The Pickering report on Benghazi is a good start, and it shows pretty clearly that the State Department wasn’t working effectively to protect U.S. diplomats in the rapidly deteriorating situation in Libya.What the report did not do, but which still needs to be done, is investigate the whole policy mix leading up to that night […]

A small provision in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law was supposed to stop valuable “conflict minerals” from fueling war in eastern Congo. Championed by human rights and advocacy groups like Global Witness and the Enough Project, the provision requires companies that use conflict minerals like tin in their products (cell phones, for example) to explain […]

Separatists in the Spanish region of Catalonia moved one step closer to independence on Tuesday when the two largest pro-independence parties announced their intention to form an alliance and push for a referendum in 2014. As the New York Times notes, these two parties hail from opposite ends of the political spectrum and have failed to see […]

The Persian Gulf is swimming in billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. offensive weapons, as the Obama administration signals to Iran that it is serious about a military option.The Congressional Research Service recently reported a massive jump in U.S. arms sales to allies in the Gulf region, with Saudi Arabia receiving the biggest chunk of the […]

The European Union is huffing and puffing anew about Jewish construction in East Jerusalem, all of which will no doubt smooth the path to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s re-election. Running against Europe and for Jerusalem is a no-brainer for an Israeli leader. Netanyahu must be secretly blessing the EU foreign ministries for boosting his chances […]

South Africa’s foundering ANC party may have received a shot in the arm: Cyril Ramaphosa, a former union leader and respected businessman who helped draft South Africa’s first democratic constitution, has been elected deputy president of the party.Ramaphosa has mostly kept out of politics in recent years, concentrating on growing a vast business empire. By reentering […]

Strange, 1984-esque tidings are coming from Texas, where a school district has threatened to expel a student due to her refusal to wear an RFID tracking “spy chip,” a move that is eerily reminiscent of “big brother” and his policies of total social control.The Northside Independent School District in San Antonio implemented the “Student Locator […]

An excellent new column in the FT takes on one of Britain’s biggest flaws: its widespread tendency to underestimate its own relevance. Although Britain is no longer the globe-dominating power it once was, it remains one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world, a fact that too many Britons tend to forget: If […]

This past June, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization warned us that “Land and water resources are now much more stressed than in the past and are becoming scarcer.” A new report suggests that is incorrect.While the world has indeed hit “Peak Farmland”, says the report, the reason for the coming reduction in land devoted to agriculture isn’t […]

China has a long and bloody history, and one of the bloodier episodes is the Taiping Rebellion, in which a Chinese man claiming to be the younger brother of Jesus led a violent uprising against the corrupt Manchu dynasty ruling China. The conflict raged for 14 years before coming to an end in 1864, with a […]