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@mikenov: There is a complicated relation between sexuality and power. Extreme manifestations of the abuse of power can deflect attention from the structural characteristics of this relation. In an unequal power relation the dominant group influences the culture’s overall outlook-its…

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@mikenov: Israel finance minister says he’s a ‘fascist homophobe’ (AND HE IS!) FASCIST HOMOPHOBIA

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@mikenov: Russia, Homophobia and the Battle for ‘Traditional Values’ | Human Rights Watch hrw.org/news/2023/05/1…

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Putin’s – ROC crazy, ridiculous, ignorant FASCIST HOMOPHOBIA

 

Selected Articles – The News And Times

@mikenov: The God’s (aka The Absolute, Hashem, Allah, etc.) response to the Putin’s – ROC crazy, ridiculous, ignorant FASCIST HOMOPHOBIA: THE RAINBOW PEOPLE ARE MY PEOPLE TOO, AND THE MOST BELOVED ONES! KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF THEM! Northern lights dazzle skygazers as ‘extreme’ solar storm…
The God’s (aka The Absolute, Hashem, Allah, etc.) response to the Putin’s – ROC crazy, ridiculous, ignorant FASCIST HOMOPHOBIA: THE RAINBOW PEOPLE ARE MY PEOPLE TOO, AND THE MOST BELOVED ONES! KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF THEM!Northern lights dazzle skygazers as ‘extreme’ solar storm… pic.twitter.com/pBwZgomRqA— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) May 11, 2024
 
@mikenov: x.com/mikenov/status… The News And Times Review #NewsAndTimes #NT #TNT #News #Times #World #USA #POTUS #DOJ #FBI #CIA #DIA #ODNI #Israel #Mossad #Netanyahu #Ukraine #NewAbwehr #OSINT #Putin #Russia #GRU #Путин, #Россия #SouthCaucasus #Bloggers newsandtimes.org…
https://t.co/cisxMA5Yf0The News And Times Review#NewsAndTimes #NT #TNT #News #Times#World #USA #POTUS #DOJ #FBI #CIA #DIA #ODNI#Israel #Mossad #Netanyahu#Ukraine #NewAbwehr #OSINT#Putin #Russia #GRU #Путин, #Россия #SouthCaucasus #Bloggershttps://t.co/O0SIgLVWzM…— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) May 11, 2024
 

@mikenov: Aurora Borealis: The God’s (aka The Absolute, Hashem, Allah, etc.) response to the Putin’s – ROC crazy, ridiculous, ignorant FASCIST HOMOPHOBIA: THE RAINBOW PEOPLE ARE MY PEOPLE TOO, AND THE MOST BELOVED ONES! KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF THEM!
Aurora Borealis: The God’s (aka The Absolute, Hashem, Allah, etc.) response to the Putin’s – ROC crazy, ridiculous, ignorant FASCIST HOMOPHOBIA: THE RAINBOW PEOPLE ARE MY PEOPLE TOO, AND THE MOST BELOVED ONES! KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF THEM! – GS https://t.co/yAHwnnbchJ pic.twitter.com/kFaGbAiwWA— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) May 11, 2024
 

@mikenov: Putin’s – ROC crazy, ridiculous, ignorant FASCIST HOMOPHOBIA
Putin’s – ROC crazy, ridiculous, ignorant FASCIST HOMOPHOBIA – Google Search https://t.co/zyWFDTN6o2 pic.twitter.com/orBoFd327t— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) May 11, 2024
 
@mikenov: Putin’s – ROC crazy, ridiculous, ignorant FASCIST HOMOPHOBIA
Putin’s – ROC crazy, ridiculous, ignorant FASCIST HOMOPHOBIA – Google Search https://t.co/zyWFDTN6o2 – https://t.co/L4L5UFBZBz— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) May 11, 2024
 

Russia, Homophobia and the Battle for ‘Traditional Values’
In December 2022, ten months into the full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, the Duma extended the scope of Russia’s ‘gay propaganda’ law forbidding the public portrayal of ‘non-traditional sexual relations’. Previously focused on minors, the prohibited exposure would now apply to any age group. Why would Russia’s parliament do this in the middle…
 
NATO wants to work with tech start-ups on space defence. Secrecy is proving to be a huge obstacle – Euronews
NATO wants to work with tech start-ups on space defence. Secrecy is proving to be a huge obstacle  Euronews
 

Northern lights dazzle skygazers as ‘extreme’ solar storm hits Earth
Published On 11 May 202411 May 2024The most powerful solar storm in more than 20 years has struck Earth’s atmosphere, triggering warnings over the potential disruption to power grids and satellite communications while also producing spectacular celestial light shows in some parts of the world. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…
 
Donald Trump tipped to be Vladimir Putin’s secret weapon in next step to undermine NATO – MSN
Donald Trump tipped to be Vladimir Putin’s secret weapon in next step to undermine NATO  MSN
 
China, Russia rise in global esteem as US faces approval challenges – The Times of India
China, Russia rise in global esteem as US faces approval challenges  The Times of India
 
@georgewbarros: RT by @michaeldweiss: Thread. The Kharkiv operation – so far – does not look like a major drive to seize Kharkiv City. It is likely part of a larger effort to fix Ukrianian forces across the theater to facilitate advances in Donetsk. More in our thread below.
Thread. The Kharkiv operation – so far – does not look like a major drive to seize Kharkiv City.It is likely part of a larger effort to fix Ukrianian forces across the theater to facilitate advances in Donetsk. More in our thread below. https://t.co/ZWNte9QY6J— George Barros (@georgewbarros) May 10, 2024
 

 

The terrifying glide bombs Russia are using to demolish Ukrainian defences and why they’re almost impossible to stop
Russian glide bombs are the latest weapon that Vladimir Putin’s armies are using to lay waste to Ukraine.
 

 
Russia Launches Offensive Into Kharkiv Region, Ukraine Says – The Moscow Times
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Russia facing Ukraine war disaster as damning satellite pics show huge impact of losses – Express
Russia facing Ukraine war disaster as damning satellite pics show huge impact of losses  Express
 

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Sen. Bob Menendez Doesn’t Rule Out Testifying In His Bribery Trial – HuffPost
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Лукашенко освободил Гулевича от должности начальника Генштаба
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The United States is expected to announce a new $400 million package of weapons for Ukraine – The Washington Post
The United States is expected to announce a new $400 million package of weapons for Ukraine  The Washington Post
 
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Russia, Homophobia and the Battle for ‘Traditional Values’

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In December 2022, ten months into the full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, the Duma extended the scope of Russia’s ‘gay propaganda’ law forbidding the public portrayal of ‘non-traditional sexual relations’. Previously focused on minors, the prohibited exposure would now apply to any age group. Why would Russia’s parliament do this in the middle of a war?

The amendment might appear to have been a trivial effort to distract the public from Russian military losses in Ukraine. But the restrictions, which render life precarious for LGBT+ individuals in Russia, have a much more ambitious purpose—to consolidate conservative support at home and position Russia as the defender of ‘traditional values’, in opposition to ‘the west’.  

The ‘gay propaganda’ law has been at the heart of Russia’s domestic politics and foreign engagement—a symbol of its wholesale rejection of universal human rights. Its extension is but one further step in representing LGBT+ rights as a foreign threat and a Trojan-horse ‘enemy within’.

In 2020, lawmakers went so far as to include an explicit ban on same-sex marriage in Russia’s constitution. And the following year they designated several LGBT+ organisations, including the Russian LGBT Network, an umbrella group, as ‘foreign agents’—a term which in Russian has connotations of spying—accused of undermining the social order.

Galvanising issues

It is at face value extraordinary that the rights of members of a small minority, in this case LGBT+ individuals, should come to hold such symbolic resonance. Yet as the anthropologist Gayle Rubin has observed, ‘Disputes over sexual behaviour often become the vehicles for displacing social anxieties and discharging their attendant emotional intensity. Consequently, sexuality should be treated with special respect in times of great social stress.’

Contestations around gender and sexuality are thus galvanising issues of our time, intersecting with broader geopolitical conflicts in novel and unlikely ways. And the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the Orthodox patriarch, Kirill I, have mobilised the rhetoric of ‘traditional values’ to legitimise the war in Ukraine.

In a televised address announcing the invasion in February last year, Putin represented the ‘so-called collective West’ as a neo-colonial, existential threat:

‘They sought to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, our people from within, the attitudes they have been aggressively imposing on their countries, attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature.’

In endorsing the invasion, the patriarch was still more explicit:

‘Donbas has fundamentally refused to accept the so-called values that are being offered by those aspiring for worldwide power. There is a specific test of loyalty to these powers, a requirement for being permitted into the happy world of excessive consuming and apparent freedom. This test is very straightforward and at the same time horrifying—the gay parade … It is about something different and much more important than politics. It is about human salvation, about on which side of God the Saviour humankind will end up.’

‘Marker of modernity’

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And when the Ukrainian lawmaker Inna Sovsun introduced a bill to legalise same-sex civil partnerships in March, she explained the rationale thus: ‘Because Putin made homophobia such a big part of his political agenda and [Russian] national ideology, people automatically associate him with homophobia. So, if we are different from him, then we should be different in that area as well.’

For better or worse, the rights of LGBT+ people have become what the Australian scholar Dennis Altman has described as a ‘marker of modernity’, increasingly framed as a litmus-test for liberal democracy. This has negative as well as positive implications.

On the one hand—if we take a long view—in many regions of the world there has been rapid progress in recent decades, consolidating rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The flipside of a symbolic association with modernity and progress, as in liberal democracies, is that LGBT+ rights can be misrepresented elsewhere as the antithesis of ‘family’ values.

Authoritarian populists

Russia has been most adept at adopting the mantle of protector of such ‘traditions’, building alliances with like-minded rulers to extend its sphere of influence globally. Elsewhere in Europe, the spectre of LGBT+ rights has become central to the playbook of authoritarian populists.

Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Andrzej Duda in Poland have attacked the rights of LGBT+ individuals, as part of a strategy to build political support on the foundation of conservative sexual politics and undermine democratic institutions. In Poland local authorities have declared themselves ‘LGBT-ideology-free zones’, excluding the Other in an attempt to produce a particular version of Polish society aligned with the vision of the ruling party.

In Hungary Orbán has rallied against LGBT+ rights as a ‘foreign’ and supposedly destructive influence, successfully mobilising a moral crusade, while distracting attention from the erosion of democratic norms, as part of his strategy for re-election last year. LGBT+ rights thus readily become shorthand for broader geopolitical contestations which, while rooted in questions of gender or sexuality, have much wider implications.

Competing visions

At the heart of these acrimonious conflicts is individual autonomy and the relationship of the self to society. At play are different visions of society and the world, and the place of individual rights within them.

On one side is the vision of a social order in which the individual is subordinated to a static notion of ‘culture’ and tradition, brooking no dissent. The competing vision is rights-based and accommodating of diversity.

What proponents of ‘traditional values’ are calling for is a world in which individual freedoms—including bodily autonomy and freedoms of expression and association—are curtailed by the state. In this scenario LGBT+ issues are relegated to the domain of moral stigmas, not elevated as human rights. Hence authoritarian regimes seek to restrict reproductive rights, sexuality education, domestic-violence legislation, legal gender recognition, and innovations in family structures and sexual mores. Those who fall outside gender and sexual norms then become symbolic shorthand.

When Russian lawmakers doubled down on attacking the rights of LGBT+ individuals, that symbolism was primary. Advancing ‘traditional values’ is central to Russia’s ideological justification for its war in Ukraine and activities beyond. Its systemic attacks on the rights of LGBT+ people have proved the canary in the coalmine, portending a much more dangerous global agenda.

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@mikenov: Putin’s – ROC crazy, ridiculous, ignorant FASCIST HOMOPHOBIA

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@mikenov: Putin’s – ROC crazy, ridiculous, ignorant FASCIST HOMOPHOBIA

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@mikenov: weather weapons en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_w…