> the state, thus even worse. As for racialized hatred and genocidal
> fury, I am obviously innocent of any knowledge of Russian politics
> becase I thought the article was mostly about how hard it was to
> actually report on the truth of what was happening to the Chechens..
Russia was pulverized by neoliberalism in the 1990s. A third of its GDP was vaporized, life expectancy and living standards fell, and lots of state property was stolen by oligarchs. This catastrophe doesn't bother Specter one bit.
> but on the
> whole the article seems like standard US journalism and a pretty
> mainstream account of what is going on in Putin's Russia.
Oh, it's a shining example of standard US journalism -- Specter was the Times' correspondent in Moscow from 1994-1998. This is someone who ought to know how bad things were under the neolibs, and how real the recovery since 1998 has been.
> know it might be a lot to ask, but would you care to explain what I
> should have found repulsive about the article?
(1) The complete denial of the most basic facts about Russia, which is a complicated, multicultural society with a fairly weak state, badly in need of centralization, (2) complete denial of the toxic role of neoliberalism (as well as the cheerleading role played by the US mainstream media) in wrecking the place, and (3) the cringing reaffirmation of US neocolonialism in precise lockstep with the US oiligarchy, which is trying to whip up anti-Iranian and anti-Russian hysteria -- anything to distract from its failed colonization of Iraq. Specter's basic argument is one the oldest colonial ideologies of them all: Russians (Arabs... Indians... Chinese... take your pick) are supposedly torn between proper, English-speaking liberals, full of wisdom and light, and brutish, despotic Asiatics, who speak weird languages and need to be properly disciplined by us oh-so-civilized Westerners. Orientalism is one of the linchpins of neolib/neocon orthodoxy.
> On the
> whole, most of what he says (except for his seeming agreement with the
> idea that Kremlin poisoned Litvinenko)
Litvinenko was, by all the credible European press accounts I've seen, a low-level scam artist with no credibility and zero access to any actual state secrets. For someone with Specter's credentials to uncritically swallow the Litviniade defies the imagination. For The New Yorker to publish the piece at all speaks volumes about the nightmarish state of US journalism.
-- DRR