IS RUSSIA AN EVIL EMPIRE YES OR NO

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.

Counterpunch, maybe, though idk if they're particularly credible.

Intercept?

Intercept is owned by the guy demonised in Russia for working with USAID to foment the Maidan uprising. It also publishes one of the most extreme of the mainstream Putin critics, in Masha Gessen, or has in the past:

https://theintercept.com/2015/09/08/how-putin-controls-the-russian-internet/

https://theintercept.com/2016/02/15/putin-doesnt-need-to-censor-books-publishers-do-it-for-him/

https://theintercept.com/2016/02/19/for-russia-censors-only-suicide-is-worse-than-homosexuality/

etc, etc

Greenwald himself has been critical:

https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/whats-behind-obamas-ongoing-accommodation-of-vladimir-putin/

The Intercept has also published a hell of a lot of softball pieces on Al-Nusra and ex-Soviet fighters in Syria.

Yet Greenwald keeps describing claims of ties to Russia as McCarthyite, which is pretty nonsensical.

The term "McCarthyite" has been used pretty extensively for the last fifty years to describe irrational political witch-hunts irrespective of whether leftism is involved.

There is also a line of continuity with that irrational paranoia from the 80s, even if Russia has changed. The perception that Russia never actually de-Communised and the Soviet government just morphed into the present one is more common on the liberal centre-right than on the left imo.

that is not an opinion i've ever heard. i think the conventional liberal wisdom about russia is that after the fall of communism it devolved into an oligarchic society w/ a strongman fascist leader.

if you can find a liberal pundit who says that today's russia is just a new form of soviet communism i'd be very interested to read it

I think the thinking is more that the late eighties Soviet government was more authoritarian oligarchy anyways, so no difference there? Putin being a KGB officer and all that.

feel like that's substantively different from communism as an ideological threat

Joy Ann Reid described Putin as "communist" fairly recently, but that's beside the point.

Not so much a new form of Soviet communism but there are two fairly mainstream views about the continuity of power. The starting point for both is that late-era communist Russia was never actually communist - it was a vehicle to feed privilege and power through to a small elite. The first, put across in a well-reviewed academic book that i can't remember the author of at 2am, is that the whole process of the breakup of the Soviet union was stage-managed by the KGB. The oligarchs are KGB tools and all post-Soviet leaders have been effectively reporting back to them, with Putin the first to step out from behind the curtain and rule directly.

The second is that there was a brief experiment with democracy but the post-KGB intelligence services and siloviki, headed by Putin, siezed power and have embarked on a kind of Soviet revanchism. In both theories, the nature of Russian political thought, and the threat posed by Russia, is pretty much the same now as it was in 1982.

Aside from that, and a much weaker thread, is the idea that Putin's protectionism, the limited redistribution that has taken place, the return of the idea of the paternal state and a hostility to some forms of foreign capital constitutes a kind of return to Soviet orthodoxy.

Communism was never much of an ideological threat from the 70s onward. The threat was military and in the race for influence over client states.

the two mainstream opinions you're citing seem pretty reasonable and not like irrational paranoia but what do i know

McCarthyite as a descriptor always had two main points, but as a term now it makes little sense because it's referring to one or the other. McCarthy's ostensible purpose in his demented crusade was to ferret out Russia sympathizers within the public sphere, but he did so with the assumption that any group advocating for socialist/communist political stances was inherently allied with the USSR.

I can't imagine any of the people who had those stances being allied with today's Russian state, nor can I imagine many of the people who like to deal with the oligarchs advocating communist causes.

as much as I want to keep Trump's name out of everything, I have to say that his recent debate shenanigans where he denied any Russian influence, cast Russia as a power to be worked with, and then lamented the fact the US was falling behind in developing nuclear weapons (?!?) was really o_O

Having to appeal to one set of Republicans who want to team up to fight ISIS at the same time as another set who are still hypersensitive to any potential challenge to US dominance is always going to create a certain amount of cognitive dissonance.

His position that US jets should fly alongside Russian ones in Syria, but Russian jets should be shot out of the sky if they fly too close to US warships, is another example.

a certain amount of cognitive dissonance

the same thing that Clinton's been accused of with claims that she's somehow two-faced when the majority of things cited are her presenting the same situation and proposed action to different groups with arguments that appeal to that specific group

Keeping Russia from expanding its influence as a stance can be supported with arguments about sovereignty, humanitarian rights, and economic influence, among others, but not everyone buys into all of those points. Telling Wall Street that we have to make sure the ruble isn't the default currency for oil pricing sounds gross and sets off all my internal "war for oil" alarm bells but it's something they'd listen to.

The second is that there was a brief experiment with democracy but the post-KGB intelligence services and siloviki, headed by Putin, siezed power and have embarked on a kind of Soviet revanchism. In both theories, the nature of Russian political thought, and the threat posed by Russia, is pretty much the same now as it was in 1982.

this is my impression, w "experiment with democracy" qualified of course by the destabilizing inequity and churn following from the public-sector fire sale, "shock therapy", a sudden new class of warring gangsters, etc.; arguably democracy cannot function under these circumstances but of course the period is different from the authoritarian-monopole systems that precede and follow it and share a lot of staff.

had never read about the literal-conspiracy possibility! it seems unnecessary to me from an occam's perspective but of course unnecessary stuff happens all the time.

would set the point at which the cold war became solely a great-power game about spheres of imperial influence back even further than the '70s tbh. maybe all the way. even when the ideological war is at its hottest, its actual expression is still as a jockeying over influence. a peculiar nuclear-age interest in projections of strength arguably distinguishes the cold war from balances of power past but that's not ideological either. i guess, earlier on, you did have more american leftists who thought the ussr was still part of the struggle. but idk that they were ever a threat to anyone.

(well spies are a threat. what i mean is despite people's personal reasons for recruitment i don't see much difference between a soviet spy in postwar america and, like, an austrian spy in fin-de-siecle france.)