For those of you who like bullshit with your borscht:
This morning, Maria Alekhina and Nadezdha Tolokonnikova, two member of the protest group Pussy Riot, were sitting in a McDonalds in Sochi when "around fifty" plainclothes police officers arrested them "for robbery," according to their Twitter feeds. They were out of prison for a little less than two months, just enough for the world to feel slightly better about attending the gangster Olympics. And now the facade from Russia's Potemkin human rights has been abruptly pulled away. If Putin's plan with the Sochi Olympics was to mock democratic values, to show that everyone in the West can be played for suckers, and to demonstrate our hypocrisy to the rest of the world, he has completely succeeded.After questioning, the two were released without charges being filed. Let's hope this causes much more trouble for Czar Vladimir than for these two courageous women.
UPDATE: Russian security goons broke up an impromptu performance by Pussy Riot in Sochi by pepper spraying and lashing the group's members with whips. (Remember this when you tune in to NBC's "nothing to see here, move along" coverage of the Olympics). From now on, "Cossacks" will be synonymous to "cowards."
(Photo: Maria, left, and Nadezdha)
