PUSSY RIOT SENTENCE

     pussy riot

The verdict in the Pussy Riot kangaroo court is a sentence of two years for hooliganism and expression of hate for religion. That's what they were charged with, not permitted a proper defense, and that's what they were sentenced on, what they were charged with. I can't help but think it is a mind game played on them by Putin who may have set the nature of the punishment first day of their arrest. The judge following orders from headquarters. Whatever the case, the so-called trial was a mockery of law, which the State is free to do at will. It's like a Kafka novel and a Solzhenitsyn novel spun together as one. That's in Russia. I have no right in USA to be telling Russian State what decisions to make. I don't aim to. It's their business. But as a story, a story told by a Russian contemporary writer, the verdict is not the end of the story. It's the beginning of the next chapter. The plot thickens. The kangaroo trial and the martial sentence were done publicly, so I have a right to comment on it publicly; albeit with not anything like the international publicity they made for themselves.


It is no different here. Kangaroo trials abound here. No one can point a finger from this side of either ocean. 911 was an inside job and American Muslims suffer under the blame for it by the ones that pushed the button to set the plan in motion. The Pussy Riot girls pushed Putin's buttons in a time when he is evidently feeling threatened. It's not like they were in Amsterdam or SanFrancisco. They also pushed the buttons of the Russian Orthodox church, itself threatened by a falling away of the young. The way I see what they did from my own perspective, sitting with a laptop pushing buttons, they were children playing with firecrackers. I would never think of doing what they did without considering the consequences first. Maybe they did. If I chose to go ahead and commit the act, it would be aware of the risk. They got the shaft. If they didn't know that was the risk, they were too ignorant to be taken seriously anyway. These three women will be committed political activists the rest of their lives. They will be cheered at rallies, at rock concerts. Their names will ring all over Russia among the young. The more harshly they're treated, the more famous around the world they will be. Censoring the internet is what the State has to do. In effect, shutting out the outside world.


What's the problem with that? In USA we are so self-centered that the biggest majority of Americans isn't even interested that Russia is a country, couldn't find it on a globe. As a rule, Americans are not interested in anything beyond our borders except as tourism. Evidently Russians are not interested in the world outside Russia either. Why would Putin give a shit about what Madonna thinks of the Russian legal system? Or Bjork? Or The Edge? From his way of seeing, these freaks with freakish names are what's wrong with the world. To post-Soviet Russians, like in America, mostly rural peasantry, they're so poor the religion is all they have. Wiggle your ass in the face of what half the Russian population believes to be God's altar, and you've pist off very seriously an awful lot of the people around you, wherever you are in the country. The Pussy Riot girls did not get it how adamant religionists can be. On a news clip I heard someone from over there say the girls simply chose the wrong location to exhibit their protest. At the same time, what better indication that your protest really worked than a 2 year sentence? That's better than the front page of the Sunday paper for publicity.


I think I recall seeing something about a new single by the punk rock band Pussy Riot. It's another rant about Putin, or maybe the one that got them locked up. They're pushing it. I couldn't be so light-hearted going up against the Russian bear. The girls are so out of their league, they may end up wishing they'd taken up knitting in front of a television instead of political activism. Whatever the case, the story is not over and may not be over for quite awhile. A provocative action provokes. A 2 year sentence is what the Pussy Riot girls provoked for themselves. It doesn't seem right to people of the world outside Russia, but evidently it seems right to the people of Russia. Who knows? The press cannot be counted on to tell anything remotely close to actuality, theirs and ours. I know Russia is censoring internet activity that has to do with Pussy Riot. So what. They want control of the news inside Russia. US corporate government has control of the news inside USA. It's nothing we can make something of about freedom. It's just post-Soviet Russia acting like America. They do it their way, we do it our way. They have the Gulag, we have the biggest prison system in the world.

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PUSSY RIOT PUSHING BUTTONS

     pussy riot

There are moments that I look at myself with a cold eye and feel like I've wasted a lot of time, didn't take making a living serious enough, could have done better. That thinking doesn't last long. I remind myself that I have chosen time over money, not because I had something particular to do, but because I did not want to be a part of the rat race. Money the goal? That's not good enough for me. It could have been the overwhelming amount of attention paid to the preacher in the Baptist church, fundamentalist Southern Baptist, preacher so austere who went his own way that the Southern Baptist Association rejected him for membership year after year. He was a devout Bible scholar, self-taught. Scandinavian austerity characterized his life in the fields of the Lord. He was a powerful influence on my thinking. He made a good example for me of a man living his own integrity. Possibly it's from him I came to understand the importance of living by one's own integrity. It's from him, for sure, that I never developed an interest in "the world." That is, the world of commerce.


It was several years searching for a definition of "the world" that satisfied me as something that fits. Also, by now, I'm not so sure it is all that necessary to avoid "the world," to have a spiritual life. Interpreting "the world" as gambling casinos, beer joints, liquor stores, dance places, the easy ones that get focused on the most, I wanted to know what it really meant. I tend to think of the Bank as the world, wanting is of this world, and, of course, the 7 deadly sins. The greatest reason I can see for, as they say, turning one's back to the world, is so one's dying will be easier. I'm thinking as we study the ways of the spirit and live for inner satisfaction instead of body satisfaction called pleasure, when it is time to pass over to the other side, we're already in tune. It won't be such a big transition suddenly going from ego to spirit. In the place I'm at now, I feel like there is no difference between in the body and out of the body, except presence and absence of the body/ego. For somebody whose whole identity is in the ego, it can be a major loss to see it fall away. It's the spirit that travels from lifetime to lifetime, not the ego. The ego is particular to the body and its experiences. The body gives the soul a home, like a conch shell. The ego identifies with the body. I suppose it could be said the soul animates the body the way a hand animates a glove.


The ego and the soul make an interesting divide. If it is a divide. I suppose when the soul leaves the body, it leaves ego with the body. The soul gains its experiences through the ego. I, personally, don't have a problem with ego, in that I allow and guide my ego the best I can by my own ethical standard. We have varieties of ethical standards from person to person. Every one of us lives by our own. Some are developed, some are not. We're all mixed together of various and opposing ethical standards. Putin opposed the ethical standard of the Pussy Riot girls and they opposed his ethical standard. He has power, they do not. He's letting them wallow in the mud of understanding he has power over them. They do not have power over him. Naive youngsters who think outrageous is chic went a bit far challenging the power of a macho man thug with absolute power over them. He's of a generation that does not embrace rock, esp punk street protest rock in church. Of course he does not care anything for church, but his power base does.


What I've come to see is that "the world" is inside self, not outside, like a "house of sin." I recall from the documentary of raising a baby chimpanzee in an American suburban family to see how it developed. NIM. It's the saddest story of any I know. The "psychologist" behind the study concluded after treating the little thing like an object that when it learned sign language, all it did was say, "I want...." Whatever it was, spontaneous I want. Sees something, points and says, "I want..." By the end of the film I had nothing but revulsion for the psychologist. He was so involved in the trees he lost the forest. I've been watching a baby waking up from birth on to 14 months old and walking. Baby is paying attention to words and sounds, sees everything, likes to watch the wind blow through the trees. Baby wants everything she sees. She wants to hold it and look at it, see what it is, what it does. Without using the two words, she tends to start intent for a sentence with I want, either by gesture or vocal appeal. That's the beginning of the ego, I want. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. The first 30 years of our lives are about developing the ego. Ego works like ballast in a ship, keeps us grounded, keeps us upright.





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