France is offering asylum to Christians fleeing ISIS in Iraq. For some strange reason, whenever I say that the same can be done for Palestinians, people become annoyed and start twitching uncontrollably in mute anger.

Maybe that’s because Palestinians and Iraqi Christians are so fundamentally different that safety, shelter , good living conditions and a chance to settle in a very rich country is not something that can possibly interest Palestinians. No, they are above such trivial things. The real help to them consists of rich, well-fed people who live in complete safety marching in the streets, yelling “Death to Israel!” Christians, on the other hand, merit a more substantial aid than “Death to ISIS!” marches.

OK, let’s brainstorm. I just discovered that if I am to ask for a sabbatical for 2015-16, I have to do it now or forever hold my peace.

I can ask for a semester-long sabbatical at 100% of pay or for a year-long one at 50%. What do you, dear blog readers, think I should choose? I trust your opinions because the last time I asked you which of the 2 possible conferences to attend, you picked one, I went there, and eventually published a book thanks to the important information I discovered there.

The year-long sabbatical will let me write the entire second book. The topic is kind of urgent. It is something that has to be written fast or not at all. Plus, having 2 books before the age of 40 is kind of cool. And I really wouldn’t mind not to work for a year. I like being at home.

But 50% of salary is not super attractive. I like money. Plus, I don’t want people to think I dislike working.

Of course, asking doesn’t mean I will get it, so nothing is set in stone anyway.

We are such a weird little town. Somebody left this truck parked right in the middle of the road about an hour ago. This is not the world’s busiest thoroughfare but still. The police is now coming to sort this out.

Plus, my contractor showed me a bullet hole in his truck. In his unique lazy droll, he said somebody was hunting squirrels and accidentally hit the truck. The bullet lodged right next to the open window.

The wonders of small town living.

“If Western leaders believe Ukraine is asui generis crisis that, once resolved, will allow them to focus on other things, they had better think again.” So true. In their reaction both to the Israeli/Palestinian and Russian/Ukrainian conflicts, the West just wants the conflicting sides to shut up and go away because the noise they are making prevents the West to wallow in delicious contemplation of its imaginary misry.

“According to a poll released yesterday by CNN, the nine leading prospective 2016 GOP presidential candidates all barely hit double-digits among Republican and independent voters.” Hello, President Hillary!

“The ACA requires insurance companies to spend at least 85% of premium revenue on medical care. What’s good for the goose, is good for the gander. Require any institution that has students that are getting federal loans to spend 85% on “instruction.” Otherwise, no student loans.” Hear, hear!

It takes all I’ve got not to wish PUPPPS on idiots who drawl, “I can’t say I really understand what motivates people to go through this stuff” about women who are trying to avoid pregnancy.

“Sadly, our systems are increasingly set up to let the greedy and jealous grab and hold power.” Yes, because in the past “our systems” were set to let the altruistic and generous to grab and hold power. And of course, this is written by a white guy, who else?

The best concluding sentence to an article, ever: “The evidence continues to accumulate that the Pope is Catholic. Sooner or later even the press will figure this out.”

“The British government announced today that it will hold a public inquiry into the murder of KGB agent-turned-dissident Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned with radioactive polonium in London in 2006.” Because now, suddenly, that murder became a crime and the millions brought to the UK by bandits from Russia are not looking as attractive?

“There is dissent in Putin’s inner circle. Alexei Kudrin, a close associate of the Russian President and a member of his presidential economic council, issued a warning that Russia is going in the wrong direction in an interview with Itar-Tass, a state-run news agency.” There is no “dissent.” This guy wouldn’t offer a squeak without an order from Putin. Let’s wake up already and stop projecting.

“Scan the New York Times bestseller list and you’ll find plenty of mysteries and thrillers. A novel about two children during the Second World War. A female protagonist dealing with substance abuse. Not a single novel about children whose parents can’t find work and must subsist on wits and government handouts. No stories about a carpenter living in his car with his family, chasing across the country in search of any kind of work.” Yes, it seems like all everybody wants to read are escapist fantasies. And that’s just sad.

“By running an experiment among Germans collecting their passports or ID cards in the citizen centers of Berlin, we find that individuals with an East German family background cheat significantly more on an abstract task than those with a West German family background. The longer individuals were exposed to socialism, the more likely they were to cheat on our task.” Tell me about it.

I had no idea there were still folks who are dense enough to believe that the conflict between Israel and Palestine has anything to do with religion: “These people are fighting a conflict based almost entirely on their differing religious views, and the fact that people are still killing each other over the belief that their faith is right while all others are false is shameful and should not be supported or excused by rational people.”

“The tragedy of MH17 should be a wake-up call to Western leaders to stop dragging their feet and to take decisive action against Putin the pariah.” Pariah??? Putin is swooned over in Latin America, welcomed in China, and secretly adored by the EU. Wishful thinking should have its limits.

“How many women *never* orgasm?” None, of course. Those whose conscious prohibition against sexual pleasure is too high experience it in sleep.

“My view is that what the Russians did in Crimea, in particular, was disturbing but probably not all that serious at the same time.” If this issue is not that serious to you (which is a perfectly legitimate approach to take) then maybe it’s a good idea not to write thousands of garbled and stupid words on this frivolous and insignificant little affair.

What this silly photographer doesn’t get is that this isn’t USSR in decay. It is what USSR was like the entire time.

Incredible, just incredible:

An international arbitration court ruled on Monday that Russia must pay $50 billion for expropriating the assets of Yukos, the former oil giant whose ex-owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky fell foul of the Kremlin. Finding that Russian authorities had subjected Yukos to politically-motivated attacks, the panel made an award to a group of former Yukos shareholders that equates to more than half the entire fund Moscow has set aside to cover budget holes.

These idiots are so intent on being stupid like it’s going out of style. Castigating the vicious gang of bandits called “Yukos” was the only good thing Putin’s regime ever did. Do you know why there are so few voices of dissent coming out of Russia today? Do you know why the words “human rights activists” leave everybody in Russia heaving with laughter? That’s because Yukos bought every such activist and turned him or her into a mouthpiece for the defense of its gang leader Khodorkovsky. Yukos are criminals of the worst order. And they never had any “assets.” Jeez, people, use your heads. Where would they get “assets” from, two seconds after the collapse of the USSR where nobody was allowed by law to have any “assets”?

The Yukos gangsters were given some money to keep for the criminals sitting in the Kremlin. Then the Kremlin criminals decided it was time to get their blood money back from the Yukos branch of the gang. So they did. And now the European court decides it has nothing better to do than to adjudicate disputes among murderers as to who is more “entitled” to their ill-gotten gains?

It is obvious to everybody at this point that the EU is not going to do anything to improve the situation in the East. But it could try not to make things worse. 

Hopeless dumb-asses.

With the frequency of my visits to the dentist, you’d think I have several rows of teeth, like a shark.

I have so much work to do, research, syllabi, tenure dossier, translation, supervising the contractor, sending out the book, etc. But instead of doing all this, I have to spend 5 hours in the dental chair. Grrrrrr.

According to a recent survey, 82% of people in Russia believe that Ukrainians have been brain-washed into not noticing “the bloody crimes of the Kievan Junta.” Since it’s impossible to prove a negative, there is no way for Ukrainians to demonstrate that there is no Junta in Kiev. Especially since it’s so convincing for Russia to believe it exists.

I really wish more people realized what unsolicited efforts to “help” really conceal.

The really funny part is that my Ukrainian side of the family was always deeply pro-Russian. It’s the Jews in the family that were life-long passionate Ukrainian nationalists.

As I told you last week, the Ukrainian side of the family is from South-East Ukraine. The fighting right now is occurring right where they were all born and grew up. This means they were all Ukrainian speakers as they were growing up. They had to Russianize their (mine, as well) last name and unlearn Ukrainian to be able to get educated and employed in white-collar jobs back in the USSR. And this is an enormous trauma. The only way to process it is to devalue what you have lost. Which is exactly what they did.

My mother would always drive me to distraction with her constant, “We are Russian people” and “Our Russian culture is the best.” Not that there is anything wrong with being Russian but I hate inaccuracy and dislike wannabeism. Even in the face of all the nasty, degrading remarks about the inferiority of Ukrainians that her numerous really Russian friends would regale her with on a regular basis, my mother persisted. All of her relatives were the same. She wouldn’t tolerate even the most innocent comment of mine she’d perceive as anti-Russian.

“Did you tell your new colleagues you are Russian?” she’d ask.

“No,” I’d say. “Because I’m not.”

“How can you say this?” she’d exclaim. “It’s all your father’s fault with this silly Ukrainian nationalism of his.”

Of course, now all of a sudden, the Ukrainians in the family are discovering that they are, indeed, not Russian. The real Russians are bombing the region where they grew up. The Russian media tell them they are subhuman and ought to be wiped out. The family’s Ukrainians are now recognizing the enormity of what they had lost and the reasons why they were deprived of their entire language and culture.

Of course, as we all remember, the official story was that Russia needed to invade Ukraine to “protect” its Russian-speakers from some mysterious threat. The result is not what the invaders hoped for.

I have to say, against the background of the dawdling, impotent, fussy EU, the US is showing up for Ukraine in a way that impresses:

The U.S. State Department is putting out photographic evidence to back up U.S. claims that Russian forces have fired across the border at Ukrainian military forces, and that Russia-backed separatists have used heavy artillery provided by Russia in attacks on Ukrainian forces from inside Ukraine.

It would have been harder for Russia to keep up the invasion of Ukraine if it didn’t feel a constant tacit support of the EU. There would still be an invasion, of course, but the scope might have been smaller. Western Europe is fading away, in every sense of the world. 

France has ceded its place as the intellectual leader of the Western civilization. It has degenerated to open fascism and the worship of the pathetic little Russian neo-Nazi Limonov. Nobody in Europe is in too much of a hurry to take France’s place at the helm. Of course, I’ve been hoping that Spain would finally take back its place as the intellectual and cultural center of the West but I’m not delusional, I know that’s just my silly dream.

The UK has eviscerated its intellectuals on too many levels for them to be able to make any impact on anybody. Germany has been intellectually bankrupt since the time when all of its civilizational advances led the world to the dead-end of Hitlerism. The Scandinavian countries will, surely, awaken one day and stun the world but for now they are descending deeper and deeper into an intellectual slumber. The Netherlands and Belguim are still reeling from their bizarre experiments with “multiculturalism.” Hungary has become a place it is too shameful even to notice. Eastern Europe will need at least 100 more years to get over the legacy of the Soviet domination. And that’s only if Russia lets them do that. Italy and Greece haven’t produced anything for centuries and are now stuck dealing with their bizarre levels of corruption for God knows how long. Canada is too overawed by the US to believe in its own capacity to create anything of value.

For now, I’m not seeing any alternative to the United States becoming the West’s intellectual leader. That will be a curious development. As Russians say, a holy place is never empty. So somebody will be stepping into the void. The question now is: who will that be?

P.S. I’m talking about intellectual and cultural leadership. Intellectual and cultural. Mentioning the Marshall Plan in this context will not be an intelligent thing to do.

Google Translate translates “located in Mississauga” as “located in Toronto.” I really have to wonder what it has against Mississauga.