I hadn't really followed the strange trajectory of Paul Craig Roberts, who went from working for the Reagan Administration to denouncing the Magnitsky Accountability Act, which is of course a legitimate piece of human rights legislation — thereby revealing his denunciation of it as…strange.
I suppose he's emblematic of my point — once denied intensively by Kevin Rothrock of A Good Treaty — that there is a real streak of pro-Kremlin and Russian state tropism in the American conservative movement — and I don't understand why (like attracts to like?). It matches the pro-Kremlin sentiment of the "progressives" and of course the old socialist left. They merge here on this point — not getting it about Russia — the way they merge on Internet freedom issues — thinking state regulation to protect copyright in SOPA is wrong yet state intervention to impose redistributive "net neutrality" is right. There are underlying reasons for these concurrences, but I'm still discovering them.
The ending of the article gets especially weird, as it repeats Medvedev's threats of "asymmetrical warfare" and implies we also face a nuclear conflagration because we…want to get justice for human rights wrongs.
Certainly, the Russians are not afraid. The Russian
Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, responded to the Washington morons as
follows: “It is inadmissible when one country tries to dictate its will
to another.” The Magnitsky rule will bring forth a “symmetrical and
asymmetrical reaction from Russia.” The Russian Duma seems intent that this be the case.
Washington is like the drunk in a bar who picks a fight with a
bruiser. Washington is full of itself, but Russia and China are not
going to put up with a financially busted and militarily overstretched
popinjay. The evil in Washington is driving us into nuclear war and into
the destruction of life on earth.
Roberts isn't quite in sync with the Kremlin line, in fact; usually Lavrov at least manages to curtsy to the tragedy of the Magnitsky case without implying that he died due to illness. This report by Physicians for Human Rights pretty much calls that versiya into question in any event.
In the course of reading this strange article, I was tipped off about Roberts (Counterpunch's?) Twitterbots. Is Counterpunch one of those sites where the freelancers are paid or kept on depending on their traffic, so they artificially generate it on thematic Twitter bots?!
RD @TrotskytodayObdurate Washington: Hypocrisy and the Magnitsky Rulehttp://bit.ly/ZecAgn
RD @aftercapitalismObdurate Washington: Hypocrisy and the Magnitsky Rulehttp://bit.ly/ZecAgn
RD @socialistpowerObdurate Washington: Hypocrisy and the Magnitsky Rulehttp://bit.ly/ZecAgn
Obdurate Washington: Hypocrisy and the Magnitsky Rulehttp://bit.ly/ZecAgn
Leave a Reply