I see the Putinists beat me to the first post. Nice try, bozos, but nobody believes your lies.
FACT: Ukraine had a democratic mass protest against a corrupt thief and mass-murderer, former President Victor Yanukovych, whose thugs shot down dozens of unarmed protesters on Maidan square in Kiev. FACT: Yanukovych was subsequently impeached and removed from office by a legal quorum of the democratically elected parliament of Ukraine. FACT: Ukraine then elected Peter Poroshenko as President (he won 55% of the vote) in May 2014 in a free, fair vote. FACT: Russia illegally annexed Crimea and has been waging a war of imperial aggression against eastern Ukraine ever since (thousands of Russian troops and tanks are currently on Ukrainian soil as we speak -- among their other crimes, a Russian Army SA-11 unit shot down that MH-17 airliner, murdering three hundred innocent civilians). FACT: The vast majority of Ukrainians do NOT want to join Russia, and the populations of the regions of Donetsk and Luzhansk which Russian forces have invaded are 70% ethnic Ukrainian. FACT: Part of this war is an unspeakably evil lie campaign by Russia's state-owned media and its paid army of online trolls to smear and defame Ukraine as a fascist junta, a claim which is, frankly, completely insane. FACT: Ukraine is a democracy under attack by an imperialist invader, and should be supported by anyone with the slightest bit of decency or integrity.
I'm sorry to report that many so-called Leftists have fallen into the trap of thinking Putin is the reincarnation of Lenin. Not so. Putin is 100% neoliberal, an ultra-nationalist thug who works to enrich Russia's 1% -- its plutocracy, which loots Russia through hundreds of billions of dollars of capital flight. (Note that the fine folks at OCCRP have an excellent series documenting a tiny slice of this massive looting spree here: https://reportingproject.net/the-russian-laundromat/).
Lastly, some useful links from folks on the ground:
One word of caution: this is an accurate analysis of Putin's Russia in 2004, but has limited relevance to today's Russia (Putinism today is a quite ordinary urban-machine politics, similar to the rule of Mexico's PRI or Japan's LDP during the 1950-1975 period). Russia has a vast and growing middle-class, a vast digital commons (close to 70 million web users out of a population of 142 million), and a thriving digital media culture with plenty of open dissent (including some of the best hip hop in the world). It has a genuine albeit deeply flawed democracy. The biggest reason Russia isn't a helpful model for Egypt, though, is urbanization. Russia has been highly urbanized since the 1960s, but Egypt has a majority rural population, and urgently needs a coherent state-led industrialization program (i.e. investing in education, green energy, mass housing). My own feeling is that rather than relying on fickle Gulf donors, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt should sit down and hammer out a regional development policy -- Libya has cash, Tunisia has expertise, and Egypt has a huge labor poor and networks of state-owned factories. Put it all together and the Maghreb will blossom.
An economy of billionaire thieves, who create nothing but trillion dollar frauds, backed by the most corrupt government in the world (thanks to billions in annual campaign donations and a corrupt billionaire-owned media) which has not arrested one single senior Wall Street bankster for their multi-trillion dollar looting spree. Instead of prosecuting the 0.1%, our shambles of a governing class spend all their time spying on the 99.9%.
OK, so I exaggerate slightly - it's true they also spend lots of time destroying the public schools via charterization and high-stakes testing, razing public services to reward real estate swindlers, subsidizing health insurance vampires, and throwing $1 trillion each year at a completely useless military-industrial complex.
I hugely enjoy your blog, but I'm not convinced the Riot case has anything to do Russia's Middle Eastern policies. Three points:
(1) Putin is simply a nationalist, period, and Russia's Middle Eastern foreign policy is deeply colored by Russia's own post-imperial brand of Orientalism (i.e. Putin and the siloviki regarded Assad and Qaddafi as bulwarks against the sort of fundamentalist violence which has indeed killed lots of people in Russia, much as the US regarded Mubarak and Ben Ali). I personally detest all Orientalisms, but that's just how Russia's political class thinks.
(2) Most Russians really, really, REALLY don't like the idea of anyone kicking up a ruckus in an Orthodox Church. Russians have awful memories of decades of Soviet repression. I'm not defending the jail terms for the protestors for a single second, just pointing out that Russia is a socially conservative society (conservative, as in the gender and racial norms of Eisenhower's America), with a hugely diverse and multiconfessional population, which makes religion especially touchy.
(3) Yes, there's plenty to critique about Russia's very young and flawed democracy. United Russia's demonization of Russia's LGBTQ community is hideous and disgusting, and Russia's draconian drug laws are as idiotic and damaging to civil liberties as their US equivalents. But the standard for Russia should be places like Turkey, a society still emerging from decades of authoritarianism, e.g. the ugly treatment of Kurdish journalists and human rights activists.
Painting the world into quasi-Cold War zones of influence is precisely what the 1% want us to do: to keep us 99Percenters fighting over bogus divisions, rather than uniting to solve our problems.
I see the Putinists beat me to the first post. Nice try, bozos, but nobody believes your lies.
FACT: Ukraine had a democratic mass protest against a corrupt thief and mass-murderer, former President Victor Yanukovych, whose thugs shot down dozens of unarmed protesters on Maidan square in Kiev. FACT: Yanukovych was subsequently impeached and removed from office by a legal quorum of the democratically elected parliament of Ukraine. FACT: Ukraine then elected Peter Poroshenko as President (he won 55% of the vote) in May 2014 in a free, fair vote. FACT: Russia illegally annexed Crimea and has been waging a war of imperial aggression against eastern Ukraine ever since (thousands of Russian troops and tanks are currently on Ukrainian soil as we speak -- among their other crimes, a Russian Army SA-11 unit shot down that MH-17 airliner, murdering three hundred innocent civilians). FACT: The vast majority of Ukrainians do NOT want to join Russia, and the populations of the regions of Donetsk and Luzhansk which Russian forces have invaded are 70% ethnic Ukrainian. FACT: Part of this war is an unspeakably evil lie campaign by Russia's state-owned media and its paid army of online trolls to smear and defame Ukraine as a fascist junta, a claim which is, frankly, completely insane. FACT: Ukraine is a democracy under attack by an imperialist invader, and should be supported by anyone with the slightest bit of decency or integrity.
I'm sorry to report that many so-called Leftists have fallen into the trap of thinking Putin is the reincarnation of Lenin. Not so. Putin is 100% neoliberal, an ultra-nationalist thug who works to enrich Russia's 1% -- its plutocracy, which loots Russia through hundreds of billions of dollars of capital flight. (Note that the fine folks at OCCRP have an excellent series documenting a tiny slice of this massive looting spree here: https://reportingproject.net/the-russian-laundromat/).
Lastly, some useful links from folks on the ground:
Myroslava Petsa: https://twitter.com/pravolivo
Kharkhov Human Rights Group: http://www.khpg.org/en/index.php
Ukraine's President: http://www.president.gov.ua/en/
Top 100 Putinist Lies: http://www.examiner.com/list/russia-s-top-100-lies-about-ukraine
Ukraine Today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeKNjoegIZ4
One word of caution: this is an accurate analysis of Putin's Russia in 2004, but has limited relevance to today's Russia (Putinism today is a quite ordinary urban-machine politics, similar to the rule of Mexico's PRI or Japan's LDP during the 1950-1975 period). Russia has a vast and growing middle-class, a vast digital commons (close to 70 million web users out of a population of 142 million), and a thriving digital media culture with plenty of open dissent (including some of the best hip hop in the world). It has a genuine albeit deeply flawed democracy. The biggest reason Russia isn't a helpful model for Egypt, though, is urbanization. Russia has been highly urbanized since the 1960s, but Egypt has a majority rural population, and urgently needs a coherent state-led industrialization program (i.e. investing in education, green energy, mass housing). My own feeling is that rather than relying on fickle Gulf donors, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt should sit down and hammer out a regional development policy -- Libya has cash, Tunisia has expertise, and Egypt has a huge labor poor and networks of state-owned factories. Put it all together and the Maghreb will blossom.
Yes. It really has come to this.
An economy of billionaire thieves, who create nothing but trillion dollar frauds, backed by the most corrupt government in the world (thanks to billions in annual campaign donations and a corrupt billionaire-owned media) which has not arrested one single senior Wall Street bankster for their multi-trillion dollar looting spree. Instead of prosecuting the 0.1%, our shambles of a governing class spend all their time spying on the 99.9%.
OK, so I exaggerate slightly - it's true they also spend lots of time destroying the public schools via charterization and high-stakes testing, razing public services to reward real estate swindlers, subsidizing health insurance vampires, and throwing $1 trillion each year at a completely useless military-industrial complex.
Juan -
I hugely enjoy your blog, but I'm not convinced the Riot case has anything to do Russia's Middle Eastern policies. Three points:
(1) Putin is simply a nationalist, period, and Russia's Middle Eastern foreign policy is deeply colored by Russia's own post-imperial brand of Orientalism (i.e. Putin and the siloviki regarded Assad and Qaddafi as bulwarks against the sort of fundamentalist violence which has indeed killed lots of people in Russia, much as the US regarded Mubarak and Ben Ali). I personally detest all Orientalisms, but that's just how Russia's political class thinks.
(2) Most Russians really, really, REALLY don't like the idea of anyone kicking up a ruckus in an Orthodox Church. Russians have awful memories of decades of Soviet repression. I'm not defending the jail terms for the protestors for a single second, just pointing out that Russia is a socially conservative society (conservative, as in the gender and racial norms of Eisenhower's America), with a hugely diverse and multiconfessional population, which makes religion especially touchy.
(3) Yes, there's plenty to critique about Russia's very young and flawed democracy. United Russia's demonization of Russia's LGBTQ community is hideous and disgusting, and Russia's draconian drug laws are as idiotic and damaging to civil liberties as their US equivalents. But the standard for Russia should be places like Turkey, a society still emerging from decades of authoritarianism, e.g. the ugly treatment of Kurdish journalists and human rights activists.
Painting the world into quasi-Cold War zones of influence is precisely what the 1% want us to do: to keep us 99Percenters fighting over bogus divisions, rather than uniting to solve our problems.