Henry Kissinger has sided with Russia in its war against Ukraine. So has Noam Chomsky. I rest my case.
It’s funny how both these elderly dudes use identical phrases to argue their identical point. The past is speaking to us through them in all its clueless irrelevance.
But there’s an interesting intellectual exercise one can conduct here. Read (or listen) what Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald have to say about this war and look for differences. After finding none, say loudly, “wow, I have been had.” It’s a very useful activity that I highly recommend.
Clarissa's Blog 
Noam Chomsky has spent decades saying that all international conflicts since World War II have been America’s fault, while simultaneously being a fawning apologist for communism and the behavior of the USSR/Russia. (That’s why his “Blame America First” articles have always found a loving home on “The Nation” website.) So it isn’t at all surprising that he’s now taking Putin’s side against Ukraine.
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I still remember how stunned I was when I arrived in Canada in 1998 and was assigned Chomsky in college. He was a total Soviet apologist, and everything he said was an extraordinary lie. I’m not surprised that he’s still exactly who he always was. I am amused, though, that what passes for the Right is now slavishly parroting Chomsky, of all people.
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If I had any respect Chomsky’s intellect, I’ve lost it when he said that the unvaccinated should not have access to the stores to buy food.
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Jesus. I didn’t know this one.
Admiration for totalitarian regimes doesn’t arise out of nowhere.
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I’ve been telling people to stop listening to American, German, French or really any western European thinker and listen to the people who live there instead. They have first hand experience that none of Western thinkers do.
On that note, checkout this article by Slavoj Žižek; I find him to be one of the more rational and interesting left-wing thinkers:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/23/we-must-stop-letting-russia-define-the-terms-of-the-ukraine-crisis
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Great article, thank you!
No wonder you like my blog. Zizek was one of my earliest intellectual influences. 🙂
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Zizek kind of lost me with:
// Of course Palestine is not a state because Israel denies its right to be a state – in the same way Russia denies the right of Ukraine to be a sovereign state. As much as I find Lavrov’s remarks repulsive, he sometimes deftly manipulates the truth.//
Does he truly see no difference?
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Slightly off-topic, but yet another Russian general (a 63-year-old RETIRED two-star officer apparently brought back on active duty to help lead the war effort) has been shot down while piloting an attack aircraft near the front lines in Ukraine.
At least, Putin can save Russia money by continually killing off all his generals who otherwise would be entitled to generous military pensions.
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This kind of great news is never off-topic, my friend. I will get a good night’s sleep now.
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“continually killing off all his generals”
According to Galeev purges of generals are a regular occurence in the Russian military and they’re killed off even after successes (because a successful general is probably smart and therefore an inherent threat to the regime).
Negative selection on steroids…
In other news a Peter and Paul church in Moscow seems to have been set on fire. After confusion about which church (there are apparently 3 P&P’s in Moscow this is the one in Lefortovo about half a kilometer from the torture prison where Surkov and Besada were (are?) bieng held… According to one source, Surkov had a self-destruct protocol worked out in case he was arrested/killed….
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