But when someone is sent to prison on a disorderly conduct
> charge someone is damn scared.
Not in a legal system with maximum sentences that are much steeper. I know this is hard for many Western leftists to believe, but not every society aspires to our (very theoretical) style of liberal democracy.
> And it is both absurd and offensive to
> condemn (or praise for that matter) _any_ tactic in abstraction from
> particular conditions.
You're probably right that it's "absurd" to waste one's time thinking about matters of petty criminal law in a faraway country. And as Karlin notes, "According to my rough tally, a stunning 70 per cent of The Guardian's articles on Russia this past month - almost all of them uniformly uncritical - were related to Pussy Riot." Absurdity abounds.
As for "offensive," it seems that when morality absconds, sins multiply. :-D
-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."