Past imperialism of present-day NATO countries is provoking hostility from their former African colonies, which express it in a bizarre way: by supporting Putin's imperialism.

They have valid grounds for a grievance with former colonizers, but it's not fair to take it out on Ukraine, which is in the same position today that they were in a century ago.

A coup in Russia might get rid of Putin, but if it did, it could lead to other bad situations.

Australia's right-wing ruling parties aim to win reelection by spending a lot of money on infrastructure in precisely the districts where they need more votes.

All in all, the countries that set out to eliminate Covid-19 did very well, until variants much more contageous supplanted the original virus.

If all countries had approached the disease this way, the more contageous variants might never had evolved. Of course, that was not possible for all countries; many didn't have the money, or didn't have the social cohesion and trust, or didn't have the necessary leadership, to make the attempt. But we should learn to do that in the future.

The US tolerates problems that cause many avoidable deaths, partly due to distrust of science. Covid-19 has been one of them, and is likely to be tolerated on a permanent basis.