From Bill Moyers’ daily report:
“A complete meltdown of humanity” –> That’s how the UN has described the situation in Aleppo as the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including support from Russia and Iran, push deeper into the city. They anticipate winning control within a day or two. The advancing pro-regime troops have shot dozens of civilians and burned others alive, a UN human rights office spokesperson tells NBC News, and observers worry that thousands of civilians crammed into a rebel-held, one-square-mile section of the city could die as well. “Real massacres” are taking place, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told The Guardian.
This is Vladimir Putin’s latest foreign policy triumph. Donald Trump’s best friend.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This from The Guardian link in your note. Note the Russian attitude: QUOTE: ““We’re seeing the most cruel form of savagery in Aleppo, and the regime and its supporters are responsible for this,” foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said, adding that his country was was negotiating with Russia to implement a ceasefire. “The wounded are not being let out and people are dying of starvation,” he told a news conference in Ankara. Meanwhile, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Moscow was fed up of calls from the US to halt the fighting. “We are tired of hearing this whining from our American colleagues in the current administration,” he told journalists. The US was urging Russia to halt military action while doing nothing to separate moderate rebels from “terrorists” in Aleppo, he added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were corpses abandoned in the streets with residents too terrified by the shelling to bury them. Real massacres were taking place in the city, the war monitor said. Jens Laerke, a UN spokesman, said it looked like there had been a “complete meltdown of humanity” in the city. END QUOTE
I guess they are waiting for the new, less whiny, administration to take over.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/13/red-cross-urgent-plea-to-save-civilians-aleppo-syria
Far more complex an issue than good guys or bad guys. Have we sorted out yet who to support against Assad. Do we support ISIS or do we support Al-Qaeda ,who the Israelis were assisting as a wedge against Iran. Ah I know we support the Kurd’s probably the best alternative . But then
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/explosion-heard-near-istanbuls-central-9438197
A swamp we are better off staying out of. As heart breaking as stories might be.
We caused the death of over a Million Iraqis taking out Saddam. How many civilians in Yemen.
The Russians and Assad have not been going after ISIS. I am not saying they are good people.
The Russians and Assad are securing Assad’s power. They are not, as you said, going after ISIS.
RED ALERT: I do believe, Diane, you’ll want to spend time listening to Eva Bartlett, from the “War Diary” project | UN | December 9th 2016.
Because the MSM accounts of Aleppo are woefully different from an actual independent journalist, native speaker and person who has actually been there in the midst of it. <a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjHniRRgOao>Canadian Journalist on the lies about Syria.
Bill Moyers may have this very, very wrong.
The UN must have it wrong too
Y ¿en qué manera tiene que ver eso con la enseñanza?
This is a preview of how Trump wants “his” generals to fight “his” wars, because with Trump everything is always about Trump even the name he wants for the wall between the US and Mexico. From The Daily Beast, “These Are the Dictators Donald Trump loves”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/18/these-are-the-dictators-donald-trump-loves.html
How can you blame trump for Aleppo? He was not even in the running when OBAMA became partially responsible for this mess, with CLINTON.
I havr always thought the rewriting of history took at least a few generations, but you have started already.
Have you ever talked to military commanders and their thoughts about war (not all of them are insane like Westmoreland and Haig).
Most commanders hate war. They are the ones who are forced to send a generation into a war zone. They would rather not do that. Civilians on the other hand, don’t have any issues with that. They stay safe at home, 1000’s of miles away.
Rudy, no one blamed Trump for Aleppo. This is the work of Trump’s new best friend, Vlad Putin.
Rudy, I don’t think you can read. I never blamed Trump for Aleppo. Shake your head. Do you hear anything rattling in there?
Inane articles like this are evidence that you should stick to writing about education. Spare us your opinions on Putin, Trump and the world global system
Can’t disagree with that thought.
Lambert and Swacker: Go away.
To where, King?
You see I can be an SOB also, Catherine.
So glad to hear it.
What’s the saying: Know thyself?
Of course, know thyself. If it means anything to you, the comment came from Socrates through Plato–and it means (and I think you already know this) you cannot change yourself for the better if you do not know yourself first. The companion quote from the same source is this: “An un-examined life is not worth living.” Basically, this means waking up and finding that “I am an SOB,” (as you claim to be) is one thing; but accepting that state of affairs is quite another.
But I’m going back to avoiding your posts; as I thought before. Though there are glimmers sometimes, it’s mostly a waste of my time.
Notice, Catherine that I did not say “I am an SOB” those are your words describing me. I said “I can be an SOB” and that is true whereas your statement about me is false. But that’s okay. No me friega lo que dices sobre mi.
Larry,
One of the virtues of having a blog without sponsors is that I am free to write what I want. You are free to disagree, to not read what I write, or to start your own blog.
And I concur with your thoughts also, Diane!
While I personally would like the discussions here to focus on “a better education for all” and that definitely can and should include the broader picture educational issues,rather than non-education related articles, it is Diane’s blog to do what she wants.
But it seems, and I say it seems because it’s only my impression and I haven’t gone back to analyze all the responses, to me that the number and variety of posters has decreased here in the last six months or so which coincides with an increase in “non-educational” posts. And I think we’ve lost some important voices in discussing “a better education for all”. Now I may be completely wrong on my impression/analysis. I hope so!
This is one of the reasons I love you Diane…P.S. I am so very interested in your ideas about politics and international relations, as it is all very closely tied to what public education looks like in this country.
People have short memories, which are easily played.
I’m old enough to remember the “Iraqi Soldiers Kill Kuwaiti Babies” disinformation campaign that helped push US public opinion into supporting the first Gulf war. Those lies received the imprimatur of Amnesty International before they were exposed and the organization had to walk back its endorsement.
Then there was Colin Powell’s testimony before the UN about those fantasy aluminum tubes that somehow “proved” that Saddam had WMDs, and before that there were bogus and easily refutable claims that he was close to Al Qaeda. Ditto the CIA director claiming that proof of Iraqi WMDs was a “slam dunk.”
All fiction and disinformation and “fake news,” intended to sway a credulous population.
I don’t doubt that Russian agents or their proxies are mucking around in our computer systems, as we do in theirs; that’s how the game is played. However, people should also keep in mind US government intrusion into Russian elections in the 1990’s, as well as recent US State Department and intelligence agency/proxy funding for bogus “color revolutions” in Russia and surrounding countries. I guess it must be OK when we do it.
I also don’t doubt that atrocities are being committed in Syria, but people should also try to remember that it is US and Saudi support for the Salafist “rebels” that brought the last secular, pluralist state in the Middle East to this point.
Assad and Putin are not nice people, but Russia has legitimate geo-political interests in the Middle East – their only Mediterranean naval base is in Syria – and it’s generally considered axiomatic that sovereign states have the right to defend themselves. In the case of Syria, democratic opposition to Assad was immediately hijacked by the Salafists, who are our sworn enemies (except when we fund them against secular Arab nationalists).
As long as Democrats are in a state of denial about their own political shortcomings and contradictions, they’ll continue discrediting themselves with distractions like this.
Keep it up guys: there are still a few state governments the Repugs haven’t taken over yet.
Well stated, thank you, Michael!
And there are many many more examples of which most have forgotten or never took the time to investigate.
“But they’re doing it” is hardly an argument to support the right of one’s own actions. Neither do the ends justify the means in any case, though they can correlate nicely. Similarly, those in power in our own or others’ countries are rarely monolithic in intention, love of country, or intellectual, moral, or spiritual comportment.
There is, however, in the concrete cases before us, and with all of the hits and misses we can talk about ad nauseum, the great difference between a working constitutional democracy and a dictator-totalitarian state, and between a dynamic and collaborative peace between neighbors, as distinct from a bunch of aggressive, violent, kleptomaniacs in suits who think they have a right to everything.
It’s not a party issue. And Michael, I remember all those things–Powell particularly, in whom I was so disappointed, even though I understood the pressure he was under at the time. But the point that we were and are all disappointed in such negligence of character speaks loudly to what is good in all of us; and what gives the best Constitutional frame for that good, while we still have it.
So keep on blaming–we need to know our faults to correct them; and when you are right, which you are of course in many if not all cases, it won’t strike at the heart of the struggle that we are still about.
Catherine, “the struggle we are still about” requires truth and honesty with oneself and others, things that are in desperately short supply right now. In bad times, truth itself is a revolutionary act, and I don’t think our cause is served by jumping on a runaway train powered by lies and disinformation.
Perhaps Russia did interfere with our election in November, but today’s over-hyped “expose” in the NY Times contains not a single concrete fact to prove that case. The entire report is based on flimsy circumstantial evidence and the word of the head of the NSA, whose previous director lied about the agency not spying on American’s internet use.
I think Trump is a pig, and I shudder at the prospects facing public education and the republic at-large under his presidency. That said, I think he’s correct in wanting to reduce tensions with Russia, and I think the demonizing of Putin/Russia is comically overblown and counterproductive.
Russia has a thousand year history of being invaded, often from the west. Mikhail Gorbachev was promised by President George H. W. Bush that if the Soviet Union pulled its troops out of eastern Europe, then NATO would not expand there, and Bill Clinton immediately reneged on that promise when he took office. We’ve been surrounding them militarily ever since.
In Ukraine, inarguably part of Russia’s cultural and geo-political sphere of influence, the US and proxy organizations funded a coup against a democratically-elected government, a coup comprising a coalition that included Neo-Nazis, who continue to hold power in Ukraine and intimidate journalists and trade unionists, and who committed mass murder in Odessa when people protested against Banderist/Neo-Nazi influence in the new government.
What would the response of the United States have been if Russia or China funded a political coalition in Canada that included Al Qaeda, and which then violently overthrew Canada’s elected government? What if that new government immediately started agitating for missiles and troops to be placed on the US border?
Sometimes the shoe hurts when it’s placed on the other foot.
Every day that the Democrats continue up this dead end of seeing Putin behind every tree, is a day they sink deeper into a pit of self-delusion and political irrelevance. They should be honest with themselves, change their leadership and emphasis, and go about re-building the Party on a (real, unlike Trump’s) pro-working class platform.
If they can’t or won’t do that, and continue to see their problems resulting from imaginary foreign demons, then they deserve the oblivion they will encounter.
Michael: Mine was a general statement. However, “plugging it in” to real-politic, there is a great difference between what people who know something about history can expect from (a) a totalitarian state (the playbook is pretty clear on this) and THIS totalitarian state (Russia) with a proven predator (Putin), and (b) a democracy (the US) with its democratically elected president (Clinton) holding the NATO line against Russia’s intentional overreach of our allies.
But in terms of arguing the case from either side, the general point in my argument holds: the two political systems are completely different with different means and different ends, and a different relationship between means and ends. And so to talk about them as “Russia did this,” and “the US did that,” as if the comparison were based on similar grounds is a patently false way to go about it–endless and pointless. (The term again is “false analogy.”)
Also, one reason why the introduction of oligarchs and the business-only mentality into education–yes–but also across-the-board, including now in our Congress and the Executive Branch, as it has been for some time in Russia, creates a kind of momentary but false peace. That is, business has always been semi-, un-, or anti-political. It’s just about trading, building, banking, creating work etc., regardless. (For instance, our own corporations make bombs for both sides). But as legitimate, the trade of businesses creates avenues for social orders to mix on a different plane besides familial, political, or religious conflicts.
Exxon’s Rex Tillison is playing his part in that (what will look like) peaceful relations between states (Trump’s word: “Friendly.”) But don’t tell me that Russia is not after more than trade or “deals.” Do you think he’s just going to become POOF! a fair, honest (non-predatory) person? To him, Trump and Tillison are just pawns (“useful idiots”). We can expect that because of his history (the KGB) and because of the history of fascists and totalitarian states in general, and particularly his.
We’re back to the differences between political states. YES, we are trying to create democratic friends in the world. No, that’s not the same as being taken over by a totalitarian state run by a bunch of thugs.
So, would you rather have a bunch of lawyers in charge, who have never been responsible for any of the areas where they get their committee placements, or people who happen to know about business, budgets etc.?
Someone commented on the generals. From what I read not too long ago, both previous presidents had more generals involved with their leadership team than trump has.
Having worked with military forces, I would much rather have a general in charge of defense than a politician. Politicians don’t worry too much about the price of human lives – generals do. They are the one who writes letters to parents, spouses, children.
Rudy, whatever your feelings, there is a requirement that the Secretary of Defense must be a civilian or seven years removed from the military. Only once was there an exemption: for General George Marshall.
In this country, there is a tradition of civilian control of the military.
And it has shown the difficulties of waging war by committee of people who have no skin in the game.
Of course, that’s still better than fighting a war with an army that is unionised…
when has the U.S. military ever been unionized
Who said anything about the US Army? The Dutch army is unionised and I can hear the conversation when the battle cry sounds… let’s get the shop steward and see if this is part of our job contract, being shot at.
Thank you for clearing that up, that it’s the Dutch army that’s unionized. I see that the Netherlands sent 1,345 troops to Iraq that stayed until 2005. They also sent 2,100 soldiers to Afghanistan and didn’t pull out those troops until 2010.
Did they go on strike and refuse to fight or go on patrols while the were in these combat zones?
Have you seen Armadillo?
Back in 1977 the US Senate even considered unionizing the US Military and studied countries that already did it.
“Proponents of military unions point particularly to the European experience. Military unions are widespread and well developed in a number of European countries, especially in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, West Germany, and the Netherlands. These six countries have more than 60 soldier associations among them, with nearly 100% organization in Scandinavia. The Swedish groups have full collective bargaining and the right to strike. Some European associations are even seeking occupational safety and health guidelines. The best-known such organization is the Dutch VVDI-1, a draftee’s union that has, it is claimed, brought about such changes as higher pay, elimination of inspections and supposedly “unnecessary” formations, optional saluting, and reforming the military penal code to eliminate more severe forms of punishment.” …
ARGUMENTS AGAINST MILITARY UNIOVIZATION:
“Those who oppose unionization of military personnel recognize a serious morale problem within the armed services, but they con- tend that unionization is not the proper device for achieving reform. Rather, they point out the activist role played by the various military associations, many of them quite powerful, in bringing pressure to bear on responsible officials. Such associations can speak for military personnel without operating as trade unions and thereby undermining the military chain of command, which is seen as basic to any well-organized and adequately- functioning military force.”
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1977/06/unionization-of-the-military-s274–s997
They did their duties – and well, too. Of course, the Dutch military did get blamed for not preventing a massacre in Serbia. But they were bound by the roe. Because civilians set the rules…
Civilians (elected officials) in the U.S. set the rules for the U.S. military too. They’ve been doing it since Vietnam making it extremely difficult to be in the military in a combat zone. And most of them never wore a uniform and never fought in combat.
Which is why it seems a good idea to have a general in charge of the department…They are much slower on the draw, more able to make correct decisions, and to have to support needed by soldiers in a fight, rather than having to “phone home” every time.
The U.S. military has been fighting with one hand tied behind their back since Viet Nam.
Rudy
There is a long established tradition (and laws) requiring civilian control of the military. Countries where the military is powerful and insular have military coups.
Diane, such “long traditions” in Democratic countries caused millions of death – because a civilian has little or no interest in the costs of war – unless it is the financial side.
Now, the RULE is that yes, a former military member can become secretary of defense after 7 years in civilian life. Makes little difference… It is still an ex-military member.
Having worked with the U.S. Air Force during the 1st Gulf War, I am familiar with how military people think about war-by-committee.
Rudy–I was talking about “general,” as in “generalization.” Not generals as in four star general. Does that clear it up or did I miss something?
Michael,
This is a very one-sided view of US-Russia relations. The USSR was not just another nation. It was a totalitarian state that invaded and dominated its neighbors. No freedom of religion, speech, press, etc. surely you have read histories of the Soviet Union.
Hungary and Poland and the Czech Republic and Slovakia and the Baltic nations did not want to be part of the Soviet Union. They were kept there by military force. Ukraine wanted to be independent. Putin sent in troops to reconquer Crimea.
When did George HW Bush make a deal with the Soviets that if they pulled out their troops, we would not put NATO there? Those nations asked to join NATO. Soviet troops left because of popular uprisings and because the USSR collapsed of its own ideological and economic stagnation.
Please document your claim that Bush 1 persuaded the Siviets to leave in exchange for not expanding NATO. That’s a new one.
As for feeling threatened in their borders, that was Stalin’s rationale for invading and dominating all the nations of Eastern Europe. Don’t you think the people who live there should have some voice in choosing who rues them?
“. . . between what people who know something about history can expect from (a) a totalitarian state (the playbook is pretty clear on this) and THIS totalitarian state (Russia) with a proven predator (Putin), and (b) a democracy (the US) with its democratically elected president (Clinton) holding the NATO line against Russia’s intentional overreach of our allies.”
Are you saying that Putin was the “proven predator” in charge of the supposedly totalitarian state of Russia when Clinton was in office? It appears that you confusing and conflating two completely separate historical time frames to further your argument.
I’m not a fan of Putin at all as he like GHW Bush was the head of the national espionage service for his country at one point and then became the president. And as far as I’m concerned one does best not to trust the heads of spy agencies as their whole world revolves around lies, falsehoods, feints, and misdirection, a world of obfuscation, not enlightenment.
Duane,
Say what you want about W. Bush. Poppa Bush is a very fine person. Unlike Putin, he never murdered dissidents or journalists. This constant stream of invective against our country is tiresome and false.
Differing perspectives due to differences (most likely) in our education and personal readings/research and life experiences over the course of decades. And to the times in which we came of age-you in the 40s-50s, me 60s-70s. No doubt in my mind that the differences of the zeitgeist of those time frames very much have helped serve how we view the world. Yours was a much more “trusting” time, mine a “question authority” time. And so you and I have come to different views and conclusions on the state of this country and the political realm.
You see, I see the defending of Poppa Bush and his ilk, and what our country has done to other countries during and since the Viet Nam war to be “tiresome and false” also.
So, be that as it may, we shall agree to disagree but at the same time I can’t sit idly by when I read what I consider hagiographic descriptions of this country of ours. That is why I have been imploring your to stick more with education posts, including, yes, the broader political context for education (which probably is the most important function of your blog) and not with the ongoing machinations of the current non-educational political realm. I fear you are losing valuable readers with insightful comments who are fed up with posts such as this one.
Just my two cents worth, although there are those who would insist I have no sense at all (and not just in this forum-ha ha!)
Duane,
Education issues are bound up in political issues. We are soon to have the most reactionary government in my lifetime, maybe in our history.
Trump has placed incompetent, inexperienced loyalists in every domestic agency, those determined to destroy the mission of their agency. One of those agencies is Education. It is impossible not to look at the Trump agenda when writing about education.
I am persuaded that this reality TV star did not win fair and square for reasons we all know. Thus, his determinination to smash public education is tied up with the legitimacy of his election.
Readers express their views. I express mine. If people are so offended by my views that they don’t want to read the blog anymore, that’s their choice. I don’t pander to anyone.
And I like the fact that you don’t pander to anyone!
“Are you saying that Putin was the ‘proven predator’ in charge of the supposedly totalitarian state of Russia when Clinton was in office?” No. Of course you are right that it’s a nuanced history. (1) the history of totalitarianism, and of Russia from Stalin’s time; and (2) Putin’s history with the KGB, their recent movements at their borders; their relationship with NATO and (as Diane recounts in another note, I won’t repeat), his murdering journalists and competitors; do you need more?
I agree that Putin is a scumbag of a human, no doubt.
But that does not mitigate what the US has done in the name of democracy and supposed freedom. It’s impossible to enjoy those things when one is dead. Just ask the 1/2 milllion dead in Iraq from the US sanctions put in place by B. Clinton-the sanctions that M. Allbright deemed necessary and good, or. . . I could go on for quite a while with many more examples.
Blind American nationalism (a false patriotism) and belief in “American Exceptionalism” has lead to million of now dead folks at the hand of our military around the world not being able to enjoy that freedom and democracy that we so exalt.
Anything that is wrong or wrongly done, in the name of democracy, is doubly wrong. But the “they did that, but we did this” commentary is just insane and gets us nowhere.
The only place we can criticize our own government and not look over our shoulder after doing so is in an authentic democratic state where, in our case, all of the Amendments, the rule of law with its rules of evidence, and the constraints on brute power are in place and operating. What we do on the international scene is open to critique and some of it is quite damning. Our job, then, is to hold our representatives to their commitment to our Constitution and to the values that have long-served us so well.
It’s an issue not of event, but of democratic foundations and their present “at risk” status. I don’t see that as blind nationalism. Nor this: Donald Trump is trashing everything about authentic democracy, and Putin has his hand in Trump’s back with the intent of bringing it all down. And I doubt Putin is interested in authentically running for office here.
As a notable aside, there is an article in EdWeek about professors at a US university being afraid to show up in their classrooms. Doesn’t bode well–we have entered some very bad times. I thought it was bad when Bush imposed the Patriot Act on the Bill of Rights, which really got the attention of librarians in this country. That was probably a foreshadowing of what was to come–and is here already. I also wonder if the movement to support Trump is at least partly fueled by what happened on 9-11. I doubt many of us have really cleansed that event, and the anguish and need for justice that came from it, from our unconscious selves.
Diane, here is a more recent article about this topic:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op=ed/la-oe-shifrinson-russia-us-nato-deal-20160530-snap-story-html
As for Crimea being “invaded:” 90% of the population speaks Russian and it’s been part of Russia for over three hundred years. It was made part of Ukraine by decree of Khrushchev, himself a Ukrainian, and had no minimal cultural or historical ties to Ukraine. It’s also the location of Sevastopol, site of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, giving access to the Mediterranean. A look at the map and a brief skimming of the peninsula’s history suggests that it is legitimately part of modern Russia.
Finally, regarding Soviet/Russian occupation of eastern Europe and the Baltics, while not seeking to justify Stalinism, I’d also point out that it occurred in the aftermath of a war in which 20 million Russians died, and in which the Red Army did the overwhelming majority of the fighting against Hitler, and in which many prominent US military leaders, Patton among them, were urging that the US Army continue eastward and take out the Soviet Union.
I don’t want to come off as a Russian/Soviet apologist, but I also think it’s necessary to temper some of the overstatements about Russian perfidy that came about as a result of the Cold War and its aftermath.
I’m very grateful to live here, and not there, (my maternal grandparents left Russia in the early 20th century, and settled in Brooklyn) but that also doesn’t mean that the country doesn’t have its own geo-political interests and rationales for defending them, something that is usually ignored amid all the demonization.
“. . . and in which many prominent US military leaders, Patton among them, were urging that the US Army continue eastward and take out the Soviet Union.”
Do you think there might be good reasons behind that thinking, and that it wasn’t just some sort of hubris-filled military aggression and crude power-grabbing? You really don’t see the difference? At this point, those are rhetorical questions, but they have to do with the basic difference between freedom and oppression in the face of the brute power of the state.
I do think the experiment of democracy as it has evolved and as we have known it for more than two centuries is stalling out and losing ground, partly for our own carelessness and ineptitude as a group (which speaks to education in this country over the long run), but also to outside forces, as is becoming more and more obvious. What a shame. And much of that carelessness and ineptitude is from our being put to sleep by the enjoyments of the very freedoms that others have fought so hard to preserve and that are presently flowing towards their own death.
Actually, it was a smoke-filled backroom agreement between FDR, Stalin and Churchill, establishing “spheres of influence.” Neither Stalin nor FDR had any energy (or army) left to do any more fighting. Churchill was, well, he was there…
Politics makes strange bedfellows, and this one is still about the strangest of them all.
Strange, indeed. Apparently, FDR and Churchill knew they were sitting next to and shaking hands a mass murderer. What a twist of history that Hubris Hitler had the cheek to break his agreement with Stalin’s Russia and invade. Thank God for Russian winters.
Michael, the USSR had a policy of moving Russian speaking people into conquered territories to colonize them. Russian was mandatory in schools. Ukraine in fact was invaded by troops and tanks a few years back. Did it “belong” to Russia? Such issues belong to negotiators and voters and should not be resolved by military force. Putin likes to use brute force. Note the leveling of Chechnya. No one can blame us for what Putin did to the Chechnyans.
I’m out of my element on this topic, but isn’t the discussion of Crimea’s “Russianness” a bit reminiscent of the “Sudetenland”? (And perhaps Austria?) I recall from a Romanticism course I took ages ago that long before the 20th century, there was a rich history of strong opinions among German nationalists about what people were German and what land should be German, based on maps, language, culture.
Diane, I think we’re reaching/have reached a point of diminishing returns in this debate, but I’ll finish by making two points:
First, eastern Ukraine is majority Russian speaking, and not from Russian colonization (which you correctly point out does exist, and also predates the Soviet Union) and the neo- Nazi/Technocrat/Oligarch government that took over with US support after the coup banned the use of Russian in the entire Ukraine, even though Ukrainian is mostly just spoken in the western part of the country.
Second, while it’s true that Putin leveled Chechnya (and is currently rebuilding it with support from his hand-picked overseer), it’s also true that it was a movement to secede from Russia that was dominated by Islamic jihadists, and that they committed atrocities against civilians inside Russia.
Not to excuse it, but Russia has a history of not being quick to lash out, but when it does, it doesn’t hold back and keeps fighting until its enemy is destroyed. That pattern can be discerned throughout Russian history. That pattern usually comes into play when the territorial integrity of the Russian state is threatened, something that has happened frequently in their history, and far more than in ours.
As I asked previously, what would the US have done if Russia or China financed a coup against Canada, a coup partially comprised of people historically connected to the murder of millions of Americans in years past (as is the case with neo-Nazi Banderists in Ukraine) and then asked Russia/China to help place missiles and troops in our border? How pacific would our response be?
Michael: The back and forth problems and their reflectiveexercise are important; however they will never end. Underneath such a converse-ation is the expectation that someone needs to be perfect. Good luck with that. The exercise is good for a blog about history.
On the other hand, what makes the US exceptional, is not the US as geography, people, or climate, or certainly not our avoidance of self-reflection and critique. Rather, it’s the fact that we have the principles set forth in a democratic Constitution to live up to. It’s not this or that betrayal of our principles that are the issue here, but the principles themselves, and that are at stake. That’s not “blind nationalism” but the defense of valuable and working (at present) principles wherever they are embraced. And they are concretely established in our presidents by their taking of the Oath of Office. Here comes “The Big Lie.”
In fact, I don’t think you are a troll–on the contrary. But focusing on historical instances of real or imagined failures, and doing a comparison-contrast, instead of focusing on their covert attack on underlying principles, is an established method of trolls. So by such focus, we are either trolls or being used by them to avoid the real issues that are at stake.
For education, they do that by smearing public schools, their teachers, their teachers unions, public oversight, and by countering with slick schools; and at best, by focusing on the bad-half of a half-truth, and often the bad that they themselves created; and by setting up the conditions for followers, who don’t take time to get the whole picture, to follow the logic from their shallow understanding of the issues.. “But my (private) school is so much better than my public school. (Duh.)
Sheesh . . . there are other forms of blindness besides that associated with nationalism.
“eastern Ukraine is majority Russian speaking and not from Russian colonization”
But there’s more to the story than that. Are you just ignorant, or did you deliberately cherry-pick your facts and leave out the Ukrainian Famine caused by Stalin?
“the 1932-33 genocide in which Josef Stalin’s Soviet regime murdered seven million Ukrainians and sent two million more to concentration camps.
http://www.ukemonde.com/genocide/margolisholocaust.html
Then there was “Population transfer in the Soviet Union may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of ‘anti-Soviet’ categories of population, often classified as ‘enemies of workers,’ deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite directions to fill the ethnically cleansed territories.”
“During the 1930s, categorisation of so-called enemies of the people shifted from the usual Marxist–Leninist, class-based terms, such as kulak, to ethnic-based ones. The partial removal of potentially trouble-making ethnic groups was a technique used consistently by Joseph Stalin during his career; between 1935 and 1938 alone, at least nine different nationalities were deported. Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union led to a massive escalation in Soviet ethnic cleansing.”
“The deportations started with Poles from Byelorussia, Ukraine and European Russia (see Polish minority in Soviet Union) 1932-1936.”
“Poland and Soviet Ukraine conducted population exchanges – Poles who resided east of the established Poland-Soviet border were deported to Poland (c.a. 2,100,000 persons) and Ukrainians that resided west of the established Poland-Soviet Union border were deported to Soviet Ukraine.”
Michael,
I urge you to read Robert Conquest’s classic “Harvest of Sorrow”
A little different perspective:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/14/there-is-more-than-one-truth-to-tell-in-the-terrible-story-of-aleppo/
Robert Fisk, author of the article Duane linked to, has been reporting from the Middle East for four decades, and is one of the most highly respected independent journalists reporting from that region, along with Patrick Cockburn.
His reporting is a necessary antidote to the disinformation we are all being swamped with, whether from blogs or legacy media.
Thanks for providing the link, Duane.