The solo trail runner was hospitalized after encountering the animal on Anchorage’s Wolverine Bowl trail near the Prospect Heights trailhead. ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A woman injured in a brown bear attack on a popular Anchorage trail managed to deploy bear spray during the encounter and make her own way back to the trailhead before being taken to a hospital, Alaska wildlife officials said. The attack was reported Thursday, Aug. 13, near the Prospect Heights trailhead, ... Read more

The presence of an Israeli angle can determine whether the difficulties faced by activists become an international news story. The post Media ignores Palestine convoy stranded by Iraq, unconcerned since Israel not involved appeared first on World Israel News.

The presence of an Israeli angle can determine whether the difficulties faced by activists become an international news story. The post Media ignores Palestine convoy stranded by Iraq, unconcerned since Israel not involved appeared first on World Israel News.

U.S. envoy Jared Kushner gave an update on ongoing negotiations with the Iranian regime, noting the regime isn't interested in doing anything that makes sense. The post WATCH: Kushner says Iran not interested in a sensible deal appeared first on World Israel News.

U.S. envoy Jared Kushner gave an update on ongoing negotiations with the Iranian regime, noting the regime isn't interested in doing anything that makes sense. The post WATCH: Kushner says Iran not interested in a sensible deal appeared first on World Israel News.

Smotrich has repeatedly advocated Israeli sovereignty over Gaza and the establishment of new Jewish settlements in the territory. The post Smotrich criticizes Kushner-Hamas talks, encourages continued assassinations of terror leaders appeared first on World Israel News.

Smotrich has repeatedly advocated Israeli sovereignty over Gaza and the establishment of new Jewish settlements in the territory. The post Smotrich criticizes Kushner-Hamas talks, encourages continued assassinations of terror leaders appeared first on World Israel News.

President Trump touted the blockade against Iran, citing the U.S. enabling the flow of millions of barrels of oil, while restating that the U.S. might declare the Strait of Hormuz U.S. territory. The post WATCH: Trump reiterates idea to declare Hormuz a US territory, says Iran is in ‘big trouble’ appeared first on World Israel News.

President Trump touted the blockade against Iran, citing the U.S. enabling the flow of millions of barrels of oil, while restating that the U.S. might declare the Strait of Hormuz U.S. territory. The post WATCH: Trump reiterates idea to declare Hormuz a US territory, says Iran is in ‘big trouble’ appeared first on World Israel News.

Israeli officials said the key test will be whether Hamas actually gives up its weapons, as the American representatives told Netanyahu it would. The post Israel-US agreement on Gaza plan spells out conditions for IDF withdrawal appeared first on World Israel News.

Israeli officials said the key test will be whether Hamas actually gives up its weapons, as the American representatives told Netanyahu it would. The post Israel-US agreement on Gaza plan spells out conditions for IDF withdrawal appeared first on World Israel News.

The working-class voters who delivered Donald Trump’s 2024 victory have steadily slipped away in 2026 according to new polling. But few of them are switching to the Democrats.

IDF forces conducted an operation in Qabatiya, searching approximately 100 buildings and arresting two terrorists suspected of planning attacks against Israeli citizens and IDF forces. The post WATCH: IDF arrests two terrorists in northern Samaria raid appeared first on World Israel News.

IDF forces conducted an operation in Qabatiya, searching approximately 100 buildings and arresting two terrorists suspected of planning attacks against Israeli citizens and IDF forces. The post WATCH: IDF arrests two terrorists in northern Samaria raid appeared first on World Israel News.

Earlier this year in Minnesota, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security infiltrated and surveilled meetings of nonprofit groups and two of the US’s biggest labor unions, the Communications Workers of America and the Service Employees International Union.

Muslims are estimated to make up about 1% of Americans, suggesting that in 2025, a Jewish American was about 190% likelier than a Muslim American to be the target of a hate crime. The post US Hate Crimes Drop, but Anti-Jewish Hate Remains Staggeringly High appeared first on World Israel News.

Muslims are estimated to make up about 1% of Americans, suggesting that in 2025, a Jewish American was about 190% likelier than a Muslim American to be the target of a hate crime. The post US Hate Crimes Drop, but Anti-Jewish Hate Remains Staggeringly High appeared first on World Israel News.

Lessons on jihad and armed conflict continue to move away from glorifying violence, reinforcing the curriculum’s broader emphasis on state authority and the protection of civilians. The post Saudi Arabia excises all antisemitism from textbooks appeared first on World Israel News.

Lessons on jihad and armed conflict continue to move away from glorifying violence, reinforcing the curriculum’s broader emphasis on state authority and the protection of civilians. The post Saudi Arabia excises all antisemitism from textbooks appeared first on World Israel News.

A 36-year-old Arab was arrested by Israeli Border Police after admitting to digging a tunnel near the Jerusalem security wall, intending to infiltrate Israel, potentially foiling a significant terror plot. The post WATCH: Israeli police thwart tunnel building effort near Jerusalem appeared first on World Israel News.

A 36-year-old Arab was arrested by Israeli Border Police after admitting to digging a tunnel near the Jerusalem security wall, intending to infiltrate Israel, potentially foiling a significant terror plot. The post WATCH: Israeli police thwart tunnel building effort near Jerusalem appeared first on World Israel News.

The four-year-old arrived at the hospital in moderate condition, fully conscious, while the seven-year-old arrived without signs of life, forcing the hospital staff to pronounce him dead. The post Two boys stabbed, one dead in Beit Shemesh stabbing appeared first on World Israel News.

The four-year-old arrived at the hospital in moderate condition, fully conscious, while the seven-year-old arrived without signs of life, forcing the hospital staff to pronounce him dead. The post Two boys stabbed, one dead in Beit Shemesh stabbing appeared first on World Israel News.

The former child actor was found unresponsive in Greenville, South Carolina, and authorities said no cause of death had been determined. GREENVILLE, S.C. — Hayden Panettiere, the actor who grew from a child performer into a television star through prominent roles in “Heroes” and “Nashville,” died Sunday in Greenville, South Carolina. She was 36, her family and representative confirmed. Greenville police said officers and emergency medical personnel responded shortly before 2 p.m. Aug. 16 to ... Read more

Everybody loves summertime. But from climate change to budget cuts on public spaces like parks and pools to a lack of vacation time, capitalism is increasingly robbing us of our summer fun.

The Nevatim Air Force Base is located in the Negev, about 15 kilometers southeast of Beer-Sheva. The post Illegal Bedouin structures ‘choke’ Israeli Air Force base, watchdog reports appeared first on World Israel News.

The Nevatim Air Force Base is located in the Negev, about 15 kilometers southeast of Beer-Sheva. The post Illegal Bedouin structures ‘choke’ Israeli Air Force base, watchdog reports appeared first on World Israel News.

In the Judean Desert, daily convoys of stolen and unlicensed vehicles are smuggled from Judea and Samaria to Arad, raising fears over weapons trafficking and terror threats. The post WATCH: Inside the Judean desert’s illegal vehicle smuggling crisis appeared first on World Israel News.

In the Judean Desert, daily convoys of stolen and unlicensed vehicles are smuggled from Judea and Samaria to Arad, raising fears over weapons trafficking and terror threats. The post WATCH: Inside the Judean desert’s illegal vehicle smuggling crisis appeared first on World Israel News.

Kate Bronfenbrenner, who retired this year from Cornell University, has studied how workers win unions, how employers stop them, and how organizers can learn from one another for four decades. Her findings have changed how unions think about organizing.

The former Puerto Rican prospect lived with severe neurological damage for nearly 11 years after his final professional fight. ORLANDO, Fla. — Former professional boxer Prichard Colón, whose promising career ended after he suffered a severe brain injury during a 2015 bout in Virginia, has died at age 33, his family and major boxing organizations announced. Colón’s father, Richard Colón, announced his son’s death Thursday, Aug. 13, in a social media post thanking supporters for ... Read more

President Trump lauds Mecca Accords between Islamic powers, linking Saudi Arabia with Pakistan and Turkey. The post Trump hails Saudi-Turkey-Pakistan defense pact as ‘big, bold’ step appeared first on World Israel News.

President Trump lauds Mecca Accords between Islamic powers, linking Saudi Arabia with Pakistan and Turkey. The post Trump hails Saudi-Turkey-Pakistan defense pact as ‘big, bold’ step appeared first on World Israel News.

Next month’s state elections in Germany could see the Alternative für Deutschland reach power for the first time. The ruling Christian Democrats seem paralyzed and are increasingly imitating their rising far-right rival.

Jared Kushner, Tony Blair, and Nickolay Mladenov meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu, with the aim of pressuring him to back partial IDF withdrawals from Gaza under the proposed Hamas disarmament plan. The post Kushner, Blair, Mladenov press Netanyahu to accept new Board of Peace Gaza plan appeared first on World Israel News.

Jared Kushner, Tony Blair, and Nickolay Mladenov meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu, with the aim of pressuring him to back partial IDF withdrawals from Gaza under the proposed Hamas disarmament plan. The post Kushner, Blair, Mladenov press Netanyahu to accept new Board of Peace Gaza plan appeared first on World Israel News.

It was never really in doubt. The Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, irritated, bothered, and keen to throw scrutiny off his financial affairs, was returned in the most pointless of by-elections on August 13. His share of the vote … The post Wounding Victory: Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage Beats Count Binface appeared first on Global Research.

“Forest flammability can be greatly increased by killing all shrub vegetation, selecting optimum weather conditions for burning, and igniting fires in a preselected pattern.” Operation Sherwood Forest In September 1965, CINCPAC requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff take action … The post Forest Fire as a Military Weapon appeared first on Global Research.

Tehran has said the Strait of Hormuz “will remain Iranian” in response to a warning from US President Donald Trump that he would soon declare the strategic waterway a “territory of the United States.” The Strait, a crucial oil and … The post After Trump Comment on Declaring Strait of Hormuz Us Territory, Tehran Says It ‘Will Remain Iranian’ appeared first on Global Research.

If they had their way, chaos is for culling the population, slowly and as painlessly as possible. So is the holy wish of Dennis Meadow, one of the chief architects of the Club of Rome’s first and most infamous report … The post Chaos for Life or Death – Or for Awakening? appeared first on Global Research.

Democratic leaders should make it very clear that the president is unfairly profiting from his position and hold shadow hearings detailing how he has done it. * To House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—Your responses … The post Corrupt Trump Makes $1.1 Million an Hour by Grifting the US People appeared first on Global Research.

Adults who started a high-fiber nutritional program soon after a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis achieved larger reductions in HbA1c and fasting blood sugar than those who began with conventional treatment The benefits of early intervention persisted even after treatment changes, … The post Diabetes Diagnosis? Early Fiber Intervention May Shift Gut Microbiome Toward Better Glucose Control appeared first on Global Research.

Libya’s conflict and instability today is caused by the U.S.-NATO attack in 2011 for regime change. U.S. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton destroyed Libya’s political and security structures and contributed to the country’s subsequent fragmentation. Since the … The post Libya Suffering From U.S. Meddling, Internal Rivalries and the Battle for Oil appeared first on Global Research.

Trump’s favorite in Colombia is Abelardo de la Espriella, the rightwing “populist” millionaire who, as a child, tortured and killed cats with explosives, similar to the notorious serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and David Berkowitz. His wealthy … The post “The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine”. Colombia Elects a Right-wing Millionaire Backed by Trump appeared first on Global Research.

Historically, one of the greatest dangers to a major power in the international system is letting smaller allies and clients drag that power into an unwise war. Both the United States and leading European powers seem inclined to make that … The post Baltic Republics Foment Crises With Russia appeared first on Global Research.

Hardly a week goes by when Donald Trump is not the centerpiece and source of a lie so outrageous or an accusation so heinous that one has to sit back gazing at one’s computer screen, stunned by the audacity and … The post “Exposure to Trumpism”. Switching Presidential Planes in Ankara appeared first on Global Research.

Reports of sailors attempting to go overboard aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln amid the war in Iran have exposed a military crisis. The US also faces strained weapons inventories, recruitment problems and a widening industrial gap. All of this paints … The post US Suicidal Crisis: Several USS Abraham Lincoln Sailors “Attempting to Go Overboard” appeared first on Global Research.

Speaking to Fox News, President Trump called on Iran to raise the white flag of surrender while threatening to attack Oman if it moves forward with a deal to jointly manage the Strait of Hormuz with Iran. The post WATCH: Trump threatens to bomb Oman ‘if they get in the way,’ advises Iran to surrender appeared first on World Israel News.

Speaking to Fox News, President Trump called on Iran to raise the white flag of surrender while threatening to attack Oman if it moves forward with a deal to jointly manage the Strait of Hormuz with Iran. The post WATCH: Trump threatens to bomb Oman ‘if they get in the way,’ advises Iran to surrender appeared first on World Israel News.

As memorandum of understanding with Iran nears end, President Trump rebuts recent comments by Vice President Vance which set low energy prices as a higher priority than blocking Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The post Challenging Vance, Trump declares denying Iran nukes ‘number one goal’ appeared first on World Israel News.

As memorandum of understanding with Iran nears end, President Trump rebuts recent comments by Vice President Vance which set low energy prices as a higher priority than blocking Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The post Challenging Vance, Trump declares denying Iran nukes ‘number one goal’ appeared first on World Israel News.

Turkiye and seven other countries on Sunday condemned Israel’s rejection of a roadmap for completing the implementation of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the Gaza conflict, saying the move jeopardizes efforts to achieve lasting peace, Anadolu reports. In … The post 8 Countries Condemn Israel’s Rejection of Roadmap to End Gaza War appeared first on Global Research.

“He absolutely needs to be impeached, removed, and locked up,” said one progressive critic, calling the president “a completely unhinged lunatic.” * In yet another remark that triggered alarm around the world, President Donald Trump said Friday that he planned … The post ‘Menace to the World’: With Iran Talks Stalled, Trump Vows to Declare Strait of Hormuz a US Territory appeared first on Global Research.

By 1862, the Union navy’s blockade of Confederate ports had effectively cut off the export of raw cotton. One unintended harm was that hundreds of thousands of British textile workers in England’s northwest cotton manufacturing district in and around Lancashire were thrown out of work or onto starvation wages. By the time of the U.S. Civil War, the mill towns surrounding Lancashire—spurred by its revolutionary mechanized spinning and weaving technology, damp climate (good for handling cotton thread without its snapping), its efficient network of canals and railways, cheap coal, and with the port of Liverpool as an import hub–had become the center of the world’s cotton textile industry. However, the American South supplied nearly 80% of the raw cotton entering Lancashire and alternative sources from Egypt, India, or Brazil, both smaller in supply and more expensive, couldn’t scale up fast enough to make up for the losses incurred by the blockade. The region collapsed in what became known as the Cotton Famine. Many mill owners, whose fortunes depended on the free flow of cotton, pressed the British government to intervene against the blockade or to recognize the Confederacy. They demanded their workers stand behind them. Much of the liberal press sided with the owners, as did influential local political and community leaders, and many mill workers themselves, all of which added greater pressure on those mill workers who had not joined the owners in common cause. On top of it all, there were other more devasting pressures as well. With the region’s economic failure, the mill workers were cast into severe poverty. Many faced starvation, lack of heating, the humiliation of the Poor Laws, health crises, eviction, and sometimes even violence from those siding with the owners. Despite these threats and deprivations, in an extraordinary act of moral courage, most cotton workers not only refused to join the owners but publicly broke with them. At a mass meeting in Manchester’s Free Trade Hall on New Years Eve, 1862, a “Committee of Workingmen” resolved to send Abraham Lincoln a letter of support, explicitly endorsing emancipation and the Union cause—not just despite, but also because of their own privation. The workers, through their reduction to dependency, through having their labor and livelihood controlled by forces outside their say, and through their general helplessness, discovered in their own experience something like the standing to address an American president on behalf of a people in bondage. The Lancashire workers didn’t claim equivalency with the slave—they understood wage unemployment isn’t the same as the chattel system—but the degradation of powerlessness had become less abstract. They urged Lincoln “not to faint in [his] providential mission” but to push for “immediate and total emancipation” to ensure “the erasure” of slavery—which they called a “foul blot upon civilization and Christianity.” They encouraged the president, “we are truly one people, though locally separate…our interests are identified with yours.” In response, Lincoln offered heart-felt gratitude to the mill workers for what he called an act of “sublime Christian heroism,” praising their willingness to endure hardship rather than demand a policy that would have relieved their own suffering while leaving untouched the suffering of others. While the similarities between that time and now are not entirely comprehensive, something like the spirit of the Lancashire mill workers was brought to mind last Friday by President Trump during his brief comments about the Iran war in his speech at the Nassau County Policy Academy on Long Island, in which he called on the American people to accept hardship as the cost of doing something both necessary and good. “We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” he stressed, reasserting, again, the primary aim of his war against the mullahs in Tehran. In doing so, he did two things at once. First, he seemed to directly contradict a statement made the day before by the vice president, who appeared to shift the administration’s messaging by declaring that reducing the cost of fuel for the American people was now “goal number one,” while preventing a nuclear-armed Iran had dropped to “goal number two.” More importantly, though tied together, the president’s rhetoric suggests he is unwilling to allow domestic economic stressors to dilute his focus on victory and finishing the job. Rather than trying to manage voter anger—and while cognizant of the financial impact on those voters—he framed any temporary economic hardship as comparatively minor when placed alongside the potential threat. We might have to pay a “little bit more” at the pump, he acknowledged, but we’re “doing it so that a very evil country” cannot have a nuclear weapon. Preventing that calamity, he encouraged Americans, is a “great service for the world.” While not exactly unique in the history of American presidential rhetoric, it is at least unusual in a modern political era too-often characterized by near-constant campaign messaging to request of the American public something so practically unpopular. American presidents frequently call for general resilience during crises, but it’s relatively rare for a president to explicitly ask the public to accept economic pain. Following the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush called Americans to patience, increased vigilance, and the acceptance of increased security measures. Admittedly, asking us to endure the TSA was a pretty big ask, but, famously, instead of also asking us to accept economic hardship he urged us to go shopping. After Putin invaded Ukraine, President Biden warned Americans that defending global democracy carried costs. After acknowledging that sanctions would yield higher domestic gas prices, he framed it as unavoidable and something he was actively trying to fix. He was rather apologetic about it. I don’t mean to draw cavernous distinctions here, but there is something refreshing in President Trump acknowledging pain-at-the-pump while insisting he was not going to apologize for higher prices because what he is doing is right to do. If Jimmy Carter was the last president to boldly call American’s to “accept a little suffering” for the long-term good of the nation, it was also Carter’s calls for that sacrifice that at least contributed to his political defeat. The question of the novelty of Trump’s bluntly stated willingness to allow us to hurt a little aside, he is right to be willing for us to hurt a little. It should be beyond argument that the present regime in Tehran must never acquire nuclear weapons. Their own history provides the best evidence for this assertion. From their very beginning in 1979 and going forward, the Mullah’s have attempted to make good on their pledge to destroy America, the Great Satan, through a continuous campaign utilizing direct military action, cyber warfare, state-sponsored terror networks, and assassination plots. Add to this the ongoing Iranian threats against U.S. partners and friends in the region, including, most obviously, against Israel, which Tehran has pledged to drive into the sea. At the very beginning of this war, against this ritualistically unrelenting, systematic threat, President Trump outlined a clear set of aims: destroy the Iranian nuclear program once and forever; destroy the Iranian ballistic missile threat that was quickly becoming not just a conventional threat against regional partners but a genuine deterrent against anyone interfering with the regime’s nuclear ambitions, destroy the Iranian Navy so that it could not threaten shipping and international commerce, and destroy Iran’s ability to fund and support proxy terror networks. It’s clear that while enormous gains have been made, significant challenges remain. Most notably, Iran’s ballistic missile program has proved resilient, and they have been able to continue to blockade the Strait of Hormuz. Supporting this, their mobile weapons—like the Shahed munitions—are exceptionally easy to hide and to quickly deploy against shipping, the rugged coastline allows the regime to effectively camouflage drones and mobile batteries with direct line-of-sight to passing tankers, and fast, small, armed speedboats continue to carry out intermittent harassment operations. In short, Iranian threats have been significantly suppressed but not eradicated. Trump needs time. And time takes time. All indicators strongly suggest the Iranian regime is currently facing an economic catastrophe. The American blockade has choked off oil revenues, leading to hyperinflation, worthless currency, and a record misery index. Mass unemployment, industrial damage, and assets seizure has left the regime cash-strapped and unable to levy taxes effectively—mostly because it’s always hard to get blood from a rock. While the impact of Lancashire’s support of President Lincoln on his ability to prosecute the Union’s war or to continue the blockade is contested, it seems clear that it had at least a measurable effect on helping to prevent then Prime Minister Palmerston from declaring war on the United States or effectively supporting the Confederacy. Suggesting that the mill worker’s courage kept Britain out of the war is probably too simplistic, but it contributed to the failure of the Confederacy’s efforts to secure Britain’s support. That harms Southern morale even as it emboldens Northern. That’s not nothing. More intangibly, but no less significantly, it also seems clear that the mill workers’ letter put some steel in the spine of the U.S. president. Deepened resolve is also not nothing. If the American public demonstrated widespread willingness to accept economic hardship—primarily by enduring high energy costs and the consequent rise in food and other costs—it might fundamentally reshape or stiffen the administration’s strategic calculus, giving President Trump the runway he needs to sustain the war of attrition against the Iranian regime. With Iran’s chief weapon being their ability to inflict economic pain by choking off the Strait of Hormuz, if Americans collectively signaled their willingness to absorb this pain, then the mullah’s primary leverage is neutralized. Backed by a willing American public, Trump could ignore artificial diplomatic deadlines and simply refuse to make dangerous concessions, allowing the U.S. blockade to slowly exhaust the regime. Because a prolonged war requires sustained enforcement of secondary sanctions, which often harms American allies and raises the prices of consumer goods, public tolerance for these harms will allow the administration to do what it needs to do to keep its foot on the throat of the mullahs. Because this conflict has created a severe logistical bottleneck, a supporting public gives Trump and congressional leaders more confidence that they can divert tax dollars into rapid defense production—giving the Pentagon the runway it needs to responsibly escalate military pressure. Finally, regimes like Iran always rely on the belief that democracies are soft and lack the stomach for long-term, painful grinds. A reasonably unified American public might shatter the regime’s hopes of winning a war of nerves. Their loss of morale would be a beautiful thing to behold. Another lesson that rose out of Lancashire’s morally courageous act is really a reminder of what should be both obvious and common sense: a public’s morally courageous willingness to suffer economic hardship—even in the cause of justice—will always affect the poor worst of all. Much of Britain rallied around those struck by the cotton famine. Soup kitchens, job programs, and other acts of rescue and relief multiplied. In America, those who can ought to do what they can to improve the ability of those harder off to endure economic pain. State and local governments should continue to expand utility bill subsidies, public transit funding, and fuel funds to support those most in need; private corporations and employers should continue apace the rolling back of return-to-work policies to support hybrid and remote work options and offer, when they can, fuel stipends to allow employees to save at the pump. Churches and non-profit organizations should also offer emergency fuel and utility funds when able, expand food pantries, and seek other remedies. All of these measures—if responsibly and efficiently pursued—can signal to Tehran that Americans support their defeat. Charity can become a force multiplication measure. Neighbor love can be a combat multiplier. To be sure, it will be hard for many to see an easy parallel between the magnanimity of the cotton workers’ willingness to suffer economic hardship to have some hand in ending chattel slavery and the willingness of Americans—including financially strapped Americans—to support this Administration’s war in Iran. For the reasons above, I think I’ve made clear that supporting the war—particularly with the president’s relatively modest aims—is easy to make. Certainly, it would be easier still if, at the end of all this, we had cause to hope that we could welcome the Iranian people back to the free world. While regime collapse has never been a direct goal of this administration, there is much that the president has done, can do, and can continue to do to encourage it. The decapitation strike at the beginning of the war was not without real hope that Khamenei’s killing would galvanize the regime’s opposition into rioting. Following this, the targeted strikes against other regime leaders were aimed not just at punishing culpable individuals but to further try to inspire protesters. While these actions appear to have had little direct impact, similar calculated strikes ought to continue. The Administration and its allies must find other ways to encourage the opposition’s—and change the regime’s—cost-benefit analysis on crackdowns. Presumably, as U.S. officials continue to intensify economic pressure, disrupt Iran’s oil exports, and degrade its military capabilities, America and its allies are also continuing to cultivate contacts inside the regime, to encourage opposition groups—including by helping them to maintain access to internet and other communications and by revisiting considerations of support for armed opposition factions. One hopes we are trying to create fractures between the National Army and the IRGC, including by credibly signaling a willingness to grant amnesty and safe passage out of Iran for political or military leaders—and their families—who either walk away or help with a popular uprising. The Trump administration’s path toward victory against Tehran, including its regime-collapse strategy—has oscillated with changing fortunes on the ground between U.S. and partner military force, military-inspired uprisings, back-channel and direct negotiations, and economic strangulation. Trump’s call for Americans to suffer a bit at the pump to do something worth doing—and good not just for America but the free world and the people of Iran—ought to result in a show of unified, public, American support for the defeat of Tehran. Doing so might remove one variable from the president’s calculations. He should know that Americans are willing to give him and our military leaders the space and time to do what needs to be done. Doing so might also signal to the Iranian people that their interests are our interests. Doing so might give the president the room he needs to focus on a strategy to get the job done and bring this thing to a responsible end. Were he able to do so, history just might repeat itself, a great good worth doing might have been done, and we’d all be walking in high cotton.

… The post Netanyahu’s Réprise of the ‘Iraq WMD Deceit’ — Re-launched to Promote War on Iran appeared first on Global Research.

Five people were wounded, and police said investigators were still working to identify other people who fired weapons during the confrontation. ETTRICK, Va. — Police arrested a 19-year-old man found hiding in a Virginia State University dormitory closet more than 14 hours after a shooting wounded five people, while investigators continued Sunday to search for other people who fired weapons during the confrontation. Camron Harris of Henrico was being held without bond in the Chesterfield ... Read more

Jurors rejected Romi Frentescu’s self-defense claim after hearing testimony about the fatal 2024 roadside confrontation near Bruceville-Eddy. WACO, Texas — A McLennan County jury convicted Romi Frentescu of capital murder in the shooting deaths of Michael Morris, 38, and Morris’ 18-year-old son, Braxton Johnson, following a trial centered on a roadside confrontation between men linked to rival motorcycle groups. Frentescu, 33, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after jurors deliberated ... Read more

On May 21, 2025, Andrij Portnov was assassinated with five gunshots in the Pozuelo de Alarcón district of Madrid, Spain. Andrij Portnov had been a prominent figure in the top echelons of the Ukrainian legal system since 2005, when he … The post Ukrainian Murders at the Highest Level appeared first on Global Research.

Ukraine’s ability to protect its cities and military infrastructure from Russian air attacks is deteriorating sharply, according to Western media reports and former top Ukrainian commander Valery Zaluzhny. Depleted interceptor stocks, complex Russian air strikes, and the exhaustion of … The post Kiev Exhausted Battlefield Innovations as Interceptor Shortages Continue appeared first on Global Research.

… The post Castro at 100: Watch the Story of Cuba’s Revolutionary Leader appeared first on Global Research.

… The post Putin Lamented the Worsening of Russian-Japanese Relations appeared first on Global Research.

The state of regional strategic affairs is characterized by the stunning reversal of Russia becoming the group’s top military-technical patron and Pakistan its top enemy. The Taliban returned to power half a decade ago on 15 August 2021, so it’s … The post The Fifth Anniversary of the Taliban’s Return to Power appeared first on Global Research.

Germany continues to deepen its security policies to confront an alleged “Russian threat.” In a recent statement, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt urged the expansion of powers of the country’s intelligence agencies. He stated that German intelligence law will soon … The post Is Germany Becoming A Police State? Broader BND Intelligence Powers. Confronts An Alleged “Russian Threat” appeared first on Global Research.

Juan Felipe Giraldo, 24, was recovered from a collapsed Pereira hotel two days before his planned wedding in Bogotá. PEREIRA, Colombia — A 24-year-old man who was preparing to get married was found dead Friday in the rubble of a hotel that collapsed during the powerful earthquake that struck western Colombia, ending a dayslong search by rescuers and relatives hoping to find him alive. Juan Felipe Giraldo had traveled to Pereira for work when the ... Read more

Mark Alan Spadt was arrested more than two months after the 15-year-old girl was found dead south of Yuma. YUMA, Ariz. — A 52-year-old Yuma man faces a first-degree murder charge and other felony allegations after investigators linked him to the death of a 15-year-old girl who had been reported missing from San Luis, authorities said. Mark Alan Spadt was arrested Aug. 13 after what the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office described as extensive investigative work ... Read more

The wounded included a 4-year-old and a 14-year-old after gunfire erupted during East End Day at Charles Young Park. LEXINGTON, Ky. — One person was killed and four others were injured Saturday evening in a shooting at Charles Young Park in Lexington, prompting a large police response and an emergency call-up of officers across the city. Lexington police said the shooting happened shortly before 7 p.m. Aug. 15 in the 200 block of Midland Avenue. ... Read more

… The post The Book on Man by Bô Yin Râ. Part VIII: Epilogue and Final Teaching! appeared first on Global Research.

The name of the "Secret" Memorandum was not “Voluntary Migration”, quite the opposite: Israeli Intelligence Ministry Policy Paper October 2023, the objective of which was to "Expel All Palestinians from Gaza" under Option C. The post Artificial Intelligence in Support of Israeli Intelligence. The Planning of Genocide. “What Will Gaza Look Like in the Future” appeared first on Global Research.

At the same time that the Supreme Court is making the political landscape less competitive, a series of corporate law developments are concentrating power within the commanding heights of the data economy.

Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler begins with Zoya, a political prisoner exiled to a small cottage in the Russian wilderness, with a robot as her sole companion. From the first chapter of Ray Nayler’s cybernetic thriller: “Now … The post “Where the Axe is Buried”: “Europe in Run by AI Politicians”. Ray Nayler’s Cybernetic Political Thriller appeared first on Global Research.

The official story is that a dangerous new coronavirus was detected in Wuhan, PRC. It had not been isolated, it's identity had not been confirmed. And then in February, the name of the "new virus" was changed to SARS-CoV-2, a virus first detected 20 years ago in 2003. The post There Never Was a “New Corona Virus”, There Never Was a Pandemic appeared first on Global Research.

From Israel and Russia to Germany and Japan, we can find nationalists laying claim to a state of perpetual victimhood to justify present-day chauvinism. This brand of “victimhood nationalism” is becoming a powerful and pernicious force in global politics.

The magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck near Flores, triggering landslides, a tsunami warning and hundreds of aftershocks across eastern Indonesia. SIKKA, Indonesia — At least 51 people were killed and thousands fled their homes after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck eastern Indonesia, damaging more than 1,300 homes, blocking roads with landslides and sending rescue teams into communities across Flores Island. About 5,000 people had evacuated by Sunday, Aug. 16, as authorities continued searching damaged buildings and ... Read more

Courtney Gartshore was convicted of culpable homicide after her 3-month-old daughter died from prolonged exposure to heat from a hairdryer. EDINBURGH, Scotland — A Scottish woman has been sentenced to six years in prison for the culpable homicide of her 3-month-old daughter, who died after being exposed to sustained heat from a hairdryer at their home in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire. Courtney Gartshore, 28, was sentenced Aug. 14 at the High Court in Edinburgh after a jury ... Read more

Michel Chossudovsky and Drago Bosnic focus on the Global Financial Apparatus, Geopolitics and the Military Agenda. They are intertwined, Big Money and the US-NATO Military Agenda constitute a Threat to Democracy.  Our objective is to reach out to people … The post Video: War and Money. Democracy is Threatened appeared first on Global Research.

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey makes for fantastic moviegoing. It also advances a fundamentally conservative view of society.

The United States has stopped pretending that the Monroe Doctrine was about anything other than its own freedom of action. Donald Trump has now declared dominance over the entire western hemisphere.

Karl Marx’s ideal society is taken far less seriously than his critique of capitalism. But he did offer a rich account of what a better society would look like — one built around meaningful work, mutual care, and human flourishing.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is backing the Delivery Protection Act, a piece of local legislation which would require Amazon to directly employ their drivers. It could open a lane for drivers to unionize — and is thus seen as an existential threat by Amazon.

Executive Summary: On July 10, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) cleared the mainland filing required for Shein’s Hong Kong listing, approving the issuance of up to around 340 million shares (CSRC, July 10). Beijing granted this clearance while the European Commission was investigating the platform for selling childlike sex dolls and other illegal products, The post Beijing Ships Harmful Products It Restricts at Home appeared first on Jamestown.

Under the cover of earthquake response, Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella has dramatically reversed Colombia’s stance toward Israel, recognizing controversial Israeli claims over the occupied Golan Heights.

James Carville is threatening to leave the Democrats if socialists keep advancing. James, if you can figure out how to launch a viable centrist third party and break the bipartisan stranglehold, we socialists would welcome it.

In a wide-ranging interview with Jacobin, economist James K. Galbraith discusses how neoclassical economic orthodoxy has badly distorted US policy thinking on everything from inflation to trade policy to the fertility crisis.

Ireland’s conservative parties are weaker than ever, but the forces of the Irish left haven’t been able to cohere around an alternative. A campaign for Irish unity based on radical change in both parts of Ireland could help break the logjam.

It’s tempting to view access to housing as a generational issue, but that approach is a political dead end. It diverts our focus from the class inequalities and profiteering that are the real cause of the housing crises afflicting so many countries.

In 1948, a US-sponsored dictatorship in South Korea launched a brutal campaign of repression on the island of Jeju. Having killed up to 30,000 people — one islander in ten — Washington’s Korean clients covered up the evidence of the crime for decades.

We spoke to David Morales, socialist candidate for mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, about fighting for rent stabilization, why the Left should run in Democratic primaries, and the plan for winning an affordable city in Providence and beyond.

Executive Summary: On July 16, the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) artificial intelligence (AI) startup Moonshot AI (月之暗面) released its latest model, Kimi K3. In blind developer testing it beat every rival on a leaderboard for frontend coding (The Decoder, July 16; Tom’s Hardware, July 17). Dean Ball, a former senior policy advisor for AI The post Beijing Signals Tiered Governance of Open-Weight Models appeared first on Jamestown.

Paramount Skydance owner David Ellison is holding California hostage as his $110 billion Warner Bros. takeover falters — exposing a mogul more interested in power and prestige than preserving the film industry he claims to love.

Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has long been a Medicare for All champion, but his current health care proposal would allow for private insurance alongside a public option — a setup bound to undermine support for the public plan.

Executive Summary: The 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC; 世界人工智能大会), held in Shanghai in July, was the first time that Chinese leader Xi Jinping attended and delivered remarks at the annual event. The conference has tracked the steadfast development of the country’s approach to artificial intelligence (AI) since its inaugural summit in 2018, which took The post Xi Bids for Global Leadership at 2026 World AI Conference appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: Strategic cooperation between Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is reaching new levels, as a variety of recent activities attest. Most prominent is a meeting between Foreign Minister Wang Yi (王毅) and his counterpart Sergey Lavrov on July 24, at which Wang said that both sides should “plan for the next The post Geopolitical Socialism: Xi and Putin Build Bloc Power appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: In late July, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization convened in Kyrgyzstan for its annual Foreign Ministers’ Council Meeting. A report by the Xinhua Research Institute published following the summit stated that the multilateral institution “will continue to expand the scope of security cooperation by placing greater emphasis on cooperation in such nontraditional security fields The post Beijing Internationalizes Its Cultural Security appeared first on Jamestown.

After the atomic bombing of Hiroshima 81 years ago on August 6, 1945, Einstein reflected “The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem.  It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.”  Though not a Christian, Einstein recognized that, while the spectacular destructive capacity of nuclear weapons was an entirely new phenomenon in 1945, man’s innate drives towards sinfulness and evil long predated WWII.  And yet, even as humanity has not changed, the arrival of such powerful technology necessitates a corresponding effort by Christians to restrain the potential destruction.  Hopefully, voices that are both Christian and realist can, working harmoniously with other faiths and worldviews, seek to guide the world safely through the current nuclear age. Principle 1:  The nuclear threat is here to stay and it must be managed.  The existence of nuclear weapons makes nuclear war a possibility, but also safeguards against that possibility through mutually-assured destruction.  Pacifist logic seeks global disarmament, even as the pre-nuclear world was far from peaceful.  It was the very threat of a potential Nazi atomic bomb which prompted Einstein and other physicists to petition President Roosevelt to pre-empt that threat.  From this historical example we can learn that even ardent pacifists like Einstein had to make pragmatic exceptions.  Nukes cannot and should not be used, but the limited possession of them is a safeguard against rogue states.  This may also discourage great powers from going to war directly with each other. Principle 2:  The highest public conscience is necessary.  Pacifistic spirit is not irrelevant or misguided per se, but must be forced to reckon with certain facts.  In our hearts, we all want peace.  At least in the West, we instinctively recognize the innate desire of each man to sit under his own vine and fig tree and be unafraid.  Yet there is also evil within each one of us, something which cautions that the abandonment of all weaponry would invite the unjust to embrace tyranny.  Self-proclaimed realists are often in actuality pacifists at heart who regrettably recognize the unpleasant facts and corresponding duties.  Bearing in mind that Christian love means working through reality rather than just wishing for a better world, it behooves us to be prudential rather than idealistic.  In this act, it is hoped that a Christian voice can sing in unity with a chorus of all religions and philosophies wishing the same.  The vital importance of this is captured with a single image:  what moral conscience do you want governing the finger closest to the nuclear trigger? Principle 3:  Nuclear non-proliferation.  The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which entered into force in 1970, was a positive development, but not all nation-states are party to it.  If there are fewer countries with nuclear weapons, this may reduce our risk.  Four powers have gained nuclear weapons since the signing of the NPT:  India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea.  The current war with Iran is, of course, motivated in part by fear that a fifth member may join that group.  Yet even among those who have signed the treaty, trust is far too low.  The temptation to violate this principle and join the ring of nuclear-armed powers is as rational as the argument for self-defense.  Only the extreme pacifist might argue against that.  Yet the very act of acquiring nuclear weapons also paints a target on one’s back.  Any country with a nuke will be in the crosshairs of a rival country with a nuke, while all other countries without them will jockey for the position of protection under the nuclear umbrella of their allies.  Nuclear weapons have not ended war, but they have limited aggression between the major military powers. Principle 4:  Responsible democratic government.  This must be in part a product of the second principle above.  If a government is neither democratic nor responsible, it is likely a tyranny under unwholesome moral leadership.  Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous observation fits here: “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”   Without a democratic government answerable to its people, who alone give true voice to the public conscience, we hazard a much higher risk of nuclear war.  Indeed, reflecting on the madness and war of our past, the most responsible and democratic order is a prerequisite for a safe and tranquil future. Principle 5:  A greater harmony, a “Global Ethic.”  Trust is low between the United States, Russia, and China, representing some of the major signatories of the non-proliferation treaty.  Religious and ideological divisions still abound in the world:  Christian vs. Muslim, Communist vs. Capitalist, Ukrainian vs. Russian, Chinese vs. American, Israeli vs. Palestinian, Sunni vs. Shia, democracy vs. autocracy.  This list goes on as the schisms of insecurity abound.  There is a need for some global sense of ethics and responsibility binding us together—a spirit of common cause and justice that transcends the United Nations.  That we should beat our swords into plowshares has long been an unattainable goal for humanity. Can a global nuclear ethic ever be realized?  Not likely in totality.  Yet this does not absolve each and every nation from finding common cause in minimizing the risks of nuclear war.  The foundations of nation-states—shared language, culture, religion, and history—have never been scalable to all mankind.  Yet internationally, with division and perils abounding, we must surmount these differences insofar as possible.  Principle 6:  Strategic limits and reductions.  The total number of nuclear warheads in existence is of course a concern.  With just enough warheads to deter a nuclear attack, it seems pointless to stockpile weapons that only serve to increase budgets.  In this sense, it is necessary to reinvigorate an international discussion about how many warheads are needed for minimal deterrence.  What kinds of arsenals are the safest to manage?  We must eliminate all warheads that do not come under a responsible chain of command and limit the numbers of those deemed to be in safe hands. Principle 7:  Responsible upgrades and management.  Technologies advance and improve, making older nuclear weapons less strategically viable or even obsolete.  Nuclear weapons are, after all, just another kind of machine: they age and wear out, so it is responsible to repair and upgrade them.  But by upgrading and maintaining of nuclear arsenals, new threats and new hazards are introduced, the kind which only peaceable actions and treaties might help guard against. None of us is glad for the existence of nuclear weapons.  But technology is a pandora’s box.  All of its gifts inevitably constitute both a blessing and a curse.  While horrifyingly destructive on one hand, we would be remiss not to acknowledge that the world has seen far less violent conflict in the 80 years since Hiroshima than the 80 years preceding it.  Yet one thing humans must never forget is our responsibility to leave a better, more secure world for our children.

Executive Summary: After more than four and a half years of war, a decisive Russian victory in Ukraine appears more unlikely than ever. Desperate to achieve a major success and in fulfillment of an imperialist vision he has championed for years, Russian President Vladimir Putin may well turn next to Estonia, a former Soviet republic The post Lessons Learned From Russia’s War Against Ukraine: The Case of Estonia appeared first on Jamestown.

In China, faith in Christ as the only way to heaven is considered “cultist” theology by the government. In Russia, Christians must seek state approval to proselytize and are often refused. In Iran, the state has leveraged its upgraded domestic digital surveillance network to crack down on its Christians. And in North Korea, merely possessing a Bible can land up to three generations of a Christian’s family in a labor camp. These patterns of oppression may seem unrelated, but in reality they are connected by a technological and ideological alliance against Christianity. In their new book, Axis of Aggressors: Countering the Cooperation of China, Russia, Iran & North Korea, my colleagues Bradley Bowman, Elaine Dezenski, and Mark Montgomery document how China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are increasingly “cooperating across economic, cyber, technology, and military domains in ways that threaten U.S. security and raise the odds of simultaneous major wars.” Yet as Axis of Aggressors further explains, cooperation among these four authoritarian countries also serves to reinforce their domestic repression. Though each regime has a different axe to grind, there is at least one group that none can tolerate: Christians. And just as the new Axis cooperates militarily, it is also coordinating the persecution of Christians. The Ideological Framework of Axis Persecution The Axis of Aggressors is, among other things, an axis of religious control. It supplies the technology, legal frameworks, and ideological concepts necessary for each state to control, repress, and persecute Christians. The commonality within their persecution, regardless of other characteristics, is that these Axis countries insist their people must not hold any force, even God, above the state.  During the 2017 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, China and Russia—with Iran, which attended as an observer—expanded the definition of “extremism” to include the legally ambiguous categories of “ideology and practice.” This was in contrast to the 2001 Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism, which had principally defined extremism in objective terms involving violence. This shift gave member governments greater legal latitude to suppress religion even without any violent or criminal activity to prosecute. While vague, this new terminology closely mirrors Russia’s principal anti-extremism law, which Moscow adopted in 2002 and which includes behavior that incites “religious discord.”  A year before the 2017 summit, Moscow had pioneered this concept by passing a package of anti-terrorism legislation called the “Yarovaya Laws.” These statutes sharply restricted missionary activity, limited where and by whom evangelism could be conducted, and penalized unauthorized religious outreach. A few months after the summit in 2017, Beijing—clearly inspired by Moscow—announced its “Five-Year Plan to Sinicize Christianity,” through which it seeks to imbue Christianity with China’s “core socialist values.” Under this program, China uses what it calls xie jiao law, which roughly translates to “cult,” to persecute Christians. The CCP used xie jiao laws in May to send a 77-year-old pastor to three years in prison for such “cult” behavior as believing that faith in Christ leads Christians to heaven. Similarly, Pyongyang views Christian worship as an “anti-state crime.” Though North Korea is arguably the worst persecutor of Christians in the world, it seeks to maintain a weak façade of religious tolerance. Russia has been instrumental in this regard, aiding North Korea in constructing its only Russian Orthodox church, which is purely for show. It has no permanent congregation and exists only as an international propaganda tool.  Pyongyang’s fake Russian Orthodox (ROC) church was blessed by the official Russian Orthodox Church, when then-Metropolitan Kirill, who now leads the ROC as Patriarch, traveled to Pyongyang in 2006 and consecrated it. Kirill also ordained North Korea’s first state-approved Orthodox priests. The ROC serves as a propaganda arm of the Kremlin and has built arguably the most effective state-church façade in the world.  Meanwhile, Tehran has cooperated with Moscow in developing an ideological alternative to universal religious freedom. The ROC and the Iranian religious establishment have maintained a formal Orthodoxy-Islam dialogue since 1995. Iran often calls Christian groups, particularly converts, “extremists,” and has used this language to justify its crackdowns on believers. At the sixth Russian-Iranian Commission meeting in Tehran in 2010, participants declared that “human rights and freedom cannot be set against religious tradition.” They agreed that the ROC and Iran’s Shiite establishment should develop a concept of “traditional values” and seek its recognition in international law. Patriarch Kirill explained the relationship at the commission’s 12th meeting in 2023 by saying that Orthodox Christians and Muslims shared fundamental values and should work together against Western interference and “extremism.” Although explicitly framed as religious, “traditional values” is a broad and politically adaptable category whose content is defined by state-aligned Russian and Iranian religious institutions. This formulation is analogous to China’s efforts to Sinicize Christianity, which requires it be subordinated to Beijing’s “core socialist values.” Chinese Technology Fuels the Axis China represents the cornerstone of the axis, providing the majority of technology and intelligence to the other members. North Korea in particular has had its persecution of Christians greatly enhanced by China. Pyongyang views all Christian worship as “anti-state crime” and thus seeks the most comprehensive apparatus of oppression. Chinese authorities have created digital maps to identify support networks for North Korean escapees and track their contact with Christian groups. Beijing often repatriates fleeing North Koreans to Pyongyang, where they then face especially harsh punishment, including torture, forced labor, and possible execution. Even though UN investigators warned China in 2014 that this information-sharing could constitute aiding and abetting crimes against humanity, Beijing continues this insidious practice to this day. Similarly, Tehran’s ability to minimize public Christian worship might have faltered had it not been for China. Iran seeks what Bowman, Dezenski, and Montgomery call “sovereign internet,” that is, “the ability and right of the state to control citizens’ access to the internet.”  In 2021, Chinese surveillance camera manufacturer Tiandy supplied networked video recorders and other surveillance products to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, police, and regular military through an Iranian distributor.   This technology’s purpose became clear during the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, when Iranian forces, with the aid of Tiandy cameras, killed at least 551 protesters and bystanders and detained more than 18,000 people. While Tehran targets all perceived domestic enemies, these Chinese-supplied capabilities strengthen the same security institutions that monitor house churches, track Christian converts, and suppress unauthorized worship. The U.S. Must Prioritize Christian Persecution by the Axis Fortunately, the Trump administration has made addressing Christian persecution a significant feature of its foreign policy. Axis of Aggressors includes important insights and practical recommendations that can help protect Christians from authoritarian regimes. Washington should expand Global Magnitsky sanctions against manufacturers, distributors, security agencies, and financial intermediaries that help authoritarian governments identify converts, monitor house churches, censor religious material, or repatriate Christian escapees. Congress should also heed the book’s proposed “qui tam” mechanism, allowing whistleblowers with credible evidence of sanctions evasion or illicit surveillance transfers to bring cases against these institutions in America’s federal courts on behalf of the U.S. government and receive part of recovered penalties. Likewise, Washington should utilize its offensive information capabilities to expose the imprisonment of pastors, sham churches, coercive “extremism” and “cult” laws, and the technology that enables religious repression. Finally, it should expand secure internet access, satellite connectivity, and encrypted communications for Iranian Christians, North Korean escapee networks, and underground churches threatened by state surveillance. For the sake of Christians living under the Axis of Aggressors—and for Christians in countries that might seek to join the Axis in the future—the United States must prioritize religious freedom when confronting these regimes.

Embarrassingly, it took me until my fifties to read Pilgrim’s Progress—an omission I cannot pretend was due to obscurity or inaccessibility.  A book in continuous print since 1678 and arguably more influential in the English-speaking world than any other text besides the Bible itself, John Bunyan’s masterwork remains a touchstone of Western religious and secular culture alike.  At home, our three copies include my grandparents’, parents’, and our own, in different stages of physical wear and language modernization.  Yet despite my early grounding in the faith and knowledge of the text’s religious, historical, and cultural significance, it took me decades to finally read it for myself.  And if it took me that long as a classics-minded Christian to read Bunyan, how much more unlikely would it be for those of limited or no faith background, unconvinced of the importance of this foundational text of the Protestant worldview and Western canon?      As an allegory of the Christian experience, Pilgrim’s Progress continues to offer deep wisdom and insight into the universal triumphs, trials, tribulations, and ultimate victory that await every believer who chooses the narrow path.  Told as a dream, the story follows its protagonist—Christian—from new birth to death, with scenes along the way exposing both the challenges and the joys of growing in faith.  It’s also a fun story and the delightful source of concepts and verbiage that remain au courant almost 350 years later: Vanity Fair, Slough of Despond, Worldly Wise, just to name several.  The wider culture remains in Bunyan’s debt. I thought of Pilgrim’s Progress recently while reading a piece in the Washington Post by Princeton politics professor Gregory Conti entitled “Ivy League students are suffering from religious illiteracy.”  Speaking as a non-believer, Conti urges universities rethinking curricula in the wake of popular backlash against the academy to incorporate basic instruction in the Bible and Christianity as a means to be more conversant with the wealth of moral insight Western civilization has passed down.  His is a powerful argument, lamenting that religiously illiterate students cannot fully appreciate the majesty or magnificence of Shakespeare, Rembrandt, or Mozart (I would have substituted Bach, but whatever), much less the rich history of political philosophy borne out of Christian precepts. Can students understand the underpinnings of a society built on the rule of law if they are unaware there are Ten Commandments, much less what they command?  Can they appreciate the genesis of human rights, including for the unborn, infirm, and the condemned without an appreciation for the doctrine of the Imago dei?  Or the imperatives of just war theory for international relations?  Or the history of anti-slavery, improved race relations, and women’s rights without any explicit knowledge of Jesus’ teachings and the resulting work of Christians to put words into practice?  Or the importance of conservation and animal rights apart from knowing the order of Creation and God’s plan in the Garden of Eden?   Yes, millions of people maintain strong beliefs on these issues apart from religion, but the questions remain: what role did religion play in the development of the modern world and what does that indicate about the bigger questions of governance, democracy, equality under law, rights as well as duties, human nature, and Western civilization itself? These are some of the questions that universities are, in fact, established to explore.  (Indeed, Princeton was founded in 1746 as the College of New Jersey to train Presbyterian clergy.)  Yet a student body ignorant of the religious foundations of the Western social and democratic experiment, both due to their own learning trajectory as well as general academic neglect, can quickly become unmoored.   On cue, Princeton religion professor Judith Weisenfeld published a letter to the Post editor on May 12, 2026 building on Conti and lamenting that colleges are cutting religion classes and suggesting that students therefore lack the resources for the sort of education Conti seeks.  She’s not wrong to suggest that cutbacks are hurting such departments, but I would submit that the solution is not necessarily for students to take a semester-long comparative religions class to become religiously literate.  By then, religion is but one of many competing voices, one more thing to “study,” one more topic to critique, rather than a life-affirming foundation of belief that infuses a broader understanding of all other disciplines.  By the time students get to college, spiritual formation will ideally already be well underway, and can be applied to a chosen discipline, rather than being a revelation when they first pass through the campus gates.   Yet the reality is that students generally come to college woefully unprepared on spiritual matters.  And that deprivation cannot be laid solely at the foot of the academy.  Parents are responsible for their children’s upbringing, including early and consistent exposure to their own beliefs which may be agnostic or opposed to Christianity and its values.  But without appreciation of the building blocks of politics and culture, the broader edifice of Western civilization is undermined.  That’s where the university must lean in.    This is no utopian impulse.  Even non-believers such as Conti understand the depth of loss when the foundations of the culture are ignored.  Next door in the comparative politics or history or sociology or anthropology departments the argument can be made that, for instance, you cannot fully understand Chinese culture without Confucianism, Japanese culture without Shintoism, India without Hinduism, the Middle East apart from Islam, or Latin America without Catholicism.  How, then, can students be expected to understand and appreciate their own cultural and political inheritance in North America and Europe apart from the principles and beliefs arising from religion, whether or not they personally profess such beliefs?  And what does that then say about the strength and ultimate sustainability of democratic governance based on individual freedoms and obligations if the structure on which they have been built is allowed to decay or is actively dismantled? There’s more at stake here than simply the knowledge of a book by John Bunyan written almost 350 years ago.  Though Pilgrim’s Progress is just one title, it stands atop a grand edifice of Western culture that has been neglected for far too long.  And from that perspective, it becomes imperative that institutions once again include key religious reference points in the course of broader instruction necessary to consider oneself “educated.”  It may not be a new argument, but when secular professors at elite universities are making the same point, it has, frankly, become too urgent to ignore.

Executive Summary: The State Council released the Regulations on Exit and Entry Administration (国务院关于出境入境管理的规定) on July 31. Also known as Order No. 841, the regulations derive their legal authority from the 2012 Exit and Entry Administration Law (出境入境管理法), and will be effective as of September 15 (National Immigration Administration [NIA], June 30, 2012; Xinhua, State Council, July 31). The post Exit Controls Anchor Beijing’s Closed-Door Strategy appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: July 2026 was an important month for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) overseas united front work. On July 13, the 11th World Conference of Overseas Chinese Associations (第十一届世界华侨华人社团联谊大会) began in Beijing, with over 400 invitees—all leaders of overseas Chinese associations—streaming in from 140 countries and regions. The conferences were attended by both Wang The post Politics on Display at Overseas Chinese Affairs Conferences appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: The National Resistance Front (NRF) traces its origins to the Northern Alliance, which was led by the well-known Tajik commander Ahmad Shah Masoud. Masoud was one of the key figures in the campaign against the Taliban in the 1990s. The movement was originally mostly ethnically homogeneous, as its membership was largely composed of The post NRF’s Potential to Launch an Anti-Taliban Counterinsurgency appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan (IMP)—an alliance comprising the Hafiz Gul Bahadur Group (HGBG), Harakat Inqilab-e-Islami Pakistan (HIIP), and Lashkar-e-Islam (LeI)—has significantly altered Pakistan’s militant landscape, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Since its formation on April 11, 2025, IMP has evolved into an umbrella alliance, rather than functioning as a distinct organization. It includes fragmented militant The post Rise and Growing Threat of Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan appeared first on Jamestown.

Since Paul the apostle first encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus, Syria has been one of the cradles of Christianity. Today, Syria is closer to a graveyard for Christians, as violence and oppression-fueled emigration threaten the virtual extinction of Christianity in Syria. Before the Syrian Civil War, Christians made up roughly 10% of the population, between 1.5 and 2 million people. Only an estimated 300,000 remain today. While their dwindling number is due in large part to the instability in the region, the new government, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, has escalated the oppression of Christians. The current state of religious minorities in Syria, along with the posture and structure of the Syrian Constitution and Parliament, effectively restricts positive change.   After al-Sharaa led Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) sudden overthrow of the Assad regime, thousands of Syrians rejoiced in the streets with the possibility of freedom. While members of the international community wanted to trust in al-Sharaa’s promises to expand freedoms and political participation, the government’s religious extremist roots necessarily inhibits improvement for religious minorities. Following years of fighting for al-Qaeda and capture by American forces, al-Sharaa formed an al-Qaeda branch in Syria to fight President al-Assad, eventually breaking off al-Qaeda to form to form Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). HTS has long been a U.S.-designated Entity of Particular Concern (EPC) for its egregious violations of religious freedom during the civil war.   While al-Sharaa promised to make a nation for all Syrians, religious and ethnic minorities in the region do not trust him owing to continued terrorism carried out by his fighters and related groups. The Open Doors’ World Watch List reported the largest single-year jump in Christian persecution in 2025, moving from 18th to 6th. In March of 2026, violence against Syria’s oldest Christian towns by Islamist militants forced the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox patriarchs to issue a joint statement saying that Easter celebrations would be “limited exclusively to prayers within the churches.” Since 2024, Islamic extremists have destroyed Christian crosses, cars, churches, homes, and businesses, kidnapped and tortured religious minorities, and brainwashed Syrian children with Jihadist messages. Similar attacks, including massacres, have been perpetrated against other religious and ethnic minorities, like the Druze, Alawites, and Kurds. Many suspect that Christians have faced less open hostility than these other communities due to the greater sensitivity in Western countries to the persecution of Christians, but their treatment of other religious and ethnic minorities reveals the dangers that threaten all who do not share the religious extremism of HTS.  Since al-Sharaa’s government took power in late 2024, the Druze minority has faced systematic violence. In July of 2025, armed tribal groups committed large-scale attacks on villages and blockaded  the main roads leading into Swaida, a city in southern Syria with many Druze. As government forces “intervened to restore order,” they and allied tribal fighters began violent raids on Druze-majority villages. The conflict resulted in 1,700 deaths, over 155,000 displaced civilians, and the destruction or burning of 36 villages. According to the UN Commission, some members of the Transitional Authority’s forces removed their military uniforms and dressed as tribal fighters before continuing their attacks against civilians and intentionally humiliated members of the Druze community. As a result of constant targeting and oppression, many in Swaida argue that this long train of abuse by the government gives them the right to self-determination.  A few months earlier, in March of 2025, a reported attack on Syrian Ministry of Defense personnel by heavily armed fighters loyal to the ousted Bashar al-Assad resulted in a massacre against the Alawite community, the ethnic minority to which the Assad family belonged. Thousands of militia men joined al-Sharaa’s government forces to attack thousands of Alawite civilians in Syria’s coastal region, killing an estimated 1,500 people. Many Muslim leaders supported this attack online and in their mosques, saying that they were “waging jihad” on the non-Sunni group. According to U.S. intelligence, the attackers “probably operated outside the direct control of the authorities.” While al-Sharaa openly condemned the attack and formed an investigation, many doubt the credibility of the investigation, and even more conclude that al-Sharaa does not have complete control over his own men. Sectarian kidnapping and murders also have increased in frequency since the new government took power. The March 2026 UN General Assembly report found that in 2025, dozens of Alawite women were kidnapped, often in broad daylight, and sexually abused. The security officials tasked with responding often failed to properly investigate or actively discouraged and threatened families to deter them from investigating or publicizing the case. In two cases they documented, Syrian officials arrested the victims themselves after securing their release and investigated them for morality-related causes.   The largest ethnic minority, the Kurds, make up roughly 10% of the total Syrian population and established a semi-autonomous region called Rojava in northeast Syria. In the past, the United States has supported their autonomy and relied upon their military, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as its local partner in the mission to permanently defeat ISIS, providing between $2.5 and $3 billion in aid between 2017 and 2026. Since January of 2026, the SDF has lost 80% of its previously autonomous territory and was forced to sign a 14-point capitulation agreement with the Syrian government as the U.S. completely withdrew its troops in April 2026. In this agreement, the autonomous administration (DAANES) is being dismantled, control of borders, dams, and oil fields is transferred to the central government, and the SDF fighters must integrate into the national Syrian army as individuals. The peril of this situation and that facing other religious minorities was deepened by the establishment of the new Syrian Constitution the year before. Since the March 2025 negotiations with the new government, Rojava has called for a constitution that represents all Syrians and spells out their rights clearly. On March 10 of 2025, President al-Sharaa signed an agreement with the Kurdish community recognizing the Kurds as an indigenous community in the Syrian state, allowing them citizenship and all constitutional rights in Syria. Three days later, al-Sharaa issued a new constitution.   Although President al-Sharaa has promised to make Syria a more inclusive country for all Syrians, the new Constitution bases the structure of the Syrian polis squarely within the Islamic tradition. The new government is titled “The Syrian Arab Republic,” a label which alienates Syria’s large non-Arab population, like the Kurds, Turkmens, Syriacs (including Assyrians and Chaldeans), Armenians, and Circassians. Furthermore, in Article 3 of Chapter 1, Syria’s president and law are directly tied to Islamic theocracy. By embedding Islam into the presidency and jurisprudence, Syria becomes another theocratic nation rather than a non-sectarian state equally respectful of Syria’s diverse population. In the Constitution of the Assad regime, Islamic law was only a source of law. In the new regime, it has become the only source of Syrian jurisprudence. For religious minorities, constitutional language matters because it defines whether citizenship is based primarily on equal civic status or religious identity.  In addition to the Constitution, many minorities are concerned about the new Syrian parliament. Before Syria held elections in October 2025, al-Sharaa issued a decree dissolving all political parties, including the Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party and historic leftist and nationalist parties, a similar move to President Assad when he took power and dismantled opposing parties. One-third of Syria’s population, living in the areas around Sweida (National Guard-controlled), Hassakah (SDF-controlled), and Raqqa (SDF-controlled), was excluded from forming local electoral committees at the outset. The ones who had a “say” did not have get to choose their own representatives, but were given options “representative” of their minority communities by the government. To make matters worse, there was no direct voting by Syria’s 23 million citizens, an unprecedented move in the region, even following the Assad regime. An 11-member Supreme Committee formed subcommittees in Syria’s 14 governorates, which in turn selected 30- to 50-member electoral bodies who voted for registered candidates. Only 7,000 people got to vote at all, and most of them were approved community leaders, academics, and technocrats.  These electoral bodies appointed 140 seats of the lawmakers, while al-Sharaa appointed 70, one-third of parliament, with the new parliament having 50 fewer members than the Assad-era parliament. The resulting parliament is overwhelmingly male and Sunni Muslim. After al-Sharaa’s appointments, there were only 21 female and 10 religious minority seats out of 210 legislators. When asked why Americans should care about Syria, James Jeffrey, a top diplomat in the region from 2004 to 2020, responded that “it’s not that Syria, per se, is important. It’s that what happens in Syria impacts all of the Middle East.” This thought drives much of U.S. engagement with Syria. After a meeting with al-Sharaa twelve days after Assad fled, diplomats from the Biden administration walked away impressed by al-Sharaa’s calm authority and charisma, along with his understanding of warfare, economic policy, and plans for Syria’s future. In 2026, many diplomats and members of Congress remained hesitantly supportive of him, arguing that further U.S. support must come in tandem with accountability. In order to protect religious minorities and pull Syria from its downward spiral, America and the international community must pressure the Syrian state to amend its Constitution by changing the structure of Parliament. While many members of Congress want bring Syria back into the international community, such as by ending its status as a state sponsor of terrorism (SST), their desire for Syrian growth must not come at the expense of continued political and religious repression. When President Trump agreed to waived certain sections of the Caesar Sanctions Act, it was with the understanding that the White House would follow up to ensure Syria would not backslide. To date, a review of Syria’s failure to uphold their end has not been formally reported, which has stalled U.S. pressure on Syria to improve. By formally calling out and condemning violence, Americans can use their current leverage to help protect all citizens in Syria, and help in the recovery of the Christian cradle in this spiritually-significant part of the world.  

“The only thing the Kremlin is interested in exporting these days is chaos.” – UK Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster in Daniel Silva’s Ransom Perhaps the most anticipated book of the summer season is the latest adventure of master spy and artist Gabriel Allon.  Now in its twenty-sixth iteration, Daniel Silva’s series has taken Allon from a secret operative defending his native Israel against Islamist terrorists to international protector of prime ministers and popes.  In Ransom Allon once again operates in the gray zone, facing a network of Russian spies bent on destabilizing Western Europe. This is not a formal book review, so there need be no disclaimer of a spoiler alert.  Ransom is not about a traditional international conflict, so it begs the question: does just war thinking apply in unconventional conflict, in the world of spies and espionage, “in the shadows?” As Ransom unfolds, the reader is presented with today’s world of Russian drones buzzing international airports, Russian assassination of political opponents by exposure to nerve agents, Russian cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns, and Russia’s relentless war on Ukraine.  Gabriel Allon asserts that this is nothing new:  “Our Russian friends are doing the same things they have been doing for the past 20 years: subversion, sabotage, election interference, and sophisticated information operations, all to sow discord and undermine the will of the West.”  Allon goes on to say, “the KGB used to call it ‘active measures’” but today we call it “hybrid warfare.”   Does just war thinking apply in these instances?  We typically apply just war thinking to cases where we anticipate or observe a formal declaration of war: legitimate authorities declaring the justice of their cause and the rightness of their intentions when the use of force is clearly a reasonable last resort.  Hybrid warfare, or gray zone operations, do not seem to fit this framework. Does the just war tradition falter because of the informality and unconventionality of hybrid warfare?  The answer, of course, is no.  Indeed, the just war framework stands up very well by providing legitimate authorities in democratic societies a diagnosis of the situation and a starting point for making decisions. First, hybrid warfare is warfare because it is the use of force or violence under, or directed by, government authority.  It is an act of war any time a government, including rogue governments such as Havana, Pyongyang, or Tehran, instigates, incites, supports, coordinates, or cooperates in the use of force or violence, whether directly, through proxies, or by clandestine methods. When such rogue governments initiate acts of harm, it is the moral and lawful duty of governments and the international community to defend the lives, livelihoods, and way of life of their citizenry. National security officials, and especially academicians safely far from the battlefield, must avoid the trap of throwing their hands up in the air and avoiding responsibility with limp excuses such as, “There is nothing we can do … the UN Security Council has not decided …”  or, “There hasn’t been a formal declaration of war, so any action on our part will be illegal …”  These are moral and strategic cop-outs. It is the ethical responsibility of legitimate governing authorities to protect their publics and the international common good by making every good-faith attempt to deter, thwart, and appropriately respond to such ‘active measures.’  Moreover, the shadowy element of hybrid warfare should result in even closer collaboration among partners in terms of information sharing and collective action.  Unfortunately, in the case of Russia’s constant undermining of Western societies and international order, the Western alliance does not seem to fully in sync. Dan Silva’s Ransom is a fast-paced novel with a cast of return characters that his vast audience will enjoy.  It is set in our own dangerous world of enemy governments, such as Russia, North Korea, and China, that actively seek to sow discord and undermine the will of the West.  The reason that the reader knows that “all’s fair in [love and] war” is an evil lie is because our Western moral order is rooted in justice—just statecraft.  May the good guys win in the real world and not just in our fiction.

For those of us with a bit of seniority, looking back on the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, George H. W. Bush’s promise of a “global spring” and Francis Fukuyama’s prediction of the “end of history” now seem remarkably optimistic, if not naïve. Depending on how one counts, more than one hundred armed conflicts are taking place around the world today, at least eight of which qualify as major wars involving large-scale combatant and civilian casualties. According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, armed conflict claimed approximately five million lives between 1989 and the end of 2025. Even that sobering estimate may be conservative. Depressingly, as the old song reminds us, the beat goes on. Against this backdrop, the need for moral clarity in thinking about war is no less urgent today than at any point in history. For centuries, the just war tradition has provided the Western moral tradition with an indispensable framework for evaluating both the justice of resorting to war (jus ad bellum) and the justice of conduct in war (jus in bello). Yet every major advance in military technology has tested the tradition’s core principles—especially proportionality, discrimination, and just cause. In earlier centuries, those innovations included the crossbow, firearms, and aerial bombardment. More recently, and with arguably greater consequence, nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence have led some observers to conclude that just war thinking has become obsolete. The most influential contemporary voice advancing this argument is Pope Leo XIV. In his inaugural encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (2026), he declared that “just war theory, which has all too often been used to justify every kind of war, is now outdated.” In doing so, Pope Leo went beyond his predecessor, Pope Francis. Although Francis declared that “the possession of nuclear weapons is immoral,” he stopped short of rejecting the just war tradition itself. Leo’s central claim is that “the just war theory comes from centuries past when we couldn’t imagine the weapons [and] human beings’ ability for destruction.” Leaving aside the fact that conventional bombs and bullets killed as many as eighty-five million combatants and noncombatants during the Second World War, there is little doubt that nuclear weapons represent something sui generis in the history of warfare. Robert Oppenheimer captured this reality after witnessing the Trinity test when, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, he reflected, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” After 1945, a diverse group of secular and religious thinkers—including Bertrand Russell, Hannah Arendt, Herman Kahn, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Ramsey—recognized the unprecedented strategic and moral implications of nuclear weapons. Within the Roman Catholic Church, the principal institutional guardian of the just war tradition, these developments prompted a sustained reevaluation of the Church’s teaching on war and peace. That reassessment began with Pope John XXIII’s 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris. Because the encyclical questioned whether war could still serve as an instrument of justice in the atomic age, some interpreted it as inaugurating a new pacifist ethic in which no war could be morally justified. Yet commentators from very different theological perspectives—including Michael Novak and J. Bryan Hehir—rejected that reading. In retrospect, Pacem in Terris did not represent a rupture with the Church’s historic teaching on war and peace. Rather, it reflected a growing awareness that the nuclear age required a more searching application of traditional moral principles. The Church’s second major postwar reassessment occurred during the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), particularly in Gaudium et Spes. Like Pacem in Terris, the council’s treatment of war and peace proved both influential and controversial. Vatican II continued the Church’s movement away from viewing warfare as an acceptable instrument of policy in the nuclear age, while nevertheless reaffirming the Church’s millennia-long commitment to the just war tradition. Following Vatican II, skepticism toward nuclear weapons continued to deepen, particularly within the American Catholic Church. By the mid-1970s, the U.S. bishops had concluded that any use of nuclear weapons was morally impermissible while permitting their possession, under strict conditions, as a lesser evil in support of deterrence—a position later affirmed by Pope John Paul II in his 1982 address to the United Nations. This moral formula—use, no; possession, qualified yes—set the stage for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ landmark 1983 pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response. Arguably no ecclesial document has more comprehensively examined the biblical, moral, and strategic dimensions of war and peace in the nuclear age. The Challenge of Peace represented the culmination of two decades of Catholic reflection that began with Pacem in Terris. It forcefully condemned the use of nuclear weapons while allowing, as a strictly transitional measure, a policy of nuclear deterrence. At the same time, it reaffirmed the just war tradition, emphasizing its strong presumption against the use of force. The pastoral letter also advocated arms control, encouraged respect for conscientious objection, and gave renewed prominence to nonviolence and peacebuilding within Catholic moral reflection. The pastoral letter generated national headlines, and the responses it provoked reflected the theological and political divisions of the era. Cardinal John J. O’Connor welcomed its central affirmation that peace remained possible in the nuclear age. George Weigel, while applauding its reaffirmation of the just war tradition, criticized its treatment of deterrence and what he regarded as an insufficient appreciation of strategic realities. Reagan biographer William Inboden notes that both President Ronald Reagan and his administration followed the drafting of the pastoral letter closely, viewing it as a potential challenge to the administration’s strategy of peace through strength in its confrontation with the Soviet Union. The legacy of The Challenge of Peace has been profound, shaping subsequent Catholic teaching while influencing evangelical, mainline Protestant, and even secular discussions of war and peace. Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas represents the latest stage in this trajectory. Yet the encyclical is arguably more than an aggiornamento—an updating—of Catholic teaching. It is the strongest papal statement to date that modern warfare, especially in an age of nuclear weapons, hypersonic missiles, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence, has rendered the traditional conditions for a just war increasingly difficult to satisfy. Inspired by Pope Leo’s encyclical, some have gone a step further, concluding that the time has come to lay the just war tradition to rest. Others, however, while acknowledging the profound challenges he identifies, argue more persuasively that our task is not to abandon this venerable tradition but to reaffirm its enduring relevance in the face of radical technological change. 

In the year 1900, most European nations had an established state church with a socially normative role. Yet France disestablished its fourteen-hundred-year relationship with the Catholic Church in 1905. Portugal would follow suit in 1911. Russia would see the end of Eastern Orthodoxy as its state religion with the Russian Revolution in 1918, and most Eastern European nations would lose their state churches as a result of Soviet occupation. Austria ended its state relationship with the Catholic Church in 1918 with the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy. The Catholic bastions of Spain and Italy would end Catholicism’s official status in 1978 and 1984, respectively. There have been historical outliers to this. The Netherlands eliminated its in 1795 during the wars associated with the French Revolution. Belgium never had a state church. The German Empire had no national state church, but did have official churches for its constituent states up until 1918. Just the same, Switzerland let the issue rest with its individual cantons and offered nothing federally. Ireland was particularly complicated, as its Anglican state church was disestablished in 1871. However, since this was a colonial church, it held no standing with the birth of the republic. The Catholic Church held a “special position” with the Republic of Ireland until 1972, albeit not as a state church. In more recent years, the disestablishment of state churches has affected the Nordic world. In 2000, the Church of Sweden was disestablished, and in 2017, the Church of Norway was also disestablished after long debate. There are now only a few remaining in Europe: the Church of Greece (Orthodox), the Church of England (Anglican), the Church of Denmark (Lutheran), and the Church of Iceland (Lutheran). How could institutions once seen as cornerstones of national order and identity so rapidly become outdated? Perhaps this is overstating it; critics from both the political left and right predicted that modernity would eventually sweep away the old alliance between church and state, leaving behind a cleaner distinction between the realms of religion and politics. They were at least partially correct. Attendance at Europe’s old state churches continues to fall, baptisms decline, and cathedrals increasingly serve as destinations for tourists rather than worshippers. In this context, what happens to a nation when one of its oldest civic institutions ceases to function? Despite the self-congratulatory clamor of atheists, what is lost when such institutions disappear? Historically, these churches have retained functions well beyond the limited administration of sacraments and the rite of Christian worship. They were emblematic of the social contract, a tangible reminder that membership in a national community required more than obedience to its sundry temporal authorities. State churches regularly cultivated the habits upon which all modern free societies depend. That is to say, their selection of virtue: honesty, restraint, responsibility, forgiveness, charity, and mutual obligation were all the fundamental building blocks of an ordered civilization. In this sense, the state church existed as the great teacher of a nation, an instrument of social pedagogy that offered a sense of mutuality. It formed the moral conscience and imagination of its citizenry well before it ever constrained the institution of the government. Such institutions also fulfilled a second and distinct constitutional function on the body politic. Their public presence reminded rulers that their executive political authority was neither absolute nor self-creating. By placing both sovereign and subject on equal footing, beneath the judgment of God, the established church introduced a necessary moral vocabulary into public life, one that even social and financial elites were expected to acknowledge fully. Therefore, the church served not only as a teacher of civic virtue, but as a permanent witness that political power itself remained accountable to the universal moral jurisdiction of an ever-present God. The evaporation of public religion in Europe and elsewhere raises questions about the civic and spiritual health of Western society with no higher reality than the self-constructed power of the state. In 2026, the Church of England offers perhaps the clearest warning about the demise of public religion. For centuries, it has occupied a peculiar constitutional position within the British state. Its bishops continue to sit in the House of Lords, the British monarch serves as its Supreme Governor, and national moments of celebration and mourning have traditionally passed through its liturgy. These include events that require the language of solemnity, such as Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, to which secularism is aphasic.  Liberal democracy and representative government depend upon habits of trust, restraint, responsibility, and mutual obligation, which the state alone cannot inculcate. Instead, these virtues require belief in an omnipresent moral arbiter, to whom all citizens and subjects are answerable. This civic role for the church becomes more apparent as it fades from public life. Across much of Europe, declining church attendance has coincided with increasing political fragmentation, institutional distrust, and uncertainty regarding what national identity means in a rapidly changing society. It is difficult to ignore that as churches have retreated from public life, including state churches, few institutions have emerged capable of performing comparable integrative functions. The Nordic churches reveal this civic function even more clearly. The Evangelical Lutheran churches of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland historically served both as religious bodies and as part of the moral architecture of Scandinavian society. The celebrated Nordic social contract, so often admired for its remarkable levels of trust and civic responsibility, did not emerge in a cultural vacuum. It found maturation within cultures shaped by Catholic, and later Lutheran, Augustinian assumptions regarding community and mutual obligation. The post-Christian irony of the present moment is therefore striking. Modern Scandinavia continues to enjoy many of the social virtues cultivated by centuries of established Christianity. Post-Christian, postmodern societies are definitively myopic. They hold that their virtues materialized ex nihilo, that trust, solidarity, and civic responsibility are permanent and immutable features of life rather than habits cultivated across generations by institutions dedicated to moral continuity. This all having been said, much of the decline of state churches stems from their own serious moral and institutional defects and complacency. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, numerous established churches gradually exchanged the prophetic office for that of administrative comfort. Protected by legal privilege and made complacent with public revenues, they too often became identified with the apathetic machinery of government rather than the conscience of the nation. However, the church, when it acts as the true church, is a force for subversion in the world. There is perhaps no greater patron saint of the public witness of established churches than St. Thomas Becket, the medieval English bishop who challenged the unchecked, tyrannical power of Henry II and was subsequently martyred in 1170. That an established church does not entail theocracy is perhaps a point of confusion among Americans who commonly attribute the separation of church and state to Thomas Jefferson in the 18th century. Established churches did not ordinarily exist to direct the state, but to remind the state that its authority was neither absolute nor self-justifying. Their public presence served as the tacit acknowledgement that political power itself remained subject to a higher moral law. In this respect, state churches functioned less as instruments of ecclesiastical domination than as a restraint upon political absolutism, placing even the most powerful beneath a transcendent standard of justice from which no one could claim exemption. Whether Europe ever returns to the model of established churches is immaterial. History rarely reverses such major shifts in the body politic, and the legal restoration of established churches would not revive the spirituality that once sustained them. The more immediate question is whether liberal democracies can preserve the moral continuity that these institutions once helped cultivate. A liberal society requires more than constitutionalism, elections, and free markets; it requires a citizenry capable of civic and moral virtue. Historically, Europe’s state churches often failed to embody those virtues, yet they nevertheless bore public witness to the enduring claim that no one, whether citizen or politician, is beyond judgment. If that conviction disappears from public life altogether, the issue before us will not simply be the decline of ancient cultural institutions—it will be whether the West can remember why political power was ever thought to have limits in the first place.

Few episodes in modern political history are as darkly ironic as an officially atheist regime attempting to preside over a religious ritual whose underlying beliefs it explicitly rejects. Yet, this is exactly what the Chinese Communist Party (the CCP) is determined to achieve by determining the identity of the next Dalai Lama. On the one hand, the CCP continues to proclaim that religion is “the opium of the people”; on the other, it insists on certifying the reincarnation of Tibetan Buddhism’s highest spiritual leader and thus determining his legitimacy. In 2007, the Chinese government promulgated the Measures on the Management of the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism. Its central provision is unambiguous: every reincarnation of a Tibetan Buddhist lama (a revered spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism) must receive approval from the central government. This regulation is aimed squarely at the eventual recognition of the Fifteenth Dalai Lama. By controlling the gateway through which reincarnations are officially recognized, the CCP seeks to weaken, and ultimately eliminate, the influence of the Dalai Lama as an institution, thereby eroding the religious identity and cultural bonds of the Tibetan people. This forms part of a far broader project: the cultural assimilation and ideological remolding of Tibet. To appreciate the absurdity of this policy, imagine the Italian government announcing that the election of future popes would require the Italian state approval. Or suppose the United States government declared that it would determine who should be appointed to the College of Cardinals. Such actions would represent not only an assault on religious autonomy but also an insult to common sense. Yet the CCP’s policy is even more extraordinary. It is not merely an instance of governmental overreach; it is interference by a state whose governing ideology fundamentally rejects the religious beliefs upon which the institution itself is based. The Chinese government repeatedly claims that China enjoys “freedom of religious belief,” yet nowhere is this more clearly contradicted than in the CCP’s usurpation of sovereignty over the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation. In Tibetan Buddhism, the system of recognizing reincarnated lamas is not simply a religious ritual; it constitutes the very foundation of doctrinal continuity and spiritual succession. If a religious community is denied the authority to determine this most fundamental aspect of its own faith, then promises of religious freedom become meaningless. History has already provided a chilling precedent. Following the death of the 10th Panchen Lama (another significant lama in Tibetan Buddhism), the 14th and current Dalai Lama announced that the 11th Panchen Lama had been identified as six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima in China. Nyima was then taken into custody by Chinese authorities in 1995, never to be seen publicly again. Meanwhile, Beijing appointed its own officially sanctioned Panchen Lama and elevated him as the legitimate successor. One religious leader vanished; another was manufactured by the Chinese state. This reality alone exposes the emptiness of official claims about religious freedom. The contradiction runs even deeper. As a ruling party founded upon dialectical materialism, the CCP has consistently portrayed religion as backward, irrational, and ultimately harmful. Throughout its history, from the destruction of the “Four Olds” during the Cultural Revolution to the suppression of numerous faith communities, “idealism” has frequently served as both a political accusation and a justification for persecution. Even today, spiritual groups may be suppressed simply because they are labeled “idealist.” This raises an obvious question: why would a government committed to materialism and hostile to idealism be so determined to intervene in, and even dominate, one of the most important aspects of Tibetan Buddhism? It recalls one who publicly denies that music exists while insisting through force of arms that only he be allowed to conduct a symphony orchestra. Chinese officials often justify their policy by invoking “historical tradition” and precedents in which earlier Chinese governments formally confirmed high-ranking Tibetan Buddhist figures. Such arguments, however, collapse under closer examination. The relationship between political authority and religious institutions has varied greatly across different historical periods. Occasional interactions between imperial governments and religious communities do not amount to the kind of comprehensive administrative control that Beijing now claims. Elevating isolated historical precedents into a legal foundation for total state supervision is itself an exercise in selective historical interpretation. More importantly, this policy forms part of a much broader framework of ethnic and cultural governance in China. In recent years, Beijing has increasingly promoted the concept of forging a “shared consciousness of the Chinese nation,” while legislation and administrative policies have reflected an increasingly systematic drive toward assimilation. The Law on the Promotion of Ethnic Unity, adopted at China’s annual “Two Sessions” in Beijing this March, further codifies the CCP’s assimilation policies toward ethnic minorities. Within this framework, religious, linguistic, and cultural differences are increasingly viewed not as forms of diversity to be protected, but as differences to be integrated into a single homogeneous national identity. Viewed in this context, it becomes clear why the Chinese government has chosen not to abolish the institution of reincarnated lamas outright. First, the Dalai Lama commands enormous respect and influence throughout the world, and openly abolishing the institution would provoke substantial international condemnation. Second, preserving the outward appearance of institutional independence enables Beijing to continue projecting an image of respect for religious traditions. More fundamentally, however, this approach reflects a subtler strategy of political control: not destruction through elimination, but domination through appropriation; not open rejection, but gradual hollowing out from within. By positioning itself as the arbiter of the next Dalai Lama, the Chinese government can functionally preserve the institution while fundamentally transforming its substance. Once the authority of a religious leader derives not from a faith community itself but from the state, that leader’s spiritual legitimacy is inevitably compromised. Over time, the institution may remain, but its meaning will have been emptied; the outward form will survive, while its soul has been removed. Such an “orchestrated continuity” may ultimately prove to be the most effective means of dismantling a tradition. History repeatedly demonstrates that the vitality of religious faith often exceeds that of political power. Yet history also reminds us that prolonged campaigns of suppression and transformation impose very real costs upon communities and individuals. In the face of such realities, silence itself can become a form of acquiescence. In this sense, the debate over the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation concerns far more than the future of Tibetan Buddhism. It raises broader questions about the meaning of religious freedom, the proper limits of state authority, and whether, in a pluralistic world, distinct cultures possess the right to preserve and perpetuate themselves according to their own traditions.

War is, of course, inherently moral in its nature because it is an inherently human phenomenon. This is not to make a value judgment about all war per se, that every war is always morally right and good; this is patently illogical. Rather, it is to say that because war as a phenomenon arises from and is fought within the nexus of human relationships, that as humans are agential moral beings in their nature, so war then is necessarily a moral endeavor. Describing the political philosophy of Edmund Burke, the late Roger Scruton used an analogy of war to describe how Burke saw politics: “Ideology proposes a kind of politics of war: the message is, you are either with us or against us, and we shall win in any case. This goes counter to the entire political tradition of Anglo-American representative government, which involves the acceptance of certain procedures and institutions as ‘given’—i.e. as creating the framework within which disagreements can be negotiated. Such a form of government should not be understood as a means to an end, or a solution to a problem, but as a way in which people live together in mutual understanding. It is both the end and the means, the solution and the problem.” Notwithstanding that Scruton’s analysis of Burke’s political ideology poignantly captures the current political zeitgeist, it is reflexively just as accurate a description of war as it is of politics. This is precisely the point which the famed Prussian theorist of war Carl von Clausewitz so famously made, that war is, in fact, an extension of politics by other means, namely armed violence in pursuit of political ends. This is a truth worth re-examining amidst the present discussion in America about its profession of arms. Though a renewed emphasis on the warrior ethos, violence, destruction, and lethality are perhaps overdue in the view of some, we cannot divorce such ideas from the moral nature of war, and why, how, and towards what ends we fight.  Towards this end, let me offer three not original points, but ones which need occasional reconsideration, particularly at a time in American life in which the initiation of war has been renegotiated under the rubric of the unitary executive. The first, of course, is the seductively simple observation that technology can enhance but not supplant the human decision to act with violence in war. General George C. Marshall, of course, famously intoned this in 1941 prior to America’s entrance into World War II, for even then the siren song that technology could supplant the human in war was being sung in many corners; through battlefield experience and strategic education, Marshall knew otherwise. Indeed, he was only challenging the American public to remember this timeless truth about the nature of war, derived from the ancient Greeks to that day: increasingly lethal and effective technology aids warriors in combatting an enemy, but it is the will to fight buried in our souls which, with God’s help, is decisive in assuring victory. For Marshall as for us today, increasingly effective technology iterates with the changing character of war but cannot supplant the will of the warrior—and his or her nation—in shaping the outcome. Derivatively, then, we are faced with a choice: humanity must repeatedly decide to always control war, never ceding it to any factor lest, in fighting, we lose our moral agency in the process.  Because humans are either moral or immoral, then, war embodies the human character of those who fight, whether ignobly or nobly. Thus, the second point I wish to make is to return to the why and how of conducting war, for these are not secondary but primary questions we must address if we decide, as a republic, to wage war. As Eric Patterson has so eloquently reminded us, these two questions lie at the heart of the Just War Tradition, particularly its ad bellum and in bello frameworks. Moreover, today as this tradition expands to consider both post bellum and ante bellum factors (so war before, in, after, and even between conflicts), the point is all the more comprehensively made that any war in which we engage will necessarily reflect our character, for right or wrong, for justice or injustice, for aggrandizement or peace… whether we like it or not. Essentially, as a human phenomenon, we cannot escape the truth that the telos of war must always be at the forefront of our decision-making about war, for such is reflective of ourselves as much as anything, and certainly what political ends we seek to achieve through it. However, though war is violent in its expression, it nevertheless remains a political process between warring parties; it is neither static nor singular in nature. As a means unto an end and thus not an end unto itself, war must always be strategically emplaced in its overarching national security apparatus context. A helpful corollary is the oft-cited acronym taught in many war colleges regarding the instruments of national power, essentially that any nation has at its disposal many means to achieve its geopolitical ends, including diplomatic, intelligence, military, economic, financial, informational, and law enforcement powers (so DIME-FIL). What is important to retain in our understanding is that each warring nation-state has all such powers at its disposal, though some relatively more or less according to their strategic capacities in each area.  Regarding our consideration of the moral nature of war, however, no nation controls each of these capacities absolutely and, more importantly, it remains for each nation to well coordinate (or not) each of these in tandem with one another. Essentially, nation-states which achieve victory have historically done so in war not solely through their domination of the military instrument of national power but through their synchronization of that instrument with each of the other’s at its disposal. How, when, where, and why each nation-state does this well is the far more dominant consideration in assessing victory or defeat. Accordingly, this makes such effective and efficient synchronization of national powers towards defined political ends a moral outcome of statecraft. Moreover, a nation-state’s lack of such effective and efficient synchronization of its national powers can, and usually does, undermine the confidence in and trust of that government by its people, particularly if such failure directly contradicts the stated values of the body politic. These, then, are the threads of war which, taken together and analogous to a garment, constitute the whole of its component weavings. War cannot be described, understood, or envisioned apart from its nature as an inherently human enterprise, and three truths help us in this regard: technology cannot supplant human agency in war; the telos of war remains paramount, and reflects our national character; and, the military instrument of national power must still be waged in synchronization with all other instruments of national power in order to achieve victory. Any nation which fails to keep these truths about the nature of war at the forefront of its thinking risks not only an immediate strategic defeat but also a broader, deeper moral corrosion of the fabric of its people. Put another way, it is more than past time for America to begin the project of recapturing an understanding of the moral nature of war; without that, victory is elusive, if not precluded. 

What do melting Arctic ice, a war for farmland in Ukraine, and the panic of Gulf petro-states have in common? Arthur Snell exposes the terrifying new geography of global conflict and how humanity can adapt to survive it.

An extract from Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah’s new book Seeking Sexual Freedom

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah on memory, risk and organising beyond backlash

Amazon and X’s policies on age verification and content moderation criticised in report on murder of three children and stabbing of others

Thousands clutching rosaries and dollars from Washington formed the march that paved the way for the 1964 coup

If Donald Trump fails to end the Iran war soon, its effects could last for decades, with unpredictable consequences

We speak to journalists and defenders of human and environmental rights about how their lives have come under threat

Keen to present itself as a key EU partner on migration, Morocco pushed migrants out of sight before tourists arrived.

What can progressives everywhere learn from Magyar’s historic victory over Orbán’s anti-democratic regime?

Europe’s great replacement prime minister lost on Sunday, and so did the global anti-gender movement

Israel’s strikes on Lebanon are a reminder that Netanyahu will do whatever he can to avoid a peace deal with Iran

The government is seeking powers to allow ministers to rewrite significant portions of the Online Safety Act

Harsh Mander on solidarity, peace, and why holding together can be the real victory

I first reported on abuse in the NHS in 2022. Labour has made the right call on the unfair ‘five-year rule’

Having helped get the party elected, Anacta Strategies now helps its clients get what they want from Starmer's Labour government