My Mother Is A Fish

Putin, the Patriot- by Justin Raimondo

I've been reading a bit about Uzbekistan's crushed demonstrations, Ukraine's so-called Orange Revolution, Russia's internal problems and war with Chechnya, Justin Raimondo on the above, and Tom G. Palmer on Justin. The recurrent doubt arises as it has in the past in my ever-naive and ever-paranoid mind: Have I been duped into supporting charlatans and fools, as Palmer would have it? I ask because, maybe in my devotion to such a narrow range of newssources and in my weakness of memory, I've lost sight of the possibility that the organizations I support have lost touch with reality.

Raimondo tells of Central Asian satraps, such as in Uzbekistan, getting away with murder, of US-supported revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia getting away with markedly unfree policies (in repression of dissent an in economic policies of price controls and renationalizations), of Chechen terrorists committing an atrocity at Beslan, in connection with al-Qaeda, in response to Russia's reaction to which the US has given an outcry.

Is Raimondo just taking the anti-US side of things? No. He is pointing out hypocrisy done in the interests of the power elites, namely in the interest of the oil pipeline running through Central Asia as the prize and of the weakening of Russia (possibly by means of war) as the strategy. He is not supporting Putin's domestic policies when he says things like "Putin, the Patriot"--although I wish he would be more explicit in this--but rather pointing up the absurdity of our financial and moral support for his critics. Raimondo, like other decentralist libertarians, may in principle applaud a devolution of power away from its centers, such as in Moscow as against the federated republics and against former members of the USSR, while still showing disgust for the grander scheme he sees behind the actual devolution--or whatever it should be called instead: rather a scheme to set the surrounding regions against Russia for the greater likelihood of a US-supported pipeline.

Just a few measly thoughts. I've obviously got very much to learn. For instance, I never know what to think of the 'privatizations' and 're-privatizations' without knowing how genuine the former were. Etc.