Posted on 08/20/2012 9:43:37 PM PDT by No One Special
Here is Victor Davidoff’s view of the Pussy Riot atrocity, writing in the Moscow Times. He says it has discredited Russia’s public image, the Orthodox Church, its judicial system and its citizens. This is, of course, exactly what we’ve been saying Putin would do for the past five years.
* * *
For many years, the Darwin Awards have been given to people who self-select out of the gene pool by voluntarily and unnecessarily placing themselves in danger. It has been bestowed only on individuals, but if it could be granted to institutions, the Kremlin would surely be awarded it hands down for creating the Pussy Riot case.
In February, when three of the four Pussy Riot punk band members were arrested for their 41-second performance in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral, no one foresaw the consequences. Everyone thought it would end quickly and quietly, and the “criminals” would be simply fined or, in the worst case, given a week or so in detention on misdemeanor charges. But the Kremlin’s insistence on criminal punishment for blasphemers who pronounced the criminal words “Mother of God, cast Putin out” turned into a public relations disaster. Today, the Pussy Riot case is famous on every continent and has captured the attention of intellectuals and politicians up to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and some of the world’s most popular musicians, like Madonna and Paul McCartney.
On the day after the verdict was announced, the furor reached its peak. The writer Andrei Malgin, currently living in Italy, wrote on his LiveJournal blog, “I went into a newsstand that carries the international press. Good grief! Every newspaper, in every language that exists, on every stand — from the floor right up to the ceiling — had a front-page story about Pussy Riot and Putin.” This one guilty verdict and sentence of two years of labor in the camps turned the Kremlin’s multimillion-dollar campaign to improve Russia’s image abroad into dust.
But Russia’s image was just one of the victims of the Pussy Riot verdict. The authority of the Russian Orthodox Church took a stronger hit, especially among Orthodox intellectuals. Svetlana Goryacheva wrote on her Facebook page, “I, a regular congregant at the Church of Saints Cosmos and Damian, a biblical scholar with a Ph.D. in history, officially announce that I have totally broken off relations with the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church. I remain a practicing Christian, but I consider it impossible to remain in a church with liars, money-grubbers and reactionaries.”
The judicial system has also suffered from the verdict handed down by Judge Marina Syrova. Even prominent lawyer Genri Reznik, who is usually diplomatic in his comments, called the verdict “an absolute discredit to the justice system.” In an interview with the Russian News Service, he said, “I’d classify this sentence as a criminal act. As a lawyer, I’m ashamed of this mockery of justice.”
The hearing was conducted with many procedural and legal violations, which were obvious even to nonspecialists. The judge refused to hear any of the witnesses for the defense. Out of three psychological and linguistic analyses commissioned by the court, only one was accepted: the one carried out by experts affiliated with the church, which cited decisions made by the ecclesiastical councils of the fourth and seventh centuries.
As journalist Sergei Dorenko noted acidly on his LiveJournal blog, “One of the most compelling proofs of the absence of God must be the existence of the Moscow courts.”
But the main victims are, of course, the citizens of Russia, who seemed to have been transported in a time machine back to the Middle Ages, when someone could be jailed for violating religious rules of behavior.
Television journalist Tina Kandelaki, who is hardly a Pussy Riot supporter, wrote on her LiveJournal blog, “According to the criminal code of the Russian Empire in 1845, the maximum sentence for actions similar to what Pussy Riot did was three months. In the 21st century, why must they get two years in labor camps?”
The Pussy Riot case is strikingly reminiscent of the Soviet repression of dissidents. Using similar logic, the Soviet Union persecuted poets, musicians and artists whose poems, songs and paintings didn’t conform to the only permissible canons of socialist realism. Socialist realism has given way to church canons, but the result is the same. Last week a Novosibirsk court upheld an earlier ruling that fined artist Artyom Loskutov for displaying publicly a noncanonical image of the Mother of God.
This new medieval Russia doesn’t just threaten artists. The Russian Orthodox Church has been quite successful in its efforts to lobby for legislation limiting abortion. In St. Petersburg, there is already a law forbidding “the propaganda of homosexuality,” which covers any actions to protect the rights of gays. Similar laws have been passed or are being considered in other regions.
And the church has not ignored the school system. In an interview to Polish media last week, Patriarch Kirillsaid he considers it necessary to conduct catechization in all the country’s schools and complained that this has been blocked by the “liberal press.”
So President Vladimir Putin‘s brave new world is gradually being built, a world in which codes of behavior are determined by the state and church. It is a world in which any independent activity — from political to environmental to artistic — is outlawed and in which the individual is deprived of the freedom of choice in education and even in his personal life.
The jailed Pussy Riot activists are like caged canaries in a coal mine. As long as there is hope they might be freed from prison, Russians still have hope that they can avoid the nightmare of life in a second Middle Ages.
Going from a communist dictatorship to a medieval serfdom is actually a step up.
Give the man a cigar.
For once the faggot Bolsheviks find out there are consequences, and the Eastern world is going to end.
Pussy Riot "protest art" is a front for Bolshevik faggots trying to use popular progressive causes to push Russia back to Communism.
Putin, much of the Russian government, the Russian Orthodox Church, and above 70% of the Russian people know this, and are perfectly happy to see Pussy Riot rot in a labor camp for two or more years.
Judging by the whine from leftist progressive socialists, world MSM, entertainment personalities, academia, and ZerObama hisself, Putin and Russia couldn't have made a better decision. Russia won't be whined and carped back to Communism, and the commies are going to see what it's like to rot to death in a labor camp, for once.
Our commies are ticked off because Russia doesn’t embrace atheism like it once did.
So the anti-Bolshevik side is Putin and his KGB handlers?
Pussy Riot represent the San Fransisco wing of anything goes liberalism, KGB spook Putin represents Bolshevist Stalinism. In the battle between Barney Frank and Josef Stalin, I chose Barney Frank.
Also, Putin forgot an important lesson about creating martyrs. I was just listening to a whole thing about Pussy Riot on a country station in rural Oregon, not the smartest move by the KGB regime.
... KGB spook...
...the KGB regime.
There's that KGB ghost, again.
...I chose Barney Frank.
I believe you.
Putin the liberator. That’s funny. Especially with you cheering him on to allow his people to rot to death in a labor camp. You’re wrong and he’s laughing at you.
“Orthodox Church has been quite successful in its efforts to lobby for legislation limiting abortion. In St. Petersburg, there is already a law forbidding “the propaganda of homosexuality,” which covers any actions to protect the rights of gays. Similar laws have been passed or are being considered in other regions.
And the church has not ignored the school system. In an interview to Polish media last week, Patriarch Kirillsaid he considers it necessary to conduct catechization in all the country’s schools and complained that this has been blocked by the “liberal press.””
OMG,,how medieval!!/ Russia should be advanced like us and let sodomites take over the schools, and desecrate a church. Im sure everyone here would be just fine with a bunch of ski masked jerks invading a service at a cathedral that was a recently restored national treasure, and sing disgusting insulting songs.
Two years honestly sounds about right.
If i put on a ski mask and invaded Reverend Wrights church service, or a Mosque, and started singing a lewd song about Allah and Obama, any bets on the sentence i would get?
Yeah, because when the KGB changed its name it totally made them the vanguard of capitalism and freedom. Sure it is the exact same people, and yeah they still operate out of the same building where not too long ago they executed dissidents in the basement. But never mind that! Putin loves freedom and puppies!
If Hamas changes its name tomorrow to “Freedom Loving Zionists” will you support them as well? I hope I live to see Putin hung upside down Mussolini style in the Red Square.
Interestingly, the Communists changed their name to the Democratic Party and you chose to support them.
That is outright BS from a man who is here praising the KGB.
Gulags or homosexuals. Decisions, decisions. Whatever Puty wants, Puty gets.
Putin equals Stalin? Please. His main interest is that Russia is harshly first in any business dealings. NOt always what we want, but at least he isn’t selling his nation out to the EU bankers the way we have. There is a prime directive there that they not be subservient to the EU/UN or us, but that is hardly a return to Stalin.
So the choice is not between your pal Barney Frank and Stalin. It’s between Putin and Frank. I know this is going to be a shock to you and Oregon radio, but a place is not a Stalinist Communist nation because they don’t want to follow us down homo highway.
By the way, Russia wants a gold backed currency for trade, drills all the oil and gas it can find, puts Orthodox chapels on all their subs now, and has an air-droppable chapel for their airborne forces, and they have a non-progressive income tax of 13%. The tax is off the top of your check, no filing, no byzantine maze of forms and no intrusive IRS. They ban gays proselytizing their kids.
And heres a fun factoid, they have the lowest national debt of any G20 country. We are carrying a debt around a 100% of GDP. Theirs stands at 2.5%. Did they mention that on radio PBS Oregon?
Odd behavior for a Stalinist.
Currently we are literally more communist than they are, right down to our leader.
Barney Frank, Democrat, yes or no?
“and yeah they still operate out of the same building where not too long ago they executed dissidents in the basement”
Would you feel better if they used a different building? You think the building is possessed or something? You know, WE used Dachau after the war, and Abu Graib had quite a history too, but we used it.
I like this haunted building theory!
Please copy and paste my comments PRAISING the KGB.
That from a guy who equates Pussy Riot with Christ clearing the temple, and admires Barney Frank.
Here is your quote:
“Putin and Russia couldn’t have made a better decision.”
I am done.
“Would you feel better if they used a different building? You think the building is possessed or something?”
Its not a question of superstition. I am just pointing out that the KGB, possibly the most murderous political organization in human history is still operating in Russia, and in fact has their man as the leader of that nation. They literally just changed the name. There was not trial, nobody was executed or even jailed for the murder of tens of millions of people. Now these butchers have the arrogance to claim to be the good guys, unbelievable.
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