19 April 2010 The crash on 10 April of an airliner carrying Poland’s president, Lech Kaczynski, his wife and 94 of the nation’s political, military and economic leaders, was a heart-rending tragedy.   But for Poles, tragedy is a constant.  Poland’s epic, thousand-year history has always alternated between extremes of tragedy […]

12 April 2010  As Henry Kissinger once rightly observed, it is often more dangerous being America’s ally than its enemy. Watching Washington’s growing anger Afghan president Hamid Karzai, one recalls the unhappy endings of such former US allies as South Vietnam’s Diem, Iran’s Shah, Indonesia’s Suharto, Nicaragua’s Somoza, and  Pakistan’s […]

April 5, 2010 There is an old saying about the fierce Chechen tribes who inhabit southern Russia’s Caucasus mountains: `Chechen cannot ever be defeated. They can only be killed.’ Chechen are Russia’s nemesis. Even the notoriously brutal Russian mafia fears the ferocious Chechen, and for good reason. Last year, Prime […]