The State of Affairs in Russia

[The Minsky Moment]

He won a legitimate victory with the Crimea. Without real violence or consequences he added territory to his country while the rest of the world protested.

I wouldn't be quick to call that a victory.
Before this mess started, Putin had secured a lease extension on the navy base, which is the only real asset there that mattered.  De jure sovereign control over pieces of dirt OTOH isn't all that it is cracked up to be.  Crimea is underdeveloped whether viewed in absolute terms and relatively to the rest of Russia, so the upshot of the acquisition is a significant drain to Russian resources for the foreseeable future.

More generally compared to the status quo ante, Russia has exchanged powerful, informal influence over Ukraine generally to de jure or de facto control over small pieces of it + mass alienation of the remaining majority.  To the extent Russia's foremost strategic goal was to keep Ukraine out of NATO, it already "won" that battle in Georgia - there was no appetite in NATO to consider such a thing.  But now Russia's action has restored relevance to NATO and specifically re-energized it as a anti-Russian coalition.  Further enlargement of the alliance east is still unlikely but is a little easier to contemplate than before.

[Syt]

http://en.itar-tass.com/russia/748608

Protest activity lowest in Russia in 14 years
   
MOSCOW, September 08./ITAR-TASS/. Protest activity in Russia is at the lowest level in 14 years, a public opinion poll shows.

Russia's Levada Centre, an independent analytical orgaization, said, referring to its recent poll, that the number of people who were ready to participate in protests decreased in half to 8%.

In September 2001, 17% of respondents, when asked whether they were ready to participate in social protests, answered "sooner yes than no". In August this year, eight percent answered "yes", almost twice as low as in June (15%).

When asked whether mass protests were possible in your city or a rural area, 17% answered "possible" and 78% said "unlikely". In September 1999, 28% said "quite possible" and 55% said protests were unlikely.

The number of those who are ready to come out with political demands decreased in the past five years from 13% in August 2009 to seven percent in August this year. The number of people who oppose such protests remain high - 83% at present (75% in August 2009).

The Levada Centre conducted the poll from August 22 to 25, 2014 among 1,600 people in 134 cities and towns in 46 regions of the country. A statistical margin of error of such surveys does not exceed 3.4% The poll results were published on the Levada Centre website.

Meanwhile, opposition activists plan "marches of peace" in Moscow and other Russian cities for September 21.

Opposition activists applied to Moscow authorities on Monday to organize a march of up to 50,000 people on September 21, Sunday, one of the organizers told ITAR-TASS. A Moscow security department official said the proposed route would cross the route of a traditional Moscow marathon that was also planned for September 21. No decision was taken yet, he said, adding "By the way, no 'march of peace' or 'peace' were mentioned in the application. The announced aim was to 'express a view on violation of human rights and international law norms'." Earlier, RPR-Parnas party co-chairman Boris Nemtsov said that opposition activists planned marches of peace in Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and other cities for September 21.

Interesting, how the state news agency chose to illustrate the article. Because all protests are violent.

[celedhring]

Interesting, how the state news agency chose to illustrate the article. Because all protests are violent.

They are just illustrating why protests have reached an all-time low. It's good journalism.

[DGuller]

Interesting, how the state news agency chose to illustrate the article. Because all protests are violent.

They are just illustrating why protests have reached an all-time low. It's good journalism.

[Tamas]

Has anyone else wondered about those crazy Polish conspiracy theories about the Smolensk flight since all this happened?

I have, actually. Although I consider the Potato Twin to be perfectly capable of tantruming his own plane into tragedy, as well.

[Syt]

http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=11502

Austrian MP condemns USA in attempts to blow up traditional European values

[Note: he's leader of the FPÖ faction in the Vienna city parliament, not Austrian parliament as the article claims.]

Moscow, September 11, Interfax - Member of the Austrian Parliament Johann Gudenus believes the United States stand behind the attempts to destroy traditional values in Europe.

"Europe is more than the European Union. Europe is a big Christian family. But there is someone who wants to break up our values, our family. And we know that the USA continues war till the last European soldier," he said Thursday at the international forum Large Family and Future of Humanity.

He said that policy of the European Union "is the NATO policy, American policy."

"I'm ashamed of it. People of Austria, people of the European Union don't share it. We are Russia's friends and it is important for me to say that," Gudenus said.

He also said that "homosexual lobby is very strong in Europe: they master mass-media, papers, TV channels."

"Today they seek absolute equality in rights, they want to adopt children and where it can lead it is difficult to imagine," he said.

Needless to say, all other Austrian parties are jumping down his throat. FPÖ party leader Strache hasn't reacted yet. According to latest polls, FPÖ would score ca. 1/4 of votes in federal elections at the moment.

The event where Gudenus spoke (in Russian) also welcomed members of FIDESZ and Front National.

[Syt]

Actually, it's a continuation of tradition.

[garbon]

He also said that "homosexual lobby is very strong in Europe: they master mass-media, papers, TV channels."

"Today they seek absolute equality in rights, they want to adopt children and where it can lead it is difficult to imagine," he said.

Yes, just thing about what would happen if gays raised children!

[Tonitrus]

I, for one, welcome our homosexual overlords. 

[CountDeMoney]

Lulz, what "traditional European values" are we attempting to blow up again?  Jew baking?

[Syt]

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/election-day-illustrates-firmer-kremlin-grip/507028.html

Russian Regional Election Day Showcases Kremlin Grip

Mass apathy and a scarcity of serious challengers to state-preferred candidates were the recurrent themes of Russia's nationwide voting day on Sunday, which pundits said attested to the Kremlin's tightening grip on all levels of the Russian electoral system.

Voters in 84 of the country's 85 federal subjects were summoned to some 64,000 polling stations to elect 30 regional governors, 14 regional and 21 municipal legislatures, as well as other forms of regional authority. But the scale of the exercise did not match the population's lackluster enthusiasm for Sunday's events, which has been molded by two decades of electoral rigging and the stifling of political alternatives, according to independent observers.

Low Turnouts

Members of the opposition have accused President Vladimir Putin of constricting the country's electoral system by creating a facade of openness, which they say has contributed to a consolidation of the Kremlin's control over regional and local politics.

In 2012, Putin reinstated direct gubernatorial elections, after having initially banned them in 2004.

Last year, Putin signed legislation vesting regions with the right to choose whether to elect their governors directly, or to let regional legislatures pick from a list of Kremlin-approved candidates.

The vast majority of those registered to vote in Moscow's City Duma elections, in fact, snubbed Sunday's poll. As of 3 p.m., the turnout was nearly 13 percent. Dmitry Oreshkin, the head of the Merkator research group, which monitors regional Russian politics, told The Moscow Times on Sunday that the turnout would be unlikely to exceed 15 to 20 percent by close of polling stations at 8 p.m.

"The fewer people that come out and vote, the better it is for authorities," Oreshkin said, adding: "People don't trust the system and feel the regional and local levels in government don't really have a say in anything."

Interest in the gubernatorial and regional legislative votes were only slightly higher outside Moscow. By 3 p.m the turnout for St. Petersburg's gubernatorial elections was nearly 20 percent, while 19 percent of voters of the Rostov region had cast their ballots in municipal elections. Enthusiasm for the polls was only marginally higher in Crimea and Sevastopol, Russia's latest additions into its federal fold, where turnouts had risen respectively to 22 and 19 percent by midday.

Sunday's political exercise in Moscow had been rehearsed last June through the city's first non-binding primaries. But while supporters of this rehearsal insisted it would help voters get acquainted with candidates' platforms without affecting the results on election day, its detractors warned that doubling the exercise could blur Muscovites' electoral judgement and increase voter fatigue.

The apathy infused into the bloodstream of the Russian population feeds into the general sentiment that decisions are made at the highest echelons of power, and that the elected regional and municipal leaders answer to decision-makers at the federal level. This sentiment translates into far greater popular interest in federal politics, where the turnout of the latest parliamentary and presidential elections in 2011 and 2012 exceeded 60 percent.

Weeding Out the Opposition

The self-confessed weakness and lack of consolidation within Russia's nonsystemic opposition have created significant problems for candidates that fall outside of the political mainstream, but these factors alone may not account for the lack of true opposition candidates on the ballots, analysts said.

"Even if the nonsystemic opposition members were more active, the situation would be the same," said Andrei Buzin, election-monitoring director at Golos, an independent election monitoring organization. "The level of competition is very low. All the serious challengers were filtered out before they could even run."

The only potential challenger to the long-standing governor of St. Petersburg, Georgy Poltavchenko, was State Duma deputy Oksana Dmitriyeva, of opposition party A Just Russia. Dmitriyeva, a liberal economist who has been eyed by her party as a potential presidential candidate, was unable to gather enough signatures on the municipal level to register to run in her region's gubernatorial elections.

"My party will likely not recognize the results of the St. Petersburg gubernatorial elections and other polls," Dmitriyeva told The Moscow Times in a telephone interview Sunday, after having spoiled her ballot by entering check marks in every single box. "There have been criminal violations during these electoral procedures."

Political activists Olga Romanova and Maria Gaidar were faced with similar registration barriers when they attempted to register as candidates for the Moscow legislature. In August, a Moscow court rejected Gaidar's appeal of the decision that prevented her from running in Sunday's election.

Violations

Election monitor Golos had received 656 complaints of electoral violations from voters by 8 p.m. Sunday, including 115 from Moscow. Authorities meanwhile maintained that electoral procedures and regulations were generally closely observed across the country.

The Public Committee for Election Observation in Moscow monitoring group said that its observers had not recorded recorded any electoral violations as of 1 p.m., and that the dozen or so suspected violations witnessed via video surveillance of the polls had not, in fact, constituted violations.

The committee conceded that 46 polling stations had encountered technical difficulties with at least one of their two cameras. The secretary of the public committee, Oleg Bocharov, said that both cameras in three polling stations had failed at the same time, preventing video monitoring of the political exercise for a maximum of 20 minutes, but that no violations had taken place during that time, Interfax reported.

The stated absence of blatant electoral fraud in the polls came as no surprise to leaders of the nonsystemic opposition. Firebrand opposition blogger Alexei Navalny, a leader of the anti-government street protests of 2011 and 2012 who is currently under house arrest, wrote in a blog post that the constriction of the electoral system had naturally led to the state-approved candidate's "ability to achieve victory without significant fraud."

A number of colorful incidents also reportedly hampered voting at certain polling stations.

Three Femen activists, including citizens of Ukraine, were detained after removing their clothing at a polling station in downtown Moscow, TASS reported. Other incidents included an inebriated individual who allegedly obstructed Dmitriyeva's access to the ballot box in St. Petersburg.

[Valmy]

Austrian MP condemns USA in attempts to blow up traditional European values

Wait the evil atheistic Americans destroying Christian Europe?  Us expecting Europeans to do our fighting for us?  Woah.

[Jacob]

Wait the evil atheistic Americans destroying Christian Europe?  Us expecting Europeans to do our fighting for us?  Woah.

Yeah, that's pretty trippy.

[Martinus]

Interesting, how the state news agency chose to illustrate the article. Because all protests are violent.

I think you didn't get the point. This is how non-violent protests are dealt with in Russia. For example, gay rights sit-ins.

P.S. I am not joking.

[Martinus]

In other news:

Queer Tango Instructor Murdered in St. Petersburg, Throat Slashed

Posted 12 September 2014 20:13 GMT

Ekaterina Khomenko, a 29-year-old queer tango teacher, was found in her car early on September 7 with a four-inch gash across her throat. The engine was still running when a street cleaner chanced on her vehicle. Police, who initially entertained the theory that Khomenko may have killed herself, are now treating her death as a murder. Early reports in local newspapers made no mention of Khomenko's ties to the LGBT community.

Khomenko's father, Valery, was one of the first to publicize the killing. Commenting on the last photograph Ekaterina posted to her Vkontakte account (see above), he announced that detectives phoned him at 9am on September 7 to inform him that his daughter's body had been discovered. According to his comment online, police were most interested to learn if Katya had any history with drugs, money problems, or suicidal tendencies.

Two days later, a Vkontakte user named Timur Isaev launched a flame war in the comments below this photograph, saying that gay people "always die earlier than healthy people [sic]." Isaev would leave 48 more comments in the next 48 hours, repeating his homophobic message for Khomenko's mourning friends.

Lesbiru.com, an online portal for Russian-speaking lesbians, points out that Isaev is a member of the anti-gay Vkontakte community "Gay Hunters," where he shares homophobic materials with the group's 122 other subscribers. Isaev is also active on Twitter, where he posts more anti-gay content and praises Russia's recent annexation of Crimea.

According to the guerilla news website Contraband, St. Petersburg's LGBT community is certain Khomenko's career as a gay tango instructor played a role in her murder. Khomenko's friend and colleague, Angelina Tishina, has launched a closed group on Vkontakte to collect money for Valery Khomenko, presumably to help pay the costs of Katya's funeral, which took place yesterday outside Moscow.

Russia's LGBT community faces many legal and social challenges. Though homosexuality was officially removed from the Russian list of mental illnesses in 1999, human rights activists have watched in dismay as local, regional, and federal lawmakers have passed several bans on so-called "gay propaganda" in recent years. Before Moscow's military intervention in Eastern Ukraine, the crackdown on gay rights in Russia was perhaps the Kremlin's biggest publicity problem internationally.

Update: The news portal Spbdnevnik.ru reports that Ekaterina Khomenko was once a driver for a St. Petersburg ride-sharing service called "Rainbow Taxi," an Uber-like service that caters to the local LGBT community, offering safe rides to the city's gay-friendly clubs and bars. The taxi service says Khomenko hasn't worked as a driver in over two years, but her friends suspect that she may have responded to a "Rainbow" call on the night she was murdered.

Russia is like nazi Germany, only gays are like Jews. Film at 11.