The story out of Afghanistan has been getting worse and worse since at least 2007 if not earlier, and nothing we’ve done—Obama’s Surge, or Obama’s non-withdrawal withdrawal; Britain’s alleged withdrawal in 2014, or Britain’s not-really-withdrawal a year later—seems to work…

The point is that these simplified, superimposed framings serve a political lobbying purpose—as well as dumbing down the story to make it easy for dumb-dumbs to read. Sleazy and stupid—that’s how DC likes ’em.

The Guardian just published a piece on Russia’s inequality problem — first and worst in the world, according to a new Credit Suisse report. Funny to see Credit Suisse wringing its hands over Russian inequality, given that bank’s active complicity…

Last week, a member of Alekseyev’s GayRussia.ru organization sued Novaya Gazeta — and announced plans to seek criminal libel charges against the muckraking newspaper, which could conceivably lead to jail sentences for the journalists and editors. It’s all the headache Novaya needs, given the threats hanging over the heads of their brave reporters—Elena Milashina and Irina Gordienko—who broke the story, and the entire Novaya staff.

Now here is where Novaya Gazeta’s story diverges widely from the New York Times’ version (and the rest of the western media’s). See, you can’t really bring up Nikolai Alekseyev’s name in a story like this without bringing up his very weird, ugly politics—which includes a lot of unhinged anti-Semitism and a long fruitful relationship with Russia’s xenophobic ultranationalist right-wing party.

There’s only one world-famous advisor who gives advice as catastrophically stupid as this: The Great Gazoo…

I’ve responded to the article in several Facebook posts, but this is important enough to deserve a more formal response. So here it is.

Gutman’s article is a shoddy, dishonest mess, but it will be effective, because the Nation has a better rep than the author’s usual venue, The Daily Beast. So Gutman’s smear will stick, eroding support for the YPG/J, the one heroic faction in the miserable Syrian War…