Three historical notes on Putin’s 2022 Victory Day Parade Speech
Vladimir Putin’s Victory Day speech tells stories of how Russia has responded to threats by embracing multi-ethnic, multi-national traditions.
What if Russia Wins?
So, it seems reasonable at least to ask: what will happen in the West if Russia wins the war in Ukraine?
Colour Revolution on a Chaise-Longue
I took to reading Catherine Merridale, Lenin on the Train (2016) this morning while reclining on a scarlet chaise-longue and bathing in autumnal sunshine. The cat was on my lap, but my attention kept slipping…. [Read More]
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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