Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin

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Re: Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin

Postby hanshan » Tue Mar 06, 2012 8:17 pm

...

JackRiddler wrote:
Byrne wrote:A bit more digging reveals that the players in the anti Putin demonstrations:
[list=]the International Press Center in Moscow
GOLOS
the Levada Center
Vladimir Kara-Murza
Tamirlan Kurbanov
Alexei Navalny
[/list]
are backed/funded...by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED).....



The biggest anti-Putin players are the Communists, who are not backed/funded by NED, and whom Engdahl manages to omit. It's clear enough the US propaganda machinery is targeting him, as they recently targeted Assad and Gaddafi before him, and it's also clear why the US propaganda machine is targeting him, and them, and it has nothing to do with a desire to promote democracy. That doesn't make any of them into automatic good guys. Nor are those people automatic bad guys who might accept US money (a stupid move in any case) or who might associate with (or be associated with) others who might accept US money. What Engdahl, Tarpley and the rest of the LaRouche circle (orthodox and heretics included) never want to acknowledge is that Putin is every inch the former KGB thug he appears to be, and came to his present prominence in perhaps the most blatant false-flag terror operation conducted by an intelligence service on its own people for the purpose of installing a strongman in the entire 20th century's worth of such operations. That the 9/99 coup was also a move by domestic-minded tyrants to salvage the Russian state against dismantling by foreign-associated pirates merely shows up the paradox. Politics is often bad guys vs. bad guys. From this distance, we don't always have to choose. But I've no doubt Pussy Riot and the rest of the Russian youth revolt are about a thousand times more honest and real than Putin's apparatchiks, whether or not they are also misled or manipulated by NED money and American propaganda.

.


Thank you, Jack :angelwings:

...
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Re: Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin

Postby Byrne » Tue Mar 06, 2012 8:55 pm

Jack, good points you have made & I don't disagree with what you've said.

There is an interesting essay by Stephen Holmes (NYU School of Law):
Fragments of a Defunct State which details Putin's Russian situation.
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Re: Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin

Postby JackRiddler » Tue Aug 14, 2012 2:27 am


http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/13/ ... al-2/print

August 13, 2012

"Prison is Better Than Stoning"
Closing Statement in Pussy Riot Trial


by NADEZHDA TOLOKONNIKOVA



Essentially, it is not three singers from Pussy Riot who are on trial here. If that were the case, what’s happening would be totally insignificant. It is the entire state system of the Russian Federation which is on trial and which, unfortunately for itself, thoroughly enjoys quoting its cruelty towards human beings, its indifference to their honour and dignity, the very worst that has happened in Russian history to date. To my deepest regret, this mock trial is close to the standards of the Stalinist troikas. Thus, we have our investigator, lawyer and judge. And then, what’s more, what all three of them do and say and decide is determined by a political demand for repression. Who is to blame for the performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and for our being put on trial after the concert? The authoritarian political system is to blame. What Pussy Riot does is oppositional art or politics that draws upon the forms art has established. In any event, it is a form of civil action in circumstances where basic human rights, civil and political freedoms are suppressed by the corporate state system.

Many people, relentlessly and methodically flayed alive by the destruction of liberties since the turn of the century, have rebelled.

We were looking for authentic genuineness and simplicity and we found them in our punk performances. Passion, openness and naivety are superior to hypocrisy, cunning and a contrived decency that conceals crimes. The state’s leaders stand with saintly expressions in church, but their sins are far greater than ours. We’ve put on our political punk concerts because the Russian state system is dominated by rigidity, closedness and caste. Аnd the policies pursued serve only narrow corporate interests to the extent that even the air of Russia makes us ill.

We are absolutely not happy with—and have been forced into living politically—by the use of coercive, strong-arm measures to handle social processes, a situation in which the most important political institutions are the disciplinary structures of the state – the security agencies, the army, the police, the special forces and the accompanying means of ensuring political stability: prisons, preventive detention and mechanisms to closely control public behaviour. Nor are we happy with the enforced civic passivity of the bulk of the population or the complete domination of executive structures over the legislature and judiciary. Moreover, we are genuinely angered by the fear-based and scandalously low standard of political culture, which is constantly and knowingly maintained by the state system and its accomplices. Look at what Patriarch Kirill has to say: “The Orthodox don’t go to rallies.” We are angered by the appalling weakness of horizontal relationships within society. We don’t like the way in which the state system easily manipulates public opinion through its tight control of the overwhelming majority of media outlets. A perfect example is the unprecedentedly shameless campaign against Pussy Riot, based on distorting facts and words, which has appeared in nearly all the Russian media, apart from the few independent media there are in this political system.

Even so, I can now state—despite the fact that we currently have an authoritarian political situation—that I am seeing this political system collapse to a certain extent when it comes to the three members of Pussy Riot, because what the system was counting on, unfortunately for that system, has not come to pass. Russia as a whole does not condemn us. Every day more and more people believe us and believe in us, and think we should be free rather than behind bars. I can see this from the people I meet. I meet people who represent the system, who work for the relevant agencies. I see people who are in prison. And every day there are more and more people who support us, who hope for our success and especially for our release, who say our political act was justified. People tell us, “To start with, we weren’t sure you could have done this,” but every day there are more and more people who say, “Time is proving to us that your political gesture was correct. You have exposed the cancer in this political system and dealt a blow to a nest of vipers, which then turned on you.” These people are trying to make life easier for us in whatever way they can and we are very grateful to them for that…

We are grateful to all those who, free themselves, speak out in our support. There are a vast number, I know. I know that a huge number of Orthodox people are standing up for us. They are praying for us outside the courtroom, for the members of Pussy Riot who are incarcerated. We’ve seen the little booklets Orthodox people are handing out with prayers for those in prison. This shows that there isn’t a unified social group of Orthodox believers as the prosecution is endeavouring to say. No such thing exists. More and more believers are starting to defend Pussy Riot. They don’t think what we did deserves even five months in detention, much less the three years in prison the prosecutor would like. And every day, more and more people realize that if this political system has ganged up to this extent against three girls for a 30-second performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, it means the system is afraid of the truth and afraid of our sincerity and directness. We haven’t dissembled, not for a second, not for a minute during this trial, but the other side is dissembling too much and people can sense it. People can sense the truth. Truth really does have some kind of ontological, existential superiority over lies and this is written in the Bible, in the Old Testament in particular. In the end, the ways of truth always triumph over the ways of wickedness, guile and lies. And with each day that passes, the ways of truth are more and more triumphant even though we are still behind bars and are likely to be here a lot longer yet.

Madonna performed yesterday (7 August). She appeared with Pussy Riot written on her back. More and more people can see that we are being held here unlawfully and on a completely false charge – I’m overwhelmed by this. I am overwhelmed that truth really does triumph over lies even though physically we are here in a cage. We are freer than the people sitting opposite us for the prosecution because we can say everything we like, and we do, but those people sitting there say only what political censorship allows them to say. They can’t speak words like “punk prayer” or “Virgin Mary, Banish Putin!” They can’t say the lines from our punk prayer that have to do with the political system. Perhaps they think it wouldn’t be a bad thing to send us to jail because we are rising up against Putin and his system as well but they can’t say so because that’s not allowed either. Their mouths are sewn shut. Unfortunately, they are mere puppets. I hope they realize this and also take the road to freedom, truth and sincerity because these are superior to stasis, contrived decency and hypocrisy. Stasis and the search for truth are always in opposition to one another and, in this case, at this trial, we can see people who are trying to find the truth and people who are trying to enslave those who want to find the truth.

Humans are beings who always make mistakes. They are not perfect. They strive for wisdom but never actually have it. That’s precisely why philosophy came into being, precisely because philosophers are people who love wisdom and strive for it, but never actually possesses it and it is what makes them act and think and, ultimately, to live the way they do. This is what made us go into the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, and I think that Christianity, as I’ve understood it from studying the Old and New Testaments, supports the search for truth and a constant overcoming of the self, overcoming what you used to be. Christ didn’t associate with prostitutes for nothing. He said, ‘I help those who have gone astray and forgive them’ but for some reason I can’t see any of that at our trial, which is taking place under the banner of Christianity. I think the prosecutor is defying Christianity. The lawyer wants nothing to do with the injured parties. Here’s how I understand this: Two days ago, Lawyer Taratukhin made a speech in which he wanted everyone to understand that he had no sympathy with the people he is representing. This means he’s not ethically comfortable representing people who want to send the three members of Pussy Riot to jail. Why they want to do this, I don’t know. Perhaps it is their right. The lawyer was embarrassed, the shouts of “Shame! Executioners!” had got to him, which goes to show that truth and goodness always triumph over lies and evil.

I think some higher powers are guiding the speeches of the lawyers for the other side when, time after time, they make mistakes in what they say and call us the “injured parties”. Almost all the lawyers are doing it, including Lawyer Pavlova who is very negatively disposed towards us. Nevertheless, some higher powers are causing her to say “the injured parties” about us rather than the people she’s defending, us. I wouldn’t give people labels. I don’t think there are winners or losers here, injured parties or accused. We just need to make contact, to establish a dialogue and a joint search for truth, to seek wisdom together, to be philosophers together, rather than stigmatizing and labelling people. This is one of the worst things people can do and Christ condemned it.

We have been subjected to abuse during this trial. Who would have thought that a person and the state system he controls would be repeatedly capable of entirely wanton evil? Who would have thought that history and Stalin’s Great Terror, in particular, not so very long ago, would not be taught at all? It makes you want to weep to see how the methods of the medieval inquisition are brought out by the law-enforcement and judicial system of the Russian Federation, which is our country. Since the time of our arrest, however, we can no longer weep. We’ve forgotten how to cry. At our punk concerts we used to shout as best we could about the iniquities of the authorities and now we’ve been robbed of our voice.

This whole trial refuses to hear us and I mean hear us, which involves understanding and, moreover, thinking. I think every individual wants to attain wisdom, to be a philosopher, not just people who happen to have studied philosophy. That’s nothing. Formal education is nothing in itself and Lawyer Pavlova is constantly accusing us of not being sufficiently well-educated. I think though that the most important thing is the desire to know and to understand, and that’s something people can do for themselves outside of educational establishments, and the trappings of academic degrees don’t mean anything in this instance. Someone can have a vast fund of knowledge and for all that not be human. Pythagoras said that ‘the learning of many things does not teach understanding’. Unfortunately, that’s something we are forced to observe here. It’s just a stage setting and bits of the natural world, bodies brought into the courtroom. If, after many days of asking, talking and doing battle our petitions are examined, they are inevitably rejected.

The court, on the other hand—and unfortunately for us and for our country—listens to the prosecutor who repeatedly distorts our comments and statements with impunity in a bid to neutralize them. There is no attempt to conceal this breach in an adversarial system. It even appears to be for show. On 30th July, the first day of the trial, we presented our response to the accusations. Prior to that we were in prison, in confinement. We can’t do anything there. We can’t make statements. We can’t make films. We don’t have the internet in there. We can’t even give our lawyer a bit of paper because that’s banned too. Our first chance to speak came on 30th July. The document we’d written was read out by defence lawyer Volkov because the court refused outright to let the defendants speak. We called for contact and dialogue rather than conflict and opposition. We reached out a hand to those who, for some reason, assume we are their enemies. In response they laughed at us and spat in our outstretched hands. “You’re disingenuous,” they told us. But they needn’t have bothered. Don’t judge others by your own standards. We were always sincere in what we said, saying exactly what we thought, out of childish naïvety, sure, but we don’t regret anything we said, even on that day. We are reviled but we do not intend to speak evil in return. We are in desperate straits but do not despair. We are persecuted but not forsaken. It’s easy to humiliate and crush people who are open, but when I am weak, then I am strong.

Listen to us rather than to Arkady Mamontov talking about us. Don’t twist and distort everything we say. Let us enter into dialogue and contact with the country, which is ours too, not just Putin’s and the Patriarch’s. Like Solzhenitsyn, I believe that in the end, words will crush concrete. Solzhenitsyn wrote, “the word is more sincere than concrete, so words are not trifles. Once noble people mobilize, their words will crush concrete.”

Katya, Masha and I are in jail but I don’t consider that we’ve been defeated. Just as the dissidents weren’t defeated. When they disappeared into psychiatric hospitals and prisons, they passed judgement on the country. The era’s art of creating an image knew no winners or losers. The Oberiu poets remained artists to the very end, something impossible to explain or understand since they were purged in 1937. Vvedensky wrote: “We like what can’t be understood, What can’t be explained is our friend.” According to the official report, Aleksandr Vvedensky died on 20 December 1941. We don’t know the cause, whether it was dysentery in the train after his arrest or a bullet from a guard. It was somewhere on the railway line between Voronezh and Kazan. Pussy Riot are Vvedensky’s disciples and his heirs. His principle of ‘bad rhythm’ is our own. He wrote: “It happens that two rhythms will come into your head, a good one and a bad one and I choose the bad one. It will be the right one.” What can’t be explained is our friend. The elitist, sophisticated occupations of the Oberiu poets, their search for meaning on the edge of sense was ultimately realized at the cost of their lives, swept away in the senseless Great Terror that’s impossible to explain. At the cost of their own lives, the Oberiu poets unintentionally demonstrated that the feeling of meaninglessness and analogy, like a pain in the backside, was correct, but at the same time led art into the realm of history. The cost of taking part in creating history is always staggeringly high for people. But that taking part is the very spice of human life. Being poor while bestowing riches on many, having nothing but possessing everything. It is believed that the OBERIU dissidents are dead, but they live on. They are persecuted but they do not die.

Do you remember why the young Dostoyevsky was given the death sentence? All he had done was to spend all his time with Socialists—and at the Friday meetings of a friendly circle of free thinkers at Petrushevsky’s, he became acquainted with Charles Fourier and George Sand. At one of the last meetings, he read out Gogol’s letter to Belinsky, which was packed, according to the court, and I note, with childish expressions against the Orthodox Church and the supreme authorities. After all his preparations for the death penalty and ten dreadful, impossibly frightening minutes waiting to die, as Dostoyevsky himself put it, the announcement came that his sentence had been commuted to four years hard labour followed by military service.

Socrates was accused of corrupting youth through his philosophical discourses and of not recognizing the gods of Athens. Socrates had a connection to a divine inner voice and was by no means a theomachist, something he often said himself. What did that matter, however, when he had angered the city with his critical, dialectical and unprejudiced thinking? Socrates was sentenced to death and, refusing to run away, although he was given that option, he drank down a cup of poison in cold blood, hemlock.

Have you forgotten the circumstances under which Stephen, follower of the Apostles, ended his earthly life? “Then they secretly induced men to say, ‘We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.’ And they stirred up the people, the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and dragged him away, and brought him before the Council. And they put forward false witnesses who said, ‘This man incessantly speaks against this holy place, and the Law.’” He was found guilty and stoned to death.

And I hope everyone remembers what the Jews said to Jesus: “We’re stoning you not for any good work, but for blasphemy.” And finally it would be well worth remembering this description of Christ: “He is possessed of a demon and out of his mind.”

I believe that if leaders, tsars, elders, presidents and prime ministers, the people and the judges really understood what “I desire mercy not sacrifice” meant, they would not condemn the innocent. Our leaders are currently in a hurry only to condemn and not at all to show mercy. Incidentally, we thank Dmitry Anatolievich Medvedev for his latest wonderful aphorism. If Medvedev gave his presidency the slogan: “Freedom is better than non-freedom”, then, thanks to Medvedev’s felicitous saying, Putin’s third term has a good chance of being known by a new aphorism: “Prison is better than stoning.”

I would like you to think carefully about the following reflection by Montaigne from his Essays written in the 16th century. He wrote: “You are holding your opinions in too high a regard if you burn people alive for them.” Is it worth accusing people and putting them in jail on the basis of totally unfounded conjectures by the prosecution?

Since in actual fact we never were, and are not, motivated by religious hatred and hostility, there is nothing left for our accusers other than to draw on the aid of false witnesses. One of them, Motilda Ivashchenko, was ashamed and didn’t show up in court. That left the false witness of the expert examination by [Vsevolod] Troitsky, [Igor] Ponkin and Mrs [Vera] Abramenkova. And there is no evidence of any hatred or enmity on our part other than this expert examination. For this reason, if it is honourable and just, the court must rule the evidence inadmissible because it is not a strictly scientific or objective text but a filthy, lying bit of paper from the medieval days of the inquisition. There is no other evidence that remotely hints at a motive.

The prosecution is reluctant to produce excerpts from the text of Pussy Riot interviews because they are primary evidence of this lack of motive. For the umpteenth time, I will quote this excerpt. I think it’s important. It was from an interview with “Russky Reporter”, given the day after the concert at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour: “Our attitude toward religion, and toward Orthodoxy in particular, is one of respect, and for this very reason we are distressed that the great and luminous Christian philosophy is being used so shabbily. We are very angry that something beautiful is being spoiled.” It still makes us angry and we find it very painful to watch.

The lack on our part of any show of hatred or enmity has been attested by all the witnesses examined by the defence. And by the evidence of our characters. In addition to all the other character statements, I’d like you to consider the findings of the psychiatric and psychological tests the investigator ordered me to undergo in detention. The expert’s findings were as follows: the values to which I am committed in my life are justice, mutual respect, humanity, equality and freedom. That’s what the expert said, someone who doesn’t know me and Investigator Ranchenko would probably have very much liked him to write something different. It would appear, however, that there are more people who live and value the truth, and the Bible’s right about that.

Finally, I’d like to quote a Pussy Riot song because, strange as it may seem, all our songs have turned out to be prophetic, including the one that says: “The KGB chief, their number one saint, will escort protestors off to jail” – that’s us. What I’d like to quote now, however, is the next line: “Open the doors, off with the shoulder-straps, join us in a taste of freedom.”






http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/13/ ... iot-trial/



This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only.

August 13, 2012

"The System Cannot Conceal the Repressive Nature of This Trial"
Closing Statement in Pussy Riot Trial


by YEKATERINA SAMUTSEVICH



During the closing statement, the defendant is expected to repent or express regret for her deeds, or to enumerate attenuating circumstances. In my case, as in the case of my colleagues in the group, this is completely unnecessary. Instead, I want to express my views about the causes of what has happened with us.

The fact that Christ the Savior Cathedral had become a significant symbol in the political strategy of our powers that be was already clear to many thinking people when Vladimir Putin’s former [KGB] colleague Kirill Gundyaev took over as head of the Russian Orthodox Church. After this happened, Christ the Savior Cathedral began to be used openly as a flashy setting for the politics of the security services, which are the main source of power [in Russia].

Why did Putin feel the need to exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetics? After all, he could have employed his own, far more secular tools of power—for example, national corporations, or his menacing police system, or his own obedient judiciary system. It may be that the tough, failed policies of Putin’s government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, the bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced him to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign; otherwise, the citizens of Russia would help him do this. Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more convincing, transcendental guarantees of his long tenure at the helm. It was here that the need arose to make use of the aesthetics of the Orthodox religion, historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself.

How did he succeed in doing this? After all, we still have a secular state, and shouldn’t any intersection of the religious and political spheres be dealt with severely by our vigilant and critically minded society? Here, apparently, the authorities took advantage of a certain deficit of Orthodox aesthetics in Soviet times, when the Orthodox religion had the aura of a lost history, of something crushed and damaged by the Soviet totalitarian regime, and was thus an opposition culture. The authorities decided to appropriate this historical effect of loss and present their new political project to restore Russia’s lost spiritual values, a project which has little to do with a genuine concern for preservation of Russian Orthodoxy’s history and culture.

It was also fairly logical that the Russian Orthodox Church, which has long had a mystical connection with power, emerged as this project’s principal executor in the media. Moreover, it was also agreed that the Russian Orthodox Church, unlike the Soviet era, when the church opposed, above all, the crudeness of the authorities towards history itself, should also confront all baleful manifestations of contemporary mass culture, with its concept of diversity and tolerance.

Implementing this thoroughly interesting political project has required considerable quantities of professional lighting and video equipment, air time on national TV channels for hours-long live broadcasts, and numerous background shoots for morally and ethically edifying news stories, where in fact the Patriarch’s well-constructed speeches would be pronounced, helping the faithful make the right political choice during the election campaign, a difficult time for Putin. Moreover, all shooting has to take place continuously; the necessary images must sink into the memory and be constantly updated, to create the impression of something natural, constant and compulsory.

Our sudden musical appearance in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior with the song “Mother of God, Drive Putin Out” violated the integrity of this media image, generated and maintained by the authorities for so long, and revealed its falsity. In our performance we dared, without the Patriarch’s blessing, to combine the visual image of Orthodox culture and protest culture, suggesting to smart people that Orthodox culture belongs not only to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch and Putin, that it might also take the side of civic rebellion and protest in Russia.

Perhaps such an unpleasant large-scale effect from our media intrusion into the cathedral was a surprise to the authorities themselves. First they tried to present our performance as the prank of heartless militant atheists. But they made a huge blunder, since by this time we were already known as an anti-Putin feminist punk band that carried out their media raids on the country’s major political symbols.

In the end, considering all the irreversible political and symbolic losses caused by our innocent creativity, the authorities decided to protect the public from us and our nonconformist thinking. Thus ended our complicated punk adventure in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

I now have mixed feelings about this trial. On the one hand, we now expect a guilty verdict. Compared to the judicial machine, we are nobodies, and we have lost. On the other hand, we have won. Now the whole world sees that the criminal case against us has been fabricated. The system cannot conceal the repressive nature of this trial. Once again, Russia looks different in the eyes of the world from the way Putin tries to present it at daily international meetings. All the steps toward a state governed by the rule of law that he promised have obviously not been made. And his statement that the court in our case will be objective and make a fair decision is another deception of the entire country and the international community.

That is all. Thank you.

We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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Re: Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin

Postby jlaw172364 » Tue Aug 14, 2012 1:31 pm

Man, those Russians haven't learned anything in how to really repress people. Instead of caging Pussy Riot and making them international heroines, they should have detourned and defanged them somehow, perhaps with a TV show. All they did was a play an unpermitted concert. Sheesh.
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Re: Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin

Postby Jeff » Wed Aug 15, 2012 11:33 am

jlaw172364 wrote:Man, those Russians haven't learned anything in how to really repress people. Instead of caging Pussy Riot and making them international heroines, they should have detourned and defanged them somehow, perhaps with a TV show. All they did was a play an unpermitted concert. Sheesh.


That's a good point. A similar observation here:

We’re right to think that a Pussy Riot wouldn’t go down–or up in flames–in North America. We’re wrong, I think, if we don’t wish for it a little. In Russia, the patriarchy is so literal as to be funded by the actual Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church. Perhaps that just makes it, along with Putin’s church-supported authority, less insidious. Imagine Pussy Riot in the U.K., or North America. They’d be like the masked, art-punking Guerrilla Girls of the ‘80s and ‘90s: chased, but never caught. Their fate would be easier on their bodies, worse for their politics. They would be ignored. Or they’d be commodified. You could buy Pussy Riot postcards at the MoMA; you would see them play as Josie and the Pussy Riot at a Marc Jacobs show.

...

Days before the March arrests, pseudonymous members told Vice they carry their balaclavas everywhere, because you always have to be ready, “like Batman.” We smile at this in recognition, then go watch the new Batman and see – or maybe it’s too obvious and too familiar to see – that it’s 165 minutes of pro-Wall Street, pro-state, pro-cop, anti-anarchy, anti-human propaganda.

Like, Christopher Nolan told reporters that, while re-reading A Tale of Two Cities, he found total-monarchy France to be a “relatable, recognizable civilization?” And then we say it’s “just a movie.”


And I like this, from Pussy Riot's crime was violating the sacred. That's what got Jesus in court:

The problem comes when the holy is employed as a cover to evade critical scrutiny. Even more so when questionable moral or political ideologies are smuggled into the holy – from menstruating women being ritually unclean (thus unable to be priests doing holy stuff in the sanctuary) to the Orthodox church's support for Putin. For values thus inscribed within the holy can easily come to regulate the politics of a community in ways that resist any sort of challenge. Then religion becomes an adjunct of totalitarianism. And when this happens a pussy riot is an absolute moral necessity.


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Re: Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin

Postby barracuda » Wed Aug 15, 2012 11:53 am

Image

A Russian artist has sewn his mouth together in support of three members of the feminist punk collective Pussy Riot, who are currently in prison for their protest against Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Petr Pavlensky stood in front of St Petersburg's Kazan Cathedral holding a banner reading 'Pussy Riot act is a replay of a famous act by Jesus Christ'.

http://www.nme.com/news/pussy-riot/65124


Image

I find myself hoping a confederate smuggles them a used Fender inside a biskvit and they escape the courtroom in a blaze of overdriven C and G chords.
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Re: Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin

Postby 8bitagent » Wed Aug 15, 2012 8:50 pm

This is a government who blew up over 300 Russian civilians 13 years ago in a clear false flag in order to justify an invasion that slaughtered a large percentage of innocent Chechens. That, on top of all the rigged elections, journalist/whistleblower assassinations, FSB-pedo narco mafia networks running cities, etc.

I've been called a neocon for my hate of the Russian government, but fuck the Russian government. And China.
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Re: Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Aug 16, 2012 1:55 pm

Mike Whitney's confused column in Counterpunch today
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/08/ ... flap/print

prompted me to very quickly write the following e-mail:

The west is waging a propaganda war on Putin, aiming to foster regime change and a neoliberal shift.

Putin is cracking down on opposition free speech and the Pussy Riot trial is an absurdity.

Western support for Pussy Riot is hypocritical and obviously motivated by the anti-Putin campaign.

Pussy Riot faces an injustice, even if it's not as bad as Guantanamo. (Is that going to be the standard for measuring all injustices henceforth? Not as bad as Guantanamo, so it's okay?)

Putin is very popular in his country. (So was Reagan.)

Western intel is trying to infiltrate and support the opposition to Putin.

The opposition to Putin is mostly genuine, even if they have minority support.

Putin protects the national interests of Russia against Western multinational push to plunder.

Putin took down the worst of the oligarchs, and ended Khodorkovsky's awesome gangster career.

Putin has his own set of oligarchs, exploiting the country but more in line with current Russian policy.

Putin is a spymaster who was installed thanks to the most obvious false-flag covert state terror operation in 9/99.

None of these statements factually contradict any of the other statements. They need not be falsely set up as though the truth of one would relativize the truth of any of the others, as you had it in your article today. If one side is bad, that rarely means the other side is good. Save that for the movies.

I like most of your work.

Nicholas


I could have added that the defeat of Putin sometime down the line won't necessarily entail the return of Western shock therapy. Putin is not the only alternative to neoliberal plunder, and he is a tyrant - a popular one, like they very often are.

Also:

Funniest Denial of 9/11 Ever
viewtopic.php?t=32773&p=419472
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Re: Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin

Postby wordspeak2 » Fri Aug 17, 2012 1:32 am

Very well-said, JR. I wish you had the column in Counterpunch. Putin is more popular than Reagan even was, though- over 60 % support... It shows Russians want to defend the motherland, even with the ultimate mafioso crook- just don't go back to Yeltsin.

Regardless, this is a global PR blunder on Russia's part, trying to lock up a bunch of girls for singing a song in a church that had some political content in it. They're asking for a western media field day with that one.
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Re: Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin

Postby Jeff » Fri Aug 17, 2012 7:55 am

The three women of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot were convicted of “hooliganism” Friday and could face seven years each in prison.

The judge is still reading the verdict.


http://www.thestar.com/news/world/artic ... sian-judge

And thanks, that was good and true, Jack.

[on edit:] Sentenced to two years.
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Re: Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin

Postby Jeff » Fri Aug 17, 2012 3:47 pm

On the day of sentencing, a member of Femen cuts down a cross in Kiev in solidarity.

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Re: Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin

Postby Luther Blissett » Fri Aug 17, 2012 5:30 pm

Image

sgcny wrote:If you are going to the next protest be careful the cops aren't happy today
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Re: Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin

Postby Canadian_watcher » Fri Aug 17, 2012 6:52 pm

I dunno 'bout this whole thing.

the balaclavas & the 24 7 coverage add up to no good in my books.

something stinks.
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Re: Pussy Riot take revolt to the Kremlin

Postby 8bitagent » Fri Aug 17, 2012 7:43 pm

Canadian_watcher wrote:I dunno 'bout this whole thing.

the balaclavas & the 24 7 coverage add up to no good in my books.

something stinks.



I think it's nothing but pure awesome. Anarcho feminist punkers standing up to fascist Russian overlords with performance art. What's not to love?
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