When a person goes to a country and finds their newspapers filled with nothing but good news, he can bet there are good men in jail.

So many of the new nations which were established as democracies after the second world war, during the decolonizing process, have now changed their system to state-socialism. Small elites run them, and they aren't sharing societies. They aren't even socialist. The power of the state has been merged with business property and you have the greatest concentration of power that's possible.

The world's largest debtor is a distinction of sorts, but not the one we like having.

The status quo is working.

When a person goes to a country and finds their newspapers filled with nothing but good news, he can bet there are good men in jail.

As the family goes, so go the children.

The Soviet Union came apart along ethnic lines. The most important factor in this breakup was the disinclination of Slavic Ukraine to continue under a regime dominated by Slavic Russia. Yugoslavia came apart also, beginning with a brutal clash between Serbia and Croatia, here again 'nations' with only the smallest differences in genealogy; with, indeed, practically a common language. Ethnic conflict does not require great differences; small will do.