Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
The Kremlin should not mind at all a politically vulnerable, ailing person in the White House. Secretary Clinton fits the description perfectly, assuming that her digital trail and health are truly the sad affair her detractions claim they are. Besides, she is an intelligent, hence intelligible, machine with quite…
No matter who gets to occupy the New Shaab Palace and the White House, the Kremlin’s occupants will still have to admit that Russia, viewed as a country rather than merely a strutter on the global stage, is not getting anywhere.…
Last week, Reuters reported, citing Vedomosti (sorry for the tabloid link): The Ministry of Economic Development believes that economic stagnation could last for the next 20 years. The economy will grow by an average of 2 percent a year till 2035,…
Whether or not Moscow has the missing State Department emails and will use them to make good friends with President Clinton, I am starting to suspect that Trump is simply too revolutionary for the Kremlin. The notion that the ruling elites…
The Wall Street Journal reported on October 7: The organization WikiLeaks on Friday [Oct. 7] released what it claimed to be Clinton campaign email correspondence revealing excerpts from paid speeches that Hillary Clinton gave in recent years, before her presidential…
The good news today is the Nobel prize in literature going to Bob Dylan for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition. Yes – a great tradition, and an author whose work is well known and…
If my calculations are correct, 37.4% of the eligible voters voted for Brexit in June and 39.7% of the eligible voters voted for Orbán’s immigration proposal last Sunday. However, the turnout for the Brexit referendum was 72%, with 52% voting…
In July 2002, Yossi Klein Halevi wrote in the New Republic, in a long piece entitled “The Wall” and subtitled “How despair is transforming Israel”: The more that Israelis are treated as pariahs, the greater their tendency toward recklessness… And…
Alexander Petrun’ko was one of the “conservative activists” who attacked the Josh Sturges exhibition at the Brothers Lumère Center in Moscow last Sunday. Reportedly, he spilled a foul-smelling yellow liquid over the exhibits and the walls. (Some reporters got sprinkled, too.)…
The Russian Orthodox patriarch has called for all abortions to be banned, and his Muslim colleague, the mufti, has joined the appeal, but with a provision for termination on medical grounds. This exception is in line with the teachings of the…
The Moscow Times is running this headline today: Social Conservatives Make American Photographer an Overnight Celebrity in Moscow. The photographer is Jock Sturges. Radio Liberty reports: A controversial Moscow photography exhibition that critics say amounts to “child pornography” has been…
When Brezhnev died in November 1982, he was almost 76 years old. Since the mid-1970s, he had been mocked for his apparent senility – approaching dementia – and for his slurred speech. Many Russians remember him as a decrepit wreck, unable to…