Pyotr Verzilov, a Russian performance artist and political activist, is the spouse of Pussy Riot's Nadezda Tolokonnikova. Here is his talk at the Olso Freedom Forum on the politics of Pussy Riot, their controversial protest and the case against them (from May 2012):

“From 2 years of break, PSY is finally coming back with his 6th album! The album's weighty title song 'Gangnam Style' is composed solely by PSY himself from lyrics to choreography. The song is characterized by its strongly addictive beats and lyrics, and is thus certain to penetrate the foundations of modern philosophy.”

Over at Business Insider, a video and partial transcript of the closing statement from one of the defendants in the Pussy Riot blasphemy trial [h/t: Justin Smith]:

On 30th July, the first day of the trial, we presented our response to the accusations. Prior to that we were in prison, in confinement. We can’t do anything there. We can’t make statements. We can’t make films. We don’t have the internet in there. We can’t even give our lawyer a bit of paper because that’s banned too. Our first chance to speak came on 30th July. The document we’d written was read out by defence lawyer Volkov because the court refused outright to let the defendants speak. We called for contact and dialogue rather than conflict and opposition. We reached out a hand to those who, for some reason, assume we are their enemies. In response they laughed at us and spat in our outstretched hands. “You’re disingenuous,” they told us. But they needn’t have bothered. Don’t judge others by your own standards. We were always sincere in what we said, saying exactly what we thought, out of childish naïvety, sure, but we don’t regret anything we said, even on that day. We are reviled but we do not intend to speak evil in return. We are in desperate straits but do not despair. We are persecuted but not forsaken. It’s easy to humiliate and crush people who are open, but when I am weak, then I am strong.

Listen to us rather than to Arkady Mamontov talking about us. Don’t twist and distort everything we say. Let us enter into dialogue and contact with the country, which is ours too, not just Putin’s and the Patriarch’s. Like Solzhenitsyn, I believe that in the end, words will crush concrete. Solzhenitsyn wrote, “the word is more sincere than concrete, so words are not trifles. Once noble people mobilize, their words will crush concrete.”

As a Pakistani-American I take special pleasure in wishing my Indian friends and colleagues and family a happy independence day today. Though I do it annually, I never tire of reading Jawaharlal Nehru's moving and poetic speech to the Indian Constituent Assembly which was delivered exactly 65 years ago at midnight. If you have not done so before, do read it.

From Wikipedia:

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment, we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history, India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and grandeur of her success and failures. Through good and ill fortune alike, she has never lost sight of that quest, forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of misfortunes and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom, we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons us now.

Read the rest here. And a short video of the occasion:

Rabia Mehmood in the Express Tribune:

The short documentary is a collection of testimonies in which those Ahmadis who have faced persecution narrate the target killings of loved ones, discrimination at the hands of fellow students and what it is like to live in jail as a blasphemy convict.

Rabwah, is a town of District Jhang with the highest population of Ahmadis in Pakistan. The town is also home to some who have been convicted of blasphemy and under the anti-Ahmadi Ordinance of 1984, making them prisoners in this town.

A major chunk of the report was filmed in Rabwah and identities of some community members have been hidden for the sake of their security. The young man who shares the story of the horrors his family faced after his brother was accused of blasphemy has now left Pakistan. Therefore, we took the risk of showing his face on-camera. The town still provides a sense of security for the rest, so the condemned could speak with hidden faces.

More here.

Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon:

Director Anthony Baxter’s horrifying, frequently outrage-inspiring “You’ve Been Trumped” chronicles the true saga of what happened when Donald Trump — a man described in the film as “someone who just isn’t used to hearing ‘no’” — decided to build a golf resort in a territory so environmentally unique it’s been called the Amazon rain forest of Scotland. Suffice to say, things got ugly. Ugly like a Trump casino. As Baxter demonstrates with agonizing, unflinching clarity, the result was a community and a land that were literally rolled over in the name of corporate greed — and with the apparent blessing of the local authorities.

The series of unfortunate events that befalls the community when an irascible mogul comes to town can only be described as flat-out surreal. Where to even begin? There’s the way Trump’s application to build in the area – rejected on existing environmental limitations on the special scientific interest site — magically wins approval two years later. There’s the way he repeatedly and sneeringly refers to the put-upon Balmedie locals — in particular Michael Forbes, the feisty farmer who resolutely refused to sell him his property, as “disgusting pigs.” There’s the litany of nightmares the community endures as Trump and company plow their way through their world – having their water and their power cut off, having their property damaged and, for the kicker, then getting billed for the wreckage.

More here.  And here’s the trailer: