Frozen Toothpaste

On today’s “Other People’s Words,” John F. Burns’s — former Baghdad Bureau chief for the New York Times — on the way forward in Iraq. This quote is from an absolutely excellent conversation he had Monday with Charlie Rose. If you have the time (and bandwidth), I would recommend that you watch the entire thing.
I can understand why there […]

I’m fairly certain that the most dangerous people in the world are those that nihilistically believe that their group — especially one they find essential to their identity — is under attack. Many relatively powerless people with such fears, rational or otherwise, resort to terrorism. Having no ability to defend their group through conventional warfare, they strike anything and […]

The latest Ken Burns’s epic The War aired on PBS over the last two weeks. The fifteen-hour program tells about America’s involvement in in the Second World War by focusing on four towns: Mobile, Alabama; Luverne, Minnesota; Sacramento, California; and Waterbury, Connecticut. In choosing this device, Burns his made a film both richer and narrower […]

It would be easy to say that the trouble with Myanmar — Burma if you’re a traditionalist, rebel, or new arrival from the 1990s — is that it’s ruled by an exceptionally undemocratic junta, which is willing to its exploit its citizens, even the clergy, and considers force a perfectly reasonable option in the face of dissent.
And indeed, Burma’s […]

In a recent piece, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman identified himself as a global warming skeptic. But before you go away thinking that a liberal-leaning columnist at the Times actually doubts that global warming is occurring, we should clarify.
In the column, Mr Friedman discusses his recent visits to Doha and Dalian, mentioning his awe […]