Storm Clouds Ahead for Putin as He Takes on McCartney, Madonna and the LGBT Community

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