My newborn nephew looks like an Inca warrior. Even when he sleeps, he has this resolute, serious look. My niece Klubnikis looked like this, too, when she was born.

These are Peruvian babies, in case people are wondering about the Inca connection.

Have you ever noticed that there has never been a massacre between atheists and agnostics. . .

Non-believers, we don’t murder anyone over religious disputes. We don’t murder people for their belief or their lack of belief.

That’s shockingly ignorant. Are people honestly unaware of the persecution and slaughter of religious people by atheists in the USSR? Nobody heard of the Soviet demolition of churches? The thousands of priests killed and starved to death in concentration camps? The killings of the faithful of all religions? Has anybody wondered why there were so few practitioners of any religion in the USSR? Was that an accident? Or a result of terror?

Human beings kill. Religious belief or lack thereof is just an excuse. And anybody who says “my religious, irreligious, anti-religious, etc. group is pure as driven snow while yours kills” is a dumbass. 

I rarely get a chance to be ashamed of being a Spanish speaker but this is one of those occasions. 

It’s refreshing since usually I’m ashamed of being a Russian speaker.

I’m feeling very Christmasy, people. I’ve got a new little nephew, my colleagues are all great people and even the HR is coming through for me in a very helpful way, I just received a 800-page book that I really want to read, and I finally came up with an idea for the conclusion of the last chapter of my book. 

I did some really good work today, so I can now lie in front of the fireplace and wait for my pheasants to defrost. (This last phrase sounds very funny to me, especially given my origins.) 

Once again, Assad used chemical weapons against civilians. At the same time, Amnesty International is accusing Russia of crimes against humanity in Syria because the only thing Russians bomb are civilian living quarters, mosques, markets and hospitals.

The idea that somebody else is going to snatch chestnuts out of an open fire for you needs to be abandoned forthwith. Everybody has their own goals and is pursuing them. 

There is nothing more transformative and intellectually enriching than the realization that every person on the planet is just as human as you are. In a rapidly globalizing world, the price for not understanding this will be steep. Both the Republican and the Democratic debates on foreign policy made it very clear that very few of our aspiring leaders are capable of understanding that other people are just as bad, just as good and just as dedicated to their own interests as we are.

Germany approved the scandalous Nord Stream pipeline, hugely strengthening Putin and locking the EU in another unbreakable cycle of dependence on Russia.

I have absolutely no other explanation for what Merkel has been doing than that she hates the EU, hates Europe and wants to wreak some sort of vengeance on it. The way Germany behaved throughout the global economic crisis, ensuring that as many countries as possible soured on the EU, the way Merkel trampled on the sovereignty of her neighbors in what concerns the refugees, and now the pipeline decision that will make many European countries very angry – Southern, Central, and now Northern Europe are being angered one after another with a truly German meticulousness.

I’m not a Merkel hater. I always wanted to give Merkel the benefit of the doubt. But after all this, I can’t think of any reason for all these actions that doesn’t include dumb, possibly unconscious malice.

I don’t know what can happen to let the EU survive right now. And that’s something that will enormously strengthen Putin (or the successor his criminal organization will appoint.) Plus, this will produce more unhinged far-right parties in power and an even more rapidly fraying social safety net.

And while I’m on the subjects that annoy me, Canadian healthcare system sucks. If that’s what free universal health care is, then fuck it.

MSNBC is running an hour-long feature glorifying Trump. I watched for 10 minutes, threw up at something like “since age 24 Trump was fiercely anti-establishment”, and turned off the TV.

People, help me out. Is this Roger Cohen who wrote the completely unhinged article in today’s NYTIMES the same Cohen who writes crazy Putinoid pieces for The Nation? Or is it a different Cohen? And if so, what made the bearers of such a glorious name suddenly go crazy en masse?

Now Trump is defending the love of his life Putin from charges of killing journalists.

The funny thing is that I have no idea which journalists Putin is supposed to have had killed either. I literally live inside the Russian news cycle and know an enormous lot about Putin’s crimes. The vicious little creep has done a lot of horrible things and keeps doing more of them every day. But I can’t think of any reporters Putin could have murdered. Moreover, I don’t know why he’d want to do that. The way the Russian media space is set up makes journalists extremely innocuous. Why would Putin want to waste energy on killing them?

This is all very mystifying. Everybody knows how much I detest Putin but can we discuss his real crimes instead of these imaginary charges? It doesn’t help to throw around accusations that nobody can substantiate.