Roshanak's Political Peepenscheíßeschau

[Jonathan]

I found this informative.
blog article

[Jonathan]

Another interesting article I ran across Translated blog post

The comments (when translated) shed interesting light on how (at least some) Russian speakers feel about what is occurring.
Original version

[Roshan]

btw, just because I said I have a place in my heart for Vlad the Paler doesn't mean I'd be particularly surprised or upset if someone just eliminated him.

After all that's part of what being a political Shakespearean means. "Comes with the territory", as it were.

Thanks for the aticles, Jonathan; I'll read 'em in a bit.

[Roshan]

I particularly enjoyed the second article, Jonathan, because she is so well-connected to 'the corridors of power'. (I wonder how long this blog will last? ) I had already learned about the three main motifs of Putin's speech (Ukraine as part of Russia, genocide and denazification) so was hoping there would be more clarity on the second and third (which are so very interlocked).

I had seen this video from the Grayzone (below) where this guy Mark Sleboda, who's 'based in Moscow', is interviewed. He is very obviously Jewish and from 4'03" to 8'05" he addresses the trope how can there be a Nazi threat when they have a Jewish president, saying yes, Zelensky is Jewish and so is patron, the oligarch Kolomoisky,
who 'funded these battalions from the very beginning of the Maidan'. Fine, from what I've seen so far those Azov battalions do sound close to their Nazi roots and I don't disbelieve Zelensky's patron supports them but to just assert this explains nothing, is about as clear as mud.

Konstantin Kisin got really annoyed with a superchat question about the genocide on his show (Triggernometry). He said I'm Jewish, I have family in Eastern Ukraine, don't you think if there was a genocide I would have heard about it?

This is the Grayzone interview. Sleboda as you can see is very intelligent and very shifty. The Grayzone (Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate) were very good in challenging the Russiagate narrative under Trump and also the Syria narrative but I feel now they are going down a slippery slope in terms of objectivity

[Roshan]

Scott Ritter has been interviewed on Ukraine by Lee Camp. (not the same thumbnail on yt). Ritter was the UN weapons inspector who first made a stink that Iraq had no WMD's. His wiki shows his array of credentials. He was US/UK military/intelligence and then UN; he just understood the folly of the road we took beginning 2001. It's hard to disregard Ritter when he goes into the Azov batallions at length and things get weird.

(Lee Camp lost Redacted Tonight because RT America shut [was shut] down. RT America was known for giving a hands off platform to pretty garden variety leftist talking heads like Camp, Chris Hedges, Abby Martin, and Ed Schultz when the Overton Window narrowed on MSM).

[Roshan]

A new panel discussion with Meersheimer on Ukraine has popped up when I had given up on finding one. It's on Consortium News. Consortium News is one of the platforms that was targeted by the notorious WaPo article as Russian disinformation shortly before Russiagate was officially hatched. Consortium was targeted along with everything from World Socialist Website to Truthdig to Ron Paul to Ron Paul's site to Naked Capitalism to Zero Hedge and beyond. So the hard far left, the kinda sorta far-ish kaffee klatsch Chris Hedges left, conservative libertarians, hipper libertarians, ancaps....and really JUST muckrakers (which would be Consortium; the founder was one of the exposers of Iran Contra). All were Russian disinformation. That one WaPo article--and Bezos' CIA links--was why I never could take RussiaGate seriously. It was always just very annoying background noise to me the entire time Trump was in office.

I haven't watched the panel discussion yet but I have read the comments. tbcd

[Roshan]

It was very annoying background noise to me but through the noise I couldn't help but notice the Hunter Biden Ukraine scandal and the later concerted MSM collusion to cover up the laptop affair so Biden could eak out a win, and also that Trump got impeached over a call to the Ukranian president. I notice things like this; patterns like these stand out to me as very high frequency, while things that consume so many people especially here in NYC, like RussiaGate, seem like static.

Another thing that stands out to me is when Bernie Sanders campaigned against Hillary Clinton's stated goal to establish a no-fly zone over Syria. Sanders said it would cause a war with Russia. All these things together make me reluctant to dismiss the notion out of hand that some people here wanted this invasion to happen.

So many moving parts, though.

The part about the Nazis really bugs me a lot. And not because of the Nazis but because I haven't been able to reconcile at all Konstantin Kisin's position (and that of Ivan, a Ukranian TPAS commentator) that the Nazis and the genocide are Putinganda balderdash, with the Grayzone reporting and now Ritter, etc. A piece of the puzzle that festers and offends me like a right eye that can't be plucked out.

ps Putin is an sp 2w1.

[Roshan]

And so there is this.

Every political peepenShakespeareschau needs a Carlson.

[Vincent]

Thank you Roshan and Jonathan, that's a lot to read and watch
I'll try to catch up with the peepenShakespeareschau tomorrow !

[Roshan]

I can't find a way to link directly to the Jacobin article 'A Ukranian Socialist Explains...' posted 10:29 am March 9 on fb (aka 'yesterday') that includes the comments. so I'm just linking to their fb page. I thought the article was fine; after all the author doesn't like NATO, Putin or the Ukranian government. What more can you ask? I can see taking issue with the blurb Jacobin gave it, and with whether supplying arms is the best tactic (Yanis Varoufakis pointed out here, in his argument to 'Finlandize' Ukraine,that if you don't, Putin will have no reason to negotiate), etc. But seriously, a lot of these responses...if nothing else this thread puts the polarization on the left on parade like Macy's at Thanksgiving. For some background:
Jacobin, despite the name, is not taken seriously by the hard left; it's seen as bourgie and accommodationist, more soc dem than even dem soc* and also as the propaganda arm of the DSA**, which is seen as the sheepdogging mechanism of the Democratic Party. But just what DO these 'hard leftists' think they're supporting?

*That means more social democrat than democratic socialist (the latter in contrast to revolutionary socialist) but I had to say it the way I said it, it just had to be.

**Democratic Socialists of America, whence 'AOC' et al.

tbcd