Good Protests, Bad Protests

All over the world people have been protesting their governments. Their reasons vary from economic grievances (eg high gas prices, corruption) to political concerns (eg resistance against centralization or oppression or foreign influences; political freedoms) to religious causes (eg sectarian conflict, religious freedoms).

Some protests are violent while others are peaceful or even festive. Some governments tolerate the protests while others respond with violence. Some protests are purely grassroots while others seem to be fueled by outside parties.

Given all this diversity, how do we know which of these protests are good protests from the perspective of the US foreign policy establishment? And hence, which protests will receive positive, negative or no coverage in US media?

The rule of thumb seems to be that protests are deemed good when they target (and preferably threaten) the continued existence or influence of governments that the US foreign policy establishment regards as insufficiently subservient to its interests.

And protests are bad when they target governments that are friendly to the US.

With some protests, to be sure, it may not yet be clear what the effects will be or who the main driving forces behind them are. And in some cases the protests may be relatively neutral with respect to US interests.

But in many cases it is pretty obvious whether protests threaten or support the interests of the US foreign policy establishment. These are listed below in an arguably simplistic but perhaps nonetheless useful overview:

List of Commentators Who Acknowledge They Were Wrong About Russiagate

There was no evidence of any collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. This was the conclusion of the Mueller report that was made public last April. The conclusion was subsequently confirmed by Robert Mueller himself in his testimony before Congress in late July.

Of course, if you had predicted in 2017 or even in 2018 that Mueller would find no evidence of collusion many hundreds or thousands of journalists, pundits, politicians, podcasters, TV hosts and other commentators would have thought you were a fool or worse.

Now that they've had several months to reflect it may be instructive to see which of the people who were at some point so confident that there was Trump-Russia collusion now publicly acknowledge that they jumped the gun.

A while ago I published a list of commentators and media organizations who were rationally skeptical throughout Russiagate, who always insisted that the publicly available evidence for collusion simply wasn't there. They deserve praise for getting it right.

But because intellectual honesty matters we should also praise the people who once believed in collusion but who now acknowledge that they were wrong.

You can find their names on the list below. Suggestions for additions are welcome.

Acknowledged They Were Wrong about Russiagate 

1. Michael Isikoff
2. Bobby Chesney (55:00)
3. Stewart Baker (57:15)
4. James A. Gagliano

This list will be updated with more names when needed.

Bill Browder's Sergei Magnitsky Story Is a Lie

Bill Browder tells the story of how his whistle blower lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was murdered in a Russian prison to cover up a massive fraud he had discovered. This story has been a key element in the current anti-Russia narrative that is so pervasive in Western European and North American politics.

It is also completely false.

For How Long Can a World with Nuclear Weapons Avoid Nuclear Annihilation?

We live in a world with nuclear weapons. We know there are enough nukes to blow up the world many times over. And we know that the more time passes the more opportunities there will have been for nuclear war to break out.

But how much time will have to pass for this possibility of nuclear war to become a near certainty?

Let's make four assumptions:

1. Only 10 governments have nuclear weapons at any given time.
2. A government exists for four years on average.
3. Only .1% (1 out of 1,000) of governments with nuclear weapons are stupid or suicidal/homicidal enough to accidentally or intentionally start a nuclear war.
4. Nuclear war will escalate into nuclear annihilation (either directly through the blasts or as an indirect effect in the form of fallout and nuclear winter).

Three Books on the History and Nature of Russophobia Help Explain Russiagate

What is Russophobia?

Russophobia is several things. Wikipedia says:

a diverse spectrum of negative feelings, dislikes, fears, aversion, derision and/or prejudice of Russia, Russians or Russian culture. A wide variety of mass culture clichés about Russia and Russians exists in the Western world. Many of these stereotypes were originally developed during the Cold War, and were primarily used as elements of political war against the Soviet Union. Some of these prejudices are still observed in the discussions of the relations with Russia. (wikipedia)

But as Guy Mettan explains in his historical study, Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria, Russophobia is not just the manifestation of a feeling:

It is first of all the expression of a power balance, of a relation of power. It is not only a passive judgment. It is not just a mass of clichés and prejudices. It is also, and first of all, an active bias, adopted with the intention to harm or at least to reduce the other in relation to one’s self. In this sense Russophobia is also a racism: the purpose is to diminish the other with a view to better dominate.

And this is what makes Russophobia a phenomenon specific to the West. It proceeds with the same categories Edward Said identified for orientalism: exaggeration of the difference, affirmation of the superiority of the West and recourse to stereotyped analytical grids. The ultimate strategy of the Russophobic discourse is to provide a full-fledged, infinitely adjustable subject, sufficiently sophisticated for academics in charge of theorizing about Russia yet popular with journalists eager to put that within everyone’s reach.

Russiagate Skeptics

Below a list of journalists, commentators etc & media organizations who never succumbed to Russiagate --the conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government to hack and distribute the DNC & Podesta emails-- and who remained rationally skeptical throughout.