XPost: ba.politics, dc.media, soc.penpals   
   XPost: alt.burningman   
   From: zkoffman@thinkprogress.org   
      
   SOCHI, Russia — For an Olympics that was anticipated by critics   
   of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, as a rare public   
   platform to bring together and amplify Russia’s scattered voices   
   of dissent, the protest here had largely turned out to be a   
   bust. And then Pussy Riot came to town.   
      
   Members of the women’s punk protest group suddenly materialized   
   here on Tuesday, announcing that they had been arrested — many   
   reporters did not even know they were here — and beginning what   
   became a three-day spiral of mayhem in which members were   
   detained three times, whipped by a Cossack as they sang and   
   danced outdoors, attacked with pepper spray and hounded by pro-   
   government activists.   
      
   “The Olympics has created an environment of sweeping violations   
   of human rights in Russia,” Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 24, one of   
   the leaders of the group, said on Thursday. “We are banned from   
   speaking out here.”   
      
   As it turns out, the mayhem provided free publicity for a new   
   protest song by the group, “Putin Will Teach You to Love the   
   Motherland,” whose music video begins with a serene shot of the   
   Black Sea far from the Olympic Park.   
      
   http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/world/europe/russian-punk-   
   group-ends-protest-tour-of-sochi.html?_r=0   
      
   So it was all an act.   
      
       
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)