Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff

“On Friday, leaders of Western countries will gather in Germany for the third time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to coordinate which weapons to send to the war-torn country. Their possible choices, such as the advanced Leopard 2 battle tank, may matter less than the shifting rationale for them. Nearly a year into the invasion, the original reason for the West to arm Ukraine has gone beyond the goal of ending a ‘war of aggression’, or the altering of a national border by force. In recent weeks, as the Russian military has lost ground and turned more to killing and abducting civilians, its use of terror has made it easier to justify the deployment of more powerful weapons in order to protect innocent Ukrainians.” (01/17/23)

https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2023/0117/The-armor-of-innocence-in-Ukraine

Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Dan Sanchez

“If an economist sees the handiwork of God in the economy, does that invalidate his economic arguments from a secular perspective? The great economist Ludwig von Mises, who himself was either atheist or agnostic, noted that: ‘Many economists, among them Adam Smith and Bastiat, believed in God. Hence they admired in the facts they had discovered the providential care of ‘the great Director of Nature.’ Atheist critics blame them for this attitude.’ … Free-market defenders have countered that Smith, Bastiat, and Read were speaking figuratively, not literally. However, even if they were speaking literally, and even if the atheism is true, it still would not invalidate their arguments. That is because those arguments did not rely on a divine characterization of the economy.” (01/18/23)

https://fee.org/articles/how-atheist-anti-capitalists-miss-the-point/

Source: Fox News
by Michael Shellenberger

“Over the last month, a team of journalists that includes me has enjoyed extraordinary access to the internal emails and other documents of the social media platform Twitter. As part of that investigation, I discovered that the FBI and intelligence community discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and before The New York Post revealed them to the world in October 2020. The story begins in December 2019 when a Delaware computer store owner named John Paul (J.P.) Mac Isaac contacts the FBI about a laptop that Hunter Biden had left with him. … the FBI did nothing to investigate the many signs of criminal activity revealed by emails and other documents on the laptop.” (01/18/23)

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/elon-musk-chose-me-report-twitter-files-disturbing-things-learned-fbi

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Mark Episkopos

“Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is set to meet his U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken in Washington this week. There are scant expectations among observers that the visit will resolve any of the outstanding issues in what has been an increasingly troubled bilateral relationship, with the Biden administration keeping its distance from Ankara over allegations of human rights abuses and the Eurasian country’s increasingly warm ties with Moscow. Turkey has reaffirmed its uncompromising stance on the fraught NATO bids of Sweden and Finland, setting the stage for a showdown with serious long-term implications for both Ankara and the alliance.” (01/18/23)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/01/18/what-if-turkey-blocks-finland-and-sweden-nato-bids/