Julia Ioffe:
Culpability is a tricky thing, and politicians, especially of the demagogic variety, know this very well. Unless they go as far as organized, documented, state-implemented slaughter, they don’t give specific directions. They don’t have to. They simply set the tone. In the end, someone else does the dirty work, and they never have to lift a finger — let alone stain it with blood. I saw it while reporting on Russia, where, after unexpected pro-democracy protests and the annexation of Crimea, Putin created an environment so vicious, so toxic (he called his critics “national traitors” and “a fifth column”) that, when assassins killed opposition leader Boris Nemtsov at the foot of the Kremlin walls in 2015, it was easy for people to blame the divisive political rhetoric as if it were a spontaneous weather pattern, rather than Putin himself for creating it. And everyone understood immediately the message it sent: Dissent is a deadly business. Putin may not have ordered Nemtsov’s assassination, but Russia’s elite could clearly see he wasn’t too upset about the outcome.
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2002—Mexico won’t back US Iraq resolution:
Why is it that all of Bush's international "friends" are abandoning the US? Russia's Putin, whose soul had passed the Bush test, has already sided with the evil French in opposition to the US's "bomb Iraq" UN Security Council Resolution. In most ways, that was to be expected.
But now Bush's supposed best friend, Vicente Fox, has announced his opposition to the measure. Mexico has one of the rotating seats on the Council, and along with Ireland is one of the swing votes. Yet the Americans, who assumed Mexico would vote with them, are showing they are no one's bitch.
And Bush is pulling one of those famous temper tantrums he throws when he doesn't get his way.
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