Monday, August 20, 2012

Reactions to the Pussy Riot Verdict - WSJ


via Pussy Riot - Google News on 8/19/12

NBCNews.com (blog)
Pussy Riot trial gives Russia 'the image of a medieval dictatorship'
The Guardian
The case against Pussy Riot was widely seen as serving as a warning to other protesters, as well as a means of appealing to Putin's deeply conservative base. A poll released on Friday by the Levada Centre, an independent pollster, found that 44% of ...
Russian clerics forgive Pussy Riot for Putin rantSan Jose Mercury News
What Pussy Riot teaches usCNN (blog)
Russian top clerics forgive Pussy Riot, ask for mercyNBCNews.com (blog)
Washington Post -Huffington Post (blog)
all 5,961 news articles »


http://blogs.wsj.com/emergingeurope/2012/08/17/reaction-to-the-pussy-riot-verdict/
  • August 17, 2012, 3:57 PM CET

    • Reaction to the Pussy Riot Verdict

    Emerging Europe Real Time HOME PAGE »
    A collection of reaction to the verdict for Russian punk band Pussy Riot, whose members were found guilty and sentenced to two years in jail for an anti-Putin performance at Russia’s main Orthodox cathedral. We’ll be updating with the latest reaction.
    The European Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement that she was “deeply disappointed” with the verdict. “This sentence is disproportionate. … [I]t puts a serious question mark over Russia’s respect for international obligations of fair, transparent, and independent legal process,” she said. “I expect that this sentence will be reviewed and reversed in line with Russia’s international commitments.”
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    The U.S. embassy in Russia said on its Twitter feed that the verdict “looks disproportionate.”
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    German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the sentence was “excessively harsh” and “not compatible with the European values of the rule of law and democracy to which Russia, as a member of the Council of Europe, has committed itself.”
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    “The verdict handed down today appears particularly disproportionate, considering the minor acts they are accused of,” said Vincent Floreani, France’s foreign ministry spokesman. “The process is not over, since appeals in Russia and in Strasbourg (to the European Court of Human Rights) have not been exhausted.”
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    The court’s interpretation of the law in Pussy Riot’s case may create a dangerous precedent, the head of the presidential human rights council, Mikhail Fedotov, told Interfax. He said he condemns the women’s actions, but noted that he is prepared to support their appeal, should there be one. “What they have done has some blatant amorality in it and petty hooliganism but there is no criminal offense in it,” he said.
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    Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt says on Twitter: “Even the Human Rights Commissioner of Russia deems the prison sentence for Pussy Riot unfair and calls for it to be appealed. Easy to agree.”
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    Vladimir Zhiyanov, the father of band member Maria Alyokhina said, “What they did is not right, but what the court did is much, much worse. It’s complete lawlessness. It’s time to kick Putin out of the G8. The world’s reaction may force Putin to pardon him, to let them out.”
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    Sunday, August 19, 2012

    Joan Smith: Putin has lost this game of cat and mouse

    Joan Smith: Putin has lost this game of cat and mouse

    Joan Smith
    Sunday, 19 August 2012
    Repressive regimes commonly mistake power for omnipotence. No one doubts that they can arrest their opponents, isolate them, deny them fair trials and put them in prison. What's much harder to do, in the modern world, is bury critical ideas under a suffocating blanket of censorship. Even if the regime gets the result it wants, its leaders risk appearing petty and vindictive, if not actually stupid. So the Russian government has little to celebrate in the wake of the trial of three members of the punk band, Pussy Riot.
    On Friday, a judge in Moscow sentenced Maria Alekhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich to two years each in prison. They were arrested in March after performing a "punk prayer" in the city's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, where they pleaded with the Virgin Mary to drive out Vladimir Putin. At the time, few people had heard of Pussy Riot, but they've become an international symbol of the rigidity and intolerance of the Russian state. Half a million people have viewed a shaky video of the women's protest in the cathedral, spreading their message to an audience far beyond the Russian Federation. Their slender figures in colourful balaclavas represent a kind of modernity that the regime simply cannot handle.
    Maria, Nadezhda and Yekaterina are smart, outspoken and feminist. What could be more scary for President Vladimir Putin, a politician whose masculinity is so fragile that it is reasserted in a comical series of public performances? Listening to actors read the women's closing speeches at the Royal Court Theatre in London on Friday, I was impressed by their cool appraisal of the prosecution's attempts to distort their arguments. I don't think it's an accident that some of Putin's most significant critics are feminists; another woman who challenged him was the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was assassinated on Putin's birthday in 2006.
    The charge on which the Pussy Riot three were convicted, hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, sounds like a modern version of an offence dreamed up by Soviet bureaucrats. It's a delicious irony that the head of the Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, is a Putin supporter who recently presented the President with an icon of Our Lady of Tenderness. In her summing-up, the judge accused the women of showing disrespect to the clergy, people in the church, and people who share Orthodox traditions. But Yekaterina had already asked Putin why he felt it necessary to "exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetic".
    The answer, I suspect, is that the regime doesn't feel as solid as it makes out. "Compared to the judicial machine, we are nobodies, and we have lost," Yekaterina said in her closing speech. So why did the regime go to such (ineffectual) lengths to marginalise the three? The band won a bigger battle, as Yekaterina also pointed out.
    Now we all know the regime is terrified of pussy power.
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    PussyPut i Pop Gundyay

    Litsemer i negodyay:
    PussyPut i Pop Gundyay
    Arkhivrun i akhiplut:
    Pop Gundyay i PussyPut

    Vishla parochka na slavu
    Vsemu miru na zabavu!
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    PUSSYPUTINKA

    I announce that I intend to register a trademark "PUSSYPUTINKA" as a new brand name for Russian vodka. It will be on sale everywhere very soon.
          
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    Pop Gundyay

    Kak na vsekh parakh tramvai
    Razosholsya Pop Gundyay:
    "Ya im, Puskam, pokazhu
    I v tyurmu ikh posazhu!"
    Vot predel tvoikh idey,
    Patri - arkhi - prokhindey!

    I ALLOW TO USE THESE, OTHER, AND FUTURE "CHASTUSHKI" AS LYRICS FOR POP-OPERA WITH THE PROVISIONAL TITLE "PUSSYPUT AND POP GUNDYAY" AND ANNOUNCE THE COMPETITION FOR THE BEST MUSICAL SCORE WITH THE PRIZE OF $5,000. THE RESULTS WILL BE ANNOUNCED BY 1.1.2013. PLEASE, SUBMIT YOUR IDEAS IN THE COMMENTS TO THIS POST. GOOD LUCK AND START WORKING!

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    PUSSYPUT

    On sovsem ne liliput:
    Ves v srazhenyakh tam i tut
    Nesprosta yego zovut
    Neputyoviy PUSSYPUT!

    Vipusti devchonok, Vova, a to budu pisat chastushki kazhdiy den.

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    Photo: In Russian theater, during the mass scenes on stage ("massovki"), the actors comprising those background crowds and purported to conduct the lively conversations between themselves, traditionally toss back and forth to each other one and the same phrase, spoken quickly or pensively and with varying degrees of emotional intensity: "What's there to talk about when there's nothing to talk about." This seems to be the way one happens to feel concerning the whole, phenomenally amplified, Pussy Riot situation: everything that could be said with regards to it has been said already, apparently, and yet millions of new words dissecting it from every conceivable new angle are being uttered every hour on the hour of each passing day; and it is impossible, somehow, not to follow the random loose strands of this ever-widening global discourse -- or rather, to step away from the rumbling avalanche of this (frequently inane, but such is the nature of the avalanche, which, after all, is a force of nature, and nature doesn't have to be a sentient being) world-wide cyber-discourse. This is like in early childhood: you keep stuffing your face with spoonfuls of homemade strawberry jam, even though you've already passed the point of feeling vaguely nauseous; you hate yourself for not being able to stop, and you know mother or grandmother will scold you severely soon enough, when they find out, and likely even ground you for a week -- and yet, there's nothing you can do, you just keep spooning out from the bottom of the nearly empty jar that sugary viscous stuff and pushing it in your mouth, gagging, you head swimming... This seems to have been blown completely out of all proportions: this, admittedly medieval of nature, state-ordered trial of the three young girls who had rushed into the country's main orthodox cathedral and, once there, had proceeded to dance around to loud, discordant music, mouthing the pre-recorded words of a brazenly impolite prayer (for that's what it was) to Virgin Mary, asking for her divine intervention to help rid the country of Vladimir Put's rule. Predictably, they were arrested. Predictably -- given the obnoxious character of Putin's authoritarian regime and the small, vengeful nature of Mr. Putin himself, as well as the free-floating confused anger which seems to be the dominant of the societal atmosphere in present-day Russia -- they were put on trial. Predictably, too, they were found guilty of malicious hooliganism and willfully offending the religious feelings of the handful of the cathedral's personnel present at the scene -- and subsequently convicted, the overlapping and endlessly multiplied entreaties from the mega-stars of Western rock music notwithstanding (it is not in Putin's nature, shaped as it had been in keeping with the prison-bound logic of fear, among the small hoodlums of the dangerous Leningrad inner courtyards, to yield to public pressure, consequences be damned; kindness is a sign of weakness, clemency is for pussies, et al.). Someone whose frame of reference still to a large extent is planted with the Russian paradigm, may have a bit of a difficult time comprehending the suddenness and the sheer keenness of the Western world's fascination with this particular morsel of Putinland injustice: why this particular trial, these specific three girls? Why now, why this? Why not the Khodorkovsky or Magnitsky, no less and more egregious as the corruption-steeped political affairs, or... or... But the avalanche has its logic, and its logic lies in the absence of the kind of logic we can comprehend. It starts on its own time, and in accordance with the laws of physics, not human fairness and justice. It sets off when the moment is right, when the critical mass of snow has accumulated, when the saturation point of immobility has been reached. So now this saturation point has been reached by the Western world, apparently, with regards to Putin's Russia -- after 13 years of his, progressively less enlightened, rule. The point's been reached, and now there's no stopping the avalanche. It just has to run its course, burying in its passage both the recent set notions and illusions the West might have harbored with regards to Putin's Russia -- and perhaps, Mr. Putin himself, who finally, in his apparent growing derangement, might have made the fatal mistake of global overreach. All of sudden, millions of people who, until a few days ago, knew nothing and cared even less about Russia, are all aglow with the Pussy Riot passion. That's the difference between the megaphones wielded by the politicians -- from the US Congress to the German Chancellor -- and those held in the hands of the likes of Madonna and Sting and Sir Paul McCartney. One knows the saturation point has been reached when Rupert Murdoch's lovely NY Post gets involved in an international affair. This means it has the certainty of mind that the majority of its readership are aware of why Mr. Putin is bad, and what he has done to warrant calling him a pussy. I may have reached my personal saturation point the other night, too, when I had a dream in which I was hanging out with Putin in his private residence and asking him all kinds of questions for the purported interview with some unspecified publication of a suitably global readership. In a way, I was an H.G. Wells to his, um, Lenin (I'd been rereading, for a writing project, the former's "Russian in the Shadows") -- except that, of course, I ain't no H.G.Wells, to put it mildly; and he's no Lenin, in more ways than one. Our conversation -- which, inexplicably enough, was conducted in a mixture of Russian and English (that is, I addressed him in Russian, and he responded in Brooklyn-accented English) -- was marked by an uncommonly high degree of frankness. Thus, I told him I considered him to be one of the worst specimens of human race alive today -- and he only shrugged and told me, looking sad, like a rain soaked spaniel puppy, that he fully respected my right to hold an opinion different from his. I reminded him of that traditional Russian-theater background-crowd's "What's there to talk about when there's nothing to talk about" -- and he agreed with me that indeed, by and large, the two of us, he and I, had nothing to talk about. He was smiling amicably while saying this. I meant specifically this whole Pussy Riot affair, I told him -- not anything broader than that. The readers of our publications, whose name I'm not at liberty to divulge, are positively inflamed about this whole Pussy Riot affair, right now, and they can't have enough of it, Vladim Vladimych. Sure, there probably is nothing to talk about for the two of us; but still -- do you perchance have anything to say about it? Your personal perspective would be greatly appreciated... you little lying, vengeful, small-minded, greedy, thieving, murderous, no-good son of a bitch? Hmm. He fell silent for a spell, lost in contemplation, seemingly confounded by the sheer depth of my question. No, come to think of it, I cannot, he replied at length. I cannot tell you what it is really about, he added -- this whole international rigamarole. Sorry, pal. I just don't get it. Nor can I tell you what this whole dratted Pussy Riot thing really about, from the standpoint of the current political moment in my, and perhaps our, beloved Russia. I can tell you, however, what it is NOT about: This is not about me as a vengeful, small-minded little worm, onetime low-to-midlevel secret police operative cum mega-billionaire and tsar of Russia, he went on. This is not about my raging insecurity, my fear of dying, my ridiculous botoxed-up mug, my bid to hold on to the supreme power in Russia forever. This is not about my attempt to split the Russian society along the class and educational lines, in a desperate and potentially fatal bid to hold on to power relying exclusively on the less educated, the ignorant, the mythologically and conspiratorially minded segment of the country's populace -- my own version, if you will, of Richard Nixon's "silent majority." This is not about my not being aware that this supposed "silent majority," in the case of present-day Russia, is a distinct minority and is anything but silent. This is not about me being out of touch with reality -- although yes, indeed, out of touch with reality I probably am. This is not about me having, you know, kind of lost my mind and divorced myself fully and completely from reality. This is not about the fact that there's a great surfeit of anger and confusion abroad in Russia at this time. This is not about the fact that Russian people, by and large, are not religious, but rather superstitious. This is not about the stunning fact, either, that according to a recent survey, the full 30% of Russian people can not not name one single deadly sin: not one, just imagine! This not about... oh well, this is not about this, or that, or the other. This is not about anything at all! This is not about me! This is about... At that point, lowering his voice, he dipped his head towards me and admitted to suffering from a milder form of lactose intolerance. What's the deal with this cold borscht they, you know, serve in Lithuania? he said, rounding his tiny, pewter eyes. It's so excessively creamy! They put so much sour cream in it! Why? Why?? That's when I knew, while still asleep and being fully cognizant of the fact of my functioning inside a dream, that I had reached my saturation point with regards to being away from home, too. For the last 40 days I've been in Lithuania -- the place I like very much and love and find extremely complex and interesting. Today, in point of fact, is my last day here. I know! I know! I concurred heartily. I'm with you on this! I don't particularly like that cold "barsciai" either! I also have mild lactose intolerance! Vladim Vladimych! I'm so glad to have discovered at least one relatable, human weakness in you! But you know what, also? If you have lactose intolerance, however mild, that means you're mortal. No one lives forever with lactose intolerance! You too will die! I'm sorry to break this to you, you lowly worm! On the other hand, he continued, ignoring my meek outburst of sympathy, I like their cepelinai... Mmm, yummy! I opened my mouth to register my disagreement with him on that one -- I'm sorry, the connoisseurs of Lithuanian cuisine, but I cannot tell a lie -- but at that point, conveniently and mercifully enough, I woke up. It was sunny outside. I was hoping, half-hoping for a rainy last weekend it Vilnius, to put me in an appropriately ruminative, lightly wistful frame of mind -- but that didn't come about. Oh well. So be it. I'll have to leave feeling lucid and content. That's all I have to say on the matter. It's time to start packing.
     
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