Putin
Gergiev/Putin
Arthur Lubow’s NYT Magazine piece of March 15 dealt with conductor Valery Gergiev and his close ties to Vladimir Putin. In last week’s magazine, Les Dreyer, retired violinist with the Met, has a letter which concludes: Because of his political power and loyalties, Maestro Gergiev has been unjustly judged by his detractors, many of whom are still fighting the Cold
The anti-Georgia consensus
Frank Rich, laying out the best line of attack against McCain, concludes with this: “Does a bellicose Vietnam veteran who rushed to hitch his star to the self-immolating overreaches of Ahmad Chalabi, Pervez Musharraf and Mikheil Saakashvili have the judgment to keep America safe?” Saakashvili is not a saint walking the earth, but he does not belong in the same
Georgia: gaining perspective
Ok … Having sounded off on the failure of liberal pundits to express clear outrage at Russia’s incursion into Georgia, it’s time to note some parallel absurdities on the other side. Like John McCain declaring “We are all Georgians” to a room full of Middle Americans who haven’t the slightest clue what he’s talking about, but applaud anyway. Like George
Dismissing Georgia
Andrew Sullivan joins the smugness bandwagon on Georgia, calling the besieged country “uppity” and issuing this shameful bit of relativism: Maybe we should start complaining when as many Georgians have perished as Iraqis – and when Putin throws thousands of innocent Georgians into torture chambers. Thank god there are readers taking him to task on this: That’s a ghastly thing
Russia the aggressor
Yglesias’s take on the Russia-Georgia shooting war, which seems to lay large amounts of blame on Georgia, strikes me as fatuous. He begins with an oddly strained parallel: Perhaps a closer analogy in the present-day context would be to Cuba, like Georgia a former favorite vacation destination for the great power’s elite, a country we’ve been horribly mistreating for decades
Stand by democratic Serbia
Great to see Clifford Levy’s report on unrestrained thug rule in Putin’s Russia. Also interesting to note that some among the Serbian fascist crybabies who burned our embassy in Belgrade have taken to hailing Putin’s name in the streets. Tells you all you need to know about them, but in case, here’s Marko Attila Hoare to tell you more. Money