Mr. Niall Ferguson’s essay of February 13, 2015 titled ‘The Meaning of the Minsk Agreement’ is one more demonstration that the political cliches of the New Cold War have become fully integrated in the rhetoric of the Western Exceptionalist Political Theology. Although the pretentious ‘frozen conflict’ has replaced the notion of ‘stalemate’ from the Old Cold War. Nothing has changed except that Putin takes the place of Stalin as the political monster that needs to be defeated.

In his essay Mr. Ferguson addresses and admonishes the ‘armchair strategist’. Our scribbler has read the ‘fine print’ of the document and shares his superior knowledge with his reader. Yet our experience of Mr. Ferguson has been one that recoils at his imperial apologetics and his bellicosity: one would think/posit that a person with no military experience, might just hesitate in the face of his own ignorance, to advocate such a course of action, that is the answer he provides to vexing political questions. We know that his household deity is Eris, the god of mischief and discord, a god he serves without fail.

Political Observer

If there is any doubt in your mind that War Fever has infected the same ‘minds/hearts’ that sold the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Here is the evidence.

Martin Wolff in the Financial Times under the title ‘Help Ukraine seize this chance’, with the subtitle of ‘A small price for the chance of securing a stable democracy on the continent’s eastern flank’. Needless to say Mr. Wolff’s polemic is larded with the cliches of the New Cold War i.e.Putin taking the lead as political monster in chief  :

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/806eb796-b08b-11e4-92b6-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3RMB1SPvi

I can’t quote directly from the text but Mr. Wolff acquits himself as a trusted spokesman for Western Values i.e. perpetual war in search of an elusive peace. The argument Mr. Wolff makes is economically based, complemented by winning graphics, no surprise here, but the IMF bailout, and as usual, in the face of failed Neo-Liberalism the prescription is more Neo-Liberalism. (The key word here is always ‘reform.’) See Philip Mirowski’s book ‘Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste’ for a telling description of this phenomenon:

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste

There is so much more to be said about Mr. Wolff’s unseemly war advocacy! Yet he arrives at his political destination with a certain  aplomb: he manages to provide a rational economic gloss to his advocacy.

From The Economist, the F.T.’s sister publication, of the February 14, 2015 edition is the print magazine’s lead story, complete with a melodramatic, menacing picture of Putin as puppet master, on a black background, called ‘Putin’s war on the West’. The road to war is paved with cheap visual melodrama! But please don’t underestimate the power of sophisticated propaganda, that uses an hysteria mongering vocabulary allied to an appealing historically charged rhetoric. And also notice the sub-heading ‘What is to be done’ a reference/quotation from both Chernyshevsky and Lenin, a bit of Oxbridge flat footed irony?

Again , there is so much more to be said about this essay.

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21643189-ukraine-suffers-it-time-recognise-gravity-russian-threatand-counter

HE IS ridiculed for his mendacity and ostracised by his peers. He presides over a free-falling currency and a rapidly shrinking economy. International sanctions stop his kleptocratic friends from holidaying in their ill-gotten Mediterranean villas. Judged against the objectives Vladimir Putin purported to set on inheriting Russia’s presidency 15 years ago—prosperity, the rule of law, westward integration—regarding him as a success might seem bleakly comical.

But those are no longer his goals, if they ever really were. Look at the world from his perspective, and Mr Putin is winning. For all his enemies’ machinations, he remains the Kremlin’s undisputed master. He has a throttlehold on Ukraine, a grip this week’s brittle agreement in Minsk has not eased. Domesticating Ukraine through his routine tactics of threats and bribery was his first preference, but the invasion has had side benefits. It has demonstrated the costs of insubordination to Russians; and, since he thinks Ukraine’s government is merely a puppet of the West (the supposed will of its people being, to his ultracynical mind, merely a cover for Western intrigues), the conflict has usefully shown who is boss in Russia’s backyard. Best of all, it has sown discord among Mr Putin’s adversaries: among Europeans, and between them and America.

An editorial from February 12, 2015 edition of the Financial Times titled ‘Tactical pause in Putin’s assault on Ukraine’ which tells the whole propaganda story in miniature:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d5481096-b2ac-11e4-a058-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3RZjbIAoQ

Political Skeptic

E.W. is author of the rambling essay titled Anxious Sensitivity under the rubric of Political Correctness, in which she/he engages in an evaluation of events, opinions, comments, that share a perceived common theme, expressed in that rubric and title. Here  is the ‘offending’ passage in the President’s address that has provoked the rhetorical animus of Christian Apologists:

Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history.  And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.  In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.

If this recitation of historical fact makes Christian apologists ‘uncomfortable’, they are uncomfortable with the facts of their own history, or simply, in their response to this historical precis, confronting their own spiritual/historical hubris?

After all ‘Faith’ is the triumph of ‘revelation’ over fact, the empirical: Kierkegaard’s Knight of Faith in Fear and Trembling experiences the ‘absurdity’ of faith as it’s proof: Soren reveled in and rebuked the Hegelian dialectic in equal measure i.e. he embraced the inherent schizophrenia of the Christian Mystery!

Here is what the Christian Apologist’s ignore, because it is politically inconvenient to their agenda, in President’s address:

So this is not unique to one group or one religion.  There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith.  In today’s world, when hate groups have their own Twitter accounts and bigotry can fester in hidden places in cyberspace, it can be even harder to counteract such intolerance. But God compels us to try.  And in this mission, I believe there are a few principles that can guide us, particularly those of us who profess to believe.

And, first, we should start with some basic humility.  I believe that the starting point of faith is some doubt — not being so full of yourself and so confident that you are right and that God speaks only to us, and doesn’t speak to others, that God only cares about us and doesn’t care about others, that somehow we alone are in possession of the truth.

Our job is not to ask that God respond to our notion of truth — our job is to be true to Him, His word, and His commandments.  And we should assume humbly that we’re confused and don’t always know what we’re doing and we’re staggering and stumbling towards Him, and have some humility in that process.  And that means we have to speak up against those who would misuse His name to justify oppression, or violence, or hatred with that fierce certainty.  No God condones terror.  No grievance justifies the taking of innocent lives, or the oppression of those who are weaker or fewer in number.

And so, as people of faith, we are summoned to push back against those who try to distort our religion — any religion — for their own nihilistic ends.  And here at home and around the world, we will constantly reaffirm that fundamental freedom — freedom of religion — the right to practice our faith how we choose, to change our faith if we choose, to practice no faith at all if we choose, and to do so free of persecution and fear and discrimination.

On the question of Charlie Hebdo: it is a publication of a politically exploitable Islamophobia as a function of a retrograde Colonial apologetics, and about the complete failure at integrating the immigrants from colonies into French civic life, the 2005 riots in the banlieues being utterly indicative. Holding the Prophet up to unrelenting ridicule was/is a cowardly attack on the whole of that population. Hebdo’s main target was the Prophet and by implication the entire immigrant community.

And on the question of Charlie Hebdo’s proffered relation to the Enlightenment, one need only read Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary to see the various rhetorical modes of irony as practiced by the paradigmatic figure of the French Enlightenment. Even in his scandalous, even vulgar La Pucelle d’Orléans took place within the evolving Deist tradition.

On the question of Jonathan Chait’s New York Magazine self-serving revival of Mr. Dinesh D’Souza thesis, presented in Illiberal Education, see Glenn Greenwald’s essay that provides a readable, enlightened  criticism of Mr. Chait’s exercise in self-justification. Not to speak of his un-becombing self-pity, heavily garnished with the kind of horror stories that made Mr. D’Souza’s potboiler a best seller.  Be forewarned, Mr. Chait’s essay is the purest form of hysteria mongering, and as such requires your patience and forbearance. 

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/28/petulant-entitlement-syndrome-journalists/

Political Observer

The peripatetic Mr. Blair missed Ms. Tett’s essay on a speech by economist Benjamin Friedman:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/927efd1e-9c32-11e4-b9f8-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl

Mr. Benjamin Friedman’s full address here:

Click to access friedman.pdf

Mr. Friedman, in his address, speaks forthrightly about a pattern of debt forgiveness that was granted to Germany in 1924, 1929, 1932 and 1953. Mr. Blair scolding admonishment to the debtors, the Greeks and their soon to be successors, is patently obvious, but unsurprisingly history tells a different story!

Mr. Blair offers the usual Neo-Liberal apologetics: the Free Market upon it’s ignominious failure is replaced by the mirage of Austerity, and then Structural Reform combined with economic growth etc., etc. with asides about the danger of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ extremists. Mark well the Greeks as the harbingers of the complete failure of the myth of Market Discipline. The problem with Neo-Liberalism is that with each dismal failure the prescription of it’s apologists/rationalizers is more Neo-Liberalism. See Philip Murowski’s Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste:

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste

Mr. Blair engages in  fear mongering about political extremism,  tangentially mentions Putin as The New Stalin, and then offers himself and his fellow Neo-Liberals as the ‘centrists’ capable of producing the answer to the Crisis. Yet both New Labor and The New Democrats were the central civic/political actors whose Financial Reform led directly to the 2008 financial collapse. Mr. Blair’s essay is a riff on his usual speech, that he charges handsomely for, full of foreboding about encroaching ‘extremism’ and self-congratulation about the ‘moderation’ that he and his fellow travelers offer as an alternative.

Almost Marx

‘We don’t want a new Cold War’  Ms. Applebaum/Mrs.Sikorski has lent her wan propaganda skill to that very end! She and her cohorts Judy Dempsey, Strobe Talbott, David Frum and their allies in the Obama administration:Rice,Nuland,Pyatt,Power and host of others are making it their number one priority to stir up War Fever. To focus on Russian crimes, in an effort to hide the Crimes of the Coup, and the governments who supported it :They brought down a legitimate but corrupt government, and ushered in a government whose slogan of ‘national renewal’ included  prominent positions for Right Sector and Svoboda. The point of the ‘Security Conference’, besides institutionalized political self-congratulation, is the manufacture of more US,EU,NATO intellectual/political moralizing, led by Think Tank denizens and their political allies in or out of government. Who trade on their reputations as policy technocrats i.e. The New Cold Warriors, Ms. Applebaum being one very prominent member of that nihilistic guild!
Political  Skeptic

Is the fact that Ms. Applebaum/Mrs. Sikorsky should issue such a ringing endorsement of the demonstrably failed successor to the Free Market Delusion, Austerity, be anything like a surprise?
A number of dissenting opinions on the notion of Austerity’s putative success:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/06/11/economic_austerity_how_it_failed_in_one_chart.html
http://www.salon.com/2015/02/06/joseph_stiglitz_austerity_failed_greece_partner/
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/greece-eurozone-austerity-reform-by-joseph-e–stiglitz-2015-02
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/jun/06/how-case-austerity-has-crumbled/
The alliance between the Neo-Cons and the Neo-Liberals is of long standing: Ms. Applebaum is a Neo-Con in all but name. But the fact that her badly cobbled together propaganda realizes itself in this argument : the social/political potency of the idea/practice of ‘national renewal’ as a particular historical/political aspiration across Europe ending in the alliance of Right and Left, as she narrates the story. Need we, as readers, look any further that the Coup Government of Ukraine as an object lesson of this narrative? Right Sector and Svoboda are active participants in that Coup Government. In view of this, should the Greek’s be offered the same tolerance/acceptance that Ms. Applebaum not only accepts but celebrates as worthy of our approbation and material aid in Ukraine?
Please don’t mention the collusion between the banks/investment houses and Greek Oligarchs to hide the reality of the actual condition of Greek indebtedness, it is antithetical to this writer’s ideologically charged essay. The Putin hysteria mongering, Russophobia is a function of The New Cold War rhetoric that the Neo-Cons/R2P zealots have adopted in anticipation of WWIII, and her marriage to Radosław Sikorski Polish politician and journalist.

Political Observer

Mr.Casey Michel’s essay is not quite as persuasive as it might be, although his commentary is not without it’s merits, in convincing the Foreign Policy elite of his virtues.
Although this paragraph is not surprising, but what follows this paragraph is the cynicism of a Cold War Hack like has been Strobe Talbott:
‘After all, this isn’t some war of religious schism or broader ethnic demarcation, as the Crimean War or the break-up of Yugoslavia presented. Nor is it a war to retain Russia’s territorial integrity, as in Chechnya. This is a war within Orthodoxy, within Slavdom—and the Russian populace, by and large, will not have loved ones die for it.’
‘A war within Orthodoxy, within Slavdom’? : a religious/cultural war? Or a territorial/ethnic dispute, a hold over from Soviet times: creating political doubt, uncertainty is a Neo-Con strategy.
That elite is equal to a herd of independent minds that brought us the Ukrainian Coup: Victoria Nuland, Jeffrey Pyatt, and of course Susan Rice and Samantha Power. The bungling Neo-Cons and their R2P allies.  Mr. Michel must prove that he is material for promotion to one of those top spots reserved for the propaganda apologists for the floundering, but still quite lethal, American National Security State. He acquits himself with a certain careerist aplomb!
Instead of this nearly competent essay seek out Mr. Wolfgang Ischinger’s fear mongering essay at The Financial Times at the link:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6b91cdfc-ac78-11e4-9d32-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3QpCAzHtl
Mr. Ischinger brings a level sophistication and polish to the demonization of Putin, in the more restrained rhetorical environment of the ultra-respectable Financial Times.
Both essays share in common the lead character of Putin The Terrible and/or Putin as The New Stalin, with the added dimension, that we as readers have, of that leaked Pentagon document that ‘proves’ Putin suffers from Aspergers. How unfortunate that this nugget was unavailable to our two scribblers!

Political Observer

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e0332f12-ac59-11e4-9d32-00144feab7de.html#axzz3QpCAzHtl
I read with foreboding the nearly unhinged paranoia mongering about Putin as the New Stalin, in the Stephens essay: the New Cold War is upon us with the same Party Line as the old Cold War, a rehearsal of shopworn political/historical chatter: us versus Putin, we are the sane,the rational ones, he is the power mad megalomaniac. Cliche piled on cliche in homage to the last Cold War. We don’t have to search for our Nixons or McCarthys, we have Mr. Stephens, Strobe Talbott, Samantha Power, Victoria Nuland and assorted Ukrainian allies, of various loathsome political hues.
Political Cynic

Here is an excerpt from a transcript of comments by Strobe Talbott (Russia Hand) and a comment from Stephen Cohen on his comment from Democracy Now:

STROBE TALBOTT: In the context of what is happening in Ukraine today, the right way to characterize it is an act of war on the part of the Russian Federation. This means that there is going on in Ukraine today a literal invasion, not by—it’s not a proxy war. It’s a literal invasion by the Russian armed forces. It’s a literal occupation of large parts, well beyond Crimea, of eastern Ukraine. And it is a virtual annexation of a lot of territory other than just the Crimea. And in that respect, this is a major threat to the peace of Europe, to the peace of Eurasia, and therefore a threat to the interests of the United States and, I would say, a threat to the chances of a peaceful 21st century.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, now president of Brookings. Your response?

STEPHEN COHEN: Well, he’s much more than that. People need to drop their masks and say what their personal stake in this is. Strobe Talbott, whom I’ve known for years, was the architect of the American policy that led to this crisis. He was “the Russia hand,” as he called his memoir, under President Clinton, when the expansion of NATO toward Russia began.

Understand what he said—and the rollout of this report has been coming. And if you look at the signatures, these are the leaders of the American war party, the people who literally want a military showdown with Russia. Stop and think what that means. Stop and think what that means, as though Russia is going to back off. But the people who signed this report—and they’ve been bringing it out for days—are saying that the—he literally just said this—the future of the 21st century is at stake in Ukraine. Stop and think what that means. Then he went on to say things that are fundamentally untrue, that Russia has invaded and annexed eastern Ukraine. I mean, when the State Department was asked a few weeks ago, “Can you confirm the presence of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine?” the State Department, which misleads about this story all the time, said, “No, we cannot.” So what are—this is what I’m talking about the fog of war, where we’re being told Russia has annexed eastern Ukraine, the stake of the world is at—the future of the world is at stake here, and basically they’re calling for war with Russia.”

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/3/is_ukraine_a_proxy_western_russia

Here is a link to Wolfgang Ischinger Financial Times essay of February 4, 2015 titled ‘Pledge weapons for Ukraine or the violence will go on’, the argument presented seems self-evident from the title:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6b91cdfc-ac78-11e4-9d32-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3QpCAzHtl

Mr. Ischinger is the Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, that by this Wikipedia account has supported the Ukrainian Coup government. The 50th Munich Security Conference was held from 31 January to 2 February 2014.

A dominant theme of the conference was the violent clashes between government and opposition in Ukraine. At the Munich Security Conference US Secretary of State John Kerry promised the Ukrainian opposition support from the West.^[20] The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the Western countries of assisting in the violent uprising in Ukraine which was getting out of control. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on the other hand, accused Russia of violating Ukraine’s rights to a free choice of alliances.^[21] The Ukrainian politician Vitali Klitschko accused the Ukrainian government during a panel discussion of responding with acts of terror and violence to the demands of the opposition.^[22] Klitschko called for economic sanctions against those responsible for the violence. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara dismissed the allegations that his country’s political policies were directed against Europe. Since Ukraine is geographically part of Europe and also carries a very close relationship with Russia, Koschara warned, it should not be faced with the decision “Europe or Russia”. The Foreign Minister also declared that Ukraine had already met key demands of the opposition.^[23] His claims that the violence in Ukraine started from terrorists, was countered by Klitschko by distributing a collection of images of the protests in Ukraine to panel participants and spectators.^[24] During the conference Catherine Ashton, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, started a mediation initiative, inviting members of the Ukrainian parties in conflict and the Foreign Ministers of important EU countries to participate.^[25] During the conference, Swiss Federal President Didier Burkhalter, in in his capacity as OSCE Chairman, pointed out again an existing offer of mediation of the OSCE to the conflicting parties in the Ukraine.^[26]Zbigniew Brzezinski, Leonid Kozhara, Vitali Klychko, Leonid Slutsky, Irakli Garibashvili, Traian Basescu and Štefan Füle participated in a discussion panel regarding the situation in Ukraine.^[27]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Security_Conference

Succeeding the Wolfgang Ischinger piece of February 4th  is this essay by Philip Stephens of February 5th titled ‘Ukraine is only part of Putin’s game plan’

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e0332f12-ac59-11e4-9d32-00144feab7de.html#axzz3QpCAzHtl

The Stephens column trades on anti-Putin hysteria mongering: Putin’s putative Machiavellianism, in pursuit of a more effective  propaganda. The Ischinger essay acts as the introductory phase of that endeavor, to shape, not debate, but a carefully massaged and easily exploited public perception, controlled by respectable bourgeois pundits and policy technocrats: beholden not to their readers, but to the corporations that own and control a government friendly press.

But the ultimate proof of Putin as the New Stalin, a political monster, is this leaked Pentagon document of 2008, identified as the ‘source’  in this report from The Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/11392680/Vladimir-Putin-suffers-from-Aspergers-syndrome-Pentagon-report-claims.html

The timing for this ‘revelation’ couldn’t have been more apt or more politically convenient. The headline and sub-headline says it all:

Vladimir Putin suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, Pentagon report claims

US Pentagon report from 2008 concluded that ‘the Russian President carries a neurological abnormality’, described as ‘a form of autism’

Political Skeptic

The long night of Neo-Liberalism, and it successor Austerity, is at an end? And it’s end came when those lazy, profligate Southerners got tired of the political/economic wisdom of their Northern betters: Teutons and Anglo-Saxons vs the Latins/Greeks? Don’t mention that corrupt bankers/investment houses and Greek Oligarchs colluded with each other, to hide the level of indebtedness and a near economic collapse ensued. All neatly packaged by the Economist under the title of ‘Beware Greeks voting for gifts’ : a not so subtle riff on Ayn Rand’s Makers and Takers, and other such locutions favored by the apologists for a failed experiment in the Free Market. The hysteria mongering at The Economist is at fever pitch, as the thought that others might follow, leads to a rhetoric suffused with panic and political desperation, masquerading as a kind of self-defensive political wisdom. As the shaky edifice crumbles, but more pointedly the very foundation of the Neo-Liberal delusion proves to be in a state of collapse.
Some further thoughts on two portions of this informative yet ideologically charged essay:

‘Discussions with Brussels are only part of the story. Any bail-out extension must be approved by parliaments in Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and Estonia: four countries not renowned for their forbearance towards fiscal sinners. The attitudes of such hardline governments will matter at least as much as those of EU institutions.’

Note the ‘fiscal sinners’ theology as the very center of The Economist’s argument!

‘As ever, the looming Greek crisis is about far more than Greece. Going soft on Greece may also embolden Syriza-like parties in other countries (see article). In Spain Podemos, a party that emerged from nowhere to lead the polls, has closely allied itself with Syriza. Its leader, Pablo Iglesias, singles out Mrs Merkel, with her ruthless demands for austerity, as the foe of Europe’s downtrodden. It is perhaps no coincidence that ministers from Spain and Portugal, both run by centre-right governments facing anti-austerity challenges in elections this year, were among the first to warn of the dangers of dancing to Syriza’s tune after the election.’

As ever the ‘Left’ remains the ghost that looms large over the failing realm of Neo-Liberalism.

Almost Marx

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21641251-syrizas-success-increases-risk-grexit-and-will-embolden-anti-austerity-parties-across?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/bewaregreeksvotingforgifts