Let’s face it: We don’t really know why North Korea decided to test a nuclear weapon last week, why it has suddenly declared the Korean War armistice of 1953 null and void, why it has launched several test missiles and is preparing to launch others.
If one were trying to define the lowest point in the long and venerable tradition of American anti-communism, surely it came in 2003, with the publication of Ann Coulter’s Treason. Coulter’s “thesis” in this work of cut-and-paste-from-the-Internet history was that a straight line could be drawn between Americans such as Alger Hiss, who spied for …
A couple of years ago, Adam Zamoyski — who is, yes, a friend — told me that he was revising The Polish Way, a history of Poland he had published back in 1987. At first he had thought merely to shorten a few over-long paragraphs and check facts. But as he re-read his work, he …
Drip, drip, drip: The neverending stream of revelations has been compared by one British member of Parliament to “torture” — waterboarding? — and rightly so. One day, it emerges that a senior MP has charged British taxpayers £2,000 (about $3,200 as of yesterday) for the cleaning of the moat on his 13th-century estate. A few …
Apparently, President Obama told some good jokes at a dinner. The British Parliament is mired in an expenses scandal (one politician charged the government more than $3,000 to repair a leaking pipe under his tennis court). In China, they’re marking the anniversary of the earthquake that left some 80,000 people dead or missing a year …
After the new Starbucks opened, I walked by the place a couple of times, just to see the crowds. Strategically located midway between the university and the stock exchange, the world’s best-known coffee franchise immediately attracted a well-heeled clientele. Lines twisted around inside the shop and out the door. Up and down the street, blue-jeaned …
Yesterday, the front page of my morning newspaper featured a photograph of uniformed Mexican police officers, machine guns at the ready, surgical masks strapped to their faces, seemingly prepared to defend their compatriots against the sudden outbreak of swine flu. I live in Warsaw, which is pretty far from Mexico City. But even if I …
We’ve been waiting a long time for political upheaval to follow in the wake of technological change, and on April 7, it seemed to have arrived. From Moldova, of all places, came news of the Twitter Revolution:
Odd though it sounds, there is deep satisfaction to be had in watching one’s child clutch the pen of Thomas Jefferson’s “polygraph machine,” steady it with his grubby hands and carefully draw two identically wobbly circles.
It is no fun to be the one who rains on the parade, and, if nothing else, President Obama’s trip to Europe has been quite a parade. Or maybe “sold-out concert tour” is the better metaphor.
