So Hollande is going to Moscow, to beg Putin to protect him from the scary, big terrorists? What a pathetic little wimp.
The moment he was elected I said he’d be a disaster. Now nobody will deny, I hope, that a more pitiful, tottering excuse of a leader has not been known to France in many decades. France is a mess. Economically, politically, militarily – the country has become a joke.
Nobody hates Putin more that I do, or hates to see Hollande try to elevate that KGB swine to “partner” status more. But in the last 24 hours, Putin has actually directly at least some of his forces to directly striking ISIS oil fields and other targets — and Putin is, temporarily at least, raising more hell against the ISIS barbarians than Obama’s feckless efforts and speeches.
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And this is all it takes for Western weaklings to crawl to him, begging for mercy? Because they are too inept to do anything themselves? Has it really come to this?
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\ And this is all it takes for Western weaklings to crawl to him, begging for mercy? Because they are too inept to do anything themselves?
Well, if America refuses to do much, how can you blame much weaker European countries?
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I’m not the only one who blames them. Today, Michel Houellebecq published an article in the NYTimes calling his country’s leaders a useless opportunist and a congenital moron. And I agree.
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Clarissa, why does it always take three times as long for “Anonymous” comments to be posted? Do they go through some kind of automatic filtering process?
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Anonymous comments have to wait for me to go online and approve them manually.
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“So Hollande is going to Moscow, to beg Putin to protect him from the scary, big terrorists?”
“The so-called Islamic State should have learned by now: they’ve picked a fight against the wrong guys. We have entered “take no prisoners” territory. For Russia, now all the gloves are off.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/20/in-the-fight-against-isis-russia-aint-taking-no-prisoners/
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Why are people buying into these lies? So pathetic.
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“Kremlin today saying they will not launch a full-scale ground war for the time being.
But they refused to rule out such action in future amid reports that Putin is preparing to send in 150,000 troops to end the reign of evil ISIS once and for all.”
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The more of those animals Putin sends to Syria, the fewer there are to go kill Ukrainians. That might sound cynical, but I hope that Putin’s troops and ISIS all just kill each other already and leave the rest of the world alone.
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My reading of today’s “Serious People’s” online comments is that there is a private consensus being established where Russia takes out ISIS in return for the lifting of the embargo against Russia established in the West after the Ukraine invasion last year.
“Mr. Putin now is looking less like a global pariah and more like the indispensable man for a combined global effort to tackle Islamic State.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/global-anti-isis-alliance-begins-to-emerge-1447806527
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This would be nothing but an invitation for Putin to invade more countries and send even more militants from Russia to join Middle Eastern jihadis.
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Don’t you agree that after 14 years and 2 Trillion dollars in expenditures America is swinging to a more isolationist posture regardless of GOP electioneering comments?
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I’m not sure what you mean by “after.” The US has been drifting towards isolationism for years now. This position is a product of the Vietnam War and was exacerbated by the war in Iraq.
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OT: Have you read Clotaire Rapaille? This is a psychologist who works as a marketing consultant, more or less.
He is absolutely scathing when he talks about Obama, Putin and Hollande.
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Well, Putin is hardly very quiet. The fellow is a regular chatty parrot. He gives 6-hour-long press conferences that are televised in full. Can anybody imagine Obama blabbing on for 6 hours, while the US audience listens raptly?
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No, not even the most rabid Obama supporters in 2008 would listen to this guy speak for six hours on end. I’m fidgeting at the very idea. Do people even watch live television for hours on end (that’s not a professional sports final) anymore? And by watch, I mean “Pay attention to what’s on the screen” instead of “use it as background noise while doing something else”. Hindi movies are three hours and exceptionally long ones clock in close to four hours. And I find it really hard to believe Putin is more compelling than a Netflix binge.
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Besides, all of the questions at those press conferences are fake. They are made to look like live and spontaneous but they are highly vetted. As a result, most questions sound like “Dear Mr. President, how come you are so phenomenal and the evil West doesn’t realize just how amazing you are?” To which Putin responds, looking very modest and abashed, that we have to be patient with people who take a while to catch up with reality.
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Is that why half of your “the Russian media talks about Putin” posts sound like they’re about to write political slash on Archive of Our Own?
Discussing at length how long one world leader held another’s hand in a handshake sounds middle schoolish and repressed.
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“Discussing at length how long one world leader held another’s hand in a handshake sounds middle schoolish and repressed.”
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American newspaper or Pravda?
If putin himself dictated this article to this journalist it wouldn’t have been any more flattering.
Was there ever a time that journalism (in the US) did something like speaking truth to power? We talk about the problem of access in that if you publish something critical of the establishment you may lose access to all the ‘senior officials said on condition of anonymity’ quotes, juicy palace gossip, your front row seat in the white house press room, etc. Which hurts you financially. So you enter into a tacit agreement with the establishment that you wouldn’t rock the boat, in exchange for access.
That’s all well understood. My question is if it has always been like this. Somehow I feel that starting from Bush II (and continued with Obama), this practice became much more prevalent. With the rise of the internet the establishment came to realize the need for tighter control of the message. We know the Obama administration routinely invites influential ‘friendly’ bloggers and journalists to discuss policy and to decide on the best way to sell them. Is this new? I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem right to me.
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So true. I’m not sure when it started either, but this is such a toothless press. I actually prefer to watch Russian TV (its only kind of somewhat partially dissident channel, that is) because at least there reporters and commentators are a bit more alive and manage to say something unscripted every once in a while.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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