Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni held up closer ties to Russia — which has successfully bucked western outrage over its law against “homosexual propaganda” — as a possible response to U.S. pressure to reject its own Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

Museveni made the remarks on Friday, Feb. 21, responding to President Barack Obama's statement that the bill would “complicate” the relationship between Uganda and the U.S. Museveni signed the law, which imposes up to a lifetime prison sentence for homosexuality and criminalizes LGBT rights advocacy, on Monday.

“The Russians work with us, they don't mix up their politics with our politics, they just do what we agree on,” Museveni said during a visit to the Ugandan Air Force's headquarters in Entebbe to commission a Russian-built Sukhoi-30 military flight simulator. Apparently referring to Obama, Museveni continued, “If you see someone who goes into other people's homes and starts giving instructions — do this, do that — you know there is something wrong with him…This is my home, you have got your home. you go back to your house.”

Museveni has been pursuing military ties to Russia since at least 2011, when his government reportedly ordered six Sukhoi fighter jets for more than $700 million. The purchase caused an uproar in Uganda, because Museveni went over the heads of lawmakers to use Bank of Uganda funds to acquire the aircraft.

Museveni visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in December of 2012, just after appointing a special military attaché to his country's embassy to Russia. Ugandan media reported that Museveni was recently “given Russia's highest public award for being one of the eminent military-political leaders in Africa.”

If the showdown over the Anti-Homosexuality Bill does lead Uganda to pursue closer ties with Moscow, it will be a dramatic illustration of how Putin's aggressive defense of his country's anti-gay legislation could reshape geopolitics. He defied western outrage in the run up to the Olympics, possibly emboldening leaders in other countries to follow his example. Russia has the military and financial means to make more of a symbolic gesture of support if it suits its interests.

“Putin is being strongly and proudly homophobic with an aggressive global posture that African leaders were more reluctant to take before this,” said Mark Bromley of the Council for Global Equality, which lobbies the U.S. government to defend LGBT rights in foreign policy. “He's seeing this as a new non-aligned movement of proudly homophobic leaders, he's creating more political space for countries that might have looked for a more diplomatic way out in the past”.

Watch Museveni Propose Closer Ties With Russia

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23 Completely Random Old Photos Of People Standing On Things

Before planking was a thing, there was standing. Inspired by the State Library of Victoria.

Apparently in the olden days, people really liked standing on things.

St Kilda, Victoria, 1909.

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They stood on walls, of course.

Sydney, New South Wales, c. 1934

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Next to columns.

1903.

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At the beach.

Nelson, New Zealand, 1945.

Flickr: drregor / Creative Commons

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Thursday, 13 February 2014

You Have To Watch The Schapelle Corby Facebook Look Back Parody

Relive ALL the (recently released convicted drug smuggler’s) memories!

YouTube user VJ4rawr2 is responsible for what is probably the most hilariously accurate Facebook look back video seen so far.

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It captures the past nine years of Schapelle Corby's life perfectly.

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And also reflects on the life of her family.

Note that her sister's swimwear modeling is the only thing on Schapelle's Facebook that has zero 'likes.'

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Don't worry though, it isn't restricted to her time in prison. The lookback also gives insight into her future.

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Texas Sportscaster Delivers A Brilliant Takedown Of NFL Bigots

If you have preconceived notions about Texans and tolerance, Dale Hansen — a sportscaster for ABC’s Dallas affiliate WFAA — might surprise you with his thoughts on Michael Sam . Someone give this man a raise.

Here's Hansen's thoughtful speech:

Hansen's scathing words towards NFL employees who are afraid of drafting an openly gay player: “It wasn't that long ago that we were being told that black players couldn't play in our games because it would be uncomfortable. And even when they finally could it took several more years before a black man played quarterback, because we weren't comfortable with that either. So many of the same people who used to make that argument and the many who still do are the same people who say government should stay out of our lives but then want government in our bedrooms. I've never understood how they feel comfortable laying claim to both sides of that argument.”

He then opens up and admits “I'm not always comfortable when a man tells me he's gay, I don't understand his world. But I do understand that he's part of mine.”

After that, the sportscaster goes on to quote writer and civil rights activist Audre Lorde, who said “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”

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Mike Dinovo / Reuters

Hansen concludes that “we've always been able to recognize 'em, some of us accept 'em, and I want to believe that there will be a day that we do celebrate 'em. I don't know if that day's here yet, I guess we're about to find out, but when I listen to Michael Sam I do think it's time to celebrate him now.”

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Saturday, 1 February 2014

21 Things Every Traveler Wishes They Owned

I just want a comfy pair of sweatpants I can wear on a plane.

A gold foil scratch map to mark all their adventures ($20).

Made by Luckies, available here.

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Monday, 27 January 2014

The Curious Case Of Queer Love On NBC’s “Dracula”

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Lucy, you in danger, girl.

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In a television season arguably book-ended by Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black and now HBO's Looking, at least if social media and think pieces are any indication, viewers in search of LGBT characters have had — perhaps to a few studios' frustration — options. While, just a few years ago, simply having an a queer character or plotline might have been (and often was) enough to earn a dedicated following, NBC's Dracula is an unintentional reflection of how the landscape has changed. Featuring not one, but two gay plotlines this season, Dracula managed to capture and keep my attention despite a pilot I turned off halfway through. I'm emphasizing my take on the show here because, well, as Dracula showrunner Daniel Knauf told me yesterday by phone, “Why aren't there more of you?!”

The Bram Stoker adaptation created by Cole Haddon and starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers has shown an impressive appetitive for the dynamics of race, sex, and institutional violence, all while playing in the shadows of Victorian London.

Early in the season, medical student Mina Murray (Jessica De Gouw) and her soon-to-be fiancé Jonathan Harker (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) share a relatively chaste kiss in a sidewalk café that makes women at a nearby table audibly gasp. Set against that same repressive backdrop, though, Dracula and Lady Jayne Wetherby (Victoria Smurfit) have sex on her private balcony at the opera. “Lady Jayne is biting her lip until it bleeds because she can't moan,” Knauf points out. “Trying to deal with vice is like squeezing a balloon. Squeeze it on one end and it just bulges out on the other end.” On another date, Dracula and Lady Jayne later have sex at an underground female wrestling match.

Anthony Howell as Lord Laurent (left) ) with Lewis Rainer as Daniel Davenport

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But the show spends just as much time in the plush and elaborate manses of London’s elite as it does in the city's underworld. “During the research for the show, we learned that underground and private gay clubs were pretty popular and that there was this whole scene of female wrestlers going on,” Knauf says. When Dracula, living under the assumed identity of an American businessman named Alexander Grayson discovers that his competitor Lord Laurent (Anthony Howell) is having a closeted gay love affair with Daniel Davenport (Lewis Rainer), a business partner's son, he finds out the location of the private gay club they frequent and shows up to threaten them with blackmail. Before he utters a word, though, Dracula walks up to Daniel and kisses him. “The kiss wasn't scripted. That was a decision Jonathan Rhys Meyers made as an actor.” Well, all right.

Without giving away too much, suffice it to say the brazenness of sexuality on Dracula has its limits — and consequences, the burden of which almost always falls on the queer characters exclusively.

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