Anti-American nuttiness in Russia, a subject I have previously plumbed, is the gift that keeps on giving. Now there’s this: For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument — that an economic and moral collapse [...]
Entries from December 2008
December 28, 2008
Justice, mercy, and goodwill to all men in Putinland
Svetlana Bakhmina, the jailed former Yukos lawyer who has been denied early release for which she was legally eligible, and who recently gave birth to her third child (conceived during a conjugal visit), did not get the Christmas present her supporters were hoping for. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ignored pleas for a presidential pardon for [...]
December 27, 2008
Islam, Europe, women, sex and modernity
A fascinating article in The Washington Post about a controversy in France over the annulment of a young Muslim couple’s marriage, obtained by the husband on the grounds that the wife was not a virgin. After news got out that the French courts approved the annulment, political activists and commentators were incensed. From the left [...]
December 26, 2008
Christmas meditations
A New York Times essay offering a different take on the perennial classic It’s a Wonderful Life sparks a lively discussion in the comments. The essay argues that the small-town life Capra’s hero embraces at the end is, in fact, terrifyingly and asphyxiatingly oppressive, and that the movie is all about resigning oneself to the [...]
December 26, 2008
Happy holidays to all
This is the 300th post on this blog. (About time, too.) And it’s a fluffy, content-free, positive (even multiculturally positive) one. A good sign? a bad sign? Not, one hopes, a sign of things to come. Enjoy the season, everyone.
December 16, 2008
More Russia news: the good and the bad
According to Moscow Times: In a rare example of grassroots political power, angry protests by drivers prompted lawmakers in the far eastern Primorye region on Monday to ask the country’s two leaders to delay raising import duties on foreign cars. The Primorye regional legislature, led by United Russia deputies, voted unanimously Monday to ask President [...]
December 16, 2008
Anti-American film bombs in Russia
What if they made a rabidly anti-American movie in Russia that was supposed to capitalize on anti-American sentiment stirred up by the war in Georgia … and nobody came? My article on the movie Chuzhiye (Strangers) in The New Republic online.
December 15, 2008
Demonizing the Putin regime?
Sean’s Russia Blog has a post (based on an article by Mark Ames) lambasting Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt of disregarding facts in a rush to conclude that the mercury poisoning in France of Karina Moskalenko, lawyer for the family of murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was probably an assassination attempt linked to [...]
December 13, 2008
Russia: Freedom springs eternal
Via Robert Amsterdam, an article from The Economist about acts of civic courage by ordinary Russians: a juror in the Anna Politkovskaya murder case going public to dispute the judge’s claim that the jury has asked for the trial to be held behind closed door (causing the trial to be opened to the public and [...]
