One of the many almost unmentioned aspects of the plight of the Palestinians is that there are nearly 300,000 Palestinians who have been driven from their homes in the violence in Syria, and 500,000 that have fled to Lebanon. Their condition is pitiable in both places and bears no comparison...

The now almost certain fact that Syria has used Sarin nerve gas on domestic enemies sharply raises the ante in the desperate death struggle of the Assad regime. It is taking on the character of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, which was kept going by foreign support...

There is something to celebrate in George Will's recent column expressing pleasure at the vindication of the Central Park Five. And it is a welcome event that such eminent film-producers as Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon have made a compelling documentary about the incident....

As occurs immediately after every American presidential election, the campaign for the next election has already begun. The 2012 election was the Republican Party's to lose and it managed that task admirably. Everyone knew that Mitt Romney was not a strong candidate and if he had been facing a strong...

Anti-Semitism, as is tiresomely obvious, is alive and flourishing in many distressing places, including the Parliament of the United Kingdom. There is frequent lip service from members of all of the three largest parliamentary parties that are unreservedly hostile to Israel and to Jews generally, and routinely repeat the contemporary...

This is my first foray into the subject of pornography in any form. I have never seriously looked at adult heterosexual pornography, much less aberrant or deviant forms, and I only venture here because my experiences as a prisoner for three years give me a perspective that I have not...

Having allowed the centenary of Richard Nixon's birth to pass without published comment, because I had risen to his defence in one place and another several times recently, I was stung to self-reproach by the elegantly expressed birthday greetings of my friend Taki Theodoracopulos in The Spectator. Taki...

In the unending blizzard of anti-Israeli hypocrisy that characterizes proceedings in the United Nations, the latest blood libelous farce of the United Nations Human Rights Council has been under-recognized and largely ignored. To reduce the ignominy of having elected Muamar Qadaffi's Libya chair of the UN Human Rights Commission ten...

It is startlingly implausible that anything fiscally useful, interesting, or even sane could be generated by the hare-brained Argentinian Peronist government of Christina Kirchner Fernandez (she has already ditched the memory of her late husband who put her in the Pink House; it's as if Evita changed her name back...

The European Commission and the British government have agreed that the official language of the European Union will be English, rather than German, which was the other possibility.

German is the primary language of more Europeans than any other tongue, over 90 million, against nearly 70 million for English and...

Notwithstanding that he is an ex-Tupemaro guerrilla armed with all manner of rustically asinine reservations about the virtues of economic growth, Uruguay's president, Jose Mujica, deserves emulation for his threadbare lifestyle. He has declined to move into the presidential palace and lives instead on his wife's farm outside Montevideo. While...

Will America's reputation and influence abroad improve under Barack Obama's second term? Two foreign-policy thinkers debate the question.

This has been one of the dumbest, most futile and impartially unsatisfactory presidential elections in American history. The president is the most unsuccessful in American history to be reelected, rivalled only by his immediate predecessor.

He is the only president to be reelected to a second term with fewer...

It is impossible not to sympathize with Jews outside Israel trying to be sensible advocates for Israel's interests. A belligerently self-righteous stance, though it is often justified on the facts, is rarely a diplomatic success in the circles these people are trying to influence. But a conciliatory attitude, as such...

I am not one of those people who is compulsively proud of everything I have ever done and said, and find those who are rather tiresome. But one of my proudest moments was receiving from the Supreme Court of the United States in 2010 a unanimous verdict declaring the Honest...

Le Québec vient de connaître une élection générale exceptionnelle, qui a révélé au grand jour la rupture entre la classe politique et un public qui ne lui accorde plus aucune confiance. De nature très contemporaine, cette élection a aussi une valeur d'avertissement, compte tenu des événements tragiques de mardi soir.

Quebec has had both a brilliant and a thoroughly contemporary, as well as a cautionary election. It is brilliant because it has exposed the failure of the Quebec political class to inspire any public confidence.

The government was humdrum, over-indulged the striking students, and rushed the election to get...

It may be time for an updated reality check on the long-running Arab Spring. In terms of there actually being any springtime for democracy or anything like it, the only seriously good news is the election in Libya, where the liberal secularists defeated the Islamists, by a margin...

Gore Vidal, who died last week aged 86 was one of the most obnoxious public figures in the English-speaking world. He was predictably mourned in liberal circles where any denigration of Israel, the United States, American capitalism, the Pentagon, conservatism, conventional mores, or the accepted behaviour of the...

As Stephen Harper passes a leisurely summer dilating on the virtues of Calgary and its stampede (now that the French version of "O Canada," with its inspiring reference to our national aptitude to "carry the sword and the cross" has been reinstated there); and even as the United States slogs...