A fascinating piece in Der Spiegel tracks one German would-be jihadi, who uprooted his family to the infamous Waziristan in order to live the life of a true mujahid, only to find that his religious heroes were illiterate, incompetent and generally lived so poorly that, literally, he feared for the lives of his family.After an […]

Another day, another celebration of vicious dictators at the United Nations. Reports the New York Times: UNESCO on Tuesday awarded a prize for research in the life sciences that drew controversy because it was financed by the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, a tiny, repressive and impoverished state. The award was heavily criticized by Western countries […]

In the 11 months since Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker abolished collective bargaining rights for government workers, Wisconsin cities, towns, and school districts have saved millions of dollars. There’s an important lesson here for California as its cities start to go bankrupt. In Wisconsin, writes Steven Malanga for the LA Times, Walker’s changes immediately took hold. The […]

Yesterday we highlighted a story about attacks on pro-government Islamic clerics in Russia’s Tatar region. Today comes word in the Moscow Times that arrests have been made in the case, and the news is not good. From the Moscow Times report on the arrest of alleged mastermind Rustem Gataullin and accomplices in the murder of […]

Nearly 500 years after Martin Luther’s Nighty-Five Theses split Europe in two, the ancient religious fault line between Protestant and Catholic seems to be reemerging in the age of fiscal turmoil.We are not speaking of religion in the doctrinal sense, but in the cultural one. After all, Europe is growing more secular by the year. […]

Can closer cooperation with employers help higher ed out of its crisis? One potentially useful strategy is wedding various industries to academia and producing graduates with the specific credentials those industries desire. Inside Higher Ed outlines one such endeavor in manufacturing management (h/t Glenn Reynolds): For example, Harper College, a community college in Illinois, last […]

Americans sometimes wonder whether all that foreign aid does any good. Laurie Garrett, an old WRM friend and colleague who does a lot of work on global health issues recently had one of those odd experiences that Americans meeting with foreigners sometimes have: somebody thanked her. A few years ago at a medical conference in […]

The recent slowdown in India’s economy has everybody from stock investors to grand strategists and foreign policy poohbahs concerned. In a Project Syndicate piece we found while scanning Lebanon’s English language newspaper The Daily Star, Indian parliamentarian and intellectual Shashi Tharoor showcases reasons for optimism about India’s future.India, Tharoor tells us, thrives on “frugal innovation,” […]

Russia has long struggled with Islamic (and other) terrorists in the Caucasus. President Vladimir Putin promised to eradicate terror networks and separatists movements as he rose to power in 1999 and 2000, and ever since then he’s been ruthless in targeting enemies of the state. The days of hostage crises and apartment block bombings are gone, […]

“Organized labor is in free fall,” writes Eduardo Porter in the New York Times. He’s right. As Porter puts it, The number of workers who belong to a union has plummeted about 20 percent over the last decade. Only 8 percent of all workers are unionized. And leading labor activists are wringing their hands over […]