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Yuri Chekalin30.08.2026

Of all the languages I know, the Japanese word baishun—meaning prostitution—seems to me among the most evocative. There is something strangely melancholy and gentle in its sound, an echo of the feeling that sometimes overtakes us on a rainy day, when the damp scent of the earth makes us pause and think about eternal questions. […]

Yuri Chekalin28.08.2026

In summer Tokyo, the heat never falls from the sky. It rises from below—from the sun-baked asphalt, the blank concrete walls, the metal shells of vending machines. That evening, the air was thick and heavy. It seemed to drift reluctantly from one dark alley to another. I was walking through Nakano without any particular destination […]

Dmitri Drobnitsky24.08.2026

The United States and Canada—Donald Trump and Mark Carney—have failed to agree on new terms for their trade and tariff arrangements. Both sides are now blaming the other. Mr Trump says Canada is demanding “privileges like those of a US state without actually being one”. Mr Carney, Canada’s prime minister, argues that the new terms […]

Kamil Askerkhanov23.08.2026

The farther the story of Israel’s strikes in Syria unfolds, the less it looks like a conventional contest for influence. Israel has, in effect, drawn a line for Turkey: This is as far as Ankara can go. The latest strike on the Abu Duhur air base in northern Syria, coming hours after a Turkish delegation […]

Yuri Chekalin22.08.2026

The first thing I did in Tokyo was get lost. The labyrinth of Shinjuku Station swallowed me whole, the moment the train doors slid open with a soft, quiet sigh of sympathy. A massive river of people lifts you up and carries you through subterranean passageways, illuminated by endless billboards. You dissolve into this current […]

Robert Reich22.08.2026

What the wealthy and powerful — and Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent — don’t want you to know. The U.S. national debt has officially surpassed $40 trillion, months earlier than forecasters had expected — because of billions of dollars in lost revenue from Trump’s invalidated tariffs, Trump’s tax cuts (mostly to big corporations and the very […]

Robert Reich21.08.2026

Trump says he directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” military drills with South Korea, citing his “very good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un” — whom he calls “unthreatening and respectful.” Kim Jong Un is unthreatening and respectful? Hello? Trump also says he’s miffed at South Korea for refusing to help […]

Dmitri Drobnitsky20.08.2026

Trump family firm partners with Chinese AI model provider as Washington presses allies to choose sides. A company partly owned by members of President Trump’s family is doing business with a Hong Kong-based provider of Chinese artificial intelligence models — even as the Trump administration prepares to urge dozens of countries to choose between the […]

Yuri Chekalin20.08.2026

On August 19, 1991, an event began that would enter history under a dry bureaucratic acronym: the GKChP — the State Committee on the State of Emergency. Thirty-five years later, it is easy to look back and see those events as inevitable. The Soviet Union, it seems, was already doomed; the August coup merely added […]

Yaroslav Listov19.08.2026

Why Deng Xiaoping Saved China While Yanaev Lost the Soviet Union History sometimes confronts states with remarkably similar tests. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the two largest socialist states in the world faced crises of their political and economic systems: economic hardship, growing public discontent, factional struggles within the ruling elites, and mounting […]

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Priestesses of Love

August 17

Trump, Carney and the Limits of Tariff Power

Turkey and Israel: Is a Collision Becoming Inevitable?

The Backwards Clock

Who’s Raking it in as the National Debt Explodes?

Trump’s View of Everything in the World

Trump is Interested in Chinese AI

The GKChP: The Day the Soviet Union’s End Began

The GKChP and the Chinese Lesson

Priestesses of Love

August 17

Japanese Communism: A Century of Revolution, Underground Struggle, and Parliamentary Politics

Shipyards Matter More Than Aircraft Carriers