Russia

Restoring deterrence

Featured image Cliff May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s current column is “Restoring deterrence” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his columns on Power Line. He writes at year’s »

Trofimov not trying hard enough

Featured image On its news pages the Wall Street Journal’s more or less marches in lockstep with the rest of the braindead media on Israel’s response to the Hamas massacres. Yaroslav Trofimov is the chief foreign-affairs correspondent of The Wall Street Journal. He wrote the Review section’s featured essay “Does the West Have a Double Standard for Ukraine and Gaza?” Beyond the ambit of the news section, it reflects some of the »

Loose Ends (237)

Featured image • Today in anti-Semitism: Pro-Hamas demonstrators are blocking the Oakland Bay Bridge: The Bay Bridge is SHUT DOWN Biden will not get away with genocide, Biden will not get away with staying in San Francisco without EVERYONE knowing he is supporting the slaughter in Gaza No more genocide, ceasefire NOW pic.twitter.com/iQWWevwclA — Ariel Koren (@ariel_koko) November 16, 2023 Chaser—Iowahawk wins Twitter for today: But we have worthy runner-up: • Joe »

Reading the UNGA tea leaves

Featured image Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s most recent column is “Reading the UNGA tea leaves” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column on Power »

Martyrs — and newsmen — for freedom

Featured image Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s most recent column is “Martyrs — and newsmen — for freedom” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column »

How Nixon Advised Clinton

Featured image A remarkably interesting letter (“Eyes Only”) that Richard Nixon sent to then-President Bill Clinton in March 1994, after Nixon returned from a trip to Russia and Ukraine, has been declassified and made public. Luke Nichter writes about Nixon’s letter in the Wall Street Journal: Nixon anticipated a more belligerent Russia, the rise of someone like Vladimir Putin, and worsening relations between Moscow and Kyiv. Nixon emphasized the importance of Ukraine, »

Russia: No One Knows Anything

Featured image Screenwriter William Goldman’s famous line about Hollywood—”No one knows anything”—applies fully to the confusing scene in Russia right now. And let’s not go further without also bringing up for the millionth time Churchill’s description of Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” There’s a sentence in one of the Wall Street Journal‘s many articles about the matter today that reminds of this: “The full story behind »

A Coup In Russia? [Updated Again]

Featured image In a stunning turn of events, the Wagner Group under Yevgeny Prigozhin has revolted against the Russian Army, and has turned eastward from Ukraine and taken the city of Rostov. Prigozhin justified his rebellion by asserting that the Russian military had bombed one of his units, but that is unconfirmed. Initially there didn’t appear to be serious fighting between Wagner and Russian military units, but Wagner’s mercenaries are now marching »

Tucker’s back — on Ukraine

Featured image Elizabeth Stauffer declares that “Tucker’s back” in the adjacent post and includes Tucker’s new ten-minute monologue posted to Twitter. “Tucker’s back” doesn’t quite have the zing of “Winston is back!” — the message signaled to the British Fleet when Churchill returned to the Admiralty in the opening days of World War II — but it’s good news. Like Elizabeth, I hope he has found a new home on Twitter. Tucker »

Putin Assassination Attempt?

Featured image The Russian government is claiming that last night, the Ukrainians tried to assassinate Vladimir Putin with a drone attack on his Kremlin residence. Videos do show something streaking across the sky and being blown up: Ukrainians say the Russians staged the incident to justify a planned terrorist attack on Ukraine. Intuitively, that sounds more likely. I am not sure what Ukraine would gain by assassinating Putin. But we may never »

Thought for the Day: Morson on the Russian Way of War

Featured image Gary Saul Morson, writing on “Do Russians Worship War?” in the current issue of Commentary: Americans all too often presume that everyone else aspires to live and think as we do. Others must share our values, if only in secret, or at least be eager to learn them. This is a dangerous attitude to take with any nation or culture, but perhaps especially so with Russians—and never more so than »

Xi Jinping Rises as Biden Dithers

Featured image The utter failure of the Anchorage, Alaska, meeting between top U.S. and Chinese diplomats held in March 2021 set the tone for relations going forward. Diplomacy flew out the window at the get-go and did not return. The hostility coming from the Chinese was impossible to miss. It was made immediately and abundantly clear that then-Chinese Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi had neither »

¿Qué Es Más Embarazoso?

Featured image Newark is in the news. It has welcomed the president of the Hindu nation of Kailasa to city hall to enter into a “cultural trade agreement” with its sister city. Kailasa, it turns out, is the invention of Swami Nithyananda, the notorious scam artist and fugitive from India who has been on the run from rape charges since 2019. Ali Bauman reports that Newark has restored the status quo ante: »

Speaking of balloons

Featured image In 1968 Nelson Rockefeller ran a presidential campaign based in large part on full-page newspaper advertisements. One such Rockefeller advertisement was permeated with high-minded assertions stating “We must do this” and “We must do that.” As I recall, and I am writing from memory, William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote a column that took up that Rockefeller campaign ad. He commented: “We must cut the crap.” The thought comes to mind »

Notes on the Twitter Files (15)

Featured image Matt Taibbi has posted the fifteenth installment of the Twitter Files. It is a thread that comes in 42 tweets that can be accessed via the first (below) or read in unrolled form via the Thread Reader app here. 1.THREAD: Twitter Files #15MOVE OVER, JAYSON BLAIR: TWITTER FILES EXPOSE NEXT GREAT MEDIA FRAUD pic.twitter.com/bLRpDpuWql — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023 Taibbi’s thread addresses the Hamilton 68 “dashboard” fronted by »

The McGonigal miasma

Featured image Charles “Charlie” McGonigal helped originate the FBI’s Russia hoax investigation of President Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign. As the New York Post explains, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Jonathan Moffa told Senate Judiciary Committee staffers in 2020 that he got a July 2016 email from McGonigal which “contained essentially that reporting, which then served as the basis for the opening of the [Crossfire Hurricane] case.” After serving as chief of »

Notes on the Twitter Files (11)

Featured image Matt Taibbi posted two more Twitter Files threads yesterday afternoon. They are the eleventh and twelfth such threads posted by the journalists to whom Elon Musk has opened the files of old Twitter. Taibbi has taken the lead in documenting The eleventh thread includes 33 tweets that can be accessed via the first (below). 1.THREAD: The Twitter FilesHow Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, »