{"id":397,"date":"2004-11-27T20:27:42","date_gmt":"2004-11-28T01:27:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=397"},"modified":"2005-12-30T06:52:30","modified_gmt":"2005-12-30T11:52:30","slug":"freedoms-front-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/freedoms-front-line","title":{"rendered":"“Freedom’s Front Line”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Timothy Garton Ash–who wrote a pretty neat book about the East German surveillance file that was kept on him<\/a>–has a great piece in the Guardian<\/em> about the voter revolution in the Ukraine<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Yet until Tuesday, many west Europeans probably did not even know that there was a presidential election going on in Ukraine. We were all focused on that other crucial presidential election, in the US. And, shamingly, Americans probably have done more to support the democratic opposition in Ukraine, and to shine a spotlight on electoral malpractices, than west Europeans have. Poles, Czechs and Slovaks have been more actively engaged, understanding how much is at stake.<\/p>\n

What’s at stake is not just the future of Ukraine: whether it turns to Europe, the west and liberal democracy, or back to authoritarianism and Putin’s Russia. It’s also the future of Russia itself, and therewith of the whole of Eurasia. A Russia that wins back Ukraine, as well as Belarus, will again be an imperial Russia, as Putin wishes. A Russia that sees even Ukraine moving towards Europe and the west, has a chance of itself becoming, with time, a more normal, liberal, democratic nation-state. But at the moment, under Putin, Russia is launched on a different, worse trajectory, and western leaders have been united in their pusillanimity towards it. We have all been appeasers there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Take a few minutes and give it a read<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Timothy Garton Ash–who wrote a pretty neat book about the East German surveillance file that was kept on him–has a great piece in the Guardian about the voter revolution in the Ukraine: Yet until Tuesday, many west Europeans probably did not even know that there was a presidential election going on in Ukraine. We were … <\/p>\n

Continue reading ““Freedom’s Front Line””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-6p","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":930,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/because-they-can","url_meta":{"origin":397,"position":0},"title":"Because they can","author":"Gil","date":"April 30, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Robert Kagan has a longish column at the Washington Post today about why Russia & China support other dictatorships (instead of supporting liberal reform the way U.S. & Europe sorta do): An irony that Europeans should appreciate is that China and Russia are faithfully upholding one cardinal principle of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":434,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/secret-identity","url_meta":{"origin":397,"position":1},"title":"Secret Identity","author":"Gil","date":"December 10, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"At the conference on Wednesday, I passed by a small group of attendees from the Ukraine. We all have our nationalities listed on our name badges. Even if they don't get our names right (my press badge read \"Mrs G Roth\"), they always get our countries right.There were two men\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Brussels"","block_context":{"text":"Brussels","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/brussels"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1223,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-dec-1-2006","url_meta":{"origin":397,"position":2},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Dec. 1, 2006","author":"Gil","date":"December 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Since I moved this blog up to a new version of the WordPress platform, I can do some neat stuff, like putting the rest of this post inside that \"more\" section, so it doesn't take up so much space. The guys at Design Observer posted their holiday reading list. It\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5913,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-the-februariad","url_meta":{"origin":397,"position":3},"title":"Unrequired Reading: The Februariad","author":"Gil","date":"February 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's your monthly dose of Unrequired Reading, dear readers who are too lazy or otherwise uninclined to follow my twitter feed at twitter.com\/groth18 My dogs would get so confused on these awesome staircases. * * * Nothing about how Craigslist enables Arab protestors and revolutionaries to get laid? #noitdoesnt *\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Gin"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Gin","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-gin"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":372,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm","url_meta":{"origin":397,"position":4},"title":"ObservationsI've now spent a minimum\u2026","author":"Gil","date":"September 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"ObservationsI've now spent a minimum of several days in three European capitols in the past 5 weeks. Here are two things I've noticed:Europeans only have two kinds of Coca-Cola: Coke and Coke Light (Diet Coke). A couple of places had Vanilla Coke, but it was rare. This contrasts with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4295,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/f-you-you-whining-f-dont-look-back-edition","url_meta":{"origin":397,"position":5},"title":"F*** You, You Whining F***: Don’t Look Back edition","author":"Gil","date":"August 3, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In an op-ed in today's Washington Post, CIA Director Leon Panetta pulls a Mark McGwire and asks Congress to stop looking into the CIA's role in running secret torture prisons and planning political assassinations: I've become increasingly concerned that the focus on the past, especially in Congress, threatens to distract\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "F*** You, You Whining F***"","block_context":{"text":"F*** You, You Whining F***","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/f-you-you-whining-f"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}