News from Eastern Siberia:
A wandering shaman on a quest to “drive the evil spirit of [Vladimir] Putin from the Kremlin” has been arrested in Siberia by armed police.
Alexander Gabyshev had walked an estimated 1,700 miles from the remote city of Yakutsk towards Moscow, attracting an eccentric group of acolytes and appearing at rare protests in regional Russian cities, before his arrest on Thursday.
No charges brought at the time of writing. They’ll think up something, not to worry. An Amnesty International executive wonders:
…the Russian authorities’ response is grotesque. Are they truly afraid of his magical powers?
Well of course they are! I don’t know where the intensity of their fear falls on the scale from “vague anxiety” to “scared sh*tless,” but it’s probably a mix of the rational and the new-agey bizarre. The head of Putin’s administration, for instance, was reported to put great hopes in…
…a new device called a “nooscope” which… can tap into global consciousness and “detect and register changes in the biosphere and in human activity”.
It’s only natural that these folks should be wary of shamans, magicians and the like.
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