Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
President Trump claimed this at yesterday’s NATO summit: Germany is totally controlled by Russia because they will be getting from 60% to 70% of their energy from Russia and a new pipeline. I’m going to focus on the subordinate clause…
Ben Riley-Smith writes about the difficult relationship between Theresa May and Donald Trump in today’s Daily Telegraph: A senior US diplomat said her frequent demands annoyed him, something he sees as taking advantage of the UK-US relationship. A long-time friend…
According to Bloomberg, President Trump tweeted this statement early Monday morning: Russia and China are playing the Currency Devaluation game as the U.S. keeps raising interest rates. Not acceptable! For decades, China has been intermittently accused of keeping the yuan…
Historian Alexander Yanov has lived in the US since 1974 and has taught Russian history at the University of Michigan, UC Berkeley, and CUNY. He must have retired from regular teaching but keeps contributing to Russian media projects and sites,…
President Trump has given a Fake News award to Professor Paul Krugman, which I find both unfair and inordinately amusing. It’s unfair because Krugman is not a news reporter but a columnist and sometime economist. Since winning the Nobel prize…
Yelena Suponina writes in Forbes Russia about Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel: Trump has approached it [the problem of Jerusalem] with the sangfroid and superciliousness of a Roman emperor, who is not supposed to seek insight into his…
President Trump has retweeted three videos posted by Jayda Fransen, an English anti-Muslim activist. It has been reported that Fransen has been convicted of a “hate crime” and charged with two others in the UK. Closer inspection reveals that the…
A follow-up on my previous post on the Russian lawyer (“V”) who met with Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner last year. It bears repeating that, while it was a run of the mill meeting of the sort every politician takes…
Due diligence and background checks are sometimes as indispensable as an antiseptic liquid or protective gloves. Some people are literally contagious; others are metaphorically toxic. It may be tempting for a germaphobe’s son to ignore these precautions but prudence shouldn’t…
Michael Anton wrote at least three posts in 2016 to discuss the applicability of Trump(ism)-Caesar(ism) parallels to the American situation. In doing so, Anton relied on Leo Strauss’ work, particularly his Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero, a response to Eric Voegelin…
My latest two cents considering Obama the Cunctator and Trump the (hopefully) Knot Cutter. One Manufacturing regime change out of stagnant air is not, generally speaking, a sound suggestion. Smartly supporting a groundswell of discontent is a different matter. On…
A statement that is correct on its face can be irrelevant and – if wrongly presumed to be relevant – misleading. It won’t become “mostly wrong” in itself, no matter how misused. President Trump tweeted on Feb. 25: The media…