By Katie Halper • @kthalps • 10 years ago

Pussy Riot releases first song since members arrested

Russia’s feminist punk music protest collective Pussy Riot has released its first song since three of its members were imprisoned for staging an anti-Putin punk prayer protest in a Russian-Orthodox church in Moscow in 2012. Their latest song and video is called Like a Red Prison. The lyrics to the song are written out in English in the music video posted above. As you’ll see, Pussy Riot takes on the oil industry, the President Putin (“Your president is like an ayatollah in Iran”) hompphobia (“Homophobic vermin, out from history”) and sexism (“Fucking sexist, leave the hole alone.”)

You can read the lyrics after the jump.

Gruel-Propaganda, Gruel-Propagandaaaa!

The country has hardly mastered
Mechanized labor.
More and more often when I’m working hard —
I am rude — don’t know if it’s appropriate.

Local activists flow down the pipeline,
Filling it with life and calling for destruction!

The country has hardly mastered
Mechanized labor.

Federal Penitentiary Service, Interior Ministry, Emergency Situations Ministry, and Rosnano,
LUKoil, TNK, Rosneft, and Gazprom,

Gruel-Propaganda, Gruel-Propagandaaaa!

Get registration,
Evildoers at the oil towers,
Oil on the tables,
Sechin with crocodiles,
Like in a red prison.

Bathe the worker in the Norwegian fjord,
Cut off your penis like the Depardieu character,
You have a president like Iran’s ayatollah,
And your church is like it is in the U.A.E.

Gruel-Propaganda, Gruel-Propagandaaaa!

So, let everything be like it is in Qatar,
Evildoers at the oil towers,
Pumping till its dry,
A physics university teaches theology,
Epaulettes and oil wells,
Navalny in jail,
Hugo Chavez lives,
Like in a red prison.

Gruel-Propaganda, Gruel-Propagandaaaa!

Evil ****ing sexist, leave the hole alone!
Homophobic vermin, out from history!
Gruel-Propaganda, Gruel-Propagandaaaa!

Don’t **** with her pussycat,
She spends oil on something else.
In the Mordovian days’ quiet,
She makes salads and sometimes eats them.

nyc

Born and raised on the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side, Katie Halper is a comic, writer, blogger, satirist and filmmaker based in New York. Katie graduated from The Dalton School (where she teaches history) and Wesleyan University (where she learned that labels are for jars.) A director of Living Liberally and co-founder/performer in Laughing Liberally, Katie has performed at Town Hall, Symphony Space, The Culture Project, D.C. Comedy Festival, all five Netroots Nations, and The Nation Magazine Cruise, where she made Howard Dean laugh! and has appeared with Lizz Winstead, Markos Moulitsas, The Yes Men, Cynthia Nixon and Jim Hightower. Her writing and videos have appeared in The New York Times, Comedy Central, The Nation Magazine, Gawker, Nerve, Jezebel, the Huffington Post, Alternet and Katie has been featured in/on NY Magazine, LA Times, In These Times, Gawker,Jezebel, MSNBC, Air America, GritTV, the Alan Colmes Show, Sirius radio (which hung up on her once) and the National Review, which called Katie “cute and some what brainy.” Katie co-produced Tim Robbins’s film Embedded, (Venice Film Festival, Sundance Channel); Estela Bravo’s Free to Fly (Havana Film Festival, LA Latino Film Festival); was outreach director for The Take, Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary about Argentine workers (Toronto & Venice Film Festivals, Film Forum); co-directed New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, a video for Museum of the City of NY exhibit, and wrote/directed viral satiric videos including Jews/ Women/ Gays for McCain.

Katie is a writer, comedian, filmmaker, and New Yorker.

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