Commentators may disagree over whether religious liberty is under siege in America today (we recommend Peter Berger on this subject), but we can all agree—from Via Meadia to The New Republic—that religious intolerance and persecution are rife in the Middle East. The outlook is bleak whether you are a Jew in Yemen, a Christian in […]

With the addition of three Republican senators, including VP hopefuls Rob Portman and Kelly Ayotte, opponents of the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) now have enough support to block its ratification. Foes of the treaty fear it will force America to cede sovereignty to the UN and would prefer to negotiate maritime disputes through […]

Check out the first installment of WRM’s interview with the Interpreter, the blog at Australia’s Lowy Institute for International Policy. It’s a multi-part interview, so there will be more to come over the next few days.As we’ve noted before on this site, a greater American foreign policy focus on Asia makes Australia a more important partner […]

In disputes over the South China Sea, it’s usually China vs. everyone else, with Chinese maps and bullying behavior clashing up against the territorial claims of many of its neighbors. But at the ASEAN summit last week, something different happened: Cambodia took China’s side. Reuters has the story: Cambodia batted away repeated attempts to raise the issue […]

In the past few years, higher education has moved online with breathtaking speed. Harvard and MIT’s EdX have led the way, but Stanford’s Coursera is quickly emerging as a rival. It announced today that it has added 12 more universities to its list of participating institutions, among them Johns Hopkins, Duke, UC-San Francisco and the […]

Washington Post: “Neighborhoods across Damascus were rocked Monday with the most intense fighting the capital has seen in the 16-month-old Syrian uprising…”The Economist notes that Damascus residents are getting nervous. Some are blatantly, some nervously, some halfheartedly showing their support for Butcher Assad, afraid of what might come next. Others are working behind the scenes […]

The increasingly bizarre parallel universe known as the United Nations continues to astound. The Wall Street Journal reports: Iran was recently elected to the 15-member general committee of the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty conference currently underway in New York. The conference is supposed to develop a treaty regulating the international sale of conventional arms.What could […]

Amid ominous rumblings in the Pacific over very small bits of land, there appears to be some encouraging news about two very big Asian nations. China and India have struck a new agreement enabling their state-owned oil companies to jointly bid and invest in infrastructure. The first project is a pipeline through Burma into southwest […]

The rise of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood may not be so terrible for Israel after all.While he hasn’t come out and said it outright, Mohamed Morsi has shown some signs of being open to a change in border policy between Egypt and the Gaza Strip—at least, that’s what Hamas is hoping for. The Times of Israel […]

Over at Newsweek Joel Kotkin paints a gut-wrenching portrait of the plight of the millennials, who still dream the same dreams as their parents but lack the means to realize them. “Generation Screwed” is his term for the young adults facing unemployment, depreciated degrees and massive debt laid upon them by their boomer parents.Read the whole thing. […]