Just when I’m feeling a little anxious about my use in recent weeks of such terms as “understandable” and “justified” when it comes to Russia and what has seemed to me, under all the circumstances and history, a reasonable counter-reaction, there’s big help and a kind of validation.
The former Chancellor of Germany, Helmut Schmidt, says what Russia has done, what Putin has ordered, is “completely understandable” and the sanctions coming from the US and EU are “stupid”!
And action-star American hero Stephen Seagal not only says the same but declares Putin “one of the great living world leaders” and criticizes U.S. policy about Ukraine “idiotic”! And Seagal is a Republican!
There are others as well…professors like Stephen Cohen at NYU and former diplomats and a few excellent think-tanks spokesman (I’m thinking of those in Canada and Sweden at the moment). But the American media gives them few opportunities to speak up and drowns them out with all the screamers, belligerents, and U.S. government-sponsored talking-heads.
Articles and details as usual are daily at MiddleEast.Org and WashReport.com
Helmut Schmidt being interviewed, and Seagal pictured with Vladimir Putin in Moscow last year
Mark Bruzonsky 