Real News Network on Comey and russia

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  • #68979
    wv
    Participant

    This is good, i think. Russian Oligarchs, American Oligarchs, American hacking of Russian elections, Putin’s reasons for skepticism of America…etc

    #68982
    zn
    Moderator

    Just out of curiosity. And minus any conflictual tension stuff or any of that. Comrade to comrade. Why would I want to know Putin’s spin? When we were chasing down info on the Iraq war, no one wanted to know Hussein’s spin…and rightly so. I actually don’t see any difference now. The way I see it, it is impossible to make a genuinely objective argument that he has a credible view or any of that. He’s a pig and one of the reasons the Russians have even less democracy than we do.

    #68983
    zn
    Moderator

    Follow-up. Just another vote in the informal poll.

    First, he’s wrong. It would be as much of a scandal if the other country were NOT an adversary. Think of scandals where Israel gets revealed as too bound up with this or that american official.

    I found that whole report to be pretty wrong-headed. It;s a thing that keeps showing up… why is the media and why are the dems so wrong about Russia?

    Needless to say you can have a view of that conflict that has absolutely nothing to do with any mainstream/DNC line.

    Which is what some leftists keep missing. They act like pointing out the ways Russia is a problem is just complicit with mainstream/DNC stuff.

    To me to take that line just massively misses a lot. It in itself is a mistake IMO. I generally hear that line with just massive skepticism. To me it’s just completely wrong-headed.

    My view basically is, if I didn’t like Pinochet, why would I cut Putin a break. There’s no difference.

    #68987
    wv
    Participant

    Just out of curiosity. And minus any conflictual tension stuff or any of that. Comrade to comrade. Why would I want to know Putin’s spin?

    =======================
    OK, it will take time to flesh out exactly what are disagreement is. There is definitely a big divide here but I’m not sure exactly where it starts. (It does not affect my feelings for you, Rick. Just a disagreement to me. Probably a deep one though.)

    For starters I dont have any idea how you could watch THAT vid and then ask me why you would be interested in PUTIN’s SPIN. ?? That vid was by a historian, a professor, a guy that worked for the US defense Dept, and the US Committee for National Security. Its not ‘Putin’s spin’. How do you arrive at ‘Putin’s spin’ ??
    Did you even watch it? Personally, i think its a ‘must watch’ Vid.

    Robert English
    Early life

    Robert English was born in 1958. In 1980 he received a Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Public Administration and Ph.D. in politics from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.[1]
    Career

    He worked in the U.S. Department of Defense from 1982–86, before moving onto the U.S. Committee for National Security between 1986-88. He taught as an assistant professor at the Bologna Center in the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Relations before becoming assistant professor in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California.[1]

    As an author English wrote parts of Rebirth: A Political History of Europe Since World War II with Cyril E. Black, Jonathan E. Helmreich, and A. James McAdams in 1999. During 2000 he co-edited My Six Years With Gorbachev: Notes from a Diary with Jack F. Matlock, Jr. and Elizabeth Tucker, which is the account of Anatoly S. Chernyaev’s time as an aide to Mikhail Gorbachev.[1]

    His most notable work is Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War, an intellectual history of the rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev and his ‘New Thinking’ in the USSR. The book first charts the origins and nature of ‘Old Thinking’- which persisted in the traditional Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the Soviet Union- and goes on to chart the changes in society and of intellectual class during the Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev eras.
    Recognition

    In 1996 English won the Harold D. Lasswell Prize from the American Political Science Association for the work that he later used to write Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War.

    In 2001 he received the Marshal Shulman Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. In addition, he has received fellowships from- among others- the Institute for Advanced Studyl the Princeton Society of Fellows; the U.S. Fund for Peace; the International Research & Exchanges Board; the Ford Foundation, where he has a “‘Dual Expertise Fellowship’ in Soviet/East European and national security affairs”.[1]

    Currently, English is working on a “book-length study” called Our Serbian Brethren: History, Myth, and the Politics of Russian National Identity. He is writing the entry for The Kosovo War in the next edition of the Oxford Encyclopedia of World Politics. He is also contributing a chapter, entitled The Path(s) not Taken: Contingency and Counterfactual in Analysis of the Cold War’s End in a book edited by William C. Wohlforth to be called Witnesses to the End of the Cold War: Oral History, Analysis, Debates.[1]

    #68988
    wv
    Participant

    Noam on the antecedents to the Putin issue. Essentially he is saying Putin/russia have been surrounded by a ‘hostile military alliance’ (to use Chomsky’s words) and are reacting like a cornered animal. Chomsky has many videos on this issue, fwiw. And, you will notice when asked about Putin he did not stick to Putin — he had to expand the discussion to put things in context :

    #68992
    zn
    Moderator

    Noam on the antecedents to the Putin issue. Essentially he is saying Putin/russia have been surrounded by a ‘hostile military alliance’ (to use Chomsky’s words) and are reacting like a cornered animal.

    Okay my vote again.

    Yeah I’ve heard that line. I don’t buy it. Whatever is happening there, it’s completely mutual, and Putin is no victim.

    Honestly, people could have made the same defense of Hussein. It just doesn’t hold up.

    We have got to get over the idea that if somebody is anti-american, somehow he has to be defended.

    That;’s not a leftist critique IMO.

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