Latest Article from Ilan Berman

Trouble On The Chinese Seas

June 19, 2013  •  U.S. News & World Report

Media coverage of the June 7-8 "shirt sleeves" summit between President Obama and new Chinese president Xi Jinping in Rancho Mirage, California has largely focused on the two issues that dominated the official agenda. The first was China's extensive intellectual property theft and hacking activities in cyberspace. The second was the threat posed by the regime of reckless "young leader" Kim Jong Un in North Korea. Both are undoubtedly serious matters, and a real, substantive bilateral discussion of them is sorely overdue. But so is attention to another topic that may yet prove to be the most intractable and dangerous in relations between the two countries — Beijing's attempts to systematically exclude the U.S. Navy from a large portion of Asia's waters.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Ilan Berman

Latest Article from Michael Freund

Iran's new fanatic-in-chief

June 18, 2013  •  The Jerusalem Post

Eleven years ago, a middle-aged, up-and-coming Iranian cleric sat down for a rare interview with ABC News. Though largely unknown to the West at the time, the bespectacled mullah served as chairman of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and was a key adviser to the Iranian president.

Despite knowing that he was appearing before a Western audience, the turbaned official made little effort to hide his uncompromising and extremist views. When asked why then-US President George W. Bush had included Iran as part of the "axis of evil," for example, the partisan Persian did not hesitate to invoke an anti-Semitic canard, blaming the Jews for America's policy.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Michael Freund

Latest Article from Clare M. Lopez

National Defense vs. the Ideology of Jihad

June 14, 2013  •  Gatestone Institute

Counterterrorism expert Patrick Poole has compiled a meticulously-documented record of disastrous U.S. policy behavior that is as chilling as it is comprehensive. In "Blind Terror: The U.S. Government's Muslim Outreach Efforts and the Impact on U.S. Middle East Policy," published 4 June 2013 in the MERIA Journal, Poole describes the aggressive efforts of successive U.S. administrations dating back at least to the Clinton years to forge conciliatory relationships with American Muslim individuals and groups that are legally, openly on record as known supporters of jihadi terrorism and Islamic shariah law.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Clare M. Lopez

Latest Article from Asaf Romirowsky

BDS vs. Palestinian Statehood

June 14, 2013  •  The Algemeiner

This year's National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) conference took place at Bethlehem University where we witnessed a strong dose of Palestinian realism when a dispute occurred between the Palestinian Minister of Economy Jawad Al-Naji, and BDS participant, Nizar Banat, resulting in Al-Naji storming out of the room. The argument was triggered when Banat questioned Mahmoud Abbas and his tactics of normalization with Israel as the conference also aimed at combating such relations with Israel.

Consequently, Banat later found himself in the hospital after he was attacked when leaving the conference by PA security officers and Fatah "thugs."

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Asaf Romirowsky

Latest Article from Jeff Stier

Frankenfood? Mutant wheat not a health threat
But it may be sabotage

June 13, 2013  •  Rare

There's a new twist in the story of genetically modified wheat discovered growing rogue by an Oregon farmer. Monsanto, the company which developed the pesticide resistant strain, has now suggested the stalks were intentionally planted.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Jeff Stier

Latest Article from Clifford May

Iran's Meaningless Presidential Elections

June 13, 2013  •  Scripps Howard News Service

The Islamic Republic of Iran is holding its eleventh presidential election on Friday. It's all very exciting — just as it was in 1979 when, right after the Iranian Revolution that brought down the Shah, Iranians first cast ballots. I was there — a reporter in Iran, working on a documentary film for Bill Moyers at PBS. Then, as now, the elections were the focus of considerable international attention. Then, as now, the elections were a total fiction.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Clifford May

Latest Article from Jonathan Schanzer

How Dangerous Is a Terrorist with a Twitter Handle?

June 7, 2013  •  Foreign Policy

Sensational reports in the Guardian and Washington Post recently blew the lid off of the National Security Agency's (NSA) electronic surveillance efforts, which have harvested everything from phone calls to Facebook posts for intelligence purposes.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Jonathan Schanzer

Latest Article from Michael Rubin

The U.S. Should Stand With the Turkish People

June 5, 2013  •  The New York Times

Tear gas continues to waft over Istanbul's mosques and malls as protests have spread to dozens of cities. What began as a sit-in against the destruction of a small park has morphed into a country-wide revolt against authoritarianism. Turks have reason to be angry: Where liberals once applauded Erdogan's efforts to rein in the Turkish military, he soon showed his vendettas would not stop there: minorities, secularists, and women all found themselves targets of his ire. Press freedom is in free fall. Turkey was a tinderbox in need of a spark. By attacking demonstrators, Erdogan lit a match.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Michael Rubin

Latest Article from Soner Cagaptay

Turkey's Middle Class Strikes Back

June 5, 2013  •  The New York Times

Since 2002, Turkey's sound economic policies have made it a member of the Group of 20 and turned it into a majority middle-class society for the first time in its history. Yet this week's huge protests show that the ruling Justice and Development Party, known as the A.K.P., has become a victim of its own success.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Soner Cagaptay

Latest Article from Soeren Kern

Britain: Islamic Temporary Marriages on the Rise

June 4, 2013  •  Gatestone Institute

An increasing number of Muslims in Britain are reviving the Islamic practice of temporary marriage, according to a recent BBC television documentary focusing on the "taboo subject."

Temporary marriage -- a euphemism for religiously sanctioned prostitution -- is an Islamic custom that unites a man and an unmarried woman as "husband and wife" for a limited period of time (sometimes for less than half an hour).

The proliferation of temporary marriages -- combined with the spike in polygamous marriages -- shows how Muslims in Britain are using Islamic Sharia law with impunity to establish parallel forms of "marriage" that are otherwise illegal for non-Muslims in the country.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Soeren Kern

Latest Article from Tevi Troy

The ObamaCare Blame Game

June 2013  •  Commentary

President Obama's Affordable Care Act won't be implemented fully until 2015. But by most every measure, and according to most every voice, things are not going well.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Tevi Troy

Latest Article from Asaf Romirowsky

The voices of BDS

May 24, 2013  •  YNet News

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement's biggest success is rooted in its 'soft power.' The ability to influence behavior through values, policies, institutions and culture, as opposed to 'hard' or coercive power exercised through military or economic pressures, plays a tremendous role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Asaf Romirowsky

Latest Article from Judith Miller

Of Presidents, power and the press

May 23, 2013  •  New York Daily News

Dropboxes. Disposable cell phones. Encryption technology. Is this what American journalism has come to?

James Goodale, the former New York Times general counsel who ran the Pentagon Papers case in 1971, says that the Justice Department's secret seizure of reporters' phone and email records and its use of official press passes to track reporters' movements in government buildings make President Obama's record on press freedom worse than President Richard Nixon's.

But we live in a very different, far more dangerous time than the America of Watergate. Protecting the nation post-9/11, when the world's worst people seek to obtain the world's worst weapons, means taking aggressive measures.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Judith Miller

Latest Article from Timothy Spangler

French Wrestle With English Language

May 22, 2013  •  Creators Syndicate

Sacre bleu!

French intellectuals and politicians are coming to grips this week with an awkward fact: The English language is the de facto global standard in an increasing number of areas central to modern life. The French language, by contrast, is beginning to look a little provincial.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from Timothy Spangler

Latest Article from M. Zuhdi Jasser

We Should Have Heeded the Warning Signs of Islamist Antisemitism

May 17, 2013  •  The Jewish Press

With the rise of Islamist regimes following the Arab Awakening, we are seeing an increase in religious repression across the Middle East. That repression was predictable had we only read the tea leaves of Islamist antisemitism.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles from M. Zuhdi Jasser