Now Putin steamrolls cheese

The threat to Russia from cheese is finally over, folks. On Thursday TV viewers watched live as tons of cheese and other banned products from the European Union were destroyed by steamrollers.

This surreal moment was too much even for many Russian TV viewers well used to surreal moments. A petition calling instead for the banned produce to be distributed to the needy went viral, prompting the spokesman for Putin, Dmitry Peskov, recently exposed as the owner of a fleet of outrageously expensive watches, to promise that the signatures would undergo "expert" checks.

Yet the outcry was genuine, not manufactured by the CIA or 'fifth columnists', as the BBC noted quoting editorials in Russia's normally pliant press.

The woman who started the petition, which had almost 300,000 signatures, Olga Saveleva told the BBC "if they start destroying food, what next? It's like our authorities don't care about the people."

She said that one pensioner had written to her saying "I can't eat, I can't buy this or that, so if you want to destroy produce, bring it to my home. I can eat it!"

From thebestofrussia.ru

"It is crazy, stupid, and mean," a Moscow priest, Aleksey Uminskiy, said. "This foodstuff could be distributed through charity groups who help people in need, the homeless, refugees, and the elderly."

Poverty in Russia is ticking upwards with more than 15% below the official poverty line (which is US $160 a month). Inflation is at least 16%, more for many common food items. Social and health spending has been simultaneously decreasing as the military and propaganda budgets go up and government revenue comes down because of the dramatic drop in the price of oil and the value of the ruble.

The state of Russia's government services was highlighted last week when it emerged that one pensioner had died and 18 were hospitalized from starvation in a prison masquerading as an old folks home.

Russia now has the highest level of wealth inequality in the world. However one sector of the economy is doing well. The builders of crematoriums are stepping up to meet the sudden demand to burn food.

At the same time that cheese is crushed and poverty is rising, Russia is moving to defend the elites money by spending billions compensating the rich for any loses from Western sanctions, possibly by using money intended to shore up Russia’s pension system. The pension fund has already been raided to fund the annexation of Crimea.

Russia banned food from the European Union, Canada, America and Australia last year in response to sanctions imposed after the invasion of Crimea. It believed that pressure from Europe's powerful farmers would get sanctions lifted but that has not happened and now the Kremlin is thinking about adding X-ray machines, defibrillators and condoms to a banned list which already includes medicines.

Meanwhile, Russian opposition politician and anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny disclosed on his blog that Russian state agencies have continued to order banned products for their own needs.

Wrote Navalny:

They eat Dorblu cheese, dab their mouths with a napkin, and then turn to the camera and talk about how right it is to destroy European products.

The whole episode is surreal but also senseless as previously most ordinary Russians thought it was the West which had banned food exports to Russia. Now they know better. Here are two Russian 'opposition' journalists setting fire to cheese.

Олег Кашин и Павел Лобков жгут сыр и говорят о сакральном смысле уничтожения еды: https://t.co/9BzbbcdyZW https://t.co/YDw8utBUct

— Телеканал ДОЖДЬ (@tvrain) August 6, 2015

Aside from the mockery, after the highly public destruction the internet was flooded with pictures of poor Russians scavenging amongst the food dumps.

Yet Putin's approval ratings remain sky high. Writes William Echols:

Even when the authorities so brazenly flaunt their ill-gotten wealth, the Russian people still look West for the source of their social ills.  How long the Kremlin can keep up this shell game of misdirected blame is anyone’s guess.

Says the Russian commentator Andrey Piontkovsky (translated by Paul Goble):

Putin thinks he can get anything by intimidation, but he is no longer frightening anyone. And the economy of his country, “deprived of Western technology and credits will not be able to function normally” as the collapse of the ruble.

According to Piontkovsky, all this shows that “we are already at that stage of an authoritarian regime when it passes into a totalitarian one,” and “the fate of such regimes is,” he suggests, “a palace coup”  especially against a leader who has lost the mandate of heaven as shown by popular support.

Putin’s closest entourage, he continues, “understands that [Putin’s] policies not only threaten a national catastrophe but also (what is more important for them) hurts their personal interests for all of the people in the close circle of Putin are dollar billionaires who cannot exist without quite close, deep and friendly relations with the West.”

Now that the Russian people may be angry at Putin for what he is doing instead of remaining uncritically supportive, he suggests, may thus make the present moment or one very soon a time when those closest to the Kremlin leader will decide that it is time for him to go and for them to help him on his way out.

World Bank examining LGBT poverty globally

LGBT people in the West have an image of being a comparatively well-off group. Since the early 1990s, LGBT media and marketeers have promoted dubiously sourced statistics on supposed average earnings and created the idea of the 'Pink Pound/Dollar'.

Here's a recent corporate example promoted unquestioningly by Queerty: ' SURVEY: The Gays Earn More Money, Have Less Debt Than Average Americans.'

This idea has then been used by the opponents of LGBT rights, including in court cases, to portray LGBT people as a privileged and powerful group. It has "great long term costs", wrote the great Australian activist Rodney Croome back in 1996:

One cost is the way the anti-gay movement uses our claim to consumer power to portray us as greedy whingers. The hate rhetoric, designed so well to tap into lower middle class and blue collar economic insecurity, goes something like "they've got the jobs, they own the businessess, they've got all the money and they still want more". Another cost is when funding bodies use our supposed disposables as an excuse to leave us out in the cold. One of the chief reasons given by Tasmanian Legal Aid for refusing to help fund our current High Court appeal was that the gay and lesbian community is rich enough to pay for its own litigation. But worse of all, is the way the pink dollar has obscured lesbian and gay poverty leaving economically disadvantaged gays and lesbians a hidden and voiceless minority.

Actual studies of economic well-being for LGBT people are rare. It is hard to study a group of people whose boundaries are fuzzy and where many of its members are pretty invisible and practically no one has even tried.

Croome quotes an Irish study from 1995 which found poverty rates double that of the general population. It's not hard to imagine why this might be. Studies of homeless youth in the US has found very high numbers are LGBT. 320,000 to 400,000 is a conservative estimate of the number of American gay and transgender youth facing homelessness each year. Discrimination, job segregation, and subsequent issues like higher rates of drugs and alcohol abuse might have something to do with higher poverty rates. As might other health issues.

"The majority of people with HIV and AIDS in San Francisco are living in extreme poverty," says Brian Bassinger, executive director of the San Francisco AIDS Housing Coalition:

There's this mythology that gay men are wealthy. The reality is that gay men living in poverty are twice the national average. We are poor. And poor people see marriage equality as a middle class and upper class issue.

Bassinger's clients, and those of LGBT homeless charities in cities like New York, are struggling for attention and support.

A 2009 University of California study of same-sex families -- reputedly a first -- found extremely high poverty rates in sub-groups like rural couples and African-American couples. But it also found that white urban gay couples had poverty rates similar to the general population. Perhaps this explains why certain LGBT issues have prominence and financial support and others less so?

Global LGBT poverty

As in Western countries, in the so-called 'Global South' LGBT people also suffer discrimination and marginalisation and hence higher poverty rates.

Albert Ogle reports on a new survey of almost 6,000 men who have sex with men (MSM) from 165 countries by MSM Global Forum.

20% of younger MSM surveyed had no income and 30% had no stable housing, which have both been linked to greater HIV vulnerability and reduced access to HIV services. Compared to older MSM in the 2012 GMHR sample, younger MSM experienced significantly higher levels of homophobia and violence. Among all MSM surveyed, homophobia was significantly associated with reduced access to condoms, lubricants, HIV testing and HIV treatment.

“This data shines light on our collective failure to ensure that YMSM have the resources they need to keep themselves healthy,” said Dr. George Ayala, executive director of MSM Global Forum. “Moreover, it is a powerful reminder that HIV among MSM is an international development issue, inextricably linked with housing, health, education, and security. Donors and policy makers must treat HIV among MSM of all ages with the same level of urgency afforded to other international development priorities, and they must take concrete steps to ensure that the unique needs of YMSM are accounted for.”

Ogle just attended a first, a meeting at the World Bank featuring international gay activists. It included Victor Mukasa, who founded the rights organisation Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) but has been forced to claim asylum in the US. A charity which Ogle in involved with, he writes, supports HIV testing for Ugandan gay men who are simply denied health services elsewhere -- services which are often funded by foreign governments and international bodies.

Meetings such as this one as well as the efforts of bodies such as MSM Global Forum and the pressure of activists on bodies such as USAID are beginning to change the approach of funders on discrimination such as that seen in Uganda. Writes Ogle:

Every institution from the family, the church, the World Bank and governments are failing the LGBT community right now. The presence of this panel was seen as a positive step to begin to address the appalling neglect of this community in heath, education and employment opportunities.

And Ogle reports that the World Bank is funding a ground breaking study on the 'economic impact of homophobia globally', to be published later this year.

The Bank is a controversial partner for any civil rights movement or for those promoting health, given its history. But given the paucity of basic research on LGBT poverty this study has to be welcomed.

Whether such a study can get any resonance in the international LGBT movement or the media is another matter.