Moving the Winter Olympics...

Started by Caela, August 08, 2013, 06:50:51 PM

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gaggedLouise

This t**t realized within a minute after her post that Tyson was a boxer, so she didn't need to be told that. *works up anger*

And I'm cold sober.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Oniya

*backs away, hands raised*

More trying to clarify the reference for those who don't follow the goings on in either ring.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
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Imogen

Quote from: Avis habilis on August 27, 2013, 11:06:24 AM
The point of the law isn't to to be read sensibly. It's to provide a legal fig leaf. Anything you do where minors could see you could be labeled "distributing information" that "creates an interest".

As this is a debating forum, I would like to see more than just mere claims such as the above. So far I hear a lot of "this is true because it is" reasoning. Or "how can you NOT understand!". But as far as I can tell, the law is very new and legal history still has to decide what will and won't hold up in court.

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gaggedLouise

#278
Quote from: Imogen on August 27, 2013, 04:11:14 PM
As this is a debating forum, I would like to see more than just mere claims such as the above. So far I hear a lot of "this is true because it is" reasoning. Or "how can you NOT understand!". But as far as I can tell, the law is very new and legal history still has to decide what will and won't hold up in court.

Depends on whether one assesses present-day Russia to have a judicial system with spine and integrity. Courts that apply the law in an evenhanded way, that won't play up to what the state organs and the Kremlin want in a particular case, that don't accept rigged accusations, dodgy evidence or fake witnesses.

Show trials are a familiar means of a)staying in power and b)pleasing one's own supporters and the common people, for populist dictators through history. Stalin knew that, the Roman emperors too. The ongoing trial of Bo Xilai in China is another example of this, and probably includes some rigging, even if his wife did kill Mr Heywood. Well, there has been a string of high-profile trials in Russia during the Putin years where people have been sentenced on charges of corruption and crimes against the state, charges that looked under-investigated and too clearly meant to please the regime. The Khodorkovsky case for instance, or Pussy Riot, whose members were handed exorbitantly heavy sentences for something that wouldn't have amounted to much more than fairly harmless unlawful trespassing and a minor public order felony if it had happened in western Europe.

Courts in Russia have a track record of this sort of thing - in recent years and back into the Soviet era - so it makes sense to suspect that they could be using this new law in a heavy-handed way, when it's already rather elastic in the way it's written. And we don't know whether this is the last law of this kind that Putin's people might enact either. If it's a success, it could be followed by even more far-reaching deals.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Florence

Just throwing this out here since I don't think anyone's mentioned it yet.

http://www.advocate.com/news/world-news/2013/08/28/russia-raids-gay-peoples-homes

Seriously, Russia's making it harder and harder to avoid invoking Godwin's Law on this matter.
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Oniya

I can't understand the voices, but when I was looking for confirmation on that (multiple sources are a good thing, according to my old high-school history teacher), I found this video and article linked off of Mr. Alexeyev's Twitter account.  It looks like a news program, and the video does show his home in some disarray.  Unfortunately, my high school cancelled their Russian classes the year that I came in, so I ended up in the German class instead.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Florence

Perhaps Dashenka could translate?
O/O: I was going to make a barebones F-list as a rough summary, but then it logged me out and I lost my progress, so I made a VERY barebones F-list instead: Here.

Imogen

Quote from: Finn MacKenna on August 29, 2013, 12:13:22 AM
Just throwing this out here since I don't think anyone's mentioned it yet.

http://www.advocate.com/news/world-news/2013/08/28/russia-raids-gay-peoples-homes

Seriously, Russia's making it harder and harder to avoid invoking Godwin's Law on this matter.

I tend to raise eyebrows whenever the word "allegedly" arises. "Allegedly" is a nice word to precede an unproven accusation/theory and hedge your bets. Still, it prompted me to do a bit more reading on the subject of that activist, and I came across this article, which I found interesting.

For http://www.towleroad.com/2013/08/russia-raids-home-of-leading-gay-activist-nikolai-alexeyev-video.html
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Dashenka

He says he wants to give up being an activist after this article by Michael Lucas. It was the last straw.




In other words, he had some free publicity and decided to take the most of it. Expect his twitter to be up tomorrow again. As you can read in the article of Mr. Lucas, Alekseev doesn't feel oppressed. Something I've been saying since the start of this topic. Funny enough the American porn director seems to know better than the Russian gay activist. Sounds familiar?
Out here in the fields, I fight for my meals and I get my back into my living.

I don't need to fight to prove I'm right and I don't need to be forgiven.

Oniya

He doesn't feel oppressed, but in the video he expresses concern about the legality of the raid, and asks about 'what if they start raiding flats on a daily basis'.

Trying to reconcile this.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Cyrano Johnson

#285
Quote from: DashenkaAs you can read in the article of Mr. Lucas, Alekseev doesn't feel oppressed.

You know, the articles are linked right there, right? What Lucas' article says is that Alekseev has reversed into now claiming he doesn't feel oppressed, after years of condemning and campaigning against the homophobic laws as oppressive. Leaving that part out is the kind of sloppiness that makes it look like you are attempting to distort the contents of the article. You really need to stop doing that.

As for the article from Alekseev that Imogen linked, it's interesting and I do get his criticism of the Western activists only now waking up to a problem seven years old -- or of organizations gathering petitions from "Russian activists" who don't actually live in Russia. This is one of the bizarre features of the transitory activist / slacktivist obsessions of the Internet-fuelled media era; it's like when the Haitian earthquake happened and the Onion wryly satirized the world's sudden obsession with Haiti in an article about the discovery of this "previously unknown" civilization in the Caribbean. A certain cynicism about it is not entirely misplaced. And I think people should be learning about the perspective of activists in Russia and what they think should be done, and that something like Alekseev's campaign on visas is worth a second look.

(I am also coming around, as I continue to learn, to seeing that the prospect of the law's criminalization of PDAs by gay athletes is more remote than I first feared. That is good news but I don't know whether it vitiates the need for a "move the Olympics" campaign.)

OTOH a late awakening is better than none, and one doesn't have to think the Kremlin has somehow "gotten to" Alekseev (although who knows, it might have done) to see that there might be some nationalistic conflict in his perspective on the Sochi campaign. We've seen the same conflicting insticts play out with a member of this forum to the point of their actually coming close to echoing homophobic propaganda themselves rather than seriously entertain the notion that Russia has created a major problem of international law, human rights and relations for herself that could have bearing on her hosting of international events. Alekseev's apparent reversals should be evaluated in that context, and as a reflection of the very plain reality that the prospect of losing the Olympics quite obviously frightens Russians more than any other measure could possibly do.

That said, actually shifting the IOC will probably not happen: the edifice of the Olympics doesn't exactly turn on a dime, and (just to take one example) billions of dollars have surely been sunk into national advertising campaign in markets around the world based on the assumption of a Sochi Olympics (I know Canada's spots were already running when this controversy broke out). Deliberate protest of the law during the Olympics probably will happen, though, and the IOC had best hope that the results are not disastrous for its brand and sponsorships.
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Ephiral

Quote from: Dashenka on August 29, 2013, 08:57:03 AMIn other words, he had some free publicity and decided to take the most of it. Expect his twitter to be up tomorrow again. As you can read in the article of Mr. Lucas, Alekseev doesn't feel oppressed. Something I've been saying since the start of this topic. Funny enough the American porn director seems to know better than the Russian gay activist. Sounds familiar?

Riiiight. So a prominent activist who has been fighting for years against precisely this sort of thing sees the prospect of losing the Olympics, has his house raided and his life threatened by the government, and just coincidentally happens to do a complete reversal to align perfectly with the government's position?

Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

Imogen

QuoteThat said, actually shifting the IOC will probably not happen: the edifice of the Olympics doesn't exactly turn on a dime, and (just to take one example) billions of dollars have surely been sunk into national advertising campaign in markets around the world based on the assumption of a Sochi Olympics (I know Canada's spots were already running when this controversy broke out). Deliberate protest of the law during the Olympics probably will happen, though, and the IOC had best hope that the results are not disastrous for its brand and sponsorships.

China wasn't really known for protecting human rights either and the IOC survived just fine.

In the long run, I think it is most beneficial for the IOC to weather the storm. Changing now, especially to an LGBT-friendly country, will not only anger a lot of financial investors, but will also weaken their platform in (rich) countries with non-Western culture where human rights exclude women, activists, LGBT or other 'inconvenient' groups clashing with the majority.

If anything bad happens, they can still express their shock and disappointment. What the IOC cannot do, is ignore the words of a head of state. If the IOC starts to question the reassurances of a head of state (even one such as Putin) and side with activist groups (no matter how right they are) ....  That'd be a diplomacy fail at the highest level that I believe they can't afford.
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gaggedLouise

Some of you have propably heard about this one by now - a painting of Putin and PM Medvedev in female underwear was seized from an art gallery in St.Petersburg:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23860295'

Considering Putin's macho image this painting was a good shot at a protest. I wonder what will happen next with it. The gallery owner doesn't sound inclined to just accept that it was carried away...

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Imogen

Quote from: gaggedLouise on August 29, 2013, 10:24:55 AM
Some of you have propably heard about this one by now - a painting of Putin and PM Medvedev in female underwear was seized from an art gallery in St.Petersburg:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23860295'

Considering Putin's macho image this painting was a good shot at a protest. I wonder what will happen next with it. The gallery owner doesn't sound inclined to just accept that it was carried away...

It's probably the exact opposite of a good protest. Even in The Netherlands the subjects of a portrait such as this would very likely be succesful in ordering its removal.

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Dashenka

Quote from: gaggedLouise on August 29, 2013, 10:24:55 AM
Some of you have propably heard about this one by now - a painting of Putin and PM Medvedev in female underwear was seized from an art gallery in St.Petersburg:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23860295'

Considering Putin's macho image this painting was a good shot at a protest. I wonder what will happen next with it. The gallery owner doesn't sound inclined to just accept that it was carried away...

That would happen in every country. Nothing to do with Putin being macho. If you draw a painting of Queen Elizabeth and Barack Obama in underpants and all, it'll probably get removed as well from galleries across the UK and the US.
Out here in the fields, I fight for my meals and I get my back into my living.

I don't need to fight to prove I'm right and I don't need to be forgiven.

Oniya

However, if you make a cartoon suggesting that Jerry Falwell's first 'experience' was with his mother in an outhouse, you win a Supreme Court decision.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

gaggedLouise

#292
Quote from: Imogen on August 29, 2013, 10:36:43 AM
It's probably the exact opposite of a good protest. Even in The Netherlands the subjects of a portrait such as this would very likely be succesful in ordering its removal.

It's getting noticed, at this point, precisely because it was seized by the cops. Nothing creates a stir around art like scandal.

But I'm not so sure this kind of painting would be considered legally offensive, or get hit by a court order, in all countries. If it were some quite unknown sitters - yes, likely so. But many countries give more leeway when it comes to depictions of people who are running around public life and the news arena; if they didn't, how would cartoonists find any space for their more stingy inventions?

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

meikle

#293
Quote from: Dashenka on August 29, 2013, 10:39:13 AM
That would happen in every country. Nothing to do with Putin being macho. If you draw a painting of Queen Elizabeth and Barack Obama in underpants and all, it'll probably get removed as well from galleries across the UK and the US.

Not in the United States?  We take the freedom to criticize (and mock) our leadership pretty seriously.
Kiss your lover with that filthy mouth, you fuckin' monster.

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gaggedLouise

It's one thing that in some countries almost nobody would want to print such a picture in a magazine or a daily, circulate it - because it would be seen as too tasteless and raunchy, rather than being a legal landmine. More about where the editors of a mag would 'place the bar' for accepting an image.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Imogen

In the Netherlands Prime Minister Balkenende won a claim for removal of posters that showed a photo manipulation where he was depicted with his hands on the buttocks of a naked woman. On the posters already distributed the organization responsible had to make him unrecognizable, and the undistributed material was to be destroyed.

From what I read on http://www.fotografenondernemen.nl/de-kennisbank/portretrecht/ (my apologies, it's a Dutch section on portrait rights for photographers), the court weighs the interest of the injured party vs. the freedom of speech/expression. According to the same article, the Prime Minister also won a later claim to remove a mock portrait that held sufficient clues for the observer to deduce the portrait was meant to portray Balkenende.
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Imogen

Quote from: gaggedLouise on August 29, 2013, 10:50:46 AM
It's getting noticed, at this point, precisely because it was seized by the cops. Nothing creates a stir around art like scandal.

But I'm not so sure this kind of painting would be considered legally offensive, or get hit by a court order, in all countries. If it were some quite unknown sitters - yes, likely so. But many countries give more leeway when it comes to depictions of people who are running around public life and the news arena; if they didn't, how would cartoonists find any space for their more stingy inventions?

I'm not sure if this getting notice is such a great thing for the people in Russia. For us, safely in our homes in democratic countries, it's easy to laugh and point,  but this may well give those supporting the Law another hammer to hit with. "Look, they accuse of us ignoring their rights, but see how little they care about our privacy rights!" It's opening the door to a 'pot calling the kettle black' situation, unfortunately.

I don't see much positive coming from this, unless it's a few moments of fame for the gallery and the painter. Well, good for them, I suppose.
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gaggedLouise

Well, rules for photo manipulations (that have some intention to look like it's "the real thing") are sharper in most places than rules on paintings, drawings and cartoons.

At the time when Michael Jackson sold Neverland Ranch and was fighting out those pesky charges in court with that kid, I saw some very funny - and sometimes quite offensive - cartoons from the U.S. press. One showed some cops standing outside the gates of Neverland, one of them saying "Well, I'm not frisking any chimps!", another had a grotesque-looking Jacko, a snake (Bubbles) and a child with eyes wide in fear in the same empire bed. If it had been staged photos, they would not have been printed, but as cartoons they were seen as okay.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Oniya

Quote from: meikle on August 29, 2013, 10:52:10 AM
Not in the United States?  We take the freedom to criticize (and mock) our leadership pretty seriously.

Nixon's nose, Clinton's chin, Obama's ears - I couldn't find any in women's clothing, but I did find Baroque Obama and Captain Stimulus.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

gaggedLouise

Surely the New Yorker got away with that Barack-the-Arab-and-Michelle cover, even if it made many people very angry? It was never taken to court, I think.


Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"