Enjoying free speech since 1984. Your daily dose of anti-propaganda!
Saving Boris Johnson probably wasn’t on Putin’s list of strategic objectives. Nevertheless, that is what his invasion of Ukraine has achieved.
Just two weeks ago, Johnson’s approval ratings were cratering. On February 21, Redfield and Wilton put the net figure …
Suddenly, images of Ukrainian women are all over the internet. Most of them are mothers, fleeing Russian convoys, carrying their children across borders. Many of them are leaving husbands and brothers behind to fight. But these heart-wrenching photographs, published by …
One summer afternoon when I was 23 — this was in 1987 — I was twiddling the dial on the radio in the apartment I was subletting on 114th St. when I stumbled on a station that was unlike anything …
Last autumn, American intelligence agencies reported to the White House that they remain divided on whether the pandemic started naturally or was the result of a lab accident. “All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an …
Of all the ill-informed explanations for why Vladimir Putin has invaded Ukraine, perhaps the most absurd is that he is afflicted with “toxic masculinity”. And yet, there are multiple commentators and think piece writers saying exactly that: the Russian President …
There were a lot of us in Moscow, back then. Silly, millennial Euro-Brits, trying to be journalists, floating through a boozy world of “hackpack” drinks and Russian liberals. We were there on cooked visas — fixed in Kyiv — dreamers …
“We cannot just witness these atrocities and do nothing.” It’s a statement that resonates, the kind of thing you’d expect to hear from those we empower to keep the peace: Nato, the UN, our leaders. But this solemn vow to …
Since the end of the Second World War, most of the world’s conflicts have been civil wars. The average length of an international war is less than six months; for a civil war it is seven years. The heretic is …
“Death is a master from Germany.” The line is from Paul Celan’s Deathfugue, a poem which tried to express the abject horror of the Nazis’ genocidal war in Eastern Europe. Celan, a Jew, was a son of Chernivtsi, then a …
The war in Ukraine poses a palpable threat to Western democracies, but this has little to do with Russia posing an inherent strategic threat to the United States or its European allies. No — more so than the Russian state, …
Southern Ukraine
A week after it launched its attempted blitz across Ukraine, finally the Russian army has taken its first major city: Kherson, a key port city in the south of the country. But the defenders of Kyiv and Kharkiv …
The absurdly long table Vladimir Putin sits at, whether with Emmanuel Macron last month, or his terrified subordinates now, was the giveaway. There is stately furniture, then there is 20 feet of thuddingly symbolic paranoia. Isolated during the pandemic, padlocked …
It’s a year since Sarah Everard was abducted, raped and murdered — and the London Mayor this week called for men to lead a “fundamental cultural shift” to help end violence against women. Sadiq Khan said the problem was not …
In the summer and early fall of 2020, as protests and riots swept across the United States, a new consensus began to emerge among progressive activists, writers and politicians. Given that black men, from George Floyd to Daniel Prude, were …
Did Russia invade Ukraine because Putin wasn’t loved enough as a child? AnnaLynne McCord, an “actress/human rights activist”, seems to think so.
Last week, she posted a poem online declaring that if only she’d been Vladimir Putin’s mum, he would …