Opposition politician Oleg Shein, whose activities in the town of Astrakhan we blogged about here, is on his 25th day of a hunger strike in protest against the ‘mafia system of government’ in the southern city.   Today Ria-Novosti reported that Shein, who has made it his mission to highlight electoral fraud in the parliamentary election, has denied rumors that his health has been severely endangered by the protest.  Nonetheless, observers of his fasting have argued that physical damage is an ineluctable result of this extreme course of action.  Masha Gessen in the New York Times explains why Shein and 21 other supporters have resorted to this harrowing tactic: