Former CIA agent “Werther” explains what a likely Obama victory would do to the usual suspects in the US political and media establishment: The American political system also perceives cases of countries “testing” or “challenging” the United States in many instances where the country in question has a perfect right to pursue its own policies…
Showing all posts tagged Russia
The dark Russian soul
Who killed crusading Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya? (More on this remarkable woman here.)
Politkovskaya two years on
This week is the second anniversary of the assassination of crusading Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Reactions have been fraught with anger. Major questions remain over her death, not least the likely involvement of senior political figures. Hundreds of people gathered in central Moscow to remember her work and life. I interviewed Politkovskaya in Sydney in…
Beating the western drum
My following essay appears in the Guardian today: During the recent war between Georgia and Russia, bloggers on both sides of the conflict provided searing accounts of atrocities and manoeuvres unseen by western journalists. In a country such as Russia the space for alternative and critical views are rare. The war showed an authoritarian regime’s…
How to buy friends and make them hate you
The United States, protector of the civilised world: The Bush administration is pushing through a broad array of foreign weapons deals as it seeks to rearm Iraq, Afghanistan, contain North Korea and Iran, and solidify ties with onetime Russian allies. and From tanks, helicopters and fighter jets to missiles, remotely piloted aircraft and even warships,…
The post-Stalinist reality
Despite many regimes actively filtering the internet – issues I cover extensively in my new book – a Russian minister has suggested that it’s futile: There will be no censorship in the Internet, Russian Communications and Information Technology Minister Igor Shchyogolev told students of the Moscow State University’s Journalism Department on Monday. “Such censorship is…
The Russian murder machine
The industry of death can always find new friends: Russian arms exports may reach at least $6.1 billion by the end of 2008, a senior official at Rosoboronexport, Russia’s largest state arms exporter, said on Friday. Russia has doubled annual arms exports since 2000 to $7 billion last year, becoming the world’s second-largest exporter of…
Feeling the earth move
Ali Abunimah, Bitterlemons International, September 4: In the wake of Russia’s counterattack against the Georgian invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia last month, Turkish President Abdullah Gul observed that the era when the United States alone could set the world agenda had ended. “I don’t think you can control all the world from…
Blogging their way to freedom
My latest column for New Matilda is about the ways in which the web can challenge dictatorships around the globe and the complicity of Western firms in assisting repression: Antony Loewenstein takes a look at the work of bloggers monitoring and resisting their authoritarian governments With the Beijing Olympics now a distant memory — and…
Battling Medvedev’s Russia
What is the internet and satellite television doing to the increasingly authoritarian Russian state?