A little stroll down memory lane: The appeasement policy began in February 2009. Russia had invaded its neighbor and former client state, Georgia, six months earlier. The lame-duck George W. Bush administration planned to put missile defense structures in Eastern … Continue reading →
Commenter “Kate” writes: I don’t think anyone on our side of the fence knows what’s really going on in Russia, or whether public opinion there makes any difference. Some military observers are now estimating Russian military deaths so far at … Continue reading →
One of the reasons for the urgency of the Manhattan Project during World War II was the fear that if the US didn’t develop a nuclear weapon, Germany would. However close or however far Germany may actually have been from … Continue reading →
I’m going to respond to this recent comment, not in order to especially pick on its author, but because I think it’s an example of the type of thought process and the sorts of analogies we see quite a bit … Continue reading →
Recently I’ve made some comparisons to Munich and Neville Chamberlain’s surrender of the Sudetenland to Hitler. But I didn’t go into any real depth while referencing him. But then I realized that his name has become synonymous for “surrender” and … Continue reading →
I was very surprised, when Zelenskyy was elected, to learn that he was Jewish. The first surprise was that there were any Jews left in Ukraine at all, given the history of Jews there. The second was that the Ukrainians … Continue reading →
Commenter Geoffrey Britain writes to commenter “om” as follows: “Your understanding of Putin is incomplete because you refuse to consider Russia’s view of NATO upon its border as intolerable.” Actually, though, I think that just about everyone here has “considered” … Continue reading →
I’ve been thinking about 20th Century history lately. At the beginning of WWII, not only did Hitler invade Poland, but Stalin did as well in the days when they were buddy-buddy for a while. And it was Stalin who took … Continue reading →
(1) For sanctions to work, they should not necessarily be considered a deterrence or a punishment. I suppose they would be a deterrence if the leader or leaders involved could be deterred that easily, but that sort of leader isn’t … Continue reading →
For most of my life I never had any interest in genealogy, although I did have an interest in family stories. And it was the family story of a long-lost great-uncle, a mystery I wanted to solve, that propelled me … Continue reading →
What went on in this country post-January 6th, and what’s going on in Canada now, have historical precedents not just in repressive dictatorships but even in the US and Canada. It seems that the authorities are always frightened of demonstrations … Continue reading →
For me, the 1980s are somewhat of a blur, because I spent them having a baby and then raising that baby and intermittently working part-time. I was exhausted much of the time, and not really part of the zeitgeist. Which … Continue reading →