That long-running leftist delusion about how “We will make the world love us again” sure got old fast, didn’t it? (Never mind that outside of the jet-setting cliques of babbling salon intellectuals, our reputation around the world has always been pretty good – unlike the salon intellectuals, your humble correspondent actually gets out on the ground and meets real people with real ideas. But I | Read More »
This morning, I’m in Zurich on the way home from a few days in Nairobi (Kenya). This was a rather interesting and serious visit, and I got to spend quite a bit of time talking with both business and government leaders about their longer-term development plans and aspirations. If there is interest (vote in comments ), I can try to put together a more serious | Read More »
Over the past year, we’ve discussed a variety of prior-Presidential prototypes that Barack Obama seems to be following – by intent or outcome. Jimmy Carter is prominently mentioned – as is LBJ. But recent events prompt me to give you another one – of a presidency that never even happened. Barack Obama is Walter Mondale. And he insists on running – 25 years later – | Read More »
In the grand sweep of American history, the “War of 1812” seems to rank near the bottom of the list of events of possible importance. Just the name given to war seems to reflect this – naming nothing in particular to associate with that war, other than the year in which it began. However, the “War of 1812” (which actually stretched on until the end | Read More »
Today is an anniversary that is being marked rather somberly in places like the Baltic countries. Seventy years ago today, the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany – Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop – stunned the world by announcing a non-aggression pact between their two (totalitarian) countries. While there had been a great deal of vituperate invective between the two great | Read More »
This morning at the hotel here in Pretoria, I had breakfast with a businessman who is in town from Harare, the capitol of nearby Zimbabwe. He had a number of fascinating things to say about the present situation in Zimbabwe, which I’ll share below the fold.
There’s a nice little piece over in today’s Wall Street Journal authored by General Merrill McPeak, expressing his dismay at the premature termination of the build-out of the originally-planned fleet of the F-22 Raptor – the kick-*ss air-superiority fighter pictured above. The piece is rather good, so I’ll let you go read the whole thing via the link. I’ll just note a couple of things | Read More »
(Back in June, while I was in Washington, “Green Hell” author Steve Milloy graciously agreed to sit down for an interview. You can find my review of “Green Hell” here.) Q: At what point did you realize that you had accumulated enough material for a book? A: Having run JunkScience.com for 13 years now, I started to realize that on this issue someone really needed | Read More »
You might have noticed that Al Gore has recently been saying some very immodest things about anyone who dares to disagree with his views. Of course, when someone like Mr. Gore says things like that, it tells us more about his views than about those of his opponents. And what is the real agenda of Mr. Gore and his fellow-traveling greenshirts? If you want to | Read More »
When one heads north out of Bucharest (by either road or rail), it takes a considerable amount of time for the city to “fall away.” When that finally does happen, you find yourself out on the Wallachian plain – which is very flat, now nearly treeless, and (in summer) very hot. The cityscape and traffic of Bucharest are replaced by scenes of peasant farmers transporting | Read More »
(N.b. – This is actually a rearranged and expanded version of this post from last Thursday. I happened to stumble across the printed version of the cited article on Sweden over my morning tea earlier today, so I wanted to revisit this with more details and emphasis on Sweden. — Sk.) Last month (28 June) saw the 300th anniversary of the pivotal Battle of Poltava. | Read More »
I’ve suddenly been finding myself saddled with a surprising amount of travel – both recently-done and on the short-term schedule. If there’s a possible theme, it relates to what the next onset of economic growth will look like. And these days, it’s about a great deal more than what will drive the next surge of economic growth – it’s also about where the next surge | Read More »
Back during the 1980s, there were many left-right intellectual divides regarding the Soviet Union. One of the forgotten ones was: How should we regard the “Soviet Union?” Mushy-leftist types were fond of the notion that the Soviet Union was a relatively normal, basic “nation” – but one that was deservedly paranoid because of the 1941 German invasion (a line of thought conveniently stoked on a | Read More »
The FP has been too quiet for too long. Hence, let’s have some culinary upliftenment: (From the lunch menu in Iasi, Romania last Monday.) Overnight culinary open thread.
This hasn’t gotten much mention here – but when I was in Romania earlier in the week it was big, big news: The troubled Nabucco pipeline project — designed to diversify Europe’s energy supply and loosen Russia’s grip on the continent’s natural gas market — took a major step forward on July 13 with the signing of a transit agreement between Turkey and five European | Read More »
Maybe some societies should take their own national anthems to heart. E.g., excerpt: Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos battalions! (Citizens, to arms! Form your battalions!) Happy Bastille Day from…. Bucharest. Bastille Day open thread….
Here in Iasi, the technical university and the “physical sciences” university main buildings appear to be separate – with separate entrances. Once you’re inside though, you can see that a long colonnaded hallway connects them – a hallway known as “The Hall of Lost Steps.” The first time I came to Iasi, I had no idea that there was more to the hallway than I | Read More »
My work causes me to travel a great deal. With that kind of load, I don’t seek things out; however, things just happen along the way. One of the best instances of that occurred several years back when I made my first visit to Iasi, Romania. My hosts insisted that we make some time to visit the nearby Painted Monasteries of Southern Bucovina. This was | Read More »
Tucked deep inside Mark Steyn’s excellent (as usual) weekend column is this bit of shocking news: Last week, the donut chain Tim Horton’s, which operates on both sides of the border but is incorporated in the state of Delaware, announced that it was reorganizing itself as a Canadian corporation to take advantage of Canadian tax rates. I’ve been sending up warning flares about this sort | Read More »
(Click on the above image to see a larger version, in which the caption is more easily readable. From the World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington DC; photo by the author, last month.) Have a happy, relaxing, confident, robust 4th….
Mr. President, you’ve made quite a thing of late of running around the world “apologizing” for one perceived past sin of America after another. But it does no credit to a man – nor to his native manliness – to continually apologize for things in which he was not involved. It’s long past time for you and your Administration to own up to any spur-of-the-moment | Read More »
After a little thought about today’s nobody-showed-up-to-see-Joe-Biden-in-Erie-PA fiasco…. “Rural broadband build-out” has become a new Golden Calf of Liberalism…. (Note that it says “a” not “the” – it’s just one of them, but a relatively new one….) Default here to Open Thread….
Some watershed events in history are generally well-known, while others remain obscure, perhaps known only in a particular geographic region. However, some of these seemingly-obscure events deserve more attention – as much of the present situation in many parts of the world owes a great deal to those events. Today happens to be the 300th anniversary of one of those little-known watersheds – the Battle | Read More »
Happy St. Jean-Baptiste Day! Joyeuse-Fête St. Jean-Baptiste! French-stuff-in-North-America open thread….
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