Image: Putin Meets Pussy Riot by Punk Toad / Flickr
The love affair with Pussy Riot shows no sign of slowing down since the trio of punk women were sentenced to 2 years in prison. Neither has the legal system’s attack on their actions, with Russia Today reporting two more members of the group now under fire:
A new criminal case was launched into two Pussy Riot members who escaped police after participating in an infamous ‘punk prayer’ in Moscow’s main cathedral. The announcement comes days after their co-participants were sentenced to two years in jail. “We have launched a separate criminal case against the unknown members of the ‘Pussy Riot’ band, and are seeking to establish their identities,” a police spokesperson told the Interfax news agency.
As an aside, what does it say about the American mainstream media that a Russian news agency sometimes accused of pro-Putin bias has become a major source of news for myself and many others I know?
The journalist behind a popular activism site is facing 21 years in prison for publishing conversations with law enforcement officials that he says were on-the-record while investigating a police brutality case in the state of New Hampshire.
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By running CopBlock, Mueller has created an online outlet to release information about law enforcement officers that may not make it to the mainstream media. His attempt at showcasing what incident in particular he found a problem with his put the next two decades of his life in question, though.
Mueller was indicted following a report he filed in response to an incident at a Manchester, NH high school last year that ended with 17-year-old Frank W. Harrington being slammed face-first into a table and detained for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Video footage of a school police officer picking up Harrington and assaulting him were leaked to Mueller, who followed up on his own and attempted to interview a Manchester police captain, the Manchester High School West principal and a school secretary as part of his investigation into the incident. Mueller later used samples of those recorded phone interviews in a video report of the incident that he published to his website, and although he says he identified himself as a member of the media when approaching those officials for comment, he has been charged with felony wiretapping for allegedly putting those conversations on tape without expressed permission.
Reports on Twitter say that he was found guilty today and was sentenced to spend about 90 days in prison.
Living in the future: they watch us. We get in trouble for watching them. Upside: Ubiquitous availability of Big Mama Thornton videos.
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