IS RUSSIA AN EVIL EMPIRE YES OR NO

i think it's kiss me i'm irish not kiss me i believe linking putin to trump has something to do w/ fearmongering about communism

The international right being 'spearheaded by Russia' is a ludicrous stretch. Russia's primary involvement is running a TV station that occasionally signal boosts people on the democratic fringes of the left and the right opposed to governments it has a beef with. The international right is spearheaded by racist voters and traditional domestic media.

i guess if you read something besides RT you might be aware of Russian involvement in right-wing movements in the world outside of simple propaganda.

at least in europe i suppose that russian support for right wing movements could be correlated more with the desire to disrupt the current order of a regional rival (see also russian support for tsirpas in greece on the left) and/or some kind of calculation about keeping oil dependencies where they are, but this might be a charitable reading.

so maybe, again for the european case, 'bankrolled by' replaces 'spearheaded by' but the force of the sentiment isn't much changed.

It's not even bankrolled by. The strongest financial link is that the NF got a loan from a bank in Russia when banks in other countries wouldn't lend to them. Neera Tanden might claim that Russia is 'openly' funding UKIP but there is absolutely no evidence of it.

It also completely ignores the divisions with the different nationalist groups. The FN and PVV have traditionally been sympathetic to Russian positions vs the rest of the EU, AfD and True Finns have traditionally been hostile. Sweden Democrats are seen as friendly, the DPP is seen as strongly opposed. The head of hard-right Slovak government has talked about dialing down sanctions, the head of the hard-right Polish government believes Putin conspired with the President of the EU to blow up his twin brother.

UKIP draws its success from the British tabloids, endemic racism and failures in domestic policy. The NF is the same. The idea that Russia has any real influence over either is ridiculous. It's a fantasy for people who want to believe there are easy causes and easy solutions to a continent-wide crisis.

the head of the hard-right Polish government believes Putin conspired with the President of the EU to blow up his twin brother.

Won't find too many Poles, no matter their politics, who are sympathetic towards Russia, or Russians. Not ime anyway.

Yep, and that underlines a lot of the broader divisions. Lots of members of the far-right across Europe see Russia as a bulwark against the EU, lots believe there's an unbroken line between the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia and have carried old grievances across.

Quite a few of the Neo-Nazis who have gone off to fight in Ukraine (both domestic and international ones) view it as a continuation of an anti-Communist struggle despite Russia being in no way Communist at the moment.

Wait, who are the DPP? The Danish People Party? Because fuck no, they aren't 'strongly opposed'.

Things may have changed over the last year but the Swedish journalist Patrik Oksanen mapped voting patterns in the European parliament against what were seen as pro or anti Russian positions and the Danish People's Party came out as one of the least friendly in Europe. DK tended to take the opposite side.

https://eublogg.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/russia-index-11-new-eu-sceptic-parties-added/

Though iirc they were open to the idea of Crimea joining Russia.

That's another factor that splits some of the far-right movements. Some, like Lega Nord, are in favour of separatists being able to reshape borders, for obvious reasons, others are opposed.

DPP in the EU is a shitshow, the main guy just resigned as leader after having misused European funding for personal purposes. Plus they constituted with British tories - while SD are with UKIP - and probably voted like them. But DPP politicians has praised Putin over and over and over. Don't just use one silly stat to make such broad statements, I'm telling you, from Denmark, where I live, that they in no way are strongly opposed to Russia.

I'll bow to your experience on that - but to what extent do you link their popularity to Russian influence?

I don't know, really. There's not a big bank loan as with FN, nor is there an agreement of partnership with United Russia, as with Lega Nord, and to the best of my knowledge they aren't using RT either. I guess it's just that they're moving in an autocratic direction - Danish politicians are openly discussing whether Denmark could use 'illiberal democracy' at the moment - and Putin is a right wing autocrat like themselves. One guy tweeted, as Christiania was in the news again, that Putin would have gotten rid of them in half an hour. They're more and more willing to discard rule of law and order, so Putin seems more and more okay.

I think you have hit the nail on the head with managed / illiberal democracy. I don't think it is easy to place Putin on a traditional left-wing axis but that model of Singaporean corporate autocratic rule is attractive to a lot of parties with no strong ideological commitment to Liberal democracy. That is both in the sense of 'getting things done' and also in relation to the idea that Russia has taken back control of its destiny from the forces of globalisation. Neither of which is particularly true in reality.

Should have been left-right axis.

flashback Friday

‏@ggreenwald
Check out this awesome 2012 campaign poster from Dems - mocking Romney for Russia-phobia

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/obama-camp-mocks-romney-with-fake-rocky-iv-movie?utm_term=.jx0N1yBnK#.qjoNzKAnb

xp SV I think your splitting hairs. The international left wasn't just AstroTurf either - it had real causes and authentic local impetuses. But it found institutional expression and respect in left wing global leadership in the USSR. You could of course be a communist and have nothing to do with the Soviets but that doesn't preclude them from having a driving role in the ideological spread.

the comintern literally directed pro-soviet communist parties' policies tho, there's not really any comparison

not really surprising that the far right are stoked on putin: tough guy irredentist, nationalist, authoritarian presiding over a deeply christian, racist, and homophobic society

Jim otm x 2

My major fear is that Europe and the U.S. are potentially sliding into a mild and very slow-motion version of the post-Soviet crisis in Russia: a decline in living standards, an increase in the cost of living, the decimation of traditional industries, a ramping up of racial animosity, the concentration of more wealth in the hands of a small elite, the concentration of media power in the hands of an even smaller elite, a loss of confidence in the market and globalisation with no ideological alternative on the agenda, a loss of faith in 'experts' and ultimately a lack of belief that voting changes anything. Some of that might be imagined but some is real. These were the conditions that essentially led to Russia turning away from 'western democratic' models and opting for patrician nationalist autocracy in the belief (correct in many regards) that it would work out better form them if they did. Blaming a lack of faith in democratic parties in Russia is like a mild smoker blaming their cough on a chronic emphysema sufferer.

*on Russia*

"i was thinking how the explanation that trump is a putin sucker is not really satisfactory bc really what we're seeing is an international right emerge much like the international left had years earlier. interestingly both spearheaded by respective russian govs but in the case of the international right w/ much more cache already in the west and so instead of mccarthyism we mostly just get throwaway insinuations that greenwald quickly denounces as democratic red-baiting."

dae get the impression that an international ultranationalist consensus might be a bit of a tricky equilibrium to maintain?

the way they currently square that circle is "looking out for your nations interests is a good thing and even if you disagree w Putin you have to respect how he pursues his country's interests" you sometimes see similar sentiments about Bibi. It's like ideological nationalism as opposed to circumstantial nationalism

Krugman all over this today:

www.nytimes.com/2016/09/12/opinion/thugs-and-kisses.html

An aside: Weirdly, some people think there’s a contradiction between Democratic mocking of the Trump/Putin bromance and President Obama’s mocking of Mitt Romney, four years ago, for calling Russia our “No. 1 geopolitical foe.” But there isn’t: Russia has a horrible regime, but as Mr. Obama said, it’s a “regional power,” not a superpower like the old Soviet Union.

Finally, what about soft power, the ability to persuade through the attractiveness of one’s culture and values? Russia has very little — except, maybe, among right-wingers who find Mr. Putin’s macho posturing and ruthlessness attractive.

He's absolutely right that Russia has passed up the opportunity for a tech boom but failure to acknowledge that the domestic economic landscape would have been different had the Yeltsin model continued into the oil boom years is pretty silly. Sticking to the line that Putin retains power simply through fraud and intimidation is neither true nor instructive about what drives his popularity - and tells you nothing about what might drive the nascent popularity of foreign
leaders aiming to emulate him.

...and what is this if not the skillful use of soft cultural power:

https://s21.postimg.org/47fnt7esn/3000.jpg

is that Steven Seagal

Hell yeah it's Steven Seagal.

https://s9.postimg.org/ycjxhqhj3/1044636661.jpg

^ tasting Lukashenko's personal carrots.

Posting largely as an excuse for another Seagal pic but the more i think about the Krugman article, the more it annoys me. The critique he, and everyone else should be making, is that Russia would be in a much better economic position than it is without the ongoing tolerance / promulgation of cronyism and corruption. That's about as clear-cut as it can get.

Attempting to argue that the only thing that changed between the point at which teachers were being paid in vodka because there was literally no money in regional budgets, people with PhDs were dying of malnutrition for lack of employment / state support, etc and now is the price of oil is beneath Krugman and i suspect he knows it.

'Hand oil rights over to a gangster? Expropriate them for the state? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, doesn't really matter either way if the price of oil is going up' is not the kind of argument you'd normally find Krugman making.

Pretending that the only defining characteristic Putin has is his badness - and therefore any attraction to his leadership must be because of that badness (as though autocracy is a new invention the likes of Trump have only just heard about) is the same kind of analysis that leads to the quasi-racial-science of 'unlike the true European, the Russian needs a brutal leader to be happy', which gets trotted out on the reg to explain why conventional liberal politics has such a weak grasp outside of Moscow and SPB (or even inside them).

Either there is a growing fear about the ability of globalism / capitalism to maintain prosperity or the country who's biggest PR coup of recent months is getting the star of Die Hard to fondle Belarussian watermelons secretly controls some of the most effective political machines of the new right and the new left.

https://s15.postimg.org/baukaeqez/seagal_watermelons.jpg

I suspect it's the former, which is why it's positive to hear Clinton talking more over the last week about the need to appeal to the section of Trump's support that wants radical change, irrespective of where it comes from, and less about how the Kremlin is trying to lure kids to the dark side with the rarest of Pepes.

https://s15.postimg.org/baukaeqez/seagal_watermelons.jpg

Appalling typos throughout that post, apologies.

Not least mistaking Under Siege for Die Hard - it's early.

lol, he's thinking about thos carrots

"Steve Seagal At Russian arms fairs" also yields some good returns on google image

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-s-intel-officials-probe-ties-between-trump-adviser-and-kremlin-175046002.html

This is an interesting profile of Carter Page, or rather non-profile:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/the-mystery-of-trumps-man-in-moscow-214283

Almost nobody seems to know who he is, in Russia or the U.S. He looks like a total chancer.

As for the FBI investigation, well, it’s unclear. A State Department official who works on Russia sanctions but was not authorized to speak on the record told me that, for one thing, there is “no prohibition meeting with a designated sanctioned individual.” Moreover, sanctions violations are not criminal in nature and not enforced by FBI. OFAC runs them.” He added, “the story doesn't add up.” What does seem to have happened is that various U.S. intelligence agencies were looking into Page’s time in Moscow, then briefed Senate minority leader, Democrat Harry Reid, who wrote a letter to FBI Director James Comey asking him to investigate, among other things, “whether a Trump advisor who has been highly critical of U.S. and European economic sanctions on Russia, and who has conflicts of interest due to investments in Russian energy conglomerate Gazprom, met with high-ranking sanctioned individuals while in Moscow in July of 2016, well after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee.

heh! those Fancy Bears hackers should get some kind of award for outing Wiggins as a cheat. The way some go on about the Brit sense of fair play and how their athletes are clean as a whistle. Time to return some golds then, you fucking paragons of fair play.

he can't be a cheat he likes The Jam

I was thinking of that famous Clough line to the Leeds '74 squad.

Wiggins followed the rules. I hate the guy, but he didn't cheat. Russians hacked and leaked personal data of fellow athletes, and at this point the country quite honestly needs to be banned from international competition. They're a danger to athletes in other countries.

me and calzino constitute a kangaroo court outside of international law and we say Ban Wiggins

If we're discussing British cycling cheats, how about the crash Mark Cavendish caused in the Omnium? He should have been disqualified for that. Yeah, no special sense of fair play from western athletes, but there's still a bit of way from that to state sponsored doping scheme and using cyber orgs to retaliate against other athletes.

i'm sure Cavendish is just awful but he doesn't have a Weller haircut and collection of union jack themed underwear

IS WELLER AN EVIL EMPIRE YES OR YES

I don't care if Cavedish is having weekly blood transfusions to cover his doping, as far as I know he hasn't jammed with Weller.

The British press has definitely got the knives out for Wiggins - Newsnight practically called him a cheat, The Sunday Times said that his 2012 Tour de France win should have an asterisk placed after it, described his response as "laughable" etc. It sounds like they have been waiting to get this one started for a while. he doesn't seem to be well liked, separate from the allegations.

As Team Britain stacked up medals in track cycling, I read people questioning why the brits did so much better there than they did the rest of the year. The defense was strategic training, but we now know that strategic - 'legal' - injections has a lot to do with it. I guess most in the sport always knew, and that there's build up resentment.

US accuses Russia of 'barbarism' in Aleppo:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37468080

Zbigniew Brzezinski
‏@zbig
In its waning months, Obama admin should privately reiterate to Russia that any Baltic incursion would mean war. Not a threat, simply fact.

@DougHenwood
Dems are hot to go to war with Russia. Nuts.

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/chechen-leader-accused-of-child-cruelty-after-entering-preteen-sons-in-televised-cage-fights-35111673.html#-/web/-1475840635130-trackingCode-l8TGeQ69BeNyeYeWN/nX2fel4BLVnZvK2r9qbEIVsgQ=-articleId-372714925-vv-7ff13765-61dc-4069-8a08-c3ab1ef5da15

“Little Adam proved that he is a real lion!” Mr Kadyrov wrote under one Instagram video of the fighting.

"World Star!" Mr Kadyrov wrote under one Instagram video of the fighting.

As someone who lives on the coast of the Baltic sea, I would really really like a security commitment in this area...