"Oh what a gift the Gods would give ye to see yourself as others see ye."
“Dramitic changes”, or demonic changes?
Andrei Martyanov is a very interesting person.
Pepe Escobar on FR? I never thought I’d see the day. Strange times we’re living in. He’s been the token leftie on AT for ages (think Juan Williams on Fox News, only Pepe is smarter, more fun, and even farther left, as in bordering on full commie).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I used to enjoy his columns sometimes on AT and fondly thought of him as my fave whackaloon. While I disagreed with his lefty stance and usually with his conclusions, he’s always had a way of digging up facts from here and there and putting them together in an interesting way, and his facts checked out.
His writing style can be sometimes quite witty and highly entertaining. And while he may be a commie, he’s the most likeable and honest one I’ve come across.
He’s quite enamored of pipelines and his “Pipelinistan” theories, and if I wanted to know about the pipeline aspect of some conflict somewhere, Pepe was my go-to guy. Unlike Pepe, I don’t think fossil fuels and their transport are ever the sole or even main reason for US involvement in various conflicts. It’s always a constellation of factors and forces, of which pipelines may be only one.
He was one of the earliest to focus on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and although he seemed all in favor of it and its likelihood of eating away at American hegemony, the information itself was valuable. As an anti-colonialist and commie of the Latin American variety, I wonder whether he still thinks Chinese colonialism is so nice, given the ugly form of it practiced by China in South America and across the Global South. He disappeared from AT for a long while and I didn’t realize he was back, so it’s been some years since I read one of his columns.
He’s good at pointing out our follies abroad, sometimes quite humorously. And while I might agree wholeheartedly that some of our actions were counterproductive and foolhardy (Libya, for example), I don’t think our actions abroad are always driven by evil intent on our part, as Pepe seems to often think. Some of our leaders have been misguided, for sure.
Anyway, Pepe is worth reading if you self-administer the proper doses of salt. He’s fun, witty, entertaining and smart. But he’s still a commie of the Latin American persuasion. I would not be at all surprised to learn there are some Che T-shirts in his closet.