Russia’s highest ranking military leader accused Syrian rebels of using U.S.-made, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, as the BBC reports: “We have reliable information that Syrian militants have foreign portable anti-aircraft missile systems, including those made in the USA… it should be cleared up who delivered them,” Gen Makarov told journalists in Russia.There have been earlier unconfirmed […]

Japanese and Chinese officials are holding meetings together, trying to turn down the noise around disputed islands in the East China Sea, the WSJ reports: The meeting between the No. 2 foreign ministry officials took place in Shanghai over the weekend, the official said. That followed a meeting between two diplomats one rung down on […]

As we mentioned yesterday, the visit to Gaza by the emir of Qatar signals the beginning of a new era in Palestinian politics. The emir promised $400 million in reconstruction projects for the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip, while Fatah—the old guard of Palestinian politics—is slipping into irrelevancy.Once upon a time, the secular-leaning Fatah led the Palestinian […]

Three states form the base of Democratic political power in the United States: California, New York and Illinois. All three states are locked in an accelerating economic, demographic and social decline; all three hope that they can stave off looming disaster at home by exporting the policies that have ruined them to the rest of […]

Many Republicans sincerely believe that if Barack Obama wins a second term as President, America as we know it may cease to exist. Some Democrats are equally passionate in their belief that a Romney election would fundamentally alter the social contract, return us to disastrous Bush policies, and maybe get us into a war with […]

In St. Petersburg, police are cracking down more than usual. New noise restrictions make “yelping”, “moaning”, and “stomping” illegal after 11 p.m. This year the city also banned lesbian and gay “propaganda” and shut down some theater performances deemed inappropriate.Measures like this echo a shift around the country, where all sorts of officials have been jumping […]

Sunni radicalism is on the rise in Pakistan, and the violence perpetrated against the hated Shiite minority has been particularly brutal. Reuters has a sobering piece outlining the extent of the recent violence, which identifies the Sunni terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi as one of the worst culprits: “Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is the detonator of terrorism in Pakistan,” said Karachi […]

More bad news for weary European bureaucrats: The last best hope of the faltering Eurozone, Germany’s mighty manufacturing engine, appears to be hitting a slump. Reuters: Activity in Germany’s manufacturing and service sectors declined for a sixth straight month in October as order books thinned, indicating Europe’s largest economy had clearly stagnated in the second […]

A new piece in the Wall Street Journal reports that a tenure controversy is brewing in the Methodist Church, which is looking to keep enrollment high by recruiting high-quality pastors. Unfortunately, they are butting up against opposition that will sound familiar to anyone who has been following the debate over teacher tenure: Church leaders say that […]

It’s been a while since I addressed specifically Middle Eastern issues in this space, but of course that does not mean nothing is going on there worth commenting upon. If anything, too much is going on.In addition to the standard frustrations of the bloodletting in Syria, the fragility of the new Iraq, the even greater […]