Pussy Riot found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred

The Pussy Riot punk group singers, who have been found guilty by the Khamovnichesky Court in Moscow, were motivated by hatred and religious enmity, the court verdict says.

"The Pussy Riot singers colluded under unestablished circumstances, for the purpose of offensively violating public peace in a sign of flagrant disrespect for citizens," the court said in a verdict being pronounced on Friday.

The women were motivated by religious enmity and hatred, and acted provocatively and in an insulting manner inside a religious building in the presence of a large number of believers," the court said.

The court also has found that the Pussy Riot activists realized that their actions during the "punk prayer" in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior were insulting and intended to communicate information on the stunt to a broad range of believers.

"Intending to make the planned actions public and ensure that they drew public response, to draw the attention of the public to their illegal actions, and to communicate the expressed disrespect not only to the clergy and people in the church, but also to other citizens who were not present in the church at the time [of the punk prayer], but shared Orthodox traditions, Samutsevich, Tolokonnikova, Alyokhina, and their unidentified accomplice informed various media assistants and active bloggers on their action," the sentence read in the Khamovnichesky Court on Friday says.
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Pussy Riot trial verdict - live!

You. Me. We are ALL Pussy Riot!!!

The Illuminator projecting on the Russian Consulate in NYC

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(Thanx Carolyn!)

Pushkin Riot

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Free Pussy Riot

Letter from Nadya Tolokonnikova from prison 16/8/12 #Pussyriot

Our imprisonment has served as a clear and obvious sign that the whole country is being robbed of freedom. And this threat of annihilating the freeing, emancipatory forces in Russia – that’s what causes me to be enraged. Seeing the large in the small, the trend in the sign, the common in the individual.

Second-Wave Feminists said the personal is political. That’s how it is. The Pussy Riot case has shown how the individual troubles of three people facing charges of hooliganism can give life to a political movement. A single case of repression and persecution against those who had the courage to Speak in an authoritarian country has shaken the world: its activists, punks, pop stars, and government members, its comedians and ecologists, its feminists and its masculinists, its Islamic theologians, and those Christians who are praying for Pussy Riot. The personal has become political. The Pussy Riot case has brought together as one forces so multidirectional, I still have trouble believing this isn’t a dream. The impossible is happening in contemporary Russian politics: a demanding, persistent, powerful and consistent impact of society on its government.

I am thankful to everyone who has said “Free Pussy Riot!” Right now, all of us are participating a large and important political Event that the Putin regime is having an ever more difficult time controlling. Whatever the upcoming verdict for Pussy Riot, we – and you – are already winning. Because we have learned to rage, and to speak politically.

Pussy Riot is happy that we have been able to spur a truly collective action, and that your political passion has proven to be so strong, it has cleared the barriers of language, culture, surroundings, and economic and political status. Kant would say that he sees no other reason for this Miracle besides man’s moral beginning. Thank you for this Miracle.
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Diplomatic Premises

While diplomatic premises in the UK are part of UK territory, they are inviolable and may not be entered without the consent of the Ambassador or Head of Mission. (See DPA 1964 section 2(1) and schedule 3.) Any offences committed in diplomatic premises in the UK are triable under the ordinary principles of English law, subject to the principles of diplomatic immunity for those who have it. Those who do not have this status (whatever their nationality) can be prosecuted as normal, as for example happened in the case of the terrorists who seized the Iranian embassy in London in 1980.
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D̶e̶c̶l̶a̶r̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶T̶e̶r̶r̶i̶t̶o̶r̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶A̶s̶y̶l̶u̶m̶,̶ ̶U̶.̶N̶.̶G̶.̶A̶.̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶.̶ ̶2̶3̶1̶2̶ ̶(̶X̶X̶I̶I̶)̶,̶ ̶1̶9̶6̶7̶

♪♫ Phil Minton and Ute Wassermann - Urursonate

An improvisation based on Kurt Schwitters Ursonate performed by Phil Minton and Ute Wassermann at the Sage Gateshead on 30 June 2012. Part of Helen Petts' concert "Throw Them Up and Let Them Sing" during her exhibition of the same name at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle.
http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/hatton/news/throw-them-up-and-let-them-sing/

Siberian Princess reveals her 2,500 year old tattoos

The ancient mummy of a mysterious young woman, known as the Ukok Princess, is finally returning home to the Altai Republic this month.
She is to be kept in a special mausoleum at the Republican National Museum in capital Gorno-Altaisk, where eventually she will be displayed in a glass sarcophagus to tourists.
For the past 19 years, since her discovery, she was kept mainly at a scientific institute in Novosibirsk, apart from a period in Moscow when her remains were treated by the same scientists who preserve the body of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin.
To mark the move 'home', The Siberian Times has obtained intricate drawings of her remarkable tattoos, and those of two men, possibly warriors, buried near her on the remote Ukok Plateau, now a UNESCO world cultural and natural heritage site, some 2,500 metres up in the Altai Mountains in a border region close to frontiers of Russia with Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan.
They are all believed to be Pazyryk people - a nomadic people described in the 5th century BC by the Greek historian Herodotus - and the colourful body artwork is seen as the best preserved and most elaborate ancient tattoos anywhere in the world.
To many observers, it is startling how similar they are to modern-day tattoos.
The remains of the immaculately dressed 'princess', aged around 25 and preserved for several millennia in the Siberian permafrost, a natural freezer, were discovered in 1993 by Novosibirsk scientist Natalia Polosmak during an archeological expedition.
Buried around her were six horses, saddled and bridled, her spiritual escorts to the next world, and a symbol of her evident status, perhaps more likely a revered folk tale narrator, a healer or a holy woman than an ice princess.
There, too, was a meal of sheep and horse meat and ornaments made from felt, wood, bronze and gold.  And a small container of cannabis, say some accounts, along with a stone plate on which were the burned seeds of coriander.
'Compared to all tattoos found by archeologists around the world, those on the mummies of the Pazyryk people are the most complicated, and the most beautiful,' said Dr Polosmak.
'More ancient tattoos have been found, like the Ice Man found in the Alps - but he only had lines, not the perfect and highly artistic images one can see on the bodies of the Pazyryks...
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♪♫ Bob Dylan - Hurricane/Oh Sister/Simple Twist Of Fate (1975)

The World Of John Hammond PBS Soundstage WTTW-TV Studios Chicago, Illinois, USA Recorded September 10, 1975 Broadcast December 13, 1975. Music starts at 2:00 in.

Evgeny Morozov:
The Ecuadorean embassy is the new Abbottabad compound