Cultural Gold Standard Let me begin this piece by first laying the cultural and moral foundation of right political conduct and its applicability to the just concluded Nigerian elections, including the respective roles played by the major ethnic groups with particular reference to the Yorubas, Ndigbo and the Hausa/Fulani ethnicities in advancing, retarding or otherwise deflecting the moral argument as the case may be. What is life without morality? As the reader may have noticed perhaps with some sense of alarm, our contemporary world is in a terrible state of flux and anarchy with good old morality and timeless…

Last week U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra, an experienced diplomat, concluded bilateral consultations that focused on regional security and Algerian economics. The United States endorsed Algeria’s efforts to resolve the conflict in Mali, and the two countries pledged to work closely on counterterrorism. The United States also voiced support for Algerian efforts to diversify its economy and attract new investment, and the two countries will continue to build their bilateral cooperation in education. Algeria is an important partner of the United States, especially as both states confront new extremist threats in North Africa.…

I  spent the last week immersed in geopolitical conflict, but not in eastern Ukraine or the South China Sea. No, I was at NYU Abu Dhabi, one of the least conflictual places on Earth, at a Brookings Institution conferencetitled “International Peace and Cooperation in an Age of Global Competition.” The 40 senior policymakers and thinkers from the United States, Europe, and emerging countries largely agreed that we have entered a new world — one which looks very much like the old world — characterized by growing conflict between states. A few of us bridled at the premise. Someone — I think it…

Last March, John T. Booker, a 20-year-old from Kansas, checked himself into a mental health facility for evaluation. Now, a year later, he faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison, charged with attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction — the fake bomb that he was provided by undercover FBI informants. Booker was arrested earlier this month in an alleged plot to attack a Kansas military base. Booker, who had reportedly been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, had publicly expressed violent and extremist views for roughly a year before FBI agents…

The White House said it was “encouraged” by the return of a last-ditch bill to jettison the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of US phone records, even as the bill’s reauthorization of expiring surveillance powers under the Patriot Act is costing the bill civil libertarian support. The 2015 version of the USA Freedom Act was released on Tuesday, following nearly 10 weeks of closed-door negotiations in Congress. Advocates of the bill, which passed the House in May before narrowly failing in the Senate in November, are leveraging the imminent expiration of a surveillance authority in the 2001 Patriot Act to…