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Per the genteel NYTimes, “Russian Band Given 2-Year Term for Stunt Deriding Putin“:
MOSCOW — A Moscow judge handed down stiff prison sentences of two years on Friday afternoon for three young women who staged a protest against Vladimir V. Putin in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior last February and whose jailing and trial on hooliganism charges have generated worldwide criticism of constraints on political speech in Russia
While a guilty verdict against the three women, members of a band called Pussy Riot, was widely expected, suspense had built over how severe a punishment they would receive. Prosecutors had demanded three-year prison terms, but President Putin had weighed in on the side of leniency. …
The case has become a touchstone in the political conflict that began in Russia after disputed parliamentary elections last December. That is partly because of the sympathetic appearance of the defendants — two are mothers of young children — partly because their group uses music to carry its message, and because it has pitted them against a united power-structure: the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church.
As the judge read the lengthy verdict, hundreds of demonstrators had gathered outside the courthouse and shouted, “Free Pussy Riot!” …
Near the start of the highly anticipated proceedings, the judge said that Pussy Riot’s so-called punk prayer in Moscow’s main cathedral had amounted to the crime of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. She repeated that charge on Friday in her verdict. Because the women acted as a group, the maximum sentence under the law is seven years in prison….
As the trial opened, the women — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, and Maria Alyokhina, 24 — apologized, saying they had never intended to offend the Orthodox Church but rather sought to make a political statement against Mr. Putin and against the church patriarch, Kirill I, for supporting Mr. Putin in his campaign for a third term as president.
But prosecutors and lawyers for religious people who where described as victims of the stunt said the women were motivated by religious hatred. The defendants were accused of committing “moral harm” and even of practicing Satanism …
Emily Nokes at Seattle’s Stranger has a timeline on “Everything You Need to Know About Vladimir Putin’s Least Favorite Feminists“:
… Pussy Riot has no formal membership, tries to operate anonymously, and cites the riot grrrl movement as inspiration. According to a member of the collective: “We developed what they did in the 1990s, although in an absolutely different context and with an exaggerated political stance, which leads to all of our performances being illegal—we’ll never gig in a club or special musical space.”…
July 30: The Pussy Riot trial begins. The prosecutor demands three years in a labor camp for each defendant. The defense reports that the women have not been allowed adequate food, sleep, or medical attention. During appearances in court, they are kept in a glass and wood cage, watched by a “rotating cast of guard dogs… lest the three women try to run away from the glass ‘aquarium’ in which they are locked during the trial,” the New Yorker reports. Court sessions often last more than 10 hours.
August 3: There are reports of journalists being kept out of the courtroom. According to the Russian Legal Information Agency: “During the trial, the defense attorneys have also not had the opportunity to meet with their clients confidentially. The court has dismissed all of the defense’s appeals, and has not allowed witnesses for the defense or members of the press or the public to testify.”
August 6: The prosecution calls “injured parties” as witnesses, such as church security guards, a candle keeper, church cleaners, and a treasurer. According to the New Yorker, witnesses testify to being “profoundly offended” by the “loud, inappropriate” color of Pussy Riot’s dresses, their lack of sleeves, etc., and the candle keeper says, “They basically spat in my face, in my soul, in my Lord’s soul.” Even though the women performed for less than one minute in balaclavas and tights while the church was empty, a witness claims to have identified one of the women “by her calf muscles.” Rolling Stone reports that a real estate agent who also testifies watched the performance online and feels that “Pussy Riot declared war on God, Christianity, and the government.”…
And in another country, Rick Santorum has a peak sexual experience.
The group’s defense website is here.
Ben Franklin
Whether it’s Hooliganism or failure to use a condom, it’s all good for the Authoritarians.
Let the criminals rot.
Culture of Truth
Sounds like they’ve got their hands full
Culture of Truth
Wax on wax off
rlrr
Conservatives in the US would have celebrated the Dixie Chicks going to prison…
Kiril
A few months ago I got curious and watched some Pussy Riot videos on YouTube and ran across a comment that perfectly expresses how I feel about their, and a lot of underproduced punk music:
Culture of Truth
Bush was polite and only peered into Putin’s soul
SatanicPanic
Punkest band in the world
Comrade Dread
If that’s all they did, it doesn’t seem like it’s worth 2 years. Maybe probation or community service.
Then again, I would have hoped that the church wouldn’t have pressed charges and told the girls that next time they should call ahead so they can put on a pot of coffee and arrange a space outside for their protests.
MaximusNYC
These women are operating on a level that is so far beyond the understanding of both their opponents in Russia, and many of their supporters in the west.
Check out their closing statements. Really good stuff. And they make a mockery of the idea that their actions were “motivated by religious hatred”.
What many people don’t understand is that this was a protest specifically about the unholy attempt to fuse the church and the state. Of course, this is a problem we are not entirely unfamiliar with ourselves.
beltane
The only humorous aspect to all of this is that I got to hear my 72 year old mother utter the name “Pussy Riot”.
raven
They seem to be yucking it up in every pic I have seen.
Rekster
From the Dallas Morning News:
This was the headline from the Pop Culture Blog on August 15, 2012.
Heaven forbid they use the word Pussy. All the loons down here would have feared a horde of Kitty Kats were rioting!
MaximusNYC
BTW, here is the English translation of their infamous song:
(Chorus)
St. Maria, Virgin, Drive away Putin
Drive away! Drive away Putin!
(end chorus)
Black robe, golden epaulettes
All parishioners are crawling and bowing
The ghost of freedom is in heaven
Gay pride sent to Siberia in chains
The head of the KGB is their chief saint
Leads protesters to prison under escort
In order not to offend the Holy
Women have to give birth and to love
Holy shit, shit, Lord’s shit!
Holy shit, shit, Lord’s shit!
(Chorus)
St. Maria, Virgin, become a feminist
Become a feminist, Become a feminist
(end chorus)
Church praises the rotten dictators
The cross-bearer procession of black limousines
In school you are going to meet with a teacher-preacher
Go to class – bring him money!
Patriarch Gundyaev believes in Putin
Bitch, you better believed in God
Belt of the Virgin is no substitute for mass-meetings
In protest of our Ever-Virgin Mary!
(Chorus)
St. Maria, Virgin, Drive away Putin
Drive away! Drive away Putin!
(end chorus)
? Martin
@rlrr: You mean the Ronald Reagan Reeducation Center.
raven
Hardball has the dumbest fucking Seal I have ever heard on.
Mike in NC
A few years back I saw an old newsreel of the destruction of the original Cathedral of Christ the Savior, as ordered by good old Uncle Joe Stalin in the early 1930s. Boris Yeltsin had the thing rebuilt at considerable expense (with public donations) in the 1990s.
General Stuck
George Bush ain’t buying it.
“I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue.
To dredge up Stalin. No Pusssy Riot, No problem.
raven
@raven: And John Stoltz just called him a liar! Cool, fight back!
Villago Delenda Est
You know, “hooliganism” was a favorite crime for the old Soviet Union to charge anyone with who they didn’t like. For example, the guy who yelled “Brezhnev is an idiot!” in Red Square.
Well, that and revealing a state secret, but I digress…
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Villago Delenda Est:
It really doesn’t help that this is almost a blatant political show trial either. Guerrilla performances like that are always of questionable legality, but it’s obvious that it wasn’t really the show itself or the supposed blasphemy, but insulting Putin on a personal level and calling into question his political divinity.
scav
So this generation’s Potemkin village is Putin machismo?
Comrade Dread
@raven: Well, if he can talk, knows English and is saying something other than “I want more fish” that’s still pretty impressive for a small marine mammal.
Culture of Truth
@raven:
That’s just Chris Matthews.
djork
Those ladies have giant pairs of balls on them. Much respect.
kvenlander
As an expat of a country bordering Russia, this shit is getting scarier. From a communist dictatorship to a fascist god/country/strongman dictatorship in the same generation…
These women are putting everything on the line.
The least we can do is sign Amnesty International letter here: http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=6oJCLQPAJiJUG&b=6645049&aid=517749
Calouste
@raven:
I wonder how long it will be before we find out that the connection with special forces of at least one of the people involved in Swiftboating 2.0 didn’t go any further than the application form.
Culture of Truth
To dredge up Stalin.
How many divisions does Pussy Riot have?
JustMe
they had never intended to offend the Orthodox Church
While the defendants deserved nothing more than a citation and a token fine, could they at least refrain from “piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining”-type defenses?
General Stuck
@kvenlander:
There always has been a malignant strain of nationalism in Russia, that lives on past experiments with various forms of government. A couple of years ago, I came across a documentary concerning the Putin fueled near manic lurch toward bringing out the beast of nation love.
They were having government sponsored youth camps, like we do with church and scouting this or that for our young people, except they were worshiping the superiority of mother Russia, and Putin right along side that. Volatile country, and will continue to be, with a shit load of nuclear weapons.
Zifnab
Twenty-somethings in spandex sending a former World Superpower into distress? Can a drunk guy riding a tank be far behind?
:-p Shit like this doesn’t demonstrate Putin’s strength. It merely goes to illustrate how terribly weak he is.
Villago Delenda Est
@General Stuck:
Recall that during the darkest days of the Great Patriotic War, Stalin did not speak of defending the Revolution, he spoke of defending the Rodina. Mother Russia.
They’ve always fallen back on nationalism, regardless of the regime. Tsars and Commissars both fell back to the defense of the Motherland.
scav
@JustMe: The point of that was excluding Putin. I doubt they intended it as a defense.
vheidi
@MaximusNYC: thanks for this- wow
chopper
see, this is punk as fuck. punk rock in the US died the moment middle-aged people stopped being scared of it.
Citizen_X
Gee, one starts to get the feeling that there should be, I don’t know, a wall between church and state, or something.
I know, a heretical thought in the United Christian States of America.
Linda Featheringill
Again? What the hell?
I think that in the centuries before 1900, the Russian Orthodox Church served neither God nor man but rather was an arm of the State. In the 20th century, the Church wasn’t a major player. So now we’re in the 21st century and they’re going back to do that again?
Where’s that comet?
Mike in NC
@Villago Delenda Est:
Stalin gave the world “Motherland”, Hitler gave the world “Fatherland”, and Dubya gave the world “Homeland”.
Hill Dweller
@raven:
More articulate: Ryan Lochte or Birther SEAL?
The Sailor
“but President Putin had weighed in on the side of leniency.”
I was trying to come up with something clever, but I couldn’t get past “bullshit”.
Edit: In ex-Soviet Russia church fucks … yeah, still nothing.
Suffern ACE
@Comrade Dread: This is Russia. What is this community of which you speak?
Thoughtcrime
“Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan” is an anagram for “My ultimate Ayn Rand Porn”
h/t http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021152160
Valdivia
So how do the Wingnuts defend this? They always say Putin is like a Soviet despot but now they have to condemn a group called P*s*y Riot and the video is about religion. Hmmmm.
Mike G
An authoritarian politician sanctimoniously exploiting religion for his own purposes.
It’s good thing that could never happen in the USA.
Valdivia
@Valdivia:
I meant how do they defend, not condemn. Writing fail.
gogol's wife
@Valdivia:
They will ignore it, no doubt.
in canaduh
oh please… now putin is the villain? issue du jour because russia is allied to syria? this is a joke putin destroyed chechnya and this is what gets people s panties in a knot? for real?
Thoughtcrime
“Pussy Riot in Prison” sounds like a Roger Corman movie.
scav
@gogol’s wife: Foreign news. either a beer- or a piss-run.
Thoughtcrime
“Pu$$y Riot in Prison” sounds like a Roger Corman movie.
Valdivia
@gogol’s wife:
I would die, die, to see some wingnut just utter the name of the band! :)
celticdragonchick
@Valdivia:
Shithead wingnut of the week Rod Dreher never fails to deliver.
He is perfectly happy sending people to jail for offending the Orthodox Church. (Rod is Orthodox…natch…)
Maude
@Valdivia:
How about McCain?
Amanda in the South Bay
@celticdragonchick:
What’s funny, is that Rod is a fucking convert who hasn’t been Orthodox all that long. He just happens to be one of the most prominent Orthodox writers. Also, he’s really deep (surprisingly so for a convert) into the scandals engulfing the Orthodox Church in America. Dreher is a fucking hack, someone who hides rather conventional conservatism behind his Whole Foods granola eating persona.
JPL
@raven: Thanks to you and all that mentioned the conversation. I just watched it and wow!
Villago Delenda Est
@Thoughtcrime:
Or a Vivid Video quickie release
Roger Moore
@Thoughtcrime:
Wow. That’s the best since “Tony Blair, MP” and “I’m Tory Plan B”.
Thoughtcrime
@Villago Delenda Est:
I thought of that too.
But I loved the cheesiness of the old Corman movies.
jl
@Thoughtcrime:
“Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan” is an anagram for “My ultimate Ayn Rand Porn”
Noted. Thank you very much.
Jasmine Bleach
And, in support of the band, Femen in the Ukraine says they will go after “the jerks responsible for their [P u s s y Riot’s] suffering with a chain saw.”
Where are these impressive women all coming from?!?
celticdragonchick
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Yep. I actually tried having a dialog with him for some time (private emails) and I thought he was a decent person, although I didn’t agree with on much obviously.
Then, he started into some gratuitous and rather vicious attacks on trans women (even when the subject was something else entirely…) and I saw that he was not someone who could be reasoned with at all. He simply cannot admit to his own biases (while mocking the “bigotry” of the GLBT community)and he cannot learn from his own comment section where he is consistently debunked (bizarre theories that gay marriage will lead to severe freedom of speech prohibitions of Christians. His sole source for this is an unknown radical queer feminist professor. Repeated efforts to dislodge this fallacy have been ignored.)
Rod is a hack, and his BFF Erin Manning is utterly fucking insane.
Thoughtcrime
@jl:
“Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan: My Ultimate Ayn Rand Porn” would be a good thread title.
gogol's wife
@Valdivia:
I subscribe to a Slavic listserv, and when this whole thing happened, I had about 200 “Pu$$y Riot” messages in my inbox. Made me a little nervous.
Thoughtcrime
“Tell me one area where Paul Ryan and Sarah Palin would disagree. I cannot find one area. So, somehow, he’s the smartest guy in the party and she’s the stupidest woman on earth but they agree on everything.”
—Bill Maher
gelfling545
@Valdivia: It was interesting just to hear the BBC reporting on this the last few days. You could almost hear the news readers bracing themselves to say it, almost like audible quotation marks.
Steve
The Dixie Chicks got a raw deal, but this story really helps keep things in perspective.
gogol's wife
@celticdragonchick:
That literally makes me want to vomit.
gogol's wife
@in canaduh:
You think people here have been admiring Putin up until now?
Tony J
@celticdragonchick:
This. Dreher is the Romney of the American Conservative. He just can’t come to grips with the concept that his particular view on Christianity and its role in society can ever be questioned by people he doesn’t see as equals. Everything is an unwarranted and groundless assault on what he – knows – to be right, and he gets very pissy indeed if anyone questions his authority.
AxelFoley
Soooo, can it be said that Putin is scared of
pPussy?Todd
Dreher is a complete tool. He is a convert to the OCA, which is a kludge put together for the benefit of ethnic Russians in the US during the middle of the last century. Wingnut converts have actually taken over the OCA (the Greeks, Arabs and Serbs more successfully resisted those Calvinists), and Rod stuck his nose in the middle of the OCA infighting by creating an Internet sock puppet site to support the incompetent culture warring convert that got himself named Metropolitan. The whole ordeal is a hoot – they’re now in incredibly dire straights, and the only real solution is to fold the thing into ROCOR, despite the fact that a lot of that leadership was KGB vetted and approved back during the cold war.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Todd:
Well, technically it’d be back into the MP, as the ROCOR and MP reunited a few years ago :P
But yes, ditto on the OCA. Have you visited monomakhos? There’s a strong clique of converts (mostly centered in the Diocese of the South) who view everything through the lens of right wing politics.
AnonReader
@celticdragonchick: My take on Rod is that he is your typical bully– by which I mean he has such extreme class insecurity that he’s always on the lookout for who he thinks is an acceptable “target” and decides to beat on them to prove his “cred” and hope that he won’t end up being the next target. I think what frustrates him to no end is the fact that no matter how much he tries to hold the “right” beliefs, suck up to the “right” people, and beat on the “right” targets, he can’t get the respect and admiration he thinks he deserves. Instead of realizing that the whole conservative mindset he subscribes to is to blame, he tries to find various liberal boogeymen to blame for our problems.
@Todd: That’s an impressive amount of knowledge of Orthodox Christian jurisdiction inside baseball.
Amanda in the South Bay
@AnonReader:
My take is that there’s a lot of bishops secretly behaving badly in the OCA-Herman and Theodosius were heavily closeted, and spent shitloads of money on secret extortion-like stuff (hence the scandal revolving around Kondratick, et al). Benjamin got a DUI and is supposed to visit gay bars in SF, Tikhon (retired) spends his time on the internet gossiping and never visited his parishes while bishop of SF and the West, Nikolai and Isidore are supposed lovers who Nikolai beatup, and Isidore is a not so closeted homosexual who might be HIV pos, what else?Oh, the late Abp of the South, so beloved of converts, was an alleged child rapist in Mexico.
Todd
@Amanda in the South Bay:
George wont let me post at Monomakhos anymore – I kept upsetting his convert posters, convert priests and convert bishops. I got the banhammer when I challenged Hans Jacobse to show me evidence that he had a congregation that he met the needs of as opposed to just being a joke of an internet polemiscist that Metro Phil barely tolerates.
Good times…
Todd
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Don’t forget the general incompetence of Jonah, and the email thieving Mark (my former bishop).
Binky Bear
@Mike in NC: In point of historic fact, the Gestapo were the Gehaimat Staatspolizei, or homeland security police. Germany owns that one as well, though the Bush family has a long term lease on the term from back in the day.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Todd:
I could’ve sworn Jacobse was OCA, but I might have gotten him confused with Alexander Webster, another convert darling.
Heh, I have way too much baggage to ever consider going back to Orthodoxy, much less Christianity, but if I could (and I live in CA) I’d go to a very po nashemu parish in the ACROD or rustbelt OCA (or maybe the UOC-USA).
i am just a cowboy
@MaximusNYC:
Thanks for the link. It’s been a half hour since I read their statements, and I’m still floored.
RadioOne
your video post sounds like a cross between Christian hymns and Atari Teenage Riot. Human beings should not compose this kind of music with both musical styles simultaneously in mind.
tybee
@RadioOne:
quit whining, pussy
feckless
I thought it remarkable that they prayed muslim stylein the video. hmmm…