blog of the post capitalist transition.. Read or download the novel here + latest relevant posts
Author: thefreeonline
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Three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot said Vladimir Putin’s Russia was the one on trial as they delivered closing arguments on Wednesday in a case seen as a key test of the powerful president’s desire to crackdown on dissent.
“This is a trial of the whole government system of Russia, which so likes to show its harshness toward the individual, its indifference to his honour and dignity,” Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, one of the trio on trial said in an impassioned statement. “If this political system throws itself against three girls … it shows this political system is afraid of truth.”
The judge set 17 August as the day she would deliver a verdict against the women, charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred following an anti-Putin performance in a Moscow cathedral.
Prosecutors have asked for a three-year sentence, arguing that the women sought to insult all of Russian
Pussy Riot members, from left, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich sit in a glass cage at a court room in Moscow. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
Orthodoxy and denying they were carrying out a political protest.
Tolokonnikova called the charges against them a “political order for repression” and denounced Putin’s “totalitarian-authoritarian system”, insisting Pussy Riot were an example of “opposition art”.
“Even though we are behind bars, we are freer than those people,” she said, looking at the prosecution from inside the glass cage where she and her two bandmates, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, have spent the nine-day trial. “We can say what we want, while they can only say what political censorship allows.
“Maybe they think it wouldn’t be wrong to try us for speaking against Putin and his system, but they can’t say that because it’s been forbidden,” she said, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the revolutionary words “No Pasaran”.
Couching their case in the long plight of political prisoners in the country, the three women urged Russians to reject Putin’s system and embrace freedom.
Alyokhina, 24, compared the trial to the Soviet Union’s persecution of Joseph Brodsky, when the young poet was charged with being a “social parasite”, becoming a global cause celebre that highlighted the government’s farcical control over culture.
“We are not guilty – the whole world is talking about it,” Alyokhina said, hours after Madonna became the latest, and biggest, star to come to the women’s defence.
“I am not scared of you,” Alyokhina told the court. “I’m not scared of lies and fiction, or the badly formed deception that is the verdict of this so-called court. Because my words will live, thanks to openness.
“When thousands of people will read and watch this, this freedom will grow with every caring person who listens to us in this country.”
Lawyers for Pussy Riot have been expecting a guilty verdict and three-year sentence, but said that was called into question following the judge’s delay in issuing her decision. Lawyer Nikolai Polozov said growing international attention, including recent messages of support from the likes of Madonna and Yoko Ono, had had their effect. “To take a quick decision under such pressure is very dangerous for the authorities, so they’ve taken a time out,” he told the Guardian. “No matter what the verdict is, we have won,” he added.
Each woman ended her closing statement to loud applause from the Russian journalists sitting in the courtroom.
Yekaterina Samutsevich is seen here being escorted into court Russian prosecutors have asked for three years’ in prison for three women musicians accused of inciting religious hatred during a protest in a cathedral. The three members of the punk band Pussy Riot played a song attacking Russian leader Vladimir Putin in front of an altar […]
The Free Pussy riot campaign has gone global, hitting at the heart of oppression, semi slavery and open violence against women, in the sexist macho State and the medieval inquisitorial evil church. update https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/ God-is-punishing-jailed-pussy-riot-mothers-says-patriarch Аction […]
The trial continues of 3 women from the punk band Pussy Riot. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Mariya Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich were taken into custody in February after singing a protest song against Putin in Moscow. They have spent already 5 months without bail for nothing more than playing a song in a church without permission. Their […]
Trial Update. Tuesday. Witnesses were called who swore they were outraged by Pussyriot playing in a church…. God is judging Pussy Riot, says Russian church leader.
Informamos que la compañera afiliada a la CNT, María Jesús Vila Calviño, conocida comoChus, residente en Fuerteventura, ha iniciado desde la noche del martes una huelga de hambre indefinida para protestar, no sólo por su situación personal (desempleada, sin cobrar prestaciones ni ayuda económica de ningún tipo, sin techo por no poder pagar alquiler), sino por la de tantas y tantas personas que se encuentran en similares (o peores) condiciones.
Por este motivo, Chus se ha instalado frente al edificio de la Delegación de Gobierno de Puerto Cabras (Fuerteventura), donde permanecerá día y noche con el apoyo de amigos/as, compañeros y compañeras. Hasta el momento ha recibido la visita del Consejero de Bienestar Social del Cabildo de Fuerteventura y de la Concejala de Cultura del Ayuntamiento de La Oliva. El Delegado de Gobierno ha instado a la Policía Municipal de Puerto del Rosario a que la desalojen de la plaza pública en la que se encuentra acampada. Por otra parte, Cruz Roja de Fuerteventura ha comunicado que no puede prestarle apoyo en estos momentos por falta de personal, aun así está organizando turnos entre personas voluntarias para poder atender las necesidades de Chus. Las muestras de apoyo del pueblo de Fuerteventura han sido impresionantes y Chus está francamente emocionada.
María Jesús asegura que su decisión “es necesaria como medida de presión” para conseguir el cambio “radical” de la política social ejercida por el Gobierno que, según la huelguista, “todavía no ha entendido” que las cifras emitidas por los medios son personas, añadiendo que “si dejan morir a la gente de hambre, tirada en la calle lo verán con sus ojos”.
Adjuntamos la carta que la compañera ha presentado en la Delegación de Gobierno de Puerto Cabras, El Cabildo de Fuerteventura y el Ayuntamiento de Puerto Cabras (Puerto del Rosario), en la cual expresa claramente lo que le ha llevado a tomar esta drástica decisión.
99 Pickets is an initiative of Occupy Wall Street that uses a range of tactics: pickets, rallies, write-in campaigns, calls to action from around NYC, like the ones listed below.
We strive to connect the dots between seemingly isolated conflicts, using worker-driven, creative action to draw attention to the common struggles of people across the city. From Twitter storms to bike swarms, we’re reinventing the way people gather to speak truth to power.
Due to the ”crisis” and the Libor loan rate fixing crimes, millions of us have lost or are in danger of losing our homes and/or liberty, while the 1% have moved up to $600 trillions of our credit to tax havens. Amazing but tyrue!
For me the best solution is community real wealth sharing, without money or nations. But this may be some time in coming.
Meanwhile if you’re trapped in debt here’s some ideas for fighting back.
1) Sue the banks, maybe an idea for a large group of pissed off victims. They took billions by rigging the Libor rates. We want it all back.
For the last 10 years all efforts at a world agreement on Climate Change have been blocked
Already at +1.4C Climate Chaos is rampant. Now at the behest of its Corporate sponsors the US has abandoned the goal to limit the increase to +2.0C.
by the insane greed of the USA in putting the profits of its criminal Corporations before the urgent need to save the habitat of all life on Earth.
One of the few results of dozens of failed conferences is the commitment to in future try and limit to +2.0C average temperature increase, though many scientists estimate that even that will cause Runaway Climate Chaos.
Now the head of the US delegation, Todd Stern, has abandoned even that basic principle because..”insisting on a structure that would guarantee such a +2.0C degree goal will only lead to deadlock”. This is nonsense, the deadlock already exists and is caused by him obeying his money masters.
Stern in the past has denied US blocking of Climate talks, despite all the evidence of systematic sabotage, falsifying and blocking scientific reports, trashing and smearing scientists, financing of multiple far right Climate-Denier think tanks and blogs, as well as the obvious votes against any progressive measures. In the medium term this policy of the US climate criminals will be seen as responsible for many millions of deaths and a probably irreversible global catastrophe.
Todd Stern does distance himself from the deniers who he says are living in ”wonderland”, while himself toeing the line of Obama and the corporations. He admits that all legislation in the US has been blocked, and then details a long list of petty measures to gain credibility.
Reaction of other Climate Politicians was one of ‘shock and awe’.
Spokesmen for the EU and the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) said the US should stick to promises made.
“Suddenly abandoning our agreement to keep global warming below 2C is to give up the fight against climate change before it even begins,” said Tony de Brum, Minister in Assistance for the Marshall Islands.
“‘Flexibility’ on our 2C limit would set the world on a path to irreversible, runaway climate change.
“For many low-lying island states, including my own, that is not a solution – it is a death sentence,” he told BBC News.
This Aug. 5 marks 73 years from the shooting of the 13 Roses, young people, mostly Socialists , who were convicted of supporting the bombing deaths in General Isaac Gabaldon in July 29, 1939. The case also included two other women, Antonia Torres and Julia Vellisca, andanother 53 men, accused of committing criminal acts for having belonged to the JSU , the PCE or the UGT union during the Republic.
All thes people died that morning shot against the walls of the cemetery in Madrid. The Council of War, held barely 48 hours earlier, sentenced to the maximum penalty for military rebellion military had no time to seek clemency Of the 13 women, seven of them were minors.
These were a few of tens of thousands illegally executed after the fascist military takeover.We remember especially these 13 women and girls who died together, but as representatives of all the rest, whose deaths have never been recognized or anyone brought to justice to this day, due to the continuing fascist stranglehold on the Spanish justice system. Only last year a top judge Garzon was blatantly barred from office for trying to bring cases to the courts
I swear to crush and sink whatever gets in our way, “said the dictator in his speeches. To date, unfortunately, we know that they fulfilled their threats … of the 13 women who died that morning, seven were children.
Barrero Carmen Aguado, Martina Garcia Barroso, Blanca Vazquez Brissac, Pilar Ibañez Well, Julia Conesa Conesa, Adelina García Casillas, Elena Gil Olaya, Virtues González García, Ana Lopez Gallego, Laffite Joaquina Lopez, Denise Manzanero Salas, Victoria Muñoz García and Luisa Rodriguez de la Fuente. …Dressmakers, pianists, secretaries, advocates, Democrats, women … shot.
Antonia Torres was also convicted, but her sentence was completed in February 1940, shot in the same walls as their peers. Julia Vellisca had better luck, she spent six years in jail and the sentence was commuted.
This year, in which the anniversary coincides with the abolition of social, labor and political rights gained over the last thirty, we see reappearing the black hand of Franco, the fascists who blatantly try to forget the activists of the democratic history of our country and continue the denial of all rights to the victims of the dictatorship and their families.
Recognize those brave young people like the members of the JSU, defended democratic ideals Republican representing the state at the time, against fascism and barbarism to which obeyed the coup which led to a general war in Spain, is a must for our country’s democratic health.
The event this year, which is, as always, be held by the wall of execution is the most unitary ever, being attended, in addition to family and friends, by representatives of the Young Socialists and Communists, the PCE, the Thirteen Roses Foundation, the United Left and memorialists organizations like Forum for Memory, The Commune, The Seville Lane Width or Sunday Malagón Foundation.
The Free 