Yves Smith — What Do Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Dick Cheney, Oprah Winfrey, Erin Brockovich, Stephen Hawking, Harrison Ford, Robert Kennedy, Jr., Jon Krakauer, Michelle Obama, Dan Rathers, Malcolm Gladwell, and Yours Truly Have in Common? Smeared by a Soros-Funded Think Tank for Appearing on RT

The New McCarthyite program of demonizing anyone and anything associated with Russia continues apace. A Soros-funded think tank called European Values has put out a screed (no exaggeration, read the hyperventilating tone of the “report”) which has as its major aim chilling the participation of guest speakers on RT, per its title, The Kremlin’s Platform for ‘Useful Idiots’ in the West.

This self-styled think tank posted a list of people who had appeared on RT on a series of its shows since 2013. Despite its claims of being comprehensive, the former producer of the RT show Boom Bust, Ed Harrison, quickly identified some names that were missing, and I am sure if he thought further, he could come up with more.

The list is so lengthy and includes so many highly respected people that I doubt including will hurt them in any way. But some were mighty annoyed anyhow:

Blowback.

Naked Capitalism
What Do Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Dick Cheney, Oprah Winfrey, Erin Brockovich, Stephen Hawking, Harrison Ford, Robert Kennedy, Jr., Jon Krakauer, Michelle Obama, Dan Rathers, Malcolm Gladwell, and Yours Truly Have in Common? Smeared by a Soros-Funded Think Tank for Appearing on RT

Yves Smith

Paul Robinson — Not a ‘useful idiot’

I’m disappointed. Crushed even. The European Values think tank has just produced a report entitled The Kremlin’s Platform for Useful Idiots in the West: An Overview of RT’s Editorial Strategy and Evidence of Impact. The report contains a spreadsheet with the names of 2327 ‘useful idiots’, that is to say people who have appeared on RT and, says the report, ‘either due to unawareness of RT’s political agenda, or indeed explicit support of it, lend their names and credibility to a pseudo-news network and proxy agent of the Kremlin.’ And what do you know? I’m not on the list! In fact, I’ve appeared on RT twice, once on their news section, and once on Crosstalk, but for some reason they don’t seem to have bothered analyzing the Crosstalk guest list, so I’ve slipped through the cracks. I’m not a ‘useful idiot’ after all, and have been deprived of the opportunity to express moral outrage at being publicly named and shamed....

Irrussanlity
Not a ‘useful idiot’

Paul Robinson, Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa

James Carden — Fear and Loathing in Ukraine

Despite favorable – even fawning – propaganda in Western media, the U.S./E.U.-backed regime in Ukraine tramples on traditional liberal values of tolerance and pluralism, notes James W Carden.…

On a return trip to war-torn eastern Ukraine in March, I took the opportunity the 13-hour journey afforded to re-read Judith Shklar’s seminal essay, The Liberalism of Fear.
Written in 1989, at the time of what in retrospect looks like an era of unhinged, to say nothing of embarrassing, American triumphalism, Shklar, unlike many of her contemporaries in the academy (particularly Francis Fukuyama who published The End of History? in the National Interest that year), took a sober accounting of her time. Shklar warned, quite presciently, as it turns out, that "anyone who thinks that fascism in one guise or another is dead and gone ought to think again.”

The neo-Nazi Wolfsangel symbol on a banner in Ukraine.

The Liberalism of Fear essentially seeks to answer the question: What is the baseline requirement for a good society? What is the absolute precursor it must achieve without which it would be impossible to achieve democratic norms, pluralism, cultural freedom, and a market economy (be it democratic-capitalist or democratic-socialist) to develop?…

How do we apply Shklar’s criteria to the situation in Ukraine as it obtains today? In Shklar’s vision of liberalism, there are absolute minimums which societies need to meet. From what I saw, Kiev is not meeting them.…

The insignia of the Azov battalion, using the neo-Nazi symbol of the Wolfsangel.

Some in the conservative community are waking up and sounding an alarm. 

However, Carden makes no mention of the atrocities and war crimes committed during the coup and afterward, especially in eastern Ukraine, where they are still going on.

But what is to be expected from so-called liberal Western power who are sleeping with the devil in the Middle East especially. Why not elsewhere if it seems to be of benefit geopolitically and geostrategically. After all, the victors get to write history.

US-Russia.org
Fear and Loathing in Ukraine
James Carden, contributing editor to The American Conservative magazine, frequent contributor to The National Interest and Russia Direct, and formerly an Advisor to the US Department of State.

Frances Coppola — Europe's Shame

Shame, or just showing true (neoliberal) colors? Same in the USA, especially the broad reception for Trump's neo-fascist view of immigration.

Coppola Comment
Europe's Shame

Frances Coppola