Maria Alekhina (left) and Nadezhda Tolokonnikov. Photo via Earth First!
Russian President Vladimir Putin said today that the imprisoned Pussy Riot members will be freed under an amnesty but described their protest against him in a church as “disgraceful behaviour,” NDTV reported.
The amnesty will also free 30 people arrested in a Greenpeace protest against Arctic oil — before Russia hosts the Winter Olympics in February 2014.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina are serving two-year sentences for a protest at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which included the filming the music video “Punk Prayer – Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!”
Putin said the amnesty was passed to mark the 20th anniversary of Russia’s post-Soviet constitution, and not with the Greenpeace protesters or Pussy Riot in mind.
At an annual news conference today Putin said:
“It (the amnesty) is neither linked to Greenpeace, nor this group (Pussy Riot).”
But Putin also said, “I was not sorry that they (the Pussy Riot members) ended up behind bars,” Putin said. “I was sorry that they were engaged in such disgraceful behaviour, which in my view was degrading to the dignity of women. They went beyond all boundaries.”
Maria Alekhina (left) and Nadezhda Tolokonnikov. Photo via Earth First!
Russian lawmakers approved the final version of an amnesty today that will free Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who are both currently serving two-year sentences.
The State Duma, or lower house of parliament, made modifications to the amnesty, and then approved it. The law passed unanimously, according to the state news organization RIA Novosti.
“Opening up and finding what’s inside me to write.”
By Michael Goldberg.
Neil Young bangs away at the chords. And there’s such sadness in his voice. He’s playing an acoustic guitar. He’s nearly finished his third song of the night. Banging away too hard. Or maybe the way he’s banging at those chords is perfect. And oh, the sadness.
In that quavering voice he sings:
Yes only love can break your heart, What if your world should fall apart?
Love broke my heart, and my world fell apart. I was 17. When you’re 17 you don’t know you’ll recover. When you’re 17 everything about love is the first time, even if it’s not the first time.
When you were young and on your own, How did it feel to be alone?
She had long brown hair, almost down to her waist. She wore white peasant blouses and worn denim overalls. It was 1970 and the world was so different. There are a lot of clichés about the ‘60s, which actually didn’t end until the early ‘70s (countercultural movements don’t conveniently end as a new decade begins), a lot of misunderstanding about what it was like back then.
There was a day in 1970 when we sat together, her and I, in the swing that hung from a huge tree in her family’s very private, very large front yard, and the wind was making the leaves in the trees shimmer, and the future seemed wide open, full of possibility, I mean anything was possible. Her body warm against mine as we swung back and forth. The whole world about to be remade, I just knew it.
I am lonely but you can free me, All in the way that you smile.
Yes, that was exactly it. Exactly.
Neil’s music was part of my soundtrack during the ‘60s and the ‘70s. He sang the sad songs and as a teenager I didn’t want to know the pain I heard in his voice. But I did know it. Every time her and I were apart, I knew it. Still I loved to hear Neil’s voice.
And later, after it was over, when we just couldn’t make it together — that girl and I — I knew for real how true Neil’s words were, and today they’re still true.
Neil’s new album, Live at the Cellar Door, was recorded in 1970, 43 years ago, at the Cellar Door, a club in Washington, DC. Listening to it I see, hear, feel, smell those days, a rush of moving images, as if my life was captured on film and these old recordings are the key to starting up the projector. All the ways I blew it, and how crazy it got. And she wouldn’t take my calls, wouldn’t see me when I came to her door, and I thought I’d explode.
Yes, love can break your heart — a cliché and so what, ‘cause it’s the truth.
Hearing Neil sing those old songs in that tenor voice, the tenor voice of a young man, it breaks my heart all over again. Neil was 25 when he played those songs at the Cellar Door.
Daryl Hannah (second from left) and Neil Young (center), with Athabascan Chipewyan Chief Allan Adam, left, during a visit to the Chipewyan Prairie First Nation in Janvier in September. Photo via the Edmonton Journal.
Neil Young will perform four “Honor The Treaties” benefit shows in Canada to raise money for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) Legal Defense Fund.
The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation is suing Shell Oil to stop the corporation from undertaking additional oil sands extraction projects the Indian group says will encroach on lands and resources protected by an 1899 treaty.
In September Young spoke at a press conference in Washington D.C. with Senators Harry Reid and Debbie Stabenow.
”I am against the Keystone pipeline in a big way,” Young said. “The fact is, Fort McMurray [Alberta] looks like Hiroshima. Fort McMurray is a wasteland. The Indians up there and the native peoples are dying. People are sick. People are dying of cancer because of this. All of the First Nations peoples up there are threatened by this. Their food supply is wasted, their treaties are no good. They have the right to live on the land, like they always did, but there’s no land left that they can live on. All the animals are dying.”
Supporting Young at all four dates is Diana Krall.
The shows will take place in Toronto (Jan. 12), Winnipeg (Jan. 16), Regina (Jan. 17) and Calgary (Jan. 19).
Check the subliminal messaging in this image of the sailors lying on the turkey in a sea of gravy in the shape of a “v” for vegan.
The National have made a Thanksgiving video for “Bob’s Burgers,” the animated TV show.
The group has done a remake of “Gravy Boat,” putting a dark, possibly vegan spin on it.
In the video, a group of sailors sing the ode to gravy, now turned into a dour funeral march, including the daft chorus, “Sailors in your mouth,” and are ultimately eaten by the Belcher family, equating the eating of animals with the eating of humans.
Please ignore the abysmal example set by President Obama who, in the name of Thanksgiving, supports torture as 45 million birds are horrifically abused; dragged through electrified stun baths, and then have their throats slit. And President Obama laughs. Haha, so funny!
As Ingrid Newkirk from PETA points out, turkey ‘meat’ is one of “our nation’s top killers”, causing heart-attacks and strokes in humans due to saturated animal fats and cholesterol. And President Obama laughs.
Further, the meat industry is responsible for 51% of human-caused greenhouse-gas emission, therefore the embarrassingly stupid White House ‘turkey pardon’ is open support for a viciously cruel and environmentally irresponsible industry.
And President Obama laughs.
Bonnie “Prince” Billy released a new recording of his “Black Captain” on Saturday, dedicated to Greenpeace captain Peter Willcox, who was recently released from a jail in St. Petersburg after spending over two months in Russian custody, the Huffington Post reports.
This is cool. In time for all your holiday mail, PETA has released postage stamps featuring famous vegetarians.
Featured on the stamps: Sarah Silverman, Bob Barker, Paul McCartney, Ricky Martin, Russell Simmons, Mayim Bialik, Edie Falco, Casey Affleck, Belinda Carlisle, Pamela Anderson, Alan Cumming, John Salley, Vivienne Westwood, Sara Gilbert, Morrissey, Joaquin Phoenix, Marco Antonio Regil, Sam Simon, Stella McCartney, and Joan Jett.
Over at Brooklyn Veganthey found some choice quotes from vegetarian celebrities:
Morrissey says,
I think animals look to humans for protection, and of course humans lead them into slaughterhouses, which to me is just like an image of leading children into a slaughterhouse. There’s no difference.
And some words of wisdom from Sir Paul McCartney:
If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty.
Is twelve million dollar sharp-man Damien Hirst funding Banksy? That’s what Daily Beast writer Lizzie Crocker theorizes today.
Crocker writes:
Despite this ostensible aversion to personal fame and publicity, Banksy agreed to be featured in Hirst’s 2006 show at the Serpentine Gallery in London, “In the darkest hour there may be light.” Speaking to The Guardian about Banksy’s work, Hirst praised the pseudonymous graffiti artist. “I’ve always thought he was great. The streets are boring…anyone like Banksy who makes it entertaining and treats people like people instead of consumers is brilliant.”
It was the beginning of a collaboration that has fueled rumors about Banksy’s identity and associations—particularly amongst those who speculate that “Banksy” is in fact a sort of performance art collective funded by art world mandarins.
I never cared for David Hockney’s paintings. Why was that? I didn’t pay much attention to them, but on occasion he would do the cover of the New Yorker and I dismissed his work as decorative, with a sneer.
Well I was wrong.
As soon as I entered his massive “A Bigger Exhibition” at the de Young Museum in San Francisco last Friday, I realized my mistake.
Hockney is actually a phenomenal artist. The show, which is composed of mostly work he’s done since 2000, is mind-blowing. How could one person complete over 250 works of art, some of them wall-sized, in 13 years. By contrast, the Pointillist painter George Seurat, for example, could spend two years on a single painting.
I could talk about Hockney’s landscapes, which are unlike other landscape paintings. The artist has created a new visual language to let us see what he sees. There is a quality in the work that makes me think of Vincent van Gogh.
But what’s most impressive to me is Hockney’s embracement of the iPhone and the iPad as tools to make art.
The man is 76 years old. He is very successful. He could keep painting and drawing portraits and landscapes for the rest of his life. He did not need to start using new technology to make art.
But he did.
Check out the images above that Hockney made with his iPhone and an app called Brushes.
Or this piece made with an iPad and Brushes:
As I wandered though the exhibit, which takes up most of two floors of the museum, I was struck by two things.
First, when you look at the world, and I mean really look, and are open, there’s a chance of seeing something new.
And then I thought about all the rules that we come up against in life. Art is supposed to be “this,” and a novel is supposed to be “this,” and music is supposed to be “this.”
But we can ignore the rules. There’s a price to pay of course, especially if you’re not an already celebrated artist. But how are we going to break on through to something new unless we takes chances.
