So Putin has been “elected” Russia’s president for a third time. Well, some remain unwilling just to accept this lying down – er, fully clothed. Yes, one of the world’s favorite protest groups swung into action yesterday in Moscow to protest Russia’s crooked election. The group calls itself Femen, and it’s a media-favorite mainly due to its attention-getting tactics – so time-tested and traditional, in a way, yet now employed for political ends: they are all comely young women, and they take their tops off.

The result is frequent intriguing headlines such as Women Go Topless Against Putin and the like. (Click if you will, but the photo-series is of course rated PG.) But there is another aspect to this group’s operations that is intriguing as well, if one can pull one’s eyes away from the fleshly dazzle. For Femen is a Ukrainian organization – so what are they doing in Moscow, and what do they care about Putin?

Actually, this Moscow altercation – which apparently earned its Femen protagonists several days in jail, and which took place at the very same polling-station where Putin himself was scheduled to come vote, naturally: this has emerged as a standard Femen tactic – was a romp in the park compared to the group’s protest action in Minsk last December against the dictator there, Aleksandr Lukashenko. The Belarussian KGB – they still call it that there – proved itself to be quite unimpressed with the charms on display; they not only rather roughly arrested the Femen protestors, but then took them off to the woods to terrorize them for a bit, including cutting off their hair. But of course they did not want to go too far, given the constant media attention these women enjoy, and which to some extent is their protective shield even as they otherwise leave themselves naked.

Still: Ukraine, Belarus, Moscow – OK, it was once all one country, and many cultural similarities remain. But Femen activists have also reportedly been spotted in Milan, protesting in some way or another against the fashion industry. I couldn’t find much material on that, but what I do have is recent reports about how the Austrian political scene is about to get a bit more interesting. Yes, a two-woman Femen delegation – that’s them in the picture up above – recently traveled to Vienna to give the Austrian Green Party political-action tips. According to the report in the authoritative Austrian newspaper Die Presse, that included a how-to session on “boob prints,” which have turned out to be the #1 money-raising article from their Femenshop. (Unfortunately, the text on that webpage is only in Cyrillic – probably Ukrainian – which likely means that those too far removed from Kiev could find it difficult to mail-order the goods on display here. Any enterprising Western Internet-business(wo)man interested in helping out?) The German newsmagazine Focus actually has a photo-series showing them at their press conference, making the aforesaid print; the rather more staid Die Presse limits itself to collecting juicy quotes from the Femen representatives, such as “We want to show how you do it: go out onto the streets, disrobe, and win!” and that they all still call their mothers every day, who invariably ask “whether we are dressing warmly enough.”

In the final analysis, though, Austria is another culture entirely, as is Milan, so it is a significant step outward into the world. Why would the girls of Femen want to stop there? What I’m suggesting is that we might be seeing here the beginnings of the next great transnational political movement. Yes, after the Occupy Wall Street protests, it’s time to take it from the top!

Talk about ending the year on a sour note! Der Tagesspiegel journalist Caroline Fetscher starts her post-Christmas opinion column (Project Europe is only beginning) with Belarus, which is certainly depressing enough. Through the vicious wave of police-repression following his recent presidential election “victory,” Aleksandr Lukashenko has cemented his title as “Europe’s last remaining dictator.” That much is clear, but Fetscher has a rather different point to make: Europeans should not assume that Belarus is the only problem when it comes to democracy, i.e. that there are no other stains elsewhere.

That would be a complacent thing to do; and after all, Die Zeit republished Fetscher’s piece under the new title Complacency is the enemy of Democracy. So where are there problems elsewhere in Europe? Well, there’s the Vatican, with its pedophilia scandals; Italy itself where “there rules an operetta-premier, who systematically subjugates the media, laws, and several submissive girls”; the Netherlands, where eurosceptic and anti-Islam ideologies thrive (and where Jews live uncomfortably – allegedly); and then Hungary, where antisemitism and anti-Gypsy feelings prevail.

This is mostly incoherent. First of all, Fetscher’s subject is supposed to be threats to democracy; the Roman Catholic scandals have little to do with that, while one would think that at least some of the opinions she condemns (at least euroscepticism) are precisely what free, democratic peoples are supposed to be allowed to hold if that suits them. She also strangely misses one recent phenomenon that would seem to have constituted a datapoint strongly supporting her thesis, namely the new media-supervision law in Hungary (which I recently covered here) that some see as paving the way for the return of something resembling a dictatorship.

But does the new law really make up such a threat? Why not go ask someone actually on the ground there, which is what Hanno Mussler of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung does in an interview with Jan Mainka, publisher in Budapest of a German-language weekly.

This is a remarkable piece, mainly because of the calm lack of concern Mainka displays for the new media law:

The Budapester Zeitung [his paper] reports in a fair and balanced manner. In our editorials we support no party. At most you could describe our line as pro-Hungary. I don’t see that we will get in conflict with the new law. I’m not so sure about other Hungarian media outlets. Many are anything but fair and balanced. The interregional dailies stand on the side of either the opposition or the government.

To him, concern elsewhere in Europe over the media law (even as expressed by German Chancellor Merkel, or by the EU Commission) is “hysteria.” The new Hungarian premier, Viktor Orbán, was after all one of the leaders of the opposition that brought Communism down in Hungary twenty years ago. Of much more concern for the country’s media business are its economic troubles, for which the Orbán administration is just the set of personnel you would want to look to for solutions. Yes, recent taxation measures (bank tax, tax on foreign companies) have been drastic, but drastic solutions are what is needed; only their somewhat unpredictable nature is to be regretted.

So there you have it. If we are to believe Herr Mainka – again, responsible for putting out and making money with a publication in Hungary’s capital – neither the new media law nor Orbán’s ruthless revenue-raising measures are anything to worry about. But I don’t know: in particular, his dismissal of the Hungarian dailies – implying that it’s no problem if the government comes down hard on them, after all, they’re partisan – for me strikes the wrong note: newspapers are supposed to be allowed to be partisan! I’m getting too much here of the syndrome “OK, they’re going after the Jews; but I’m an upstanding and decent citizen, and they’ll never come after me!”

Still, this is a “don’t worry” viewpoint from an expert who is right there where the things are happening. Maybe all of us who were viewing developments in Hungary with alarm should stop and reconsider. Mainka also makes the point that few if any have likely taken the trouble to read the new media-law act to see what it actually says – maybe that would be a good first step for everyone!

Uh oh: looks like some funny business with the counting of the ballots. And don’t you find it a little suspicious that all the local election officials, the ones in charge of recording and counting the votes, are all professed partisans of the incumbent?

Yes folks, it’s the old bait-and-switch tactic again. All of this has truly been going on, but not (yet?) in Florida. I’m referring here instead to the recent “elections” in Belarus, commonly known as “Europe’s last dictatorship,” where to no one’s great surprise President Alexander Lukashenko managed to get passed the amendment to the Belarussian constitution that allows him to keep on running for re-election as long as he is physically able.

The key, of course, is that now that the Belarussian constitution allows him to run, it’s overwhelmingly likely that he will always win. This is not due to any special place Lukashenko occupies in the hearts of his countrymen, but rather to his efficiency in finding ways to win, irrespective of what may be the voters’ preferences. Johnni Michelsen of the Danish commentary newspaper Information managed to infiltrate the country to observe the Belarussian election process himself and send back a report: Chaotic Election Day in Belarus. (more…)

Here’s the latest on our favorite European dictator (come to think of it – the only European dictator left!), Belarus’ Alyaksandr Lukashenko, again from the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Newsline. The entry is short, so I’ll just go ahead and quote it in its entirety:

Belarussian President Signs Edict on Ideology Within the Workplace. President Lukashenko signed an edict on 23 February stipulating that the heads of companies and enterprises will be responsible for the ideological schooling of their workforces, Belapan reported. The edict specifies how many people can be employed by local “ideology departments” and the procedure for appointing ideology officers within organizations. A statement released by the president’s press office read: “An ideologist must enjoy the credibility of the staff, be able to explain issues of interest to his or her colleagues, and help [the workers] address their own problems.”

That’s right: We’re in effect talking here about the old Soviet concept of political commissars. In the 21st century. In a land that many place as being within Europe.

Belapan, by the way, is the “Belarussian Information Company.” I tried clicking on the link I found on that page (it’s the English-language homepage) to check out the article whose headline was “Belarus’ membership of EU not ruled out, British ambassador says.” (Hey, I like hysterical humor-writing as much as the next guy – whether it’s intentional or not.) But that revealed to me that you only get access to such articles if you pay for a subscription. Somehow a subscription to the Belarussian news agency is not something I have in mind, as much as that attitude could hurt what seems to have become this weblog’s on-going Lukashenko-watch. (Do I need to set up a separate “Belarus” category over there in the list in the left-side column, so interested readers can separate out the Lukanshenko articles from the rest?)