If Christian pilgrims traveling to Bethlehem for Christmas this week happened to witness violence, for the first time militant Jews, not Palestinians, were most likely to be the perpetrators.Now that a far right-wing government has governed Israel for almost three years, settlers feel emboldened so that Jewish extremists are wreaking havoc and mayhem. West Bank Palestinians, meanwhile, are standing by quietly, largely minding their own business ― even as these settler-marauders repeatedly attack

SEOUL ― According to North Korean state television, the heart attack that killed Kim Jong-il on Dec. 17 was “due to severe mental and physical stress from overwork.” That report instantly raised a question in my mind: if we accept the regime’s diagnosis, why did Kim need to work so hard, despite his frail health? In some sense, his sudden death seems to symbolize the helplessness of a desperate leader confronting overwhelming challenges.Seen in this light, the more important question is whether

Last week, Elizabeth Taylor’s jewels were auctioned for an astonishing $116 million, easily a record for a single collection. Taylor’s talent for amassing jewelry was equaled only by her ability to accumulate husbands. There were eight marriages in all, two of them to Richard Burton, who bought her a 33-carat diamond ring that was auctioned for $8.8 million.By coincidence, the same day’s newspaper had another story about marriage, this one less spectacular but more far-reaching. The news was a f

Europe is as full of bad ideas as it is of bad debts. Conventional wisdom says that sovereign defaults mean the end of the euro: If Greece defaults it has to leave the single currency; German taxpayers have to bail out southern governments to save the union. This is nonsense. U.S. states and local governments have defaulted on dollar debts, just as companies default. A currency is simply a unit of value, as meters are units of length. If the Greeks had skimped on the olive oil in a liter bottle,

The defining political issue of 2012 won’t be the government’s size. It will be who government is for.Americans have never much liked government. After all, the nation was conceived in a revolution against government.But the surge of cynicism engulfing America isn’t about how big government has become. It’s a growing perception that our government is no longer working for average people. It’s for big business, Wall Street and the very rich.In a recent Pew Foundation poll, 77 percent of responden

The career of Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s “Dear Leader,” was marked by a series of historical firsts ― most of them dubious at best. He was, to begin, the first ruler of a Marxist-Leninist state to inherit absolute power through hereditary succession from his father, “Great Leader” Kim Il-sung, founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK.He was also the first ruler of an urbanized, literate society to preside over a mass famine in peacetime: The Great North Korean Famine of the

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s sudden death has further increased the uncertainty on the Korean Peninsula. Yet it has also provided an important opening for the two Koreas to end the hostility and pursue peace and mutual prosperity. To grab this rare opportunity, the Seoul government needs to recalibrate its North Korea strategy.Inter-Korean relations have remained deadlocked for years, especially following the North’s provocations against the South last year ― the destruction of the Navy’s C

The government’s response to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s death has exposed some glaring problems. One such problem concerns the failure of the nation’s main spy agency to detect Kim’s death before Pyongyang’s state media announced it on Monday.The National Intelligence Service had no clue to Kim’s death for two days, revealing its serious lack of capability to gather intelligence on North Korea. The agency’s intelligence lapse kept President Lee Myung-bak in the dark about the grave situat

Hours after North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s death on Saturday, news reports out of Seoul said Pyongyang had agreed to suspend its enriched uranium nuclear weapons program.This was a sign that denuclearization talks, stalled since April 2009 when North Korea pulled out, could resume. It was a key demand of the United States before it would agree to the resumption of talks.The agreement, struck between North Korean and U.S. negotiators in talks in Beijing last Thursday and Friday, included 240,0

If Asians got together to name a person of the year, someone who brought surprise, intrigue and economic impact to the region, the choice would be obvious: Mother Nature. From earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand to floods in the Philippines and Thailand to Chinese droughts to volcanic eruptions in Indonesia, this was a year overrun by nature’s fury. Food shortages and the effects of climate change challenged governments and inflation rates as rarely before. Other forces of nature, meanwhile, ra

According to his obituary in the Los Angeles Times, North Korean strongman Kim Jong-il hired a personal sushi chef from Tokyo and a personal pizza chef from Italy even as his country suffered through a famine that killed as many as 2 million of his people. He kept a library of 20,000 movies for his own entertainment although ordinary citizens could be sent to prison camps for watching South Korean or American movies. He beat back economic reforms and led North Korea’s economy to the brink of col

STOCKHOLM/MEXICO CITY ― Indonesia’s parliament has just taken a historic step, one that makes the planet safer from the threat of nuclear weapons. The importance of Indonesia’s decision to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty cannot be overstated. This is a golden opportunity for the remaining eight countries to endorse the CTBT, enabling it to come into legal effect.For the five decades following World War II, a nuclear test shook and irradiated the planet on average every nine days

As if the world did not face enough uncertainty at the end of 2011, we received the news on Sunday night that North Korea’s Kim Jong-il died. As is common for the sadly surreal nation, the information came wrapped up in confusing and absurd non-details, with reports indicating the 69-year-old died of exhaustion on a train.North Korea, and the newly defunct Kim of the sinister Kim dynasty, have given comedians much to joke about. And they have sparked a great deal of creativity among intelligence

Wall Street is its own worst enemy. It should have welcomed new financial regulation as a means of restoring public trust. Instead, it’s busily shredding new regulations and making the public more distrustful than ever.The Street’s biggest lobbying groups have just filed a lawsuit against the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, seeking to overturn its new rule limiting speculative trading in food, oil and other commodities.The Street makes bundles from these bets, but they have raised costs

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il drove his country deep into starvation and isolation while stockpiling cognac and fine foods for himself and his friends. He also threatened the world with a growing nuclear arsenal.He won’t be missed.Now Kim’s youngest son, Kim Jong-un, a 20-something cipher with no military experience and a four-star general’s rank, steps onto the stage.There’s speculation that the untested Kim will provoke a crisis to prove his chops and rally the military around his fledglin

The premature death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il leaves behind a Shakespearean cast of characters who may not play the roles the late dictator had assigned to them.Kim may have had a stroke in 2008, but his health more recently seemed stable. Observers felt his third son, Kim Jong-un, designated 15 months ago as the heir-apparent, would likely have several years to grow into the role.Instead, the elder Kim’s death at age 69, reportedly from a heart attack, now means the rest of the world,

Korean slander law is surprisingly different from that of the United States, and surprisingly easy to violate. In both countries the underlying rationale is to prevent defamatory statements about an individual being made to a third party. However, that is where the similarity ends and the differences begin. While in the United States the elements of slander will vary depending on the public nature of the individual and the information, the offense is, at its simplest, the oral communication of a

May Day 1979. Kim Il-sung Square, Pyongyang, North Korea.Some 50,000 of my closest Korean friends and I thronged the plaza as dancers of all ages, dressed in traditional joseon-ot of many colors, swayed and swung to ancient Korean folk tunes.The international holiday for workers was celebrated in what was then ― and today even more so ― one of the last bastions of communism in the world.In one circle of 50 or so people, I clung to the hand of a pretty young woman as we spun round like Ferris whe

The White House said last week that President Obama will sign a controversial $662 billion defense authorization that permits indefinite detention without trial for some terrorism suspects and broadens the authorization for the use of force against people and groups “associated” with al-Qaida anywhere in the world. It’s the wrong choice.The bill, which passed the House Wednesday and the Senate on Thursday, is being advertised as a compromise with the administration, and indeed it includes provis

With the death of Kim Jong-il, the world is both a better and a more dangerous place. Better, because over his nearly two-decade rule of North Korea, Kim Jong-il killed or brutalized millions of his countrymen, illicitly spread nuclear technology and stoked regional tension and conflict. More dangerous, because Kim’s heir apparent, his son Kim Jong-un, is untested and unknown. Rumor has it that Kim Jong-un likes American basketball and expensive sneakers. He may be 28, or he may be 29. He may sp