Amber Larson, Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Library Foundation L.A. (lfla.org)
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| Nadia T. (right) and fellow Pussy Riot member post-prison; Euro TV (RTE 1) last month (S). |
What were we expecting to find at author (
Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot)
Masha Gessen's
Pussy Riot lecture in LA? Riot Grrrl protests in a staid building in the middle of the largest library in town? There were crowds taking advantage of the extra hour afforded by daylight savings time. It was cool and breezy, yet there was not a single
balaclava in the audience. DayGlo hair yes, "Free Pussy Riot" teeshirts yes, feminists yes. Activists? Not so much. No nude protesters, no riot police, no mobs of newsmen after photos of
topless demonstrators.
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| Don a balaclava and you, too, are Pussy Riot |
The capacity crowd was here to be intellectually stimulated by researcher
Masha Gessen, who somehow managed to survive gay and out in increasingly draconian Russia. She relayed the arresting details of a sham trial that was a "trial" only in one sense: The Pussy Riot defendants got to read their own prepared statements near the end. It almost brought us to tears as Nadia (pictured above, right), who conceived of a
Wee-wee (later changed in English to
Pussy) Riot, a
radical feminist art protest collective, read a statement that explained our whole reason for working on Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal. Nadia speaks for us by her brave court statements. She was a philosophy major, after all.
(HBO Special) "A Punk Prayer" the American Pussy Riot documentary
He appointed himself "president" three times then rigged elections after the fact to confirm and legitimize the appointment. He was suffering from a great deal of unpopularity, particularly at the time Pussy Riot was singing a "
Punk Prayer" (see entire HBO special above) against him in the former empire's most famous Christian church.
(The Buddhist temples, such as the famous monastery in
Elista, tend to be in the east, in Europe's only
indigenously Buddhist country,
Kalmykia, which is part of Russia). But, Gessen pointed out, traditionally the Eastern Orthodox Church has always been the last resort of scoundrels in officially atheist Russia.
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| If Imperialist Hillary says so |
Russia was never actually atheist; that was just the official party line, and most Russians were never members of the official party, which was for elites. The Church was always there to back a dictator if called upon, according to Gessen. (This was because the KGB killed or defrocked any resistors within the Church then replaced them with spies and cronies, much like our American mainstream media).
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| Protesting Putin, promoting Pussy Riot (FP) |
Putin has only recently seen his numbers skyrocket because of his incursions into Ukraine and Crimea, moves which most Russians seem to approve. Moscovites and Kremlin insiders certainly love it, as do the very rural areas of the country. Why? As Gessen reveals, 85% of Russia is wholly dependent on state-run media [and, we would guess, the other 15% is involved in making and/or disseminating that media].
But now, as of the day of her lecture, it's worse. What little independent media there was has been dismantled in the past two weeks. Since Sochi things have only gotten worse. Pussy Riot activists have been attacked, as aided and abetted by the police state. But Russia has never known democracy or any real freedom in their lifetimes, yet Nadia and the others recognized the lies and faux freedoms were lies.
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| Men conquer, and I'm The Man. |
For instance, how could Russians not see how Pussy Riot was trying to help and liberate them? The state-run media saw to that: A "Punk Prayer" has the lyrics "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," and due to this and some spin doctoring, most of the surprisingly pious country to this day thinks Pussy Riot members defecated inside the church. Thus their sensibilities were hurt, accused and convicted of a hate crime.
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| RT helped WikiLeaks |
And as ludicrous as it may seem, even
RT -- which has done so much to reveal what American media/propaganda tries to conceal -- has been forced to go overtly pro-Moscow in reporting new propaganda. The channel was always funded by the state but exhibited editorial freedom that made it one of our favorite outlets to turn to get a view on what our own government wouldn't tell us. An opposition party, no matter how awful, is always needed in a democracy.
We got to hear first hand from Gessen how Putin is, indeed, a dictator the likes of which have not been seen since George W. Bush stole a pair of American elections. (She is also the author of Man Without a Face: Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin).
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