Just a couple absurdities:

On Saturday we met a friend of a friend named Dima who is a Sociology student, writer, and all around swell fellow. He was collecting signatures in protest of the recent closure of the European University in St. Petersburg. The official reason, as in the recent attempt to close the Moscow House of Journalists, is fire safety–apparently a recent tactic bullying and/or closing insufficiently submissive institutions. Among the list of violations is a spiral staircase (the building was built in the 19th century, I believe) and some other architectural quirks, but due to the building’s historical status, Dima says, it’s impossible to make modifications in compliance with the “regulations.” But of course, this isn’t about fire safety, it’s political. The university was involved in a project regarding the observation of elections and aiming to reduce rigged votes; as you might imagine this is rather unpopular. The University’s foreign connections and reliance on international funding most likely doesn’t help.

Among the week’s posts over at Johnson’s list there’s a summary of some of the ways in which counter-terrorism is used to restrict speech. “Extremist language” and insulting public officials are offenses punishable by fines and even jail time. This is of course a serious issue, but there are some really crazy examples of its implementation. Right now there’s a case against the author of an article called “Putin is our good Hitler” which makes bizarre favorable comparisons to Hitler. There was also apparently an incident where somebody compared Vladimir Vladimirovich to a phallus, but my favorite is the following:

Article 282 [of the Russian constitution] prohibits the incitement of hatred or enmity “if these acts have been committed in public or with the use of mass media.” Dubrovskiy cited the case of Stanislav Dmitrievsky, who was prosecuted for writing an article critical of Russia’s handling of the Chechen war. Dmitrievsky was charged with extremism, in part, for not capitalizing the “p” in a critique of “Putin’s regime,” although in the Russian language a name is not usually capitalized when used as an adjective, Dubrovskiy noted. Experts in philology testified that this non-capitalization was intended as extremism.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m a big fan of Echo Moscow who not only sports one swell logo but also debate that tends to be more critical (and lively) than not and usually featuring at least several points of view, sometimes even opposition leaders who get considerably less space in other outlets. All this in spite of a 66% share holding by Gazprom who, if you’ll remember, is now lead by the future President, Medvedev. At any rate, I’ve noticed that very often during the day the station runs long, awkward infomercials about Erectile dysfunction. I’ve often wondered if this is some kind of campaign to undermine the credibility of the station, or at least drive away listeners among the masculinity obsessed male population.

Joking, of course, probably

On a completely unrelated note, I’m gonna go ahead and parrot Hertzberg’s link to an article by the historian William Miller for all those Obama nay-sayers and skeptics.