Latest in Opinion Highlight
Latest in Opinion
In Cairo, check your hijab at the door
By Dalia Rabie CAIRO: A few days ago I was not allowed to join my own birthday dinner. According to the man guarding L’Aubergine’s door, there were strict orders from the restaurant’s owner not to let in girls who wear the hijab. Fully aware of his employer’s hypocrisy, the bouncer cringed as he asked me if …
Egypt to boost Gaza power supply to ease crisis
By Nidal al-Mughrabi / Reuters GAZA/CAIRO: Egypt will let more fuel into Gaza and increase the amount of electricity it supplies to the Palestinian enclave, Palestinian and Egyptian officials said on Tuesday, a move to ease a power crisis that has embarrassed the ruling Hamas movement. The Egyptian government said the amount of electricity supplied to …
To all modern day Pharaohs out there
By Dina Mohamed Basiony “Go, both of you, to Pharaoh, for he has indeed transgressed all bounds; But speak to him mildly; perchance he may take heed of the reminder or fear (God).” (Quran 20:43, 44) This is a reminder. Why? Because we, people, are nas (the word in Arabic means “people” as a noun; it …
Who should lead the World Bank?
By Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian WASHINGTON, DC: Robert Zoellick will depart in June as President of the World Bank, once again raising the thorny issue of leadership of the Bretton Woods twins (the Bank and the International Monetary Fund). At their birth, John Maynard Keynes memorably warned that if these institutions did not get good …
Germany’s sunshine daydream
By Bjørn Lomborg COPENHAGEN: One of the world’s biggest green-energy public-policy experiments is coming to a bitter end in Germany, with important lessons for policymakers elsewhere. Germany once prided itself on being the “photovoltaic world champion”, doling out generous subsidies — totaling more than $130 billion, according to research from Germany’s Ruhr University — to citizens …
Rattling the Renminbi
By Yu Yongding BEIJING: From July 2005 until this past December, China’s renminbi (RMB) appreciated steadily. But then the RMB fell unexpectedly, hitting the bottom of the daily trading band set by the Peoples’ Bank of China (PBoC) for 11 sessions in a row. Though the RMB has since returned to its previous trajectory of slow …
Mission Impossible?
By Philip Whitfield CAIRO: John McCain, war hero, legendry upholder of freedom and justice — your mission senator, should you decide to accept it, is to rescue Egypt from a venomous viper’s nest. You wear the scars of excruciating torture. Five years of incarceration in the infamous Hanoi Hilton’s dungeons seared your soul. You have known …
The Maghreb’s modern Islamists
By Moha Ennaji FEZ: Just over a year ago, the Arab Spring sparked dramatic change throughout the Arab world. Popular movements have brought a range of avowedly Islamist political parties to power, replacing the largely secular former regimes. What that will mean for these countries, and for the region, is one of today’s central geopolitical questions. …
Capital shrugged
By Mark Spitznagel LOS ANGELES: Capitalism’s greatest strength has been its resiliency — its ability to survive the throes and challenges of crises and business cycles to fuel innovation and economic growth. Today, however, more than four years into a credit crisis, a conspicuous enigma calls this legacy into question. Despite recent hopes of recovery in …
Jordan re-enters the fray
By Naseem Tarawnah While King Abdullah has managed to maneuver through the turbulent regional weather of the past decade, hardly a year passes without Jordanians such as myself are forced to wonder: what would his father King Hussein have done? The late monarch’s legacy is as defined by his pursuit of a peaceful resolution to the …
Africa’s imperiled democracy
By Alfred Stepan and Etienne Smith NEW YORK: The future of one of Africa’s oldest democracies is at stake in Senegal’s presidential election on February 26. The incumbent, Abdoulaye Wade, formerly a leading advocate for democracy, has, at almost 90 years old, become its gravedigger. Wade has been tinkering with Senegal’s constitution in dangerous ways ever …
Jordan needs continued talks
By Mohammad K. Shiyyab The situation in the Middle East is unpredictable. At best, one can identify many processes as they unfold: the “Arab Spring”, the proliferation of political Islam, increasing Iranian influence in Iraq coupled with the recent US troop withdrawal there, the uncertain and unacceptable situation in Syria, troubled Turkish-Israeli relations and, more importantly, …
Lighting the dark continent
By Adnan Amin, Achim Steiner, and Kandeh Yumkella NAIROBI: Nineteenth-century European explorers called Africa the “Dark Continent,” because to them it was vast and largely unknown. Today, Africa may still be dark, but for a very different reason: it is chronically short of electricity. Indeed, nocturnal satellite images show that, except for some parts of southern …
Detangling the Holocaust from Israeli-Palestinian politics
By Moriel Rothman JERUSALEM: Late last month I went to the children’s memorial in Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem. I stood there and took in the names, the candles and the glass. And I felt confused and sad and a little bit broken. It was 27 January, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and it …
Houston legacy to continue in final film, song
For Bishop T.D. Jakes, watching Whitney Houston sing a classic gospel hymn two months ago made him sure the long-struggling singer was poised for a comeback. Instead, her soulful rendition of "His Eye is on the Sparrow" will be the last chance for audiences to see Houston perform new music. Her performance was filmed for …
America’s role in the Arab Spring
By David L. Phillips President George W. Bush maintained that history would judge his invasion of Iraq and efforts to bring democracy to the Middle East. Recent events have not been kind to Bush’s legacy, with Iraq on the verge of renewed civil war and political transitions in the Arab world causing chaos and instability. The …
US-Muslim Brotherhood relations key to Egypt’s economy?
By Mohamed El-Sayed CAIRO: Egypt continues to struggle with violence in the wake of political uncertainty and transition. Yet despite the domestic turmoil, there has been a positive development — the relationship between the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood has improved after decades of mutual distrust. In January, high-level US and Muslim Brotherhood officials met …
From Argentina to Athens?
By Mohamed A. El-Erian NEWPORT BEACH: Let me set the scene: an increasingly discredited economic policy approach gives rise to growing domestic social and political opposition, street protests and violence, disagreements among official creditors, and mounting concerns among private creditors about a disorderly default. In the midst of all of this, national leaders commit to more …
The public and its problems
By Raghuram Rajan CHICAGO: On a recent visit to Europe, I found economists, journalists, and business people thoroughly frustrated with their politicians. Why, they ask, can’t politicians see the abyss that yawns before them, and come together to resolve the euro crisis once and for all? Even if there is no consensus on what a solution …
An alliance to empower and employ the youth
By Lars Thunell and Charlotte Petri Gornitzka Too many people today cannot find a decent job — the result of three years of global financial instability and anemic global growth. But for young people, unemployment is not only a cyclical problem. It is also a chronic condition that is robbing them of a secure future and …
Arab Spring and the peace process: The real domino effect
By Zvi Bar’el Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has been full of surprises in the last couple of months. First came his announcement that the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations should be given a chance. Then came the reconciliation agreement between Fateh and Hamas, which was followed by Meshaal’s confirmation that he would not run for another term as director …
A futile exercise?
By Hassan A. Barari Jordan’s recent efforts to hold exploratory pre-negotiation talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis could not be more surprising. Over an extended period of time, King Abdullah II has reiterated his conviction that peace, although favorable, is not yet possible. Time and again, he has blamed Israel for the impasse in the …
The nation-state reborn
By Dani Rodrik CAMBRIDGE: One of our era’s foundational myths is that globalization has condemned the nation-state to irrelevance. The revolution in transport and communications, we hear, has vaporized borders and shrunk the world. New modes of governance, ranging from transnational networks of regulators to international civil-society organizations to multilateral institutions, are transcending and supplanting national …
Europe’s Tobin tax distraction
By Barry Eichengreen CAPE TOWN: At last, European leaders have revealed their top-secret plan for solving the euro’s crisis. And it is — drum roll — a version of the “Tobin tax,” a levy on financial transactions first suggested in 1972 by the Nobel laureate economist James Tobin. Now, 40 years later, the European Commission has …
A PALESTINIAN VIEW: Arab Spring and peace process: The goal is democratization
By Ghassan Khatib The relationship between the ongoing uprisings and revolutions in the Arab world and the Palestinian-Israeli peace process is a convoluted mix of cause and effect. While Israelis tend to argue that recent developments in the Arab world justify the stagnation in the peace process (because the Arab revolutions “prove” constant instability in the …
Why has Jordan succeeded where others failed?
By Oraib Al-Rantawi In Jordan’s view, the creation of an independent and viable Palestinian state, resulting from a serious peace process and intense meaningful negotiations, is a strategic Jordanian interest as well as the fulfillment of Palestinians’ legitimate national rights. It might even be said that Jordan — after the Palestinian Authority — is the party …
A Crisis in Two Narratives
By Raghuram Rajan CHICAGO: With the world’s industrial democracies in crisis, two competing narratives of its sources — and appropriate remedies — are emerging. The first, better-known diagnosis is that demand has collapsed because of high debt accumulated prior to the crisis. Households (and countries) that were most prone to spend cannot borrow any more. To …
China’s soft-power offensive in Taiwan
By Yuriko Koike TOKYO: China’s behavior during the recent presidential election in Taiwan demonstrates that its leaders have learned some lessons, if only the hard way. They have learned that China can have a greater impact on Taiwanese voters through trade and making people feel richer than by threats — even threats to fire missiles — …
An Israeli View: Abbas juggles initiatives while Israel takes none
By Yossi Alpher The Israeli-Palestinian peace process was dead well before the Arab revolutionary wave began a little over a year ago. Nor does it appear likely that the Arab revolutions, in and of themselves, will catalyze its revival. Still, they have affected the peace process in a number of significant, albeit still evolving ways. First …
The ethics of internet piracy
By Peter Singer PRINCETON: Last year, I told a colleague that I would include internet ethics in a course that I was teaching. She suggested that I read a recently published anthology on computer ethics — and attached the entire volume to the email. Should I have refused to read a pirated book? Was I receiving …