7 years of prison for pussy riot?

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.

oh and the wsj:

The proximity of the Pussy Riot verdict to the scheduled announcement of Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization, due to be formalized on Wednesday, captures the strange chimera that is Mr. Putin's Russia. On the one hand, the Russian Federation is taking major strides toward economic modernization. On the other, it's a country that will sentence young women to two years in prison for an irreverent political protest—after seriously debating the evidential requirements for proving demonic possession.

a country that's in the wto AND repressive, authoritarian, and superstitious?! truly, a chimera. wrapped in a medusa. (piece otherwise seems fine, speculates levelheadedly about what putin's cost-benefit analysis must have been.)

The Guardian makes a Pussy Riot video from news footage:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/video/2012/aug/17/pussy-riot-release-new-single-video

To clarify, it's for this new song ( via same publicist as the above Free Pussy Riot reading etc)
Pussy Riot shares their new song, “Putin Lights Up the Fires” with the world HERE (link for the Guardian video). This is the art group’s first musical piece since the "Virgin Mary, Please Drive Putin Away" for which three members were found guilty of hooliganism driven by religious hatred and sentenced to two years in jail. The Guardian has edited the new song to a montage of Pussy Riot members and their supporters. Even though the song was released on Friday, the translated lyrics have just been revealed today.

PUSSY RIOT "Putin Lights Up the Fires" lyrics:
(translation credit: @Russian_Market)

This state may be stronger than time in jail.

The more arrests, the happier it is.
Every arrest is carried out with love for the sexist

Who botoxed his cheeks and pumped his chest and abs.

But you can't nail us in the coffin.
Throw off the yoke of former KGB!

Putin is lighting the fires of revolution
He's bored and scared of sharing silence with the people
With every execution: the stench of rotten ash
With every long sentence: a wet dream

The country is going, the country is going into the streets boldly
The country is going, the country is going to bid farewell to the regime
The country is going, the country is going, like a feminist wedge
And Putin is going, Putin is going to say goodbye like a sheep

Arrest the whole city for May 6th
Seven years isn't enough, give us 18!
Forbid us to scream, walk and curse!
Go and marry Father Lukashenko

The 6th letter from detention written by Nadia:
http://www.freepussyriot.org/content/6th-letter-detention-nadia-written-eve-verdict

And Livestream's still got an archive of videos, docs etc posted during the reading
https://new.livestream.com/accounts/1294758/events/1050371

idk how much coverage this story is getting except on my facebook feed

It was the top story on the CBC News page a day or two ago. More than one celebrity, including Madonna, has spoken publicly about it.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=bbc+pussy+riot&src=IE-SearchBox&Form=IE8SRC
http://www.bing.com/search?q=ny+times+pussy+riot&qs=n&form=QBRE&pq=ny+times+pussy+riot&sc=0-0&sp=-1&sk=

Fwiw:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=bbc+nasrin+sotoudeh&src=IE-SearchBox&Form=IE8SRC
http://www.bing.com/search?q=ny+times+nasrin+sotoudeh&qs=n&form=QBRE&pq=ny+times+nasrin+sotoudeh&sc=0-0&sp=-1&sk=

That nytimes op-ed is just insane.

standing behind Pussy Riot only now, when it is obviously blameless and the government clearly guilty, is pure opportunism

http://www.vice.com/read/we-too-are-hooligans

*barfs*

inspiring

why the hell am I still clicking on Red State links when I won't go near Vice with a ten foot pole

But no amount of bitching, or blogging, or tweeting was making me, or any of the rest of us, feel like we were doing enough to show that we felt something about this. That we cared.

"Fuck it. Let's get tattoos."

poss. key phrase

yeah this is a hall of fame "lol privileged white kids" story

lol

He concentrated on his beer during the ouchy parts. He concentrated on his beer during the ouchy parts. He concentrated on his beer during the ouchy parts. He concentrated on his beer during the ouchy parts. He concentrated on his beer during the ouchy parts. He concentrated on his beer during the ouchy parts.