An entire journalistic cottage industry now exists (such as here and here and here and here) devoted to making the claim that Jeremy Corbyn is an overgrown adolescent CNDer harbouring a lingering atavistic attachment to Russian nationalism, with participants frequently coming as close as libel laws permit to averring outright anti-semitism on the Labour leader’s part. […]
Posts Tagged ‘Putin’
Putin’s brinkmanship explained
Feb 16th, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.The guns aren’t entirely silent, but it appears that the ceasefire in East Ukraine is mostly holding. In a conflict that has claimed at least 5,000 lives and threatened to consume even more, the deal struck in Minsk between the Merkel/Hollande-backed Ukrainian government and the pro-Russian rebels assisted by Putin will hopefully hold and the […]
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The view from inside the head of Vladimir Putin
Apr 15th, 2014 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.You run an authoritarian regime in a vast country beset with economic problems, corruption, and ethnically-based insurgencies. The nation on your doorstep – which formerly used to be an integral part of the multinational state ran from your capital for 70 years – has been intriguing with your long-term opponents in the international arena. Former […]
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Western hypocrisy towards Putin is breathtaking
Mar 10th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Thunderous Western denunciations of Putin’s actions over Ukraine ring hollow in the light of a decade of utterly unprovoked aggression against Iraq, let alone other bloody interventions in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan (repeated lethal drone strikes killing far more innocent civilians than Taliban), and Afghanistan (13 years of war), none of which was authorised by […]
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The tip-toe invasion of the Ukraine
Mar 5th, 2014 by Dan McCurry.Russia’s recent actions are an example of self-harm no different from a young woman who scratches her own flesh till it bleeds, for no better excuse than it makes her feel good. This from a young person with a difficult background, who has great opportunities before her, if she chose to take that route, but […]
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Ukraine and the Threat of War
Mar 3rd, 2014 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Of all the ways to mark the outbreak of the First World War in its centennial year, starting another is the least appropriate way I can think of. But the dogs of war are straining at the leash, and the drums are loudly echoing across the Black Sea’s northern shores. The decision of Vladimir Putin […]
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Is Russia now in charge of Middle East policy?
Sep 17th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.The US has been comprehensively outmanoeuvred over Syria. First, the Commons vote induced Obama to seek a vote in Congress to shore up his authority to take military action against the background that US public opinion shared UK public opinion in resisting any further intervention in the Middle East. Then as uncertainty grew about the […]
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The West is too riddled with self interest to lead on Syria or other world affairs
Sep 5th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Obama’s key line that the attack on Syria would be a short, surgical strike was designed to win over those who were appalled at Assad’s (virtually certain) use of chemical weapons and wanted him to be punished, but without risk of another long war. His latest deviation from this line – that the missile strike […]
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Pussy Riot: back in the USSR
Aug 6th, 2012 by David Osler.In this country at least, the punk music I loved as a teenager lost its ability to shock long before Johnny Rotten started appearing in butter commercials. So safe has it become that brief snatches of Sex Pistols songs even made it into the Olympic opening ceremony. Not so in Russia, where it has obviously […]
