With data for the first three months of 2015 out, it is now tentatively possible to make out some hints of what Russia’s demographic developments are going to be like this year. In short, it’s not looking very good. But not catastrophic, either. The birth rate has remained essentially stable, declining by 0.8% relative to the
In Western popular culture, and to be honest most of the rest of the world, Kazakhstan is most commonly associated with Borat and his putative homeland of slapstick provincial troglodytes. And following Nursultan Nazarbayev’s 98% win in the recent elections, and his reaction to it… I apologize if these numbers are unacceptable for the super democratic
Just in case you needed any more evidence Freedom House are complete, utter prostitutes. This is about a country where journalists speaking out against mobilization are getting arrested, anti-regime sites get taken down by the secret services, far right thugs raid leftist and anti-Maidan newspapers, and an officially sanctioned website lists the names and addresses of anti-regime “terrorists and propagandists,”
There are some massacres that are clearly genocides, such as the Holocaust, and there are some massacres that are clearly not, such as Katyn, but in between there is a vast, gristly spectrum that in the absence of any strict and universally accepted definition of the term is dominated by quacks and cranks driven more by politics, competing
Apostrophes around “opposition” because even something like the Communist Party is far more deserving of the label than the gaggle of discredited 1990s-throwbacks who constitute the Western-approved challengers to Putin’s rule in RPR-PARNAS. But I digress. Anyhow, latest news: Mikhail Kasyonov (known as Misha 2 Percent for the percentage he took as kickbacks on government contracts when he
Why Is America Richer Than It’s Smart?
The following leaflets are being spread in Slavyansk, a once focal point of the Donbass resistance that was recaptured by Ukrainian forces in July last year: Translation: How to recognize your typical separatist? Calls for the entry of Russian troops or suggests surrendering to Russia. Propagandizes Russian symbols and spreads the idea of the “Russian world.” Denigrates the values of
Here are three very important graphs for comprehending the ebb and flow of Russia’s relations with the West, and why what some are now calling the New Cold War might well be here to stay. Russian approval of the United States (green is positive, red is negative): Russian approval of the EU: While it’s hard to
I could never take UVAgate seriously. To be unapologetically blunt, even if it was all literally true, all those lurid accounts of broken glass and so forth… so what? There are about 15,000 homicides in the US every year. Rapes are an order of magnitude higher; around 250,000 per year as of 2011, according to
It has the world’s highest number of guns per unit of GDP, a population fast outgrowing the land’s carrying capacity, is riven by ethnic and religious divisions, and its cities look something like the Counter-Strike map de_dust. Otherwise, I don’t know much about Yemen. So I will not wax knowledgeable about it except insofar as the
This will probably be of no surprise to people who follow Russian sentiments, but still worth pointing out that according to the latest polls by Levada – an independent polling agency headed by pro-Western liberals – support for this thing called “Western-style democracy” has never been lower. This is quite a change from 2012, at the height
The Western media is having a field day with this motley gathering of Neo-Nazis and assorted freaks at the grandiosely named International Russian Conservative Forum – none of the more serious alternative right European parties, such as the National Front or Fidesz, bothered turning up, and neither did serious Russian nationalists – and for once they might just have a
The benevolent dictator, much like Communism, seems to be one of those semi-mythical things that seem to be good in theory but rarely if ever pan out in practice. But every so often there occurs an exception. If there was one man who embodied the archetype, it was Lee Kuan Yew, who passed away earlier today
Russian Opposition Journalist Andrey Babitsky Discovers Western Freedom of Speech
It became symbolic of the absurdity of Yanukovych’s kleptocracy when it was seized by the February Revolutionaries at his Mezhigorye residence. But now, it is nowhere to be found. “In effect, it was stolen. But by whom? I have a list of objects that weren’t even confiscated. They were shown only on TV. Two months I spent sending