IS RUSSIA AN EVIL EMPIRE YES OR NO

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...

There is a small security commitment called NATO that you may be familiar with. idk if hyping up a risk that pretty much only exists in the minds of pundits would make a great deal of sense - particularly with a live and real risk of conflagration over Syria on the horizon.

This stuff isn't neutral. Russia isn't going to invade Estonia but continually emphasising the idea that Russian Estonians are a nefarious fifth column is going to have an impact on their already appalling treatment.

A very good friend of mine is a Russian Lithuanian, and she would like security commitments as well. I'm familiar with NATO, but I've also seen people, including a presidential candidate, say that it perhaps shouldn't really count with regards to the Baltics.

given putin's demonstrated imperial ambition i think it's understandable for people in the region to be anxious, and especially in the context of this american election wherected nato commitment has been something of a talking point

If Trump got in, I'm not sure what assurances Obama gave now would be worth. Russia invading the EU would and should lead to an armed response from NATO - it isn't a matter of serious discussion and is one of the many reasons Russia isn't going to invade the EU. The commitments are already in place. The rest is hot air. If Obama wanted to send a strong message, making the same commitment to Georgia, where there is an existing territorial dispute, would have more substance.

Weeeelllll let's not get carried away...

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/10/russia-and-the-2016-campaign

...And then Trump happened, and suddenly a massive vulnerability of the Democratic candidate became a significant asset. Just as suddenly, the Russian state suddenly had an ideologically sympathetic candidate to support. Crazy. To all appearances, this opportunity seems to have just dropped into Russia’s lap; to my mind, there’s little plausible evidence to indicate that Russia played any significant role in inspiring Trump to run, or in helping him prevail in the GOP primary. But given such an opportunity, the Russian intelligence services are running with it. Allies such as Wikileaks (I still think it’s wrong to refer to Assange as a Russian proxy; he has his own reasons, personal and ideological, for disliking Clinton) have actively supported this effort.

As an aside, it’s worth discussing against this backdrop the still-puzzling affinity that some leftish outfits (the Nation, obviously, but others) still have for Russian state propaganda. The reluctance in these quarters to grant that Russia has preferences regarding the 2016 US presidential election, and that it is actively pursuing those preferences, is genuinely odd. Part of this (paging Stephen Cohen) can be ascribed to the long-term habits of the Cold War, and a failure to notice that Russia had ceased to be even a rump revolutionary state, and had become an activist reactionary power. Some undoubtedly results from the fact that Putin was, indeed, on the correct side of the Iraq War debate, and that Russian media outlets in the United States (RT most notably) actively took an antagonistic stance towards the Bush administration. Some surely stems from residual gratitude for Russia’s role in promoting Julian Assange and harboring Edward Snowden, even as it has become apparent that Assange, at least, is more reactionary crank than progressive force. And related to this, there seems to be an implicit, undercurrent belief in some quarters that any political actor capable of resisting US foreign policy, even one which has become as actively pernicious and anti-progressive as Russia, is worth offering at least measured support. In any case, it sure would be nice if one of the flagship magazines of the American left was capable of noticing what the Russian state has become.

What would the main three or four flagship magazines of the American left be, in this context?

Other than cranks like Stop The War, most of the high-volume pushback i've seen against the Trump / Putin narrative has been from people who have also been historically critical of Putin, as has been discussed in the past. I don't think i could name a single credible left-wing outlet that genuinely seems to think that Russia is part of the international left.