Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin points to the fundamental difference between imperialism and revanchism as Western critics purposely or ignorantly confuse the two to serve their interests, writes Joe Lauria.
U.S. journalist Tucker Carlson with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow during an interview that aired on Feb. 8. (Kremlin)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Amongst the condemnations that were hurled at Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin even before their interview was aired, was this gem from an unnamed European foreign affairs spokesman to The Guardian:
“A spokesperson for the European Commission said it anticipated that the interview would provide a platform for Putin’s ‘twisted desire to reinstate’ the Russian empire.
‘We can all assume what Putin might say. I mean he is a chronic liar,’ said the EU’s spokesperson for foreign affairs. …
‘[Putin] is trying to kill as many Ukrainians as he can for no reason. There is only one reason for his twisted desire to reinstate the now imperialistic Russian empire where he controls everything in his neighbourhood and imposes his will. But this is not something we are able to tolerate or are willing to tolerate in Europe or the world in the 21st century.'” [Emphasis added.]
The article warned that Carlson’s interview could actually be deemed “illegal” under last year’s European Digital Services Act. The Guardian says:
“The law is aimed at stamping out illegal content or harmful content that incites violence or hate speech from social media. All the large platforms, bar X, have signed up to a code of conduct to help them accelerate and build their internal procedures in order to comply with the law. …
The onus is on platforms to ensure content is lawful, said a spokesperson for the digital tsar, Thierry Breton. … If a social media platform does not comply with the new EU law it can be sanctioned with a hefty fine, or banned from operating in the EU.”
The Russians Are Coming … Again
Military parade on Moscow’s Red Square, May 2017. (kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
After the interview, the Western media predictably dismissed it for a variety of reasons, including that it promoted Russian “imperialism.” The Economist wrote that Putin’s
“obsession — Russia’s historical claim to Ukraine — is backed by a nuclear arsenal. … He denied any interest in invading Poland or Latvia (though he previously said the same about Ukraine).”
Western rhetoric about a resurgent “Russian imperialism” dates back to 2014, when Russia assisted Donbass in resisting the U.S.-backed unconstitutional change of government in Kiev. Western officials sought to characterize Russia’s action as an “invasion” that was part of a grand scheme by Putin to reconstitute the Soviet Empire and even threaten Western Europe.
In March 2014, a month after the coup without making any reference to it to explain Russian actions, Hillary Clinton compared Putin to Adolf Hitler. The Washington Post reported:
“‘Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the ’30s,’ Clinton said Tuesday, according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram. ‘All the Germans that were … the ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, Hitler kept saying they’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people, and that’s what’s gotten everybody so nervous.'”
March 19, 2010: U.S. Secretary of State Clinton, Ambassador Beyrle and Under Secretary Burns with Russian Prime Minister Putin during a meeting at the Novo-Ogaryovo just outside Moscow. (State Department, Public Domain)
Clinton later tried to talk down any comparison to Hitler beginning his conquest of Europe by saying Putin was not that irrational. But the notion that the Russian president is trying to reconstruct the Soviet Empire — and then threaten Western Europe — is often repeated in the West.
The Atlantic Council has been in the forefront of keeping this idea afloat.
Reconstituting the Soviet Empire would involve bringing the Central Asian Republics, Azerbaijan and Armenia, let alone the Baltics and the former Warsaw States, now part of NATO, under Moscow’s control.
A slew of articles since Russia’s 2022 invasion have harped on this theme, for example, in The Hill: “The US Has a Chance to Defeat Russian Imperialism for Good;” Foreign Policy: “The Inevitable Fall of Putin’s New Russian Empire;” and Salon: “How Russian Colonialism Took the Western Anti-Imperialist Left for a Ride.”
The absurdity of the notion of a threat to the West by Russian “imperialism” is underscored every time many of these same Western leaders and media ridicule how disastrously Russia has performed on the Ukrainian battlefield and how, in the words of Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission president, Russia must resort to washing machine parts to keep its military going.
How can Russia be so weak and incompetent and yet be such an imminent and menacing threat at the same time?
The late Russia specialist Stephen F. Cohen dismissed these fears as a dangerous demonization of Russia and Putin. Cohen repeatedly explained that Russia had neither the capacity nor the desire to start a war against NATO and was acting defensively against the alliance.
“How can Russia be so weak and incompetent and yet be such an imminent and menacing threat at the same time?”
This is clear from the decades-long Russian objection to NATO expansion (which Putin raised with Carlson), coming in the 1990s when Wall Street and the U.S. dominated Russia, asset-stripping the formerly state-owned industries and impoverishing the Russian people, while enriching themselves.
It is clear from Russia backing the Minsk Accords, which would have left Donbass as an autonomous part of Ukraine, and not rejoined to Russia.
And it is clear from the treaty proposals to NATO and the United States offered by Russia in December 2021 intended to avert Russian military intervention. The West rebuffed Russia on all three diplomatic initiatives.
Dec. 7, 2021: U.S. President Joe Biden, on screen during video call with Putin. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
While realists in Washington and Europe increasingly admit Ukraine is losing the war, neocon fantasists, desperate to keep it going, have revived the theme of the Russian threat to the West to counter congressional reluctance to throw away more money and more lives.
Trumped-up fear of Russia has served U.S. ruling circles well for more than 70 years. The first three National Intelligence Estimates of the C.I.A., from 1947 t0 1949, reported no evidence of a Soviet threat, no infrastructure to support a sustained threat, and no evidence of a desire for confrontation with the United States.
“Trumped-up fear of Russia has served U.S. ruling circles well for more than 70 years.”
Despite this, in 1948 a war scare was drummed up to save the U.S. aircraft industry, which had nearly collapsed with the end of the Second World War.
Then came the 1954 bomber gap and 1957 missile gap with the Soviet Union, now accepted as deliberate fictions. In 1976 then C.IA. Director George H.W. Bush approved a Team B, whose purpose was again to inflate Soviet military strength.
George Kennan, the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow and America’s foremost expert on the Soviet Union tried to counter such exaggerations, including late in life when he opposed NATO expansion in the 1990s.
Now we are being asked again to believe another fictional story of a Russian threat to the West in order to save U.S. and European face — and Joe Biden’s presidency.
It is instead a projection to cover up its own authentic imperialism and the West’s perceived threat to Russia, a big part of what Putin was trying to get across in the Carlson interview.
Revanchism & Imperialism
The Donbass status referendums in May 2014. (Andrew Butko, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The issue at hand is the fundamental difference between imperialism and revanchism. Western critics purposely or ignorantly confuse the two to serve their interests.
Succinctly, the difference is this: imperialists take control of a country that does not want them there and resists. A revanchist wants to absorb former imperial lands where the population is largely the same ethnicity and welcomes the revanchist power to protect them from an outside threat.
Yes, Hitler was being revanchist in his defense of the German-speaking Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. But it was a first step in an imperial design to conquer countries that ultimately resisted him. Clinton’s effort to roll back her comments to say Putin is not as irrational as Hitler was her attempt to tamp down a suggestion that Putin wanted to conquer Europe as Hitler did.
“The issue at hand is the fundamental difference between imperialism and revanchism. Western critics purposely or ignorantly confuse the two to serve their interests.”
To call Putin’s move on Ukraine “imperialist” is to say Russia had never conquered those lands before and that he might indeed keep going to conquer lands Russia has never controlled: i.e., Western Europe.
Russian imperialism in Ukraine took place nearly 250 years ago under the reign of Catherine the Great. That was when the Russians defeated the Turks and occupied what came to be known as Novorossiya. Putin went back further than that to make Russian claims (Lenin in 1922 gave Donbass, and Khruschev in 1954 gave Crimea to Soviet Ukraine, not independent Ukraine) and he has been open about his feeling that those lands and Russia are one. He spoke at length about it in his interviews with Oliver Stone in 2017.
Despite these revanchist or irredentist positions on Ukraine, Putin did not act on them until 2022. Carlson asked Putin twice why he didn’t move on Ukraine earlier if he held these views and twice Putin evaded the question. The Western media is saying that Putin is lying about acting to defend the Russian speakers of the Donbass; that he was motivated by territorial expansion.
Putin was acting both to defend Donbass’ Russian speakers (who were under imminent renewed attack in February 2022) and also saw the opportunity to reunite the old imperial lands with Russia. That opportunity was seen in the Kremlin as a necessity because of the West’s rejection of Moscow’s diplomatic efforts to avoid conflict.
Given the results of the four regional referendums in 2022, plus the one in Crimea in 2014, it is clear the people of those regions wanted to rejoin Russia after the coup and the revival of Ukrainian extremism.
One can condemn or criticize revanchism, but one cannot call it imperialism.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe
Cue mucho hysteria now from western hypocrites about the death of convicted fraudster and swindler and western inbtelligence asset Navalny, people who apparently have never heard of Julian Assange.
A man who called moslems cockroaches and said he wanted to shoot them all.
Perfect term: Revanchism…
This American cit believes the opening paragraphs using term: Russian imperialism constitutes “The pot calling the kettle…
It makes me sad that US people are so shallow that they found a detailed cultural history “boring.” Not all US people are so disabled, of course. There are still a few geeks here and there, who have a capacity to grok culture and history. Sigh.
Unfortunately Mary, you are correct. “There a still a few geeks”. Emphasis on “Few”. Too few in my opinion. Most are busy chasing trends on Tiktok or following celebrities while Rome burns down around them.
The motivations of the political and economic powers on this planet are dangerous to the people of the planet (and the east of the living world), be they from the east or west, north or south…business oligarchs or international criminals. We can parse the subtleties, select our heroes…or at least those more acceptable to us…but ultimately, those ‘leading’ are almost never finally concerned with the well being of the vast majority or the stability of the biophysical systems that sustain life. That is the the reality that is not being openly faced.
We got two answers I know of to the cowards and zionists on the hill. Hill Harper, running in Michigan and who turned down a 2 million dollar bribe to run against our only Palestinian/American rep in congress, and a return of one of my heroes, Dennis Kuchinich, when as mayor of Cleveland thwarted a takeover of private interests to purchase Cleveland’s public owned utility. He had four attempts on his life for doing so.
I agree, if there is something devastating in wars is that they do no allow creativity and innovation to solve the human problems; creativity and innovation require some degree of challenge but above all they require a stable and cooperative environment, huge amount of resources and positiveness.
The fact that in pursuing and imposing our “superior ideology”, favoring war over diplomacy, we have diverted crucial resources to build bombs instead of sustainable products and solutions, we have destroyed the cooperative and stable global environment necessary to become sustainable and prosperous, makes us one of the worse culture earth has ever seen.
If today we do not cooperate despite differences we will hardly survive, those wars have already robbed us of decades of progress and possible solutions to solve human problems.
We need China more than ever, and it still surprise me that even a “realist” like john mearsheimer cannot see China as a friend. it is sad, very sad.
We often think we will one day travel the universe to find alien, I hope our culture never make it beyond the moon, otherwise will bring destruction everywhere we do not understand other species; let say that earth is an experiment to deal with diversity, and so far the western culture has failed miserably.
I agree, great article and comments. The US is the declining global hegemon, the imperialism it employs is financial (the US dollar, “petro-dollar” and the Bretton Woods institutions). It is also military of course, with hundreds of bases all over the world. The over trillion per year that the US gov spends on DoD, nuclear weapons “modernization”, military giveaways to Israel/Ukraine etc., surveillance, special appropriations etc. underlines this. The MassMediaCartel and Hollywood facilitate informational and cultural imperialism
The leading academic expert on Russia, the late prof. Stephen Cohen, warned us in 2014 of what was going to happen, and it did. The late Robert Parry covered Ukraine from the start as well and exposed the Ukrainian Nazi groups like the Right Sector and Azov. The MassMediaCartel (using CIA narratives) denies this as ridiculous, and “morally repugnant” to eve suggest such a thing.
Regarding Carlson’s interview: some say he “risked his life”, I’m sorry, but there is no credible evidence of that. He is a celebrity who wants to further the imperialist line of attacking China/Iran (while supporting Israel) and endorse the other geriatric kakistocrat warmonger, DT. He and his buddy, DT support attacking Syria, Iran and China – all ALLIES of Russia. With “friends” like that, who needs…
Putin even brought up Carlson’s past thoughts of joining the CIA. His father did work for VOA and could well have been a CIA asset – who knows. Carlson does represent the controlled opposition – he, DT, the neocons as well as the old-school Realists (Henry K. Zbig B. et al.) all advocated the perpetuation of US hegemony – they just differ on tactics. Sadly, our mainstream discourse is quite narrow and circumscribed. That’s why we come to CN – because we get the broader spectrum of information.
An outfit called NewRulesGeopolitics just posted an excellent interview with Dugin and Pepe Escobar. Go find it, the Twitter account is: @NewRulesGeo That’s where you can seek it out.
A lot of words have been written and twisted logic employed to offer justification for a larger country invading a smaller country.
I assume you’re referring to Victoria Nuland in Ukraine in 2014, and the coup replacing a democratically elected president favoring agreements with Russia? Also, recall her resonant “Fuck the EU!” remark at this time.
“Having a discussion with friends reveals how successful the USA’s indoctrination of hate the Russians, hate Putin is”
Perhaps the attempts of attribution to an individual in interaction with hatred, is even more successful in facilitating lateral opportunities ?
This would be an interesting counterpoint to feature on the front page:
hxxps://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/tucker-carlson-promised-an-unedited-putin-the-result-was-boring
This comment in the article you recommend suggests the overall flavor and approach of it by referring to Putin as “a dictator whose opponents get killed and jailed and who invades neighboring countries.” In short, ad hominem (which continues throughout the article) as response and method of dispute.
What it surprise me is how we inevitably (no matter how critical we might be) overvalue our culture and societ; we are incapable of using the “anthropological approach” in understanding ourselves and other culture. If we were capable then we would understand that none is superior to anyone else.
Goebbels is often said to be the first who exploited art and movies for propaganda purpose. However, the CIA not only has used media, NGO, historians, scientists to its own benefit, but it has extensively used Hollywood for decades and still do it today.
How many movies in which a russian person or russian territories are associated with evil, fear, repression, etc? Sometimes in a direct manner, sometime more subtly and indirectly, like the movie ” The tomorrow war” in which the alien ship hid in Siberia. What about top gun 2, against the Iranians? and the list goes on, and on and on… for decades, Hollywood has helped CIA shaping/distorting the western perception of Russia, China, Iran, etc.
SO the natural question is, are we truly free in the western culture?
However, even the CIA must acknowledge that propaganda/social engineering has its limits, and having invested so much on “goebbels’ manipulative skills” might have been a major mistake that it is now backfiring.
An interesting piece on CIA using Hollywood “The Historical Roots of CIA-Hollywood Propaganda”
The is plenty of lying regarding NATO expansion and calling Putin a liar and evil and without soul indicating a religious motivation as well perhaps in Biden’s case roman orthodox versus Russian.
As to the Minsk agreement it seems Canada regarded an acceptable agreement for Quebec to not be a preparation for war.
As to lies ad world press it seem the Iraq invasion for fear of their imminent attack is very clear.
It also appears that all European countries are being drafted into a world alliance against the cultures of the rest of the world for dominance. The release of colonial imperialism into neo-colonial imperialism is at risk and the is scared there may be repercussion for our past history ahead,
The hatchets of all world history should be buried for the good of all humanity along with a vast number of reconciliation processes as well.
Thank you, Joe Lauria for this study of the misrepresentations of Russia used to rationalize war in Ukraine.
The MIC denizens never raise the issues of revanchism, and take opposite sides on Donbass vs. Taiwan.
The usual militarist tyrants manipulating tribal dependencies with zero concern for truth or justice.
Tyrants must invent enemies to demand power as fake defenders, for MIC election bribes or promotions.
The core US foreign policy is to make trouble everywhere, to sell MIC weapons as others die for nothing.
The other interest groups that control where the wars are started, are the Antisocialists and the Zionists.
The US used both to support the anti-USSR Afghan wars, then the Zionists for all Mideast/CE wars since.
The Antisocialist wars are largely secret operations in this hemisphere. The public sees nothing.
The US violation of agreements even when made prevents any basis for peace other than force. Its supply of long-range weapons to Ukraine forces Russia to enforce a larger DMZ, and take the Black Sea coast.
On Sept. 7, 2023, in a presentation to the European Parliament, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated: “The background [of the Ukraine War] was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition to not invade Ukraine. Of course, we didn’t sign that … So, he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.” Probably without realizing it, Stoltenberg thus negated his mantra that the Russians invaded to order to take over Ukraine and then march upon Europe.
On Jan. 23, 2024, at a press conference in Brussels, Stoltenberg again eschewed the Russian threat meme: “We don’t see any direct or imminent threat against any NATO ally.”
I have been reading Jeff Morley’s Our Man In New Mexico, just starting really and I’m in Chapter 6. Chapters 5 and 6 speaking of Imperialism. Chapters 4 and 5. Things are not good for Dulle’s CIA, Phoilby was abut to be caught, MacClean had fled to Russia, the CIA attempt to convince some of the nations that were becoming satellites to Russia had failed and made fools of the U.S. counter intelligence efforts to turn them. Philby was about to flee to Russia, MacClean was already gone and the Arbenz Government in Guatemalan was about to be overthrown.
Judging from what I’m reading about the CIA’s activities at the time Americans might want to get very serious about who they elect to run the U.S..
Mr. Lauria in his, “Trumped -up Fear of Russia Has Served U.S. Ruling Circles for More Than 70 Years”, section has this history right on the money.
This point in this segment of the time line tells the story of CIA going all in for Imperialism, done the American way. None of this is pretty, much like what the U.S. intelligence community is experiencing now.
Consider yourselves warned that things could get much worse for the U.S. very soon. The reason being that CIA and NSA are out of control because Congress will not develop a back bone and call them on the carpet.
All this because much like the 1950’s far far too much is held secret by NSA and CIA and these agencies employees, none of whom I might remind everyone were never elected to Dogdamned thing.
I caught a slice of Pelosi on the Utube claiming, as though she had first hand info, calling anyone who supports the Palestinians, Putin-Russian lovers working for Putin.
Y’ all have a great evening.
Thanks CN
No need to worry about who elects whom here to run the country, because it doesn’t matter. Trump will do as he’s told, and then pretend it was his idea all along. Trump will certainly back Israel to the hilt.
Here are two straight up politicians; if you know more, please let me know. Hill Harper, running in Michigan, refused a 2 mil bribe to run against Tlaib, and he’s back!, Dennis Kucinich, who as a young mayor of Cleveland fought off the privateers in buying Cleveland’s public utilities. He survived four attempts on his life for doing so. Also which alt-media will give them some air time, cause just like RFK, Jr., they will not be given any. Maybe Democracy Now could do segments on them.
“A revanchist wants to absorb former imperial lands where the population is largely the same ethnicity and welcomes the revanchist power to protect them from an outside threat.”
“welcomes” is an interesting way to describe the Ukrainian reaction.
It is doesn’t, and isn’t intended, to describe the Ukrainian reaction, it describes the Donbass and Crimean reactions.
“Carlson asked Putin twice why he didn’t move on Ukraine earlier”
This was a trap. An honest answer to this question would have forced Putin to admit two things: 1) that at the time, Russia was weak and not sufficiently prepared to resist NATO expansion; and 2) Putin was naive and got played.
Of course Putin would never admit to either.
Good piece, Joe!
But Putin, on previous occasions, has definitively admitted that he got played.
He did admit to being naive and being played, actually.
Yeah, I came away from the interview understanding Putin believed there were actually diplomatic steps being taken to resolve the issue and that he felt betrayed upon learning the west had no intention of signing off on any such resolutions.
Projection being the operative word. These Western imperialists are so transparent, only the most propagandized believe anything they say. They are clearly in panic mode as their grip on global power slips through their greedy hands. The string pullers behind the curtain have worked diligently to frame Putin as the aggressor when they know perfectly well it is they who are intent on “Full Spectrum Dominance.” They don’t care how many lives they destroy in their pursuit of global domination which to their horror, becomes less and less a possibility. We are living through the collapse of empire. Nukes in the hands of straight up power mad lunatics makes this particular collapse that much more frightening. That Chinese proverb is haunting in this day and age.
Small correction: These Western imperialists are so transparent, only the most propagandized (OF WHICH THERE ARE MANY) believe anything they say.
The “less propagandized” are largely outside established political parties and in minority. In USA, there are enough of them that they will abandon Democrats, assuring a period of Republican domination, but I hope for a trickle that will grow to a river. Voices like Consortium News will help explaining “what went wrong” etc.
With the emergence of the armed militias of the far right organizations such as Right Sektor and Svoboda, and various other oligarch parties, these armed militias were directly or indirectly involved various capacities in the massacres of the protesters and the police, In the Independence Square.
The mass killings were in the face of successful false flag operations, organized and conducted by elements of the Maidan leadership and concealed armed groups in order to win the asymmetric conflict during the Euromaidan and seize power Ukraine.
The battle of the Maidan was over, the upcoming confrontation was between the Ukranian regulars, and irregulars and the Don Bass militias who were also ready. This meant of course an opening strike against the local militias in the DB which began in 2013/4. But the Ukies found it more heavy going than what they were expecting, and to dig in for a long haul. Casualties amongst the DonBass populations were 14000 killed.
By 2022 Putin had had enough of the Ukie army’s shelling of the Donbass and crossed into the contact line of the Donbass. The SMO was launched but an initially moderate force, but one which grew into a modern army). So who invaded who exactly? To pose the question is to answer it.
Thank you for helping me understand the difference between imperialism and revanchism….big difference. Having a discussion
with friends reveals how successful the USA’s indoctrination of hate the Russians, hate Putin is. Disturbing. All are highly educated yet bare their teeth when the word “Putin” pops up. What happened to open mindedness?
Dumbing down of America. Just look at congress and around us.
Yeah, the well-educated are perhaps more easily swayed by propaganda than the less-educated. It has always been so, though obviously not all are swayed by propaganda. Everyone I know who is well-educated simply doesn’t want to believe that their Party is all about war and Wall Street. What will it take?
A big shock when they take their retirement funds and private property.
Your Property Rights Have Been Taken in All 50 States: Here’s How to Get Them Back hxxps://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/01/your-property-rights-have-been-taken-in-all-50-states-heres-how-to-get-them-back/ via @@veteranstoday
THE GREAT TAKING- Summary
This documentary is about the taking of collateral (all of it), the end game of the current globally synchronous debt accumulation super cycle. This scheme is being executed by long-planned, intelligent design, the audacity and scope of which is difficult for the mind to encompass. Included are all financial assets and bank deposits, all stocks and bonds; and hence, all underlying property of all public corporations, including all inventories, plant and equipment; land, mineral deposits, inventions and intellectual property. Privately owned personal and real property financed with any amount of debt will likewise be taken, as will the assets of privately owned businesses which have been financed with debt. If even partially successful, this will be the greatest conquest and subjugation in world history. Private, closely held control of ALL central banks, and hence of all money creation, has allowed a very few people to control all political parties and governments; the intelligence agencies and their myriad front organizations; the armed forces and the police; the major corporations and, of course, the media. These very few people are the prime movers. Their plans are executed over decades. Their control is opaque. To be clear, it is these very few people, who are hidden from you, who are behind this scheme to confiscate all assets, who are waging a hybrid war against humanity. The Author has deep experience with investigation and analysis within challenging and deceptive environments, including the mergers and acquisitions boom of the 80’s, venture investing, and the public financial markets. He managed hedge funds through the period spanning the extremes of the dot-com bubble and bust, producing a gross return of more than 320% while the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ indices had losses. His clients included some of the largest international institutional investors.
hxxps://rumble.com/v3yptkd-the-great-taking-documentary.html
In reference to the above, South Dakota legislators are supposedly working on a bill to protect retirement funds and private property of South Dakotans. Fox News did a report for which I do not have a link .
Putin emphasized that the current war in Ukraine started back in 2014, or earlier, with the US manipulated coup and the collapsed Minsk Accords, which Merkel admitted were pretense, and which revealed the attempt at cunning and deception behind the real “imperialist” project from the West. All this about “imperialism” is outdated and clung to as the holy grail of “the free world.” Putin evinced a certain fatigue with the stupidity and bald maneuvering of this sort of talk, that he was the new Hitler out to take over Europe.
As he indicated, what is the need for this? What for? It’s rooted in the Demonize Putin as Cover and Provocation part of the war plans from the West, which continued from at least 2014 into increasing attack, massive increase in bombardment in the week of Feb 24 2022, on the Russian-identifying east provinces. This as provocation and invitation to the Ukraine War, where more manipulating of “the proxy”–i.e. the hapless stupidity of the piano player (with his penis) Zelensky–would be the second step, assisted by the likes of Boris Johnson.
The official cover for this, The Official Narrative, would draw on the wells of “them Russians them Russians” in America and elsewhere and decades of fear and trembling nursed carefully through the Cold War and completely irrelevant to the change that had happened in Russia following 1991. This is what Putin miscalculated, admitted in this interview, due to his naivete that the West could become “a partner”, that the Russia could join NATO, and a balanced and secure world could move ahead into an era of peace. JFK would probably have understood this moment, from his similar feelings about the possibility in his secret talks with Khruschev, leading up to November 22, 1963.
I am not sure if Putin was naive or that he miscalculated. Russia has only so many resources to resist, hard for me to point what he could do better.
How contorted some leftists can twist themselves. Take the CPGB M-L, for example; be sure to include the ‘G’ for Great Britain in order to avoid confusion with other groups. On their X feed they said:
“Tucker #Carlson and Vladimir #Putin. A strange combination. But a shrewd one on Russia’s part.”
As soon as most people in Western countries see Tucker Carlson, they turn away in disgust. What is shrewd about Putin having a cordial interview with him?
But if you are more devoted to talking about Russia than doing communist work for revolution in your own country, this is what comes with the choice.
Your comment is incomprehensible. I can tell you that “most people” do not turn away in disgust from Tucker Carlson. I started watching him because he was the only MSM figure who actually interviewed gender-critical feminists. Amazingly, though I know I disagree with him on many issues, I found an intelligent, rational, and often funny person.
And WHO in doing communist work in the U.S.? I checked out PSL and found a bunch of trans-supporters! If you support a project of the CIA and billionaire capitalists, you are hardly doing communist work. I appreciate that they are very involved in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, etc, but this level of political sophistication is not amusing. I saw the same stuff in the antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s, a bunch of people with zero critical analysis of what was happening, which then permitted them to join the petit bourgeoisie and support every other U.S. war.
It’s a great point. I think aside from the revanchist imperative, the prospect of further ‘acquisitions’ of historically Russian territories is being used as a major pressure point to bring Kiev to the negotiating table (of course, those regions signed into law as Russian are irreversibly so). Too bad they (and the leaders of the collective West) are too stupid / evil to respond in a timely fashion in the only way that will prevent it, and further bloodshed.
Aha, Frank Kofsky! Daniel Ellsberg in an interview a while back mentioned that thanks to “Kofsky and others” he now believed that the cold war largely from beginning to end was a long set of excuses to protect the profitability of the aerospace industry. I had been dying to find the source to this claim for some time now but it eluded me. Thanks so much for citing it, Joe!
Kofsky’s book is indeed very good.
I only found out about it because Noam Chomsky referred to it in one of his books and so I decided to get hold of a copy.