» Russian pro-, anti-gay activists clash, police detain dozens
29/06/13 14:38 from Reuters: International
ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Police detained dozens of people when pro- and anti-gay activists clashed in the Russian city of St Petersburg on Saturday, just two weeks after parliament passed a law banning homosexual "propaganda".
» Russia's Crackdown On 'Gay Propaganda' And Popular Illiberalism - Forbes
29/06/13 13:34 from Russia - Google News
Russia's Crackdown On 'Gay Propaganda' And Popular Illiberalism Forbes Over at The Nation, Alec Luhn recently wrote a quite good summary of the recently-passed ban on “gay propaganda” and the generally perilous state of gay rig..
29/06/13 13:34 from Russia - Google News
Russia's Crackdown On 'Gay Propaganda' And Popular Illiberalism Forbes Over at The Nation, Alec Luhn recently wrote a quite good summary of the recently-passed ban on “gay propaganda” and the generally perilous state of gay rig..
Russian pro-, anti-gay activists clash, police detain dozens
ST PETERSBURG, Russia | Sat Jun 29, 2013 10:38am EDT
ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Police detained dozens of people when pro- and anti-gay activists clashed in the Russian city of St Petersburg on Saturday, just two weeks after parliament passed a law banning homosexual "propaganda".
Critics say the bill - a nationwide version of laws in place in cities including St Petersburg, President Vladimir Putin's hometown, - effectively bans gay rights rallies and could be used to prosecute anyone voicing support for homosexuals.
Up to 100 people took part in the march to protest against the law, confronted by an equal number of anti-gay activists, who threw eggs, smoke flares and stones at them.
Police intervened with batons to stop the violence and detained dozens of people.
"We staged the rally to support our rights and express our protest against the homophobic law," Natalya Tsymbalova, a gay activist said by telephone from a police station, adding that the rally did not infringe Russian law.
The march was organized by the group "Ravnopraviye" (Equal Rights).
The incident highlights increasing intolerance in Russian society towards gay people and a toughening of laws aimed at stifling any dissent against the rule of Putin in general.
The bill passed by the lower house on June 11 bans the spreading of "propaganda for non-traditional sexual relations" to minors and sets heavy fines for violations. It has yet to be signed into law by Putin.
There are no official figures on anti-gay crime in Russia, but in an online poll last year, 15 percent of about 900 gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender respondents said they had been physically attacked at least once in the previous 10 months.
Putin, who has embraced the Russian Orthodox Church as a moral authority and harnessed its influence as a source of political support, has championed socially conservative values since starting a new, six-year term in May 2012.
(Reporting by Alexander Demianchuk and Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Alison Williams)
BERLIN (Reuters) - The United States bugged European Union offices and gained access to EU internal computer networks, according to secret documents cited in a German magazine on Saturday, the latest in a series of exposures of alleged U.S. spy programs.
Der Spiegel cited from a September 2010 "top secret" document of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) which it said fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden had taken with him and which the weekly's journalists had seen in part.
The document outlines how the NSA bugged offices and spied on EU internal computer networks in Washington and at the United Nations, not only listening to conversations and phone calls but also gaining access to documents and emails.
The document explicitly called the EU a "target".
A slew of Snowden's disclosures in foreign media about U.S. surveillance programs have ignited a political furor in the United States and abroad over the balance between privacy rights and national security.
According to Der Spiegel, the NSA also targeted telecommunications at the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels, home to the European Council that groups EU national governments, by calling a remote maintenance unit.
Without citing sources, the magazine reported that more than five years ago security officers at the EU had noticed and traced several missed calls to NSA offices within the NATO compound in Brussels.
Each EU member state has rooms in Justus Lipsius with phone and Internet connections, which ministers can use.
Snowden, a U.S. citizen, fled the United States to Hong Kong in May, a few weeks before publication in the Guardian and the Washington Post of details he provided about secret U.S. government surveillance of Internet and phone traffic.
Snowden, 30, has been holed up in a Moscow airport transit area since last weekend. The leftist government of Ecuador is reviewing his request for asylum.
(Reporting by Annika Breidthardt, editing by Gareth Jones)
Read the whole story
· ·
Putin Triumphant at the G-8
|
29 June 2013
The meeting between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G-8 summit in Northern Ireland left an impression that the White House is ready to cooperate on the Kremlin’s terms. Donald N. Jensen, Resident Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, finds “inexplicable” the US president’s unwillingness to mention human rights in his conversation with Putin.
There was much to talk about for the world leaders attending the G-8 summit in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland on June 17-18: Syria was in flames, Iran had just elected a new president, the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks remained interrupted, and one of the representatives present, Russian President Vladimir Putin, was ruthlessly cracking down on political opponents. But the main message coming out of the talks seemed to be the participants’ concern about Putin’s mood. After the discussions concluded, the Russian leader, one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s few allies and the main obstacle to achieving an international consensus on a way to end Syria’s civil war, was asked by one reporter whether he felt “lonely” among the other world leaders over the past two days. “No, that’s absolutely not true,” Putin answered. “It was a general discussion…but Russia was never left to defend its approach to the Syrian problem on its own.” Talk of Moscow’s isolation had been raised by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper before the G-8 meeting began, perhaps as a tactic to force Putin to compromise. Singling out the Kremlin’s support for Assad, Harper said, “this is the G-7 plus one.”
For observers who felt the G-8 meeting was a chance for the Kremlin to prove its good faith as a key contributor to global security, the summit was a failure. Putin succeeded in blocking mention of Assad from the bland final communiqué that backed the Geneva peace process and called for a vague “transitional governing body.” All participants but Russia support his ouster and, though Harper mystifyingly and inaccurately reversed course and announced that Russia had changed its position, Putin repeated that he was against arming the Syrian opposition and claimed there was no proof Assad had used chemical weapons. During the talks, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Russia would fulfill its contract to deliver S300 advanced air defense systems to Assad. After the proceedings ended on June 20, Lavrov criticized the West for impeding the work of the planned international peace conference. That same day Putin faulted the West for failing to ensure that the weapons it plans to supply to Syrian rebels do not fall into the wrong hands.
Inexplicably, Obama did not once publicly criticize Putin over human rights.
The stalemate at the Northern Ireland summit was a blow to White House efforts to constructively re-engage with the Kremlin, relations with whom have become strained due to the Syria crisis, passage of the Magnitsky Act, Russia’s adoption ban last fall, and differences over missile defense. With Putin and Obama glumly sitting side-by-side in adjacent chairs, Putin announced, “Our opinions do not coincide. But all of us have the intention to stop the violence in Syria.” Inexplicably, Obama did not once publicly criticize Putin over human rights, the rule of law, the prosecution of opposition leaders, the pressure on nongovernmental organizations, or the adoption issue, for which the US president is under heavy pressure from Congress and prospective parents. Instead, Obama praised a new deal with Russia to dismantle chemical and nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union. The approving comment by an Obama Administration official that the new nuclear agreement was less intrusive than its predecessor, the respected Nunn-Lugar program, showed how deferential the White House is to the Kremlin’s sensibilities about foreign involvement in Russia’s “internal affairs.”
President Obama turned quixotic in Berlin, the next stop on his European trip, when at the Brandenburg Gate he proposed reducing US-deployed strategic nuclear warheads by one-third, to about 1,000. While the offer was placed in the context of US-Russia relations, Obama did not appear to rule out unilateral reductions—a move that would face substantial opposition in the US Senate—or putting such cuts outside the Congressional treaty ratification process entirely. Despite the support of arms control enthusiasts in Washington for the proposal, the prospects for concluding an arms control treaty with Russia are dim. About the same time as Obama delivered his address, Putin, speaking to arms industry officials in St. Petersburg, warned that Russia needs to preserve its strategic deterrent in the face of US missile defense plans and increasingly powerful conventional weapons. Igor Korotchenko, a member of the advisory board of the Russian defense ministry, called further reductions “unacceptable.” If anything, in recent months the Kremlin’s position has become tougher.
Having lost the support of the urban middle class, Putin has been strengthening his base among nationalists.
Having lost the support of the urban middle class in cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin has been strengthening his base among nationalists and working people in the regions. This means making anti-Americanism a basis of his foreign policy. In an exclusive interview with RT, the Kremlin-funded English-language satellite television network, during the run-up to the G-8 meeting, Putin praised the channel for ending “the monopoly of the Anglo-Saxon media” in the world. He reminded viewers that the US was founded on the “ethnic cleansing” of its native populations and used the atomic bomb against Japan at the end of World War II. Putin also presented the Kremlin’s alternative view of global affairs in which a beleaguered Russia “wages a lonely battle for principle and common sense against a cynical and hypocritical West.” This rhetoric reflects a deeper turning inward in the Kremlin. Gone is the openness toward external influences that characterized the years of Dmitri Medvedev’s presidency. Among the more dubious outcomes of the Northern Ireland meeting was the recommendation to re-establish US-Russia presidential commissions on key issues, an approach that did not work well even in better times. Russia will not integrate with the West, the Kremlin now insists. Any cooperation will be on its own terms.
In this regard, the Syria crisis provides the Russian leadership with a chance to demonstrate its hard new approach to foreign affairs even as, in the view of the well-connected foreign policy commentator Fyodor Lukyanov, Moscow’s obstinacy gives the West an excuse not to become involved. For Lukyanov, even the Obama Administration’s disengagement from Afghanistan, willingness to negotiate with Iran, and dithering over Syria have sinister motives. “America is composing itself,” he writes, “Syria and even Iran are less important to its future positions in the world than the creation of an economic community of the United States and the European Union, as announced by the interested parties at the G-8.” If this succeeds,” he adds, “then the possibility of the new ‘West’ influencing world processes and imposing its own rules of play will increase sharply.”
Read the whole story
