WILL
IT PLAY IN PEORIA?
The
drumbeat has been relatively low key, but remarkably steady:
ever since the rise of Vladimir Putin, a constant stream
of stories in the mainstream media emphasizing
his KGB background, his "strongman"
persona, and his
stern visage have built up an image of Russia resurgent
and revanchist, roiling with rampant nationalism and bitterly
resentful of the West. Putin's serio-comic meeting with
Fidel Castro in Havana was like the revival of some much-beloved
Broadway play, with new actors playing familiar roles –
and even featuring one of the original stars. "Cold War
II" – it's obviously a musical comedy. With lyrics
by Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, and Condolezza Rice, and
background music composed by their
obliging servants in the Fourth Estate, it's bound to
be a hit in Washington, where the national security apparatus
built up during the original cold war is withering for want
of a mission. But will it play in Peoria?
BACKGROUND
MUSIC
The
quality of the background music is the key factor in answering
that question. For this sets the public mood, or at least
aspires to: the music is the first thing a theatergoer experiences,
and it literally establishes a tone that can make or break
a production. The mainstream media, in wartime, is like
an orchestra: there may be a few dissonant notes here and
there, but in the main the body acts in unison, obeying
the commands of its invisible conductor. This same analogy
is operative during the prelude to a war, albeit far more
subtly. Without melodrama, but with remarkable persistence,
the American public is being fed the story that fascism,
or neo-communism, or some unpleasant combination of the
two, is on the rise in Russia. For example, the headline
on a recent Agence France Presse story warns us "Russian
Press Freedom Still Under Attack." The writer reports
the solemn deliberations of the Council of Europe, which
recently announced that "attacks on the freedom of the press
in Russia are still common with intimidation, threats and
harassment being par for the course for some Russian journalists."
Alexei
Simonov, who bills himself as the president of something
called the Foundation for the Defense of Glasnost, told
the assembled delegates that "in the year 2000, 15 journalists
were killed and 73 were subjected to attacks."
THAT
NAME RINGS A BELL
In
a country where gangsters – and not just the government
types – run rampant, this is hardly surprising. Putin
came to power, after all, on the strength of his promise
to restore the rule of law. Simonov was shocked – shocked!
– that Russian authorities, like all governments everywhere,
"want to hide, to cover up certain things. They don't want
the media to enlighten the public on mistakes made by powers,"
he burbled. Apparently this Russian "journalist" has never
even heard of an American government official that tried
to "cover up certain things." I'd like to ask Mr. Simonov:
Does the name Bill Clinton ring a bell? How about
Richard Nixon? And those are only two of the most obvious
examples. Here's
another:
THE
BIG BREACH
It
seems that the "rogue" British intelligence agent, Richard
Tomlinson, had to go to Russia to have his book,
The
Big Breach: From Top Secret to Maximum Security,
published, where a first edition of 10,000 was printed by
Narodny Variant (Popular Option). The London Times
[January 14, 2001] published an excerpt, detailing the illegal
and immoral activities of M16, the British spy agency, in
routinely harassing and squelching its critics: when Tomlinson
contracted with a British publisher to bring out the book,
Blair's cops raided
the office and carted off the manuscript. More extracts
were subsequently published in defiance of a government
injunction, which forbids the publication of "official
secrets," with the paper arguing that the government's
action was moot since the material is already available
elsewhere. A
British judge ruled in favor of the Times, and
a panel of judges put off an appeal until after publication,
but the point is that if the Blairites failed in their attack
on Britain's free press, it wasn't for lack of trying. Yet
we don't hear anything about the ominous rise of Tony Blair's
authoritarian tendencies; Putin is regularly likened to
Stalin and the Russian czars, yet nowhere is the resemblance
between Cromwell and Blair noted.
UNCLE
SAM'S "JOURNALIST"
The
Council of Europe was also addressed by Andrei
Babitsky, whom the AFP story describes as "a Russian
journalist." The truth is that Babitsky is an employee of
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), an agency of the
US government. He has taken up the cause of the Chechen
terrorists who plague Russia's southeastern border, kidnapping,
pillaging, raping, and murdering in the name of Allah
and "independence," and his arrest in January of last
year provoked an international uproar. It seems that Mr.
Babitsky was in the country on a forged passport: a charge
he does not deny, but insists that the Kremlin had it in
for him on account of his critical reporting on the Chechen
war. Can you imagine if Babitsky was an actual journalist,
instead of a US government employee, reporting the US "war
on terrorism" behind the lines with Osama bin Laden's group
and championing his cause? He'd have been arrested so fast
his head would spin – and not for having a forged passport.
BABITSKY'S
BABBLINGS
"The
pressure hasn't eased off," whined Babitsky to the conference.
"It has continued for the media who tried to attract public
attention to the death of civilians" during the Chechen
civil war. Since his buddies in the Chechen gangs are the
major cause of civilian deaths in the region – and,
some claim, in the recent bombings carried out in major
Russian cities – Babitsky and his bosses in the
US Department of State are in no position to criticize the
Russians, whose depredations in Chechnya hardly measure
up to the proportions of the genocide inflicted by the US
on 1.3
million Iraqis.
I
HATE THE NEW YORK POST
A
recent editorial in the New York Post [January 21,
2001] disdainfully
dismissed the possibility that "depleted" uranium is
any more harmful than, say, a lung-full of New York City
air. We are suffering, they opined, from a "war disease
syndrome" that is "dulling the shine of America's victory
over Iraq. " That this "shine" may be due to radioactivity
is not a proposition the Post is willing to admit.
Ever since Vietnam, the Post avers, this "syndrome"
has cropped up persistently, in spite of the government's
calm assurances that the numerous symptoms are "psychosomatic":
Gulf War Syndrome, according to the Post editorialist,
was "vague" and unproved, and the same goes for the depleted
uranium scare in its "Balkan Syndrome" incarnation:
"Again,
the claim seems preposterous. The uranium, after all, is
called "depleted" because the most radioactive elements
have been removed. The remainder emits such small amounts
of radiation that it takes 4.5 billion years for just half
of it to decay. And scientists across the board say that
it's hard for the stuff to penetrate the skin – and
that even if it does, it's not likely to get to the bone
marrow, and so cause leukemia. Indeed, depleted uranium
doesn't seem to have much of an adverse health effect at
all. "
HOW
ABOUT IT, RUPERT?
There
is only one way to test out the Post's hypothesis
that depleted uranium is no big deal. Why not install a
big vat of it smack dab in the center of the Post's
editorial office – as close to the editor's desk as
possible? Perhaps we could sprinkle some in the coffee-maker,
and periodically shower a fine dust through the air vents,
just to make sure the staff feels the full effect –
if any. Indeed, perhaps the owner of the Post, Rupert
Murdoch himself, might want to take up the challenge and
defend the editorial honor of that pitiful rag that litters
the streets of New York and lines its cat-boxes with fatuous
headlines and forgettable prose. A spoonful of depleted
uranium with his evening cocktail should do.
RUSSIA
IMPLODES
Behind
the propaganda campaign to demonize Putin is an orchestrated
effort to portray Russia as a dangerous adversary intent
on pursuing an openly revanchist and aggressive policy.
A new arms race, the "Star Wars" boondoggle for the armaments
industry, and increased US and European intervention in
the Caucasus and Central Asia – all this will be justified
in the name of stopping Russian "expansionism." But the
idea that Russia poses a threat to the security of the United
States or its legitimate interests is not one that any serious
observer of the Russian condition can credit. Far from being
on an expansionist course, Russia seems to be imploding
– literally. A recent article by Murray
Feshbach in the Wilson
Quarterly points out that Russians are dying faster
than they are being born, and that the fate of those who
manage to survive is extremely uncertain: AIDS, syphilis,
hepatitis C and other medico-social scourges are pandemic,
and an estimated 20 million are alcoholics. The Russian
health system is buckling under the strain, and, by 2050,
the population will have shrunk by fully one third.
THE
ENEMY AT THE GATE
Strangely,
Feshbach's conclusion is completely counterintuitive. He
says that Russia's radical population decline "raises the
twin prospects of political disintegration and subsequent
consolidation under an authoritarian leader hostile to Western
interests." But even if an authoritarian leader should take
power in the Kremlin, he would still preside over a Russia
shrunken and prostrate: how a state could be undergoing
"political disintegration" and still pose a threat to its
neighbors, let alone the US, is a question that Feshbach
does not answer: nor
does Arnold Beichman, writing about the piece in the
Washington Times. The military rationale behind the
formation of NATO was the presence of a vast Eurasian horde
that would engulf Western Europe on the Kremlin's command.
Now the Red horde has disappeared, but in the West NATO's
hordes are gathering
at the Polish border, and spilling
over into the Baltics, almost within sight of Moscow.
Of course it is purely a coincidence that Putin, once depicted
in the West as Russia's savior, and the legitimate heir
of the US-backed Boris Yeltsin, is now characterized as
a tyrannical Czar, a kind of Peter the Great with a cell
phone.
ACT
II
The
theater darkens, and the first strains of the orchestra
are heard. Softly, lightly, at first. Then the prelude rises
out over the audience, and the music grows louder, as the
curtain rises over the second act of the Cold War Follies.
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