I have participated in several major organizational catastrophes. The most well known of them is the Vietnam War. I was aware on my first visit to Vietnam in 1961 that the situation there—a failing neocolonial regime we had installed as a successor to French rule—was a sure loser in which we should not become further involved. Yet a few years later, I found myself participating as a high-level staffer in a policy process that lied both the public and Congress into a war that, unbeknownst to me at the time, experts inside the government accurately predicted would lead to catastrophe.
Contrary to popular myth, the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were not great Americans. Instead, they were great Englishmen. In fact, they were as much English citizens as Americans today are American citizens. It's easy to forget that the revolutionaries in 1776 were people who took up arms against their own government.
Advocates of freedom dodged a bullet last week when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the right to keep and bear arms, the subject of the Second Amendment, is an individual, not a collective, right. Opponents of gun ownership have long maintained that the Amendment’s reference to the militia indicates that the right does not apply to private persons.
Ingrid Betancourt, the French-Colombian politician held hostage by Farc rebels for more than six years, has thanked the Colombian army for rescuing her.
Starbucks, the US coffee retailer, has said it will close 600 US outlets and cut up to 12,000 jobs in the next year, as the company struggled to compete in the faltering US economy.
News_Alerts 
Tens of thousands of South Korean car workers have added their voice to opposition against resumed US beef imports.
Starbucks, the US coffee retailer, has said it will close 600 US outlets and cut up to 12,000 jobs in the next year, as the company struggled to compete in the faltering US economy.
Prolific writer and scholar Abdel Wahab Al-Messiri has died.
