Hey-hey, my little, sweet, precious bastards. Once again I have to show you the might of my bipolar disorder – and write an article on the absolutely random topic – still remembering the fact that this blog is about art! 

But I get used to that. You know, it’s hard to live with such a disease. It’s hard to be a journalist when you have a split personality. You do some things and suddenly boom – your other identity starts doing another. 
But it seems that now I even have the third identity! That dictates me to have categories in my blog – even though my original identity doesn’t want to! But I went too far, no one is interested in my problems. Let’s discuss the topic that the second identity dictates me to write about. 

Being a journalist in CIS is already an act of bravery. If you’ll write what you think is right, in the best scenario you will end up in prison, in worst – in the grave. 
Of course, if the journalist was called to the court in CIS, it will never end up well for him. He will at least have to pay infinite amounts of money. This is what Evgeniya Albats’ case is about. 

Who is Evgeniya Albats? She is a journalist in Russia, creator of “The new times” magazine. Also, she works on “Echo Moskvy” radio – taking interviews with different people.

Last year her magazine was forced to pay 22 million rubles penalty – the amount of money that they couldn’t afford – but they were saved by the readers who donated 25 million. It is the biggest media penalty in the history of Russia. 

And it’s funny how fast this process was. The case was made very long ago – but it lied in the prosecutor’s office because the judge found mistakes in it and send it back. Then Evgeniya made an interview with Alexey Navalny. Just a few days – the case was sent to the court, was looked over by the same judge in a few hours – and boom! Penalty. How fast the court system works, wow. 

The only question – for what they were punished? “For not giving information to Government about the foreign money support”. I personally cannot even understand, why one must give the government information where he takes the money. But I’m just a stupid libertarian, don’t listen to me.

The fun thing is that actually, Albats didn’t receive “foreign” money. They used the foundation, which was based outside of Russia, yes – but the money was donated by Russian people. So, a good advocate could’ve easily beaten the prosecutor case. Could’ve. If the system worked okay. If the court was fair. 

But this is not the case here. Here they just lost the court – and had to pay gorgeous amounts of money just for taking the interview with an interesting person. How unfortunate.