Dead Kennedys once shouted out the Westerner’s hard-core blues. So much hate and so much pity. It’s such a bore; it gets me really sore. Gag with every breath. So I’m looking forward to death!
These days, we suddenly find ourselves in a world that is a far cry from boring. A traditional Chinese curse, ‘May you live in interesting times’, updates exponentially – through every move made by Russian jingoism during the invasion of Ukraine. So most of our societies will bid farewell to boredom in the days to come.
But some of us plan to remain dull. Certain red celebrities attest that by insisting on old songs: demented and daunting.
Take Noam Chomsky. In the 4 February interview for Truthout, he was so preoccupied with a new concert of Great Powers, with tuning into Russian concerns, that he ‘forgot’ of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv. And yet it did happen. It proved Ukraine is not a pawn but an independent and determinate agent. And as for self-determination, it hasalways made the very basis of socialist anti-imperialism. Mr Chomsky should be aware of so fundamental a fact.
There’s also Yannis Varoufakis: an advocate of Ukrainian neutrality. On his and DiEM25 part, he proves reluctant to mind a critical factor. Putinist Russia can hardly be filed under ‘peace- loving’ or ‘agreement-honouring’. As some stillremember, the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, signed by the Russian Federation, guaranteed Ukraine territorial integrity in return for giving up nuclear weapons. In 2014, Putin killed the deal by the annexation of Crimea. Had the Ukrainians kept their nukes, would the aggression have been possible? Not bothered by the question, Varoufakisans are still happy to solicit the unilateral demilitarization. It’s not to be the Russian one, clearly.