''There's no more rule of law,'' said Mahathir Mohamad, the 90 year old grandee who was prime minister of Malaysia for 22 years.
You know how it is with buses? You wait ages for one, far longer than seems reasonable - and then three arrive all at once. Financial crises are a bit like that too.
''No-one can set the price of oil. It's up to Allah,'' said Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi in May.
Protesters thronged Brazil's cities last Sunday (local time) demanding the impeachment of Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, narrowly elected to a second term just last October, but not one of them made any reference to the Peter Principle.
We have been hearing a lot about the 70th anniversary of the first use of a nuclear weapon on human beings, in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
Reuven Rivlin, the president of Israel, is an outspoken man, but he knows when to hold his fire.
It was not so much a straw in the wind as a cheese in the wind. It's a chewy, salty cheese that is delicious grilled: halloumi, as they call it in the Greek-speaking Republic of Cyprus, or hellim, as it is known in the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus.
Fifty-five years ago Nobosuke Kishi, Japan's prime minister, resigned just after winning the battle to push the treaty revising the country's military alliance with the United States through Parliament.
It's hard to say sorry, but it's even harder to say you're sorry for a genocide.
In theory, it could still work. It only requires three miracles.
Last Friday, in France, an Islamist named Yahya Salhi killed his employer, Herve Cornara.
Tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, and in the course of the day you are almost bound to hear or read somebody claiming that it ''changed history''.
For Turks, the burning question after this month's election is whether they will now get the fully democratic, pluralist country that so many of them want.
''The Greek Government would be well advised to act quickly - for the Greek banks, it is five minutes to midnight,'' said Andreas Dombret, an executive board member of the German central bank, last weekend.
The fall of Ramadi to Islamic State troops last week was not a big deal. The city was deep inside IS-held territory, IS fighters had controlled 80% of it since March, and we already knew that the Iraqi army can't fight.
Early this month, North Korea claimed to have launched a ballistic missile from a submerged submarine.
Part of the army rebelled in Burundi last week, not to overthrow the constitution but to save it.
The picture of the two Asian giants that most people carry around in their heads shows China racing ahead economically while India bumbles along, falling ever further behind.
''What's emerging is what we need, which is a comprehensive plan, going after the criminal gangs, going after the traffickers, going after the owners of the boats ... and stabilising the countries from which these people are coming.''
Once upon a time, big military operations were given obscure names so the enemy wouldn't guess what the plan was.