Western universities harbour truly vile creatures. Here’s one. Radhika Desai @RadDesai from @umanitoba Attending Valdai Club in person, Radhika performed a duty many Russian “journalists” have: ask Putin a “question” as a cue for a propaganda diatribe. cbc.ca/news/world/put…
In this case, she asked an apparently pre-arranged “question” about the former speaker of the Canadian Parliament, so that Putin can deliver a vile little diatribe full of lies that resulted in headlines around the world.
Radhika has a long history of collaborating with the Kremlin regime and giving voice to anti-Western “multipolarity” nonsense. At @umanitoba she is “director” of a “geopolitics” institute where she collaborates with another Valdai stooge, the “cultural economist” Alan Freeman.
Radhika is an equal-opportunity servant of totalitarian regimes, open to all who pay. She is also employed by Beijing as a “commentator” for the Chinese state-run CGTN “news,” where she recently called the U.S. “psychotic.”
Earlier she called Biden’s characterisation of Putin as a war criminal to be “egregious” and laid the whole blame on the U.S. Let that sink in: she masquerades as a scholar and is employed with full tenure by a Western university.
This isn’t a matter of academic freedom or free speech any more than it would be if someone glorified Hitler and wrote pieces on how he wanted peace but his treacherous enemies attacked him. Western academic institutions are used as a safe haven for such people.
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The greatest danger the world today faces isn’t Vladimir Putin’s Russia. At least not directly. The greatest danger to the world comes from an American extremist organisation that works 24/7 to destroy democracy and make imperialist autocrats great again - the Republican Party.🧵
If you believe Trump hijacked the Republican Party, you are delusional. If you believe there is within that party an honourable brand of conservatism that became marginalised by Trump, you are delusional. If you think Putin brought Trump to power, you are delusional.⬇️
Trump and MAGA fascism are the natural, logical and inevitable result of many decades of domestic extremism, open racism, embrace of fascism, flirtation with dictators and the worship of hate. It started with Goldwater and Nixon. It thrived under Reagan. It matured under Bush. ⬇️
Arguing Russians are predetermined to be genocidal criminals is a boon to Putin, who would gladly diffuse culpability to 140 million people and the wide expanse of history. It also negates prosecution: if you aren’t free to choose otherwise, you aren’t responsible.🧵
Arguing that Putin and only Putin is responsible is also an absurdity and, paradoxically, also a boon to Putin, who has never been known to be bothered by having the reputation of a mass murderer: a ruthless Chekist takes pride in being one and being known as one. ⬇️
So where does the balance of justice lie? It lies in the choices specific Russians have made. These include Putin, his entire security apparatus, his top military echelon, and every willing participant in the illegal war, especially those who have committed war crimes. ⬇️
Here is the simple, hard-hitting, inconvenient truth.
The minute Western leaders so much as entertained the idea of Russia keeping any of the lands it has illegally occupied was the minute the international order collapsed and Russia won its most important victory. ⬇️
The minute those who insisted on full liberation of Ukrainian territories were called “maximalists” was the minute three dangerous ideas won: 1. It is acceptable to change borders by force; 2. It is acceptable to try to annihilate another nation; 3. Sovereignty is not absolute.⬇️
It is tempting to think that this is the principle of nuclear-armed superpowers being able to do what they can and all others having to suffer what they must. Except this isn’t quite true. The new principle is rather more specific: nuclear-armed Russia can do as it pleases.⬇️
History “gave” us one of the most unequivocal, good-versus-evil wars known, with an aggressor of pure evil committing horrendous atrocities against a brave, proud, freedom-loving nation.
And we screwed it up.⬇️
Our failure would have been inexcusable if this were a faraway conflict with no consequences for us (other than losing our souls).
But this war’s diabolical purpose is to destroy the West by destroying Ukraine. This makes our failure both inexcusable and inexcusably dumb. ⬇️
To see that 80 years after Hitler, we have not only not progressed but arguably regressed, consider this:
The Third Reich went to enormous lengths to conceal its massive crimes even when it thought it would win.
Russia now not only doesn’t hide anything. It advertises it. ⬇️
Did you know that according to the latest EU report on corruption, Hungary’s corruption is much worse than Ukraine’s (and the worst in Europe along with Bosnia), while Ukraine is in the same middle group as 12 EU countries? ⬇️
Moreover, within that group, Poland is worse than Ukraine, with more opportunities for and fewer constraints against corruption. againstcorruption.eu/articles/uphol…
Here is the most crucial part: there are two kinds of state corruption. The first is petty, individual-level corruption of embezzlement and bribe-seeking. The second is the “corruption of the developed” — institutionalised corruption of the state picking winners and losers.