If Putin succeeds in his aggression in Ukraine and the Republican Party follows Trump in his admiration for what he has done, then it will be making a decisive break with fundamental American democratic values.
So much is being written about the Russian invasion of Ukraine that more on the situation on the ground is unnecessary. Certainly, it is premature for a post-mortem on causes and responsibilities of a conflict that came on so quickly and unexpectedly. But it is not a bad time to
Putin’s Neo-Soviet Russia reverted to form with its systematic doping regime at the 2014 Sochi games.
On February 2nd, I wrote an opinion piece entitled “Beware the Anti-Fascists, for they have become what they oppose,” on behalf of the UK-based Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR)—a research centre for which I served, until recently, as a policy and practitioner fellow. That article began
Dear Readers, As I compile the articles for this week’s newsletter, Russian tanks have entered Donbas. Appearing on Russian television, Putin addressed his nation arguing that "Ukraine [has] never had a tradition of genuine statehood," justifying the invasion. Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky has stoically called for
In some cases, drawing the line between permissible and impermissible forms of public protest can be difficult. But the Canadian “Freedom Convoy” that occupied downtown Ottawa until Sunday wasn’t one of those cases. Thousands of anti-vaccine-mandate protesters, many of them driving trucks, took over a large portion of Canada’
On February 8th, scientists associated with the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion experimental facility located in Oxfordshire, UK, announced that they had achieved a sustained fusion reaction releasing 11 megawatts of thermonuclear fusion power burning a deuterium-tritium plasma mixture continuously for five seconds. Nuclear fusion energy major breakthrough, created a
I was a good friend of Harvey Weinstein during his early years as a concert promoter, before he became Harvey Weinstein, movie mogul. We subsequently drifted apart, and while Harvey went on to find astronomic success in Hollywood, I worked as the chief psychologist at the Massachusetts Treatment Center for
Over the last few years we have witnessed the alarming growth of both left-wing and right-wing populist movements in both the developed world and countries with fragile democratic traditions. Although pundits and political scientists continue to debate the precise definition of “populism,” it is accepted that the term can be
When the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR collapsed, one might have assumed that Cold War fiction would become irrelevant. That hasn’t turned out to be the case with Frederick Forsyth’s work. Consider, for instance, this passage from his 1979 novel, The Devil’s Alternative: The Union of
Diamond is the most valuable, not only of precious stones, but of all things in this world. ~Pliny The Elder Loving someone, and having them love you back, is the most precious thing in the world. ~Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook At age 11, I first glimpsed the bewildering anthropologic spectacle
At the American university where I teach, one of my assigned tasks is to advise undergraduates—mostly freshmen and sophomores. This essay describes a conversation I had in 2017 with one of those advisees. I will call him Daniel. Daniel was a sophomore at the time. He had been an
The thing about PJ O’Rourke, who passed away on Tuesday at the age of 74, was that everyone wanted to be around him. By “everyone,” I don’t just mean the right-wingers I hang out with, most of whom share PJ’s classical-liberal politics, but also neoconservatives like Bill
In January, as reporters were celebrating the first woman—and also the first transgender person—to win more than a million dollars on Jeopardy!, I was reading up on the discrimination still faced by biological women who toil away in my own fields of endeavor: anthropology and archaeology. This discrimination
Dear Reader, This week's dispatch focuses on the unfolding situation in Eastern Europe. We have three pieces for you on the subject, one from Chris Miller, a Grand Strategy expert, analysing Putin's strategic intentions in What Putin Really Wants, another from regular Quillette contributor, Brian Stewart,