Pussy Riot, British style
[ by Charles Cameron — comparative images, Russian and British, with videos of Sunday’s Occupy-related protest during Evensong at St Paul’s in London ]
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By way of contrast with the bright balaclavas of the Pussy Riot grrls, the British protesters wore white, and chained themselves to the pulpit steps during the Sunday service of Evensong.
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Here’s a short video featuring the way St Paul’s integrates their protest into a ceremonial procession, so that it’s just a little odd in about the same way that Elton John playing piano during a service in the same cathedral is just a little odd.
Or let’s just say, eccentric… British.
Here’s the 30-minute official St Paul’s version, including the sermon, some muffled protester voices, and some blasts from the great cathedral organ…
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Essentially, the protesters get co-opted by the clerics — with an offer of a little chat, probably over a cuppa tea, to follow…
October 19th, 2012 at 1:10 am
Charles,
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A comment only loosely related to this thread (and not to the tired She-parts Riot), and that is a topic we’ve discussed before — provocations/and authoritarian/creepy state trial balloons in general.
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https://zenpundit.com/?p=13394#comment-79898
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One of the things that greatly disturbs me that the right wing press (led by Breitbart.com) is pointing to is the sheer number of tweets calling for the death of Mitt Romney if he is elected President of the United States after both recent presidential debates. And that those investigating these tweeters, like reporters working for a certain King of Conspiracy talk radio host in Austin, Texas, have noticed that these are not dummy accounts. Meaning that dozens if not hundreds and perhaps into the thousands now of individual tweeters with real online histories that can quite easily be matched with offline identities/photos are committing a crime, or at least what would be a federal crime on November 7th if Romney were the president elect (I’m sure there are other laws that apply as well to candidates and not just presidents or presidents-elect).
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Why is the Secret Service doing nothing? Is it simply easier for them to question people if they happen to be white bitter clinger types as opposed to urban Obama supporters of a darker hue?
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Why are the usual authoritarian creeps I monitor occasionally on Twitter (@ReginaldQuill, cough cough, but there are others equally obsessed with Assange et al) saying nothing on this subject? Aren’t they supposed to be defending America from ‘agitprop’ and subversion, or do they only care about the alleged foreign-inspired variety? Or is homegrown extremism consist only of fearing one’s government, not of threatening violence to any who would threaten all that government cheese? (And the idea that Romney would cut off people’s food stamps is itself a fantasy, the country club/Rockefeller Republicans are the last who want to see cities burn and the most likely to agree with their Democrat golf buddies that the food stamps and Planned Parenthood clinicsdown in the ghetto should be increased, regardless of what some Bible thumping rednecks think).
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Again, these comments are not solely intended for Charles and Zen, as much respect as I have for them. It’s intended rather to get those very frequent readers of ZP in the military to THINK about the would-be fascists posing as patriotic Republicans among us. To ponder why there are those who don’t seem to mind gangbanger thugs burning stuff and threatening to kill politicians if it creates the pretext for putting boots and the Creepy State on American streets.
October 19th, 2012 at 1:21 am
After that riff on the ‘I’m gonna riot in this mo#@^&*^% Twitter animals and those who refuse to question them, I should return to the topic of this post.
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One, clearly the UK is not Russia. The Russian Orthodox Church takes its liturgy more seriously than most of the Church of England. And violations of private property and public disorder both get harsher sentences in Russia, though this penal colony in Mordovia which allows children on sight and conjugal visits is not exactly Stalin’s GULAGs. I don’t think the women should’ve been sent there in the first place, they ought to be doing community service/making restitution to the Church instead, but I am not the Russian authorities who still view jailtime as the best deterrent rather than being shamed into humility.
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Two, with the exception of the lads down at the (totally MI-5 bugged and possibly MI-6 coopted) Finsbury Park mosque (kept open by the British security services as a roach motel, of sorts, though as with 7/7 the lines get so blurry it’s easy to conspiracy theorize that the Brits actually run some jihadi cells), nearly all of the subversion in Britain is of the homegrown variety (even Al-Muhajiroun is increasingly first generation British Muslims who hate their decadent country). Meaning even the most fanatical British eurocrats are products of their native soil, by and large, of that old Fabian Socialist tradition that is always two steps forward one step back toward technocracy/building Jerusalem amidst the dark Satanic mills, without God. Some of them like Polly Toynbee are even literal descendants of the old 19th century utopian families that wanted to inbreed together or their historian friends and confidantes. England is a rather small island after all.
October 19th, 2012 at 1:25 am
Last links for this thread — on the subject of whether the ‘Demintern’/London/D.C. has a soft spot for Islamists so long as they’re directed against the appropriate targets (Putin, Assad) — here’s a link about some Hizb ut-Tahir guys trying to stir up trouble in Tatarstan (incidentally, a Muslim majority part of Russia that has a birth rate about the same or lower than the Moscow region):
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http://www.austereinsomniac.info/blog/2012/10/15/liberasts-and-islamists.html
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Liberasts and Islamists – whereby it looks like the Russian services ran their own ‘roach motel’ confab to see who turned out and whom should the oxtrot ierra ravo follow up on later.
http://www.austereinsomniac.info/blog/2012/4/12/a-video-and-more-for-democratist.html
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activist Ponomarov tells a Japanese diplomat on camera his part of the Russian opposition lives off State Dept. money