Wisdom
Only small minds think alike.
Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
Only small minds think alike.
What the heck is going on in Baghdad? Is the war over or not yet? A great number of Russians don’t seem to believe CNN coverage because they mistrust US government and media as much as they mistrust their own.…
Lee Harris on Marth Nussbaum’s famous essay, Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism. This is surely not the first criticism I have come across, but, honestly, I can’t remember whether I read the essay in question. Nussbaum: “nationalism and ethnocentric particularism are not…
It’s easier to defend American interests that promote American values. US politicians tend to pretend they are engaged in the latter when their actions are but the former. Too bad. US Army’s “setbacks” in Iraq seem setbacks only against the…
A shallow but entertaining piece from Russian Journal (not to be confused with The Russia Journal). An inelegant translation of some excerpts follows. It looks like the anti-Iraqi allies did not realize indeed what they were getting into. Americans planned…
US believes Russian technicians helping Iraqi defense: official I told you so a few posts ago. This piece is also amusing: U.S. Concerned About Russian Weapon Sales. Surely the US has known all along that a) Russia sold weapons and…
Kommersant reports that about 20 (!) people showed up to protest against the war in Voronezh, and a tiny few in Vladivostok. Nothing of note in the capitals, Moscow and St. Pete. Being an anti-anti-Americanist, I’m nonetheless not amused by…
The Philosopher of Islamic Terror by Paul Berman. [Post edited in 2021.] Gamal Abdel Nasser was the only Nasser whose name Russian announcers articulated with a stress on the second syllable: Nah-SER. The audience enjoyed punning on that surname because…
In case you didn’t know, the word Proletariat was nearly a swearword in Soviet Russia in the 1970s–1980s. The well-off and the educated so labeled the drink-loving, foul-mouthed, good-for-nothing working classes. Well, not exactly good for nothing — when it…
It looks like Russia’s birth rate is still dwindling, but it is hardly the case in Moscow. And there is immigration – from the Caucasus, China, Ukraine, Vietnam, Africa, etc. Not that I’m worried “we” might lose our identity –…
Sir Paul is coming to Moscow. How come it will have been the first time, uh? The Beatles should be given greater credit for the downfall of Communism than Carter, Reagan, Bush I with all their men and horses and…
Typical Russian responses to the Iraq war? I don’t know how typical, but I’ll offer a few. Why? It’s unneeded and unnecessary. Wars should only be fought when there’s no alternative. It’s no good when one country plays cop, judge…