December 10, 2012 – Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor 71 years ago this month was a “day that will live in infamy” according to US President Franklin Roosevelt. Seven decades later,  it increasingly appears that the president’s surprise and outrage may have been synthetic.   Roosevelt had been maneuvering for […]

December 1, 2012 NEW YORK – The wicked 19th century American cynic Ambrose Bierce defined  diplomacy in his “Devil’s Dictionary”  as “the patriotic art of lying for one’s country.” True enough. But diplomacy is also the fine art of getting one’s way without war, and convincing people that it’s in […]