Now that President Barack Obama has indicated that he will be removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, only three countries — Iran, Sudan and Syria — remain. The list began in December 1979, with Libya, Iraq, South Yemen and Syria. Cuba, Iran and North Korea were later added. During his 2002 […]
By re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba after an almost 54-year break, U.S. President Barack Obama will be putting an end to a policy that long ago became pointless. Cuba may be no democracy, but Washington enjoys diplomatic relations with at least 20 countries whose regimes are more repressive than that of the Castro brothers. Yet […]
The 2011 British census provides a snapshot of the country’s Muslim population, which now stands at almost 2.8 million — 4.4 percent of the country’s overall total. Most live in cities like Birmingham, Bradford, and, of course, London, whose Muslim population, at a bit over one million, is 12.4 percent of the city’s people. Philip […]
Among the many ethnic groups that inhabit the Caucasus are the Azeris, a Turkic people who speak a language related to Turkish, but who are culturally closer to the Persians. The Republic of Azerbaijan’s 9.4 million people inhabit a land 86,600 square kilometers in size. The country borders the Russian Federation’s republic of Dagestan to […]
Who is a Russian? In everyday conversation, people speak of “Russia,” but the country is actually the “Russian Federation.” Even today, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, only 81 percent of its almost 144 million people are ethnic Russians. So who is a “Russian?” And who is not? In English, we sometimes differentiate between people’s […]
In an article published last July in the Los Angeles Times, veteran journalist Doyle McManus noted, “The drone has become America’s counter-terrorism weapon of choice.” Controlled by operators from the ground thousands of miles away, or at American bases in places like Djibouti or in the United States itself, drones carry lethal missiles, can hover for […]
November 9 is a Schicksalstag, a fateful day, a shameful day, but also a happy day in German history. On November 9, 1918, Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the first German republic from a window of the Reichstag. This proclamation raised the hope that Germany, after the defeat in World War I and the resignation of […]
The Gaza War between Hamas and Israel last summer may not have extended to the West Bank, but it has unleashed a wave of urban violence in eastern and western Jerusalem, affecting its transportation system and dividing its Arab and Jewish segments even further apart. Given the use of attack vehicles in this unrest, which […]
The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, in Warsaw, was created from the inside out. Before there was a museum, before there was a building, before there was a collection, there was a plan for the exhibition. The story — the thousand-year history of Polish Jews — came first. All else followed. The […]
This is a country with no religious toleration for non-Muslims — an absolutist entity with no democratic institutions. And it beheads people on a regular basis. It espouses an austere, puritanical and absolutist Islam, with incitements to jihad and conquest, and tries to export it to other countries. Apostates from Islam, homosexuals, and blasphemers can […]