Russian Punk Band Pussy Riot Sentenced to 2 Years

[Nickdfresh]

Pussy Riot members sentenced to 2 years in prison
By Nataliya Vasilyeva, Associated Press

http://www.ksdk.com/images/640/360/2/assetpool/images/120817092900_pussy-riot.jpg

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Free the Pussy!!

MOSCOW – A Moscow judge sentenced three members of the provocative punk band Pussy Riot to two years in prison each on hooliganism charges on Friday following a trial that has drawn international outrage as an emblem of Russia's intolerance of dissent.

Three Amnesty International activists dressed as the Russian Band Pussy Riot protest for the release of three band members who were sentenced Friday for staging a protest stunt against President Putin.

Three Amnesty International activists dressed as the Russian Band Pussy Riot protest for the release of three band members who were sentenced Friday for staging a protest stunt against President Putin.

Three Amnesty International activists dressed as the Russian Band Pussy Riot protest for the release of three band members who were sentenced Friday for staging a protest stunt against President Putin.

The trial sparked a wave of protests around the world in support of the feminist rockers, who have been dubbed prisoners of conscience by international rights group. Hundreds of Pussy Riot supporters chanted "Russia without Putin!" amid a heavy police presence outside the courtroom, and several opposition leaders were detained.

The three were arrested in March after a guerrilla performance in Moscow's main cathedral, high-kicking and dancing while singing a "punk prayer" pleading the Virgin Mary to save Russia from Vladimir Putin, who was elected to a third new term as Russia's president two weeks later.

Judge Marina Syrova said in her verdict that the three band members "committed hooliganism driven by religious hatred" and offended religious believers. She rejected the women's arguments that they were protesting the Orthodox Church's support for Putin and didn't want to hurt the feelings of believers.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich stood in handcuffs in a glass cage in the courtroom for three hours as the judge read the verdict. They smiled sadly at the testimony of prosecution witnesses accusing them of sacrilege and "devilish dances" in church.

The three women remained calm after the judge announced the sentence. Someone in the courtroom shouted "Shame!"

The charges carried the maximum penalty of seven years in prison, although prosecutors had asked for a three-year sentence.

Putin himself had said the band members shouldn't be judged too harshly, drawing expectations that the band members could be sentenced to the time they already have spent in custody and freed in courtroom. Skeptics had warned, however, that a mild sentence would look as if Putin was bowing to public pressure — something he has clearly resented throughout his 12-year rule.

On the street outside, the courtroom, police rounded up a few dozen protesters, including former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, who is a leading opposition activist, and leftist opposition group leader Sergei Udaltsov.

Amnesty International strongly condemned the court's ruling, calling it a "bitter blow" for freedom of expression in Russia.

The Pussy Riot case already has inflicted bruising damage to Russia's esteem overseas and stoked the resentment of opposition partisans who have turned out in a series of massive rallies since last winter.

It also has underlined the vast influence of the Russian Orthodox Church. Although church and state are formally separate, the church identifies itself as the heart of Russian national identity and critics say its strength effectively makes it a quasi-state entity. Some Orthodox groups and many believers had urged strong punishment for an action they consider blasphemous.

The head of the church, Patriarch Kirill, has made no secret of his strong support for Putin, even praising his presidential terms as "God's miracle" and has described the performance as part of an assault by "enemy forces" on the church.

Kirill avoided talking to the media as he was leaving Warsaw's Royal Castle following a ceremony in which he and the head of Poland's Catholic Church called for mutual forgiveness and reconciliation. Microphones were set up for statements in the castle yard and reporters were brought to the site, but Kirill went straight to his car.

Celebrities including Paul McCartney, Madonna and Bjork have called for the band members to be freed, and other protests timed to just before the verdict or soon afterward were being. In the Russian capital activists put the band's trademark ski masks, or balaclavas, on several statues across town.

Small, but raucous protests were held in a few dozen cities. A few dozen people came out in Barcelona, Spain, a couple hundred in Paris, and a handful in Washington.

"This is all nonsense," said Boris Akunin, one of Russia's best known authors. "I can't believe that in the 21st century a judge in a secular court is talking about devilish movements. I can't believe that a government official is quoting medieval church councils."

Before Friday's proceedings began, defense lawyer Nikolai Polozov said the women "hope for an acquittal but they are ready to continue to fight."

The case comes in the wake of several recently passed laws cracking down on opposition, including one that raised the fine for taking part in an unauthorized demonstrations by 150 times to 300,000 rubles (about $9,000).

Another measure requires non-government organizations that both engage in vaguely defined political activity and receive funding from abroad to register as "foreign agents."

USA Today

[BigBadBrian]

Who gives a fuck!!!

http://www.fairfaxunderground.com/forum/file.php?2,file=61113,filename=and-who-gives-a-fuck.jpg

[Nickdfresh]

Who gives a fuck!!!

http://i842.photobucket.com/albums/zz343/Shioun/FAIL.png

Apparently you do, link fail...

[hambon4lif]

I was immediately drawn to this thread by the "free pussy" tag, but that's neither here or there.....

Personally, I think it would've been less painful to sit naked on a wooden floor and fire a nail-gun through my ballsack than to listen to this bitch incessantly ramble for eight fucking minutes, but I digress.
Besides, it might have something to do with this story.

[hambon4lif]

Who gives a fuck!!!I give a fuck.....ask your wife!:thumb:

[BigBadBrian]

I give a fuck.....ask your wife!:thumb:

Impossible!!! She's not a lesbian. :lmao:

[Seshmeister]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/422370_10151022799817175_536078249_n.jpg

[FORD]

Given the similarity of this stupidity and what happened to the Dixie Chicks a few years back, I'm beginning to understand why Chimpy described Putin as a "soulmate".

[katina]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/17/pussy-riot-punk-putin-editorial

Pussy Riot: Putin v punk
The band's trial will not be the last as prosecution becomes the Russian government's weapon of choice against dissent

You are the president of a large country with a growing economy, intent on keeping your name up there in the lights. You pride yourself on your popularity, your sense of history, and the fact that you personify the destiny of your country (or so you keep telling yourself). A criminal court sentences three young women, two of them mothers, to two years in prison for staging a 40-second punk feminist stunt inside your country's official church and the world's social network sites go mad. Two years of gulag for Vladimir Putin's enemies, they scream. Demonstrations erupt on the streets outside your embassies. Ageing celebs queue patiently to condemn you. There is even someone offering knitting patterns for Pussy Riot's balaclavas. The punk feminist band becomes a global brand before it even releases its first album and you a pariah so sullen that not even botox conceals your scowls. Mr Putin did not so much shoot himself in the foot on Friday, as fire a Kalashnikov into his size 8s.

Pussy Riot must have offended many Russian Orthodox believers by screaming lyrics such as "Shit, shit, the Lord's shit" behind the iconotasis of the Church of Christ the Saviour. An opinion poll released by the independent Levada research group found that only 6% of Russians polled sympathised with the women and 51% felt either indifference, irritation or hostility. Similar umbrage would have been taken inside St Paul's or the Vatican. And those who doubt that may well wonder what tension would have been caused by a flash-mob invading a mosque at Friday prayers.

How many museums around the world would have looked the other way as a number of couples – including a heavily pregnant Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, one of the three convicted on Friday – were filmed having sex to illustrate how Muscovites were being screwed by their government? The British Museum? The Louvre? The Metropolitan? The wish to punish anarchists is not Russian alone.

But the wish to crush political dissent, in this way and at this time, is Mr Putin's alone. Pussy Riot had two points to make, both of them valid: that the Orthodox Church provides intellectual and religious cover for Mr Putin's increasingly messianic political brand; and that this man is driving Russia straight up a cul de sac. The agent of stability is becoming the obstacle to change. The omens are not good. Mr Putin has no policies to offer a generation that has been politically awakened. He is not ready for dialogue with any part of country, and he is all about reinforcing central control. He has lost his grip on his popular image so he is forced back on an essentially conservative base. The result is that in his third term as president, Mr Putin has a real problem re-establishing himself as a leader for Russia as a whole.

The Pussy Riot trial will not be the last. Criminal prosecutions will become the weapon of choice against political activists like the anti-corruption blogger Aleksei Navalny, journalists who face stiffer penalties for libel, websites, or foreign-funded NGOs. Of course the world reaction is selective and partial. Would that Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer whose corruption investigation led to his death in prison, have produced the same reaction as the Pussy Riot verdict. That does not change the verdict that all Mr Putin has to offer the next demonstration, called for September, is a bigger stick.

It need not be this way. Mr Putin still has time to climb out of the hole he has dug himself into. He could call early parliamentary elections, because it was the rigged Duma elections last year that triggered the current crisis. He could let a popularly elected prime minister run the country. He could retreat from the political frontline, and still fashion a role for himself as father of the nation. To continue as he is doing, as the only and increasingly unsteady hand on Russia's tiller, spells disaster.

[katina]

Don´t forget The Plastics, a Czech Band from the ´70. Message to Putin.

http://www.utsalumni.org/news/a-message-to-putin-remember-the-plastics-4770/

A band of long-haired psychedelic rockers locked up in the 1970s proved a catalyst in the fall of Soviet communism

“The band’s lyrics have nothing to do with music or art and seriously threaten the moral values of society,” the chief prosecutor declared portentously in a crowded court room. “They display extreme vulgarity and their words expose anarchy, decadence … and cause a negative influence on the lifestyle of our young generation.”

These words intended to send rock musicians to jail sound very familiar to anybody who has been following the trial in Moscow over the past weeks of the punk girl band Pussy Riot. Various prosecution witnesses for the State have trotted out almost word for word the same line.

In fact the quote is from a case 36 years ago in which members of an East European rock group were jailed on charges of “hooliganism” and “public disorder”, very similar “offences” to those alleged against Pussy Riot now. One can assume that yesterday’s guilty verdict by Judge Marina Syrova — like the decision to hold a clearly political show trial in the first place — was sanctioned by the top leadership in Moscow. While the three young Russian women languish in prison serving jail terms of two years that seem ludicrous to the outside world, they might draw some strength and comfort from the story of a Czech band from the 1970s.

Many rock musicians have preached revolution. Only the Plastic People of the Universe can claim that they genuinely sparked one — and played a significant part in bringing down an autocratic regime in the Kremlin. The Plastics, as fans called them, were formed a year after Russian tanks crushed the Prague Spring in 1968. It was a particularly icy period in the Cold War. The Czechs had just seen their dreams of freedom from the Soviet orbit shattered and the Communist puppet regime that Moscow had installed in (as it then was) Czechoslovakia was one of the most hardline and austere in Eastern Europe.

The Plastics were not a great band musically. Compared with their hero Frank Zappa — one of whose lyrics inspired their name — they were hardly innovative artists. Nor, as their guiding spirit, the late Milan Hlavsa, used to say, were they overtly political. “We didn’t have much of a message; certainly we didn’t think of bringing down communism. We just loved rock’n’roll and wanted to be famous,” he told me once.

If they had simply been left alone to play, they would probably have got stoned, had artistic differences, split up and been forgotten, like most 1970s rock bands. But the Czech leader handpicked by the party bosses in Moscow was a grim-faced, ascetic man in his mid- sixties, Gustav Husak. Deeply conservative in his Marxism, he felt threatened by anything unconventional.

The Plastics dressed in the same way as counter-culture bands of the time in Western Europe or the US — leather jackets, jeans, tie-dye T-shirts, lots of beads — and they wore their hair long. Husak and his fellow apparatchiks perceived pop music as a threat to the State, which showed how confident they were in the strength of their system and their ideology.

In 1973 the Plastics were banned from playing at public events. They were constantly harassed and occasionally beaten up by goons from the StB, the feared Czech secret police. With great courage they found a way of appearing legally at “private gatherings” — weddings, parties and, because of a strange loophole in the law, in gardens.

They attracted a small cult following. Young people reckoned that if Husak and the full force of the Communist regime were against them, the Plastic People must be doing something right. One of their supporters was a brilliant man beginning to make his mark as a playwright, Václav Havel, whose work was receiving attention in the West.

The Plastics were more psychedelic than capitalist, but the popularity of the band, however small-scale, was a constant irritant to Husak and the neo-Stalinist Czech authorities. On March 15, 1976, after they finished a performance at a wedding in an apartment in central Prague, four of them were arrested and locked up.

When they appeared at a show trial a few months later, Havel, who had become close friends with most of the band, managed to sneak into court to watch the “performance”, as he put it, for at least part of the case. He wrote a superb essay with a title echoing Kafka, The Trial, which was published in samizdat and, embarrassingly for the regime, found its way to the West.

“The Plastics were simply young people who wanted to live their own way, to make the music they liked, to sing the songs they wanted to sing, to live in harmony with themselves in a truthful way,” he wrote. Their imprisonment for periods of 18 months to three and a half years was briefly a cause célèbre in the West.

But behind the Iron Curtain, their case had a profound impact. The late, great Havel often claimed that the persecution of the Plastics was one of the main factors that fuelled his opposition to Soviet-style communism. Two months after the trial he and a few other Czech writers, musicians and artists founded Charter 77, which became the most important dissident group in Eastern Europe.

For the next decade it influenced a generation of young people to rebel against repressive regimes, and their parents to brave opposition along with them. Havel and the “Chartists” proved to be a constant, powerful challenge, not only to the Czech regime but to the might of Russia. Not long after, in that extraordinary year of 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet empire in Europe collapsed, Havel became a president and among the honoured guests at his inauguration party in Prague Castle were the Plastic People of the Universe. Two years later the Moscow regime and the entire governing system disappeared.

Many people close to President Putin will feel the sentence announced yesterday is lenient. But it is likely that the case will soon come to be seen as an overreaction by the man in the Kremlin. Previously apolitical and apathetic young people from the iMessage and Twitter generation will see a leader who jails girl pop singers as rather absurd, a man to mock, much as East Europeans mocked Gustav Husak and his ilk. Pop fantasy perhaps, but Mr Putin may eventually rue the day he messed with a rock band.

Victor Sebestyen is author of Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire

[katina]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/23/pussy-riot-russia-opposition-intimidation


Maria Baronova wasn't at home on the morning eight masked officers armed with Kalashnikovs broke down her front door. They took troves of family photos, four laptops, a bunch of books and several white ribbons – the symbol of the protest movement opposed to Vladimir Putin. They took a pin with a pink triangle, a symbol of gay rights activism. They even took an ultrasound from when she was pregnant with her son six years ago. "I later asked them – do you think my child was planning unrest?" Baronova, 28, said.

While the eyes of the world have been focused on the three members of the punk band Pussy Riot who were last week jailed for hooliganism – in a case that has prompted widespread condemnation of Russia's politicised justice system and crackdown on freedom of expression – dozens of others have also been caught up in what activists warn is a burgeoning repression of the opposition.

Baronova is one of more than a dozen people charged in connection with an anti-Putin protest held on 6 May, the eve of his inauguration. It was the only protest to turn violent, with clashes between protesters and riot police erupting after thousands of demonstrators were prevented from entering the rally site. In the weeks that followed, injured riot police were handed free flats. Baronova and others were charged with provoking mass unrest and face up to two years in prison if found guilty.

Since then, her life has been turned upside down. She devotes countless hours every week to meeting with her lawyer and officials from Russia's Investigative Committee, which raided her flat in early June. Although others have been confined to pre-detention centres, Baronova has been banned from leaving Moscow.

In late June, she was visited by social services, who said they had received a complaint about her parenting of her five-year-old son. They searched the flat and asked why she had English-language books, why there were cigarettes on the kitchen table, whether the violin aligned with sanitary norms. "That's when I realised I'm in a nuthouse," she said.

Though under investigation, Baronova didn't stop her activism. When floods ravaged the southern town of Krymsk in July, killing more than 170 people, she helped organise a massive donation effort amid criticism of the government's response. Soon, she began receiving odd phone calls. Coming home with her son and boyfriend one night, she was confronted with vulgar graffiti scrawled across the door with her flat along with the words: "Bitch, return the money, evil creature".

"There is no doubt that there has been a turn in the policy toward those defiant Russians who dare challenge the government," said Masha Lipman, an experienced analyst at Moscow's Carnegie Centre. "In addition to the cases that have become public, there is a lot of intimidation going on."

Opposition activists have been at pains to publicise the harassment. Earlier this month, Alexey Navalny, an anti-corruption activist who has become the opposition's de facto leader, livetweeted the discovery of a bugging device in his office.

A week earlier he was charged with embezzlement and banned from leaving the country. Navalny has called the charges, which allege in 2009 he organised a scheme to steal timber from a state-owned company while acting as an adviser to a regional governor, absurd. He faces up to ten years in prison if found guilty. A similar case against him was closed earlier this year.

At the reading of the verdict against Pussy Riot last week, defence lawyers tried to usher Navalny and Baronova into the courtroom, to the dismay of many journalists gathered outside pushing to get in. "What they don't understand is – we're next," Baronova said.

Baronova worked as a sales manager at a chemical supply company until she began devoting all her time to the opposition movement following Putin's announcement in September that he would be returning to the presidency. Many were outraged at the idea that the man who has ruled Russia since 2000 could return for two six-year terms. "I realised my kid would be 18 in 12 years and I will be 40 – I'll have to live my whole youth with him," she said.

Some 400 people were arrested on and around the 6 May protest. "We knew people were detained, but we were all busy with our own stuff," Baronova said. "We didn't know these people or what was really happening."

Since then, the ominous signs have grown, Lipman said. The Duma, Russia's parliament, passed a series of laws that appear to be designed to rein-in an opposition movement that has brought tens of thousands of people into the streets, and tens of thousands more into critical forums online. New laws have drastically raised fines for illegal protest and another law has created an internet blacklist that activists fear could be used to censor online content. Non-governmental organisations that receive foreign grants are now required to identify themselves as "foreign agents".

Opposition deputies have also come under pressure. Gennady Gudkov, a member of the Just Russia party who issued stark warnings in the autumn of the coming popular discontent, has seen the Investigative Committee investigate his private business and threaten to bring charges of illegal profiteering, in a move his supporters say is a means of political revenge. At least four activists who were at the 6 May protest have fled the country amid fears charges will be brought against them.

Baronova said it would be a "moral crime" to flee. Anyway, her ex-husband has long refused to provide the necessary permission for her to leave Russia with her son, disrupting her plans to get a PhD abroad. "That's when I had the feeling of being in jail," she said. "I'm tired of being in a cold civil war."

[gbranton]

(1) They are barely a band.

(2) They knowingly broke the law, then mocked the court.

(3) Breaking the same law in Germany would get you three years instead of two and is illegal in America as well.

(4) Their "performance" was nothing but a carefully chosen chickenshit stunt, calculated to be profane and offensive as possible. You can be sure these assholes wouldn't have dared to try that shit in a mosque. They wouldn't have lived to tell the tale.

In short, fuck them.

Part of the appeal of punk is the danger and spontaneity but there is no danger here, only careful calculation. They claim to be a "band" giving a "performance" in order to appeal to the liberal intelligentsia in the worldwide media and create a made to order cause de celebre.

[envy_me]

(1) They are barely a band.

(2) They knowingly broke the law, then mocked the court.

(3) Breaking the same law in Germany would get you three years instead of two and is illegal in America as well.

(4) Their "performance" was nothing but a carefully chosen chickenshit stunt, calculated to be profane and offensive as possible. You can be sure these assholes wouldn't have dared to try that shit in a mosque. They wouldn't have lived to tell the tale.

In short, fuck them.

Part of the appeal of punk is the danger and spontaneity but there is no danger here, only careful calculation. They claim to be a "band" giving a "performance" in order to appeal to the liberal intelligentsia in the worldwide media and create a made to order cause de celebre.

Haha, I totally agree!

[Nickdfresh]

Well then, let's have them impaled!

[gbranton]

Well then, let's have them impaled!

Depending on what you impale them with, that might be entertaining.

[ELVIS]

Keep 'em locked up...

[Nickdfresh]

Is that "libertarian" Elvis, LOL...

[fourthcoming]

Seriously.....how fuckin' annoying is Madonna.......

[envy_me]

Seriously.....how fuckin' annoying is Madonna.......

I HATE her. She has absolutelly nothing.

[Nickdfresh]

(1) They are barely a band.

Not for you to decide, this has nothing to do with taste...


(2) They knowingly broke the law, then mocked the court.

Which people do all the time, it doesn't usually result in prison sentences...


(3) Breaking the same law in Germany would get you three years instead of two and is illegal in America as well.

I doubt anyone in Germany would let this happen...


(4) Their "performance" was nothing but a carefully chosen chickenshit stunt, calculated to be profane and offensive as possible. You can be sure these assholes wouldn't have dared to try that shit in a mosque. They wouldn't have lived to tell the tale.

It wasn't particularly profane, they actually said a prayer, although they used foul language regarding Putin...


In short, fuck them.

Part of the appeal of punk is the danger and spontaneity but there is no danger here, only careful calculation. They claim to be a "band" giving a "performance" in order to appeal to the liberal intelligentsia in the worldwide media and create a made to order cause de celebre.


So, what did they do?:


On February 21, 2012, five members[1] of the group staged an illegal performance, described as a “punk prayer”, on the soleas of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. During this performance they walked up the steps leading to the altar, shed their winter clothing, pulled colorful winter hats down over their faces, and jumped around punching and kicking for about thirty seconds.[2][3] Their actions were stopped by church security officials. By evening, they had turned it into a music video called “Punk Prayer: Holy Mother, Chase Putin Away!” where they invoked the Virgin Mary to get rid of Russian President Vladimir Putin, using crude language to attack Putin and Kirill I, the Moscow Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.[4][5][6] On March 3, after a video of the performance appeared online, three of the group members were arrested and charged with hooliganism.[7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pussy_Riot

So they weren't arrested until AFTER the video appeared online, yeah, it's all about the hooliganism...

[ELVIS]

Is that "libertarian" Elvis, LOL...

I don't mean forever, but they deserve some jail time...

[Dr. Love]

Two of them fled the country.

:gulp:

Pussies.

[Hardrock69]

I don't mean forever, but they deserve some jail time...

So by your point of view, fascist, all punk bands in the US who perform songs, videotape the performance, and upload the video to the internet should be thrown in jail?

You are showing your true colors. SIEG HEIL!

[Hardrock69]

(3) Breaking the same law in Germany would get you three years instead of two and is illegal in America as well.



No. It is not illegal for any kind of band in the US to perform songs, videotape the performance, and upload the video to the internet.

Show us where it is illegal to do so. Musicians can perform songs criticial of the US Government all they want to, without any risk of prosecution whatsoever.

[Seshmeister]

(3) Breaking the same law in Germany would get you three years instead of two.



Not since 1945.

[Blaze]

If this is the biggest thing to protest about in Russia. all is well in Russia.
Moer sexy Putin pictures please! ^_^

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVDKp4IxHeI
:winkglasses:

[Nickdfresh]

It was just a silly guerrilla theater bit, but if done in a church people get their panties in a wad...

[binnie]

Two of them fled the country.

:gulp:

Pussies.

Must......try......to.......work.....but.......can 't......take.......eyes............off............ ..siggy.................

[FORD]

No. It is not illegal for any kind of band in the US to perform songs, videotape the performance, and upload the video to the internet.

Show us where it is illegal to do so. Musicians can perform songs criticial of the US Government all they want to, without any risk of prosecution whatsoever.

Hell, bands like Dead Kennedys and Consolidated pretty much made a career out of doing just that!

[katina]

Persian Gulf on the Moscow River
A new report from Boris Nemstov, into the Russian president’s lavish perks of office may help undermine authoritarianism.

Soon after Vladimir Putin more-or-less fully consolidated power in 2007, an astute observer of politics in that country predicted some of the main problems the Russian president would soon confront. Comparing his regime to a fascist state, Rutgers University’s Alexander Motyl said it was inherently unstable because cults of vigorous leaders can’t be sustained as they grow old and decrepit.

At the same time, he wrote, some segments of society — the young, educated and middle class — would begin refusing to submit to the humiliation his unconditional authority imposes.

Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov has been one of their most dogged enablers since he broke with Putin shortly after his rise in 2000. The former deputy prime minister once widely seen as Boris Yeltsin’s chosen successor has co-authored several reports about corruption under the man who eventually beat him out.

His latest, released on Tuesday, is a study of the populist president’s perks of office.
Titled “Life of a Galley Slave,” after the deprecating description Putin gave of his job when he swore to step down in 2008, it details some of the benefits the authors say have ballooned during his tenure. Among them are 20 residences, including a palace near St. Petersburg that cost tens of millions of dollars to restore, 43 airplanes and fleets of luxury cars and yachts.

Using photographs of the president’s various wristwatches, the writers estimate them to be worth almost $700,000, six times his annual salary. His lifestyle, they conclude, can be compared to a “Persian Gulf monarch’s.”

As the yawning gap between the Soviet elite’s relative luxury and the lot of everybody else who used newspaper scraps for toilet paper shows, Russians aren’t unused to their leaders’ lavish lifestyles.

Nemtsov’s criticism shouldn’t faze Putin for other reasons. Although he no longer enjoys approval ratings of more than 80 percent, he spent much of his twelve years in office preparing for the time his popularity would wane. His firm grip on all important levers of authority as well as the vast energy industry makes his current position virtually unassailable.

But Putin is known to be hypersensitive to criticism: for all his power, his authority is brittle in the way of all similar regimes with no real popular mandate. He also surely knows about a recent poll that showed half of Russians are against his running for a fourth term in 2018.

If that number is accurate, and if the sentiment grows, last December’s mass protests may help convince him to try to hand over power while he believes he still can, which would provide the opposition with its next real opportunity.

However expected it may have been, the brusque manner of his return to a third term prompted the first organized stirrings of those ordinary people who are tired of being humiliated. Reports such as Nemtsov’s are important for maintaining their support for the daily pushback against the Kremlin’s authoritarianism.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/chatter/Russia-Putin-Nemtsov

[Nickdfresh]

Russian PM calls for Pussy Riot to be freed
Associated Press – 45 mins ago
http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/sef78z6hZB5mZji5xtvKXA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Y2g9MzcyO2NyPTE7Y3c9NTEyO2R4PTA7ZH k9MDtmaT11bGNyb3A7aD00NTg7cT04NTt3PTYzMA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.com/photo_1345232581099-14-0.jpg
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has called for three members of the punk band Pussy Riot to be freed, saying further prison time would be "unproductive."

Medvedev's comments on Wednesday could signal the band members' imminent release as their case comes up for appeal on Oct. 1.

The women had already spent more than five months in jail when they were convicted in August of "hooliganism driven by religious hatred" and sentenced to two years in prison.

They were arrested after performing a raucous prayer inside Moscow's main cathedral asking Virgin Mary to save Russia from Vladimir Putin. The imprisonment of the women has drawn protests around the world as it highlighted Putin's intensifying crackdown on dissent.

Yahoo.com (http://news.yahoo.com/russian-pm-calls-pussy-riot-freed-160553245.html)

[FORD]

Is that "libertarian" Elvis, LOL...

Elvis is still mad at The Vandals for what they did to "Heartbreak Hotel", so he wants to take it out on all punk bands.......


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V40e3Of2h-s&t=3m12s

[Nickdfresh]

Russian judges in Pussy Riot case defend their decision to keep 2 band members behind bars
By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, October 11, 10:10 AM

MOSCOW — The Russian judges who ruled to keep two of the three Pussy Riot band members behind bars took the unusual step of publicly defending their decision, saying Thursday that it was made independently and without pressure.

A panel of three judges at the Moscow City Court on Wednesday upheld a lower court ruling to send Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina to prison for two years, but they released Yekaterina Samutsevich after giving her a suspended sentence.

Pussy Riot staged an impromptu punk performance at Moscow’s main cathedral in February in protest against President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy for openly supporting his rule. The three women were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, but they insist that their protest was political in nature and not an attack on religion.

The case has caused controversy in Russia and been widely condemned in the West, which may have prompted the judges to speak out.

The presiding judge said the appeals court deemed it necessary for Tolokonnikova and Alekhina to remain incarcerated.

“The court has considered all the circumstances of the case and the level of danger to society and ruled that their correction is possible only in isolation from society,” Larisa Polyakova said.

She said the fact that the women both have a small child was taken into account at the lower court, which handed down two-year sentences on a charge that carries a maximum punishment of seven years in prison.

Polyakova said the leniency for Samutsevich reflected “her degree of participation” in the crime.

Samutsevich’s lawyer made the case at the appeals hearing that her client should be treated differently because she had been nabbed by security guards and taken out of the cathedral before she was able to join other band members in the performance.

The Pussy Riot trial has become a symbol of Putin’s crackdown on dissent since returning to the presidency in May after four years as prime minister. Just days before the appeals hearing, Putin said he thought the lower court had been right to hand down a two-year prison term, a statement that defense lawyers said would put pressure on the court.

Polyakova insisted that the judges were not influenced by Putin’s statements and made the decision “that we thought was necessary.”

“There has never been any pressure on us in this case,” she said.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

© The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/russian-judges-in-pussy-riot-case-defend-their-decision-to-keep-2-band-members-behind-bars/2012/10/11/a2a2c592-139d-11e2-9a39-1f5a7f6fe945_story.html)Company

[Nickdfresh]

Pussy Riot on Colbert

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/432806/february-04-2014/pussy-riot-pt--1

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/432807/february-04-2014/pussy-riot-pt--2

[katina]

Pussy Riot attacked with whips by police at Sochi.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivT-I-yxtdY