O Nite Before Christmas

The most powerful voice against a tyrannical government

MANDELA

Sacred Honor

"Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor"

It was a glorious morning. The sun was shining and the wind was from the Southeast.
Up especially early, a tall bony, redheaded young Virginian found time to buy a new
thermometer, for which he paid three pounds, fifteen shillings. He also bought
gloves for Martha, his wife, who was ill at home.

Thomas Jefferson arrived early at the statehouse. The temperature was 72.5 degrees
and the horseflies weren't nearly so bad at that hour. It was a lovely room, very
large, with gleaming white walls. The chairs were comfortable. Facing the single
door were two brass fireplaces, but they would not be used today.

The moment the door was shut, and it was always kept locked, the room became an
oven. The tall windows were shut, so that loud quarreling voices could not be heard
by passersby. Small openings atop the windows allowed a slight stir of air, and also
a large number of horseflies. Jefferson records that "the horseflies were dexterous
in finding necks, and the silk of stockings was nothing to them." All discussing was
punctuated by the slap of hands on necks.

On the wall at the back, facing the president's desk, was a panoply -- consisting of
a drum, swords, and banners seized from Fort Ticonderoga the previous year. Ethan
Allen and Benedict Arnold had captured the place, shouting that they were taking it
"in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!"

Now Congress got to work, promptly taking up an emergency measure about which there
was discussion but no dissension. "Resolved: That an application be made to the
Committee of Safety of Pennsylvania for a supply of flints for the troops at New
York."

Then Congress transformed itself into a committee of the whole. The Declaration of
Independence was read aloud once more, and debate resumed. Though Jefferson was the
best writer of all of them, he had been somewhat verbose. Congress hacked the excess
away. They did a good job, as a side-by-side comparison of the rough draft and the
final text shows. They cut the phrase "by a self-assumed power." "Climb" was
replaced by "must read," then "must" was eliminated, then the whole sentence, and
soon the whole paragraph was cut. Jefferson groaned as they continued what he later
called "their depredations." "Inherent and inalienable rights" came out "certain
unalienable rights," and to this day no one knows who suggested the elegant change.

A total of 86 alterations were made. Almost 500 words were eliminated, leaving
1,337. At last, after three days of wrangling, the document was put to a vote.

Here in this hall Patrick Henry had once thundered: "I am no longer a Virginian,
sir, but an American." But today the loud, sometimes bitter argument stilled, and
without fanfare the vote was taken from north to south by colonies, as was the
custom. On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

There were no trumpets blown. No one stood on his chair and cheered. The afternoon
was waning and Congress had no thought of delaying the full calendar of routine
business on its hands. For several hours they worked on many other problems before
adjourning for the day.
Much To Lose

What kind of men were the 56 signers who adopted the Declaration of Independence and
who, by their signing, committed an act of treason against the crown? To each of
you, the names Franklin, Adams, Hancock and Jefferson are almost as familiar as
household words. Most of us, however, know nothing of the other signers. Who were
they? What happened to them?

I imagine that many of you are somewhat surprised at the names not there: George
Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry. All were elsewhere.

Ben Franklin was the only really old man. Eighteen were under 40; three were in
their 20s. Of the 56 almost half - 24 - were judges and lawyers. Eleven were
merchants, nine were landowners and farmers, and the remaining 12 were doctors,
ministers, and politicians.

With only a few exceptions, such as Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, these were men of
substantial property. All but two had families. The vast majority were men of
education and standing in their communities. They had economic security as few men
had in the 18th Century.

Each had more to lose from revolution than he had to gain by it. John Hancock, one
of the richest men in America, already had a price of 500 pounds on his head. He
signed in enormous letters so that his Majesty could now read his name without
glasses and could now double the reward. Ben Franklin wryly noted: "Indeed we must
all hang together, otherwise we shall most assuredly hang separately."

Fat Benjamin Harrison of Virginia told tiny Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts: "With
me it will all be over in a minute, but you, you will be dancing on air an hour
after I am gone."

These men knew what they risked. The penalty for treason was death by hanging. And
remember, a great British fleet was already at anchor in New York Harbor.
They were sober men. There were no dreamy-eyed intellectuals or draft card burners
here. They were far from hot-eyed fanatics yammering for an explosion. They simply
asked for the status quo. It was change they resisted. It was equality with the
mother country they desired. It was taxation with representation they sought. They
were all conservatives, yet they rebelled.

It was principle, not property, that had brought these men to Philadelphia. Two of
them became presidents of the United States. Seven of them became state governors.
One died in office as vice president of the United States. Several would go on to be
US Senators. One, the richest man in America, in 1828 founded the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad. One, a delegate from Philadelphia, was the only real poet, musician and
philosopher of the signers. (It was he, Francis Hopkinson not Betsy Ross who
designed the United States flag.)

Richard Henry Lee, a delegate from Virginia, had introduced the resolution to adopt
the Declaration of Independence in June of 1776. He was prophetic in his concluding
remarks: "Why then sir, why do we longer delay? Why still deliberate? Let this happy
day give birth to an American Republic. Let her arise not to devastate and to
conquer but to reestablish the reign of peace and law.

"The eyes of Europe are fixed upon us. She demands of us a living example of freedom
that may exhibit a contrast in the felicity of the citizen to the ever-increasing
tyranny which desolates her polluted shores. She invites us to prepare an asylum
where the unhappy may find solace, and the persecuted repost.

"If we are not this day wanting in our duty, the names of the American Legislatures
of 1776 will be placed by posterity at the side of all of those whose memory has
been and ever will be dear to virtuous men and good citizens."

Though the resolution was formally adopted July 4, it was not until July 8 that two
of the states authorized their delegates to sign, and it was not until August 2 that
the signers met at Philadelphia to actually put their names to the Declaration.

William Ellery, delegate from Rhode Island, was curious to see the signers' faces as
they committed this supreme act of personal courage. He saw some men sign quickly,
"but in no face was he able to discern real fear." Stephan Hopkins, Ellery's
colleague from Rhode Island, was a man past 60. As he signed with a shaking pen, he
declared: "My hand trembles, but my heart does not."
"Most Glorious Service"

Even before the list was published, the British marked down every member of Congress
suspected of having put his name to treason. All of them became the objects of
vicious manhunts. Some were taken. Some, like Jefferson, had narrow escapes. All who
had property or families near British strongholds suffered.

· Francis Lewis, New York delegate saw his home plundered -- and his estates in what
is now Harlem -- completely destroyed by British Soldiers. Mrs. Lewis was captured
and treated with great brutality. Though she was later exchanged for two British
prisoners through the efforts of Congress, she died from the effects of her abuse.

· William Floyd, another New York delegate, was able to escape with his wife and
children across Long Island Sound to Connecticut, where they lived as refugees
without income for seven years. When they came home they found a devastated ruin.

· Philips Livingstone had all his great holdings in New York confiscated and his
family driven out of their home. Livingstone died in 1778 still working in Congress
for the cause.

· Louis Morris, the fourth New York delegate, saw all his timber, crops, and
livestock taken. For seven years he was barred from his home and family.

· John Hart of Trenton, New Jersey, risked his life to return home to see his dying
wife. Hessian soldiers rode after him, and he escaped in the woods. While his wife
lay on her deathbed, the soldiers ruined his farm and wrecked his homestead. Hart,
65, slept in caves and woods as he was hunted across the countryside. When at long
last, emaciated by hardship, he was able to sneak home, he found his wife had
already been buried, and his 13 children taken away. He never saw them again. He
died a broken man in 1779, without ever finding his family.

· Dr. John Witherspoon, signer, was president of the College of New Jersey, later
called Princeton. The British occupied the town of Princeton, and billeted troops in
the college. They trampled and burned the finest college library in the country.
· Judge Richard Stockton, another New Jersey delegate signer, had rushed back to his
estate in an effort to evacuate his wife and children. The family found refuge with
friends, but a Tory sympathizer betrayed them. Judge Stockton was pulled from bed in
the night and brutally beaten by the arresting soldiers. Thrown into a common jail,
he was deliberately starved. Congress finally arranged for Stockton's parole, but
his health was ruined. The judge was released as an invalid, when he could no longer
harm the British cause. 
He returned home to find his estate looted and did not live to see the triumph of
the Revolution. His family was forced to live off charity.

· Robert Morris, merchant prince of Philadelphia, delegate and signer, met
Washington's appeals and pleas for money year after year. He made and raised arms
and provisions which made it possible for Washington to cross the Delaware at
Trenton. In the process he lost 150 ships at sea, bleeding his own fortune and
credit almost dry.

· George Clymer, Pennsylvania signer, escaped with his family from their home, but
their property was completely destroyed by the British in the Germantown and
Brandywine campaigns.

· Dr. Benjamin Rush, also from Pennsylvania, was forced to flee to Maryland. As a
heroic surgeon with the army, Rush had several narrow escapes.

· John Martin, a Tory in his views previous to the debate, lived in a strongly
loyalist area of Pennsylvania. When he came out for independence, most of his
neighbors and even some of his relatives ostracized him. He was a sensitive and
troubled man, and many believed this action killed him. When he died in 1777, his
last words to his tormentors were: "Tell them that they will live to see the hour
when they shall acknowledge it [the signing] to have been the most glorious service
that I have ever rendered to my country."

· William Ellery, Rhode Island delegate, saw his property and home burned to the
ground.
· Thomas Lynch, Jr., South Carolina delegate, had his health broken from privation
and exposures while serving as a company commander in the military. His doctors
ordered him to seek a cure in the West Indies and on the voyage, he and his young
bride were drowned at sea.

· Edward Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., the other three South
Carolina signers, were taken by the British in the siege of Charleston. They were
carried as prisoners of war to St. Augustine, Florida, where they were singled out
for indignities. They were exchanged at the end of the war, the British in the
meantime having completely devastated their large landholdings and estates.

· Thomas Nelson, signer of Virginia, was at the front in command of the Virginia
military forces. With British General Charles Cornwallis in Yorktown, fire from 70
heavy American guns began to destroy Yorktown piece by piece. Lord Cornwallis and
his staff moved their headquarters into Nelson's palatial home. While American
cannonballs were making a shambles of the town, the house of Governor Nelson
remained untouched. Nelson turned in rage to the American gunners and asked, "Why do
you spare my home?" 
They replied, "Sir, out of respect to you." Nelson cried, "Give me the cannon!" and
fired on his magnificent home himself, smashing it to bits. But Nelson's sacrifice
was not quite over. He had raised $2 million for the Revolutionary cause by pledging
his own estates. When the loans came due, a newer peacetime Congress refused to
honor them, and Nelson's property was forfeited. He was never reimbursed. He died,
impoverished, a few years later at the age of 50.
Lives, Fortunes, Honor

Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or
hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with
brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13
children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the
victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes
completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or
went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much
to create is still intact.

And, finally, there is the New Jersey signer, Abraham Clark.

He gave two sons to the officer corps in the Revolutionary Army. They were captured
and sent to that infamous British prison hulk afloat in New York Harbor known as the
hell ship Jersey, where 11,000 American captives were to die. The younger Clarks
were treated with a special brutality because of their father. One was put in
solitary and given no food. With the end almost in sight, with the war almost won,
no one could have blamed Abraham Clark for acceding to the British request when they
offered him his sons' lives if he would recant and come out for the King and
Parliament. The utter despair in this man's heart, the anguish in his very soul,
must reach out to each one of us down through 200 years with his answer: "No."

The 56 signers of the Declaration Of Independence proved by their every deed that
they made no idle boast when they composed the most magnificent curtain line in
history. "And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the
protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our
fortunes, and our sacred honor."

WHAT DO THESE ALL HAVE IN COMMON?

WHAT DO THESE ALL HAVE IN COMMON?

•  
• Cardinal six
• Ordinal 6th(sixth)
• Factorization  2 · 3
• Divisors1, 2, 3, 6
• Roman numeral VI
• Greek prefixhexa-/hex-
• Latin prefixsexa-/sex-
• A standard guitar has 6 strings
• Bands with the number six in their name
• There are 6 semitones in a tritone
• "Six geese a-laying"
• Messier object M6, a magnitude 4.5 open cluster in the constellation Scorpius, also
• known as the Butterfly Cluster
• The Saros number of the solar eclipse series which began on -2691 March 16 and ended
• on -1393 May 3.
• The Roman numeral VI:
• 6 is the atomic number of carbon
• The sixfold symmetry of snowflak
• The cells of a beehive honeycomb are 6-sided
• 6 tastes in traditional Indian Medicine called Ayurveda: sweet, sour, salty, bitter,
• pungent, and astringent
• Phase 6 is one of six pandemic influenza phases
• In Standard Model of particle physics: 6 types of quark and 6 types of lepton
• The National Basketball Association has six divisions (the National Hockey League
• had six divisions until realigning into four divisions for the 2013-14 season)
• The Original Six teams in the National Hockey League are Toronto, Chicago, Montreal,
• New York, Boston, and Detroit.
• In volleyball, 6 players from each team on each side play against each other
• In the ancient Roman calendar, Sextilis was the sixth month. After the Julian
• reform, June became the sixth month and Sextilis was renamed August
• The highest number on one end of a standard domino
• a polydactyl human hand with six fingers
• The standard term in office for a United States senator is six years
• THE NUMBER OF DAY-1 OBAMA-CARE ENROLLEES
•  
• .....................It's rhetorical 

SENTENCED TO PRISON FOR HOOLIGANISM

 

 

Pussy Riot's Nadezhda Tolokonnikova: Why I have gone on hunger strike

In an open letter, the imprisoned Pussy Riot member explains why the brutal conditions at Penal Colony No 14 have led her to undertake a hunger strike in protest

Beginning Monday, 23 September, I am going on hunger strike. This is an extreme method, but I am convinced that it is my only way out of my current situation.
The penal colony administration refuses to hear me. But I, in turn, refuse to back down from my demands. I will not remain silent, resigned to watch as my fellow prisoners collapse under the strain of slavery-like conditions. I demand that the colony administration respect human rights; I demand that the Mordovia camp function in accordance with the law. I demand that we be treated like human beings, not slaves.
It has been a year since I arrived at Penal Colony No 14 in the Mordovian village of Parts. As the prisoner saying goes: "Those who never did time in Mordovia never did time at all." I started hearing about Mordovian prison colonies while I was still being held at Pre-Trial Detention Centre No 6 in Moscow. They have the highest levels of security, the longest workdays, and the most flagrant rights violation. When they send you off to Mordovia, it is as though you're headed to the scaffold. Until the very last moment, they keep hoping: "Perhaps they won't send you to Mordovia after all? Maybe it will blow over?" Nothing blew over, and in the autumn of 2012, I arrived at the camp on the banks of the Partsa River.
Mordovia greeted me with the words of the deputy chief of the penal colony, Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov, who is the de facto head administrator of our colony. "You should know that when it comes to politics, I am a Stalinist." Colonel Kulagin, the other head administrator — the colony is run in tandem — called me in for a conversation on my first day here with the objective to force me to confess my guilt. "A misfortune has befallen you. Isn't that so? You've been sentenced to two years in the colony. People usually change their minds when bad things happen to them. If you want to be paroled as soon as possible, you have to confess your guilt. If you don't, you won't get parole." I told him right away that I would only work the 8 hours a day required by the labour code. "The code is one thing — what really matters is fulfilling your quota. If you don't, you work overtime. You should know that we have broken stronger wills than yours!" was Kulagin's response.
My brigade in the sewing shop works 16 to 17 hours a day. From 7.30am to 12.30am. At best, we get four hours of sleep a night. We have a day off once every month and a half. We work almost every Sunday. Prisoners submit petitions to work on weekends "out of [their] own desire". In actuality, there is, of course, no desire to speak of. These petitions are written on the orders of the administration and under pressure from the prisoners that help enforce it.
No one dares to disobey these orders and not submit such petitions regarding entering the work zone on Sunday, which means working until 1 am. Once, a 50-year-old woman asked to go back to the residential zone at 8pm instead of 12.30am so she could go to bed at 10 pm and get eight hours of sleep just once a week. She was feeling ill; she had high blood pressure. In response, they held a unit meeting in order to take the woman down, insult and humiliate her, branding her a parasite. "What, do you think you're the only one who wants more sleep? You need to work harder, you cow!" When someone from the brigade doesn't come to work on doctor's orders, they're bullied as well. "I worked when I had a fever of 40C and it was fine. What are you thinking —w ho is going to pick up the slack for you?"
My residential unit in the camp greeted me with the words of a fellow prisoner finishing off her nine-year term. "The pigs are scared to touch you themselves. They want to do it with the hands of the inmates." In the colony, the inmates in charge of the brigades as well as their senior members are the ones tasked with depriving fellow inmates' rights, terrorising them, and turning them into speechless slaves — all on the orders of the administration.
For the maintenance of discipline and obedience, there is a widely implemented system of unofficial punishments. Prisoners are forced to "stay in the lokalka [a fenced-off passageway between two areas in the camp] until lights out" (the prisoner is forbidden to go into the barracks — whether it be autumnl or winter. In the second brigade, consisting of the disabled and elderly, there was a woman who ended up getting such bad frostbite after a day in the lokalka they had to amputate her fingers and one of her feet); "lose hygiene privileges" (the prisoner is forbidden to wash themselves or use the bathroom); "lose commissary and tea-room privileges" (the prisoner is forbidden to eat their own food, or drink beverages). It's both funny and frightening when a 40-year-old woman tells you: "Looks like we're being punished today! I wonder whether we're going to be punished tomorrow, too." She can't leave the sewing workshop to pee or get a piece of candy from her purse. It's forbidden.
Thinking only of sleep and a sip of tea, the harassed and dirty prisoner becomes obedient putty in the hands of the administration, which sees us solely as free slave labor. Thus, in June 2013, my salary was 29 (29!) rubles [57p] for the month. Our brigade sews 150 police uniforms per day. Where does the money they get for them go?
The camp has been allocated funding to buy completely new equipment a number of times. However, the administration has limited itself to repainting the sewing machines with the hands of its labourers. We sew using physically and morally exhausted machinery. According to the labour code, when equipment does not correspond with current industry standards, quotas must be lowered in relation to typical trade conventions. But the quotas only rise, and suddenly and miraculously at that. "If you let them see that you can deliver 100 uniforms, they'll raise the minimum to 120!" say veteran machine-runners. And you can't fail to deliver, either, or else your whole unit will be punished, the entire brigade. The punishment will be, for instance, that all of you will be forced to stand in the quad for hours. Without permission to use the bathroom. Without permission to take a sip of water.
Two weeks ago, the production quotas for all colony brigades was arbitrarily increased by 50 units. If previously the minimum had been 100 uniforms per day, now it is 150. According to the labour code, workers must be notified of a change in the production quota no less than two months before it is enforced. At PC-14, we just woke up one day to find we had a new quota because the idea happened to have popped into the heads of the administrators of our "sweatshop" (that's what the prisoners call the colony). The number of people in the brigade decreases (they are released or transferred), but the quota grows. As a result, those left behind have to work harder and harder. The mechanics say that they don't have the parts necessary to repair the machinery and that they will not be getting them. "There are no parts! When will they come? Are you kidding? This is Russia. Why even ask that question?" During my first few months in the work zone, I practically became a mechanic. I taught myself out of necessity. I threw myself at my machine, screwdriver in hand, desperate to fix it. Your hands are pierced with needle-marks and covered in scratches, your blood is all over the work table, but still, you keep sewing. You are a part of the assembly line, and you have to complete your task as well as the experienced sewers. Meanwhile, the damn machine keeps breaking down. Because you're new and there's a deficit, you end up with the worst equipment — the weakest motor on the line. And now it's broken down again, and once again, you run to find the mechanic, who is impossible to find. They yell at you, they berate you for slowing down production. There are no sewing classes at the colony, either. Newbies are unceremoniously sat down in front of their machines and given their assignments.
"If you weren't Tolokonnikova, you would have had the shit kicked out of you a long time ago," say fellow prisoners with close ties to the administration. It's true: others are beaten up. For not being able to keep up. They hit them in the kidneys, in the face. Prisoners themselves deliver these beatings and not a single one of them is done without the approval and full knowledge of the administration. A year ago, before I came here, a gypsy woman in the third unit was beaten to death (the third is the pressure unit where they put prisoners that need to undergo daily beatings). She died in the medical unit of PC-14. The administration was able to cover it up: the official cause of death was a stroke. In another unit, new seamstresses who couldn't keep up were undressed and forced to sew naked. No one dares complain to the administration because all they will do is smile and send the prisoner back into the unit, where the "snitch" will be beaten on the orders of that same administration. For the colony administration, controlled hazing is a convenient method for forcing prisoners into total submission to their systemic abuse of human rights.
A threatening, anxious atmosphere pervades the work zone. Eternally sleep-deprived, overwhelmed by the endless race to fulfill inhumanly large quotas, prisoners are always on the verge of breaking down, screaming at each other, fighting over the smallest things. Just recently, a young woman got stabbed in the head with a pair of scissors because she didn't turn in a pair of pants on time. Another tried to cut her own stomach open with a hacksaw. They stopped her.
Those who found themselves in PC-14 in 2010, the year of smoke and fire, said that while the wildfires were approaching the colony walls, prisoners continued to go to the work zone and fulfill their quotas. Due to the smoke, you couldn't see two metres in front of you, but, covering their faces in wet handkerchiefs, they all went to work nonetheless. Because of the emergency conditions, prisoners weren't taken to the cafeteria for meals. Several women told me that they were so horribly hungry they started writing diaries in order to document the horror of what was happening to them. When the fires were finally put out, camp security thoroughly rooted these diaries out so that none of them would make it to the outside.
The hygienic and residential conditions of the camp are calculated to make the prisoner feel like a filthy animal without any rights. Although there are "hygiene rooms" in the dormitories, there is also "general hygiene room" with a corrective and punitive purpose. This room has a capacity of five; however, all 800 colony prisoners are sent there to wash themselves. We do not have to wash ourselves in the hygiene rooms in our barracks — that would be too easy. In the "general hygiene room", in the eternal press, women with little tubs attempt to wash their "nursemaids" (as they call them in Mordovia) as fast as they can, heaped onto one another. We are allowed to wash our hair once a week. However, even this bathing day gets cancelled. A pump will break or the plumbing will be stopped up. At times, my unit was unable to bathe for two to three weeks.
When the plumbing breaks down, urine splashes and clumps of faeces fly out of the hygiene rooms. We've learned to unclog the pipes ourselves, but our successes are short-lived — they soon get stopped up again. The colony does not have a snake for cleaning out the pipes. We get to do laundry once a week. The laundry is a small room with three faucets pouring weak streams of cold water.
It must also be a corrective measure to only give prisoners stale bread, heavily watered-down milk, exclusively rusted millet and rotten potatoes. This summer, they brought in sacks of slimy, black potatoes in bulk. Then they fed them to us.
The living and working-condition violations at PC-14 are endless. However, my main and most important grievance is bigger than any one of these. It is that the colony administration prevents any complaints or claims regarding conditions at PC-14 from leaving colony walls by the harshest means available. The administration forces people to remain silent. It does not scorn stooping to the very lowest and cruelest means to this end. All of the other problems come from this one — the increased quotas, the 16-hour work day, and so on. The administration feels untouchable; it heedlessly oppresses prisoners with growing severity. I couldn't understand why everyone kept silent until I found myself faced with the avalanche of obstacles that falls on the prisoner who decides to speak out. Complaints simply do not leave the prison. The only chance is to complain through a lawyer or relatives. The administration, petty and vengeful, will meanwhile use all of its mechanisms for putting pressure on the prisoner so she will see that her complaints will not help anyone, but only make thing worse. They use collective punishment: you complain there's no hot water, and they turn it off entirely.
In May 2013, my lawyer Dmitry Dinze filed a complaint about the conditions at PC-14 with the prosecutor's office. The deputy head of the colony, Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov, instantly made conditions at the camp unbearable. There was search after search, a flood of reports on all of my acquaintances, the seizure of warm clothes, and threats of seizure of warm footwear. At work, they get revenge with complicated sewing assignments, increased quotas, and fabricated malfunctions. The leaders of the unit next to mine, Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov's right hands, openly requested that prisoners interfere with my work output so that I could be sent to the punishment cell for "damaging government property." They also ordered prisoners to provoke a fight with me.
It is possible to tolerate anything as long as it only affects you. But the method of collective punishment is bigger than that. It means that your unit, or even the entire colony, is required to endure your punishment along with you. This includes, worst of all, people you've come to care about. One of my friends was denied parole, for which she had been awaiting seven years, working hard to exceed her work quotas. She was reprimanded for drinking tea with me. That day, Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov transferred her to another unit. Another close acquaintance of mine, a very well-educated woman, was thrown into the "stress unit" for daily beatings because she was reading and discussing a Justice Department document with me, entitled: "Regulations for the code of conduct at correctional facilities." They filed reports on everyone who talked to me. It hurt me that people I cared about were forced to suffer. Grinning, Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov told me then, "You probably don't have any friends left!" He explained that everything was happening because of Dinze's complaint.
Now I see that I should have gone on hunger strike in May when I was first found myself in this situation. However, the tremendous pressure that the administration had put on my fellow prisoners due to my actions led me to stop the process of filing complaints about the conditions in the colony.
Three weeks ago, on 30 August, I asked Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov to grant the prisoners in my work brigade eight hours of sleep. We were discussing decreasing the workday from 16 to 12 hours. "Fine, starting Monday, the brigade will only work for eight hours at a time," he replied. I knew this was another trap because it is physically impossible to fulfill the increased quota in 8 hours. Thus, the brigade will not have time and subsequently face punishment. "If anyone finds out that you're the one behind this, you'll never complain again," the Lieutenant Colonel continued. "After all, there's nothing to complain about in the afterlife." Kupriyanov paused. "And finally, never request things for other people. Only ask for things for yourself. I've been working in the camps for many years, and those who come to me asking for things for other people go directly from my office to the punishment cell. You're the first person this won't happen to."
Over the course of the following weeks, life in my unit and work brigade became impossible. Prisoners with close ties to the administration began egging on the others to get revenge. "You're forbidden to have tea and food, from taking bathroom breaks, and smoking for a week. Now you're always going to be punished unless you start behaving differently with the newbies and especially with Tolokonnikova. Treat them like the old-timers used to treat you. Were you beaten? Of course you were. Did they rip your mouths? They did. Fuck them up. You won't get punished."
Over and over, they attempt to get me to fight one of them, but what's the point of fighting with people who aren't in charge of themselves, who are only acting on the orders of the administration?
Mordovian prisoners are afraid of their own shadows. They are completely terrified. If only yesterday they were well-disposed toward you and begging, "Do something about the 16 hour work day!" after the administration started going after me, they're afraid to even speak to me.
I turned to the administration with a proposal for dealing with the conflict. I asked that they release me from the pressure manufactured by them and enacted by the prisoners they control; that they abolish slave labour at the colony by cutting the length of the workday and decreasing the quotas so that they correspond with the law. The pressure has only increased. Therefore, beginning 23 September, I am going on hunger strike and refusing to participate in colony slave labor. I will do this until the administration starts obeying the law and stops treating incarcerated women like cattle ejected from the realm of justice for the purpose of stoking the production of the sewing industry; until they start treating us like humans.

Translation: Bela Shayevich of n+1 magazine, which has covered the Pussy Riot case extensively