When this blog was formed (or re-formed) some months ago, part of its name included “Jewcentricity” for a reason. For those who may not know, this is the title of a book I wrote in 2009.  There will be no second edition of the book, because the first edition attracted not a single major review […]

Older readers will remember a 1969 song by Edwin Starr. “War,” he sings, “what is it good for?” The answer, repeated through the song, is “Absolutely nothing.” (Watch Jackie Chan sing it here.)If you asked the same thing about a modern political convention, the answer would be pretty much the same: Absolutely nothing, or close […]

Chennai is one of those Indian cities that has confused the world by changing its name; for centuries it was known as Madras. It was the oldest center of British power in India; with a presence dating from the 1630s the British presence there was part of the same colonial expansion that settled the eastern […]

During a visit to Cairo in late July, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta praised the relationship between newly elected President Mohamed Morsi and Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the longtime Defense Minister who had ruled Egypt after Hosni Mubarak’s fall from power. Ten days ago, Morsi radically changed that relationship, announcing the retirement of Tantawi […]

There cannot be two other religious traditions whose historical relations have been as awful as those between Judaism and Christianity. For centuries Jews suffered discrimination and persecution in countries that defined themselves as Christian, culminating in the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust (while the Nazi ideology which legitimated the latter was anything but Christian, it […]

Nearly twenty years ago, Zbigniew Brzezinski famously said, “Russia can be either an empire or a democracy, but it cannot be both. . . . Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.” Uninterested in becoming a democracy, today’s Kremlin has not given […]

The second stage on my India trip took me to one of the most dynamic places in the world: Mumbai. Hyderabad is a great Indian city; Mumbai is a global metropolis. With more than 20 million people in the metro area, it’s about as big as cities get, and as the financial and entertainment capital […]

There has been no shortage of recent media stories bound to embarrass the Roman Catholic Church. There has been no end of reports about priests abusing boys and girls under their care (more boys than girls, it seems), culminating in the criminal conviction of an ecclesiastical official for protecting abusive priests. And there have now […]

“Gotov je!” (“He’s finished!”) —Serb resistance slogan, directed at Milosevic An arrogant dictator grasping at power, warning of terrorists at every turn. An opposition fragmented, but growing in both coherence and strength. An uncertain future, in a region prone to violence. In some ways, Syria today evokes memories of Serbia 12 years ago, when its […]

There has not been a day since February 11, 2011, that Egyptian politics have ceased to surprise the world. Ever since the afternoon that Hosni Mubarak fell, the world’s most seasoned political analysts have struggled to make sense out of events. No one foresaw the fast-paced dynamic of the political game we have witnessed in […]