One of the least surprising poll results in modern history comes from Gallup:   Americans’ top source of financial concern is, brace yourself,  “lack of money,” afflicting 17% of those polled.There are a few people around whose main financial problem is that they keep running out of sacks to store all their money in, but […]

Russia appears to be moving toward a geopolitical strategy in Asia that complements American goals, if this recent piece by top Russian foreign policy expert Sergei Karaganov, one of Russia’s top foreign policy intellectuals is any guide.  Karaganov argues that China will inevitably be an important source of capital and economic growth as Russia tries […]

The great waves of civil rights legislation and urban policy since the 1960s had successes and some failures.  The great success has been the establishment of a much larger and better educated Black middle class.  Forget the high profile achievements of the few — two of the last three Secretaries of State, the current President […]

California’s budget cuts are striking the state where it really hurts: the justice and education systems. The bad news from the courts just doesn’t seem to stop: Over the last 3 years, the funds available to state courts dropped by 30 percent. $350 million will be cut from this year’s budget. Forty percent of the […]

At least that’s what  this 2009 ADL poll suggests.  Majorities in Hungary, Poland and Spain believed that Jews had “too much power” in the business world.  74 percent of Spaniards polled believed that Jews have too much power in international markets.  Majorities in Austria, Poland and Hungary (and more than 40 percent in Germany and Spain […]

A newly declassified US intelligence report raises concern over the possibility that China could develop high-powered microwave weapons capable of disrupting communication networks and other electronic infrastructure in Taiwan and beyond.The speculation about a Chinese capability of this sort is, as far as we know, still just that — speculation — and the US has […]

Do international tribunals and war crime trials deter people from committing war crimes?Probably not, says an editorial in Bloomberg Businessweek.   High profile war crime and genocide trials don’t seem to have deterred the Libyan, Syrian, Yemeni and Bahraini governments from some pretty dicey steps — and extremely brutal wars continue to grind on across […]

We are still not sure what kind of allies we have in Libya.  This is not the best possible news.

A survey of 1,010 Palestinians conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research found that 84 percent say that “Over time, Palestinians must work to get back all the land for a Palestinian state.” Two thirds of respondents said “The real goal should be to start with two states but then move to it all being one […]

Hugo Chavez — the great Bolivarian leader of the Axis of Ankle-Biters and voluble critic of Yanqui capitalismo in all its sordid forms — is keeping busy during his medical hiatus in Cuba.Chavez, it appears, has continued to govern through Twitter.For over two decades, Chavez ability to rule in spite of a tragically mismanaged economy […]