Ukraine, Putinian intellectuals and idiotic intellectuals
Press review bits by Lodovico Festa per Tempi on Russia's war on Ukraine
ISRAEL'S MOVES ON UKRAINE
The Tgcom website writes: « The Russian army will cease fire this morning to allow humanitarian corridors in various Ukrainian cities: the Guardian reports, quoting Interfax. The corridors will be open from 10 am Moscow time (8 am in Italy) from Kiev, Mariupol, Kharkiv and Sumy at the request of French President Emmanuel Macron. This was announced by the Russian Defense Ministry ».
There is not much good news about the war in Ukraine, perhaps there is one, if this time the humanitarian corridors for the besieged cities are maintained. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett says that the negotiations between Moscow and Kiev have not yet taken off and that he remains available for mediation. Recep Erdoğan steps forward to negotiate. The Polish government reports on the difficulties in transferring combat aircraft to Ukraine without going to a confrontation with Moscow. The basic problem always remains how to hold firm the condemnation of the Russian invasion with the search for a way out that avoids catastrophic outcomes for the world.
THE NEO IMPERIALISM OF PUTIN AND THE ROLE OF THE WEST
In Subsidiary Giulio Sapelli writes: « Russia's war against Ukraine is proof of the further transformation of this post-Soviet neo-imperialism that has taken place in the last twenty years. The mortification inflicted by the USA on Russia by rejecting Gorbachev's reforming and regenerating plan to support – instead – the robbery capitalism of Yeltsin's neobourgeois comprador reversed Putinian power: it proposed itself, against the Yeltsinian robbery of Russian natural and industrial resources, as the defender of national historical identity and thus found a sort of legitimacy in many ways unexpected. The confrontation took place with an EU that already triggered, due to German arrogance, a new and more terrible transformation of Putinian power: Germany, let us remember, recognized Croatia and Slovenia on January 15, 1991, without a prior agreement with the other nations. Europeans, and thus opened that season of Balkan blood whose nightmares are continually renewed ».
Post-Soviet neo-imperialism represents a serious risk for the peaceful coexistence of the European peoples, but the only way to weaken it is to understand how it was formed, also reflecting on the serious American and Western faults , and how (and if) it can be reabsorbed in a logic acceptable to liberal democracies who want to defend their basic principles.
THE DISTANCES OF LANDINI
In Huffington Post Italia Nicola Mirenzi writes: « When Maurizio Landini takes the stage for his speech, at the end of the procession for peace, in Rome, there is only one flag of Ukraine flying across Piazza San Giovanni. Fifty thousand people came from all over Italy, say the organizers of the event. They brought with them a torrent of rainbow flags, several red CGIL banners, many placards calling for the complete disarmament of the world, and others that aspire to equidistance between the parties that are supposed to be in the field ».
As usual, a Landini who represents a left that still wants to be left but is in disarray, is unable to articulate his thoughts well, almost giving the feeling of being equidistant between NATO and Russia. But he cannot be criticized when he pushes for a solution to the Ukrainian war that is diplomatic and not military.
CACCIARI, THE INTELLECTUALS AND THE CRETINS
Massimo Cacciari writes about the Zuppa di Porro : " For the philosopher what abounds today on the desks of newspapers and Western" intelligences "is not so much the" single thought ", which would also be a" serious thing ", but the" thought demented ". “Articulating an argument, discerning, understanding without crying or laughing – which is the rule of every good philosophy – has become impossible. We live in an age of perennial emergency, in which it is all white or all black. Trying to discern is always more risky. In some countries you end up in jail, in others, if you venture beyond common opinion, you get a Riotta ”».
We understand the desperation of Cacciari, an almost contemporary of mine, who grew up in a cultural civilization marked also by ferocious ideologizations but also by the taste for an articulated thought that the logic of tweets and Big Brother seems to have annihilated. I did not sharesome positions of the Venetian philosopher , although I understand his concerns about how the logic of the emergency is governed, against the government's choices to combat the pandemic, often imperfect but substantially necessary. While now when he asks not only to take sides (and Cacciari of course is against the Russian invasion and to support Kiev) but also to understand how the crisis was born, I find myself in perfect line with him, also in the proposal to oppose the lists that are they multiply commentators considered to be Putinians, those of commentators who are clearly stupid.
SCANCES
On Dagospia it is written: " Andrea Scanzi, signature of the Daily News, attacks his archenemy Matteo Salvini in a post on Facebook in which he publishes a photograph of him with Vladimir Putin accompanied by a statement by the leader of the League dated 12 July 2019:" We would be better if we had a Putin in Italy ”. Scanzi also adds his own comment: "Poor". The choice of the image, however, backfires him since it is the part of a photo in which, to Putin's left, the then Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and the then Minister of Labor Luigi Di Maio were also immortalized, portrayed together to Salvini with the Russian president in early July 2019 when the "Tsar" was visiting Rome. Many commentators have accused Scanzi of the strategic cut of his favorites, attaching the complete photo, and addressing him with the same epithet addressed by the journalist of the daily newspaper to Salvini: "Poor man" ».
The fog of the war, the fog of war occasionally clears up and allows us to understand what certain commentators are made of.
THE SISCI ANALYSIS
On Formiche Francesco Sisci writes: « Is it opportune, indispensable to approve an otherwise controversial reform of the land registry as if it were ordinary administration in the middle of the war? ".
Sisci's call seems very abrupt to me, but it goes back to the central question: until the Ukrainian crisis is over, all the priority choices concern war. It would be useful if this belief were firm both in Rome and in Brussels.
SANCTIONS AND SOLUTIONS
On Leek Soup Beatrice Nencha writes: " Vladimir Putin's point of view on sanctions summed up well, days ago on Facebook, the independent French account" H5 Motivation ", when he recalled how Putin, during a conference in 2017, he commented on the sanctions applied to North Korea: “North Korea is a small country and in the end the permanent sanctions, with which it has lived for 12 years, have only strengthened the regime. Today, due to the sanctions, no one knows what happens in that territory but instead of the primitive artillery it possessed in the past, it now has sophisticated medium-range missiles, the hydrogen bomb and has not stopped arming despite the blockade of the bank accounts. Today no one knows where his war arsenal is kept, in which and in how many sites, because no one can enter to inspect them. North Korea, from the moment of international sanctions, has broken all commitments to which it was bound and has set out to pursue its own nuclear program. This is why military rhetoric is harmful ”».
Sanctions against Russia are undoubtedly indispensable, but they must serve to find a realistic solution, not to create a state of permanent tension that would damage the entire planet.
BETWEEN REALITY AND PROPAGANDA
On Formiche , ambassador Armando Sanguini, senior advisor to ISPI, writes: "It is proclaimed that Russia is sliding towards the pit of international isolation and the vote of the United Nations Assembly on March 3 is invoked in this regard, where 141 representatives from as many countries voted in favor of Putin's sentence and only 4 against (North Korea, Syria, Eritrea, Belarus). However, little attention is paid to the 35 abstentions , to the governments of the countries that, in addition to not feeling embarrassed by a positioning that actually places the attacker and aggressor on the same level as China, Vietnam, India, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Algeria and several countries Africans: an embarrassing company but in many ways a breath of fresh air for an "isolated" Putin ».
Distinguishing the actual reality of things from propaganda is the only basis for an effective diplomatic initiative.
THE CHINESE MOVES
In Huffington Post Italy Marco Lupis writes: «China appears increasingly worried about the war of its great friend Putin and comes out with the request for a peremptory ceasefire. But on the phone with the US Secretary of State Blinken, the foreign minister of Beijing, the “hawk” Wang Hi, leaves little room for the imagination and asks in exchange for Washington not to interfere with Taiwan ”.
Here are some effective observations for those who hope that Beijing will now be the power that puts Moscow back in line.
CHAPTER AFRICA
On Leek Soup Anna Bono writes: "So the war on Ukraine creates embarrassment for many African governments, most of which in fact avoided giving their opinion until March 2, the day on which the 11th special emergency session of the UN a resolution presented by over 90 countries calling on Russia to withdraw its military forces from Ukraine "immediately, totally and unconditionally" is being voted on. “The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation ushers in a new global era. UN member states must take sides, choose between peace and aggression ”. That was the call, but many of the 193 Member States were expected to abstain or not show up. Instead the resolution passed with 141 votes. But of the 52 states that did not vote for it, 26 – half of them – are African. Eritrea voted against (together with Russia, Belarus, Syria and North Korea), 17 states abstained, out of a total of 35 abstentions, and eight did not vote, out of a total of 12. African countries are 54 and therefore almost half of the continent has decided not to take a stand ».
If, as my old friend Giulio Sapelli always explains to me, the African question and its resources will be the decisive one in the coming decades, this is why Bono offers us very useful material to reflect on.
DOSSIER IRAN
In the Atlantico newspaper Federico Punzi writes: «Aware of how much the Biden administration was desperate for an agreement, the Iranians played hard, upping the ante and refusing to deal directly with the US negotiators. And who did the Americans turn to, in the person of Robert Malley, US Special Representative for Iran and former chief negotiator of the disastrous 2015 agreement? Yes, they asked the Russians to act as intermediaries to find an agreement with the Iranians – a choice that can only arouse astonishment and concern in light of what is happening in Ukraine (and not today, but for months, as is remember just from Washington). In short, while Europe and the United States are on the verge of an armed conflict with Russia, and have waged a very expensive economic war against it, in the Middle East the Biden administration is courting the Russians to get help with the Iranians and its policies. in relation to Teheran they are coordinated with the Moscow emissaries ».
Ah, yes, then there is the Iranian question, which among other things explains better the Israeli interest in not losing links with Moscow .
THE GASATE OF ITALY
In the Subsidiary Alessandro Nidi writes: « France has suggested to its companies and companies not to accelerate the flight from Russia. This was reported by the transalpine newspaper Le Figaro, according to which Emmanuel Macron received about fifteen representatives of the main commercial realities of the country beyond the Alps on Friday 4 March 2022 at the Elysée. None of them has currently cut ties with Moscow and, in this sense, the president has made it clear that he has not forgotten the collateral victims (the economic ones, ed) of this war and the financial retaliation measures it determines ».
Here is a precious warning for an Italy that, from Libya to South Stream to Cypriot oil, has always appeared in recent decades (and in particular since 2011) as the expendable subject of economic power policies.
(Extract from the section of Festa su Tempi, here the full version )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/ucraina-intellettuali-putiniani-e-intellettuali-cretini/ on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 10:55:37 +0000.