“I can’t stand him. He’s a liar,” then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy told U.S. President Barack Obama four years ago, in a conversation about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
No good deed goes unpunished. Two months ago Chancellor Angela Merkel amazed the world by opening Germany’s borders to all the genuine refugees (mostly Syrians and Afghans) who could get that far.
It’s been a week since the Russians began their air-strikes in Syria and the countries that have already been bombing there for over a year - the United States and some other NATO countries - are working themselves up into a rage about it.
In Ukraine, it was the rebels who had to move first. They moved because Moscow has decided to freeze the conflict, which has now served its main purpose of saving Putin’s face.
Jeremy “Jez” Corbyn and Bernie Sanders are very much alike, and so are their ambitions.
“There’s no more rule of law,” said Mahathir Mohamad, the 90-year-old grandee who was prime minister of Malaysia for 22 years.
You know how it is with buses? You wait ages for one, far longer than seems reasonable – and then three arrive all at once. Financial crises are a bit like that too.
One by one, the empty boxes in the Drake Equation are being filled in with actual numbers, and it’s looking good.
“No one can set the price of oil. It’s up to Allah,” said Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi in May. But less devout people believe that Saudi Arabia has been trying very hard to set the price of oil – and to set it low.
