control of Russian TV

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