Tag Archives: Putin

Political Rants

The state of it.

I imagine if you didn’t watch the president’s state of the union address and listened to NPR (aka Empire) news the next day, you might think they were talking about a speech made by a reactionary republican legislator or pundit. That’s all they had on their guest list for the two days following the address. You have to wonder why they feel these people need all this air time. Instead of wallowing in the predictable knee-jerk partisan reactions to the speech, why don’t they drill into some of the issues? Sure, they do a little “fact check” report, kind of like Politifact (and just about as superficial). But report on, say, oil and gas drilling and its implications for climate change and ultimately human survival? Not when one of their big sponsors is “think about it dot org”.

Doing too little? Seriously?Then there’s “Morning Joe” (or “Morning Blow”) on purportedly liberal/progressive MSNBC. Their foreign policy braintrust of, well, Joe Scarborough, Richard Haas, and various senior editors from Politico have been engaging in a narrative that goes something like this, in short – “W” Bush did too much, Obama does too little, and both put us in greater danger from the scourge of jihadist terrorism, which has killed nearly one person in the United States so far this year (call it none). Setting aside the obsessive focus on this rare and sensational threat, I agree with the assertion that both presidents’ foreign policies have put us in greater danger, breeding a new generation extremists, several of whom, for instance, attacked the offices of Charlie Ebdo in Paris. But the notion that Obama does too little is ludicrous. Bush and Obama basically have the same foreign policy. Obama is following Bush’s playbook from 2006-08. And yes, it is murderous and destabilizing and designed to radicalize people.

Of course, the pundit circle’s prescriptions for what we should be doing are drawn from the same volume. This week on Morning Blow they were latching onto co-host Mika Brzezinski’s father’s suggestion that we should deploy troops to the Baltic states to provide a “tripwire” against further action by Vladimir Putin. The braintrust was opining that NATO should be beefed up; more troops in Poland, etc. Again – Obama has been following the same policy as Bush, in essence. Aggressive eastward expansion of the U.S.-European trading zone and of NATO, right into Ukraine, which is as integral a part of Russian security planning as Canada and Mexico are for the U.S. Want to keep Putin from overreacting? Stop boxing the Russians in. Just saying.

The only new piece of foreign policy from Obama has been the Cuba opening, but like Boehner’s invite to Netanyahu as a way of scuttling the Iran talks, there are many ways for Congress to undermine the new policy.

Next week: Domestic policy. Stay tuned.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

The year (2014) that was.

It’s the end of the year, and news organizations far and wide are doing their annual retrospective clip shows. From a production standpoint they are a terrific money saver, no doubt, which would explain why the various networks seem so enthusiastic about it. This is the week when you get a distillation of the year’s worst reporting; a big ball of conventional wisdom, served up on a plate. Open wide!

NPR’s Morning Edition – as reliable a servant of empire as any imperial bureaucrat could hope for – wasted no words in putting one of the world’s most dangerous conflicts into the proper context:

You can learn a lot about 2014 by tracing the story of one man, Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader hosted the Winter Olympics proudly showing off a place that’s near and dear to him, the Black Sea Resort of Sochi. But the feeling of global goodwill there disappeared so quickly. Putin infuriated the West by annexing Crimea then he stirred a deadly conflict in Eastern Ukraine.The West imposed sanctions, and there’s been talk of a new Cold War. But at home, even with his economy tanking, Putin remains popular.

This just in from Empire News.

That’s David Greene, now Morning Edition co-host and formerly one of NPR’s correspondents in eastern Europe. Here he is joining his colleagues at all the major news networks parroting the administration line about the crisis in Ukraine, making it a story about Putin rather than a story about a decades-long conflict over economic and military policy on the continent. This is a lead-in to a conversation with Peter Pomerantsev, a Russian-born writer at The Atlantic, in which they dissect the phenomenon of the manipulative Russian leader, pointing out the appalling fact that the Russian government is (gasp!) “choreograph(ing) politics to make Putin look good.” Whoever heard of such an outrage!

They followed this edifying conversation with a story from two NPR European correspondents illustrating how Putin’s government is offering support to right-wing opposition parties across Europe, delivering funding in a way that would be illegal within the borders of Russia. In other words, NPR has made the astonishing discovery that Russia does exactly what we do in nations all around the world – sluice money into opposition groups, support opposition candidates with money and other resources, and insert ourselves into their political process in a manner forbidden by U.S. law if someone were to try it here. In fact, this is precisely what we’ve been doing in Ukraine as part of our efforts to integrate them into the European trading bloc and, ultimately, NATO.

With a long history of devastating invasions from the West, that’s a non-starter for Russia, just as Mexico’s entry into a foreign military alliance would be frowned upon in Washington. But far be it from NPR or any other major corporate news organization to report on that. That would require stepping out of line ever so slightly. Never going to happen.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

New cold war on tap.

The full-court press is on. The Obama team has been channeling Bush/Romney for the past couple of weeks, delivering on the promise of a more aggressive foreign policy on several fronts, most ominously (in my humble opinion) in far eastern Europe, on the indefensible frontiers of U.S./European capitalism and military hegemony. Obama has announce that we will be taking part in NATO exercises in western Ukraine; roughly the equivalent of Russia or China or Iran doing the same in western Cuba, except that Russia has been attacked ruinously by foreign alliances via their western frontier twice over the last century. (The same, of course, cannot be said of us and our southern frontier.)

This is the threat to world peace?At the close of the Cold War, it was understood that expansion of NATO would be seen as provocative by Russia, but because Russia was in a weak position, their economy destroyed by massive privatization, shock therapy structural adjustment, guided by some of our Chicago-school fanatics, we felt free to ignore their concerns. That worked so long as our drunken ally Yeltsin was in command. But now that the extremely powerful Russian presidency (which we supported under Yeltsin) has been inherited by a sober ex-KGB officer, and the Russian economy has been lifted somewhat by oil revenues, they have found the confidence to voice their objections. And, of course, we’re shocked, shocked!

I’ve never been a fan of Putin (even when our government was), but if this “Russian aggression” as I’ve heard on radio and television for several weeks now, it’s not very, well, aggressive. Sure, they’re helping their allies in eastern Ukraine, now under attack from Kiev, just as we massively intervene on the side of governments and movements all over the world. Putin, for all of his foibles, at least has a definable national interest to invoke in Ukraine. What’s our excuse in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, etc., etc.? Much more abstract, to say the least.

Why are we looking for this fight? And if we are, how can we accuse anyone else of being a threat to world peace?