When the twin crises erupted on Wall Street and Main Street, each one of them fierce in itself but far more frightening when they interacted, populists rushed forward to celebrate the demise of capitalism and, for added gratification, plunge their pitchforks into its dead corpse. Since then, they have had their champagne parties. By now, [...]
The five young men detained in Pakistan this week — like a whole new generation of jihadis — appear to have made considerable use of the Internet in their alleged approach to al Qaeda. Their story points out that, nine years after 9/11, terrorist networks are still not only able to stay in touch via [...]
Tonight Jewish kids will light the menorah, spin their dreidels and get their presents, but Hanukkah is the most adult of holidays. It commemorates an event in which the good guys did horrible things, the bad guys did good things and in which everybody is flummoxed by insoluble conflicts that remain with us today. It’s [...]
Nestlé has just announced that KitKat – Britain’s biggest-selling chocolate bar – will carry the Fairtrade logo from next month. But how much do consumers really know about the Fairtrade movement? Is it, as some say, an essential safety net that helps poor farmers earn a better living or, as others say, an example of [...]
IMAGINE you are a physician and a patient arrives in your office with a troubling and mysterious disease. Some of the symptoms are familiar, but others are not. You have never treated anyone with quite this set of problems. via Economic View – Tax Cuts Might Accomplish What Spending Hasn’t – NYTimes.com.
Perhaps when the history of our times is written, ours will be called The Era of Narcissistic Catechisms. To understand why this is the case it is enough to consider the fortunes of two green movements.On the main stage of global affairs this week we have the much touted UN climate change conference in Copenhagen. [...]
Five young Americans detained in eastern Pakistan had developed contacts with al Qaeda operatives through the Internet and were on their way to North Waziristan to join a militant training camp, said a senior Pakistani intelligence official. via Americans Detained in Pakistan Found to Have al Qaeda Links – WSJ.com.
Abe Greenwald on National Review Online.
President Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech Thursday is drawing praise from some unlikely quarters – conservative Republicans – who likened Obama’s defense of “just wars” to the worldview of his predecessor, Republican George W. Bush. It’s already being called the “Obama Doctrine” – a notion that foreign policy is a struggle of good and [...]
Since I gave him so much grief for accepting the prize in the first place, I have to give the president credit for the speech itself. He faced the impossible task of having to give multiple addresses at once: A speech his European hosts expected to hear from a Nobel Prize winner; a speech that [...]
