Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
Project Willow wrote:Jeff wrote:On the day of sentencing, a member of Femen cuts down a cross in Kiev in solidarity.
I have a few issues with how the young woman simultaneously exploits and rebels against her object status, but I can't think of many acts that should be more quintessentially feminist than cutting down a cross. It's a testament to the power of enculturation, and perhaps savvy, that an anti-religious stance is a minor and contentious rather than a major thrust of feminist activism. If cross-cutting had been adopted as a symbolic act, we still wouldn't have the vote, let alone title IV.Canadian_watcher wrote:I dunno 'bout this whole thing.
the balaclavas & the 24 7 coverage add up to no good in my books.
something stinks.
Jack rather aptly laid out the "what stinks" in his post above.
wordspeak2 wrote:Um, yeah. 8bitagent, you're missing the obvious. It's not apologetic to Putin to point out that the U.S.-led Empire would much rather him out of power and the oil oligarchs who totally ran the country under Yeltsin back in effective power. In order to maintain his nearly two-thirds popularity (down from 80+% at one point) Putin/Medvedev have been relative economic nationalists; much of the financial and energy sectors are in Russian hands, rather than the U.S./Empire-preferred transnational corporate hands. The fact is, the vast majority of Russians; knowing socialism in their not-too-distant past, and the majority believing life was better under Stalin, do not want the country's wealth completely privatized. Putin has held onto power by giving the masses what they want to a certain degree, though of course nowhere near the liking of Russia's Communist Party. Also, Russia under Putin/Medvedev is relatively friendly with Iran, which worries the U.$., as well as Putin's support of Assad. Not to mention Russia selling Venezuela some serious military arsenal a couple years back, as I recall. It's blatant from a geo-political perspective that the Empire would rather have a subservient client regime in power in Moscow than the current one. Read capitalist think tank press, and they spell all this out. Hillary Clinton wanted a "reset" in U.S. relations with Russia, but that ended up being a bungled media stunt, and relations as it were have not improved, i.e. Russia is not doing exactly what the U.S. says.
So, anyway, hence the western press has given massively disproportionate coverage to every tiny anti-Putin protest over the past couple years, with Gary Kasparoz as their hero media darling. The usual stealth capitalist foundation operators, such as Soros' OSI and the Ford Foundation, are doing their thing supporting and propping up "opposition" bloggers and the like while Reuters and AP etc. have been hyping up every "pro-democracy" (pro-complete-privatization, pro-west) anti-Putin demonstration or figure who surfaces.
Pussy Riot, though clearly well-intentioned activists with good feminist politics and understandable rage at the government, was nonetheless a gift to the western media/foundation apparatus. By pulling an Abby Hoffman type stunt, "enticing the system to over-react," PR contributed to a hell of a media hit against Putin, and an easy one, considering it's true that locking these women up for two years over a free speech stunt is draconian. The comparison to Serbia's western-supported Otpor movement is apt, as they're both youth organizations formed sincerely within the country with totally legitimate grievances that the west harnessed as unwitting pawns in its broad effort to unseat a leader who was/is not exactly socialist but refuses to be completely controlled by transnational corporatism, due to the widespread sentiments among the populace and the leader's desire to stay in power (well, not that foundations are directly supporting Pussy Riot as far as I know; I imagine it's just a carpe diem media hit). It certainly doesn't mean that Putin's power is currently in jeopardy, but it's doing a lot to turn global public opinion against Russia, and that's a big part of the game in this globalized world, and it seems to be making some impact domestically, though most Russians are not sympathetic to Pussy Riot.
The CFR magazine Foreign Affairs' latest coverage of the Pussy Riot fiasco:
http://www.cfr.org/russian-fed/stake-pu ... e_in_putin’s_cul-081612
From the article: "The center is holding--but it's embattled. And there are new challenges ahead: Russia may be sliding into a recession. If that happens, will Putin be able to retain the loyalty of his disadvantaged working-class supporters? If the price of oil continues to slide, how will he resolve disputes about budget shortfalls?"
Also from the article:
"...with developments like the Pussy Riot trial, Russia has, in some ways, become a kind of international laughing stock. For many people, [the country seems] further behind in modernizing itself and coming into the European mainstream than Putin [would probably care to acknowledge]. But Putin never claimed that Russia was going to be guided by international opinion."
wordspeak2 wrote:Definitely punk rock, and I like it. Wish I understood Russian.
I'd like to take back something I said earlier, which is that the comparison to Serbia's Otpor movement is apt. That was a major student movement that had tacit western foundation support. This is a punk band that's gotten a draconian prison sentence for a protest, and their government's effective enemies are taking advantage of the situation for a big media hit.
Meanwhile, thirty people were just murdered in a labor strike attack in South Africa, and it was top story on google news for a split second; now it's nowhere on the front page, and Pussy Riot is back as top story (Orthodox Church forgives PR; Kasparov might go to jail for biting a cop's finger).
barracuda wrote:compared2what? wrote:There's some kind of beef between them and the U.S. State Department/Western media? No way!"
Yes way.
And please note Mr. Carlucci's poorly drawn equivalence of Pussy Riot's actions with some of the more notorious anti-semites in semi-recent history:
compared2what? wrote:he's kinda LaRouchie. Talking hatefully about Jews
compared2what? wrote:It's Cartalucci.
One mustn't be unduly harsh, is what I guess I'm saying.
wordspeak2 wrote:I suppose... but the authorities actually let Occupy go for months before cracking down, right?
lupercal wrote:compared2what? wrote:he's kinda LaRouchie. Talking hatefully about Jews
I don't suppose you'd like to support those allegations with evidence?
lupercal wrote:Yes it's almost as if the whole thing was scripted to play well on CNN. Oh wait, it was. I wasn't going to say anything but now that the cat's out of the bag, yes CW, it is a stunt coordinated by your southern neighbors, like those demonstrations in Tahir square that Alice used to gush about. Notice how Egypt is now run by an ex-Cal State Northridge professor who just fired the Egyptian heads of the military and intel agencies and replaced them with US-trained, US-friendly stooges...
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