Showing posts with label pussy riot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pussy riot. Show all posts

Thursday, 29 May 2014

Unbelievable rapes in India; police participate

Teen gets three years in gang rape, murder of Indian woman: a protester in India chants slogans as she braces herself against the spray fired from police water canons during a protest sparked by the gang rape of student. This is the first verdict in a case that has sparked international outrage over the brutal crime (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images/NPR).

Young girls hold banners during a demonstration Thursday in Lucknow, India, after police arrested several men for allegedly gang raping and murdering two teenage children, sisters, then hanging their bodies from a tree. At least one of the perpetrators was a policeman (Azam Husain/Barcroft Media/Landov).
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Slutwalk, London (Garry Knight)
NPR's Julie McCarthy reports today on another alleged gang rape and murder in India -- this one involving two teenage sisters from the lowest Hindu [slave or "untouchable"] caste, whose bodies were found hanging from a mango tree.
 
McCarthy says the two girls, ages 14 and 15, were killed in a village about 140 miles east of India's capital New Delhi.
 
What U.S. child rapists look like, incest, too
"They reportedly had gone to a field to relieve themselves but never returned," McCarthy says. "Like hundreds of millions of Indians, they lacked a bathroom at home."

The girls' family belong to the Dalit caste, formerly known as "untouchables," the lowest rung of India's ancient [social stratification-by-birth] system of societal hierarchy.

What Indian rapists look like. Men convicted in notorious case to be sentenced (npr.org)
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Men say no to rape of their female relatives
The Press Trust of India says charges have been filed against seven people, including two police constables. Local media report that one of the policemen allegedly participated in the attack. The other is said to have refused to listen to relatives who reported the two girls missing.
 
Prison guard and homosexual rapist
The Associated Press says: "Hundreds of angry villagers stayed next to the tree throughout Wednesday, silently protesting the police response. Indian TV footage showed the villagers sitting under the girls' bodies as they swung in the wind, and preventing authorities from taking them down until the suspects were arrested."
 
Human Rights campaigners say Dalit women are frequently the target of attacks, and this incident is yet another in a series of violent rapes against Indian women in recent years that have united India in anger.

FEMEN says no to rape, no to patriarchy!
Last year, four men were sentenced in the highest-profile of the cases -- one involving a young woman on a bus who was gang raped [in front of her boyfriend who was beaten unconscious] and later died from injuries she sustained in the [violent sexual] assault. More (MORE)

Tuesday, 27 May 2014

Women Hating (#YesAllWomen)

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Rebecca Solnit, Amy Goodman, Aaron Mate, Juan Gonzalez (democracynow.org)
UCSB and UCLA students mourn at candlelight vigil at UCLA on May 26. This deadly shooting rampage has sparked a conversation about gendered sexual violence in the U.S. just as the infamous bus rape did in India. Why do we tolerate the abuse of half the society? (David McNew/Getty Images/ksdk.com)


Maybe "not all men," but yes all women
Santa Barbara is grieving after a 22-year-old man [the privileged son of one of the makers of "The Hunger Games"] killed six UC Santa Barbara college students just after posting a misogynistic video online vowing to take his revenge on women purportedly for sexually rejecting him.
 
UCSB (Robyn Beck, AFP/Getty Images)
The massacre prompted an unprecedented reaction online with tens of thousands of women joining together to tell their stories of sexual violence, harassment, and intimidation. By Sunday, the hashtag #YesAllWomen had gone viral. 

In speaking out, women were placing the shooting inside a broader context of misogynist violence that often goes ignored.

In her new book, Men Explain Things to Me, author and historian Rebecca Solnit tackles this issue and many others. "We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it’s almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern," Solnit says. "Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, BUT it does have a gender." More

Yes, all women (Digital Vision/Getty Images)
(The Tennessean) Twitter users are responding by the thousands in the wake of a mass shooting in Isla Vista, California. Friday night by a man who pledged revenge on women who had rejected him. Suspected slayer [and self-proclaimed "alpha male"] Elliot Rodger killed six people before [allegedly] taking his own life. In YouTube videos and a manifesto he detailed a "war on women." More

Saturday, 10 May 2014

United We Stand Festival (Occupy.com) FREE!

Pat Macpherson (occupy.com), CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; United We Stand Festival
A series of college campus concerts kicks off today at UCLA with Public Enemy, Wu-Tang Clan, and more independent candidates than the mind can easily contemplate (The Festival)

"One movement" -- 99% against criminal banks, Occupy LA (srilankanguardian.org)

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Tickets, tickets, I need tickets! - It's free now.
NOW FREE OF CHARGE! The Woodstock United We Stand Festival show has neither been rescheduled nor cancelled. It is relocated! Check for new venue. Ticketmaster has issued refunds, and anyone who got tickets through a non-refundable donation to Free & Equal will get priority seating. We'll see everyone today unless the LA Weekly is right.
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United We Stand Music Fest Calls on Youth to Seize Politics – and Power
(Occupy.com, May 8, 2014)
Recognized names in American media, music, politics, and activism will assemble today -- Saturday, May 10th -- for the inaugural United We Stand Festival. Then the show moves to a state near you.

Today's show is at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion -- kicking off a 10-campus bus tour that aims to educate and empower youth to assert a new electoral force in politics.

(N.W.A. the West Coast Public Enemy) "Express Yourself" - I'm expressing with my full capabilities/ And now I'm living in correctional facilities/ Cuz some don't agree with how I do this/ I get straight and meditate like a Buddhist..." Dr. Dre (the First Billionaire of Hip Hop) was going to come, but he is too busy counting Apple, Inc. money.
 
Solutions: Back to the land to garden but this time with organic permaculture (Occupy)
 
"...with liberty and justice for sale."
Organized by Christina Tobin and the Free and Equal Elections Foundation, the festival features TV host Larry King, former U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich, author and congressional candidate Marianne Williamson, David Bronner of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, former Green presidential candidate Jill Stein, and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

In Tobin's words, the unique brand of politics, activism, and music coming together into a single festival is "designed to inspire America’s youth to educate themselves and exercise their civil liberties to become true advocates for change.”

Awake the Nation! See all UWS Festival details at Wisdom Quarterly

 
Media makers from RT (Russia Today)'s Abby Martin to Ben Swann, Lee Camp, David Swanson, Amber Lyon, Josh Tolley, Brad Friedman (KPFK 90.7 FM), and Occupy.com's Michael Levitin will also be speaking at the festival.

Music will include performances by Public Enemy, Immortal Technique, Wu-Tang Clan, Playing for Change, Cynic, Rooftop Revolutionaries, Sounds of Solidarity, The Siren, Luminaries, and A-Alikes, among others. More
Pussy Riot's Nadia visits Cecily McMillan after first NYC O.W.S. conviction (Occupy)

I am the 1%. Don't go to UWSF!
We are the 99%. Go to the Fest!

Wednesday, 7 May 2014

Buddhism in Russia: Lhasa's Emissary to Tsar

Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; John Snelling; J. Anderson
The Kremlin in Red Square, Moscow: imperial capital of vast land holdings that again include Crimea but not the "Stans" of Central Asia, formerly Buddhist countries overtaken by Islam.
 
Buddhism in Russia: The Story of Agvan Dorzhiev: Lhasa's Emissary to the Tsar is a fascinating story of political and religious intrigue.

It tells the story of Agvan Dorziev, a Mongolian Buddhist Lama, who was instrumental in the founding of Buddhism in Russia.
 
[Russia/USSR as an empire spread out to include many formerly Buddhist lands in Central Asia. It also contains Kalmykia -- Europe's only indigenous Buddhist country, the home of international chess tournaments and Lenin's grandmother. The shamans of Siberia practice a shramanic/shamanistic form of Esoteric Buddhism from Mongolia, Tibet, Western China, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and faraway Afghanistan (Gandhara, India), Russia's "Vietnam." With secret CIA help, Afghans eventually repelled the USSR so the USA/MIC could illegally invade, occupy, and plunder it.]

The book includes an update on the status of Buddhism in Russia since Glasnost.

NUMBERS: There are under-counted Russian Buddhists throughout the country -- particularly in Buryatia, Yakutia (Sakha Republic), Kalmykia, and Siberia -- with census numbers reflecting more "atheists," "animists," and "Eastern Orthodox Christians" as if any of these designations negated one's Buddhist beliefs or practices. A Moscovite who practices the Dharma will still routinely be listed as an official atheist (formerly a good Communist party member) unless s/he is from a Buddhist Russian republic or territory.
 
Soviet slice of Buddhist history
J. Anderson, edited by Wisdom Quarterly 
Gorgeous Russian Buddhist temple, Buryatia, Russia (J. Weeks/VOA.com)
 
Civil war in Ukraine gathering pace
Civil war in Ukraine gathering pace
John Snelling's major work was being completed when he passed away in 1992. It tells a fascinating story about Ven. Agvan Dorzhiev, a brilliant Mongolian lama and the Tibetan capital's emissary to Russia in the 19th century.
 
Arrayed against the backdrop of the fiercely Orthodox court of the Russian Tsars -- with its sacred religio-political [unseparated church and state] dominance over nearly every aspect of Russian life, the extraordinary progress made by Ven. Dorzhiev in setting Tibetan Buddhism on a solid footing in that land is a story of remarkable courage and success.
  
Odessa's tragedy buries Ukraine's hope
Odessa's tragedy buries Ukraine's hope
Snelling's books can be a bit dry and academic, but his scholarship shines, and the text is surefooted and informative. The book's success rests on its thoroughness. Snelling takes a comprehensive look at the early and post-Communist state of Buddhism in Russia.
 
The enormous expanse of Russia bordering the rest of Northern Europe on the left and Siberia on the right with America just to the right beyond the Bering Straits. Buddhist Kalmykia is shown in red on the shores of the Caspian Sea.

Russian Buddhist monk, Vesak 2013 (rbth.ru)
This, indeed, makes a valuable contribution to the study of the spread and influence of Buddhism as a world religion. It even speculates with respect to the future of the Dharma in Russian Asia.
 
Included are some marvelous photos of Ven. Dorzhiev and a brilliant mini-history of the Buryats (from which he arose). While readable, it is definitely a specialist's book. More than biography, less than hagiography -- it concerns itself with what is rather than what if.

I want a Pussy Riot! - We do, too, Comrade.
In any case, it is a tale unlikely to be told anywhere else.
 
Certainly, it is told nowhere else with as much authority, passion, and carefully wrought scrutiny as Snelling delivers. Recommended for anyone inclined toward the myriad diversity of Buddhist history beyond India and Southeast Asia. 

World War II: Behind Closed Doors
J. Anderson, edited by Wisdom Quarterly 
This is a welcomed reappraisal of Churchill, a film incorporates information from Soviet files not available until the 1990s. One important outcome is a new and welcome delineation of the lying duplicity of England's Winston Churchill, his involvement in handing half of Europe to Russian Dictator Joseph Stalin, sentencing the Eastern Bloc nations to half a century of Stalinist (Orwellian) suffering. On the whole, it presents a view of history distinct from stories regurgitated in the West... More

Monday, 14 April 2014

Dismantling Ukraine, CIA blunder or Russia?

Vlad Putin gives topless FEMEN protester the reptilian snake eyes as Germany's Merkel and others make a mad dash to get out of the way (femen.org)

FEMEN coming to the USA
Who fomented the uprising in Ukraine -- the progressives of Kiev and the powerful women of the Maidan?

Or was it the CIA working behind the scenes hand in hand with Sen. John McCain, who was creeping around the country for weeks, while topless demonstrators were calling attention to the plight of westward-leaning cosmopolitans? 

Dirty girl, cover your dirty body! (FEMEN)
Then there was the U.S. Ambassador making statements about who would be installed once Pres. Yanukovich was deposed. It's true the wealthier city dwellers wanted to move into the Euro zone and out of the Soviet sphere, but not so most of the rural residents.

Pres. (Dictator) Putin and Russia caught on to the spread of N.A.T.O. and stood in the way. Not content to lose a strategic region, they took some of it back. No doubt they would gladly take all of it back and more. They must have a long-term plan: military aggression and overreach builds an empire like it did in the time of the czars.

The way to peace is proactive (codepink.org)
Who's side are we on to question the source of the Western-style freedom aspirations of Ukraine? We are progressive, cosmopolitan city dwellers, so it's easy for us to side with FEMEN and say GO EURO MAIDANS! 

But we cannot deny that this "revolution," like many recent uprisings, hasn't been what it seems. We think and are told by the mainstream media that it is grassroots and inspired by the "unintended consequences/benefits" of social media. Bull.

The attempt to depose Castro and the Cuban regime with ZunZumeo shows that these things are carefully plotted and implemented. Facebook, Twitter, and cellphones are not instruments of liberation -- but all part of the spying apparatus. Manipulated to stir up trouble for governments and police departments with predictable results. 

"Stop racism" (femen.org)
If the CIA, NSA, FBI, DHS wanted people to get on the Internets and make trouble (Arab Spring, Occupy, Orange Revolution, Green Revolution, Saffron Revolution, Pink Revolution, Red Shirts vs. Yellow Shirts, Kill Kony Kampaign, and the next brainchild of some shy college nerd who never thought of him/herself as a revolutionary but was just trying to bring a little attention to some social justice cause), why do these clandestine operations look the other way or actively help police departments when they come down hard on participants? 

Occupy LA protest of racism and injustice, Spring St. (citizenside.com)
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Balaclava-clad protester (latimes.com)
Mass arrests, mass incarcerations, jail sentences, fines, probation, police records, suppression by attention because "We've got our eye on you!" And everyone is still walking around carrying their own shiny, sleek monitoring devices proudly sporting/supporting their corporate brands.
Nadia, Pussy Riot (willworth.co.uk)
Brands are for cows, and branding is for slaves. Apple logo, anyone? An F for your Facebook cause? How about a "little bird" that quickly flies back to the police chief and whispers in his ear: "It was so-and-so talking, here's what they said, arrest them for saying it" [but develop a pretext first since our eavesdropping evidence can't be used without a warrant]. It's a whole new way to police, spy, control, and pit us against one another.

*Mocking* No, social media's the best! Look, I can save the warbler in my community and stop LAPD spying by liking this movement then spreading the message to all my Facebook friends and tweeting about it on my iPhone and ultralight Mac book, while I stand in line to buy a pair of Google Glass glasses to ogle for G-men. They sit in their cubicles, and I do the footwork then incriminate myself and my friends on email, top-secret SnapChat exchanges. Then I'm free to get a little sexting in on the side with all my UK friends.

NSA: We will end "privacy" until no one in America remembers what that ever meant.
 
It's not true. While the "instruments of change" can be anything from a strong voice and a point of view to a private meeting, we have to be aware when we are being monitored and manipulated. The solution is not to say, "Let them spy on me." 

Make out, not war (CP)
The answer is to resist and avoid being spied on or taking it as given then doing all the organizing we normally would. Listen to Snowden, listen to Manning, listen to Greenwald, Scahill, Poitras, and Assange -- and their are plenty of other voices in the wilderness. Listen but think. We know network news is lying and spinning all day long. Even good voices can be twisted and spun to work against themselves.

Greg Palast exposes US/NATO meddling in foreign countries

Friday, 21 March 2014

Review: Pussy Riot in L.A. (video)

Amber Larson, Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly;  Library Foundation L.A. (lfla.org)

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.
 
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
 
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).

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.

Russian Buddhist temple (Alexey Savransky)
(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.
 
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).

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.
 
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.

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.