‘There is profound disappointment in him’: mood in Russia turns against Putin / Russia hits Kyiv with hypersonic ballistic missile in ‘deranged’ attack

Increasingly isolated president is determined to press on with Ukraine war, say well-placed sources, despite ailing economy Pjotr Sauer and Shaun Walker Vladimir Putin pulled up to a hotel in central Moscow earlier in May in a Russian-made SUV, dressed casually in jeans and a light jacket. Carrying a bouquet of flowers, he walked unhurriedly into the… Read More ‘There is profound disappointment in him’: mood in Russia turns against Putin / Russia hits Kyiv with hypersonic ballistic missile in ‘deranged’ attack

Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger

John Boersma Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger By Waller R. Newell; 2022 Waller Newell: Interview: The Characteristics of Tyranny Today’s political discourse is rife with the prognosis that liberalism is in trouble, evidenced by the rise of anti-liberal and post-liberal thought, each of which maintains that a politics based on material self-interest is incapable… Read More Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger

China Increasingly Views Trump’s America as an Empire in Decline

For decades, many Chinese viewed the United States with a mix of admiration, envy and resentment. President Trump’s volatile second term shattered that image. Li Yuan When President Trump visited China in late 2017, Xi Jinping welcomed him with a grand display of Chinese history and culture: a four-hour private tour of the Forbidden City culminating in… Read More China Increasingly Views Trump’s America as an Empire in Decline

Bad memories

Nothing can stop Germany’s moral panic over antisemitism It would be hard to surpass the absurd spectacle of a Jewish philosopher being blocked from speaking at a German Holocaust memorial because he intended to say that the lessons of “never again” should be applied universally. And yet such perverse distortions of Germany’s ‘memory culture’ have… Read More Bad memories

Fame! A Misunderstanding

Albert Camus has long been misunderstood, but a new translation of his complete notebooks offers a corrective By Matthew Lamb The Complete Notebooks by Albert Camus. Translated by Ryan Bloom Source: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1957/camus/biographical/ EACH NEW TRANSLATION of a work from a major author should spark a reevaluation of that author’s critical reception and public reputation. Since his death in 1960, a… Read More Fame! A Misunderstanding

West Bengal, Tamil Nadu show limits of political consulting

The lesson to be learnt, however, is that when parties offload their institutional memory and political judgement to an outsourced consultant, they can come to grief Bharat Bhushan The resounding defeats of parties advised by political consultants in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu may not spell their end, but their role will now be more… Read More West Bengal, Tamil Nadu show limits of political consulting