This is a salutary reminder of just what we must now confront in the
new and supremely nasty Russia. The fact that British society is
riddled with equally nasty people acting as 'fellow
travellers' [Remember them ? ] should concern us even more. And
then we have the Kremlin satellites in the Russian oil dependent
countries like Germany and Italy backed by France (always a Russo-
phile country) to contend with in the EU, where they are in control.
This latter is exemplified in the French Les Echos today where it
says - -
"La Russie crie victoire après le sommet de l'Union européenne
La Russie a estimé, hier, avoir remporté une victoire après que les
dirigeants européens se furent abstenus, lors du sommet de lundi,
d'imposer des sanctions à Moscou à la suite de l'occupation partielle
du territoire géorgien par des troupes russes."
= "Russia cries victory after the EU summit" Russia believes
it carried off a victory when the European executives at Monday's
summit abstained from imposing sanctions on Moscow following the
partial occupation of Georgian territory by Russian troops"
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===========================
GUARDIAN 'Comment is free' Blog 3.9.08
To Russia, with love
Why has an odd alliance of leftwingers, Tories and bankers come out
for this fascist kleptocracy?
On Russia, at least, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg think
alike. Belatedly and perhaps emptily, all three party leaders have
condemned the invasion of Georgia and demanded a tough response. Yet
a different and even odder alliance is taking shape on the other
side. Its members include such unlikely figures as Andrew Murray of
Stop the War Coalition, David Davies, the Tory MP for Monmouth, and
historian Correlli Barnett, as well as anonymous but influential City
bankers and lawyers.
The Kremlin's most constant allies are the old pro-Soviet left:
people such as Bob Wareing, the veteran leftwing MP for Liverpool,
West Derby. He recalls warmly the wartime alliance with Stalin's
Soviet Union, and the promise of social justice in the communist
system. In the Morning Star, Andrew Murray blames the war in Georgia
on American imperialism and contrasts it with the success of "Soviet
nationalities policy" in promoting "the cultural, linguistic and
educational development of each ethnic group, no matter how small or
how historically marginalised". Chechens, Crimean Tatars and other
victims of Stalin's murderous deportation policies presumably don't
count.
A simpler approach is pure Russophilia: people who love Russia's
culture or language, and rejoice in what seems to be a national
rebirth under Vladimir Putin. A wider group is sparked chiefly by
anti-Americanism. If you hate George W Bush then you may cast a
friendly glance on the people who make life difficult for him, such
as Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, or Putin in Russia. It is countries such
as Russia, however spiky and unattractive, that can derail the new
world order. Yet that's odd. If, say, you feel that Muslims get a
hard deal from America, then surely the Russian torture camps in
Chechnya should make your blood boil?
In odd alliance with the anti-globalists are the champions of
international business: those who do well out of selling goods and
services to Russia. In the City, investment banks, law firms,
accountants and consultants have enjoyed a bonanza thanks to their
Russian clients. Auditors such as PricewaterhouseCoopers have not
flinched at doing the Kremlin's dirty work - for example in
withdrawing their audit of Yukos, once Russia's biggest oil company,
which conveniently coincided with Kremlin allegations of fraud. For
this pinstriped fifth column, business is business, and worries about
human rights or the rule of law are tiresome distractions.
David Wilshire, a leading Conservative member of the Council of
Europe parliamentary assembly, has lobbied hard to make Mikhail
Margelov, a pro-Putin Russian parliamentarian who used to be a KGB
language instructor, the next president of the organisation, which is
supposedly devoted to promoting human rights. Then come those such as
the polemical Peter Hitchens, who have no great liking for tycoons,
but a deep admiration for the nation-state. He writes: "I often wish
we were more like Russia, aggressively defending our interests,
making sure we owned our own crucial industries, killing terrorists
instead of giving in to them, running our own foreign policy instead
of trotting two feet behind George W Bush." Russia, he says, has come
to stand for national sovereignty and independence, while we give up
our own.
Correlli Barnett praises the regime in Russia in a similar vein. In
the past few days, for example, Barnett has said: "World peace? Give
me Putin any day!"; and "the West should jettison moral indignation
and global do-goodery as the basis of policy, and instead emulate
Russia's admirable reversion to 19th-century realpolitik". The main
motive here is dislike for the whole apparatus of modern diplomacy -
multilateral organisations governed by international treaties and at
least a notional commitment to human rights.
It is all very odd. Russia is an oil-fuelled fascist kleptocracy
ruled by secret police goons and their cronies. It is
authoritarian: critics risk forcible incarceration in psychiatric
hospitals, or are simply murdered - such as the shooting dead in
police custody of Magomed Yevloyev, an Ingush journalist, this week.
It is imperialist: bullying neighbours with oil and gas cut-offs,
let alone the occupation of Georgia, where Russia's proxies have
practised ethnic cleansing on a scale that recalls the atrocities of
the wars in former Yugoslavia. And it is deeply corrupt and lawless:
something that even Putin's successor as president, Dmitry Medvedev,
has acknowledged publicly. However bad other countries may be, it is
hard to find anything there worth emulating.
--------------------------------------------------
· Edward Lucas is the author of The New Cold War: How the Kremlin
Menaces Both Russia and the West
Wednesday, 3 September 2008
Posted by
Britannia Radio
at
16:48