Is a wave of liberalization coming to Cuba’s shores? The Cuban government just announced a plan to ease restrictions on travel abroad for the first time since the 1960s. Previously, Cubans looking to leave the country were required to jump through a series of tough obstacles to earn the right to leave the country; now […]

Once in a while a more or less esoteric academic event is picked up by the media. This has happened in September following a gathering (of all places in Rome) of a scholarly association of Coptic studies. This must be a small and exclusive club. (It must be satisfying to belong. I’m a little envious. […]

Even as pundits debate the possibility of war with Iran, America and the Islamic Republic are already fighting an undeclared war in cyberspace. Last week, Defense Secretary Panetta confirmed that a possible Iranian cyber-strike against Saudi Arabia’s Aramco succeeded in damaging some of its vital infrastructure two monts ago. This week came further proof that America is already hitting […]

This is the time in the American election cycle when much ink is spilled on that peculiar American institution known as the Electoral College. The debate has become quite stale and predictable: Reformers (mostly on the left) argue that the college is an antiquated relic of the horse-and-buggy era that offends a basic principle of […]

For a small country located in a very tough neighborhood, Georgia has not received lots of attention since 2008, when Russia invaded the country and declared South Ossetia and Abkhazia independent. And with the world’s attention focused elsewhere (elections in the U.S., the humanitarian disaster in Syria, the challenge of Iran), many might have missed […]

British Prime Minister David Cameron has granted his Scottish counterpart Alex Salmond the right to hold a referendum on independence, reports the BBC. If successful, the referendum would represent one step toward the disintegration of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.But Cameron is confident the Scots will choose to remain within […]

The fight against Boko Haram in Nigeria has begun to assume a curious pattern: Boko Haram attacks, soldiers respond, and army officials give contradictory accounts of the incident. This happened again on Monday, when Boko Haram attacked Maiduguri for the second time, pounding the city with 15 blasts from RPGs and IEDs. Soon after the attacks […]

WRM and Zbigniew Brzezinski discuss the troubled state of the Middle East on the PBS News Hour tonight. When we have a link to the show, we will put it here.Livestream link: https://www.rmpbs.org/panorama/index.cfm/tag/news-hour-livestream/contentID/674/navID/595

The American solar and wind industries have had a rough go of it the past few years despite considerable assistance from Washington. Now, the FT reports that A123 Systems, a company that specializes in manufacturing batteries for electric cars, is filing for bankruptcy. This is yet another blow for Obama’s green energy program, under which the company […]

For those who know their Chinese history, Evan Osnos’s essay on the July 23 high speed rail crash that killed forty people outside Wenzhou, which appears in this week’s New Yorker, will bring to mind scary echoes of the Great Leap Forward: [China’s Minister of Railways] Liu [Zhijun] bet everything on high-speed railways. To preëmpt inflation in the cost of land […]