The Euro-mess took another turn for the worse over the weekend following news that Standard & Poor’s has downgraded the debt of a flock of European countries, most notably France.  Last night markets weakened across Asia as once again the rest of the world looked at Europe and wondered just how those people were going […]

California’s bullet train is going off the rails, and the overseers are running for cover. The WSJ reports that Roelof van Ark, the chief executive, and Thomas Umberg, the chairman of the High Speed Rail Authority, announced they will step down from their posts as the odds against the project grow longer. The highly indebted, […]

This is a continuation of the extract of the talk I gave at the University of Geneva in Nov. 2011 on “European Identities.” This part deals with the failure to create an identity at a European level:Let me turn to nation building at the EU level. When we pass from the level of these individual […]

In December 2011 the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (Washington) issued A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population. Some of the data were developed in collaboration with the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (South Hamilton, Massachusetts). The two institutions are responsible for the bulk of reliable […]

I’m reproducing the transcript of parts of a talk I gave in Geneva last November at the Latsis Foundation Prize Ceremony on “European Identities.”  This excerpt deals with how different European countries have dealt with Muslim immigrant assimilation, and the second excerpt will discuss the lack of identity at a European level.Let me then move […]

President Obama’s high-profile release of America’s big new strategic defense review has made it official: The brave new world of the War on Terror is a thing of the past, and the bad old world of global great-power politics is back. A new Great Game is afoot. In response to China’s debut of its first […]

Libya may be in a better place without Muammar Gaddafi, but the country is certainly not out of the woods quite yet. Nobody expected a functioning government by now, but the liberal interventionists who supported the war were hoping for something better than what we now have.The Washington Post reports that factional violence between rival […]

As a kid I always had some trouble understanding the business about the three wise men. Gold always comes in handy so I could see why you would bring gold to a baby — but what on earth were frankincense and myrrh and why would anybody give them to a child? I figured myrrh might […]

The endlessly hyped Iowa caucus process has finally drawn to an inconclusive close. Here’s what acres of media coverage extending over months and months and months of stultifying boredom and pointlessness have told us: Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Herman Cain and Rick Perry aren’t going to be president of the United […]

As the Christmas season draws to a close and the return of regular blogging looms, I’m looking back over my short life as a writer on religious matters and thinking about how writing on religion is and is not like writing on other controversial topics. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s important to […]