DJT & QAnon: a QTie
BTW, why QAnon and not, say, XAnon? Because it looks mysterious enough – and cute enough – even when mirrored or reversed? Nona Q, Susie Q‘s lost sibling – or grandma. Karen Bennhold reports from Berlin for The New York…
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Category Politics
Always do you homework
An American (apparently) freelance writer writes of his experience working for what turned out a Russian operation posing as a “progressive global news outlet.” PeaceData, seemingly a leftwing news outlet, offered me a column. I should have known it was…
Too good for this life
Sobyanin seems to be consistent in his plan to make Moscow's residential districts as humanly unlivable as possible. He hates trees and low-rise buildings but adores barren skyscraper blocks based on the ugliest Chinese models.
What is Brutalism and what is not
Alexander Adams has reviewed a number of books on architecture in the Soviet block (aka the Second World) and the Third World. It’s in the Critic, one of those Save Western Civilization mags whose writers are generously paid to keep…
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad
John Gray’s piece in the New Statesman is prefaced with an image of Isaac Newton demonstrating the diffraction of daylight to an awestruck colleague. This image, and a similar one showing Newton projecting diffracted white light onto the backrest of…
Trump’s weakest spot
After the US Supreme Court had ruled on two cases concerning president Trump’s tax returns, Elaine Komarck of Brookings wrote: This week’s Supreme Court decisions on Donald Trump’s finances and tax returns will allow us to finally answer the question…
“Moscow, go away!” Do they mean it?
Back in 2014, one of Russia’s senior politicians (later elected chairman of the lower chamber of the Russian parliament) quipped: “There is no Russia today if there is no Putin.” Future developments might prove his claim correct, in a peculiar…
Protests in Khabarovsk: back to 1991
The BBC reports from the city of Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East: Thousands took to the streets of Khabarovsk in what locals are calling the biggest protest they’ve seen in decades. They’re angry at the arrest of Sergei Furgal…
Is QAnon exportable?
What did QAnon say when Ghislaine Maxwell got arrested? “It has happened,” followed by multiple explanation marks and later a series of photographs showing Maxwell, Prince Andrew, Virginia Roberts, President Clinton, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein and others in various combinations.…
Inconstitucionalissimamente
Support for Putin’s “amendments” among the general public, according to all non-Kremlin polls, has never came close to 50% in the past couple of months. More like 30%, actually, or even less. The official “referendum” tally suggests a turnout and…
Moscow windows
When the Kremlin releases its own “exit polls” from today’s, hmmm, “referendum,” they will reveal as much about the true results as these windows reveal about the inside of the house. (Check out a high-resulution photo for all the details.)…
Nakhodka
Nakhodka is a port city of about 150,000 residents in the Far East of Russia. If you google Nakhodka protests in English, you’re going to get just one relevant result for the past week, a report with an embedded video…