Princeton and NYU Professor Emeritus and Nation contributor Stephen F. Cohen talks to MSNBC’s Ali Veshi. According to Cohen “the relationship with Russia today is a dangerous as it has ever been in my lifetime. What does Russia want? It doesn’t want this relationship, it’s bad for Russia, it’s bad for Putin, it’s bad for the ambitions Putin has to rebuild Russia at home…”
Unfriendly skies: Ukraine closes airspace to Russian airlines
From Christopher Miller’s report: “In accordance with a decision by the Security Council, the government of Ukraine is adopting a decision to ban flights by Russian companies, primarily Aeroflot and Transaero, to Ukraine,” said Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told the Ukrainian government cabinet, according to a statement posted on the Cabinet of Minister site.
“Airlines with the Russian tricolor have no reason to be in Ukrainian airports.”
Russiagate and the Magnitsky Affair, Linked Again (Matt Taibbi)
When I first read the explosive New York Times story about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, I had multiple reactions, writes Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi.
President Obama, Russian FM address UN summit as Syria war likely to take center stage
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — President Barack Obama and the leaders of some of America’s closest allies are addressing a major United Nations summit on its last day Sunday as Syria’s conflict threatens to push the stated topic, global development, onto the sidelines.
The global meeting is focused on fixing some of the world’s greatest problems through a 15-year road map to eliminate poverty and hunger. Endorsed by the U.N.’s 193 members, the plan includes fighting climate change.
Democracy Breaks Out at the UN as 122 Nations Vote to Ban the Bomb (Alice Slater)
We are witnessing a striking shift in the global paradigm of how the world views nuclear weapon
Kiev Right Wing Violence: Time for Poroshenko to Look in the Mirror?
It’s only now, when extremists pose a threat to the government itself, that the international media has woken up to the rise of the political right. For years now, however, the nationalist right has posed a risk to independent leftists on the ground…Svoboda also has a peculiar habit of resuscitating dubious World War II icons. Svoboda leaders, in fact, admire “proto-Nazis” such as Ernst Jünger, and are “understanding” of Goebbels.
Russia Baiters and Putin Haters (Patrick Buchanan)
When did support for spheres of influence become un-American?
Obama to Meet Putin Next Week at United Nations General Assembly
President Barack Obama will hold a rare in-person meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the United Nations General Assembly next week in New York amid a new flare-up of tensions over Russia’s moves in Syria.
The White House decided the meeting would serve as a test of whether high-level engagement with the Russians can result in any progress in resolving profound differences, according to a administration official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The official said Putin requested the discussion, which also was announced in Moscow by a Kremlin spokesman.
VIDEO: Sparks Fly as Tucker Carlson Battles Romney Adviser on Russia Threat (FNC)
Tucker Carlson had a heated exchange with neoconservative Max Boot over Russia and US Middle East policy.
Russian Involvement and a Redirection of Policy on Syria
The recently increased Russian involvement in Syria ought to be viewed as an opportunity, more so than as a threat or as something that needs to be countered. Although Moscow’s current involvement is only an extension of its longtime relationship with the Syrian regime, it represents just enough of a change to serve as the closest thing we are likely to have to a peg on which to hang some needed rethinking about the Syrian conflict.
Donald Trump Jr.’s Emails Aren’t a “Smoking Gun” or Evidence of Criminal Collusion (Democracy Now, feat. Glenn Greenwald)
Democracy Now! speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of The Intercept, who notes that Democrats have had similar entanglements with foreign governments.
Putin is Crazy and Sick: The Lows of American Rusology
As the Ukrainian civil war heated up in summer 2014 a slew of articles began appearing claiming that Putin was ‘erratic’, ‘unstable’ etc. None of these were claims were based on anything approaching sound evidence. A classic example is Brian Whitmore “Putin’s Plan or Kremlin Chaos,” RFERL, 28 August 2014, www.rferl.org/content/putins-plan-or-kremlin-chaos/26556263.html.
PODCAST: Trump-Putin Détente Partnership Begins as ‘Russiagate’ Attacks on It Grow (Stephen F. Cohen)
Princeton and NYU Professor Emeritus Stephen F. Cohen argues that a new détente—cooperation in place of conflict—with Russia is imperative due to the unprecedented dangers of the new Cold War, with conflicts from Ukraine and the Baltic region to Syria fraught with real dangers of direct military action between the two nuclear superpowers.
Investigative Reporter Robert Parry to receive I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence
Since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, Robert Parry’s Consortium News has been among only a few reliable resources regarding the US government’s role in fomenting the civil war that has racked Ukraine for over 18 months. Consortium has never shied away from reporting on some of the more troubling aspects of post-Maidan Ukraine.
As such, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard will present Robert with the 2015 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence during a ceremony in Cambridge, Mass., on Oct. 22, 2015.
The American Committee for East-West Accord wishes to congratulate Bob on this well deserved honor.
Trump’s Low-Level Russian Connection (Leonid Bershidsky)
The lawyer who met Donald Trump Jr. was no Kremlin power broker.
Israel, Russia agreed to consult on military operations over Syria
Israel and Russia agreed Monday to set up a mechanism to avoid inadvertent confrontations between their air forces over Syria in the latest measure of the growing complexity of the crisis in Syria.
The accord reached in Moscow between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin came as the Kremlin’s military buildup in the war-torn country showed no sign of slackening. At least two dozen Russian aircraft capable of supporting Syrian army ground operation arrived in Syria over the weekend.
PODCAST: Reconsidering Russia #12: Volodymyr Ishchenko Talks With Pietro Shakarian
Volodymyr Ishchenko, Senior Lecturer at the Sociology Department at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute in Kiev, Ukraine, discusses Ukrainian politics. Topics include the privatization in Ukraine in the 1990s, the Orange Revolution, the Maidan, Crimea, the rise of the far-right, the fortunes of the Ukrainian Communist Party, the state of the Ukrainian left in general, the state of the Ukrainian economy, and the prospects for socialist democracy in Ukraine, Russia, and the former USSR.
Russia says ready to restart anti-terrorist cooperation with USA: RIA
Russia is ready to restart anti-terrorist cooperation with the United States, RIA news agency quoted the Russian foreign ministry on Thursday as saying.
Most U.S.-Russia security cooperation has been frozen amid chilly bilateral ties over the conflict in Ukraine but, worried about growing threats posed by Islamic State in the Middle East, Moscow and Washington this month reopened some defense contacts on Syria.
VIDEO: Trump Tells Russia to Stop ‘Destabilizing’ Ukraine, But What’s Really Going On? (Nicolai Petro)
Western powers fuel the Ukrainian conflict — and wider tensions with Russia — by treating Ukraine as a strategic prize, says Nicolai Petro, Silvia-Chandley professor of Peace Studies and Nonviolence at the University of Rhode Island.
Ukraine and the postcolonial condition
The question of whether Ukraine is postcolonial may seem an abstruse matter, one best left to scholars. Yet it raises some fundamental issues about the nature of Ukrainian politics.
These issues include Ukraine’s self-identity and its relationship with Europe, its potential relationship with Russia, as well as Russia’s own relationship with Europe – as a subaltern, as the core of an alternative ‘Eurasian’ identity, or as part of a new more plural postcolonial identity.