Fullofbias

Today’s main story clearly falls into the “more hellishness” category. In the morning, radio stations were discussing the newly adopted law on protecting children from damaging information. Commentators argued that dozens of classical children’s cartoons, films and books could be banned under this vaguely-worded piece of legislation.

According to the law, information is considered damaging to children if it –

–         may encourage them to try cigarettes, alcohol or illegal drugs

–         may encourage violence or suicides

–         denies family values and encourages them to disobey their parents

–         justifies anti-social behaviour

–         may cause fear or panic

–         depicts sexual acts between men and women (curiously, other possible gender combinations get no mention, so they seem to be perfectly legal)

Perhaps to show the absurdity of the law, a representative of VGTRK, Russia’s main state-run TV holding, said that its channels will stop showing the iconic Soviet cartoon “Nu, Pogodi!” before 11pm. The reason is that one of its main characters, the Wolf, lights a cigarette in pretty much every episode.

The blogosphere has been filling up since early morning with suggestions as to which other famous films and books should be banned. The pipe-smoking captains and rum-drinking pirates clearly have no chance. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are blatantly anti-social. Almost every Russian fairytale contains scenes of violence. And so on.

It appears that the Orthodox CheKa – a group of pious ex-KGB agents, which currently dominates the Kremlin – is suffering from a shortage of sane and professional people willing to work for them in the parliament.

Also today, an Orthodox website published an instruction for believers on behave if they detect blasphemy, such as Pussy Riot performance, in a church. The first they should, according to this document, is spit in the perpetrator’s face to distract their attention. It then points out that although spilling blood inside the church is not allowed, it is all right to “offer adequate resistance” outside the premises. The instruction was drafted by an organization calling itself Pchelki – Little Bees.