Remember the terrible events in Beslan two years ago, when evil Muslim terrorists callously blew up and gunned down a school full of children after taking them hostage?
According to the Russian expert investigating the case, the explosions were all caused by Russian grenades, with the gunmen only opening fire in response to the Russian attack.
I’m sure that all those people who opined on the gunmen’s great evil at the time will now apologise…
“In the old days“, says WSJ loonalist Peggy Noonan, “that would be 20 years ago, there were two great actors in the world, and in their own rough bottom line way they understood each other. America would not nuke Russia because it was not evil; Russia would not nuke America because it was not crazy. There was an ugly stability to it.”
In strict logical terms, Ms Noonan’s sentence merely states that the USSR was not crazy and the USA was not evil. However, there seems to be some kind of implicit comment going on. The implicit comment, if we assume that Ms Noonan is in any way coherent, could be intepreted as “Russia and America were neither crazy nor evil”, or “Russia was evil and America was crazy”. I state, you judge…
This sounds like an interesting challenge. Not necessarily a possible challenge, but an interesting challenge nonetheless.
Bullying the neighbours is a traditional sport in Russia – so it’s no wonder that after the Ukrainians decided to go pro-Western, the Russians decided to make them freeze by cutting off their gas.
However, it’s interesting to see that, because Russia is so poor and dependent on the West for everything, the Kremlin effectively backed down. The new gas price is in line with Ukraine’s demands, not with Russia’s intentions.
So as long as Russia remains poor, Europe’s energy supplies are safe. It’s lucky, then, that any prospect of liberal reform has been replaced in that country’s electoral landscape by populist, militaristic strongmen like Vladimir Putin…
Ukrainians “told that EU door is open”. Moroccans led to believe otherwise.