Category US

I just can’t make no connection

David P. Goldman gained a large-scale following as the Spengler of Asia Times. Apart from being a well-immersed observer of China with strong opinions, he is also a well-trained musicologist with strong opinions. He has argued that Wagner’s deepest anti-Semitism…

That mural sea

Reviewing Evgeny Boratynsky and the Russian Golden Age by Anatoly Liberman, Sibelan Forrester remarks: Russians who read Anglophone poetry in the Soviet period turned to the works available, which were largely translations or original editions of poetry from the era…

Antony Blinken and the pipeline question

If Antony Blinken’s academic interests from the 1980s are any indication of his course as the US secretary of state, I’d expect him to favor building and strengthening international alliances to counter America’s adversaries. As Chris Miller wrote in Foreign…

From individualism to groupthink

Putin appointed Andrei Illarionov as his senior economic adviser in April 2000. Illarionov remained in that position until late December, 2005. Those were good years for the Russian economy. Simply put, it was growing, and would keep growing until 2007.…

Free speech under Yeltsin: Black October

It’s good to know that Russia’s number one opposition leader supports an expansive understanding of free speech. Navalny may be wrong on Trump versus Twitter but it’s far more important – in the Russian context – that he get the…

Navalny on the Trump Twitter ban

Anne Applebaum has quoted Alexey Navalny‘s recent Tweet, in which the Russian opposition leader criticized Donald Trump’s expulsion from Twitter. Here’s a concatenation of some points Navalny made that I feel are not without some merit: Don’t tell me he…

Henry George and a land value tax in Scotland

From Farmers Weekly, a British magazine: A land value tax could be introduced in Scotland as part of the country’s ongoing reform journey. The proposals are included in the Land and property taxation in Scotland: Initial scoping of options for…

Plenty of perjury

Sergei Dovlatov once remarked: “In Soviet newspapers, only misprints are truthful.” His first example was gavnokomanduyushchiy instead of glavnokomanduyushchiy — “Commander-in-Shit” for “Commander-in-Chief,” roughly speaking. Dovlatov did not live to witness the spread of spell checkers and autocorrectors. We’re all…

Please let it be a farce, please

Shortly after watching a performance of Timofey Kulyabin‘s production of The Broken Pitcher (or The Broken Jug) – a remarkably well thought through interpretation – I learned that Kleist had been thinking of Oedipus Rex while writing his comedy: The…