An absolutely disgusting article has appeared in The Nation about Putin. It turns out that this nice, kind fellow is being “personally villainized” by American media in keeping with “US policy, that devalues multifaceted analysis for a relentless demonization of Putin, with little regard for facts.” In reality, claims The Nation, all of Russia’s problems are caused by the US and Yeltsin.
The shamelessness of this piece’s ignorant and bigoted author goes as far as referring to Ukraine as “the heart of Russia’s historical civilization.” The existence of a 48,000,000-nation with its own distinctive language, culture and history is of no interest to this Putinoid piece of journalistic garbage. The article blames a host of journalists for avoiding any fact-checking, yet talks about “the now exceedingly dangerous confrontation between the two Ukraines” as if such a confrontation were a fact of reality and not an excuse created by Putin to justify an invasion of a sovereign nation.
The Nation used to be a proudly progressive magazine, yet this piece berates the Obama administration for sending gay athletes to the Sochi Olympics as part of the US delegation. Yes, how dare the President of the US disrespect in this egregious way Putin’s venerable homophobia? Instead, the article suggests, Obama should have traveled to Sochi out of “gratitude” he must feel towards Putin.
This last statement is quite true. We should all be massively grateful to Putin that he hasn’t nuked anybody just yet.
As I was reading the article, I scrolled back to the masthead at least 6 times to make sure it was, indeed, The Nation I was reading. All of a sudden it has become a progressive cause to worship a politician who persecutes gays, says that Stalin was not a dictator but an effective manager, states that the greatest geo-political disaster of the XXth century was the collapse of the USSR, jails people for engaging in peaceful protests, hands an enormous country over to big corporations, tramples on women’s rights, destroys the separation between church and state, falsifies elections in the most egregious ways possible, puts dissident politicians in jail on trumped up charges, tramples on the freedom of speech, and is known for his misogynistic, racist and homophobic statements?
Clarissa's Blog 
Israel Navy intercepts Gaza-bound Iranian rocket ship near Port Sudan
The lengthy smuggling route was apparently intended to prevent Israeli intelligence from tracking the weapons.
The arrival of M-302 rockets in Gaza, with a range of between 100 and 200 kilometers (depending on upgrades carried out on their motors), would have represented a new level of threat to the Israeli home front.
http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Israel-Navy-intercepts-Gaza-bound-Iranian-rocket-ship-near-Port-Sudan-344369
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You are referring to Richard Cohen’s article? I thought it was odd while not totally discounting it.
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Correction: That would be Stephen Cohen.
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Wow. I do not have much experience with the Nation, so I did not have your kind of doubts. However the more I was reading it the more I had the feeling that Putin has written another article for Western press, explaining his position…
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The Nation is THE Leftie publication of the US. The oldest, the most venerable progressive magazine that is miles and miles to the Left of Obama. Putin, in the meanwhile, is far to the right of, say, Romney. What The Nation can like about the very Conservative Putin is an absolute mystery.
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It makes perfect sense in the framework of my other pet political science theory – that any political spectrum is a ring, not a line…
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I agree with the ring theory but I still can’t get over this article.
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I remember very well how back during the war in Georgia you said Ukraine was next and our interlocutors in the RF pooh-poohed this scenario as a paranoid one. Just a few years later, we are seeing who was right. 😦
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Maybe I said that, but I do not expect any credit. It was sort of common knowledge in Estonian corner of the internet…
Interestingly, just three days before all hell broke loose, I had a Facebook discussion with one very intelligent and rather moderate Russian activist, who insisted that invoking Russian threat in discussions should be forbidden, as unconductive of dialogue…
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Stephen Cohen has been an idiot for a long time. His whole career has been to portray first the USSR under Brezhnev and now Putin’s Russia as somehow a just misunderstood and larger version of Sweden. Even for a political scientist he is not very bright.
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Oh, goodness! Finally, there is something in the American press that makes sense about Putin. Go, Nation. Come on, guys, face the truth, don’t be rusophobes!
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Rusophobes are people who support Putin: https://clarissasblog.com/2014/03/14/freedom-to-speak-russian/
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