The New Republic

According to a Reuters dispatch in Haaretz online today, Hamas massed a huge rally in Gaza earlier today to "denounce the state of Israel and declare that they would never recognise its right to exist." So what else is new? "We ask God to punish the so-called Israel and the allies of Israel ... We vow to God that we will never recognize Israel even if we would be all killed." In the case of the last contingency, of course, no one would care. READ MORE >>

Kofi Annan is leaving. Yippee. It's not that he's leaving on his own. His (second) term is up and no one really wants him to stay, except maybe the Arabs, for whom he has done relentless service. In any case, there are seven candidates to succeed him. One of them, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the president of Latvia who lived for half a century in Canada, has not a chance. One reason is that she's not Asian and, according to the rules by which the United Nations plays, this is Asia's turn. Sorry. READ MORE >>

by Eric RauchwayGlitches in the peer review process sprout like dandelions in the groves of academe, and now some scholars appear to believe technology will prevent their seasonal recurrence. But it's hard for me to believe that, of all institutions, the blogosphere is the one to solve the problems of peer review. (Thanks to Metafilter for the pointer.) READ MORE >>

OK, I am obsessed by the Muslim avalanche against Pope Benedict ... and against what he said. There will now be many scholarly battles about the aptness of the pontiff's citation of a conversation between a late Christian Byzantine emperor and an erudite Muslim, a medieval affair. They will surely seem to some of us more than a bit nit-picky. I have linked to some pretty nit-picky writings myself. But it is Islam's contemporary tolerance for bloodshed that exercises us, and maybe Benedict was taking refuge in the past so as not directly to confront the present. READ MORE >>

by Daniel Drezner READ MORE >>

by Darrin McMahon READ MORE >>

DEBKAfile, an intelligence Internet site put together daily by ex-Mossad staffers and other former Israeli security personnel, has often been on target and prematurely so. Sometimes it has been wrong. I don't know whether what seems to me to be the quite plausible report on a military alliance cemented at the 14th conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana earlier this month is reliable or not. READ MORE >>

by Richard Stern READ MORE >>

by Casey Blake I'm delighted to read Darrin McMahon's account of philo-Americanism in Argentina. That's encouraging news in these dark times. READ MORE >>

by Eric RauchwayThis is an episode about how people get you to do what they want. If they can, they'll buy or bully you; but if they can't, they'll use the soft eyes. And sometimes (no, I can't resist a cheap pun) the eyes have it. READ MORE >>