How Trump co-opted Putin’s totalitarian messaging to win America. — “Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain…

How a shifting truth, poor treatment of the Russian military & people, & tunnel vision with respect to the West is undermining Putin’s war. — Burning the bridge… “Dear God, who art in Heaven, save, forgive and deliver me.” A quote by Count Nikolai Rostov at the burning of the bridge. Taken from ‘War and Peace’ by Lev Nikolayevic Tolstoy, or Leo Tolstoy, as he is known in the West. Rostov, who is living through a baptism of…

Hey! Yes, I agree. But I didn't at any stage say US actions justified Russia's actions. This is not a democracy vs autocracy war as some suggest; NATO is defending its borders and that is best done by giving Ukraine all the military help it needs. Putin would undoubtedly seek…

Russia has been rightly condemned for its brutal invasion of Ukraine, but isn’t Russia doing just what the US did before in Iraq? We examine the legal facts… — Twisting the legal basis & accepted norms underpinning the territorial integrity & sovereignty of a state. “We agreed that we would settle for the borders that we inherited. We chose to follow the rules of the Organization of African Unity and the United Nations Charter, not because our borders satisfied us, but because we wanted something greater, forged in peace.”

It was all going so well, & then came the 24th February… — As far back as 1947 George Kennan had rightly identified what he called the “innate antagonism between capitalism and socialism.” He said that this concept had become deeply embedded in the foundations of Soviet power, and that it had profound implications for Russia’s behaviour on the international stage. He said…

How a distorted, repetitive past dictates the future in Russia, & how a reckoning with those distortions could change everything… — “Because Russia never had its own version of Nuremberg, this history was never officially corrected. Only a few years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, public opinion turned nostalgic for Stalinism. Whereas in Germany it was unthinkable after World War II to declare a longing for the days of…

Putin preaches a fascist ideology to an oblivious Russian population, who then parrot fascist insults at Ukrainians they call Nazis… — “We have the great moral right to be principled and insistent in defending our positions, because it was our country that bore the brunt of the fight against Nazism…The young people of today are the heirs of the true freedom fighters…We will always be faithful to their valour, and that…

A deep irony underpins Putin’s messaging, one that is entirely lost on the Russian people… — In Russia, nothing is more dangerous than the appearance of weakness. Peter Stolypin, Third Prime Minister of Russia; assassinated in 1911. In the early months of 2000, Secretary of State, the late Madeleine Albright became the first senior U.S. …

After the appalling treatment of Judge Ketanji Jackson by Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, & the staunch defence of her provided by Sen. Cory Booker, her confirmation as the first black, female Supreme Court Justice is a triumph. Wins such as this for the black community are few & far between, & ride on the backs of many who came before, leaving behind a legacy of wisdom & a vision for unity that still resonates decades after their passing.