[Randex]Boris Berezovsky and the Bizarro Effect

[O-Land News Junkie]

As Ayn Rand once said: Don't bother to examine a folly – ask yourself only what it accomplishes.

http://randex.org/index.php/weblog/boris_b...bizarro_effect/

[Robert Campbell]

Justin Raimondo's article is worth reading, on account of his efforts to peel apart the layers of intrigue to which present-day Russian politics is prone.

However, his article also provides an object lesson in one of the key errors of Rothbardianism, as we can see here:

Putin is pursuing an independent foreign policy, one that does not conform to Washington's dictates, and this rankles – especially when it concerns the Middle East. Putin's lack of enthusiasm for the campaign to impose sanctions on Iran, in particular, has roused the Americans and the British to take out after the Russian bear. Suddenly we are hearing a familiar refrain about Russian "imperialism" – this from the citizens of a country that has invaded and occupied Iraq, and threatens to export its idea of "democracy" at gunpoint all across the globe!

Just because the United States government is engaging (or has engaged) in some imperialistic activity, it doesn't follow that no other government is engaging in imperialistic activity.

Today's world obviously harbors Russian imperialism (Raimondo says nothing about Russia's current relations with Slovakia or Ukraine or Moldova or Belarus or Georgia or any of the Central Asian -stans); Chinese imperialism (without which the North Korean dictatorship would likely have become extinct, and no one would have to pretend that Taiwan is a province of China); Iranian imperialism; and generalized Islamic imperialism à la Bin Laden.

Rothbardianism interprets all other imperialistic activity as a mere defensive reaction against American imperialism. This made no sense during the Cold War. It makes no more sense now.

Robert Campbell