On December 29, 2012, the New York Times carried an article by Samuel Freedman, who is on the faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and who regularly writes in the religion column of the Times. The article is entitled “In a Crisis, Humanists seem Absent”. It dealt with the strong religious […]

Many wondered how the Iraqi government would survive after the last U.S. troops left the country. Thus far, the signs are mixed: Parliamentary institutions are working, sort of, but a lot of the political wrangling is taking place on the streets in the form of violence among militias rather than arguments among political factions.On the […]

China’s latest salvo in its conflict with Japan over disputed islands in the East China Sea has struck a nerve. Japan, which has still not officially acknowledged that a territorial dispute even exists, summoned China’s ambassador before the Japanese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday after Chinese ships sashayed into Japanese-controlled waters for 13 hours. The New […]

“Pakistan’s continuing support of Operation Enduring Freedom has been critical to our success so far in toppling the Taliban and routing out the Al Qaeda network. Yet President Musharraf has made an even broader commitment. He has declared that Pakistan will be an enemy of terrorism and extremism wherever it exists, including inside his own […]

The last time a 3-D, digital, touch-controlled globe was being used, Admiral Akbar was briefing the Rebel Alliance on the impending Battle of Endor. Those of us on Earth, however, were still using flat paper maps or hollow plastic orbs.How times have changed. The NY Times reports that widespread use of digital globes is on the […]

Banks just can’t catch a break. Just days after they’ve agreed to pay out huge settlements for their pre-recession abuses, they’ve become the most recent victim of Iranian cyber attacks: The attackers hit one American bank after the next. As in so many previous attacks, dozens of online banking sites slowed, hiccupped or ground to […]

South Africans are striking again, although this time it’s farmers, not miners, who are on strike in one of the country’s top wine regions. The New York Times reports: South African police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades at hundreds of striking farm workers who blocked a highway in the grape-growing Western Cape on Wednesday, the […]

America is about to reach a new energy milestone: According to recent government forecasts, oil imports will will drop to the lowest level in more than 25 years in 2014. The FT reports that imports will fall to six million barrels per day, half of the 12 million barrels per day we imported from 2004–07, putting America […]

If Governor Pat Quinn is to be believed, this week was a deciding moment for the state of Illinois, whose pension woes have become so bad that even the state’s staunch Democratic leadership agrees that pension reform is a top priority. But by Wednesday morning, nothing had been achieved, and senators began to pack their bags and […]

We must fix the health care system (and no, folks, we have not already done that).If we can get the plutocrats back on their heels by cordoning off the impact of television on our moneyed politics, reforming the banking/financial sector and the tax structure, we might then be in a position to really and seriously […]