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A Method, Yet a Madness: Understanding Russian Democracy

Anna Pivovarchuk  | As Western media focuses on the Crimean crisis, Russia intensifies its assault on civil society. At the end of January, TV Rain, Russia’s independent news channel, was taken off air.On February 24, over 200 people were detained for protesting the verdict in the Bolotnaya case that saw seven antigovernment demonstrators sentenced for assault. One of them publishes  a blog about investigations of money laundering and theft by government officials, It was recently blocked.




media

The media: an intrinsically perverse market

MADRID | By Santiago Graiño Knobel via BBVAOpenMind | A market where the user is not the customer seems crazy, not to say perverse, seems impossible since it distorts the logical responsibilities of exchange and conceals the interests at stake, but the fact is that it does indeed exist: it’s the media. Recipients pay nothing, or amounts that usually do not even cover half the cost, and the media are owned by profit-making companies. And that, the author believes, leads to many problems.