By ARTHUR I. CYR, Scripps Howard News Service

Yet another intimate portrait has just emerged about one of the most prominent and pivotal world leaders of the early 1960s, arguably the most dangerous and highly charged years of the Cold War.

"Germany Dominates Europe Once Again" is the eye-catching headline of an editorial by William Pfaff in truthdig.com, a blog and commentary site popular with the political left. His perspective is useful in evaluating the European Union, which just concluded a summit in Brussels.

"What's past is prologue," William Shakespeare wrote in "The Tempest," a tale of fantasy, hatred and intrigue, but ultimate success by a leader. The line is worth remembering when considering Middle East matters.

"Fracking" rhymes with "hacking" and is not a friendly term. Other unpleasant words that begin with "f" include "fracture," "frenzied," "frustrate" and more. The f-word at issue here, obviously not invented by a public-relations firm, refers to a technical and also extremely important method of mining natural gas and oil.

The term "capitalism with a human face" has been commonly used for more than a decade and a half, inspired in part by a book of that title by Samuel Brittan, influential journalist of the London Financial Times.

"The corn is as high as an elephant's eye," a signature line from the musical "Oklahoma," comes to mind concerning the Iowa caucuses' importance for Republicans. The just-concluded exercise has winnowed the crowded field of presidential candidates in that party, while underscoring the distinctive dynamics of standard-bearer selection.

"Nattering nabobs of negativism" is probably the most enduring of the many alliterative declarations of Spiro Agnew, vice president in the Nixon administration until he was forced to resign because of corruption. This particular phrase, penned by Nixon speechwriter William Safire, was designed to put down media people who emphasize bad news over good.

The sudden death of North Korea's leader Kim Jong Il adds even more uncertainty to the tense and unpredictable surviving totalitarian state.

'Fog in channel, Continent cut off,' is a very old British joke about an alleged newspaper headline regarding weather over the waterway separating England from Europe. Even a brief visit to the British Isles can readily confirm, sometimes in startling manner, the sense of distance from the European continent among the population.

"A riddle, wrapped in an enigma, inside a mystery" is how Winston Churchill described Soviet Russia. He was speaking in October 1939, right after World War II commenced in Europe, but his words have direct importance for current developments.