Новости за 05.09.2019

In a recent interview with Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, Russian President Vladimir Putin had some very interesting and accurate comments about the current political situation in the United States, particularly as it relates to America's middle class.  Here are some of the key comments:

The battle to reclaim Syria moved forward this week. Syrian Arab Army forces reclaimed the town of Khan Sheikoun last week prompting a flurry of moves by all involved, most notably Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The largest pro-Israel organization in the United States is not composed of Jews, but of Christian evangelicals, with a total membership of 7 million, more than 2 million more members than the entirety of the American Jewish community. 

The US Navy and Marine Corps are conducting a month-long war exercise in Alaska against the rising threats of Russia and China in the Arctic region. 

— What would you change in the education of modern schools?           

The New Republic and The Nation certainly rank as the oldest and historically most influential opinion publications in America, the former now a century old and the latter a century and a half.

The mark of a true prophet isn’t perfect accuracy, but powerful ideas. It’s impossible to foresee the future in every detail, but a true prophet should give us the ideas that explain what he doesn’t foresee. For example, in one way George Orwell got the future completely wrong in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). In his totalitarian surveillance state, the Party harshly punishes “sexcrime,” which includes “all sexual misdeeds whatever [including] homosexuality and other perversions.”

Orlov is one of our favorite essayists on Russia and all sorts of other things. He moved to the US as a child, and lives in the Boston area.

European natural gas prices reached their lowest level in at least a decade this week, fuelled by a battle for market share between the world’s largest producers, Russia and the US.