So we are becoming a police homeland security state world with more effective secrecy and psyop tactics. The "if you don't like it move to Russia!" public opinion control still remains. It's "my country right or wrong" still rules and that explains Bush telling Vietnam we should have stayed there fighting. What did Nuremberg trials have to say on that principle by the way.
Our HUAC computer databases are much more organized and available than ever before hence fear in all quarters to speaking out.
Globalization with fall of the Soviet Union mean an world western European corporate and christian orthodoxy now believing the world can be converted to a one dominating culture and is willing to risk stealth nuclear war to get it.
One world banana republicism is on a run of rutting madness.

Please refrain from using the the term the "New Cold War" as it is not applicable. This is a hot war and it is only a matter of how far and how quickly it is allowed to escalate.

It is so very endearing to see the US sit back and let others fight
a war that they provoked and successfully framed ( with the full
cooperation of the Western media) Russia as the villian of the peace.
NATO and the EU have to be the stupidest bastards on earth to so
blindly be sucked into this ruse that has the potential to do great harm
to themselves.

As with the invasion of Iraq this war is also
starting with the big lie and the question remains how many lives will be
lost before the truth catches up.

American foreign policy is without a doubt guided by psychopathic imbeciles as Russia is not a third world country. It has a modern military and a nuclear capability. In the long run it may lose but at what cost to the victors?

It appears we are so retarded as to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of WWI by starting what has the potential to be WWIII.

It has been this way my whole adult life here, if you try to understand the other side of the argument and thus come to a better (and most times less bloody) approach, well, then you are simply unpatriotic, the enemy, a terrorist et al...

Did this start happening to you just at puberty?

A few belligerent people who are basically the control freak are trying to dominate the world for satisfying their greed. Earlier the idoitic masses are fooled by the patriotism or nationalism because majority are basically illiterate. But at this present condition when homelessness and joblessness are nearer to hell then starting another new war may be a self-inficted wound. The food prices would be soaring to the sky and there would be more homeless and jobless ctizens created in humongous numbers. In addition, the number of limbless veterans would cover the streets of any city of this country. But inspite of those facts, I do believe there is a larger chance that a war would break out because before going down to the pages of history this superpower will have a last bite. Just look at the wrrior goddess. If she is elected then perhaps it is definite. A war is coming.

The neocons pushing for war with Russia apparently are completely ignorant of the peer-reviewed studies that predict even a successful US nuclear first-strike, which eliminated 100% of Russian nuclear forces, would still wind up killing 100% of the US population from the long-term environmental consequences of nuclear war.

Nuclear war is absolute suicide for the human race, yet no one in Washington seems even capable of addressing the existential danger posed by a US-Russian war. There is essentially no discussion of such a possibility and its consequences in the media, despite the fact that both the US and Russia simultaneously ran large nuclear war games in May, and Russian long-range nuclear bombers are now routinely probing US air space.

Stephen Cohen does us all a great service with his informative articles and interviews.

I honestly think that most of the people driving this insanity are too young to have experienced the Missile Crisis, air raid drills in school, DEFCON escalations, and other such heart-stopping terrors.

They're too stupid to understand what they're actually dealing with, except in
the most abstract manner. They think Russia will endlessly back off from confronting the Mighty Mighty USA, and are only concerned with advancing the PNAC and Neocon agendas. Samantha Power, playing Condi Rice's ghost at the UN yesterday, is just the latest example.

Ask any one of 'em what a MIRV is. Or nuclear winter. Bet they don't know.

Look again at the average age of the US congress....the majority ARE of age to remember all of that, and yet dont give a dam. They are all bought by the Military Industrial Complex that must have war to give a reason for their existance and budgets...much the same as NATO, which lost its reason for being at the collapse of the USSR, is re-shaping itself as the US's world-wide army.

As Cohen has pointed out, Congress is utterly MIA on this issue.

I believe they've been told to play along by their leadership. I also believe that many have emergency contingency flights booked for New Zealand.

Neocons are literally fundamentalists, true believers, and so have no qualms about wiping out large numbers of people in order to enable their agenda.

Excellent article. Thanks Nation. Other nations should look to their own defenses.

Is Professor Cohen being paid by the Kremlin? I suspect it might be so. I am tempted to say: "All we are lacking is the bank transfer notes. No doubt, Cohen will find it difficult to access this money without taking a flight to Syria." But that is *probably* (?) is NOT fair?

Maybe Cohen's propaganda is sincere? Maybe he sees tough looking guys fighting back against corruption at the Maidan and can't help but think "NAZIs!!"? Sort of like going to a peaceful Berkley Campus protest and suddenly seeing BlackBlock members throwing Molotovs and thinking "Anarchists!".

What organized rally have we seen lately disrupted in a similar manner, I wonder?

Yes, I have heard Cohen from the very outset of the Orange Revolution 2.0 on Amy Goodman's Pacifica broadcast. Cohen was the originator of the story that Ukraine's uprising was primarily by fascists and neoNazi groups. He never faces a disagreeing guest and isn't that a pitty? What is up with Amy to just take this nonsense without even the smallest chaser of dissent?

Well, we should all recall that the Kremlin was saying the opposite at the time of the protests claiming that the revolution of the Maidan was by Jewish banking interests and agents of the IMF. Yes, that was equally despicable.

In other words, the Kremlin had one series of lies for the right wing Moscovites to suck on and another series of distortions for the left wing audiences in the west. Cohen is purveying the later to us.

Putin had trouble getting any of this to stick however since the truth was far simpler. Ukrainians on the streets and in the Cafes just want a representative and an uncorrupted government. They now have voted for the chocolate man to provide the beginning of this, right? Fascist chocolates, Prof. Cohen?

But all of this distortion should have cleared after the Little Green Men took Crimea. That is what I find so strange about anyone still giving Cohen the benefit of the doubt here. Now, even a year later, listening to Cohen you would think that the Ukrainians invaded Germany in 1939. This is a tragic time for Cohen's Princeton University and for Ukraine.Someone please debate Professor Cohen, OK?

Any time yet another gathering in Maidan is shown, there's a high percentage off the Right Sector flags. I don't think you can seriously argue the motives and ideology of the Right Sector. So, yes Cohen is correct, there's a heavy presence of neo fascists. Besides, Cohen describes the timeline fairly accurate.
Your arguments are weak, not related to anything and you start with ad hominem attack, implying Cohen's monetary motives and disingenuous representation.

Are you Ukrainian? Do you also understand the difference between the "troll" and "propagandist"?
BTW, Crimea was Russian. The talks between Ukraine and Russia about Crimea going back to Russia have been going on for a long time. Most Russians will tell you that they don't like how it was done but glad it was done after all. It's either that or another NATO base there. I know couple of people in Crimea. They are quite happy.

FAIL
Comrade, we all know that the right only got 1-2% of the vote.
Clearly you are a Russian nationalist.

I direct your eyeballs to the Budapest Memorandum from 1994. That answers the question. Crimea is part of Ukraine.

And you have no idea whether the people in Crimea were happy to be invaded. Guns are in their faces and a armed force of drunken thuggish Russians prowl their streets. Use your head, mother Russian.

Comrade? Fail? Oooook. Yet again another ad hominem attack. I am not a Russian nationalist but I don't like geopolitical games that are hidden under the blanket of moral superiority and fighting for freedom and democracy.
You appear to try to take this high ground but disregarding quite a bit of the preceding events. I suggest you go back to the article and read it carefully.
Vote or note, the better organized and trained forces are ultra nationalists. Without their support, the coup would not have happened. Without the support from US, it's also unlikely that the coup would have taken place.
You can direct your own eyeballs to the NATO bases and the involvement of British and American special services in to the present situation. Cohen stresses out the point that a lot of responses of Russia are retaliatory. I happened to agree with him.

BTW, Budapest Memorandum is a non binding agreement and has no legal power. While it doesn't make annexation of Crimea totally correct, it's up to international lawyers to decide the matter. Redundant tho, it's not going back to Ukraine.
Your latest comment shows that you really have no idea how things went down in Crimea. While I don't claim to know everything and everybody, certainly what you are describing is rather from another propaganda piece or Hollywood movie.

The ever whiny Cohen complains that the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy. Yet Cohen has done nothing but demonize Ukraine for the past 8 months. They don't exist, they shouldn't exist, oh they do exist but they're all Nazis.

In his warped and twisted analysis, the people of Ukraine are incapable and undeserving of having a say in their own fate. They can't be demonstrating because they're tired of the saturation of corruption they lived with under Yanukovych. No they're just dummies being manipulated by the CIA. Cohen never tells us that the real violence started on Maidan AFTER Yanukovych unilaterally passed laws in January that severely restricted the civil rights of all Ukrainians: freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to due process. No, that can't be why the people are mad, it must be because Vicky Nuland divided 5 billion dollars in cash among all of them.

The world would be a better place if we started considering people as human beings and not pawns who happen to inhabit some "sphere of influence" drawn up to pander to the insecurities of some paranoid sociopath. It's funny that Cohen whines about access and the stifling of debate, when Putin has done the exact same thing in Russia:, eliminated the free exchange of ideas, eliminated all vestiges of a free press, severely curtailed the civil rights of the populace, while catering to their ultra-nationalistic fantasies hoping they don't notice the other parts. It's funny Cohen comes across with his self-pitying persecution complex to defend the actions of a man who has murdered journalists and those with whom he doesn't agree.

Intelligent, thoughtful analysis. As so well illustrated in "House of Cards" (TV show), the successful political ploy provides a win in every circumstance. Here's a situation with a robust Plan B. The allied powers Plan A is as illustrated in the article. Plan B, in the case of Russian resistance to Plan A, is to destabilize the region and slow or even stop Russian integration into the European economic arena thereby assuring continued American dominance in European affairs. There are great economic benefits to the arms trade as well.

It's a thoughtful analysis is you consider well wrought distortions meant to confuse the issues as fine works of Russian propaganda "thoughtful".
http://www.theguardian.com/...

You can turn it around if you like, but you have proposed nothing. You have also employed innuendo in slurring the author of this article. It's very transparent.

Very well written Mr.Cohen. Thank you.

Russian troll?

Troll?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
Mr.novictim don't quite understand the meaning of the word but is trying to attack me. He's implying that, me liking the article is related to my nationality and there for is either incorrect or fallacy.
Boy, do I like Noam Chomsky.

Well documented is the fact that the Kremlin has been paying bloggers to skew the discussion and impression of the discussion toward a Russian friendly and apologist direction.

Follow the link to the Atlantic article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/...
--
or http://www.buzzfeed.com/max...
--
or the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/...

I am sure this sort of thing is going on. Propaganda works from all side.

Are you familiar with the history of financing of Ukrainian immigrant community in Canada? Have you checked, for example Yahoo comment section where 3 or 4 people will pollute the comments with hundreds of anti-Russian and plain fascist messages? You should check it out.

how do you mean?

"But, I must also emphasize, we should exempt from this imperative young people, who have more to lose. A few have sought my guidance, and I always advise, “Even petty penalties for dissent in regard to Russia could adversely affect your career. At this stage of life, your first obligation is to your family and thus to your future prospects. Your time to fight lies ahead.” "

In an otherwise outstanding article Mr Cohen, I disagree with your above statement.
Was it not students protesting loudly and continuously that brought an end to Vietnam, despite what that implied legally for those who did protest? If young students want to do what is right and are discouraged from doing so by someone they respect, isnt that just as bad as the US gvts efforts to quell criticism? The lives of these youth and ALL of us are and will be effected by the actions now being take world wide vis-a-vis Russia. To wait might be too late, and the fight for a a better future is NOW.

Thanks Mr. Cohen... my subscription is dedicated to you.

Ukraine was the Obama admin attempt to force fracking on them. It's just economics, with our world military and secret police pushing it on the world.

Nuclear and Fracking, that is the Obama agenda, even if it takes the CIA and military.

The clearly hate solar, with the 50% bs German company conjecture based tariff.

Chinese panel companies need to wake up and do the obvious:

Install manufacturing plants in the USA, then get the USA to protect you fro the world market like they do for SolarWorld.

The world is run by the USA secret police, for the benefit of thier rich finaciers, poorly, but without significant challenge. Ask them to do the right thing.

So, why should the taxpayers fund big fusion? It's all nuclear weapons research, not energy. Look it up, they admit it.

Only the Polywell looks any good. Realistically, any new nuclear is 20 years away from generating commercial power. By then solar panels will be about as cheap as paint. Roofs will be constructed out of solar panels, and last 100 years, at 90% of capacity. The modern panels already should last 100 years at 70%.

We need to put the big money into research on streamlining and automating the solar roof and parking lot installation phases. The panels are now cheap enough. Perhaps better is to let industry to the research. Change the bog bias from nuclear, fracking and tar sands to citizens, rooftop parking lot solar, big company offshore wind, and local municipalities waste toe heat, electricity fuels and raw materials, close the loop.
Waste energy and resource use needs a lot of research, mostly to measure and test the system outs there and report on who well they work. Only the gov can afford the expense of that. Sadly, the gov is a politically biased agent and not for renewables.

I see franchise operations of solar panel installers who have figured out extremely efficient and effective new methods.

Use FIT, proven to work the best for getting renewables installed, and driving prices down. Perhaps the easiest for the USA would be to look at all the gov break for fossils and nuclear, and one by one change that into an equal or great gov break for distributed solar, offshore wind, and municipal waste energy and materials reclamation.

Putin control rebels,he send them arms and his army.Cohen disappointened me long time.

Prof. Cohen will defend Russia no matter what. He does not care that Russia is rapidly becoming a Soviet-style dictatorship, with state-controlled courts, state-controlled media, political prisoners, and glorification of Putin. He does not care that Putin's actions are, even in the tiniest details, replicating what Hitler did in 1930's. One can only marvel at how a man who knows Russia (but blissfully lives in outside it) can be so ignorant. Perhaps this is because he does not view the Russians as people like himself, deserving dignity and freedom: "what they have is all we can expect from them, they are a different species." It is also possible that his views are driven by the fear that Russia may become less than prominent in the world order, and then his unique qualifications, knowledge of the Russian language and of all the things Russian, may become obsolete and uninteresting to everyone around him. I don't know. But I know that people like him provide intellectual comfort to the disgusting man ruling Russia with iron fist, and provide ammunition for the Soviet state brainwashing propaganda.

Replying to my own remark may not look grand, but I just noticed that the number of the comments is very small, so there is a good chance Prof. Cohen reads them. So I address this to him.
Prof. Cohen: When you compare Russia and Ukraine and call the latter fascist, did not notice that in the last presidential elections the "Right Sectior" (the ultranationalist party/group) got about 1% of all votes, and that in the West Ukraine (most anti-Russian) the percentage nowhere rose above 2%? Compare this to the the composition of the Russian Duma: about 12% of all votes and seats are given to the fascist-ultranationalist party of a criminal called Zhirinovsky. Ever heard of him? What do you think his relations are with Putin: are they enemies? No, Zhirinovsky praises Putin at every corner and even urges him to become emperor Vladimir I. Are you not disturbed by the rise of extreme jingoism in Russia, fueled by the media all of which (except for a couple of radio and internet outlets) are directly controlled by the Putin administration? It is one thing to be critical of USA and the West when you live in the West --- it is in fact good and wholesome (and safe too, Prof. Cohen). But should it lead to praising and "understanding the psychology" of brutal dictatorships? Try to understand that in Russia there are people who do not have what you think is the "Russian mentality." Their mentality is civilized, like yours: they want human rights to be respected and courts and media be state-independent. Try to understand that the same is true for the Ukrainians, and that they had a very good chance of moving in this direction when they wanted to join EU (but were stopped by their "Russian brothers"). If you don't care about these people, why won't you begin "understanding" and praising ISIS and North Korea? Only because you specialize in Russia and know their language?

But Svoboda, another right-wing anti-semitic party, has had around 8% of the seats in recent Ukrainian parliaments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

deadend. wholly appropriate self-categorization of your remarks, further epitomized by your need to rely to your own comment.

I encountered difficulties logging in, had to change my registration and nickname.

Doug, although I spoke about presidential elections, you are justified to bring in Svoboda because I cited the composition of the Russian Duma. But even if I mentioned the fact that 8% of seats in the Ukrainian parliament are given to ultranationalists, it would not invalidate my point. Which is not that Ukraine is a great democracy: it is not, and as it is getting radicalized in its fight against Russia, it is moving in the opposite direction, and its mass media now are every bit as bad as the Putin-controlled Russian ones. My point was that Prof. Cohen is hypocritical when he presents the Ukranians as fascists while whitewashing Russia, "overlooking" that the same (and in fact much more) can be said about it. In addition, Ukraine did want to move in the direction of the democratization and respect for human rights by joining EU --- but was brutally stopped by its jingoist neighbor led by their venerated fuerer.

Is Professor Cohen being paid by the Kremlin? I suspect it might be
so. I am tempted to say: "All we are lacking is the bank transfer
notes. No doubt, Cohen will find it difficult to access this money
without taking a flight to Syria." But that probably is NOT fair.

Maybe Cohen's propaganda is sincere? Maybe he sees tough looking guys
fighting back against corruption and can't help but think "NAZIs!!"?
Sort of like going to a peaceful Berkley Campus protest and suddenly
seeing BlackBlock members throwing Molotovs and thinking "Anarchists!".

Yes,
I have heard Cohen from the very outset of the Orange Revolution 2.0 on
Amy Goodman's Pacifica broadcast. Cohen was the originator of the
story that Ukraine's uprising was primarily by fascists and neoNazi
groups. He never faces a disagreeing guest and isn't that a pity?

We should all recall that the Kremlin was saying the opposite at the time,
that the revolution of the Maidan was by Jewish banking interests and
agents of the IMF.
In other words, the Kremlin had one series of
lies for the right wing Moscovites to suck on and another series of
distortions for the left wing audiences in the west. Cohen is purveying
the later to us.

Putin had trouble getting any of this to stick however since the truth was far simpler. Ukrainians on the streets and in the Cafes just want a representative and an uncorrupted government. They now have voted for the chocolate man to provide the beginning of this, right? Fascist chocolates, Prof. Cohen?

And no mention of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that commits us to supporting Ukraine's Sovereign territory? That is one BIG omission. Professor, any comment?

But all of this distortion should have cleared after the Little Green Men
took Crimea. That is what I find to strange about anyone still giving
Cohen the benefit of the doubt. Now, even a year later, listening
to Cohen you would think that the Ukrainians invaded Germany in 1939.
This is a tragic day for both Princeton and the Nation Magazine.

Russia may be the best hope for peace moving forward. Ukraine is in Russia's part of the world, so its strictly a matter for Russia to decide.

I agree with many of Stephen Cohen's arguments, but here is where I see a problem.
1) Mr. Putin claimed that the "green men" taking up positions in Crimea were not Russian soldiers, then he admitted that they were. Therefore Putin does not seem to mind telling blatant lies.
2) The civilian deaths that Cohen laments (appropriately) are an almost inevitable consequence of having a civil war. Based on (1) and other evidence, it looks like Putin is not just "helping" one side, but is creating the civil war in the first place. The government of Ukraine has been swinging back and forth between East-oriented and West-oriented (if you'll excuse the oxymoron) factions for decades and I suspect could accommodate many of the East's demands without a war. Therefore I wonder if Putin is militarizing the situation not to help Russian Ukrainians but so that he can openly use force, intimidate other neighboring countries, and perhaps even invade beyond Ukraine.

Even if you're right about President Putin telling "blatant lies", that doesn't necessarily mean the civil war in Ukraine is all his fault. Please consider the possibility that the post-February Kiev regime has told "blatant lies" of its own: falsehoods aimed at disguising the political division and violent conflict within Ukraine's own population, armed forces and police.

When Kiev troops in armoured vehicles opened fire on the Mariupol police headquarters on May 9, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov at once came out with a detailed and plausible explanation, which was disseminated by media throughout the world. Avakov said "terrorists" had attempted to storm the building, and the armoured vehicles were sent to help the police.

But western reporters, including a man from the New York Times, visited the scene straight after the incident, and they were told by local people that the minister's statement was untrue — the armoured vehicles came not to help the Mariupol police, but to punish them, after the cops themselves mutinied against a new, hard-line police chief appointed by Avakov.

http://www.theguardian.com/...

Mr. Cohen- in future dispense with the pity party and get to the content. I regret reading the first 60% of this article. You're facts and fallacies omit a helluva lot but they raise some interesting points.

I regret reading the first six words of your illogical ad hominem rant.

Good contribution.