Hope Versus History Following A Strongman’s Death

March 12, 2013

We can hope for democratic and economic reform in Venezuela after Chavez’s death, but history gives us little reason to expect it.

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Russian Children Pay For Wounded National Pride

January 4, 2013

Russia’s spiteful ban on U.S. adoptions shows how far it still falls short of its goal of being a “normal” nation.

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Why Katyn Still Haunts Us

September 18, 2012

New evidence hints FDR knew who committed the Katyn Forest massacre. Even today, we tend to give allies a pass on inhumanity.

Pussy Riot And The WTO

September 13, 2012

Russia’s prosecution of Pussy Riot is one more reminder to business leaders: Don’t expect fair treatment in Putin’s courts.

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Reading The Reactions To North Korea

December 23, 2011

Varied reactions to Kim Jong Il’s death should remind us which countries are our true friends in the world, and which are not.

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Libya And The ‘Bystander Effect’

March 11, 2011

Exactly 47 years ago this weekend, a young woman named Kitty Genovese screamed for help as she was attacked outside her Queens, N.Y., apartment building. The New York Times reported two weeks later that 38 neighbors heard her cries but did nothing until it was too late. That story was probably wrong in its details — investigators later determined that an initial stabbing pierced the woman’s lungs, leaving her unable …

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Patriotic Justice

January 10, 2011

No one was very surprised last month when a Russian court convicted Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former head of the Yukos oil company, of embezzling $25 billion worth of oil. But what made the verdict predictable wasn’t the strength of the charges against Khodorkovsky. In fact, the absurdity of some of the prosecutors’ arguments made even the judge laugh. The reason everyone knew what would happen was that the case was in …

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Chairman Mao’s Living Legacy

November 11, 2010

In China, one Nobel Peace Prize winner sits in jail while his wife endures an unofficial house arrest. Another, much more famous winner — the Dalai Lama — has been in exile from his Chinese-ruled homeland for more than 50 years. In Russia, journalists are routinely attacked and killed with impunity. A video documenting one such attack appeared on a Russian news site just this week. In Pakistan, journalists also …

Just What Does A Spy Do, Anyway?

July 22, 2010

The case of the Russian agents who allegedly spied for years but obtained no classified secrets may have convinced you that the Soviet Union’s last surviving idiots run Moscow’s security services. The Russian spymasters who reportedly wanted to keep tabs on American power brokers might have gotten more information, for a lot less money, by subscribing to The Washington Post. Instead, they dispatched a team of deep-cover agents who blended …

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