Odds Are, Russia Owns Trump

As regular readers are likely aware, I personally believe that the Trump/Pence campaign was in deep collusion with Russian agents, if not Vladimir Putin, during the 2016 presidential election.  Between all of the reported contacts between campaign personnel and all of the Trump projects into which money poured (saving Trump's ass financially) there is nothing normal about the Trump/Russia relationship. Now, a new book is out, entitled  "Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win,” that links together the dots and provides a much clearer picture of just how bad the collusion has been.  A column in the New York Times looks at the book and the frightening picture it paints.  A picture that means nothing to Congressional Republicans who place their party and tax cuts to the wealthy above the nation's well-being. Here are column highlights:

Three months ago, The Washington Post reported that even as Donald Trump ran for president, he pursued plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. The next day, The New York Times published excerpts from emails between Felix Sater, a felon with ties to Russian organized crime, and Michael Cohen, one of Donald Trump’s lawyers and Sater’s childhood friend, about the project. Sater was apparently an intermediary between Trump and Russia, and in a Nov. 3, 2015, email to Cohen, he made the strange argument that a successful deal would lead to Trump’s becoming president. Boasting that he was close enough to Vladimir Putin to let Ivanka Trump sit in the Russian president’s desk chair, Sater wrote, “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected.” These stories were, at the time, bombshells. At a minimum, they showed that Trump was lying when he said, repeatedly, that he had “nothing to do with Russia.” But three months feels like three decades in Trump years, and I mostly forgot about these reports until I read Luke Harding’s new book, “Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win.” One uncanny aspect of the investigations into Trump’s Russia connections is that instead of too little evidence there’s too much. . . . . Incidents that would be major scandals in a normal administration — like the mere fact of Trump’s connection to Sater — become minor subplots in this one.

That’s why “Collusion” is so essential, and why I wish everyone who is skeptical that Russia has leverage over Trump would read it. This country — at least the parts not wholly under the sway of right-wing propaganda — needs to come to terms with substantial evidence that the president is in thrall to a foreign power.

Harding, the former Moscow bureau chief of The Guardian, has been reporting on shady characters like Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was indicted last month, long before Trump announced his candidacy. He was able to interview Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the dossier attempting to detail Trump’s relationship with the Kremlin, and who describes the conspiracy between the American president and the Russians as “massive — absolutely massive.” There’s no longer any serious question that there was cooperation between Trump’s campaign and Russia, but the extent of the cooperation, and the precise nature of it, remains opaque. Harding’s book is invaluable in collating the overwhelming evidence of a web of relationships between the Kremlin, Trump and members of Trump’s circle. He suggests, convincingly, that Russia may have been cultivating Trump since the 1980s. At that time, Harding writes, the K.G.B. was working to draw “prominent figures in the West” — as the K.G.B. described them — into collaboration. According to Harding, a form for evaluating targets asked, “Are pride, arrogance, egoism, ambition or vanity among subject’s natural characteristics?” Trump, the gaudy huckster who treats closing a sale as the height of human endeavor, is a quintessentially American figure. His campaign of racial and religious grievance drew on the darkest currents of American history. At most, Putin appears to have recognized an opportunity that American political dysfunction created. It’s a sign of how deep that dysfunction goes that the substantial evidence that the president is not a patriot hasn’t caused more of a political earthquake. America, stunned and divided, appears incapable of metabolizing all we’re learning about the man in the White House. Yes, we have investigations, but the business of government plods on; right now the Senate is working on the Roy Moore of tax bills, a piece of legislation that magnifies right-wing pathologies into a cartoonish grotesque.

It wasn’t Putin who fashioned a Republican Party willing to tolerate something close to treason if it’s the price of corporate tax cuts. Even if all the Republicans in Congress read Harding’s book, they probably wouldn’t act. But at least they’d know what they’re abetting.

This is yet another piece in the picture that makes me proud that I left the morally bankrupt Republican Party close to two decades ago.   Were I still a Republican, I would feel both treasonous and bankrupt morally. 

Putin's Revenge on America

Frontline will be running a two-part documentary “Putin’s Revenge,” that will debut on PBS member stations on two consecutive Wednesdays, Oct. 25 and Nov. 1, at 10 p.m.  The program will look not only at Putin's rise to power in Russia - he is a former KGB operative - and his long simmering hatred towards the United States.  It also looks at Putin's plan to use cyber-warfare against his international foes, a list that has America at the top followed by other western nations, with resentments that stretch all the way back to the presidency of George H.W. Bush.  With American democracy in disarray and civil discourse trending downward even as Donald Trump - Putin's favored presidential candidate - strives to roil the western alliances, Putin must be smiling.  As American retrenches, Russia and China move into the void. All of these events, of course, are contrary to the interest of America and its citizens - even those embracing Trumps calls to racism and bigotry - and make up part of Putin's revenge on America.  A piece in Salon looks at the program and the message Americans need to hear.  Here are article excerpts:

Outwardly the purpose of “Putin’s Revenge” is to walk viewers through the political rise of Russia’s autocratic president Vladimir Putin, which the documentary dutifully does by building its narrative around interviews with Russian journalists and dissidents as well as expert contributions from journalists and biographers covering Putin for such publications as The Atlantic and the New York Times.

But Kirk and his co-writer Mike Wiser inform their biographical map by filtering Putin’s hardline autocratic methods through a psychological profile that draws more than a few parallels — Trump. Putin’s history as a former KGB officer is as common knowledge as that photo of him riding a horse shirtless.

Diluted into a meme long ago, that photo is a small part of a long campaign that began with Boris Yeltsin unwisely handing the presidency over to him in 1999. In part one of “Putin’s Revenge,” which airs Wednesday, Kirk and Wiser expediently trace his campaign to consolidate power to the opening days of what was initially his interim leadership, when he sold himself as a reform and a democrat — with the help of his public relations coach.

Even then, a former Putin advisor tells the interviewer, Putin understood that “everything could be manipulated. Any kind of press, any TV program is all about manipulation. It was decided what TV channels would show what news.”

Viewers who have been keeping up with current events are likely familiar with much of this timeline, starting with demolishing of independently run television studios and Putin’s move to bring broadcast media under government control.

That in itself is telling, as is the familiarity of exiled Russian journalist Masha Gessen and opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, whose claim to fame among American viewers is that he survived two assassination attempts by poisoning. Gessen and Kara-Murza have appeared on a number of American news programs as well as night-time talk shows such as “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” and “The Daily Show.”

But as “Putin’s Revenge” spells out, they are guest stars in a reality show produced by a man obsessed with image and pathologically concerned about how the world sees him. If the similarity to our thin-skinned president is alarming, it should be.

Kirk and Wiser expand upon this idea in the second half, which frames Putin’s animosity toward the united states as a product of a resentment over a lifetime’s worth of perceived humiliations. The title’s “Revenge” refers to his seething over the actions of a number of American presidents, dating back to George H.W. Bush’s celebration of the Berlin Wall’s fall (when a young Putin was a counter-intelligence agent stationed in Dresden, Germany, which Gessen refers to as “a backwater”).

From there, many moments in recent history were seen by Putin as one slight upon another. Bush’s post- 9/11 and the subsequent topping of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya as well as uprisings brewing in former Soviet countries were seen as existential threats. As he centralized power, restoring Joseph Stalin’s national anthem with new words in the process, his quest to make Russia great again became just as much about elevating his standing in the world and deteriorating America’s.

By innovating tactics in cyber warfare and enabling the viral spreading of misinformation via social media, “Putin’s Revenge” posits that Russian interference with American democracy was only a matter of time. Clinton, the latest in a line of old foes, had a questionable reputation among America’s electorate that made her a ripe target. The media’s obsession with the headline-grabbing salaciousness of Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape drowned out the government’s warning about the hack in October — a warning handled and presented with insufficient urgency, Kirk and Wiser point out.

Frontline’s consistently fulfills its purpose of lining up recent news with history to put current events in a context that’s simple to comprehend. And I suppose “Putin’s Revenge” would be chilling if we weren’t already drowning in apprehensiveness over the dangerous ignorance and instability of our own president, a handy gift to Putin whose thoughtless words enabled and encouraged hackers to attack and exploit our cultural divisions.

“Putin’s Revenge” paints Putin as a spiteful malevolence to sharpen the warning of what we could be facing in the coming campaign cycle. But it also arrives at time when Western media is questioning whether we’re assigning too much power to Putin, as the world’s attention starts to turn toward Russia’s upcoming presidential election.

The only Kremlin- approved challenger so far is a reality TV star and former Russian Playboy model, the daughter of a deceased former St. Petersburg mayor who was one of Putin’s early allies. Everybody understands that election is a sham, and unless Putin somehow decides to relinquish power, he’ll become the second longest-ruler in Moscow, outdone only by Joseph Stalin’s 29 years in power.

The Existential Threat Trump Poses to the Western Alliance

A piece in the New York Times lays out the threat Donald Trump poses to NATO and the Western Alliance that has maintained peace in Europe since 1945 as he insanely succumbs to Vladimir Putin's flattery - or perhaps more likely blackmail as further elaborated in a Washington Post piece.  What is frightening is that the always self-absorbed Trump is seemingly oblivious to the manner in which he is being played by Putin, a former head of the Soviet Union's KGB, an organization that specialized in assassinations, torture and, of course, blackmail and intimidation.  First these highlights from the Times column:

There’s a mood of confidence in Moscow bordering on triumphalism. Russia is dictating the grim outcome in Syria. It has annexed with impunity part of Ukraine and set limits on the country’s Westernizing ambitions. It has influenced through hacking the outcome of the American election. It has fostered the fracture of the European Union.

In addition, whether or not Donald Trump was ever lured into some Moscow honey trap (the oldest trick in town for Vladimir Putin’s intelligence services), Russia has reason to regard with satisfaction the coming presidency. Trump has called Putin “very smart” and “very much of a leader” (more than Obama); he has cheered on a British exit from the European Union; he has signaled deep skepticism of NATO; he has, in short, intimated that he may be ready to be complicit with Putin in the dismemberment of the Western alliance.

America’s European allies are in a state of high anxiety. For the first time in decades there seems to be a possibility that the White House will deal with Moscow at Europe’s expense.

No more important challenge awaits Trump than clarifying where he stands on Putin’s threat to the West. Hurtling into some macho love fest with Vlad based on the vague shared aim of smashing ISIS would be calamitous. Trump said that if Putin likes him, “That’s called an asset, not a liability.” Wrong. It’s a liability if Trump is so susceptible to being liked he forgets to be tough.

Trump must make clear soon after Jan. 20 that the United States stands by its NATO allies in the Baltics and that Article 5 of the NATO treaty guaranteeing collective defense is sacrosanct. Trump must leave no doubt that sanctions imposed on Russia for the annexation of Crimea and for interference in the American election will stand. He must warn Putin against attempts, in a reprise of the American operation, to sway the French and German elections through hacking and fake news.

Putin believes the way to restore Russia’s great power status is at the expense of an American-led order, particularly in Europe, but also in the Middle East,” William Burns, a former deputy secretary of state and the president of the Carnegie Endowment, told me. “Trump must recognize this without any illusions.”

I don’t know if he can. Dispensing with illusions means curtailing impulsiveness and the gut instincts that constitute Trump’s worldview, such as it is. Trump is drawn to Putin’s authoritarianism, toughness and embodiment of white Christian resolve against threatening (read Muslim) hordes. He needs to get over these inclinations fast and get on with defending the free world.

Trump’s approach to Russia is “a travesty” and has “raised more questions about our leadership than at any time since the 1920s,” Nicholas Burns, a Harvard professor, told me. More alpha-dog Trump-Putin connivance will endanger the world.

It is said that a century ago, Czar Nicholas II of Russia wrote in his diary, “The year 1916 was cursed; 1917 will surely be better!” Illusion is the mother of disaster, as Trump will learn if he does not change course on Russia.

For those, including Trump and his sycophants and propagandists who down play the likelihood that Russia has blackmail information on Trump, the Washington Post piece should be an eye opener. Here are highlights:

In 1999, Russia’s prosecutor general — the rough equivalent of a U.S. attorney general — vowed to investigate corruption allegations involving the family of then-President Boris Yeltsin.

Then a funny thing happened. Russian TV began showing grainy video footage of the prosecutor, Yuri Skuratov, cavorting in the nude with two young women. Some observers expressed skepticism that the man in the video was actually Skuratov. But any doubts were put to rest by the head of Russia’s internal security service, who declared that his agency’s experts had confirmed the prosecutor’s identity. The man who made the statement was Vladimir Putin, and his words sealed Skuratov’s political fate. 

Blackmail exists everywhere, of course. But nowhere else has it become such a prominent part of political life as in post-Soviet Russia. . . . . Putin learned well. As president he soon cracked down on both the freelance spies and the journalists, but he never forgot his early lessons about the uses of kompromat, from the Russian for “compromising material.” Discrediting an enemy, he realized, can be far more effective than throwing them in jail, so the culture of kompromat has continued to thrive under his rule — though it’s now primarily deployed in the services of the Russian state.

A liberal political rival wants to be president? Have the evening news show an interview with members of a gay club singing his praises (a great way to discredit him in the eyes of a homophobic public). A billionaire oligarch challenges your power? Dig into his seamy financial dealings and share them with muckrakers. An elderly dissident criticizes you from the safety of British exile? Have your hackers covertly plant child pornography on his computer and notify the relevant authorities. As these examples show, kompromat is best viewed as a form of information warfare, sometimes true, sometimes not. More often it’s an artful mixture — all the better to intimidate and confuse.

Donald Trump actually seems to know all this quite well. . . . . If he knows the place so well, though, he must realize that, when it comes to the business of blackmail and intimidation, Russia is indeed in a class of its own. Only Moscow has transformed the principle of kompromat into a major component of its foreign policy. Europeans both East and West witness daily how the Kremlin deploys information against the people and institutions it wants to destroy or control. In places such as Sweden and the Czech Republic, Moscow operates dozens of websites purveying conspiracy theories and falsified news, all aimed at discrediting its myriad enemies. The Russian hand has made itself felt in the outcomes of last year’s British vote to leave the E.U. and a Dutch referendum on relations with Ukraine. No other country has been doing anything like this on a comparable scale.

The recipe in each case may differ, but the objective is always the same: to weaken Western institutions, such as NATO and the E.U., that are capable of offering a united front against Russian designs. This strategy should tell you everything you need to know about Putin’s plans and the nature of the system that he runs.

[W]hy does he [Trump] continue to preach the need for a friendlier relationship with Russia? Is a government that operates the way that Putin’s does — spreading lies in the shadows — really the one that you want as an ally? One can’t help but wonder.

I think the answer to this last question is that Putin has information on Trump and Trump knows this. The question then becomes one of how willing is Trump to throw the American people and America's allies under the bus to keep a lid on the blackmail materials Putin is holding?  Be very afraid. 

The GOP is Becoming the Party of Putin

As a history major in college with an emphasis on Russian history - I even had the late Anna Anderson as a neighbor in Charlottesville for two years - I have never feared or disliked the Russian people.  Their leaders for close to the last 99 years, however, are another matter and the nation's current dictator, Vladimir Putin, a former KGB operative, is in many ways just as frightening as Josef Stalin who murdered millions of his own people. Add to this the fact that other than during the interlude of World War II, Russia has not been an ally of America since the fall of Nicholas II and then the Provisional Government.  Instead, Russia - because of its leaders - has been a consistent devious and manipulating enemy of America and American interests.  Yet, we know see Donald Trump praising Putin, a man who has allowed cronies to financially rape Russia and who is believed to have had political opponents murdered and rigged election.  Worse yet, Trump has suggested that America might ignore or revoke treaties with European allies and others.  Frighteningly, many in the GOP base seem utterly fine with this insanity and ignore the fact that Trump may see Putin's leadership methods what he'd like to adopt if Americans are insane enough to put him in the White House.  A piece in Salon looks at this bizarre situation.  Here are excerpts:

After telling a room full of military veterans during NBC News’ “Commander-in-Chief Forum” that their current commander in chief is a weaker leader than Russian President Vladmir Putin (citing the dictator’s high approval rating), Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appeared on the Kremlin-funded news outlet Russia Today. There he defended the former KGB officer from allegations of hacking into the Democratic National Committee — and now many of his most prominent campaign surrogates are following suit.

“I think it’s probably unlikely,” Trump told RT America’s Larry King on Thursday, suggesting that “maybe the Democrats are putting that out. Who knows?” Putin has called the hacking of Democratic officials’ email accounts a “public service” but has denied Russian involvement.

In July, Trump had said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

And while Trump has certainly made no secret of his admiration for the Russian strongman — “He’s been a leader far more than our president has been a leader,” he told moderator Matt Lauer on Wednesday — he’s managed to add some of the Republican Party’s most conservative voices to the baffling praise of Putin.

“I think it’s inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country,” Indiana Gov. Mike Pence said, echoing his running mate on Thursday.

Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski also repeated the seemingly Kremlin-assigned talking points: “I think that for his people, Vladmir Putin has been a fighter”

Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa argued that the Russian leader was a far superior leader to the American president, citing the nationalism incited by the Sochi Olympics.

Of course, Putin extinguished Russia’s nascent democracy, persecuted and murdered Russians and embarked on needless wars to assert dominance in the region, but conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt still argued he has “served his country’s national interest better” than President Obama. 

To be certain, Trump’s overt praise of the Russian strongman is hardly a new tone for modern conservatives, who have for years lauded Putin in an effort to attack President Obama.

Putin Continues to Expand His Hitler Like Policies

One of the key tools used by Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime in their rise to power in the early 1930's was the muzzling of the press and organizations that questioned the official Nazi propaganda machine.  Newspapers were closed, editors and reporters were threatened and arrested any organization that questioned Nazi brutality was shut down.  So far we have seen Putin reprise Hitlers performance at the 1936 Olympic Games with his spectacle at Sochi.  We have also seen him use Hitler's claims of protecting Germans outside of Germany for his blue print for meddling in and likely invading eastern Ukraine.  And, of course, we have seen Putin impose anti-gay laws reminiscent of what the Nazis did to the Jews.  Now we see Putin engaging in another Hitler tactic: closing down any organization that might help everyday Russians of the dangers a regime like Putin's poses to not just freedom, but one's life.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Putin's move to shut down an organization that reminds Russians of the brutality of a regime that Putin in some ways seeks to restore.  Here are highlights:

The letters revealed the love story of Lev and Svetlana Mishchenko, a couple separated by Lev’s imprisonment in the Soviet gulag after World War II. What made the letters extraordinary is that they were uncensored, smuggled back and forth from the Pechora prison camp in the far north. The letters became the basis for Orlando Figes’s moving book, “Just Send Me Word,” published in 2012.

What makes this relevant today is that the Mishchenko trove of letters was found by Figes at Memorial, a Russian organization formed in the dying days of the Soviet Union to ensure that the story of Stalinist repression would not be forgotten. Memorial has also, separately, been at the forefront of human rights work, determined not to let the brutality of the past be repeated. Now Memorial is facing demands by President Vladimir Putin’s government that the organization be closed. This would represent a loss beyond description.

In its archives, Memorial has preserved stories of the suffering inflicted upon millions of people by the Soviet police state. The Mishchenkos survived and were reunited; many others met a worse fate. The only way a society can begin to heal from such wounds is to preserve the lessons of history for future generations.

But Mr. Putin, a scion of the Soviet KGB that inflicted so much of the suffering, has no use for Memorial. On Friday, news services reported that the Russian Justice Ministry had filed a petition with the Supreme Court to force Memorial to close. A hearing is set for Nov. 13.

As if to twist the knife, Mr. Putin’s loyalists unleashed a smear campaign against Memorial on the NTV television channel, accusing the group of supporting extremists and terrorists. 

Earlier, the Kremlin’s pressure on Memorial included attempts to force it to accept the status of a “foreign agent” under a new Russian law that has been used to harass groups that receive funding from abroad. Memorial has resisted the insulting label, which is redolent of Soviet-style accusations of disloyalty and treachery.

No one should underestimate the power of the Russian state to crush a person or organization. Mr. Putin has done it repeatedly to silence his critics. But the squelching of Memorial would be an especially grievous blow to the Russian people and their ability to understand, and shape, their history.

A Member of Pussy Riot Condemns Putin

I have nothing but respect for the Russian people who sadly seem to have been fated to have been ruled by horrific rulers for much of the nation's history.   Nowadays, the rule of the Tsars looks almost benevolent compared to what is happening under Vladimir Putin (not to mention his Soviet predecessors) who seemingly sees himself as a new Tsar.  The man's ego is off the charts.  As is his ruthlessness - something that should come as no surprise given his KGB background.  A member of the band Pussy Riot has a column in the New York Times that looks at what is really happening in Russia beyond the faux image Putin has constructed in Sochi.  It is worth a full read.  Here are excerpts:

ON Feb. 7, the opening day of the Olympics, several people walked out onto Red Square in Moscow. When they attempted to sing the Russian national anthem, all were arrested and taken to the nearest police station. “We were holding small rainbow flags to show support for the L.G.B.T. community,” wrote my protester friend, who found herself taken into custody for the first time in her life.

The following day, the police arrested a group that had gathered in Manezhnaya Square, in Moscow. The arrests came immediately after about 60 people unfurled umbrellas in support of Russia’s only independent television channel, Dozhd. The channel was recently dropped by all major cable operators under pressure from the government, which appeared to have been exacting revenge for a viewer poll question it didn’t like.

This week in Sochi, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, another member of Pussy Riot, and I were detained three times and then, on Wednesday, assaulted by Cossack militiamen with whips and pepper spray. Mr. Putin will teach you how to love the motherland.

More than $50 billion was sunk into the construction of Olympic venues — giant, meaningless, alien objects whose purpose is to feed the ego of the country’s president, elevating him to the rank of a pharaoh or emperor. The host city of Sochi has essentially become a closed military facility. Access to the city is restricted and will remain so for another month after the Olympics end.

Environmentalists’ concerns about illegal construction, enabled by corrupt business dealings, are well founded. Mr. Putin has turned the wartime siege of Leningrad into a sacrosanct event, all while imposing a new siege on Sochi.

Can a pharaoh shut down a city, can he declare a blockade in time of peace? Yes, if he lives and rules in Russia. This is how Dozhd came to be denounced by the government — for posing a question about a siege during a siege.

The face of these Olympics is deceptive, as is the entire authoritarian regime. At first, the authorities do not strike out at you directly. Rather, they systematically force you to adopt the only stance they deem proper, which is to move passively, apolitically, through the entire chain of post-Soviet institutions, from primary school to the grave.

Nikolai Zabolotsky, a Russian avant-garde poet who was repressed under Stalin and spent eight years in exile, compared progressing through life’s stages to being transferred through the gulag’s series of transit prisons. The realities of the Stalin era made the voicing of a direct metaphor like this necessary, even at the cost of losing one’s freedom.

The reality of contemporary Russia, and Mr. Putin’s goal, is to kill such metaphors — by force, if necessary — and to kill the reflection, analysis and criticism they carry. The quasi-fascist direction of this regime over the past 13 years depends on this deadening of the intellect. For as soon as obliviousness ends, so does Mr. Putin’s power.

Those who are writing about the Olympics and who are currently present at the Games should not fall into this forgetfulness, because it is fatal. When you talk about the Olympics — whether you like it or not — you are talking about Russia. For this is a country where people are arrested for waving umbrellas and little flags, where they are sent to penal colonies, like the environmental activist Yevgeny Vitishko, for writing a slogan like “the forest is for everybody” on a governor’s fence, and where they may be sentenced to five or six years in prison for voicing their dissent against the status quo.

Because of their dissent, the most honest people in our country are currently in jail as defendants in the Bolotnaya Square case. They came to the Moscow square on May 6, 2012, to join a protest against fraud in the presidential elections, and they chanted, “Putin, get out!” They were beaten with truncheons by riot police officers, arrested, jailed and put on trial.

For the past year and a half, they have had to make repeated appearances in a kangaroo court, where, day after day, they are being silently tortured as part of Mr. Putin’s broader policy. On Feb. 5, they made their final pleas; their verdicts are due on Feb. 21.

This story is bigger than the Olympic venues, bigger even than the Olympics. This is a story about the real Russia of today. It exists, and the price of its existence is prison sentences for innocent people who speak out.

It should not be forgotten that aiding Putin in repression is the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church which throughout most of Russia's history has sided with tyrants and betrayed the Russian people as the Church leaders have pursued wealth and power.  

 

The Other Side of the Olympic Boycott Debate

From previous posts it is obvious that I have very strong feelings - rage might be an apt description - over what is happening to gays in Russia. Horrible things being done to innocent gays, many very young, all because of political opportunists like Vladimir Putin and religious zealots such as the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church.  Given how much Putin has invested in the 2014 Sochi Games, to see them be an abject failure would in many ways be wonderful - and deserved at least so far as the Russians go.  But what of the young athletes, many of whom have been training for years for this goal, often with their families investing huge amounts in their careers (my oldest daughter figure skated competitively for a while, so I have a sense of the cost involved)?  Over the weekend at the United States Figure Skating Association nationals an amazing young skater, Jason Brown, put on an amazing performance - watch the video above - and put this other side of the argument in better focus.  Out Sports puts some of the argument into words:

We at Outsports knew the calls for an Olympic boycott were never going to take hold. It was always the wrong way to approach discontent with Russian anti-gay laws because it targeted the wrong people -- the athletes -- and offered no consequence for the Russian officials who enact the laws.

Case in point. This weekend, 19-year-old Jason Brown brought the crowd to its feet at the US Figure Skating Championships well before his long program routine had completed. It was a Susan-Boyle kind of performance for many viewers unfamiliar with Brown. The public knows Johnny Weir and Evan Lysacek (neither of whom competed), many know Jeremy Abbott (who won the event). Nobody outside of figure skating circles knew Brown, ranked 16th in the world by the International Skating Union.

His long program was something to behold. . . . His final long program score -- 182.61 -- was under 13 points away from the world record. It was an epic performance from an up-and-coming athlete who has finally arrived at his dream: A spot on the US Olympic team.

Who knows if he'll be able to recapture the magic of that performance in the Olympics next month. Regardless, he deserves to chase his dream of an Olympic appearance whether Russia has anti-gay laws or not.

Whatever our focus turns to in Sochi, I'm just glad this man will get to perform this routine for the world.

I remain torn and wish nothing but the best for the athletes and nothing but the worse for Putin and his Nazi like accomplices.   I save particular ill wishes for the reactionary bastards in the leadership of Russian Orthodox Church which has brought so much misfortune to so many over the centuries.  What do readers think?