Was the Ukraine Coup America’s Main Event at the Sochi Olympics?

In my previous post, I speculated that the US and EU orchestrated the climax of the Ukraine crisis to occur while Vlad was preoccupied with presiding over his beloved Olympics, and unwilling or unable to destroy the soft power vibe by intervening forcefully in the Ukraine, or even giving the matter his more complete attention.

Clever, clever America, if this was the case.

Of course, with what we know now about the aggressive Western destabilization effort in Ukraine—which included subversion, coercion, and even comfort and aid to violent insurrectionists against Yanukovich’s hapless elected government—it is rather ironic that the Western media anointed Putin History’s Greatest Monster February 2014 Edition.

You remember that, don’t you?  The mean, anti-democratic, gay-hating, Pussy-Riot whipping autocrat who might unleash tyrannical Russian might against the freedom fighters in Maidan Square?

Well, it is also ironic that Putin preached non-intervention and let Ukraine (and Yanukovich, obviously not his BFF) stew, while it was the West and the ever-reliable Western media that engaged in active cheerleading and more, intervening in Ukraine to facilitate the overthrow of an elected government on Russia’s borders.

Wait a minute.  Maybe that’s too ironic.  Maybe it was intentional.  Maybe the Western campaign against Putin and Sochi was part of the pre-emptive framing effort to depict events in Ukraine as a struggle of freedom-loving Euro-Ukrainians against the Evil Empire.

I always thought the ostensible reason for the near universal boycott of the Sochi opening ceremonies by President Obama and the EU states always smelled a little fishy.  As I recall, the guy who runs Belgium was the only Atlantic leader who showed up.

Of course, nobody said We’re boycotting.  It was just, we’re too busy, (F*ck you Vladimir). 

 

There was considerable rumbling in the Western press, I recall, that the forces of freedom were dumping on Putin and Sochi because of the anti-gay propaganda law, a justification that has a few holes in it, considering that the legal position of LGBTs is more protected in Russia than it is in several US states.  And let’s not forget the brutal oppression of stray dogs—cute, cuddly puppies!—by the heartless Russian bear.

Maybe the Sochi-time hostility was more a matter of making sure that Putin and Russia were on the wrong side of global opinion—and less likely to risk spoiling the optics of the Games by throwing themselves into a regional crisis—when Ukraine finally blew up.

As to why the United States was so keen to hand Russia a geopolitical loss, maybe it has to do with support for the EU’s long-standing desire to wrench Ukraine into the Western column.

I hope so.

Because an alternate possibility is that the United States did it for revenge, to punish Putin for not going along with the US program on Syria.

That’s not great because, if so, the decision might have been made out of short-sighted spite, and the West might have taken sole custody of the Ukrainian tar baby just as its finances are teetering to collapse and the split between eastern and western Ukrainians threatens to turn into a permanent rift.

It would be…ironic! There’s that word again!—if punishing Putin over Syria turned Ukraine into another Syria.

I don’t think this revenge scenario is too outlandish.  President Obama seems to be a man who likes his revenge served cold—icy cold—and maybe underneath that controlled façade he was itching to show Putin that Russia could not lightly defy US demands to withdraw support from Assad and collapse the Syrian government.  I believe personal disdain and the need to assert his credentials as world’s numero uno big boss drives President Obama’s foreign policy with regard to Putin, with the Chinese leadership (ever since he was subjected to a finger-wagging tirade by China’s chief climate negotiator for America’s botched outing at the Copenhagen summit in 2010), and of course, his counterproductive crusade—now in its third dismal year with a promise of further escalation-- to destroy Syria and further destabilize the Middle East in order to punish Bashar Assad for refusing to go when Obama told him to go.

One hopes that twelve-dimensional chess is guiding US moves in the Ukraine.  But if that policy is in the hands of a crude neo-con like "Fuck the EU" Victoria Nuland, maybe we’re looking at another one of those “nobody could have foreseen” bloody foreign policy botches that the US seems to specialize in nowadays.

And Putin might have the last laugh, withholding Russia’s promised contribution of $15 billion while the EU scrambles to come up with the $30 billion Ukraine needs to get through the year (amazingly, the US has to date made no commitment to provide financial aid, something the EU is probably noticing; and thinking Thanks a Billion! Not! Vicky Nuland, since the aggressive US strategy blew up the transitional government negotiated by the EU that might have kept Russia in the game and on the hook).

A year from now it might be Vladimir Putin who’s saying Thanks! Victoria Nuland.  Thanks to you I was spared the cost and trouble of propping up a dysfunctional pro-Russian government in the Ukraine.  I saved $15 billion bucks…turned a nice profit since I could drop concessional pricing in the new gas contracts…and I picked up east and south Ukraine as new Russian provinces for free!

Clever, clever...maybe too clever America.

Diverging Strategies on Religious and Anti-Gay Bigotry in Russia and China

For readers seeking insight into the atavistic creepiness of the institutionalized anti-LGBT bigotry of the Russian state—which is eliciting calls to boycott the Sochi Winter Olympics--I offer below a reposting of an article I wrote in 2011 and updated in 2012 on Vladimir Putin’s efforts to position himself as the champion of Russian Orthodox religious conservatives (thereby provoking the Pussy Riot provocation in a Moscow church).

Putin, therefore, can rely on his ability to summon up mobs of religious reactionaries as well as rabid nationalists to defend his regime against the West-backed opposition.

In the compare-and-contrast field, the Chinese Communist Party has been rather successful in playing the nationalist card against Japan and the United States.  However, in the religion arena, its woes are rather well documented, including the long-standing adversarial relationship between the Christian house church movement and the regime.

And gay-bashing is not on the official agenda.

In striking contrast to the Russian faux pas, the Chinese state media had rolled out a gay-supportive official initiative in 2007 prior to its Olympics to promote a “smiling China” vibe and blunt U.S. criticisms of the PRC’s human rights transgressions.  

As Lily Kuo reported at Quartz, the effort continues today:

Yesterday (Aug. 13) marked Chinese Valentine’s Day, also known as the Qixi Festival. Though it’s a traditional holiday that celebrates romance dating back to the Han dynasty, it’s now becoming a rallying point for China’s small but growing gay-rights movement.  Yesterday, a gay couple kissing in Beijing was greeted by cheers.  A video of a 90-year-old grandmother (paywall) in Fuzhou province explaining her support of her gay 28-year-old grandson has been circulating the internet. State media Xinhua declared in a headline, “Chinese Valentine’s, our gay day!” (Xinhua’s Chinese edition led with a more toned down headline: “More Chinese guys [sic] openly celebrate Qixi“)

A  pro-gay stance has helped the PRC in dealing with the overseas manifestation of one of its most pressing religious headaches, Falun Gong, the esoteric syncretic qigong “spiritual practice” (to its entry-level devotees) or, according to critic Rick Ross, a cult demanding on absolute loyalty to its charismatic founder, Li Hongzhi, by its upper-level leaders.

In 1999, Jiang Zemin ordered the suppression of the Falun Gong spiritual practice movement after it displayed its ability and willingness to organize in defense of its beliefs by mustering 10,000 followers in Tiananmen Square to object to the arrest of 45 practitioners in Tianjin publically protesting negative portrayals of FLG in the official media, thereby raising the possibility that the group could serve as a Solidarity-type vehicle for political protest with a religious gloss.

The US has played a discrete and limited role in keeping this obscurantist cult chugging along outside the PRC.  Li Hongzhi has resided in the United States safely and apolitically since 1996 and Interpol has ignored a red notice the Chinese government put out requesting his detention.  In 2006, under somewhat suspicious circumstances the lead investigator for FLG’s allegations of human vivisection abuses by the Chinese government received press credentials for Hu Jintao’s official visit to the U.S. by the Bush White House and screamed imprecations at Hu during his press conference on the South Lawn.  And the FLG-affiliated Global Internet Freedom Consortium received a controversial $1.5 million grant in 2010 (the most confrontational year in many confrontational years of relations between the Obama administration and the PRC) to support its development of its Great Firewall evasion technologies Ultrasurf and Freegate. 

While we are on the subject of anti-gay bigotry, Li Hongzhi, whose universe-penetrating wisdom allegedly gives him powers of invisibility and levitation and the ability to telekinetically install the "Wheel of Law" or "Dharma Wheel"--the "Falun" of "Falun Gong"-- into the abdomen of his followers, is no fan of teh gay, as the cautiously pro-FLG Wikipedia entry  tells us:

As part of its emphasis on ethical behavior, Falun Gong's teachings prescribe a strict personal morality for practitioners, which includes abstention from smoking, drugs, gambling, premarital or extramarital sex, and homosexuality.

This stance cost Li his unlikely nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, which was withdrawn by San Francisco legislators after his views were aired.

The PRC government and its allies have exploited the FLG’s anti-gay position to marginalize the group overseas.  In 2006, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco, as part of its battle to exclude FLG waist-drum dancers from the annual Chinese New Year parade, took out a full-page ad in the SF Chronicle asking why the “Chinese community” was being asked to support a “homophobic cult”. 

The PRC’s determinedly secularist-materialist bent (most recently reaffirmed by its decision to vilify and investigate Wang Lin, a purported qigong master who peddled his nostrums to China's wealthy, connected, and famous, as part of Xi Jingping's anti-corruption drive) and, for that matter, its gay-friendly official stance butter few parsnips for its Western liberal critics.

However, it is an interesting irony that China’s progressive LGBT policies and with its anti-religious policies make it more likely that conservative and homophobic religious groups will become assets of the progressive and secular West in its ongoing rivalry with the PRC.

 

Friday, August 24, 2012

Church, State, Party, Girdles,and Pussy Riot in Russia

 

[Please click on the link embedded in the title above through to the original post for many, many extremely groovy pictures and links to the Youtubes referenced below.]

The Pussy Riot sentences (and the original prosecution) were misguided and excessive.

Putin undoubtedly found the band’s 90-second exhibition of punk calisthenics in the Church of the Savior offensive and a personal insult.  The Russian Orthodox Church is a major political prop for Putin and he probably thought he could reassure the church of his steadfastness as defender of the faith as well as score political points with conservative Russians with a heavy-handed slapdown.

But now the band has become an international cause celebre and lodestar for domestic and international opponents of Putin.  

In an interesting blurring of the line between journalistic objectivity and human-rights agitprop, the armchair revolutionaries at the Guardian chose to create a video for the band’s latest release showing the women looking at turns gorgeous, defiant, and adorable.  

That, combined with criticism of the sentence from the Obama administration and other human rights worthies, may be enough to convince Putin to keep the women in the can to serve their full term.

After all, if the sentences were commuted in response to the Russian Orthodox Church’s expressions of “forgiveness” and Putin’s own political calculations, it will be seen as a victory for the band—and inspiration for copycats and excuse for foreign meddling-- and not a welcome display of mercy by the administration.

However, it remains to be seen if shifting the terms of debate to the free-speech rights of punk rock provocateurs and away from Putin’s close and unhealthy ties to the Russian Orthodox Church (which the Pussy Riot escapade was designed to highlight) will accelerate the erosion of his power.

Cultivating and exploiting the power and prestige of the Russian Orthodox Church has become a priority for Vladimir Putin.  

When, in the spring of 2012, Putin reassumed the presidency in an election that was very much not to the liking of the United States, he went to  receive the blessing of Kirill, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, a demonstration of the extremely close ties between church and Putin that have rankled critics and inspired Pussy Riot’s act of outrance.

In addition to providing a taste of the Byzantine-vintage smells and bells pageantry that is the church’s specialty, the candid footage is also an interesting psychological document as it shows Putin losing the battle to appear humble and overawed for more than a few seconds.

The ceremony took place in the Kremlin's Cathedral of the Annunciation, one of Moscow's smaller religious outfits, but the home of the private chapel of the Tsars since the days of Ivan the Terrible, a detail whose significance was presumably not lost on either Putin or Kirill.

The video is worth watching fullscreen on Youtube for its telling detail, including an awkward moment when Kirill gifts Putin with an ancient icon of the Mother of Tenderness, a depiction of the Virgin Mary of Vladimir regarded as the protector of Russia (see endnote).

Putin briskly receives the icon, presents it to his wife for appropriate obeisance, and hands it off to a henchman.  Kirill, apparently not quite able to grasp the simple idea that what's Putin's is Putin's--period--flutters around ineffectually, trying to maintain an air of continued church involvement in the ritual transfer as the treasure literally passes from his hands.