We are well into Advent, the four weeks before Christmas in which believers prepare for the holiday.  To help you begin to get into the spirit of the season, here is a link to a YouTube performance of “The Little Drummer Boy” by Sean Quigley.  (h/t: Small Dead Animals, a blog from the Great White […]

Participating on book award juries takes a lot of time and is often emotionally difficult as you struggle to do justice to many fine books.  This year I was asked to serve as a juror for Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s annual book prize and as usual there were many more first class books […]

More countries are joining the West with new sanctions on Iran. Yesterday, it was Japan. The WSJ reports: With the new sanctions, approved by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s cabinet Friday morning, Japan said it will freeze the assets of an additional 106 organizations, one individual and three banks, widening to more than 350 the circle […]

Despite the best efforts of Green unicorn hunters, and a last ditch effort to pull some kind of fuzzy pseudo-agreement from the ruins of the Durban meeting, the past year has seen climate treaty issues swept off of the front page in favor of more relevant and dramatic news about the European debt crisis, Iranian […]

I am returning to New York this morning from a speaking engagement in Columbus, Ohio.  Expect normal blogging to resume late in the day.

Syrian President Bashar Assad is finding out who his friends really are. On the friendly side stands, loyally, Hezbollah. In a shocking display of bad timing, Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah, announced his undying love for Butcher Assad on Ashura, the Shia holiday commemorating the murder of Husayn, the Prophet’s grandson. What better day to […]

An article in Bloomberg collects a number of depressing but all-too familiar stories with one common theme — young people graduating from master’s programs with low-paying jobs and crippling debt. The article reports: More people are losing the same gamble as a 33 percent jump in U.S. graduate school enrollment in the past decade, coupled […]

China is poised to become the world’s largest producer of shale gas, though that might take a few decades. Still, test drilling has confirmed the Chinese are sitting atop the world’s largest reserves of the unconventional natural gas resource. The FT reports: PetroChina, the listed subsidiary of Chinese oil and gas producer CNPC, told the […]

After the NATO airstrike that left two dozen Pakistani soldiers dead, each side predictably rushed to shape perceptions of the incident in ways which supported their self-interest. The NYT reports: The NATO air attack that killed at least two dozen Pakistani soldiers over the weekend reflected a fundamental truth about American-Pakistani relations when it comes […]

America has always feared that a nuclear Iran would lead to a Middle Eastern arms race. Speaking at a regional security forum in Riyadh earlier this week, Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki Al-Faisal (former ambassador to the US and intelligence chief) stepped up the pressure. The NYT reports: Prince Turki said at the forum on Monday […]