| podinski on Mon, 16 May 2022 14:27:32 +0200 (CEST) |
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| Re: <nettime> irregular ukraine linklist |
Hi Ted and Nett,
i think i will have to respectfully disagree with just about everything you've said here...
and will defer to Cook's recommendation:
[https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/183040](https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/183040)This is a wordy, milquetoast variation on self-styled 'anti-imperialist left' muzak,
I really don't think this should be equated w/ any kind of
muzak...
It's an essay from a professor of US history ( not Russian, more
on that below. ) at CWU, who isn't getting a 6 digit salary from
NYT or WAPO or CNN ( Time/Warner) or MSNBC ( Comcast), Fox, etc.
to do the usual parroting of the defense contractor partners that
are deeply embedded in most of the US/West corporate media.
Didn't think the nettime crowd needed this sort of analysis...
but since no one else came to the defense of these kinds of
perspectives...
Back in the days of working with documentary projects related to the Iraq war, this wasn't a question for the left at all, but we knew we had to make bold and compelling indy media to explain it to the average ( hijacked ) media consumer... From 2005 : https://fair.org/extra/the-military-industrial-media-complex/
Nothing has changed much in that regard, except now it is more
relevant how silicon valley + surveillance krapitalism massage the
same sales pitches !
And here Herman's CWU approach manages to take the time to assemble ALOT of serious facts ... none of which appear - to me - to be easily contestable, and by my quick count there are *171 LINKS* !!! in his piece to back up what he is saying. In other words, this isn't an untethered Thomas Friedman op ed balloon ! Of course, i didnt click on all of them, but the ones i did were all entirely reasonable.
i *have* of course encountered some anti-imperialist positions
(i.e. militant "tankie" varieties ) that i find problematic, and
now highly unsympathetic to the plight of Ukrainian citizens
caught in the middle, but this work isn't in that category at all
!
And i had hoped that through the wide scope of nettime readers,
we could together find MORE even-handed + counterpoint
perspectives to the warmongering + war-profiteer narratives !
right down to the telltale mention of (BOO!) Victoria Nuland.
Not sure why you would trivialize such a central neocon warhawk
figure such as Nuland.
Anyone analyzing US foreign policy could probably do a doctorate
thesis on her to explain the last decades of the gory and
ill-advised misadventures the US has perpetrated around the
planet.
She has been a star interventionism-peddler under Clinton,
Bush+Cheney, Obama and now Biden... And her spouse is Robert
Kagan co-founder for Project for the New American Century !
That Russian intelligence most probably tapped her ( phone
calls), and then brazenly leaked the now infamous "Fuck The EU!"
call should be no surprise. Many EU leaders, incl. Merkel didnt
find that a JOKE at all, and were certainly not pleased that none
of their concerns nor expertise would be listened to as US
imperialists stirred up the boiling kettle of eastern europe's
fragile (in)stabilities.
Nor should we expect that ANY US warmachine money getting pumped
into UKR will go to help the massive fallout, the European
countries now absorbing a *5,6,7* ? MILLION REFUGEES ( of a long
war) .
What the author doesn't do is provide a symmetrically detailed accounting of the internal deliberations and actions of Russia, its allies, its technocratic intellectuals, and their collective institutions and networks over the last decades. Why?
What Herman doesn't do is analyze Russia, because as a scholar he
knows that is not his expertise, and doesnt wade into that side of
it.
A few of us in eastern europe territories ARE assembling other
articles for that, but will perhaps save that for another post.
To a limited extent, it's the result of multiple biases in global media: language, focus, and of course hegemonic status. If you want to put serious time in, in libraries or even just on twitter, detailed analyses of these things are available. But they're hyperspecialized, and for a reason: the fundamental structure and fabric of governance in Russia, and before it in the USSR, as well as their networks of influence ? these things have been traditionally and ideologically opaque for the last century. Reasonable people can disagree about the West's relative openness vs Russia's opacity, that, but essays like this should at least acknowledge their derivative bias front and center. Doing so would make it *much* harder to argue that the West is bad because A, B, C, D, E, F, G, whereas Russia is good because [no data]. One of my main takeaways from these debates about Russia and Ukraine is that the western lefts (very much plural) need to rethink their relationship to the state and, in particular, to the use of force. You don't have to like these things, theoretically or practically, to acknowledge that they exist and are effective ? and that, if you don't grab them by the horns, someone else will.
The problem is ...
there are multiple superpower actors and multiple oligarchies
that DO exactly believe THAT , and ARE grabbing em by the horns...
This is the Horn-Grabbing WW3 that many of us are concerned about and looking for another possible politics ( of the escape hatch ), before it's too late.
We also have some other articles on that theme...
but for now the Habermas article in my previous post should suffice for more counter discussions here !
Hope there are other's here to pick up the slack !
...
respex,
Podinski
p.s. And Thx David Garcia ...
for your inputs...
Biden AND Bojo admins DO seem to be on the same Churchillian
channel... and it's not Chill at all !
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