punks arrested in russia (2 Viewers)

[ann post]

i wish i was enough of a cunt to sell 'free pussy riot' t-shirts to posh protesters.

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

uk.news.yahoo.com/russia-launches-hunt-other-pussy-riot-members-111547194.html?.tsrc=samsungwn&.sep=table

No rest for the wicked.

 

[Deadmanposting]

Because it's the internet

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/mobile/article/466949.html

Punks not dead.

 

[Deadmanposting]

Not sure why the S's are dollar signs, but I still like this.

Very V For Vendetta

 

[therealjohnny]

respect my authoritaah

 

[Deadmanposting]

respect my authoritaah

He's off the clock when that goes cross goes down.

 

[Psycho Punk]

Meanwhile here is an article defending Pussy Riot but criticising Western hypocrisy.

Why Western politicians support Pussy Riot
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/aug2012/puss-a25.shtml
By Clara Weiss
25 August 2012

The three singers of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot sentenced last Friday to two years in a penal colony on charges of “hooliganism due to religious hatred” have met with a groundswell of support from Western politicians and media.

The philosophy student Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (22), Greenpeace campaigner Maria Aliokhina (24) and the programmer Yekatrina Samusevitch (30) plus other members of Pussy Riot, a feminist punk band, had sung a brief “punk prayer” criticizing President Vladimir Putin on February 21 in the Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow.

Their months in custody and eventual draconian punishment are part of the Putin regime’s intensifying offensive against the country’s liberal opposition. The affair clearly reveals the authoritarian nature of the Russian state. The prosecution of the group is an attack on basic democratic rights, which must be rejected.

The support given to the three women by leading Western imperialist politicians, however, serves a different purpose. Their statements of support are cynical to the core. None of them can speak as principled defenders of democratic rights. They are all quite prepared to ride roughshod over democratic principles when it serves their reactionary policy objectives.

After the verdict against Pussy Riot, US President Barack Obama declared his disappointment with “disproportionate punishment”. This comes from the president of a country that maintains torture centres around the world and reserves the right to kill anyone it identifies as a “terrorist”, including its own citizens, without trial. More people are incarcerated in the US than in any other country in the world.

French Minister of Culture Aurélie Filipetti expressed her concern about the state of Russian “artistic freedom”, which is “a feature of the strength of a democracy”. This is from the minister of a government planning to build ghettos for Roma—a measure hardly compatible with the “strength of a democracy.”

On August 17, the French police went so far as to break up a peaceful demonstration against the Pussy Riot judgment in Marseille because the protesters wore colourful masks resembling those worn by the punk band.

The police justified their action by citing the French anti-burqa law, a provision of which forbids not only the burqa, but the wearing of clothing that would mask the face so as to hide someone’s identity. The arrest of pro-Pussy Riot protesters has made clear, however, that this law is not only an attack on the democratic rights of people who want to wear a burqa. It is also a legal tool to crack down on demonstrators and limit political freedom.

The British Foreign Ministry also expressed its “deep concern” about the verdict against Pussy Riot. It failed to mention that that the British state sent 1,300 people to jail after the social unrest a year ago. The theft of a water bottle or a comment on an internet platform in support of the riots was enough to land someone behind bars. The judgments were made in summary proceedings in violation of due process and were clearly politically motivated.

In Germany, support for Pussy Riot from official circles has been especially pronounced. In early July, 120 members of the Bundestag authored a letter to the Russian ambassador in Berlin denouncing the trial. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has repeatedly criticized the trial and sentencing.

Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke out against “the disproportionately severe sentence”, which “did not accord with the European values ​​of rule of law and democracy”. This comes from a head of government who has not the slightest respect for “the rule of law and democracy” when it comes to implementing austerity measures against the resistance of Greek and Spanish workers.

Behind the campaign against the Putin regime in the name of democracy, Western leaders are expressing their discontent with Russia’s domestic and foreign policies and seeking to put pressure on the regime.

First, Western politicians and businesses want an opening of the Russian market for foreign investors and deeper attacks on the working class. This is why they broadly support the free market economic agenda of Russia’s liberal opposition, which dominated last year’s protest movement against Putin and around which Pussy Riot itself was active.

Second, there is a growing divergence between the foreign policy interests of the West and the Putin regime. Moscow opposes Western intervention in Syria and Iran. Together with China, it has blocked two UN resolutions which sought to pave the way for military intervention by Western powers in Syria. For decades the Kremlin has been closely associated with the Syrian regime, which, together with Iran, Washington now aims to overthrow.

French, British and German imperialism have all lined up with the United States in the Syria conflict. Their military and financial support for the so-called “rebels”—a combination of Islamic militants, ex-Syrian government officials and Western intelligence assets—has sparked a civil war which has already cost the lives of tens of thousands and threatens to plunge the region into chaos.

Following its abstention in the Libyan war, German imperialism is no longer prepared to stand on the sidelines when it comes to war in the Middle East. Torn between its traditional political orientation towards the US and its dependence on Russian fuel imports, the German government has clearly lined up alongside the United States in the Syria conflict. It is playing a key role in equipping and training the anti-Assad forces and maintains its own centre for the development of free market policies in Syria after Assad’s fall.

This foreign policy orientation is a major reason why German politicians and media are supporting the Pussy Riot campaign. At the end of July the Süddeutsche Zeitung commented that all attempts by the German government to mediate between Russia and the West had come to nothing, and the “strategic partnership” between Moscow and Berlin now lies buried “beneath the rubble of the Syrian crisis.”

Just a few weeks later the German government’s commissioner for Russia, Andreas Schockenhoff, announced that, due to the Pussy Riot affair, Berlin no longer shared a years-long “strategic partnership” with Moscow, but rather would merely “aspire to a partnership”.

Schockenhoff also threatened to dissolve the “Petersburg Dialogue”, a forum established in 2001 by Putin and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to focus on German-Russian cooperation on economic and political issues.

 

[Psycho Punk]

Hmmm, not just in defence of Pussy Riot but cutting down crosses because of insults to Lenin!

As Lenin himself put it:

The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.

Lenin, The Slogans and Organisation of Social-Democratic Work (1919)

Obscure underground movement claims responsibility for Russian cross cutting
http://rt.com/politics/movement-claims-russian-cross-710/
Published: 28 August, 2012, 13:21

A group calling itself People’s Freedom claimed in a statement online that was behind the felling of several Orthodox crosses in two Russian regions, in retaliation for the Pussy Riot trial and for clerics’ recent insults of Vladimir Lenin.

The group recalls the 19th-century Russian terrorist organization of the same name, which fought against the tsarist monarchy and assassinated several top state officials, including Emperor Alexander II. Unlike its historical namesake, the modern-day People’s Freedom was unknown until now.

“The Cutting of the Russian Orthodox Church’s crosses in the village of Smelovskiy in the Chelyabinsk Region and in the city district Varavino-Faktoriya in Arkhangelsk is a part of our operation codenamed ‘cross-felling.’ It was carried out by the militant branch of our organization, the mobile combat group called The Unknown,” the group wrote on Facebook.

Over the weekend, unidentified individuals chopped down and cut into pieces three Orthodox crosses near the village of Smelovsky in the Chelyabinsk Region in the Urals, and one cross in North Russia’s Arkhangelsk Region. Police have begun an investigation into the vandalism

The Facebook post claimed that the action was a retaliation against the “arbitrary trial of helpless Russian girls from Pussy Riot” and the “the insults that the head of the Church’s department for interaction with the military forces said about the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin,” as well as announcements by church activists that they were forming neighborhood watch groups.
The group demanded the immediate release of the members of Pussy Riot, and threatened similar actions if their demands were not met. People’s Freedom urged “all sane forces within the Russian society to leave the Russian Orthodox Church that has nothing to do whatsoever with the Orthodox Christianity”.

The People’s Freedom incident took place about a week after Ukrainian feminist group FEMEN used a chainsaw to cut down a memorial cross in central Kiev. The stunt was an act of protest in support of the members of Pussy Riot – three feminist punk rockers who were recently sentenced to two years each for staging a ‘punk prayer’ in Moscow’s main cathedral against the growing ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state

.

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

First, Western politicians and businesses want an opening of the Russian market for foreign investors...

Russia's recent ascension to the W.T.O. should help out with that.

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

As for Gerhard Schroder and the Petersburg dialogue,he has quite the connection to Russia and more particularly their energy industry/the recently opened nord-stream gas pipeline http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/09/AR2005120901755.html

 

[Psycho Punk]

Whew! It wasn't a PR fan after all.

Russian police detain man over 'Pussy Riot' murder case
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19436833

Igor Danilevsky is accused of killing his victims over finances and holiday plans

Related Stories

Will Pussy Riot criticism affect Putin?
Russian Church defiant over Pussy Riot trial
Pussy Riot jailed for hooliganism

Russian police say they have detained a man who confessed to killing two women in the city of Kazan, then trying to mislead investigators by writing Free Pussy Riot on the wall in blood.

The bodies of the 38-year-old woman and her 76-year-old mother were found earlier this week in their apartment.

The man, named as university professor Igor Danilevsky, was apparently dating the younger woman.

Three members of the punk band Pussy Riot were jailed earlier this month.

Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich were sentenced to two years for performing a protest song in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral in February.

The women said their "punk prayer" was a protest against the government of President Vladimir Putin and the support he enjoys from the leader of the Orthodox Church.

The case divided public opinion in Russia and sparked international condemnation.

Russian officials said Mr Danilevsky daubed the message on the wall in the hope of convincing police that it was a political act.

They say he murdered his girlfriend over finances and holiday plans, and killed her mother because she was a witness.

"Before leaving, in order to remove any suspicion from himself and make it seem like a ritual killing, he arranged the victims' bodies in a certain manner and wrote Free Pussy Riot on the wall with their blood," the federal investigative committee said in a statement.

Some Russian publications and websites had already run headlines saying Pussy Riot supporters had carried out the killings, or that the band had "inspired" the murderer.

 

[Psycho Punk]

Now Putins Council for Human Rights questions the sentence.

http://rt.com/politics/rights-council-pussy-riot-sentence-797/
The legitimacy and justness of the Pussy Riot sentence is still questionable, despite the moral condemnation of an "outrageous act that violates the rules of conduct in religious institutions," Russia’s Presidential Council for Human Right stated.
According to a document signed by 23 members of the council, the Pussy Riot sentence, two years in prison for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred," undermines the basic legal principle guaranteed by the Russian Constitution, according to which criminal penalties may be imposed only for acts “explicitly named and prohibited by criminal law.”

The authors of the statement, including council head Mikhail Fedotov, also expressed surprise at the fact that all of the defendants received the same prison terms, despite the fact that two of them have young children. The verdict was "more severe than it should be for the blasphemy laws of the Russian Empire," the statement reads.

 

[Psycho Punk]

The Good News:

Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev said today he thought that three female members of punk band Pussy Riot who were sentenced to two years in jail last month for a political protest in a Moscow cathedral should be freed. "The prolongation of their incarceration in the conditions of jail seems to me to be unproductive," Mr Medvedev said in televised remarks. "A suspended sentence, taking into account time they have already spent (in jail), would be entirely sufficient," he added.

The Boo! bit:

However, Mr Medvedev criticised the women, saying he was "sickened by what they did, by their looks, by the hysteria which followed what had happened

Yeah well, your wife is a skank Meddie.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0912/breaking50.html

 

[therealjohnny]

Sickened by their looks? What a gaymo

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/1001/breaking4.html

Not a lot of sympathy within Russia for them.

 

[Psycho Punk]

Pussy Riot case: One defendant freed in Russia
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19893008

A Moscow court has freed one of the convicted women from the punk band Pussy Riot but upheld two-year jail terms for the other two.

There were cheers in court when the two-year jail term of Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, was suspended.

Earlier the trio spoke defiantly at the appeal hearing, saying their protest song was political and not anti-Church.

In August they were jailed for staging an anti-Kremlin protest in Moscow's main cathedral, Christ the Saviour.

Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, were found guilty of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred".

Their imprisonment sparked widespread international condemnation.

The judges on Wednesday accepted the argument of Samutsevich's lawyer - that Samutsevich had been thrown out of the cathedral by guards before she could remove her guitar from its case for the band's "punk prayer".

The other band members cheered and hugged Samutsevich when the decision was read out. ...


Please go to the following link and send a (polite) message to President Putin asking him to pardon Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina.

http://eng.letters.kremlin.ru/

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20026056

It's not quite the Siberian gulag but doesn't sound pleasant either way.

 

[Psycho Punk]

Pussy Riot - activists, not pin-ups
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2013/0107/1224328502893.html

Clever, committed and courageous, Pussy Riot are the perfect activists. They have used their year in the spotlight to expose injustice

Depending on how you define it, the most important performance by a rock band in 2012 lasted either less than two minutes or a full nine days. Pussy Riot’s guerrilla rendition of Punk Prayer: Mother of God Drive Putin Away in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Moscow, on February 21st was brief even by punk standards, and less striking and significant to non-Russian eyes than the band’s rooftop appearance in Red Square a month earlier.

But the vindictive trial that ensued was a major international media event which revealed both the depth of the defendants’ courage and intelligence and the power of popular music to illuminate a political situation. At a recent House of Commons event organised by Kerry McCarthy MP, who attended the trial, the musician and critic John Robb suggested that the church gig was merely the soundcheck and the trial was the real show.

Contrary to Putin’s sneering remark that “they got what they asked for”, Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich didn’t set out to get prosecuted. Their fame has not eclipsed other injustices in Russia but highlighted them, in the tradition of opposition movements strategically promoting charismatic individuals, from Nelson Mandela to Ai Weiwei, as synecdoches for an entire cause. For newly curious observers outside Russia, Pussy Riot have lifted the curtain on the regime’s intolerance.

We are used to musicians making inspiring protest songs then fumbling the follow-up as they try to paper over the gaps in their knowledge with stirring simplifications. Not Pussy Riot. They sprang, in October 2011, from the anarchist art collective Voina (meaning “war“), with an arsenal of political theory. The scope of their concerns is broad, from education and healthcare to feminism, LGBT rights and Russia’s culture of conformity. ...

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

You gotta ask-what have they achieved?
The protest movement seems to have run out of steam,two of them are still locked up and the regime is determined to see any potential opposition leaders join them.