Latest Posts
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Podcast 51 (14 April 2022) War and Peace and the Conflict in Ukraine
War is terrible. War is troubling. War poses difficult questions for us all. This war in Ukraine, which is spreading globally through sanctions, bans, social media and slogans, presents those questions too. This episode of The Burning Archive responds to a listener question that just might help us get closer to peace, and that make […]
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Flowers of the Mind 25
This debate from a major show in India gives a good insight into how the USA has alienated Indian elites. It is one event in an rushing cascade of intellectual revolt against the Anglo-American world, against the Netflix stream of American thinking about the world, diplomacy, democracy, economics etc. The world is saying: America, look at me, I am the captain now.
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Flowers of the Mind 24
So much of the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is the tragic encounters of the elites of empires and ethno-linguistic national identities. We are seeing a new version of this struggle between confected social media national identities, concealing troubled and exclusive ethno-lingusitic reasoning, and collapsing imperial orders.
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Flowers of the Mind 23
A new iron curtain is falling across the “Western” or Anglo-American world. This time curtain is not being brought down by a reincarnated Russian empire. It is being brought down by a failing empire of lies, the media-theatre state of the Global American Empire, spiralling into a dynastic collapse.
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Ukraine Crisis Shows Fault Lines of Multipolar World
We are not entering World War III, I think, I hope, I insist on believing. But we are entering the final phase of the Hundred Years Cold War of the Anglo-American Powers against Russia. My forecast is that the system of power that has led this war will collapse, perhaps surprisngly quickly, but likely over five to ten years. Seven great fault lines are cracking open during the Ukraine crisis that will shape the social, political, cultural and international orders we navigate through.
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Flowers of the Mind 22
The NATO-Russia War and the last phase of the 100 Years Cold War. Advice on staying sane in an information war, a Kulturkampf. The Great Separation in the Multipolar World. Folly and fraud in Melbourne. Lev Gumilev, and the traditions of Eurasia in Russian thought. Legutko on the demons of liberal democracy, the totalitarian temptation that is collapsing the buildings of the old world order.
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Flowers of the Mind 21
The last phase of the Hundred Years (mostly) Cold War. Kingsnorth on the dead liberal order and post-democratic societies. Decisions made in anger will collapse the Western media-theatre state. Letter to Prime Minister of Australia on situation in Eastern Ukraine. Marina Tsvetaeva on poets with and without history.
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Flowers of the Mind 20
Descent into post-democratic crisis. John Ionnadis on saving democracy from the pandemic. Canada leaves the democratic nations – an Open Letter to the Prime Minister of Australia. Security crisis in Ukraine and the end of the Cold War – who really wants to invade Europe? The Russian Anxiety and our responsibility to refuse it
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Flowers of the Mind 19
American elites wag the dogs of war as the post-democratic theatre burns. Liz Truss in Moscow: the disgrace of the British State. Journalists behaving like spin doctors and government propagandists again. Isabella of Castile and the Spanish Empire. The strangeness of the children of Ash and Elm. The uncontrollability of the world, and the true words of John Donne on public health rulez, OK?
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Flowers of the Mind 18
Operation Barbarossa and war on the Eastern Front in World War II and its relevance to popular memory and geopolitics. Joint statement of Xi-Putin summit comments on history of WWII. The Anglo-American illusions of Munich: the edge of war. Russophobia and the collapse of Anglo-American diplomacy.
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Flowers of the Mind 17
A holiday of regeneration. The crisis in Europe, Ukraine, the failure of American diplomacy and the end of NATO. The Siege of Leningrad, Vladimir Putin, Operation Barbarossa, and Dmitri Likhachev on the Russian Soul. Elena Shvarts and the Flora of Ukraine. Russian Ark and the survival of culture in the floating hermitage of the Neva.
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Flowers of the Mind 16
Elena Shvarts and the burnt archive. Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob, and the perils of order in history. The Stranger Effect and the charisma of Messiahs. The Coming of the Third Reich. Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil and the ethics of poetry as gathering flowers of the mind.
The Burning Archive 