[lbo-talk] Soros: Kremlin-Gazprom "devious and arbitrary"

[Charles Brown]

Chris Doss :
By the way, a few days ago Solzhenitsyn made one of
his rare public statements. Normally, he's against
just about everyone. However, in this one, he
announced his support of Putin, citing the
obvious-to-everyone facts that Gorbachev and Yeltsin
had done great damage to the country;

^^^^
CB: Does this mean Solzhenitsyn thinks his People should have kept the USSR
?

^^^^^^

 that liberal
democracy and a market economy had been introduced
into Russia inappropriately, with disastrous
consequences; and that Russia is experiencing under
Putin an enormous economic boom, combined with greatly
rising living standards.

Nick Paton Walsh, the Guardians' cheap rent boy, tried
to spin this as saying that Sol., while having
heroically braved the Gulag, had somehow become an
"apologist" for Putin. At the same time, Walsh did not
contest any of the obvious-to-everone facts. In
effect, he accused Sol. of being an apologist for --
reality. Pretty ridiculous stuff, but the alternative
would have been to admit that he'd been pandering and
lying to the Guardian's readership for the last
several years.