When he moved to Medford, Oregon, in 2016, a rented trailer was the best that Monty Potter could afford. The $950 per month he paid for the two-bedroom mobile home didn’t leave much room for error on his wages as a grocery store supervisor, but he could manage it for himself and his two school-aged sons. Then came the Almeda fire. Starting in Ashland on September 8, flames ripped northward up the 18-mile greenway that connects a string of communities in Jackson County, all but wiping out the smallest two, Talent and Phoenix. Two people died and at least 2,350 homes were destroyed, including Potter’s, which stood near…

Foreign fighters have played a major role in Syria’s ongoing conflict, with a presence in the country that numbered in the tens of thousands at its peak. One of the most mythologized sources of foreign recruits has been Chechnya, the once-separatist province of Russia’s North Caucasus that was reconquered by the Russian army in the early 2000s. Several thousand Chechen fighters traveled to Syria to fight in various opposition and Islamist factions, where their battlefield prowess made them a prized commodity among Syrian rebel militants. The fortunes of most Chechen fighters, however, like the Syrian rebel movement as a whole, have been…

Security threats and disinformation have made mayhem of life online. It will take experimental cooperation among governments, platforms, and civil society to improve safety without hampering innovation. Traditional approaches to governing have never gotten a handle on cyberspace. There are too many actors and there is too much information, from too many sources, moving too quickly across too many jurisdictions. Bad actors further compound the problem, and discord among the big powers prevents the international community from cooperating effectively. Although most software and digital infrastructure is commercially owned and operated, technology companies lack the legitimacy, breadth of interests, and public policy…

Some hope for Japan’s economy has come from China amid the ongoing pandemic. China is slowly lifting its massive lockdown, allowing more economic activity. Many Japanese firms are anticipating new orders from China, especially for new infrastructure spending. This bit of good news mitigates Japan’s declaration of a national state of emergency from April 16 until May 6, and the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics to 2021. Japan has a special need to protect its high-risk aging population. It’s still anyone’s guess what happens next. The global base case is for the worst to be over by July—though the world…

During his acceptance speech at the Democratic Party Convention, Joe Biden cast his presidential campaign as a battle of light versus darkness, vowing he’d be “an ally of the light, not of the darkness.” Half-wit Joe had it half right; the 2020 election is about good versus evil, but Biden’s squarely on the dark side unless he switched parties. Biden can’t tell the truth because, by nature, Democrats are lying liars who speak in half-truths to garner votes from simpleton group thinkers.  Democrat politicians get away with lying because they know most of their voters aren’t interested in exercising reasonable,…