I think Mr. Putin would do himself a huge favor to let those three publicity addicts go free, the sooner the better.
Nowhere else in recent history has such modest talent generated such outlandish comparisons with the great human rights struggles of our times, and this is guaranteed to repeat itself day after tedious day.
Today's Globe and Mail has not one but two odes to the genre. Lynn Crosbie sees the Pussy Riot trial as the cusp of a new wave of feminism. She places them in a radical tradition tracing from the gals of the Manson Family, through Ann Liv Young to Courtney Love.
I don't know. At least Courtney Love can play a guitar.
The other effort I find a little more troubling. Cathy Young is an acknowledged Russia expert because she spent the first seventeen years of her life in the Soviet Union and wrote a book about it. That may be a slim peg on which to hang one's Russia Expert credentials, but no matter, that upbringing in the Soviet empire qualifies her to comment.
Like virtually anything coming out of major US think tanks (Young is with the Cato Institute) her writing is vehemently anti-Putin. My theory is that Putin is hated because he is that rare leader who does not genuflect before the world's plutocrats. In America people like to believe that plutocrats are a superior breed of humans who have been favored by God and should therefore be favored by their fellow man as well.
Besides, they fund a lot of think tanks.
Young's article claims a conspiracy between Putin's secret police state and the Russian Orthodox Church. Together they're on a mission to stamp out dissent. The trial was a political show trial orchestrated by Putin. The Church has demanded that the girls be punished.
In fact, both Putin and the Church asked that the girls be treated with leniency, but what are facts when you have an axe to grind?
So please, Mr. Putin, put an end to the squawking.
Free Pussy Riot!
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