Another great interview from George Kenney and a breath of fresh air amongst the stale tripe we have served up to us now:
Electric Politics: The Ukraine Blues
One feels frighteningly disoriented, hearing an American president support deadly mob violence for what is, essentially, counter-revolutionary change (in the form of IMF austerity). The president’s message may be directed at unknown people far away but the effects are certain to be felt here, possibly for generations, as the bindings of what relative peace we have come undone. I was extremely fortunate to be able to talk with Dr. Stephen F. Cohen about the crisis in Ukraine. He’s in a tiny minority willing to discuss what’s really happening. This is an unscheduled podcast on breaking news. [Audio file reposted at The Nation, here.] Total runtime forty eight minutes. Vae victīs.
From George Kenney:
Last Saturday evening I interviewed Dr. Stephen F. Cohen about the crisis in Ukraine. Because of timeliness I thought it best to turn this interview around as quickly as possible, so here it is. Steve has been an expert on things Russian for a very long time indeed — he was a professor at Princeton for about thirty years and taught at NYU for about another ten years after that. You used to see him regularly on the news but his brand of sympathy for the Russians has gone out of style. Well, more than that really. Any sense of objectivity regarding Russia seems to be forbidden these days. Thus you have Steve being sensible about the crisis in Ukraine and 99.99% of the other commentators taking a “let’s hate the Russians and let’s especially hate Putin” line. It reminds me very much of the atmospherics surrounding the Yugoslav civil war, except at least in that case a vocal minority in favor of a more objective approach was able to be heard. This is much worse. If, indeed, I hadn’t lived and worked through the Yugoslav civil war I wonder whether I would be able to understand that the public debate over Ukraine could be so tragically unbalanced!
This is an important show. I hope you listen. And if you like the show please forward the link.
http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2014/02/the_ukraine_blues.html
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Thanks for publishing these. 🙂
Kenney was an anti-Serb at the beginning of the propaganda war in Bosnia-Herzgovina. after 1994, he began to learn the facts and he dropped that line. Kenney is one of the few honest non-Serb voices on the scene today.