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Space Shuttle Columbia launching

Can We Boldly Go There Any More?

… is dangerous. And, consequently, expensive. That first fact was brought painfully home the morning of Feb. 1 as the space shuttle Columbia … receives much attention. Who can remember where they were when Intelsat IVA F-5 failed to reach orbit on Sept. 29, …
Photo of a nuclear explosion.

The Dawn of the Second Cold War

… intercontinental ballistic missile on July 5 only delays the inevitable. Soon Pyongyang will have a missile that can reach the United States and when it does a Second Cold War will begin. The failed launch … advertisements openly solicit suicide bombers. Deterrence was also effective in the first Cold War because the
Raising a Flag over the Reichstag by Yevgeny Khaldei (1945).

The Living Ghosts of the Second World War and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

… perpetrated by the Kiev regime.” His mission, he claimed, was “to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.”  In Putin’s … of the Jews of Kyiv in the fall of 1941, until 1976. When a monument was finally erected, it honored the … TV Rain who “disrespected” the anniversary of the Siege of Leningrad in January 2014 by asking whether it would have …
A memorial to the Heaven’s Hundred in Kyiv. Serhii Kemsky’s photo is in black and white under the words Nebesna sotnia.

Heroes Never Die

… It was February 2014 in Kyiv , Ukraine. I stood in the wet cold with Ukrainians of all ages, from all over thethe mood of the protests changed at the end of the month when students who came to sleep on Maidan were violently …
President George H.W. Bush shaking hands with Russian President Boris Yeltsin at the Kremlin.

Russia — Ten Years After the Fall

… It was on Christmas day ten years ago that Kremlin guards hauled down the Soviet flag for the last time and Mikhail Gorbachev … last decade by reconsidering several faulty assumptions. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many influential …
A crowd of Syrian refugees in the Vienna airport

Road to Europe: The 2015 Migration Crisis

… Over the past months, the news media has presented dramatic … throughout the Ottoman Empire. At the same time that was going on, there was large-scale, voluntary immigration, … But again, that was largely voluntary in nature. So when we talk about Syrians today, as well as Iraqis today, I …
Top view of engineer at desk with laptop, hardhat, and blueprints

Origins interviews the American Society of Civil Engineers

… of our episode on infrastructure and public investment in the United States, host Patrick Potyondy interviews Tom … aviation, bridges, dams, drinking water, energy, hazardous waste, inland waterways, levees, ports, public parks and … that is actually, in 2013, higher than it was in 2009, when it was at a D.  Patrick Potyondy   Okay, so there has …
A Nuclear Power Plant in the Untied Kingdom against a blue sky.

How Green Is the Atom?

The Past–and Future–of Nuclear Energy in the United States
… Nuclear power was touted as the solution to  peak oil and promoted as “energy too cheap … years) in excess of 20,000 picocuries per liter (pCi/L). When  NPPs are decommissioned they become waste. Even as new …

A Sea of Troubles: The Philippines and Pacific Geopolitics

… In early 2013 I took a tour of Corregidor Island, at the mouth of Manila Bay. Our guide ushered us through the … it would not reopen American bases in the Philippines, nor was the intent to “contain China.” This statement came in … on the services of Chinese brokers. Numbering around 20,000 when the Spanish arrived, the Chinese in the Philippines had …
Portrait of Neville Chamberlain, who was the Prime Minister of United Kingdom during the early months of World War II.

Lessons of Munich

… dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to decide the fate of Czechoslovakia. They agreed to Hitler’s demand … “doves” of supporting bankrupt pre-World War II tactics whenever they sought negotiations with an opponent. Before … a face-saving way to get out of Kuwait before his nation was attacked — Saddam agreed to withdraw if the leading …
A Memorial to the "Forgotten War" of Korea with the insignias of the United States Uniformed Services ringed around it.

Forgotten War, Tragic Peace

… Korea’s nuclear weapons program are reviving memories of “the forgotten war,” the war in Korea. But the real key to … things for ourselves, the Koreans or the rest of the world. When the Korean fighting began, most Americans assumed that … defeating our opponents unconditionally, whether their sign was a swastika, a rising sun or a hammer and sickle. …

The Hajj and Europe

The hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, is a central … Bridge, 2009. Even so, last year’s hajj witnessed tragedy when a construction crane collapse in Mecca killed more than … One effect of colonial domination of Muslim-majority lands was that the hajj came under European influence and control …
A girl stands amid the graves of 70 children on the outskirts of Dadaab. The long desert journey to the relief camps has claimed many lives.

Famine Strikes Again. Will America Respond?

… death in East Africa. Famine has overwhelmed aid agencies. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) says that more … to flee their communities in search of food, but there was little to find. A letter published by the Russian writer … and bandits. The word desperation is an understatement when it comes to the plight of Somali refugees.   The first …

The UN, the WHO, and the Future of U.S. Diplomacy

The 2020 U.S. elections have resulted in a new … of the country rejected Donald Trump. While this backlash was perhaps concentrated on domestic matters and … but the world it promoted stuck rigidly to U.S. models. When strategically important countries strayed from the
Valerie Plame in 2008.

A Dirty–and Deadly–Trick

… motives, high Bush administration officials exposed the name of a CIA agent to columnist Robert Novak. For more … the first time a president has possibly connived at what was essentially an act of treason. Not that there’s been a … into the matter last month. The current affair began when two senior Bush administration officials revealed the

Are Women People? The Equal Rights Amendment Then and Now

… On March 22, 2017, Nevada became the 36 th state and the first state in 40 years to ratify … in legal limbo. A protestor’s sign at the Women’s March in Washington, D.C. in 2017. Forty-five years after Congress … ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment ( right ). When the ERA is described in terms of equal pay for equal …
Children at Play: An American History, by Howard Chudacoff Book Cover

Children at Play: An American History

Review of Children at Play: An American History, by Howard Chudacoff (New York: New York University Press, 2007)
… society that is at once protective and threatening. Even as the "built environment" has stolen space used traditionally … This recovery of the past play world of American children was probably Chudacoff's greatest challenge, but is this … America, most of it is devoted to the years after 1800, when middle-class Americans gradually acknowledged that a …
The culminating moment of Alice, when the pretense of power is exposed and collapses. Carroll was very concerned throughout his life with giving a wide audience of people, not just his Christ Church students, the tools of logical thinking so that they would not be the victims of demagogues and ideologies.

Everyone’s Inner Child Turns 150 Years Old

… Alice in Wonderland, the little girl created by Oxford mathematician and logician … our ear tells us a different story.   Lewis Carroll was already an ardent photographer when Oscar Rejlander took this portrait of him posing with a …
Portrait of Thomas Paine from 1792.

Paine’s Counsel for a New Time that Tries Men’s Souls

… Eager to reconnect with the Spirit of 1776, Americans have turned biographies of George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander … to threats to our national security and freedom to decline. When Americans declared their independence from Britain, …
The Romanov Family

The Romanov Tercentenary: Commemoration, History, and Power

… A century ago, on May 25, 1913, Tsar Nicholas II entered the Cathedral of the Assumption in Moscow’s Kremlin, where … English translation, the smutnoe vremia (or simply smuta ) was a period of civil war, famine, and foreign intervention … laid the foundations for three centuries of Romanov rule. When Nicholas celebrated the family’s tercentenary, another …