The Independent, U.K.

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Support of Anti-Putin America for Pussy Riot is 'Disgusting and Ridiculous' (Komsomolskaya Pravda, Russia)

"The entire period of Putins rule has been a continuous series of propaganda campaigns by Western mass media, NGOs, and American Congressmen against a president popular among Russians. ... So now the global buzz is about the 'cheap whores' [Pussy Riot]. This is such a farce, that it is not only disgusting, but ridiculous."

By Alexei Pankin

Translated By Anastassia Tapsieva

August 27, 2012

Russia - Komsomolskaya Pravda - Original Article (Russian)

Madonna on tour in Europe shows her colors, stamping the name of a band of young women, Pussy Riot, who are bold enough to challenge Vladimir Putin. Three of them are now doing prison time. NEW MEDIA ANIMIATION, TAIWAN: A humurous animated look at the Medicare positions of Obama and Romney, Aug. 20, 00:02:03

After the anti-Gorbachev conspiracy of August 19-21, 1991 failed, the democratic West had an opportunity, much to the delight of USSR citizens, to establish a protectorate over our country and introduce radical reforms comparable to those the West carried out in West Germany and Japan after WWII. Twenty one years later, in August 2012, the West is losing the remnants of its moral and political capital in Russia by fighting for the right of a punk group - whose name in Russian translates to the despicable "cheap, conniving whore" - to shit in church.

I was travelling around the country in the fall of 1991, and in the aftermath of the collapse could observe the difference in perceptions between the capital and the periphery. Moscow was living amid the euphoria of newly-found boundless freedom. Central Televisions first channel, run by the democrats, broadcast a loop of a mocking parody-recording of the USSR anthem performed by a dozen popular rock and pop musicians. The periphery looked on in disgusted disbelief, dreaming about a strong and predictable central authority, while rapidly losing faith that [Boris] Yeltsin was capable of putting one in place.

It is amazing, though, that a vast number of people, in both the liberal Moscow and conservative Kuban, and at many positions of authority and private business, and even among ordinary city- and village-dwellers, sincerely hoped that we would be taken over by Washington and Berlin.

The center has not disappeared. It has moved abroad, I wrote in an article at the time, which was immediately reprinted by the Financial Times. In other words, during those months, the West was considered as almost the only legitimate authority - not only externally, but internally as well.

[Telegraph, U.K.]

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