Bashar al-Assad has been the President of Syria since 2000, inheriting power from his father, Hafez al-Assad. His presidency has been marked by widespread human rights abuses, war crimes, and violations of international law, particularly during the Syrian Civil War that began in 2011. As the leader of the Syrian government, Assad’s policies and military […]
It looks like the Assad regime which has ruled Syria since 1971 may be about to crumble. The Civil War started 13 years ago but was thought to be at a stalemate, but suddenly two major cities have fallen, and opposition forces are approach Damascus. The fact Iran and Russia have started to evacuate their […]
The most recent Oxford Union debate was both odious and raucous, and you can read about it in a piece by Niall Ferguson at The Free Press (archived here). An excerpt: Something is rotten in the state of Britain. It was epitomized by a recent [Nov. 28] event at the Oxford Union, the 201-year-old debating […]
As if the Middle East is not rent by enough warfare already – with Israel fighting Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in South Yemen, all proxy fighters for Iran, which itself has attacked Israel twice with mass bombardment of missiles and been counter-bombed by Israel once, plus numerous smaller scraps between the proxies of Saudi […]
A guest post by Lucy Rogers: On 8 November 2024 Max Harris wrote an op ed for The Dominion Post on the Israel – Lebanon conflict. Harris’ article was profoundly misleading in numerous respects and I immediately wrote a response which was submitted to the editor of the Post on 9 November. To that email […]
Well, I’ll be. The group of interns at the left-wing The Nation have objected to the magazine’s recent endorsement of Kamala Harris and published their gripes. Now why would that happen? We all know that many editors and reporters at the Washington Post objected to the paper’s failure to endorse Kamala Harris, but this kind of […]
UPDATE: The verification is almost complete. From the Times of Israel: Channel 12 publishes what it says is a police document showing that one of the identification tests conducted earlier today regarding the body of a dead terrorist, apparently on the basis of photographic dental comparisons, found a “full match” to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. […]
The details of the Mossad operation against Hezbollah is so incredible, you would think it would be implausible as a film plot. They include. All forms of warfare result in some casualties of people who are not military targets. For example 500,000 German civilians died in WWII. But this operation probably saw one of the […]
This article just appeared in Spiked (click headline below to read), but you can see a similar piece in the Times of Israel. The upshot is that the BBC, which has long bridled at using the word “terrorists” for Hamas, is now bridling again when the Beeb itself shows a documentary about the Nova Music […]
Forgive me if I put up two pieces on Israel’s wars today (i’m not sure what I’ll write about next), but it’s not only on my mind, it’s the main news besides the American election. (See the daily “Nooz” for this other stuff). I don’t like to use the words “self-hating Jew,” for I don’t […]
In this short video, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, chief spokesman for the IDF, shows us the conditions under which the six recently-murdered hostages were kept. (Trigger warning: blood.) For some reason I thought the hostages were being kept either in private residences or in rooms off the tunnels, not in the tunnels themselves. When you […]
Tim Walz, the Democratic candidate for US Vice President, made a highly incoherent–even embarrassing–statement in an interview with a media outlet in Michigan. It started off well enough. Well, I think first and foremost what we saw on October 7 was a horrific act of violence against the people of Israel. They have certainly, and […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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