Its not at all surprising that Samantha Power’s byline should appear in the pages of The Paper of Record, The New York Times  . This newspaper has been one of the many propaganda arms of The American Empire. Look at its regular columnists : David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, Bret Stephens and Arthur C. Brooks ( I forgot amiable Neo-Liberal hack Roger Cohen!) and Paul Krugman. American Exceptionalism is this publication’s ruling political theology, and its hirelings repeat this ad nauseam.

To add a certain piquancy to this essay , Ms. Power’s recent rapprochement, in political time, with American Foreign Policy guru Henry Kissinger , who some might call a monster, is the backdrop to this essay.  Ms. Power simply repeats the old formulas, not to speak of shopworn cliches, of The Old Cold War, and presents them as new insights into the political machinations of Putin as The New Stalin.

But things have changed appreciably since the 1950’s : the internet and the birth of such ‘news outlets’ such as RT and Sputnik as purveyors of ‘fake news’ , yet what remains unmentioned in Ms. Power’s screed, is that America has been broadcasting to Eastern Europe and Russia for nearly two generations, with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Even after the end of the Soviet Union. Ms. Power exercises a glaring double standard: is turnabout fair play? Not in the political world inhabited by Mr. Power, who instances the Ukrainian Coup as demonstrative of Russian revanchism in its extreme form. Again she elides from  her brief potted history these American and European bad  political actors: NATO, the EU, The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and diplomats Victoria Nuland and Jeffery Pyatt and even herself as co-conspirator in that Coup. The guilt of the Russians in MH17 was a foregone conclusion!

One point that irks Ms. Power is the damage done to the Hillary Clinton Campaign by the Russians, yet no actual proof exists except the word of Intelligence Agencies, whose record of lying and deceit to Americans is well documented. Some of us recall Ms. Power calling Hillary a ‘Monster’ , and then quickly retracting or apologizing for that characterization. The imperative of Careerism calls for stealth rather than frankness!

Almost Marx