Did Stalin start WWII? The answer won’t surprise you

ACTS OF DICTATORS

India’s war on its Muslim citizens is escalating in plain sight and anyone who calls it out is targeted by Indian fascists. Meanwhile, the Erdogan regime abandons the Istanbul Convention on Women’s Rights, with Poland soon to follow.

Xi’s lies and twisted view of communist history. A new book tries to pin much of the blame for World War 2 on Stalin, but it ignores the unique evil of Nazism (and historical fact), while two new books on the North Korean regime ignore how Kim Jong Un uses tools other than force to maintain his power.

SCIENCE

A guide to different kinds of infinities, illustrated by the worst hotel since The Shining. Why Arctic infrastructure is at risk of rapid failure from climate change. How other long-term diseases can help us understand the threat of, and treatments for, long COVID.

Is dark matter real or are we just missing something about gravity? A massive new study points toward real particles. Astronomy images that look like ’70s sci-fi book covers (if you don’t know what I mean, see here).

RACE

A plethora of recent stories on US police abandoning their jobs turn out to miss important details — like that most just go to another police job.

A guide to what critical race theory — the great new imported bogeyman of the right — isn’t, from Indigenous X. How Texas is keeping the Trump hysteria alive and well.

Mainstream media obits mislead readers about war criminal and mass murderer Donald Rumsfeld — and what about the journalists who enabled him?

RELIGION

Southern Baptists condemn China’s genocide of Uyghurs — and Christians want more defences of people of other faiths. But should it be seen in the context of an attempt by the hard right to take over that shrinking community?

Why using access to communion for political ends is self-defeating, by US Catholics. Surviving — and sometimes not surviving — the Satanic abuse panic of the 1990s.

THE WHEELS OF CAPITALISM

East of Suez? The UK military has gone from being an arm of the British imperial state to being an arm of the US imperial state, with no one batting an eyelid. The US fracking boom is ending. Does that mean the loss of lots of jobs? Well, it never created many in the first place.

By giving a voice to the economic victims of Chinese aggression, China’s illegal claims to the South China Sea can be undermined. Trump, angered at being banned by Twitter, considered investing in far-right social media site Parler on the condition that it banned critics of him.

China’s attack on Big Tech has inflicted massive financial damage on investors.

FINALLY

Great Hatchet Jobs Of Our Time: I’ve long been a non-admirer of director Michael Haneke, whose shtick of “watch these bourgeois types gets their comeuppance for being bourgeois” has lasted him an entire, and interminable, directorial career.

Imagine my delight when I discovered this week that my favourite writer, Howard Hampton, did a drive-by shooting of the vile Funny Games — a film so bad Haneke made it twice — in 1998. Take it away, Howard.

And this is one of my favourite dog videos ever. Despite the Sisyphean nature of the task, there’s a true sense of achievement.