A mere sixty-seven words helped alter the course of history. A century years ago this past week, November 2, 1917, the Balfour Declaration was issued, declaring British support for the establishment within the then-Ottoman Empire territory of Palestine of a…
The retrospectives on Fidel Castro continue, even as the entombment of the Cuban dictator has passed. New photographic essays, retrospectives and interviews appear on our computer screens. So symbolic has this figure proved that I expect to see apologias and…
Reforming United Nations institutions is often a fool’s errand. Yet, the Obama Administration chooses to draw no lessons from its attempt to improve the UN Human Rights Council, which just concluded its 10th anniversary session this month. Ten years ago,…
There has been a large volume of contradictory statements by Democrats and Republicans on nominating a successor to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. President Barack Obama has claimed that he is duty-bound to nominate a judge for the highest judicial…
One hundred and thirty-two people have been slaughtered in Paris and hundreds more wounded, to say nothing of smaller incidents that followed, victims of a well-coordinated, multi-pronged massacre devised by jihadists owing allegiance to the Islamic State (IS). The French…
Invading Iraq totally destabilized the Middle East and gave us the Islamic State (IS) — the latest in a long line of public figures to give voice to this combination of ignorance and amnesia is Donald Trump. Speaking to Bret…
It is a few weeks past 140 years since a boy christened Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was delivered at England’s Blenheim Palace. He survived the trenches of France, political reversals, and even being struck by a New York City driver…
One who does not disparage politicians as a class can still say that Margaret Thatcher was something relatively rare: a conviction politician, willing to forfeit popularity in order to advance policies in which she fervently believed. Free of double-talk, devoid…
Today, Palestinians and their supporters, as they have done increasingly over the years, mark what they call the naqba (Arabic for catastrophe). It was on this day 65 years ago that Israel came into existence upon the expiry of British…
Without doubt, Barack Obama has pulled off a brilliant victory and even those who dislike him cannot fail to acknowledge it. True, it wasn’t a landslide: in fact, he is the first president to be re-elected with a reduced majority…