In The News

Putin’s European Fifth Column

Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Gérard Roland and Edward Walker February 27, 2015
Putin rejects EU or NATO membership for neighboring states for Russia. “Indeed, the existence of a European model continues to guide and encourage those pursuing transparent, democratic governance in many post-communist countries,” explain three professors with the University of California at Berkeley in an essay for Project Syndicate. Russia’s intimidating authoritarianism has little appeal, and...

Why the West Is Losing the Battle Against Radical Islam

Azeem Ibrahim February 26, 2015
The West can no longer hold its tongue on fundamentalist religious sects that emphasize piety to the point of counting a few followers worthy while dismissing everyone else in the world. Such is the case with Wahhabism, or Salafism, the state religion in Saudi Arabia that’s exported to other Muslim nations with the help of oil dollars. Azeem Ibrahim, PhD, international security lecturer at the...

Norway Muslims Encircle Synagogue to Support Jews

Kjetil Malkenes Hovland February 25, 2015
A group of young Muslims formed a symbolic ring in front of an Oslo synagogue to protest anti-Semitism, extremism and violence conducted in the name of Islam. The Jewish rabbi expressed gratitude. “Our common God is everywhere in the world, but most of all God is where rings are formed and bridges are built between people,” the rabbi said to the crowd, according to the report by Kjetil Malkenes...

Climate Change Driving Brutal Winter?

Kirk Moore February 25, 2015
Frigid temperatures delight those who deny climate change, but the long-term outlook is unnerving. “Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis and colleagues link that wavy jet stream to a warming Arctic, where climate changes near the top of the world are happening faster than in Earth’s middle latitudes,” reports Kirk Moore for Rutgers Today. The melting Arctic is forcing upper...

Foreign Recruits Are Islamic State’s Cannon Fodder

Eli Lake February 24, 2015
Military forces fighting the Islamic State militants are reporting the terrorist group’s extensive use of foreign recruits, about 20,000 in all. Iraqi and Syrian Arabs are more likely to win safer, higher-ranking positions in the terrorist organization, while foreigners – especially the unskilled – are sent to the front lines of combat or dispatched as suicide bombers, reports Eli Lake, a...

Islamic State Militants Find a Foothold in Chaotic Libya

Maggie Michael February 20, 2015
Civil war, religious divides and power vacuums in Iraq, Syria and now Libya have made it easy for Islamic State terrorists to take patchy control, attracting new recruits while targeting oil facilities, banks and other businesses and government offices. Well publicized violence swiftly subdues the divided citizens: The Islamic State released a video showing the beheading of a group of Coptic...

China Expands Island Construction in Disputed South China Sea

Jeremy Page and Julian E. Barnes February 20, 2015
China has muted its claims, while quietly constructing artificial islands on top of four reefs, along with piers, a cement plant and landing place for helicopters, as shown by commercial satellite images, report Jeremy Page and Julian E. Barnes for the Wall Street Journal. “China appears to be building a network of island fortresses to help enforce control of most of the South China Sea – one of...