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John McCain in surprise condemnation of Putin's hate Laws

(featuring material from NBC and Pink News)
NBC’s ‘The Last Word’ with Lawrence O’Donnell has revealed John McCain, defeated Republican candidate in the 2008 US Presidential election, has submitted an ‘op-ed’ piece to Russian neswspaper Pravda. While the piece was not published in Russia, it has been released on the English language website Pravda.ru.
In it, McCain says “President Putin and his associates… don’t respect your dignity or accept your authority over them. They punish dissent and imprison opponents… they write laws to codify bigotry against people whose sexual orientation they condemn”
Putin said he was not aware of Mr McCain’s piece, but said again that the anti-gay legislation did not impinge on human rights.
In addition, the NBC programme quotes the new head of the Olympic Committee, who says he has been guaranteed by the Russian President that there would be no discrimination against anyone in Sochi.
O’Donnell and Stuart Milk, US LGBT activist, discussed Putin’s “spewing” of homophobic remarks in a debate with Anita DeFrance, newly-elected Olympic Board member, and former 1976 Olympic athlete.
See the full TV segment here.
Lawrence O’Donnell appeared to refer to comments made by Putin at the Valdai International Discussion Club on Thursday (September 19th), where he claimed ‘Europeans are dying out so why would we want gay marriage?’ and which form the basis of this article from Pink News.