By Norm Richards
Hi everybody, Everybody? Hello!
As the new year approaches I begin to wonder if I’m making an impression on anyone, enlightening or at least amusing someone.
Granted, I haven’t often picked serious stories that needed response or interaction but on occasion I have. I wrote about the Free Pussy Riot movement in 2012. I think what happened in Russia over the imprisoning of three young women over a protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin was a legitimate cause. Pussy Riot as they are known were sent to prison on what could be considered trumped up charges. They used the Russian Orthodox church to bring attention to their protest. It worked.
Here is the Wikipedia page that explains it all - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pussy_Riot and yet I don’t feel they should have been sent to prison for the kind of protest they conducted. I think it’s an outrage!
What if our children in Canada or the USA were put in jail for similar reasons? How long do you suppose they would remain in jail or would they go to jail at all? I don’t think so. There might be out cry from the religious right. Franklin Graham would comment. Who knows, Jessie Jackson would side with the protest and give reason and understanding to the whole thing. The next week they'd be on all the talk shows explaining themselves and that would be it. Fifteen minutes of fame and done. Smoke.
I can’t think of anyone high profile enough in Canada who would be listened to about such an issue.
Shaun Majumder would do a far better job than most any other countrymen I can think of. At least he’d add humour to those charges no one deserves to be struck with, no matter what country you are from. .
But perhaps Pussy Riot committed the ultimate protest. When Punk-Rock had it’s beginnings did the performers, if you want to call them that, think they would raise enough hell, the state would react and shut them down? Did they imagine at all? Well, perhaps not. Johnny Rotten sober wouldn’t have figured out a cause suitable to protest least of all getting upright to even perform.
Where does a state come off doing what was done to these women in Russia? Who would want to live in such a state? If a Titanic size ship left port at St Petersburg or Novorossiysk on the Black Sea next week and there were no restrictions on who left, who would leave Russia? But then what would move them to leave anyway? Are these women anywhere on anyone's mind in Russia today? Perhaps Putin knows how dumb his countrymen are and just what he can get away with to create fear in the populace. Is that it? Is it that simple?
