Van der Bellen II

Alexander Van der Bellen has been re-elected President of Austria. As I wrote in 2016, when he won his first term, Van der Bellen’s ancestors had moved from the Netherlands to Russia in the 18th century. They lived in Pskov…

Angry Taxi Driver

Commenting on Putin’s “annexation speech” on September 30, Shaun Walker wrote in the Guardian: Today, he offered an angrier but less coherent denunciation of the west, more angry taxi driver than head of state. If you’ve ever heard a post-Soviet…

This too shall pass

Seven and a half years ago, in 2015, Stratfor released a 10-year forecast that saw Russia falling apart by 2025. When the think tank updated its forecast five years later, it no longer mentioned Russia’s disintegration. But I’ve never stopped…

On not paying attention

Paul Krugman admits that he underestimated the current rate of inflation when assessing the impact of the $1.9-billion “American Rescue Plan” early in 2021. On the other hand, Lawrence Summers warned in February 2021 that inflation might rise too high…

Jordan Peterson and Alexander Dugin

A few years ago, I tried listening to Jordan Peterson debating Marxism with Slavoj Žižek. It soon became clear to me that Peterson was completely unprepared: he knew next to nothing about Marxism. Or, perhaps, he was deliberately playing the…

A matter of reputation

In the New Statesman, Katie Stallard reviews Putin: His Life and Times by Philip Short. Referring to Putin’s tenure as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg under Anatoly Sobchak, the reviewer notes: As Sobchak’s deputy, Putin earned a reputation for discipline,…

That’s not what’s called spare capacity

Emmanuel Macron reportedly said this to Joe Biden a couple of days ago: I had a call with MbZ [UAE leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan]… He told me two things. I’m at a maximum, maximum (production capacity). This is…

Abortion bans aim to stop the purpling of red states?

I’ve argued that anti-abortionists have a common cause with Big Brother worshipers. The word “surveillance” has already appeared in some news headlines on states’ enforcement of their anti-abortion laws. But there’s another consequence: young professionals are now less likely to…

Abortion

On abortion, my thoughts aren’t much different now than in 2016: …[E]nforcing a universal ban on abortion will require a greater degree of governmental interference into the private lives of the citizenry. It would make every woman of childbearing age…

No foundation in law or morality

Last weekend, Bloomberg published Max Hastings‘s long-term view of the Russo-Ukrainian war: Yet it seems hard to consider Russian President Vladimir Putin as anything other than a force for evil. He is personally responsible for tens of thousands of deaths…

“The beard is evidently grass”

In Tablet, David Mikics quotes Wallace Stevens and explains: His grief is that his mother should feed on him, himself and what he saw,In that distant chamber, a bearded queen, wicked in her dead light. […] Madame la Fleurie, the flowering earth,…