My book One Day We Will Live Without Fear: Everyday Lives Under the Soviet Police State is published today in the US. It will be available in Europe from February 29. This is the story behind the title of the last chapter of my book, which I also used as the title of the book as a whole.

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) is the modern face of terror. Unlike al-Qaeda, the Irish Republican Army, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Maoists in India, the Shining Path, and other traditional terrorist organizations, ISIS refuses to lurk in the shadows. Unlike Hezbollah, Hamas, the Tamil Tigers, or the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, ISIS is not content with controlling a limited amount of territory confined to a single nation-state. 

Asked about Russia’s Syrian intervention, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acerbically turned on President Vladimir Putin, whom he and others seem to regard as Geopolitical Russia incarnate.

A British court has concluded, using civil standards of proof, that Vladimir Putin approved the murder of a Russian whistleblower, Alexander Litvinenko, in London. The Litvinenko case comes as close as possible to proving Putin’s guilt.