Virtually the whole world now knows that three girls wearing colorful
mini-skirts, tights and masks were arrested in a Moscow cathedral for
performing a punk prayer: “Holy Virgin: Drive Putin Out.” After a half
year in jail, undernourished and sleep-deprived, the three Pussy Riot
feminist punk band girls were sentenced to two years in jail for
“hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” The judge refused to allow
testimony that their’s was a political act aimed at Putin and the
corrupt head of the orthodox church, Patriarch Kirill (widely known to
have been a KGB agent during the Soviet era). The girls maintained they
acted against Putin and Kirill, not against the church.
A new term is now ensconced in the Russian vocabulary – “khamsud”.
Both the Pussy Riot and oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky trials were held
in Moscow’s Khamovnichesky Court. Khamsud, roughly translated, is a
court run by dishonest judges and prosecutors.
The harsh sentence to two years in a labor colony shook the world
diplomatic and artistic communities, but prison terms are an integral
part of Putin’s strategy of attacking “low hanging fruit” to show that
dissent will not be tolerated. Putin sentenced Khodorkovsky, not once
but twice, in “khamsud.” Other oligarchs were silenced or fled the
country. But Khodorkovsky was one of those crooked oligarchs, people
concluded and paid no attention. Similarly, Putin calculates that few
Russians will care about bizarre punk rockers, whose short skirts
revealed their rears as they genuflected on the church altar.
go to forbes.com
Awake! for Cranes in their mighty flight
ReplyDeleteHas flung the kite that put Putin to Flight:
And Lo! the Big Birds of the East have caught
The Putin’s neck in a Noose 'thettr tight'.
The big birds finally got Putin in the flight: “According to two people very close to the Kremlin, the president really is experiencing health problems, which are connected to an old injury that flared up after his flight with cranes,” the newspaper Vedomosti reported.
“After the flight, it was very noticeable that he had a limp at the APEC summit in Vladivostok,” the report said of the early September event.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/11/kremlin-denies-that-injury-reportedly-from-a-bird-stunt-has-grounded-putin/
Pussy Riot's protest in a Moscow cathedral against Putin and Patriarch Kirill led to a harsh two-year sentence. Highlighting khamsud, or corrupt courts, their case drew global outcry. This mirrors Putin's strategy to suppress dissent, also seen in oligarch Khodorkovsky's trials.
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