7 years of prison for pussy riot?

e.g. when they imprison you for two years for being a bit rude.

I am saying that protests are extremely high-risk compared to their benefits.

tell that to MLK, ghandi, the arab spring, etc...

There's gotta be an opposition party or something in Russia, right?

genuine lol here, well done!

I don't wanna teach my kids to do a cost v benefits analysis before exercising their inherent right to self-expression, either. you set a good example for your children if you live your most deeply-held values imo

maybe the suffragists should have just joined the opposition party instead of protesting to demand that they... get the vote...

things how's life assumes about Russia:

- there is an "opposition party"
- most people are atheists
- protestors don't consider the welfare of their children

in russia party opposes u iirc

Any government with a thoroughly corrupt legal system like Russia's, twisted by influence and a micro-managing neo authoritarian ruler who would orchestrate a verdict like this against non-violent protestors would have cracked down on anyone who did not toe the party line exactly eventually, moms or no. That's what Russia was like for several decades, for those too young to remember, and what Russian under Putin as been wobbling toward once again in recent years. At least these women went down fighting.

in russia party opposes u iirc

well played

(xp) it's probably how the States will go if the Romney/Ryan ticket wins in November.

none of the 40 reports ive heard have defined hooliganism under russian law (maybe cause it didnt really matter for pr).

good analysis marcello

maybe the suffragists should have just joined the opposition party instead of protesting to demand that they... get the vote...

in fairness this is basically the line the Democratic party here uses about protest: do it the effective way! Vote Democrat!

Def some of those revolutionary war bros had kids, that whole "taking on the British" thing was a bit risky

(xp) it's probably how the States will go if the Romney/Ryan ticket wins in November.

― Here he is with the classic "Poème Électronique." Good track (Marcello Carlin)

a new challenger has appeared

Maybe Putin is counting on this story to not make waves in the U.S. because the media here won't want to expose the citizens to the word"pussy"

http://www.tnr.com/article/magazine/politics/105735/maria-baronova-anti-putin-activist

Shaken, Baronova wanted to leave the country, but her ex-husband wouldn’t let her emigrate with their son. So she went to the office of Solidarity, an opposition organization, and volunteered to help them—and later Ponomarev—with public relations. She also poured the money she’d saved for her son’s education abroad into the opposition’s activities. “I see this as a cold civil war,” she explains. “The state is using all its resources to fight its own citizens, so we have to use of all of ours.”

Maybe Putin is counting on this story to not make waves in the U.S. because the media here won't want to expose the citizens to the word"pussy"

so many classic ellipsis-edits possible here

There's no point in putting them in jail - if there IS a god and (s)he's offended by what they've done, they'll be punished when their time comes. So there.

i'm sure how's life tuts just as loudly every time a father is clapped in gaol for protest

well of course he does! because he himself is a dad, to a child, who he has, sometimes he talks about it on here iirc

that was unnecessary. sorry to how's life.

anyway, this is really shitty.

There's gotta be an opposition party or something in Russia, right?

The biggest opposition party in Russia, and traditionally the strongest threat to the dominance of United Russia, is the Communists. Russia's problem isn't specifically a lack of opposition parties, it's the lack of a civil society that can actually support and nurture effective grass roots political movements. The whole political system is broken - to the point at which Putin is arguably the least offensive option for voters much of the time. Russia doesn't need more people joining traditional parties - the traditional parties are terrible, it needs more people willing to step aside from mainstream politics and challenge the assumptions of authority via other means, which is what Pussy Riot were doing.

There's a case for saying that staging the protest in a church was a miscalculation, not least because they'd probably not be in jail now had they done it somewhere else, but that was presumably a calculated risk they were willing to run.

No, that's okay Matt. And I don't want to detract from how shitty and unfair this verdict it, either!

I sort of want to apologize to people because I've been doing some reading up on Russia and I guess things are a lot worse than I actually thought over there. However, I still couldn't tell you what singing songs in churches is going to do to change those conditions.

xp

hopefully to demonstrate that the 'natural' and 'unshakeable' and media-determined hand-in-glove relationship between the (orthodox) church and (putinist) state can be cracked apart, just by a prank.

However, I still couldn't tell you what singing songs in churches is going to do to change those conditions.

it is currently p much the main news item all over the world tho, right? & because of it you are doing some reading up on Russia and founding out things are a lot worse than you knew.

Singing songs in church might not make a great deal of difference but being locked up for singing songs in church has made them, almost overnight, three of the most important figureheads for dissent in a country where more of the other "figureheads for dissent" who get talked about in the international media are either murderous gangsters or super-shady for other reasons.

*most of the other*

i think the church is what is giving it some traction in the u.s. but that's not gonna help. it'll be dispiriting to watch how "we" justify not doing anything.

are either murderous gangsters or super-shady for other reasons

well there's Kasparov. unless there's some dirt on him I don't know about.

Fuck.

well there's Kasparov. unless there's some dirt on him I don't know about.

― Shameful Dead Half Choogle (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, August 17, 2012 5:46 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He's got a thing for flying penises, iirc.

well there's Kasparov. unless there's some dirt on him I don't know about.

― Shameful Dead Half Choogle (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:46 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i heard he is a major player

Kasparov has pretty much zero support in Russia and is generally thought to have strong, and not particularly transparent, links to US neo-cons and Yeltsin-era profiteers.

yeah I know he's got no actual power base, just press I guess. didn't know about the neocon stuff that's kind of a bummer.

Navalny has more on him than consorting with nationalists?

Navalny is a die-hard Russian nationalist with strong racist leanings. He's effective, and an important counterbalance to the government, but comes with some really unpleasant baggage.

Any citations for the Kasparov/neo-con links?

He was a member of, and later a consultant to, the Center For Security Policy (along with Richard Perle, Doug Feith, James Woolsey, etc) a while back but they've done their best to edit him out of their history as it would be poison in Russia. It was reported by The Exile, and others, but it's not something that the English-language press is likely to shout about.

Cheers..I see Kasparov was their 1991 'Keeper Of The Flame'..

some varied post-verdict thoughts:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/opinion/the-wrong-reasons-to-back-pussy-riot.html

hmmmm? blaming the dissidents

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444443504577600763679287008.html

more straight-forward

How many fans of Pussy Riot’s zany “punk prayer” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s erudite and moving closing statement were equally thrilled by her participation, naked and heavily pregnant, in a public orgy at a Moscow museum in 2008?

still pretty jazzed

i actually have been wondering about that "public orgy" -- a lot of ppl have been writing about it as though it were a, i guess, "real" orgy? but most of the contemporary accts describe it as staged sex.

i guess it doesnt quite "matter" -- you can see some photos here http://plucer.livejournal.com/55710.html -- but it still feels like a kind of important distinction to make?

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lat3avvu791qe4or4o1_500.png

I think it's still possible to support their release from detention without buying into their whole ideology but the first piece makes some legitimate points about the lack of interest in the context of Russian politics beyond "the state is bad and opposition to the state must be good".

I really wish people would stop comparing Pussy Riot and Khordokovsky and giving him a platform to spout his propaganda unchallenged.

I think it's awful that they're going to jail for this and I even plan to discuss this in a fall course. However, I also think it is worth questioning why this case has received so much more press coverage than this person's case (current front page of the Amnesty site) ever did: me: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/14/iran-nasrin-sotoudeh-jail-sentence

Could there be any merit to any arguments here, as provocatively written as they may be?: http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/106278/the-story-pussy-riot

Don't know how that "me" got in there.

I think people have largely given up hope that external campaigning is going to make a blind bit of difference in Iran and Pakistan but still feel it can have an impact on a country with strong political and economic links to Europe and the US. Might have been nice to see a little more about the trial of a group of Kazakh oil workers though.

http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/08/15/kazakhstan-ensure-fair-trial-opposition-activists-oil-worker

from that nytimes thing:

Some outlets have portrayed the case as a quest for freedom of expression and other ground rules of liberal democracy. Yet the very phrase “freedom of expression,” with its connotations of genteel protest as a civic way to blow off some steam while life goes on, is alien to Russian radical thought. The members of Pussy Riot are not liberals looking for self-expression. They are self-confessed descendants of the surrealists and the Russian futurists, determined to radically, even violently, change society.

watch out! do not assume these women are like us. this country actually values its dissident artistic tradition. it isn't just a lifestyle accessory for them! be very careful.

idk how much coverage this story is getting except on my facebook feed, where admittedly it is getting a lot (from people heretofore uninterested in russia). i'm sure it is being overcovered since it's about a punk girl band called pussy riot, but what are you gonna do. besides, punk girl bands need more coverage in general and siloviki-regime rights violations definitely do in particular, since some of putin's major strengths are (internationally) his feigned democracy and (domestically) the impression that his harshness was/is necessary to bring the country under control (and even that he stands against the gangsters rather than just for his own gangsters). this is the second major mass-media crack of the last nine months in both ideas. also that closing statement was all kinds of otm.

I definitely think the fact that they're a feminist punk band has a lot to do with the import my facebook/twitter cohort place upon them, but that's because a large number of them are feminist punks. I've been consciously trying to juggle my support for Pussy Riot with bringing other political injustices to light, but I'm very aware that cause célèbres happen, and they're not always bad things.