[Sp5]

Along with the idiocy of Asst. Sec of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland saying foolish and arrogant things on an unencrypted cell phone, we have this:

Samantha Power offers to join Pussy Riot

Now, if you go into a church in the USA and disrupt the services and trash the place, like Pussy Riot did in an Orthodox cathedral in Moscow, it's a crime. It would not be considered as acceptable First Amendment activity, because the church has its rights to free expression, too. If you did that in the USA, you'd be arrested. You might not get as much time in jail, but who is the USA to talk about that, the most imprisoned country in the world?

The Russian Ambassador had a good take-down of Power:

Quote:

Power met Wednesday with two members of the band, who were jailed in Russia for criticizing President Vladimir Putin and eventually released two months before the end of their two-year sentence. The ambassador and human rights scholar called the women “brave ‘troublemakers’” in a tweet sharing a picture of the group.

When asked about their meeting, the Russian ambassador to the U.N., Vitaly Churkin, asked,
“She has not joined the band?” according to Reuters. “I would expect her to invite them to perform at the National Cathedral in Washington,” Churkin said at a briefing. “Maybe they could arrange a world tour for them, you know. St Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, then maybe in Mecca in Saudi Arabia, ending up with a gala concert at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. So if Ambassador Power fell short, I would be disappointed.”

Do you think that the "canonization" of Pussy Riot has anything to do with feminism, or is it just some lame and counterproductive effort to mess with Russia? "Pussy Riot" is a pretty good term for the feminine imperative, though.

How much attention are they getting because Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is hot?

[Icarus]

(02-08-2014 01:57 AM)Sp5 Wrote:  

How much attention are they getting because Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is hot?

She's a major league "porn" slut, too: Fuck for the heir Puppy Bear! (NSFW)

[Akula]

Good points. Pussy Riot are just attention-seeking sluts who benefitted greatly from becoming a 'cause-celebre' over this whole ridiculous stunt they did. They surely would have been arrested in the US -- wouldn't have made it though the door at a Mosque.

This woman should be fired but we all know that won't happen. Our State Department is a real mess...politically self-serving bureaucrats of the worst kind.

[Sp5]

(02-08-2014 06:18 AM)Icarus Wrote:  

(02-08-2014 01:57 AM)Sp5 Wrote:  

How much attention are they getting because Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is hot?

She's a major league "porn" slut, too: Fuck for the heir Puppy Bear! (NSFW)

Yeah, that really shows the full madness of PR.

It's very odd. The scope of permissible expression in the USA is narrowing. For example, the Occupy protests were put down pretty severely in some places. Protests are met with scores of militarized police. But somehow our diplomats feel compelled to link up with a fringe movement of trite epater le bourgeois artists in Russia.

It's like the Russian Ambassador hanging out with and endorsing Insane Clown Posse and becoming a juggalo.

I don't like that Samantha Power, she's one of those "Responsibility to Protect" chicks who wants the USA to send troops to fight and die anywhere the indigenous people are killing each other.

[Haig]

It wouldn't surprise me one bit if Pussy Riot is some sort of splinter group/sister faction of FEMEN.

These sort of political agitators are nothing new to history and always suddenly appear as if by magic when there is a certain agenda they want to push or country they want to destabilize.

[DWF]

Tolokonnikova might be a crazy cunt, but WB, most definitely:

[germanico]

Anyone following the news on Russia lately? Apparently there are some athletic competitions going on there, but I couldnt find any info on that.

[Excelsior]

Relevant:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2...vYHj_vvyvh

Quote:

Why Does America Send So Many Stupid, Unqualified Hacks Overseas?

Recently, a colleague of mine from the Foreign Service told me about a former U.S. ambassador to Sweden who, some years ago, had passed out in the snow, too drunk to get up. He had been partying hard during an outing in the countryside. Fortunately, an embassy officer found him in time to save his life. America’s boozy man in Stockholm was a non-career political appointee—no surprise. The fellow who saved him was a professional diplomat. And the roles the two men played that night is emblematic of a familiar routine.

That was the thought I had earlier this week when word came that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had approved nominations of President Barack Obama’s latest batch of ambassadorial picks—including a couple of first-time diplomats whose cringeworthy performances during their testimony suggested they’ll need to rely heavily on their Foreign Service staff to keep from embarrassing the United States. Of course, we have little reason to worry about longtime Montana Senator Max Baucus, whose appointment to serve in China the Senate passed unanimously on Thursday. But some wealthy campaign donors with backgrounds a bit further afield from public service should give us concern. They’ve already embarrassed themselves.

When hotel magnate George Tsunis, Obama’s nominee for Oslo, met with the Senate last month, he made clear that he didn’t know that Norway was a constitutional monarchy and wrongly stated that one of the ruling coalition political parties was a hate-spewing “fringe element.” Another of the president’s picks, Colleen Bell, who is headed to Budapest, could not answer questions about the United States’ strategic interests in Hungary. But could the president really expect that she’d be an expert on the region? Her previous gig was as a producer for the TV soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. She stumbled through responses to Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) like, well, a soap opera star, expounding on world peace. When the whole awkward exchange concluded, the senator grinned. “I have no more questions for this incredibly highly qualified group of nominees,” McCain said sarcastically.

For the purposes of comparison, Norway’s ambassador to the Washington is a 31-year Foreign Ministry veteran. Hungary’s ambassador is an economist who worked at the International Monetary Fund for 27 years.

The resumé imbalance, of course, owes to a simple fact: The United States is the only industrialized country to award diplomatic posts as political spoils, often to wealthy campaign contributors in an outmoded system that rivals the patronage practices of banana republics, dictatorships and two-bit monarchies. A similar system once allowed political allies to become military officers, but Congress outlawed the practice after the Civil War, during which the public recoiled at the needless slaughter brought on by incompetent cronies who had been appointed generals (men like Daniel Sickles, whose insubordination at Gettysburg caused more than 4,000 Union casualties). Representing the United States in a foreign capital, however, is a privilege still available to any moneyed dolt with party connections.