The point is that these simplified, superimposed framings serve a political lobbying purpose—as well as dumbing down the story to make it easy for dumb-dumbs to read. Sleazy and stupid—that’s how DC likes ’em.

The Guardian just published a piece on Russia’s inequality problem — first and worst in the world, according to a new Credit Suisse report. Funny to see Credit Suisse wringing its hands over Russian inequality, given that bank’s active complicity…

Last week, a member of Alekseyev’s GayRussia.ru organization sued Novaya Gazeta — and announced plans to seek criminal libel charges against the muckraking newspaper, which could conceivably lead to jail sentences for the journalists and editors. It’s all the headache Novaya needs, given the threats hanging over the heads of their brave reporters—Elena Milashina and Irina Gordienko—who broke the story, and the entire Novaya staff.

Now here is where Novaya Gazeta’s story diverges widely from the New York Times’ version (and the rest of the western media’s). See, you can’t really bring up Nikolai Alekseyev’s name in a story like this without bringing up his very weird, ugly politics—which includes a lot of unhinged anti-Semitism and a long fruitful relationship with Russia’s xenophobic ultranationalist right-wing party.

There’s only one world-famous advisor who gives advice as catastrophically stupid as this: The Great Gazoo…

Backed by an army of punked-out teens, cult Russian novelist Eduard Limonov dedicated himself to taking on Vladimir Putin. Will death threats and nutty supermodels derail his democratic revolution?

Exile editor Mark Ames exposes a rare fawning side while interviewing his lyrical hero, Mark E. Smith of The Fall, while Smith, who is notorious for abusing journalists (even reportedly putting a cigarette out in the eyeball of one Brit journo), reveals a charming, disarming side.