As if it weren't disheartening enough that members of the Russian punk rock band "Pussy Riot" were sentenced to two years imprisonment for their performance in a Moscow cathedral, now one of the young women has been transferred to solitary confinement ... at her own request.
The BBC story couches the reasons for the transfer in well-oiled, non-specific wording:
Prison officials said she had been moved because she was unable to get along with other prisoners at the Berezniki penal colony, some 715 miles (1,150km) north-east of Moscow.
Prisons the world over are places of raw nastiness. Sexual and physical abuse are par for the course. But of course it is easier to be non-specific ... it makes looking in the bathroom mirror easier: Social disorder deserves punishment, but looking closely at that punishment snaps back on the one meting it out. Let's not go there, right?
An email from a friend this morning 'shared' a story about a Texas man who had received a life term in prison after his eighth driving-while-intoxicated conviction.
Texas, a tough-on-crime, fuck-all-communist-sympathizers, big-on-'Godliness' state, has proven once again that the distance between Moscow and Austin is little more than a stone's throw.
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