Whatever Russia gets up to, remember this one important fact: it’s probably our fault
PUTIN can breathe easy as The Guardian stands ever ready to pin all the blame on the West.
PUTIN can breathe easy as The Guardian stands ever ready to pin all the blame on the West.
Seumas Milne in The Guardian yesterday:
IT’S not necessary to have any sympathy for Putin’s oligarchic authoritarianism to recognise that NATO and the EU, not Russia, sparked this crisis — and that it’s the Western powers that are resisting the negotiated settlement that is the only way out, for fear of appearing weak … NATO likes to see itself as the international community. In reality it’s an interventionist and expansionist military club of rich-world states and their satellites used to enforce Western strategic and economic interests. As Ukraine shows, far from keeping the peace, NATO is a threat to it.
Poor, poor threatened Russia. Milne’s paper on Tuesday:
VLADIMIR Putin has said Russian forces could conquer the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, in two weeks if he so ordered, the Kremlin has confirmed.
Back when there was no NATO in Hungary to trouble Russia. The BBC on November 4, 1956:
THE Soviet air force has bombed part of the Hungarian capital, Budapest, and Russian troops have poured into the city in a massive dawn offensive. At least 1000 Soviet tanks are reported to have entered Budapest and troops deployed throughout the country are battling with Hungarian forces for strategic positions ... Despite Moscow’s claims, heavy fighting is reported to be continuing
Reuters on August 29:
RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin, defiant as ever, compared Kiev’s drive to regain control of its rebellious eastern cities to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II.
Familiar? That 1956 BBC report:
IN an unscheduled newscast on Moscow radio shortly after 1200 GMT, Russia claimed to have “crushed the forces of reactionary conspiracy against the Hungarian people”.
The BBC on August 21, 1968, on NATO-free Czechoslovakia:
THE Soviet news agency, TASS, claims “assistance” was requested by members of the Czechoslovak government and Communist Party leaders to fight “counter-revolutionary forces”.
A Guardian reader? Putin in March:
THEY (the West) are constantly trying to drive us into a corner because we have an independent position, because we maintain it and because we tell it like it is and don’t engage in hypocrisy. But there is a limit to everything. And with Ukraine, our Western partners have crossed the line, playing the bear and acting irresponsibly and unprofessionally.
Start your column, plug yourself early. Elizabeth Farrelly in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday:
BOOKLESS libraries, libraryless towns. Is this the future? What does it even mean? To write a book, as I’ve just done …
Hopefully it pans out better than some of her SMH efforts. Mark Colvin on Twitter in September, 2011:
I’M not sure Liz Farrelly’s correctly identified why people can’t get to the end of her columns.
Good luck, Elizabeth — the book game is a tough one. John van Tiggelen reviewing Bob Brown’s new tome, Optimism, in the September issue of The Monthly:
UNFORTUNATELY, less than a third of the way into the book, the affecting personal stories peter out. What we’re left with instead are the political forays. Chapter after righteous chapter implores us to save stuff … Brown’s editor lost the war, obviously … Doubtless Optimism will please Brown’s flock. But to anyone who doesn’t accept his saintly status (or who does accept it, but has trouble digesting quasi-spiritual cant), enduring this book is like riding a car with disintegrating tyres. By the end, even Brown must know he has run the thing down to the wheel-rims. “I’ve finished this book of anecdotes on time,” he concludes, “and in a fortnight I’ll hand it over to … the publishers.” Phew, you can almost hear him thinking. Glad that’s over.