Putin Has a New Opposition—and It’s Furious at Defeat in Ukraine

Right-wing nationalists are spreading a dangerous “stab-in-the-back” myth to explain Russia’s crushing defeats.

A new Russian protest movement is coalescing, but it’s neither pro-democracy nor anti-war. Instead, it’s the most extreme of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s supporters, who have grown increasingly furious at the unfolding military disaster for Russia in the six-month-long war in Ukraine. They want Putin to escalate the war, use more devastating weapons, and hit Ukrainian civilians even more mercilessly. And they’ve openly attacked the Russian military and political leadership for supposedly holding back Russia’s full might—even as they rarely mention Putin by name.

Putin Threatens to Halt All Energy Exports to the West

Russian president Vladimir Putin warned Wednesday that Russia would stop all energy exports to the West if Europe goes against its standing contracts and caps prices of Russian exports due to the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Jacobin, Air-Conditioning, and Productivist Nonsense

About 10 years ago, two young radicals showed up on Marxmail and soon found themselves clashing with old fogies on the list.

One of them was the 19-year-old Bhaskar Sunkara who unsubbed from the list to get away from all the nasty digs against Barack Obama:

It’s a Capitalism-Induced Ecological Crisis

One-third of Pakistan is underwater. Record heat waves blanket the globe driving up temperatures beyond what humans can survive. Polar glaciers are melting much faster than scientists predicted. Droughts, fires and floods are ravaging the planet, forcing the displacement of tens of millions of people. And this is just the beginning.

Twitter: Platform of Exchange … Vehicle of Duplicity

“The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth … If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. The theory of our Constitution is that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market . . . The First Amendment itself ensures the right to respond to speech we do not like, and for good reason. Freedom of speech and thought flows not from the beneficence of the state but from the inalienable rights of the person … Society has the right and civic duty to engage in open, dynamic, rational discourse.”

– United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709, 724 (2012).

Educația și cultura generală. Editorial-eveniment de Ioan-Aurel Pop, președintele Academiei Române

Toate societățile civilizate, în ultimele două secole mai ales și, în unele cazuri, de la Renaștere încoace, s-au îngrijit atent de educația membrilor lor. Educația este un set de teorii și de practici prin care se transmite experiența de viață a generațiilor adulte și cultura către generațiile de copii și tineri, încât aceștia să fie pregătiți pentru integrarea lor în comunitate.

Putin’s Next Move

The retreat of Russia’s forces from the Kharkiv district marks the most significant defeat for Russia since the start of war in Ukraine. The conflict however, is far from over argues Tchantouridze, Putin will now seek to decimate Ukraine’s economic and military infrastructure in a war of attrition, knowing that if Russia incur and further losses in the Black Sea and Kherson, they could lose more than just the war.

Domestic Political Chaos Is Not the Only Thing Happening in Iraq

It appears that calm has returned to Iraq after the reported intervention of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s chief and widely respected Shia cleric. In recent weeks, violence had occurred in and near parliament, which has been unable to implement last October’s election results. The clashes involved demonstrators and armed forces loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, the leading candidate in the elections, and militias loyal to a loose array of rival Shia political parties calling themselves the Coordination Framework.

Iraq: A crisis of elite, consensus-based politics turns deadly

Overview of the crisis

Iraq is facing one of its worst political crises in years. Normally formed via elite political consensus, more than 11 months after Iraq’s October 2021 parliamentary elections, the government has yet to be formed, the longest such impasse since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion reset the political order. Despite calls for dialogue, neither side seems willing to make mutually acceptable concessions. On Aug. 29 bloody street battles erupted in Baghdad and then in southern Iraq, leaving more than 30 dead and many more injured. Violence has stopped, for now, but the political crisis is far from over, even if superficial solutions may be found in the interim. Iraqis anxiously await the end of the Arba’een holiday on Sept. 17 to see what will happen next.