Pussy Riot and Russia

Firstly, she was not an unknown so again, less subjectivity in your remote source material would be advisable. Dismissing one of the media she published with as 'tabloid' is also trite and woefully misleading.
You'd need more than a cherry-picked blogger from the States to disprove some of her and other journalists' findings.

Her words didn't hold much weight in Russia. Her main body of work was against corruption and abuse in the army during Chechnya. Her criticism of Putin is just a sideshow compared to this. Novaya Gazeta had characteristics of a tabloid newpaper, too (calling it a tabloid doesn't completely condemn the journalists who have posted in it.) Added to this, I didn't call her unknown, I said she had little renown among Russians, most of whom were supporters of Putin and didn't want to listen to what she had to say. Stop twisting my words.

She had greater impact in the west than she did in Russia, and as usual, western media outlets overplayed her role in Russian journalism (much like media outlets here describe Gary Kasparov as an "opposition figure" although he has little leverage in Russia).

So what? And all in a post where you bleat about "tabloids" too? lol

Well, because you have cited numerous critics of Putin who seem to inspire your line of thinking. Simply listing journalists who agree with you won't convert me over to your point of view. "Go read Luke Harding" is, frankly, a lazy excuse for not contributing to debate.

You'd need more than a cherry-picked blogger from the States to disprove some of her and other journalists' findings.

Get off your high horse. You just cherry picked several journalists to make a point five seconds ago. Adomanis is a journalist for Forbes.

One of the many journalists who cover news, political and current affairs of the Russian state.

Don't take what he says as fact just because he is a journalist..even then, there are many jounalists who would have an opposing point of view to Harding.

In fairness, i'm wasting my time as usual perpetuating static arguments over sources, or whatever. I'd like a decent debate over the subject matter, and not mudslinging because I read Adomanis from time to time. I'm sorry that my sources aren't good enough for you, but honestly, I don't give a flip.

goose2005 wrote: »

They didn't disrupt a service, there were only a handful of people in the church. And if the church won't keep away from politics, they can't complain if politics won't keep away from the church.

The lyrics of the protest weren't aimed at the church though..?

Let's be honest, freedom of speech, protest and of the media is severaly limited in Russia.

Freedom of speech is generally respected. The only time censorship was introduced was in response to extremism. Freedom to protest is also respected. The only time protests are broken up is when Limonov's lunatics get out of hand and cause anarchy. The fact that there were protests of 100,000 people only a few months ago is largely testament to this respect.

Television media is largely state-owned but there are many, many independent newspapers and the internet is very free. The fact is, there are so many media outlets in Russia the government (in the words of Medvedev) "couldn't control all of them even if they wanted to". Russia still is behind western nations when it comes to these things however.

In general, it's not perfect, but its not severely limited either. During the Chechen wars, however, it was a different story.

The only place in Russia where freedom of speech, assembly and the media is not respected is in Chechnya, which, in a strange way, is an understandable reaction to the chaos over there.

You criticise a member of the Russian establishment at your peril and there are countless cases of people suffering at the hands of the Russian establishment.

But is that certain repression state-sanctioned or not? Politicians with a grudge against a journalist could use their connections to make their life hell, but is that not just a problem with the rule of law in Russia rather than with government policy?

However, there is certainly an establishment in Russia that knows how to scratch each others backs and such establishment are certainly not confined to Russia, we had similar FF centred establisment in Ireland for most of our history, ie judges appointed by FF, the media/RTE under the control of FF, FF related broadcasters, newspapers that were pro FF, banks that were pro FF and so on, a religion that was cozy with FF.

Agreed.

laoch na mona wrote: »

they should get done for a public order offence or trespassing at the most

everyone has there right to protest

Community service is really the harshest thing they should get. We'll see on the 17th!

They will probably end up serving half of that anyway.