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Russia's Pussy Riot plans new anti-Putin protests

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Aug. 15, 2012, 10:29 a.m. | Russia and former Soviet Union — by Reuters

Supporters stand near the street holding a sign as embers of the band "Brenda" perform in a dirt lot across the street from the Russian Embassy in Washington on August 10, 2012 in a solidarity concert for the Russian punk rock group Pussy Riot. Three members of the female band Pussy Riot are currently on trial in Russia and face a three-year sentence with the possibility of hard labor for performing a protest song in a Moscow cathedral last February.
© AFP

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MOSCOW - The Russian punk band Pussy Riot said on Tuesday, Aug.14, it planned new protest performances against President Vladimir Putin and urged other women to don balaclavas and stage protests, despite a trial at which three band mates could be jailed.

The trial of Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Maria Alyokhina, 24, has merely strengthened the band's resolve, members of the group who are not on trial told Reuters.

They spoke during an interview at which the all-women group donned balaclavas and brightly coloured tights like those worn by their three band mates during the protest on the altar of a Russian Orthodox cathedral that led to their arrest.

"Three wonderful girls who were an inspiration for this group are in prison right now," one member, going by the name of Button and clad in a thick army green balaclava to guard her identity, said.

"It is hard for us without them. We feel it, but it means only one thing: We should be even stronger, maybe even bolder."

They gave no details of the performances they plan but said they hoped to inspire others to launch their own protests.

"Please put your balaclavas on. I would like to urge other girls - put your balaclavas on, go out on to the street, to work, to your office, to the shop, go to the theatre in your balaclava, become a Pussy Riot. Stage your own riot," one of the other young women said.

Pussy Riot have been branded as immoral and irreverent by some members of the Russian Orthodox Church and representatives of Putin's United Russia Party, but they are held up as victims and heroes by admirers.

Clad in rainbow colours, the women smoked, fidgeted with their makeshift balaclavas and laughed during a break from a cover shoot for a U.S. news magazine.

A few have been members of the political protest group since it was formed last year in reaction to Putin's decision to return to the presidency, the post he held from 2000 to 2008.

But others of the seven who spoke to Reuters said they had been inspired to join by the arrest of three of Pussy Riot's founders over their profanity-laced performance on Feb. 21 deriding Putin's close ties with the Russian Orthodox Church

SUPPORT FROM ABROAD

Many Russians were offended by the "punk prayer" and a state prosecutor has demanded a three-year jail sentence on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.

A verdict in the trial that began on July 30 is due to be announced on Friday, Aug. 17.

"We made our choice. Of course there is danger and we feel it. Obviously, we want to avoid any bad situations in the future but I'm afraid that every one of us - it is quite scary - is ready for such consequences," said one of the women in a striped balaclava and red dress.

Pussy Riot's case has been taken up by global pop stars including Madonna who donned a black balaclava during a concert in Moscow last week to show solidarity with the band and called for their release.

"It is really strange to talk about because until this wave of support formed, it wasn't prestigious but provocative, it was dangerous" to be a part of Pussy Riot, said one member, "Mother", dressed in a pink balaclava and orange dress.

"Now there are very many pussy riots all over the world, people who are donning balaclavas and giving us support."

For the women, who say they were inspired by the 1990s movement of underground U.S. feminist punk movement Riot Grrrl, the masks are vital to keeping their anonymity during protests they have staged on the subway, near a prison and on a trolley bus.

"The idea of Pussy Riot is that you can't arrest us all and there will be more and more of us," said one member.

While many of the band members say the judiciary is not independent and fear the worst from Friday's verdict, the threat of jail has not deterred them.

"Initially there was desire, a very strong desire to become part of Pussy Riot. That was some sort of a dream of mine. I didn't even know how real it could be - how could I join those awesome girls and be close to them," said Button.

"Then it all somehow happened ... It was so cool. It is just happiness. For me, it is just one big chunk of happiness to be a Pussy Riot girl."

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AL BALA Aug. 15, 2012, 10:47 a.m.    

Tolokonnikova said that in the great scheme of things this was not their trial but a trial of the Russian judicial system as a whole. “Christianity, as I understand it after studying the Old and New Testament, supports the search for the truth. Christ was with sinners not by a chance. He said that He is with those who stumble and that He forgives them. But we haven’t seen it during this trial. I think that the prosecution violates Christianity,” said Tolokonnikova, the first to speak. “Like Solzhenitsyn, I believe that words will crush concrete. We sit in a cage but we haven’t lost. Just like the dissidents did not lose. Disappearing in psychiatric wards and jails, they convicted the regime.”

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AL BALA Aug. 15, 2012, 10:49 a.m.    

“Many people say that our political gesture was correct, that we uncovered sores of this system, stirred up a hornet’s nest, which then rushed at us,” continued her final statement Tolokonnikova. “With each day more and more people realize that if this political system throws itself against three girls, who sang for 30 seconds in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, it shows that this political system is afraid of them.”

Maria Alekhina, who spoke second, said: “The authorities will blush with shame for a long time for this trial. A trial like this is simply not possible in a healthy society… Without the blessing of the patriarch we uncovered the visual image of Orthodox culture and protest, we declared that the Orthodox culture does not belong to the patriarch and Putin and might be on the side of protest and rebellion.”

“It is obvious that these young ladies do not deserve criminal prosecution. It is also clear that the church, soliciting for criminal punishment and for making it more severe goes beyond the scope of its powers and, most importantly, beyond its Christian nature. I am absolutely convinced that if Jesus Christ was in the position of the patriarch and in the position of the present day church he would act completely differently.”

http://www.day.kiev.ua/233162

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AL BALA Aug. 15, 2012, 10:59 a.m.    

Gee ?

First they feared the "Orange" ?

Now they fear the "balaclavas" !

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kpxoxol Aug. 15, 2012, 9:53 p.m.    

The western hypocrisy in action - "do what we say, not what we do", heh, heh, heh :D

"Helsinki, Finland - A number of prominent public and culture figures and human rights activists in Finland have filed suit with the Helsinki police against Teivo Teivainen, a professor of the University of Helsinki, for an attempt to replay a stunt of the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot near the Orthodox Assumption Cathedral in Helsinki.

"A criminal case has been initiated under two Finnish Criminal Code articles concerning the violation of religious tolerance rules," Johan Backman, a prominent Finnish human rights activist and an adjunct professor of the University of Helsinki, told Interfax on Wednesday.

"The Finnish Criminal Code bans even an attempt to obstruct a religious service (Article 17-11) and any kind of humiliation of another person's faith in writing or in other forms (17-10). Wearing a mask at a public place and unsanctioned rallies are also prohibited. It is necessary to notify police beforehand in Finland," Backman said.

"Teivainen's punishment now depends on the Finnish Prosecutor General's Office, which makes decisions on pressing charges on anti-religious crimes. If the Prosecutor General's Office presses charges against the professor, he will face up to 2 years' imprisonment," he said.

The suit has been signed by Backman representing the Finnish Anti-Fascist Committee, prominent Finnish playwright Jussi Parviainen, musician Tommi Lievemaa, Evgenia Hilden-Jarvenpera, a member of the education committee in the city of Pori, and others."

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AL BALA Aug. 16, 2012, 12:11 a.m.    

Kremlinoids refrain from mentioning that Moscow bombed the civilian women and children in Helsinki - without a declaration of war - in 1939, because those facts are not included in the homo-sovieticus Soviet Encyclopedia.

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Jenn Smith Aug. 21, 2012, 10:52 p.m.    

Lesbian Apparatchik Eunuchs for the Global PC Empire - Pussy Rot.

Soundbite for the net.

Pussy Rot are all NGO paid agents of Washington DC. Every university educated observer sees that.

NWO Apparatchiks. Talentless, who only want money. Like the common neutered eunuch of Rome,

Academics with advanced history backgrounds can easily see that Pussy Rot are apparatchiks. The typical de-gendered, Lesbian or gay, eunuchs of any empire in history.

Apparatchik eunuched pussy rot, the neo-marxist glory girls, held up as the de-gendering of the target population.

Agents of Genocide are pussy rots.
Denigrating the survivors of genocide, Christian genocide of the USSR.

GULAG PART 3v
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G04gEjB-bZs

GULAG PART 4v
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hA9drjCX6U

GULAG PART 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7Ga2aW7-jk

GULAG PART 6v
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6Z1peXoAsA

GULAG PART 7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjdn_CuGNjs

We've all seen this before, yet the young pussy rots think their ride is unique.

65 million Russian Christians were genocided by the Marxist USSR, the reconstructed church is a symbol of that White Genocide.

Word is spreading across the internet- Pussy Rot are State Apparatchiks, the Lesbian Eunuchs of the Global Empire.

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