North Korea, the world’s only country-sized prison camp, has just executed Pak Nam Gi for the crime of ‘deliberately harming’ the country’s economy.  I personally don’t think economic sabotage ought to be a capital crime, but if it is, the firing squads of North Korea have a lot of work ahead of them.  Pak  was […]

Last week the Israelis handed the Obama administration an important advantage in the continuing struggle between the US and Israel over policy towards the Palestinians.  By announcing a decision to move forward with 1600 housing units in East Jerusalem, the Israelis embarrassed the administration in a way that created problems for Prime Minister Netanyahu and […]

The war of words between the Obama administration and the Israeli government continues to heat up.  “This was an affront, it was an insult, but most importantly, it undermined this very fragile effort to bring peace to that region,” White House senior adviser David Axelrod told the world on NBC yesterday. Axelrod of course was […]

The fundamentalist-modernist split in American Protestantism is roughly one hundred years old.  It has been an unmitigated disaster and the cost of this division is growing.The problem is not so much with fundamentalists and fundamentalist-aligned Pentecostals.  These churches and congregations are doing what they always have done: meeting the spiritual needs of the marginalized, the […]

I am leaving the paneled halls of the stately Mead manor today to spend a week giving lectures on American foreign policy in Lithuania.  This is a kind of trip I’ve been making for the State Department since the Clinton administration, and it’s taught me a lot.  During the Bush years I traveled pretty intensively […]

The American relationship with Israel is both a political and an intellectual challenge for some students of foreign affairs.  Convinced that US national interests would be best served by distancing ourselves from the Jewish state, scholars try to figure out why our country behaves in this seemingly self-defeating way.The problem is particularly tough for hard […]

The more I’ve studied the long-term politics of Zionism in the United States, the more I’ve been struck by a paradox.  While most people see the Israel lobby as an attempt to use Jewish financial and electoral power to impose a special Jewish agenda on American foreign policy, it hasn’t actually worked that way.In the […]

Many people think that Jewish lobbying, pressure and influence dragged a reluctant Uncle Sam into the Middle East.  Think again.Now it’s true that American opposition to Zionism has a long and distinguished pedigree.  In the 19th century, American missionaries built a network of colleges and hospitals across what was then the Ottoman Empire and what […]

I’ve done my share of Times-bashing on the climate change issue, so it’s a pleasure to see a thoughtful and sensible piece by Times writer Andrew Revkin.  Unfortunately it’s on the web rather than in the print edition where it might do more good, but Revkin makes some strong points in a post that is […]

I always love when a blog post can be set to music, so I was very glad to be tipped off by a linking website (HT: Irenic Thoughts) to this video.I was a little mystified by what these young people were doing until my research associate Sam (formerly team intern here at Mead GHQ, but […]