![]() Very scary angry young men, either anarchists or nationalists or provocateurs, who looked very different from the mass of middle-class protestors, threw themselves into the battle. “I’m scared!” I saw people keel over, wheezing and coughing from the tear gas, as I pulled my sweatshirt over my nose and mouth. “I don’t want to go in there!” a woman yelled. I watched riot police approach terrified bystanders-women and middle-aged men who had come to the rally but had not signed up for this-pull them off the fences, and force them into the scuffle. I watched the plainclothes cops videotape the proceedings. I watched this for about three hours, occasionally getting caught in a terrifying crush and once catching a chunk of concrete to the leg. ![]() ![]() Over four hundred people were arrested that day, and at least a hundred of them were later slapped with draft cards. Riot police-dubbed “cosmonauts,” for their shiny round black helmets-descended into the churning, angry crowd in a V formation to pluck out young men to beat and drag away. Protesters hurled bottles and chunks of cement, police threw tear gas. A sit-in started, someone pushed someone, and the scene became very violent very quickly. But the police, apparently going back on agreements with the protest’s organizers, stood in such a way as to make entry into the square very difficult, and then cut the electricity to the stage. ![]() They marched down a wide avenue, carrying funny signs and chanting “Russia without Putin!” They marched until they got to Bolotnaya Square, the site of two other unprecedentedly huge anti-Kremlin rallies this winter. On Sunday, May 6th, about seventy thousand Muscovites-as well as some people who came from other parts of Russia-gathered to peacefully protest Vladimir Putin’s third presidential inauguration, scheduled for the next day. What is harder to explain is how the image fits into the larger picture of what has been happening in Russia in the past few days. That story is simple: it was a complete accident. It’s not a college lecture, sure, but maybe at least let the expert get a word in? “Otherwise,” Ioffe wrote, “don’t waste my fucking evening.” O’Donnell, at least, played the good sport on Twitter, linking to Ioffe’s original article on the matter, calling it the “best thing” he read on the subject, and adding, “Thanks for joining us.Over the past couple of days, I’ve been asked many times, by people from around the world, how I came to take a photo of the boy on a bike with training wheels, facing a row of Russian riot police. She proceeded to make a simple, bullet-pointed list of arguments that would never be allowed on cable television because they reveal an ability to think outside a black or white, good or bad, America or Russia dichotomy. In a post for the New Republic, Ioffe insisted, “god damn it, I know my shit.” Obama’s decision to not meet with Putin one-on-one, she wrote, was a good one, but it was larger than Snowden. The segment, mercifully, ended, but the fight did not. In general, people who haven’t been to Russia tend to overestimate their abilities.” Ioffe added, “We really overestimate Putin’s abilities.” O’Donnell, voiced raised Newsroom style, stressed Putin’s all-consuming power and exclaimed, “Let’s not be ridiculous about this!” and “We’re getting absurd now!” To which Ioffe asked, “Have you reported out of Russia?” “But I think you do overestimate the Russians. ![]() “They had and still have complete power over his every breath,” especially Putin. Russia had “complete, total, absolute control over that outcome,” he said. “There was really nothing the Russians could do,” said Ioffe, which really set O’Donnell off. She argued that Snowden was a “headache” for Russia, but that the country could not let him go once the Bolivian plane thought to be holding him was downed in Austria. First, Ioffe, a Moscow-based “expert” (her word) on Russia, appeared on the show. MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell and New Republic journalist Julia Ioffe had it out last night in a most entertaining fashion over Russia’s handling of the Edward Snowden case, ending in a withering blog post in which the writer called the talking head an “angry grandpa” and accused him of “O’Reilly”-ing her. ![]()
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