In Samuel Johnson’s famous poem on London, he described some of its dangers: Here falling houses thunder on your head And here a female atheist talks you dead.In southern California, houses may fall on your head, but the female atheists are doing less talking than looming; apparently a particularly attractive one is going to be […]

The phrase ‘nation building’ conjures up ideas of foreign policy as social work: public health clinics, democracy workshops and so on.  Yes, but the first and foremost requirement of nation building is state building — building a strong government that can enforce the law and suppress armed opposition — and the main task of state […]

Brazil, last seen obsessing over rumors of a US plot to take over the Amazon, has since begun to fight back against real-life invaders. Various observers report that the Brazilian military has gone on the offensive on its own soil this month to push out heavily armed militias controlled by drug cartels that have set […]

In its issue of August 9, 2011, The Christian Century reported that Michele Bachmann, the Republican presidential candidate, had resigned from her church six days before launching her campaign. (This was also reported in some secular media.) The church in question is Salem Lutheran Church in Stillwater, Minnesota, which is affiliated with the Wisconsin Evangelical […]

With Vice President visiting Japan and the NATO assisted Libyan rebels consolidating (one hopes) their control of Tripoli, this is an odd and impolitic moment to say so, but the decline of the trilateral alliance is picking up speed.Trilateralism was the response of the US and its closest allies to the perceived decline in American […]

I really cannot resist commenting on two phenomena that seem quite different in nature but whose simultaneity suggests a few curmudgeonly observations. I am of course still on curmudgeon alert, but I can’t get to my real work today until I get these observations off my chest.First, about Washington’s earthquake yesterday early afternoon. There isn’t […]

As eurozone countries prepare to cough up the necessary funds for Greece’s bailout, the news that just one country — Finland — has struck a side deal with Athens to ensure Greece does not default on Finnish loans threatens to shake up the entire bailout.  The FT reports: The Greco-Finnish collateral deal, reached last week […]

Anti-government protests are springing up in yet another country. This time, Vietnam is the lucky winner. Yet in contrast to the situation in the Arab world, the Vietnamese government isn’t the object of the demonstrators’ ire — at least not to start.The protestors are angry about Chinese expansion into disputed areas of the South China […]

Thanks to this afternoon’s earthquake in northern Virginia, the palatial TAI headquarters building in Washington is being temporarily evacuated.  No one has been injured and there are no signs of structural damage; nevertheless buildings are being evacuated all across the region and we are no exception.Blogging will resume as soon as we can find a […]

Today the Telegraph reports that Chinese officials are scrambling to protect their business interests in Libya after rebel leaders suggested that they could give a cold shoulder to countries that didn’t help the revolution. The Telegraph quotes an official at the Libyan oil firm Agoco as saying “We don’t have a problem with western countries like […]