Saturday, January 29, 2022

Free speech isn't a right you can turn off and on

Jonathan Turley observes:


World Health Organization (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus appears to be expanding the scope of his global effort from the pandemic to what he calls the “infodemic.” Tedros weighed into the conflict between musician Neil Young and podcaster Joe Rogan and streaming giant Spotify. Tedros supported Young’s demand that Rogan be censored by the company for his views on the virus and treatments. It was a particularly glaring position for Tedros after he and WHO have been repeatedly accused of supporting China in early efforts to scuttle investigations into the lab theory on the origin of this virus.

Joe Rogan — who hosts “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast — and has been criticized for questioning whether young healthy people should get the vaccine due to its low fatality rate for younger people. He was also criticized for praising ivermectin, a medicine used to kill parasites in animals and humans despite objections that it is ineffective against the virus.

As will come as no surprise to people on this blog, I have long opposed efforts to cancel Rogan or others for their dissenting views on the virus or its treatment. In the last few years, we have seen an increasing call for private censorship from Democratic politicians and liberal commentators. Faculty and editors are now actively supporting modern versions of book-burning with blacklists and bans for those with opposing political views. Columbia Journalism School Dean Steve Coll has denounced the “weaponization” of free speech, which appears to be the use of free speech by those on the right. So the dean of one of the premier journalism schools now supports censorship. Free speech advocates are facing a generational shift that is now being reflected in our law schools, where free speech principles were once a touchstone of the rule of law. As millions of students are taught that free speech is a threat and that “China is right” about censorship, these figures are shaping a new society in their own intolerant images. 


As C.I. noted in the gina & krista round-robin, don't confuse 'bravery' with greed.  Neil Young's long ahd a problem with various streaming services and the payment he feels he's entitled to.'  


Otherwise, as Ruth noted "Neil Young's tantrum."  Joni Mitchell is sticking up for him but, again, money is in play.  Joni's a wonderful artist but she's also one who has always felt ripped off and she feels ripped off by streaming.  She's late to the game and only recently began posting her own videos to YOUTUBE.  I'm serious there.  She only now has her own YOUTUBE channel.  She feels she's been ripped off for three decades now and it's a stronger feeling than when she felt David Geffen was ripping her off in the 80s and 90s.  


We need free speech, not tantrums.


If you don't like Joe Rogan, don't stream him.  It's that simple.


It's also true that those who are being motivated by greed need to get honest about it. 


Might also be good to get honest about Neil.  A great songwriter.  Sometimes a wonderful singer.  But his politics are not signed off by me.  He was a right-winger in the 80s, embracing Ronald Reagan and his policies and that included the scapegoating of gay men for AIDS.  Those were reactionary and intolerent positions.  Like Neil and like his music but I am not a disciple of his music

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Friday, Januay 28, 2022.  Wars continue and start anew because too many people refuse to use their voices.


Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  Is there an e-mail campaign going on to this site?  Martha and Shirely counted 32 e-mails insisting that he'd made a fool of himself with his remarks on Anne Frank and that I must be embarrassed.

Nope.

I love him.  He's a friend.  And I didn't hear anything embarrassing in his remarks regarding Anne Frank.  Sorry.  If I'd spoken to him about it, I would've said, here's what you should have said as people tried to imp a fux controversy:

I want to offer my sincere apologies to the borther and sister of Anne Frank who my remarks may have offended -- Huh?  THey're dead?  Okay, to her parents -- Also dead?  It's a historical event.  Anyone can use to build a comparison.  Noting what was done to Anne Frank keeps her memory alive.  I am someone whose father and uncle were assassinated.  I've never tried to police the use of them for analogies.  I haven't thrown a public hissy.  Not even when a US Ambassador elected to mock the death of my uncle John F. Kennedy at an official State Dept event in a tasteless and embarrassing manner.  Didn't say a word.  I mentioned Anne Frank because she's someone I respect.  I know why I talked about her.  My question is why, after I spoke, some people decided to talk about her?  Seems it was less about Anne Frank and more about trying to smear the ideas that I was addressing.


He wouldn't have said that because he's a nicer person than I am. 

I'm not embartrassed by him at all.

He is a strong person who has been through a lot and he's come through it without losing his soul.  

He's used his time and name to address serious issues and done so repeatedly.  When he passes away, he will know his life was not wasted.  

I'm not so sure that his critics can say the same thing.  


The wasted? That would be the faux 'resistance.'  Where are they with Michael Avennati today?  He was their hero and holy savior and now he's on trial.  Do they still love him?  He was a disgusting con artist and, as Ruth noted, that was obvious from the very start.  I question the 'values' of those who rushed to slobber over the ambulance chaser.  But that's the least of their sins against humanity.  Aussie Oracle notes:


From Vaush to Richard Spencer to Rachel Maddow…all in lock step. All supporting war with Russia. All I can say is the CIA is really diverse…
4:31 PM · Jan 25, 2022


And John Stauber responds:

Of course.
@TheDemocrats
are united in their visceral hatred of #Russia, a bunch of warmongers since Truman.



Is that what the Maddow crowd's embrace of the neocons was really all about?  They knew they would whore for war so they forgave the other whores?  There was no accountability for the liars who took the country into war with Iraq.  None at all.  And don't bring up crap-ass media.  MOTHER JONES hired what blogger?  There were tons of antiw-ar and peace bloggers but they went with the hideous Kevin Drum who promoted the Iraq War.  That's MOTHER JONES.  A joke, I know.  But it wasn't always the big joke that it is today.  

FAIR's a pretty big joke as well.  They act as media criticis but, as we've noted so many times before, when talking about people not being held accountable for promoting the Iraq War, they never want to call out MOTHER JONES -- or the PACIFICA reporter who went on air defending the Iraq War, calling it a success and insisting things were going great.  As I'm remembering it this was four months before Camp Casey kicked off in Crawford, Texas.  

A lot of whores were in so-called independent media.

The only one ever held accountable for reporting or commentary on Iraq was . . . Judith Miller.  And where did she get her start?  Oh, that's right:  THE PROGRESSIVE.  

The fakery continues as they're silent about the push for war on Russia.

Not everyone is silent, fortunately.  


The conflict that Washington is provoking with Russia over Ukraine threatens the globe with a catastrophe beyond measure. Driven by insoluble internal crisis and rapacious geopolitical ambition, US imperialism is recklessly marching to the brink of World War III.

The crisis over Ukraine has been manufactured by the United States and its NATO allies on the basis of lies. The Biden administration denounces Russia for the movement of troops within its own borders. The claim of an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine is repeated endlessly by the White House and echoed unquestioningly by the mass media.

It is hysterical war propaganda. Russia has never threatened to invade Ukraine. Moscow has stated, however, that it cannot tolerate Ukraine becoming part of NATO.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is not a geographical alliance of “democratic” states but an imperialist cabal for war with Russia and other countries. Incorporating Ukraine would station NATO arms and forces on Russia’s immediate border and would bind the forces of US and Western European imperialism, under Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, to go to war on behalf of the far-right regime in Kiev, tied to neo-Nazis and fascists, in the event it provoked a conflict with Moscow.

US officials have revealed plans to deploy up to 50,000 troops to the borders of Russia and Ukraine. On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a statement spurning Moscow’s written request for guarantees that Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO. The Biden administration is not negotiating. They do not seek to ease tensions but to goad Putin into armed conflict so that he can be presented as the aggressor.

While US and NATO troops are being mobilized, Washington has set into motion the apparatus of economic warfare. Biden and Blinken have both threatened “severe economic sanctions” against Moscow, and Russia is preparing for Washington to cut its access to the global SWIFT financial system for US-dollar transactions, which would exclude the country from much of the world economy.

The US has invaded countries all over the world, and Putin knows what defeat at its hands would entail for him. Manuel Noriega and Slobodan Milosevic died in prison, Muammar Gaddafi was brutally murdered, and Saddam Hussein was hanged. Washington wants Putin dead.

The Biden administration has created a situation that Putin and Russia must construe as an existential threat. There is no concession that Moscow can make that will prevent the advance of NATO forces, short of complete capitulation. It faces the choice of war now or war in the near future when NATO stands on its doorstep.

The White House is recklessly marching to war, yet no one is discussing the implications. No reporter asks Biden what the worst-case scenario might be, and not one has asked if it might entail the use of nuclear arms. Washington acts as if the conflict it is pursuing will be neatly contained in the eastern regions of Ukraine, sealed off in the Donbass.

The United States has waged a series of wars since 1991, and each has ended in catastrophe. Millions are dead, and entire societies in the Middle East and Central Asia have been reduced to dust and rubble. They were primitively armed. Washington now has the country holding the world’s second largest store of nuclear weapons in its sights.

If the US and NATO have convinced themselves that they can level an existential threat against Russia without raising the tremendous danger of nuclear war, they are deluding themselves. How can they exclude this possibility? If they do recognize the risk, their actions are mad.

All of the war propaganda of the US and NATO depicts Putin as a deranged criminal; all of their strategy relies upon his conduct being saner than their own. There is a deeply reactionary faction within the Russian ruling elite and military circles, many of whom are imbued with all sorts of fascistic conceptions.

War has an inexorable logic of its own; it does not abide by the tidy plots drawn up on the Resolute desk of the Oval Office. The logic of the military vortex that Washington is setting into motion will drag the great powers into a global conflict.

China confronts Washington’s demand that it abandon its Zero COVID policy and allow the pandemic to kill millions of its people. The US war drive in the Asia Pacific region, almost as advanced as that confronting Russia, presents Beijing with a similar existential threat. China sees in the US deployment of troops to Taiwan a direct parallel to the developments in Ukraine.

British imperialism, donning again the pith helmet, invents its own lies in service to the war drive. Washington pressures the German bourgeoisie, with the blood of 28 million Soviet citizens on its conscience, to again set its sights eastward.

The unleashing of a war with Russia would within weeks—if not days—drag in Iran, Israel, China and Taiwan. Japan and Australia would rapidly be caught up in the ever expanding fray. Military imperatives would take over. The world would be engulfed. The loss of life that is being prepared is incalculable.

The American ruling class has shown that it is impervious to mass death. Over 900,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 in less than two years, but the Biden White House does not even speak of it. The evening news anchor discusses the daily weather and not the daily dead. There is not a shred of a conscience that will prevent Washington from starting a catastrophic global war.


If you have a voice, why are you not using it to say no more wars?  

 





On THE CONVO COUCH (above), FIorella rightly called out what our 'indy' media is doing currently.


And it makes no sense.   Being silent.  


You want to wait until everything's over.  An indymedia name did that, didn't she?  She can't sleep now.  I'm supposed to feel sorry for her because I've known her for years. 


A mutual friend called and said I should reach out.  


When hell freezes over.


She should feel awful.  Her husband stood for what he believed in.  And she did what?  Undercut him on Amy Goodman's hideous show.  Undercut him.  DIdn't use her position to flood the market with calling out Russia-gate.  Yeah, she published one guy who can't stop slobbering over her to this day.  But that was it.


And now her husband's dead.


Did she think she had time to make it up to him.  When she pulled the stunt on Amy Goodman's show, Elaine and I both called the husband who we'd also known for years and who we still spoke with -- while avodiing the woman.  He was so hurt by what she did.  Thats why Elaine went to town on the woman that night at her site.


Now her husband's dead and she's got guilt and she should.  


He was being brave and speaking truth and she tried to maintain her position by undermining him.  That's how he saw it -- from his mouth to my ear.  


So, no, I'm not reaching out to her and if she's in pain, good.  She should be.  She made a calculated choice.  And she gambled that she'd have time to make up for it.  Sorry, he passed away, you don't have any time to make up for it.


She knew better.  She's promoted herself as an expert on Russia for decades -- as laughable as her attempt to once claim -- in the WIKIPEDIA entry she had her intern write and police -- that she had won an award when she didn't win it, the magazine did.  


When you lie over something that minor, you really have issues.


We all know who I'm talking about, right?  The panty wetter Katy van van who kicked Elaine in the shin when she (Katty van van) was a child because Elaine noticed Katty had wet herself and asked if she needed to change?  That's Katty van van.


Am I too harsh on her?


Let's see, let's check out THE NATION.  


War on Russia is being pimped and where is Katty van van and THE NATION?  


Worthless articles on the front page about elections and candidates that pretend to be about something.


John Nichols tries.  At least?  Are we supposed to be saying that?  


Over 100 links to pieces of 'journalism' on the front page and only John's writing about Russia.  But look at the title:  "There Is No Military Solution Out of This Ukraine Crisis."


It's a crisis?  Hmm.  For who?


It's a matter that the people need to decide for themselves.    The US government and war mongers insist its a crisis.  How nice of John to use that framing?


He's worthless.


Call Katty van-van?  When hell freezes over.  She's haunted?  She should be.    She did something she knew was wrong and she made the calculation that it was the thing to do even though it meant betraying truth, betraying poeple and betraying her husband.  She hurt him very badly.  So she's getting what she deserves.  Actions have consequences.


I'm embarrassed for her and for what passes for her notion of social responsibility.  You'd think your mother killing herself in a really dramatic manner only a few years back would have taught Ktty that life was brief.  But she didn't like her mom and she didn't even know her.  Which is why she never found ______. 


If I was running THE NATION, it wouldn't be doing lifestyle pieces -- like Dave Zirin's latest -- how the Dem Party is antagnozing "young Jews."  I guess to 'sports' writer Dave, that's the most important topic in the world today.  




That's John Pilger speaking with Lee Camp about important topics: War on Russia, the ongoing persecution of Julian Assange, etc.   Two topics THE NATION refuses to lead on.  


I long ago grasped that we'd be one of a very small number of sites covering Iraq.  I rarely even bother to point that out any more.  It has to be an important anniversary for me to point to all the silence on Iraq.  That they walked away is clear.  

But they're apparently not even going to give one serious moment to war on Russia.  

Maybe that's better?  

I eman, I remember the editorial about Iraq and elections.  They ran the start of that editorial on the cover of the issue.  It was stating that they would not vote for anyone who had supported the Iraq War.  Then they promoted John Edwards and they promoted this and that person.  And it finally boiled down, to, "We won't vote for Joe Lieberman!  We'll vote for every other Dem that supported this war but we draw the line at Joe Lieberman!"

Such passed for bravery when Katrina and her buddy predator were interested in Iraq.  Hmm.  He went on my local PACIFICA and trashed me.  Is it finally time for me to tell the truth about him, the ugly truth about that horrible man and why he really hates me?  He called it a pass.  I called it an assault.  I wasn't his date.  I certainly wasn't his friend.  But he was all over me while I was screaming "No" and "Get off me" and kneeing him in the balls to get him off me.  That's why trashes me to this day.  


I trash him because he's a fake and a fraud.  And I don't base that upon attempted rape.  If you know me, you know I put myself last of the list.  I base him being a fake and a fraud upon the fact that he's a  fraud who sells out every time.  I gave to THE NATION -- up until he trashed me on my local PACIFICA -- and set aside what he'd done to me.  I stopped donating because it was obvious that THE NATION was a fraud that was never going to actually hold anyone accountable.  Remember when they had the chance to print storeis -- by Naomi Klein -- about how James Baker and Mad Maddy Albright were profiting from the Iraq War?  And they only printed the one on Republican Baker.  THE GUARDIAN prtined both reports.  Remember when the reporter did a lengthy investigtion into the corruption of Senator Dianne Feinstein and THE NATION paid him but refused to run it so he had to sell it to alternative weeklies?  Time and again, they betray.

Katty vann   refused to cover War Resisters.  Refused to support them.

Time and again, the rag demonstrated what their priorities are.

Rockets hit the BAghdad airport today -- six of them.  Some are wondering if the adjacent US military base was the target.  

The Iraq War never ended and a fucntioining Independent Media would have told you that.







The following sites updated:





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Thursday, January 27, 2022

The new Supreme Court Justice

So Joe Biden will get to nominate someone for the Supreme Court.  Here's Jonathan Turley:

 With the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, President Joe Biden was immediately challenged by Democratic members to make good on his pledge during the 2020 presidential campaign to only consider black females for his first vacancy on the Court. When he made that pledge, some of us raised concerns that he was adopting a threshold racial and gender qualification for the Court that the Court itself has found unconstitutional or unlawful for admissions to schools or private employment. I raised the same concern with Breyer’s announcement in a column that was immediately challenged by some (including the New York Times) who insisted that Ronald Reagan made the same pledge to only consider a woman for his first vacancy. While it is always interesting to watch liberals citing Reagan as authority, the claim is misleading and indeed the Reagan example shows why Biden’s pledge was both unprecedented and unnecessary.

Notably, these critics do not contest that the Court would declare this threshold exclusion to be unlawful for any school or business. Instead, they insist that past presidents have also pledged diverse selections. The historical claims, however, fudge the facts a bit. Past president have pledged to seek diverse nominees but did not exclude candidates based on their race or gender.

The Biden Pledge

In his debate with Bernie Sanders, Biden made two pledges to voters and asked his opponent to do the same to nominate only a black woman for the next open Supreme Court seat and to choose a woman as his vice president. Notably, Sanders avoided such a categorical promise to exclude any male or non-black candidates from consideration.


I would also steer you to Marcia's "Joe Biden, don't screw with me" on the same topic.


I think Joe has to go with racial and gender qualities because his nominee will be so disappointing that there will be nothing else to focus on.  By that I mean, he's not going to nominate anyone who is really left or supports free speech or any number of real and important issues.  


Myself?  If I was nominating someone it would be Jonathan Turley.


''Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

 Thursday, January 27, 2022.  US troops remain in Iraq but Joe's itching for war with Russia.


As US President Joe Biden pushes for more war (and as Nancy Pelosi plans to gift Ukraine with $500 million US tax dollars), Margaret Kimberley (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) observes:


The corporate media always carry water for the state, and they are never more dangerous than when the nation is on a war footing. Right now the United States government is sending weapons to Ukraine. One wouldn’t know that because of constant references to “lethal aid.” The euphemisms and subterfuge are necessary for a very simple reason. Everyone except the Washington war party knows that provoking war with Russia is extremely dangerous.

Joe Biden is picking up where he left off, as Barack Obama’s Ukraine viceroy. He and his incompetent foreign policy team have spun a tale about a pending Russian attack on Ukraine. In reality, it is the U.S. that is ginning up war by provoking the Ukrainians to start a fight that they can’t win. In 2014 a U.S. backed coup put a far-right clique in power. The people of the Donbass region in the east, largely ethnic Russians, wanted no part of the new anti-Russian government and sought autonomy. The resulting war has killed some 30,000 people.

Now the Biden team who publicly insulted the Chinese government and withdrew from Afghanistan without even being able to secure a major airport, have moved on to opening the proverbial can of whoopass with the world’s other major nuclear power. They are using Ukraine in an ill-advised effort to instigate what could lead to disaster.

The 2014 coup against an elected Ukrainian president took place in part because the Russians underestimated the extent of U.S. and NATO determination. They roused themselves quickly however and Crimeans, who are mostly of Russian origin, voted to rejoin the nation they had been a part of until 1954. The U.S./NATO regime change effort came at a steep price for Ukraine. Thanks to Atlanticist meddling it is now the poorest country in Europe that won’t get the NATO and EU membership it was promised. It remains a pawn between two powerful countries.

The U.S. is pulling all the hybrid warfare schemes out of the tool box. For months they claimed that Russian troops were massed on the border, ready to invade. They have engaged in diplomacy but only to try and get their way. Russia has held firm on a guarantee of no further NATO encroachment and the removal of missiles from their border. The French and Germans are feckless and do what Washington wants. They should be pressuring Ukraine to live up to the Minsk II Agreement which requires talks with the breakaway Donbass region.

None of this information is conveyed to the American people who live in ignorance orchestrated by republicans, democrats, and their friends in corporate media. Republican senators who want to run for president outdo one another with nonsense about stopping the Nord Stream II gas pipeline that Germany, a U.S. ally, asked the Russians to build. Winter is coming, quite literally, and Europe needs Russia’s gas. But unless they stop following Uncle Sam’s bullying they will end up with nothing.


War on Russia?  The economy's tanking -- inflation surges and the stock market struggles, etc -- and Joe can't deliver on anything -- not even one of his extremely modest campaign promises -- so it's time to start a war to distract everyone yet again.  Alex Lantier and Johannes Stern (WSWS) report:


Yesterday, as crisis talks between German, French, Ukrainian and Russian officials began in Paris, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a statement rejecting Russian demands for security guarantees from NATO in Ukraine.

The NATO alliance is stoking a war crisis, deploying thousands of troops to Eastern Europe and demanding that the far-right regime in Ukraine be armed to fight an invasion it alleges Russia is preparing. It has sent large quantities of missiles and other arms to Ukraine, and it is preparing up missile bases in Ukraine only a few minutes’ flight time from Moscow. Moscow therefore issued a written request for guarantees that Ukraine would not be allowed to join the NATO alliance and serve as a jumping-off point for attacks on Russia.

Blinken dismissed this out of hand. “There is no change. There will be no change,” he said of US-NATO plans to allow Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, such as Georgia, to join NATO. “We make clear that there are core principles that we are committed to uphold and defend, including Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the right of states to choose their own security arrangements and alliances,” he continued.

Blinken added that this policy had been decided directly by President Joe Biden who, he said, was “intimately involved” in drafting the US response to Moscow’s request. “We reviewed it with him repeatedly over the last weeks, just as we were getting, as you know, comments, input, ideas from allies and partners.”

Only days after US officials revealed plans to send up to 50,000 troops to the borders of Russia and Ukraine, Blinken all but admitted that Washington is not negotiating but sending an ultimatum backed with threats of war.


War and more war.  And let's not pretend that the mid-terms aren't on the minds of those screaming for war.  The pathetic and faux 'resistance' spent the last four years whitewashing War Criminals and crooks.  The same ones that pushed for the Iraq War and saw it as a campaigns trategy for the 2002 mid-term elections are now 'helping' the Democratic Party -- the David Frums.  Trash.  Get in bed with trash, don't whine to me that you got a social disease.  You brought it on yourself.  You knew a David Frum was filth before you ever bedded down.


The media goes along with the pushf or war.  "The corporate media."  Uh, no.  


THE PROGRESSIVE bills itself as "A voice for peace and social justice since 1909."  Guess it's taking a long break.  (And, no, they have not been around since 1909.  That's like MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS trying to claim credit for the work of KNIGHT RIDDER because they bought KNIGHT RIDDER.)  No wars appear to exist in the eyes of today's PROGRESSIVE.  Ukraine?  Never heard of it apparently.  Iraq?  They believe it fell off the planet.  Go down the list.  Adult topics are so very hard for them so they stick to lifestyle crap and the 'sports' work of Dave Zirin.  


So, no, it's not just the corporate media.  Outside that echo chamber, however, David Broder speaks with Richard Sakwa (JACOBIN) about some basic myths:


DB

In Western media, Ukraine is often near-totally defined by its antagonism with Russia; a Times headline cited a general saying “Ukrainians are ready to tear apart Russians with their bare hands.” Especially after the 2008 NATO summit, it’s also assumed that Ukrainians want to join NATO, but Russia is stopping it. What evidence is there for that?

RS

This goes much further back even than NATO’s 2008 Bucharest summit, which invited both Georgia and Ukraine to ultimately join. It’s the way that Ukrainian policy was defined for a long time in terms of the so-called European choice — which itself was highly contested, with poll after poll showing that the Ukrainian public is divided. It’s wobbled a bit over the years, but basically the western part, what we would call the Galician element, really wants to not just join the West, but to tear up all ties with Russia.

Postcolonialism, if that model can be used in this case, assumes a hybridity after you’ve been colonized, like at the linguistic and cultural levels, whereas the cultural separatists believe that it’s post-colonial with a hyphen, that you have to expunge all former links. But the southern and eastern parts of the country are more inclined to maintain close links with Russia. In a way, there is a basis to Vladimir Putin saying that Russians and Ukrainians are one people in terms of culture, history, intermarriage and so on. He never said that they should be one state — and that’s a fundamental difference.

I traveled through the Donbass in 2008, and you’d see painted on buildings everywhere, “No to NATO.” Whereas now we’ve seen the WikiLeaks State Department documents, published in 2010–11, showing endless messages from the US ambassador in Kiev saying ultimately people wanted NATO. This was a fanciful and artificial idea from the beginning, assuming that the choice was simple and unequivocally toward the West. Russia was then framed as holding Ukraine back geopolitically, developmentally, and above all in terms of democracy.

It’s a much more complex situation, as opinion polls even today show. Gerard Toal and his colleagues have shown that an astonishingly high proportion — 30 or 40 percent of the population, even with Crimea and Donbass not included — want close relations with Russia. Some even want to join the Eurasian Economic Union. So, this is what Zbigniew Brzezinski, and earlier and above all, Samuel Huntington, described as a cleft country, a divided country. So, it’s wrong to assume that they have opted unequivocally for NATO. But this choice has been imposed since the emergence of the neonationalist government in February 2014 after the Maidan events.

[. . .]

 

DB

British media coverage often centers on our responsibility not to “appease” Putin. We also have this World War II analogy in German politics, with its Green Party foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, saying Berlin has a duty to protect these states for “historical reasons.” The idea that small countries like the Baltic states should be able to choose for themselves, and not be left defenseless, which Putin is effectively arguing for, sounds appealing at a certain level. But clearly there’s also a problem with this analogy insofar as it reimports into Western politics a trope that demonizes all critics, or those who aren’t hard-line supporters of the arms buildup, as latter-day “appeasers.”RS

The tendency you mention is even worse than it was in the first Cold War, because back then there was at least some diversity and debate. I’ve mentioned De Gaulle’s France, and within West Germany, there was the Ostpolitik line of change through engagement, beginning even in the early 1960s. What’s so shocking today is that there are so few voices in opposition. Instead, we have this endless trumpeting of the unity of the Atlantic powers. Unity is only a good thing if it’s united around a sensible policy, not if it’s an echo chamber of false analysis talking about plucky little Ukraine facing up to Russia as a revisionist power. Germany is to be commended to its approach to history, but there’s nothing more dangerous than misapplying that to a different historical moment. Any idea of talking about engagement — classic German policy — and even the pushing forward of Nord Stream 2 is considered “appeasement” of Russia.

This is a complete misunderstanding of where we are today. Putin does not wish to recreate a Soviet empire. Our defense minister in Britain, Ben Wallace, said this week that Putin is an ethnonationalist. This couldn’t be more mistaken: Russia today has at least 150 major nationalities. Putin has been condemning ethnonationalism endlessly: it would tear the country apart. So, if Western politicians get the basic things wrong, they’ll also get the big geopolitical things wrong.

So, my view is that this present situation is far more dangerous because there’s just a few brave souls out there who are condemning it. I’m delighted to see the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft has developed; there’s a few people in the United States, shockingly few in the United Kingdom — and I think the tide has turned in Germany too, especially with the Greens, who are just Clintonian liberal interventionists of the worst order — Cold War hawks.

Foreign policy should always be a balance between interests and values. If Russia was just willy-nilly wanting to invade and suppress Ukrainian democracy, then I’d be the first to support Ukraine. But that’s not what we’re talking about. Putin’s so-called revisionism is not of an Adolf Hitler sort. This endless, even implicit, reductio ad Hitlerum is just nonsense in this case. When Putin came to power, he even said Russia would join NATO. The elite and the leaders in Russia are rational. They’re not trying to recreate an empire. They’re simply saying, “Look, our back is to the wall. Listen to us.”

The solution is very simple: neutrality for Ukraine. No one is taking it over. Putin has supported the Minsk II agreement, which is a framework for the return of the Donbass to Ukrainian sovereignty. So, where is the empire in that? Today, there are 2.5 million people in the Donbass with their own views. Putin initially mobilized because Ukraine has 100,000 troops also on the border, with the Turkish drone missiles that showed their efficacy in the second Nagorno-Karabakh war last year between Armenia and Azerbaijan. So, there was genuine alarm in Moscow that they could do what Croatia did in Operation Storm, in attacking the Serbian enclaves way back in the mid-1990s. It’s a complicated situation, but the basic lines are fairly simple and clear.


Kyle Anzalone and Connor Freeman also address the lust for war in the latest episode of CONFLICTS OF INTEREST. 




Turning to Iraq . . .


Sardar Sattar Tweets:


Muqtada al-Sadr is in Baghdad today to hold "the last round of negotiations" with the pro-Iran Cooperation Framework concerning the formation of a new government. An official said Sadr will show no flexibility on the "national majority government" plan.
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1:11 AM · Jan 27, 2022


While flexibility does lessen for the morbidly obese, ten to fifteen minutes of morning streches and Moqtada wouldn't be so inflexible.  Also, maybe get a sports bra for those moobs, Moqtada.


Still no government.  And we're also supposed to pretend that's not emboldening ISIS.  


As Moqtada disthers, Nouri al-Maliki remains in the news.  ARAB NEWS notes:


 Lawmakers have until Feb. 8 to elect a president — a post historically allocated to a Kurd.

But negotiations between parties and coalitions seeking to form a parliamentary majority have been marked by tensions, particularly between key Shiite currents seeking to exert their influence.

Both the Coordination Framework and another bloc formed by firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr claim to have the majority needed to elect a president.


We'll wind down with this;


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