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Alegretto said on August 8th, 2013 at 9:43 am

Good. This is good.

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Heather C said on August 8th, 2013 at 9:51 am

Vote with your wallet.

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I have *extreme* skepticism about the claim that Atos can be shamed due to negative publicity. (QV their horrific record on disability benefits in the UK at present.)

Very much worthwhile otherwise.

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I have *extreme* skepticism about the claim that Atos can be shamed due to negative publicity.

Understandable – hence the best strategy with them is to pressure the governments who have contracted out to them (Atos’ customer base).

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Understandable – hence the best strategy with them is to pressure the governments who have contracted out to them

Or realize that for this, they’re about as easily touched as GE and Dow and move to the rest of the list.

If even one of Coke, McD’s or Visa were to start making noises, I suspect that the IOC would do … something. I have no idea actually what they would do. It’s nice to think that some other prior Winter Olympics location could be turned around and reused for the 2014 olympics, but I don’t really know if that’s logistically feasible or not.

(I would laugh quite a bit if Utah got to host another Winter Olympics because of anti-gay policies in Russia though.)

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(I would laugh quite a bit if Utah got to host another Winter Olympics because of anti-gay policies in Russia though.)

New motto of the 2014 Winter games:
“Russia – We make Utah look progressive!”

Also: It takes, literally, 5 minutes to send e-mail to Coke, NBC, and McDonalds (although fair warning, Coke wants your address and phone number if you want to talk to them).

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…and remember, the Simply juice line is also owned by Coca-Cola. As is Odwalla. How many different brands of Orange Juice does Coca-Cola MAKE?

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Sisyphus said on August 8th, 2013 at 2:31 pm

Actually, to make it easier, here’s a link to Wikipedia’s List of Coca-Cola brands.

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One of the things done to put pressure on Glen Beck’s advertisers was to take some of his more inflammatory statements and make videos of the statements being read with subtitles over images of his sponsors’ corporate logos.

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It’s commendable that you’re sticking to your guns and voting with your wallet but honestly I’m not sure who you’d be able to do business with if you cut out everyone with deplorable practices.

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As Chris pointed out on twitter, there is the possibility of an anti-boycott boycott by troglodytes, a la Chick-Fil-A, but what I love about this possibility–and I really hope it does get to this point–is that they would have to overtly express their solidarity with totalitarian Russia–exactly the kind of thing that would make bullet-headed right-wingers uncomfortable. Indeed, the next time someone starts spouting anti-gay rhetoric you can remind them they’re on the same page as Russia, and conservative Americans LOVE Russia, right?

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Mitchell Hundred said on August 9th, 2013 at 6:05 am

It’s commendable that you’re sticking to your guns and voting with your wallet but honestly I’m not sure who you’d be able to do business with if you cut out everyone with deplorable practices.

The totality of fucked-up things in the world is too overwhelming to tackle as a whole, which is why it’s better to take them one at a time. We’re all going to have dirty hands due to something, but this doesn’t mean we should resign ourselves to that status completely.

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Carlos Futino Barreto said on August 9th, 2013 at 7:33 am

I fully agree with you re: targetting the sponsors. I’d just like to add something: Target your country’s local Olympics Comittee’s sponsors too. Specially if you live in a country that usually gets lots of medals. If the local comittees start to get in trouble, they will pressure the IOC, and the IOC doesn’t want to have winter games without the U.S. or Canada.
Of course, in my case, if Brazil boycotted the winter games, I’d bet you nobody would notice.

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This isn’t gonna work, ethical consumerism is not an effective method of change because it neglects any real activist content in favour of passive consumption. The situation with Atos isn’t gonna change because people write strongly worded letters to the government, it is only gonna change when people refuse to accept the present state of things and mobalise in vast majorities against it. The same thing applies to Russia’s anti-gay laws, go and actually do something instead of just pretending you are.

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[…] Boycotting the Russian Olympics because Russia just declared war on homosexuals is a great idea! Christopher Bird outlines some much more specific practices in order to hit the sponsors where it hu…. […]

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http://howupsetting.tumblr.com/post/56323214104/lgbt-rights-in-russia-and-our-western-fantasies

I think this blogpost encompasses all I really wanted in response to this topic, not only do these calls for boycotts actually ignore the fact LGBT activists in Russia have actually spoken out against the idea, they also indulge imperialist and orientalist fantasies concerning the “white saviour”.

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Chus is right. There’s nothing to do here but watch and wait, and criticise the efforts of other people to do something. Anything else would be futile.

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Russians aren’t white now?

OK, I know about Turkic Siberians and the peoples of the Russian Far East, but you and I both know what the people that rule Russia look like. But traditionally, whether Russia considers herself European or Eastern depends on whichever is most convenient for her at the time.

That’s basically the same bandwagon that shouts western imperialism to defend third world dictatorships, as though European colonialists invented the idea that shooting people and burying them in mass graves is a bad idea. It’s a rhetorical smokescreen.

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Jaelinque said on August 11th, 2013 at 6:02 pm

I sincerely doubt this is going to work.

Yes, I am Russian.

The piggest problem with the anti-gay legislation is that these law are, well, populist. They were barely protested mostly because there are few wanting to protest them, and those who were were mostly from the ‘Moscow/St. Petersburg iPhone-beraing hipster crowd’. Same people who are actually West-oriented and, well, care about racism and homophobia and mysoginy and stuff. Most of the general population of Russia? Yep, they’re on board.

If this sounds depressing, that’s only because it is.
It’s scary as hell: understanding that most of your country not only doesn’t share your values, but directly detests them.

Problem is, it’s not quite clear what to do with these laws. Anti-gay legislation is basically a creation of one lady severely hurt by those damned homosexuals perverting her son. Her rhetorics is nothing new for Russia, but ten years ago she would have made the headlines… and that would be all. These days those like her get laws passed. Something changed. Some would think it is about the Orthodox Church getting more power, but while that is true, this is not the root, just one of the chain links. By some reason people in power started behaving like they give a shit about social matters. Like, there is a new overwhelming ideology being constructed now. And it’s a highly conservative one (there’ve been attempts to ban abortions… they’ll hardly be succsessful, because this is where most of Russia is actually far ahead of Moscow in numbers, but the attempts themselves are telling).

What I’m trying to say is: a part of that ideology is constucting an image of the enemy. The ‘us vs. them’ rhethorics never actually stopped, but now it’s getting louder. There is an ‘inner enemy’ – our governement suddently started caring about ‘illegal immigrants’ (their legal status is actually not that simple) naming them ‘a national threat’.

And by caring I mean… there is, aong other things, a resently constructed detainment camp for illegals in Moscow camp for illegals right now. People are being brought and held there, their status unclear.

Go on, you can make the parallels yourselves.

So. Sochi.
Sochi is a big thing. A pride thing. We are pushed to get exited about it, and many people are.
Guess what a boycott would be considered&
Those evil westerners shitting on our Russian parade.
Because they hate and fear us. Us, the clean and shining beacon of good traditional values they detest. They hate us because we dare to combat the perversion they’ve been trying to spread here for nearly twenty years for the purpose of making Russian nation degenerate, dying out and ripe for the picking.
They hate us because they are our enemies and because they see us getting stronger and fear it.

We do not roll over for the West, this is the message that is loud and clear here. The more they want us to, the less we are likely to, the more pressure there is, the more heroic and righteously resistant our leaders look. This, by the way, what the Snowden thing is about, more then anything else.

Because Russia is strong. Russia is great. Russia is still a superpower.

…Yeah.

Moreover, the pro-gay activists are already labeled as ‘western agents’, those, who act not just against discrimination, but against Russia itself. Any kind of boycott… will not help with that.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do what you want to do. I am certainly all for not giving your money to people sponsoring something you find detestabe.
It’s just… It’s more about your and your conciense out there, not us in here.

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@Jaelinque:

Dude.

I really don’t have anything to add here, other than to thank you for your insight, and give you my best wishes. It sounds scary as fuck over there right now. Keep your chin up.

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Jaelinque said on August 14th, 2013 at 4:41 am

@dogheart

Thank you. Yes, it is scary and getting more so by the moment.
Not just fot LGBT people (just to clarify something: I don’t identify myself as LGBT and am a heterosexual cisgender feminist woman), but for anyone who, you know, does not agree.

And one more thing.
It’s not about being against ‘great white saviors’, please. Not about ‘you stay out, it’s our battle’. Once again: please.
There is some national pride, yes, but it’s mosly… not that we don’t want or need help. It’s just we don’t see how it could help.

Let me traslate this letter by Russian LGBT activists for you all:

Please, please don’t make them hate us even more.

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Prankster; we’re already seeing the Pat Buchanans and Rush Limbaughs supporting Russia’s “right” to opress gays, and attacking liberals for trying to “force” homosexuality on the Noble Russian People.
Really, they didn’t even slow down that car; they went right into a rheotorical Tokyo Drift.

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killians irish bread said on August 18th, 2013 at 4:31 am

@Jaelinque

every movement tries to claim that opposition doesn’t matter/makes them stronger, but that doesn’t actually make it true.

i’m sure that russian bigots will respond to pressure with all the arguments you’ve brought up but that doesn’t make it a better strategy not to pressure them.

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Jaelinque said on August 18th, 2013 at 4:23 pm

@killians irish bread

See, here is the thing: with the outside pressure those who do the pressuring ara not in any danger from those wo they pressure.
People protesting in the US or Europe don’t live in Moscow or, say, Chelyabinsk.
They will not be the ones to deal with the consequences if there will be any.

‘russian bigots’ you are talking about are, once again, most of the people in this country. Can one choose to antagonize their people? Yes, one can, one can risk their life as much as one wants.
However, making this choice for someone else is… let’s say, questionable.

And, let’s be honest here: we’re the opposition here. I may not be LGBT, but I participated in protests,starting almost two years ago, long before anybody on the outside cared. You know, when it started getting chilly here? At around 2005. Did anybody give a damn then? I protested in winter, next day after a surgery was performed on my leg. I had my friends arrested.
Does Russia need its opposition to be more active?
Definitely.
Do we neeed to push for human righs, LGBT rights included?
Yes.
This is our thing to do.
Because here we are the opposition. Us, not someone protected from our governement by borders and their country political weight and military.

Once again: do as you will, you’re entirely in your right, and you even might be helping in some ways. But, once again, this has much less to do with what is happening here than with your images of yourselves.

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[…] Today I want to share a post from the Awesome Christopher Bird (Mightygodking) all about …well just go and read it Here […]

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