Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Russian Journalist Masha Gessen on Trump & Putin's Autocracy and Media's Refusal to Call Out Lies

Published on Oct 5, 2017 by Democracy Now! [ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzuqE7-t13O4NIDYJfakrhw / https://www.youtube.com/user/democracynow , https://www.youtube.com/user/democracynow/videos ]

As the Senate Intelligence Committee says Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, we discuss Russia and Trump with Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen. Her new book, "The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia," has just been shortlisted for the National Book Award and offers a warning to the United States today as she points to the similarities between Trump and Putin, and warns of the threat of autocracy under a Trump presidency.
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/5/russian_journalist_masha_gessen_on_trump

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVgcUna67Fc [with comments]


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Masha Gessen: Trump Doing "Incredible Damage" to Democracy While Media is Obsessed with Russia Probe

Published on Oct 5, 2017 by Democracy Now!

As the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee says it has reached the conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and CNN reports a number of Russian-linked Facebook ads specifically targeted Michigan and Wisconsin, two states crucial to Trump’s victory in November, we speak with Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen. "We don’t know if there was a conspiracy," Gessen says of allegations the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. "But even if there was, we should do our best to try not to engage in conspiracy thinking. … It lends itself to this idea that once we discover that Trump colluded with the Russians, that we’ll magically get rid of Trump." She says it is unlikely the investigation will produce the kind of evidence of collusion that could be used as a legal basis for impeachment, and argues impeachment is unlikely while Republicans have control of both houses of Congress.
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/5/masha_gessen_trump_doing_incredible_damage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf61IK6-CAY [with comments]


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Masha Gessen - "The Trump-Putin Connect: What We Imagine and Why"

Published on Aug 9, 2017 by AmherstCollege [ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwX8so4zap1RFRUsZjbTEXw / https://www.youtube.com/user/AmherstCollege , https://www.youtube.com/user/AmherstCollege/videos ]

Noted for her opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Gessen has written about a range of topics, including LGBTQ rights, Russia’s Jewish state and the 2016 U.S. presidential election. She was born and spent much of her childhood in Moscow before moving with her Jewish family to the United States. After the fall of the Soviet Union, she returned to Moscow, where she and others created post-Soviet Russia’s first weekly magazine, Itogi. She also served as a member of the board of directors for the Moscow-based LGBT rights organization Triangle; as the head of U.S. News & World Report’s Moscow bureau; and as chief editor of Vokrug Sveta, a popular-science journal. She was dismissed from this position at Russia’s oldest magazine after refusing to send a reporter to cover a nature conservation event featuring Putin, considering it political exploitation of environmental concerns.

As a journalist living in Moscow, she experienced the rise of Putin firsthand. Her 2012 bestselling biography The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin—hailed as “an unflinching indictment of the most powerful man in Russia” by The Wall Street Journal—delivers a chilling account of the rise and reign of one of the most influential figures in world politics.

She is also the author of Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot—named a Best Book of 2014 by NPR and The Guardian—about a Russian punk rock group arrested for staging an unauthorized performance protest opposing Putin and the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Her 2015 book The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy, about the perpetrators of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, was named a Best Book of the Year by Time magazine.

Her most recent book, Where the Jews Aren’t: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region, was hailed by Publisher’s Weekly as “one of the 20th century’s most chilling stories of struggle, perseverance, and despair.”

A fluent writer in Russian and English, Gessen is a regular contributor to The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Harper’s, Vanity Fair and Slate, among other publications.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciXnolumIhc [no comments yet]


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Masha Gessen: Putin's War - Against the West

Published on Nov 13, 2014 by WGBHForum [ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN5PGHIurifMLpvEgP-8q_w / https://www.youtube.com/user/WGBHForum , https://www.youtube.com/user/WGBHForum/videos ]

On Wednesday, November 12, 2014 at 7:00 p.m. Cambridge Forum hosted Russian and American journalist, author, and LGBT activist Masha Gessen, discussing “Putin’s War–Against the West.” Her account of Vladimir Putin's rise to power and its devastating impact on the nascent democratic government of Russia (The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin) opened a window onto changing culture of Russia as well as the nature of its powerful and enigmatic leader. Her newest book, Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot, recounts the arrest, trial, and imprisonment of Pussy Riot. What do Gessen's experiences and insights tell us about Russia today? How might this new understanding change America's response to Putin’s actions?

Masha Gessen is a Russian and American journalist, author, and activist who writes in both Russian and English and has built a career in journalism in Russia and the United States. Gessen identifies as a lesbian and has written extensively on LGBT rights and help founded the Pink Triangle Campaign in Moscow. She has been described as "Russia's leading LGBT rights activist." Gessen voluntarily left Russia in 2013 when tightening anti-gay and lesbian policies threatened her family.

Noted for her opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Gessen’s criticism culminated in the 2012 biography The Man Without A Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. This was followed by Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot about the Russian feminist punk rock protest group whose performances protesting Putin led to their imprisonment. Gessen is the author of three previous books and has also written extensively for such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, New Statesman, Granta, Slate, Vanity Fair, and U.S. News & World Report. In 2013 she received the Media for Liberty award.

This talk was filmed on November 12, 2014, at First Parish in Cambridge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTJ5rP3JRKE [with comments] [a must-watch]


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in addition to (linked in) the post to which this is a reply and preceding and (other) following, see also in particular (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126542062 and preceding and following (earlier this string)