Latest Article from Jonathan Schanzer

How Iran Benefits From an Illicit Gold Trade With Turkey

May 17, 2013  •  The Atlantic

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has arrived in Washington, D.C. for a much-anticipated summit with President Barack Obama. The timing of the visit -- amid reports of chemical weapons usage in Syria and an attack against a Turkish border town by alleged Syrian agents -- will make it hard to talk about anything other than the civil war in Syria.

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Latest Article from Jeff Stier

How Much Of Food Activism Is New Age, Airy-Fairy Nonsense?

May 15, 2013  •  Forbes

What was once a cottage industry is now big business.  Authors, columnists, television personalities and others whose total exposure to science was college "rocks for jocks" and who never took a nutrition class are conjuring up loony notions about how we ought to be eating.  Their suggestions range from "raw foodism" and extreme variations on vegetarianism to exotic herbal supplements, weird "cleanses" and extended fasting.

Most genuine experts in nutrition echo your grandmother's advice: Eat a variety of foods, including many varieties of produce, all in moderation, then go outside and get some exercise.

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Latest Article from Michael Rubin

Erdogan's Agenda

May 16, 2013  •  National Review Online

Later today, President Barack Obama will sit down with Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Oval Office. It will be a friendly reunion. Obama has said Erdogan is one of the few foreign leaders with whom he has developed "friendships and the bonds of trust." Speaking to the Turkish parliament four years ago, on his first trip abroad as president, Obama declared, "Turkey is a critical ally. Turkey is an important part of Europe. And Turkey and the United States must stand together — and work together — to overcome the challenges of our time." These challenges are many — among them, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

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Latest Article from Clifford May

Newseum's Wall of Shame

May 16, 2013  •  Scripps Howard News Service

Inspire is a glossy, English-language, online magazine published by al-Qaeda. It was conceived by Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric and al-Qaeda leader, who also contributed editorials. In 2011, President Obama ordered a drone strike against al-Awlaki as he was riding in a car in Yemen along with Samir Khan, Inspire's Pakistani-American editor and publisher. So why hasn't the Newseum — the interactive Washington museum of news and journalism — honored al-Awlaki and Kahn in its Journalist Memorial?

If your answer is "because the Newseum would never honor terrorists," you're on shakier ground than you might think.

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Latest Article from Soeren Kern

Muslims Demand Germany "Make Islam Equal to Christianity"

May 15, 2013  •  Gatestone Institute

A major conference on German-Muslim relations has ended in failure after Muslims attending the event refused to acknowledge the government's concerns about the threats to security posed by radical Islam.

German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich had wanted the eighth annual German Islam Conference, held in Berlin on May 7, to focus on finding ways the government could work together with "moderate" Muslims in Germany to combat Islamism and extremism.

But Muslims attending the gathering were apparently offended by the insinuation that Islam could be radical or violent, and demanded instead that the German government take steps to make "Islam equal to Christianity" in Germany.

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Latest Article from Ilan Berman

Turkey To America: Step Up In Syria

May 15, 2013  •  U.S. News & World Report

This week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrives in Washington for a much publicized state visit. The Turkish leader won't simply be making a courtesy call, however. His U.S. mission is largely aimed at achieving one purpose: goading the Obama administration into taking greater action on Syria.

That's something of a tall order. Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in March of 2011, the United States has steadfastly avoided joining the fray – or even crafting a coherent strategy toward the conflict taking place between Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and his own people. This inaction has made the White House the object of withering criticism at home and abroad, but to little avail (at least so far).

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Latest Article from Asaf Romirowsky

Asia is Becoming Israel's New Frontier
Here's Why

May 14, 2013  •  Forbes

When we think of Israel, we usually think of the Middle East (its neighborhood), North America (its close ally the United States) and Europe (the long history of Ashkenazi Jews). Rarely do we think about Israel and Asia, even less about Asia as Israel's new frontier. We don't think of Asia as playing any significant role in Israel's evolution given the tiny Asian Jewish population, the lack of significant Jewish history in Asia, and minimal relations between Israel and most Asian countries for the first 40 years (1948-1988) of Israel's existence.

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Latest Article from Michael Freund

Unholy Hypocrisy At The Western Wall

May 14, 2013  •  The Jewish Press

Last Friday, the Western Wall underwent an unwelcome transformation from sacred site to media circus as the group known as the Women of the Wall sought to hold a decidedly non-traditional prayer service.

Not content with the idea that their worship would be seen by our Father in Heaven, the women went one step further and made sure that plenty of writers, journalists and cameramen from Israel and abroad were there to film their disregard for time-honored Jewish practice.

Waiting there to greet them were thousands of young religious women who had heeded the calls of leading rabbis to demonstrate support for maintaining the status quo at the site.

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Latest Article from Judith Miller

On the Outrageous AP Seizures

May 13, 2013  •  Tablet Magazine

In a move that First Amendment lawyers and advocates call a sweeping and unprecedented assault on press freedom, the Justice Department has secretly seized two months of telephone records belonging to reporters and editors for The Associated Press, apparently in an effort to discover who leaked classified information to reporters about a foiled Al Qaeda plot last year in Yemen.

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Latest Article from Jeff Stier

Ideologically Contaminated Produce Shopper's Guide Undermines Health

May 3, 2013  •  Huffington Post

"Many of the 'healthiest foods' we eat may not be as healthy as we think" was the lede of a recent Channel 11news story out of Pittsburgh. It was based on the Environmental Working Group's just released 2013 "Dirty Dozen" report on pesticide residues on produce, which is trotted out every year by the NGO. These misleading pseudo-analyses frighten consumers and actually discourage them from buying healthy fruits and vegetables.

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Latest Article from Clare M. Lopez

Time to Derail the Saudi "Visa Express"

April 29, 2013  •  Gatestone Institute

One of the more striking—and worrisome—aspects of the April 2013 Boston Marathon terror attack and the cross-border al-Qa'eda/Iran plot to bomb a passenger railway that runs between New York City and Toronto, Canada is the realization that all four suspects so far identified in the two plots had entered legally into the United States and Canada, respectively. Crossing legally into Western countries targeted for terror attacks, entering immigrant and refugee streams without drawing attention from security services, and blending into existing multicultural communities while establishing personas indistinguishable from those of tens of thousands of other new arrivals, appears to be a tried and true modus operandi for Islamic jihadis. It definitely worked for the fifteen of nineteen 9/11 hijackers who were Saudis.

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Latest Article from Lee Harris

Sympathy for the Devil

April 27, 2013  •  The American

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, Americans are again searching for motives. It is our way of dealing with acts that shock and outrage our collective sensibilities. We looked for motives after the Oklahoma City bombing and after 9/11. We looked for them in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre, when we asked ourselves what motive a young man could have to kill first graders. But what exactly are we doing when we go in search of a motive for such crimes?

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Latest Article from Tevi Troy

The Changing Bird Flu Threat

April 26, 2013  •  The Wall Street Journal

The outbreak of avian flu in China has killed at least 22 people and infected more than 108—including a man in Taiwan who had traveled in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou. For two months airline stocks have been buffeted and officials have raised concerns about a possible pandemic. So why does the American public seem so unconcerned?

There are some good and some bad reasons for the relatively blasé reaction. Most obvious is that the disease seems far away. In addition, talk of pandemics is often overblown. The 2009 swine flu was bad but nowhere near the disaster that some experts feared.

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Latest Article from Thomas Hibbs

Education nourishes the soul

April 26, 2013  •  The Baylor Lariat

"The true college," writes the African-American author W.E.B. DuBois (in words etched in stone in the walkway at Brooks Residential College), "will ever have one goal – not to earn meat, but to know the end and aim of that life which meat nourishes."

In "The Souls of Black Folk," which contains the most eloquent defenses of liberal education ever written by an American, DuBois opposed the exclusion of African-Americans from the right to vote and from civic equality. But he objected equally to the exclusion of African-Americans from the pursuit of a truly liberal education, to their being limited to a merely instrumental education, and education in a trade.

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