Latest in Opinion Highlight
Latest in Opinion
Iran’s nuclear grass eaters
By Shlomo Ben Ami MADRID: After long years of failed international efforts to end Iran’s cunning drive to develop nuclear weapons, the question today is no longer whether the West can prevent the nuclearization of Iran’s military arsenal, but whether the Islamic regime collapses first. Unfortunately, if it does not, the only option for stopping Iran …
Murder Unincorporated
By Ian Buruma NEW YORK: What possessed the young French Muslim Mohammed Merah to murder three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi, and three soldiers, two of them fellow Muslims? What possessed another man, Anders Breivik, to gun down more than 60 teenagers in a Norwegian summer camp last year? These murder sprees are so unusual that people …
The soldier, the politician, the Sheikh and his mother
By Rania Al Malky CAIRO: On the fourth anniversary of the April 6 protests, an invisible voyeur looks down from above, sporting a grin that is part gloating and part ‘mission accomplished’. Back in the day, when the seeds of Egypt’s recent popular uprising were sown through a Facebook page calling on Egyptians to support Mahallah …
The Persian Knot
By Joschka Fischer BERLIN: The negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, over Iran’s nuclear program are entering a new, and probably decisive, stage. The negotiations have been going on for almost a decade, with long interruptions, and whether a breakthrough will come this time is anyone’s …
What should the World Bank do?
By José Antonio Ocampo NEW YORK: I have been honored by World Bank directors representing developing countries and Russia to be selected as one of two developing-country candidates to become the Bank’s next president. So I want to make known to the global community the principles that will guide my actions if I am elected — …
Kenyan youth demanding change
By Kennedy Kachwanya Whenever I think of the youth issues, I remember: “Our youth are not failing the system; the system is failing our youth. Ironically, the very youth who are being treated the worst are the young people who are going to lead us out of this nightmare.” – Rachel Jackson. The youth are talented …
Whose World Bank?
By Joseph E. Stiglitz NEW YORK: US President Barack Obama’s nomination of Jim Yong Kim for the presidency of the World Bank has been well received — and rightly so, especially given some of the other names that were bandied about. In Kim, a public-health professor who is now President of Dartmouth University and previously led …
The energy deficit
By Michael Spence MILAN: I have been surprised by the recent coverage in the American press of gasoline prices and politics. Political pundits agree that presidential approval ratings are highly correlated with gas prices: when prices go up, a president’s poll ratings go down. But, in view of America’s long history of neglect of energy security …
Healing the sick man of South Asia
By Michael Spence LAHORE: Pakistan is undergoing three transitions simultaneously. How they unfold matters not only for Pakistan, but also for much of the Muslim world, particularly as the Arab Spring forces change upon governments across the wider Middle East. Most Muslim countries were governed for decades by autocrats who had either emerged directly from the …
Mr Successful and SCAF
By Omar El Sabh CAIRO: Once more the Muslim Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau has presented Egyptian politics with a black box by fielding their business tycoon Khairat Al Shater in the presidential race. This move comes at a time when the political landscape has witnessed heavy jostling between the country’s two strongest camps, SCAF and the MB. …
Erdogan the peacemaker?
By Sinan Ulgen ISTANBUL: Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken on a daunting challenge. After participating in the nuclear-security summit in South Korea at the end of March, he went to Tehran to urge Iran’s leaders to make a deal during the next round of nuclear talks between Iran and the United Nations Security …
China’s struggle to slow
By Yu Yongding BEIJING: At the opening of the annual session of China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), Premier Wen Jiabao announced that the government’s target for annual economic growth in 2012 was 7.5%. With the global economy still struggling to recover, Wen’s announcement of such a significant dip in China’s growth rate naturally sparked …
BRICs and more tar
By Philip Whitfield CAIRO: Talking shops or photo ops? Verdant oases of green shoots? Or overblown blooming nuisances? Downtrodden by history’s rapacious greed, the wooed nations are the benighted forlorn — ugly ducks turned swans. Their allure? Growth. Though not in the top tier, Egypt is on the cusp says Jim O’Neill, the Goldman Sachs economist …
Who’s Afraid of Europe’s Human-Rights Court?
By James A. Goldston and Yonko Grozev SOFIA: At a time when the ongoing European debt crisis is fracturing public faith in the continent’s political and economic institutions, one would expect Europe’s leaders to strengthen as many unifying symbols as they can. Instead, they have allowed one of the jewels of post-World War II European integration …
The hazard of second best
By Mohamed A. El-Erian NEWPORT BEACH: The international community risks settling for second best on two key issues to be discussed this month at global meetings in Washington, DC: the lingering (if currently somewhat dormant) European debt crisis, and the selection of the World Bank’s next president. It is not too late to change course, but …
Sky-high protectionism?
By Jean Pisani-Ferry BRUSSELS: A new controversy has emerged between the European Union and several of its main trade partners since the EU decided to include in its CO2 emission-control scheme all flights to and from its territory, including transcontinental flights. Airlines will need to acquire emission permits for their flights’ CO2 emissions. China and the …
British Muslims transcending differences
By Mubashir Khan LONDON: Can love really bring people together, crossing boundaries and breaking down barriers? It sounds like the stuff of fairy tales and movies, but recently in a little corner of London that’s exactly what happened. In a trendy Indian restaurant that used to be a pub, people of different faiths and backgrounds got …
Babies and the iconography of power
By Marie-Jeanne Berger The most recent attempts by the country’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to police the minds of Egyptians has led to a gregarious poster campaign around Cairo. Large photographs of a soldier cradling a baby with the slogan “Al-Gaysh wa Al-Sha’ab Eed Wahda” (The Army and the People are One Hand) …
Bonfire of the banalities
By Philip Whitfield CAIRO: Grace and pace they have not. Filibuster and bluster they’re full of. Can you believe the new crop of rags-to-riches whistle-stoppers are turning down a billion US dollars and some because their pride is hurt? More likely they’ve been tipped off the US aid package to Egypt will end up as small …
The Syrian crisis and its implications for Turkish-Russian relations
By Ziya Meral Last week, during his weekly speech to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) group in the Turkish parliament, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeated his strong statements on Syria. While his call for humanitarian corridors to bring aid to Syrian people captured international attention, his talk also included an indirect yet equally strong …
When it comes to sharia, can knowledge trump fear?
By Dr Julie Macfarlane KINGSVILLE, Ontario: Recently, Florida’s House of Representatives passed a bill (which later died in the state Senate) to ban the use of “foreign law” in domestic courtrooms. Such a bill may seem innocuous but according to the Miami Herald, flyers have circulated in Senate offices describing sharia — Islamic principles which are …
Whose sovereignty?
By Javier Solana MADRID: Despite the huge sums expended to write down Greece’s foreign debt, there has been an outcry of censure against “interference” with the country’s national sovereignty. True, in exchange for considerable European aid, Greece’s ability to maneuver independently will be limited. But are complaints that Greek sovereignty has been severely impaired justified? The …
The green-eyed monster
By Philip Whitfield CAIRO: Egypt’s Islamic politicians couldn’t hold it together. The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis are sowing seeds of mercurial destiny on a well-trod stage. Despite their protestations, both parties are fielding Delphic, ambiguous, ambitious presidential contenders. SCAF and the Mubarakites must be drooling in their druthers. A week’s a long time in politics, …
Beyond Tahrir: Public Opinion post #Jan25
By H.A. Hellyer Egyptian public opinion finally counts for something. But it’s being sorely underestimated by the activists who came from Tahrir. Therein lies a great challenge as Egypt strives to move forward. The lessons were there from almost day one. The no-vote in the constitutional referendum a year ago was the first sign. Most, if …
The Afghan endgame mirage
By Carl Bildt STOCKHOLM: On a recent visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan, I could not fail to notice the increasingly frequent international calls for an “endgame” in Afghanistan. But an endgame for that country is a dangerous illusion: the game will not end, and neither will history. The only thing that could come to an end …
Don’t follow America on health care
By Prabhat Jha and Dean T. Jamison TORONTO: With the United States Supreme Court set to begin considering the Affordable Care Act (the historic health-care reform derided by opponents as “Obamacare”), it is worth noting that the number of Americans without health insurance reached an all-time high in 2010, the year the law was enacted. Roughly …
In the name of God
By Rania Al Malky CAIRO: The future of Egypt is on the brink of an Islamist abyss. The Freedom and Justice Party’s tattered poker-faced mask has finally fallen, revealing the bloody fangs of a power hungry vampire, intent on destroying anything that stands between it and its evil, Quran-wielding project to turn Egypt into medieval Afghanistan. …
‘Terrorists’ at Home
By Naomi Wolf NEW YORK: Last week, I submitted an affidavit to support an important lawsuit brought by reporter Chris Hedges and others, including Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky, against US President Barack Obama and his defense secretary, Leon Panetta. The lawsuit seeks to stop implementation of the horrific new National Defense Authorization Act, also known …
Tunisia’s youth and their fight for the freedom of expression
By Jillian C. York In Tunisia, a new debate is taking shape. Long suppressed by the authoritarian regime of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s free expression movement for many years existed on the fringe, comprised of bloggers, software developers, media aficionados and expats whose frustration at Tunisia’s Internet censorship and surveillance regime – …
Iranians and Israelis call for an end to fear
By Sahar Namazikhah WASHINGTON DC: Iranians and Israelis should mark March 14, 2012 on their calendars — it is the day that the “Israel loves Iran” campaign began to unify the voices of Israelis and Iranians through the path of peace, despite the messages of war that political leaders have conveyed. Since last week, inspired by …