The Londoner

Near the end of a column on the Michigan “right-to-work” coup, Jonathan Chait offers an important insight on why Republicans are willing and able to pull these sort of stunts: Last year, the Michigan director of Americans for Prosperity, the right-wing activist group, explained, “We fight these battles on taxes and regulation but really what we would like to see is to take the unions out at the knees so they don’t have the resources to fight these battles.” Republicans understand full well that Michigan leans Democratic, and the GOP has total power at the moment, so its best use of that power is to crush one of the largest bastions of support for the opposing party. Obviously, one should always be suspicious of theories that attribute malicious will to power to the other side while absolving one’s own allies of the same. I don’t think Democrats abstain from this behavior (to anything like the degree the GOP employs it) because it’s made of angels. Rather, the Democ

Chancellor Angela was by all acounts relieved to see the back of Silvio Berlusconi when he stepped down in 2011. Now, however, she and other European leaders are horrified at the prospect of his return to the pinnacle of Italian politics. Not again! Just 13 months ago, European heads of state and government joined forces to usher Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi into retirement. Chancellor Angela Merkel and then- French President Nicolas Sarkozy marshalled all of their persuasive powers to clear they way for a reform government in Rome under the leadership of Mario Monti. Now, with Prime Minister Monti having said over the weekend that he would resign as soon as he pushes through a key budget law, Italy's least serious politician is back. And Europe is groaning in displeasure. The French leftist paper Libération wrote "The Mummy Returns," a reference

Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem Born in Solingen, Germany, Adolf Eichmann was the son of a businessman and industrialist, Karl Adolf Eichmann. In 1914.   Eichmann joined the Austrian branch of the NSDAP (member number 889 895) and of the SS, enlisting on 1 April 1932, as an SS-Anwärter. He was accepted as a full SS member that November, appointed an SS-Mann, and assigned the SS number 45326. For the next year, Eichmann was a member of the Allgemeine-SS and served in a mustering formation operating from Salzburg. In September 1934 Eichmann landed a position in Heydrich's SD, the powerful SS security service. There he started out as a filing clerk cataloguing information about Freemasons. Predictably, the Nazis believed that the Masons were assisting the Jews in their attempts to gain world domination. Eichmann's job was to compile information on prominent Freemasons in Germany. However he was soon assigned to the Jewish section, which w

By Sikander Hayat Pakistan is going through a terrible time and it seems that matters are quickly getting out of the hands of people who ought to be in control. There are huge domestic problems as well as a small matter of foreign interference by United States, India& Afghanistan .  By any stretch of the imagination, the biggest threats are emanating from within the country . Huge increase in population with total lack of infrastructure has turned Pakistan into a laboratory of diseases like HIV & Hepatitis of all forms.  Internal & External debt has reached a level which cannot be serviced without outside help. I do not know the definition of a failed state but we cannot be very far off from that disaster . All state institutions are in race to the bottom and prime examples are PIA (Pakistan International Airlines), Pakistan Railways, health & education system to name but a few. PIA is on the verge of a major disaster which could cause huge

Illustration by Martin Ansin    T he race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney , Politico declared in June, was “a grinding, joyless slog, falling short in every respect of the larger-than-life personalities and debates of the 2008 campaign ,” and neither candidate did much in the ensuing months to elevate the contest. Yet now, a month after the election, Obama’s campaign team has managed to cast a 2008-like hue on their 2012 victory. The secret of their successful spin: Instead of talking about how their guy won a second term by methodically defining—and demonizing—his buffoon of an opponent, they’re gushing about the ingenuity of their apps and algorithms. The new story line began to emerge the day after the election, when Time ’s Michael Scherer wrote in a postmortem that the president’s team showed

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN I went to synagogue on Saturday not far from the Syrian border in Antakya , Turkey. It’s been on my mind ever since. Antakya is home to a tiny Jewish community , which still gathers for holidays at the little Sephardic synagogue. It is also famous for its mosaic of mosques and Orthodox, Catholic, Armenian and Protestant churches. How could it be that I could go to synagogue in Turkey on Saturday while on Friday, just across the Orontes River in Syria , I had visited with Sunni Free Syrian Army rebels embroiled in a civil war in which Syrian Alawites and Sunnis are killing each other on the basis of their ID cards, Kurds are creating their own enclave, Christians are hiding and the Jews are long gone? What is this telling us? For me, it raises the question of whether there are just three governing options in the Middle East today: Iron Empires, Iron Fists or Iron Domes? The reason that majorities and minorities co-existed rela

There have been lower and meaner presidential election campaigns: Richard Nixon’s “amnesty, abortion and acid” jibe against George McGovern in 1972 comes to mind. Even so, this was a gruelling and ill-tempered contest President Barack Obama faces an immediate test of leadership, not merely to overcome the divisions between Democrats and Republicans that have largely paralysed Washington. The greater challenge is how to rekindle a spirit of can-do optimism in a nation beaten down by the global financial crisis .  “What America needs right now is confidence,” says a Wall Street CEO, “all the ingredients are in place for a recovery but we need predictability and strong executive leadership.” This year’s election will be remembered largely as a referendum on economic management, if not an entire philosophy of government. Having inherited an economy in meltdown, Mr Obama spurned regressive tax cuts and deregulation and resorted to government borrowing and state in

Military commanders committed a crime by keeping Bradley Manning in unnecessarily strict conditions at a Marine Corps brig for nearly nine months, the alleged WikiLeaks source’s defense attorney charged Monday in his first public speech about his client’s case. “Brad’s treatment at Quantico will forever be etched in our nation’s history as a disgraceful moment in time,” David Coombs told about 100 Manning supporters at a Washington, D.C., church Monday night. “Not only was it stupid and counterproductive — it was criminal.” Manning, an Army private and intelligence analyst, was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion that he leaked thousands of military reports, diplomatic cables and videos to WikiLeaks. He was jailed at Quantico from July 2010 until April 2011 and kept in what his defense says amounted to solitary confinement throughout his time there. He was usually kept in his cell between 21 and 23 hours each day, according to testimony at

KAJAKI, Afghanistan — Navy corpsman Andrew Sieber leaned over the injured Afghan policeman, who had a gunshot wound to his right shoulder. Sieber, 24, inspected the policeman's bandages and then helped load him onto a vehicle for the short but bumpy ride to a landing zone ringed by mountains. Within moments, the policeman was whisked away by an American helicopter that had squeezed over a steep mountain range and landed in a blast of dust. "He'll be fine," Sieber said, removing his rubber gloves. "We haven't lost anybody yet." He said they get three or four wounded Afghans a week. The war in Afghanistan has changed. The Afghan forces are doing most of the fighting and taking a larger share of the casualties, as U.S. forces withdraw. But Afghanistan's military remains dependent on Americans for medical evacuation helicopters, surveillance and equipment to counter roadside bombs. Afghan commanders worry the withdrawal of American force

Close friends and allies: Prime Minister David Cameron shaking hands with Israeli Ambassador to Britain, Daniel Taub   Photo: EPA Few countries are closer allies of Israel than Britain. The two are united not only by their shared efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear programme, but by shared values: Israel, unlike so many states in the Middle East, is a rumbustious parliamentary democracy, where every point of view – from Zionist nationalism to pan-Arab Baathism – finds its noisy place. So when Britain differs from Israel’s leaders, we should do so only in the spirit of candid friendship. And sadly, William Hague was right to differ from Israel’s government on the vital question of the expansion of settlements on occupied land. It is true that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, had good reason to feel affronte

According to the economist Daron Acemoglu and the political scientist James Robinson, economic development hinges on a single factor: a country's political institutions. More specifically, as they explain in their new book, Why Nations Fail , it depends on the existence of "inclusive" political institutions, defined as pluralistic systems that protect individual rights. These, in turn, give rise to inclusive economic institutions, which secure private property and encourage entrepreneurship. The long-term result is higher incomes and improved human welfare. What Acemoglu and Robinson call "extractive" political institutions, in contrast, place power in the hands of a few and beget extractive economic institutions, which feature unfair regulations and high barriers to entry into markets. Designed to enrich a small elite, these institutions inhibit economic progress for everyone else. The broad hypothesis of Why Nations Fail is that governments tha