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.


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The Global Rock and Roll Community Must Step Up In Support of Pussy Riot: Or: Vladimir Can Beat Hillary and Barack but Not Madonna and Yoko

The Moscow prosecutor has demanded three years for the three members of the Pussy Riot feminist punk rock band. They have been in prison since March after performing a protest song in Christ the Savior Cathedral, appealing to the Virgin Mary to “throw Putin out.”

The prosecutor argues that only prison can “correct” the unpardonable crime of religious hatred of the accused.

The prosecutor charged that the girls “defamed centuries-old Russian orthodox traditions…They deeply insulted and demeaned the feelings of believers. The words that they shrieked out reviled God.”  The prosecutor asked the court to weigh “the degree of social danger of the crime” (Note: the exact same language was used during Stalin’s terror).  He cited as an aggravating factor that the “action of the girls was planned beforehand, they assigned each other roles, and they rehearsed.”

The prosecutor ruled out any political motives of the girls, stating that “not one name of a politician was pronounced in the cathedral.” (How about Putin?) The analysis of their song revealed “the clear artificiality of the expression included in the text: ‘Holy Virgin: Drive out Putin,’” which they added only to support the case that their action “was a protest against people of high authority.”

The court refused to hear the testimony of fourteen witnesses prepared to testify that the girls were making a political protest. The prosecutor asked the court to ignore any testimony that their actions were not motivated by “religious hatred.” The court experts were “sufficiently qualified. There is no reason to doubt them.”

go to forbes.com