Before I join the international chorus of protest against last week’s arrest of the Russian oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, I’d like to reflect for a moment on a few other things that have happened in Russia over the past decade.
Forget your warm childhood trick-or-treating memories, and don’t think about how adorable your neighbor’s children look in their devil costumes, with their miniature pitchforks and long red tails. Instead, focus on Halloween as an objective, and deeply peculiar, phenomenon.
In Bangkok this week, President Bush used long words — multiparty talks, security guarantees, long-range missiles — to discuss the problem of North Korea with North Korea’s neighbors.
Enter any of Frankfurt’s grand hotels on any evening during Frankfurt’s annual book fair and a scene worthy of a German Woody Allen — if that isn’t a complete contradiction in terms — spreads out before you in the lobby.
For the sake of my hosts — and for the sake of the transatlantic relationship that they were trying to promote — I am not going to tell you precisely what country I was in, but a couple of days ago I listened to the foreign minister of that country make a dinnertime speech.
Is life today more dangerous than it used to be? It certainly seems that way. Between Alar in apples (remember that one?), acrylamide in crackers and trans fats in just about everything, our food has become inedible. What with the radiation emitted by our houses, the arsenic in the water and the toxic rays coming
Imagine, if you can, an issue that united the entire American political and business elite.
They’re here! They’re angry! And they’re naked! Yes, I’m afraid it’s true — if you happen to be in Cancun, Mexico: The first anti-globalization protesters already have arrived in the place where the world’s negotiators are to gather tomorrow for a meeting of the World Trade Organization.
Ferk, nerk, es-em-dee. Pooka, purpa, ar-tee-o. No, I am not writing code, or gibberish, or avant-garde poetry. On the contrary, I am writing a list of terms that you, too, will need to know if you want to keep up with the big hitters in Washington this fall. Here’s a hint: It’s to do with
About halfway through my extensive dealings with Lufthansa last week — after I had been sent, futilely, to Dulles Airport to change a ticket but before I was told, definitively, that the ticket could not be changed — I began to have a sense of deja vu.
