Current affairs

JERUSALEM - Israel's election is a victory for centrism and national consensus. Indeed, that is the key to understanding not only the vote count, but also Israeli public opinion, the next government, and its policies.

CAMBRIDGE - Two years ago, Barack Obama was a first-term senator from a mid-western state who had declared his interest in running for the presidency. Many people were skeptical that an African-American with a strange name and little national experience could win.

To make serious progress toward a final status agreement between Israel and the
Palestinians, George Mitchell must first work on restoring confidence in a peace
process that years of havoc and destruction have all but destroyed. To that end,

Peter Berkowitz's essay in the latest issue of the Weekly Standard provides good insight into what I think is the strategic irresponsibility of those in Israel's leade

The crisis in journalism has, during the past few months, reached meltdown proportions.

When I got stopped by the police in downtown Bordeaux for running a red light last week, I was thinking "Don't you cops have anything better to do ?" But the words that came out of my mouth were a lot more conciliatory, something like "Sorry, I thought it was green."

NEW YORK - For 15 years, I have attended the World Economic Forum in Davos. Typically, the leaders gathered there share their optimism about how globalization, technology, and markets are transforming the world for the better.

From his first Middle East tour as President Obama's special envoy, George
Mitchell must have found that not much has changed since his 2001 report. During
his previous mission on the origins of the Second Intifada, Mitchell concluded

Using the "too big to fail" scare tactic, the U.S.

JERUSALEM - Europe's vocation for peacemaking and for international norms of behavior is bound to become the base upon which Barack Obama will seek to reconstruct the transatlantic alliance that his predecessor so badly damaged.

Sunday's enthronement of Russia's first patriarch since the fall of the Soviet Union, Patriarch Kirill, was a moment of some reflection for those present.

BERKELEY - When an economy falls into a depression, governments can try four things to return employment to its normal level and production to its "potential" level. Call them fiscal policy, credit policy, monetary policy, and inflation.

BANGKOK - A friend recently asked a seemingly naïve question: "What is money? How do I know I can trust that it is worth what it says it is worth?" We learn in introductory economics that money is a medium of exchange. But why do we accept that?

Watching President Obama's interview on Al-Arabiya this week was striking in multiple respects, not the least of which, of course, was that an American president actually did an interview with an Arab network with a largely Muslim viewing audience -- and did it in the f

The recent appointment of George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East is
no doubt a positive sign of President Obama's commitment to the region,
signalling that there will be immediate and direct American involvement in the

According to James Wolcott in last month's London Review of Books, Norman Mailer exerted telepathic powers over the future, while the Beats hot-wired 'the American psyche (at the risk of frying their own circuits).

Hisman Melhem, Washington Bureau Chief for Al Arabiya, was trying to chase down an interview with former U.S. Senator and new presidential envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell.

PARIS - Hollywood history is often nonsensical, but filmmakers usually have the good sense not to whitewash killers and sadists. Steven Soderbergh's new film about Che Guevara, however, does that, and more.