Ukraine

[Thomas Eckhardt]

I have read this before. Very odd. At times the author is fairly balanced:

"On one hand, radical critics like Noam Chomsky and Stephen F. Cohen are 
entirely correct to observe that Vladimir Putin is not the incarnation 
of Absolute Evil, and that the rise of Putin’s version of Russian 
nationalism came in response to two decades of aggressive American or 
Euro-American expansion. All the high-minded talk about democracy, I 
would argue, is a smokescreen used to conceal the real agenda resolutely 
pursued by the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations and their 
European allies: the extension of the neoliberal economic order – the 
order presided over by the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank 
and the International Monetary Fund – clear across Europe and well 
beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union. Putin has rallied the 
Russian public behind him by convincing them they were under attack from 
the West, and he was right. But that analysis should not be used to 
depict his cause or his actions as justifiable or honorable, or to paint 
him as the misunderstood hero of history."

This should be hardly controversial among educated people.

So, what is the other hand? Bizarrely, what immediately follows is this:

"In fairness, Chomsky has been more cautious and nuanced in his 
discussion of recent Russian behavior than has Cohen, an eminent scholar 
of Soviet and Russian history and policy who has become the American 
intelligentsia’s leading Putin apologist."

It is a prime example of cognitive dissonance. As if the author suddenly 
remembers that he came to critizise Chomsky and Cohen not to support 
them. This happens more than once.

Not surprisingly, I enjoy reading Salon's Patrick Smith on Ukraine.

Yes, there are very strange bedfellows in this debate. This would be an 
interesting topic for another day and another mailing list. One example, 
though. Me, I would never have imagined to at least generally agree with 
war criminal's Henry Kissinger take on anything:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-henry-kissinger-on-state-of-global-politics-a-1002073.html

When Henry Kissinger is the voice of reason, you know you're in trouble...

Thomas
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l