Pussy Riot: Americans are simultaneously fascinated and appalled because the whole situation is so staggeringly unAmerican

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/joan-smith/joan-smith-putin-has-lost-this-game-of-cat-and-mouse-8059960.html

Joan Smith: Putin has lost this game of cat and mouse

JOAN SMITH 

"Repressive regimes commonly mistake power for omnipotence. No one doubts that they can arrest their opponents, isolate them, deny them fair trials and put them in prison. What's much harder to do, in the modern world, is bury critical ideas under a suffocating blanket of censorship. Even if the regime gets the result it wants, its leaders risk appearing petty and vindictive, if not actually stupid. So the Russian government has little to celebrate in the wake of the trial of three members of the punk band, Pussy Riot."

SUNDAY 19 AUGUST 2012