Marina Kim

Sunday

Marina Kim

Yes, Zac lost. So isn’t it time to stop bashing him?

It's easy to see the allure of ongoing Zac bashing. Can there be a pleasure more satisfying for all of us, stuck in our daily work-home, bread-butter routine, than watching a public humiliation of a wealthy tree-hugger, son of a billionaire with ‘a face carved out of caramel by angels’. Let’s kick him while he’s down, and again, and again. What? His brother Ben described him as ‘unstoppable’? Does it mean Zac still wants a career? Let’s kick him so that he never forgets, and never gets back into the public life. Leading the gang of detractors is a wealthy Guardian journalist: Owen Jones. It remains unclear what exactly drives Owen to be so vicious towards Zac. Could it be Owen’s socialist genes?

Saturday

Marina Kim

Putin may be mad – but not mad enough to have had Boris Nemtsov killed

Boris Nemtsov signed his own death warrant when gave an interview earlier this month to the Russian newspaper Sobesednik saying that he was afraid he was going to be killed on Vladimir Putin's orders. Perhaps he thought he was safeguarding himself from the possibility of such an attack by talking about it openly. Perhaps he did even save himself from Putin. But in this proclamation, he made himself a massive target - he made sure that his death would be a major political event inside Russia. So killing him became an objective for any number of people who will wish for the unrest which will now follow. “Boris Nemtsov shot dead: Outspoken Putin critic who had expressed fears for his life is killed near the Kremlin” is exactly the headline his killers were after.