Latest in Opinion Highlight
Latest in Opinion
Egypt’s investment case: What’s really changed?
By Richard Banks Since the revolution I have visited Egypt three times and have talked to my clients in China, Europe and the Gulf about Egypt. I have seen both the current reality of the new Egypt and canvassed the opinion of those who are being targeted as investors. Much of the international discussion of Egypt’s …
Taming bigotry
By Gareth Evans MELBOURNE: At a time when the horrific events in Norway remind us how much murderous bigotry there still is in the world, perhaps a story from the other side of it can restore a little optimism that some positive, historically significant, changes in attitude really are occurring. Last month in Australia, a major-league …
Israel’s lonely prosperity
By Dominique Moisi PARIS: It is difficult not to be struck by the contrast between the “Asian”-like energy of Israel’s economy and civil society and the purely defensive nature of its approach to political change, both within and outside the country. A recent law bars Israeli citizens from supporting Western boycotts aimed at reversing the country’s …
News Corp.: All in the family
By Harold James MUNICH: Big economic crises often cause iconic companies to falter. Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is a model of the modern global enterprise. A particularly dynamic and innovative business model came from outside and took over central aspects of British and then American public life. That model is now threatened by the fallout from …
Faith and fashion beyond the burqa ban
By Shenaz Kermalli LONDON: Europe’s obsession with the way Muslim women choose to dress is far from over. Several months after France banned the burqa, a garment that covers the face and body, from public spaces, Belgium has followed suit. As of last week, women wearing the burqa in public (who constitute a tiny minority in …
Ramadan and Human Rights
By Robert Kesten Over 1 billion people around the world, on all continents and throughout all social strata of any given society will join in the Ramadan holiday. It is a time when people contemplate the world and themselves in it, it is a time of both discipline and celebration and is a reminder of how …
Egypt’s Salafis: Enter the Dragon
By Rania Al Malky CAIRO: A motley crew of Egypt’s Salafis, Brotherhood members and liberals gathered Friday in what some described as the largest Tahrir Square protest since an 18-day uprising ousted the previous regime in February. The contrived ideological clash that drove tens of thousands of Salafis — ultra-conservative Muslims who, from my limited experience, …
What Failed in Norway?
By Dominique Moisi PARIS: Japan in March 2011 and Norway in July 2011: any comparison between the madness of nature and the pure madness of man in Norway may sound artificial. Yet, confronted with their respective tragedies, Japan and Norway displayed a very similar combination of qualities and flaws. In both countries, civil society reacted to …
A legitimate resistance tool
By Samah Jaber For those who lament the Palestinians’ use of violence and sigh, saying, “Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?” here is the answer: Israel delegitimizes all tools of resistance. Most recently, the Israeli parliament passed legislation making it possible to punish any public call for economic, cultural or academic boycott of the Israeli occupation and …
Europe’s last taboos
By Jean Pisani-Ferry BRUSSELS: You can always trust the Americans, Winston Churchill said, because in the end they will do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possibilities. For the last 18 months, this has been Europe’s method for confronting its sovereign debt crisis as well: it has taken the necessary decisions, but always …
Mubarak’s silver bullet
By Philip Whitfield CAIRO: Hosni Mubarak admitted he was obstinate. Once his mind was made up, he seldom had a change of heart. A close associate is said to have asked, why? Mubarak gave an odd reply. He said a command from him was a bullet fired from his pistol. Once released, it could not be …
The Kingdom betrayed?
By Mai Yamani LONDON: The old saying “lonely is the head that wears the crown” has literally taken on new meaning for Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah. Not only has he watched close regional allies, Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, be toppled, but fellow crowned heads in Bahrain, Morocco, and Jordan have also …
BDS and limited boycotts: a distinction without a difference?
By Gerald Steinberg Since independence in 1948, Israel has been confronted by boycott campaigns, beginning with the Arab League’s extensive embargo that continues in many countries. The objective of this form of warfare was and remains the rejection of the sovereign Jewish nation-state, regardless of boundaries. In 2001, the Non-Governmental Organizations Forum of the United Nation’s …
Abigail Adams’ Arab sisters
By Dalila Mahdawi BEIRUT: In 1776, the First Lady of the United States, Abigail Adams, wrote a letter to her husband John and to Congress, imploring her countrymen not to overlook women’s interests. “Remember the ladies,” she urged, adding with considerable defiance: “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies we are determined …
Groping in the fog of war
By Philip Whitfield CAIRO: There’s a battle to win hearts and minds in today’s war of words. Not much has changed since Carl von Clausewitz defined military strategy as the employment of battles to gain the end of war. Soldiers are deployed with unambiguous objectives that envisage an end in sight. In his treatise On War, …
Winning the transition
By Sri Mulyani Indrawati WASHINGTON, DC: Is the Arab Spring turning into a gloomy autumn? With brutal crackdowns in Syria, a bloody civil war in Libya, and Yemen teetering on the brink of chaos, the number of skeptics is growing. Although Egypt and Tunisia’s pro-democracy movements achieved rapid regime change, uncertainties remain in those countries, too. …
BDS, the boycott law and Israel’s democracy
By Naomi Chazan July 11, 2011 was a watershed in Israel’s political history. The adoption by the Knesset of “The Law to Prevent Harm to the State of Israel via Boycott” (generally known as the boycott law), makes it a compensable civil wrong to publicly encourage a boycott against the state of Israel, its institutions or …
The future of economic growth
By Dani Rodrik CAMBRIDGE: Perhaps for the first time in modern history, the future of the global economy lies in the hands of poor countries. The United States and Europe struggle on as wounded giants, casualties of their financial excesses and political paralysis. They seem condemned by their heavy debt burdens to years of stagnation or …
Instant media wounded by rush to judgment on Oslo
By Alastair Macdonald / Reuters LONDON: As Norway mourns the carnage wrought by a self-styled crusader against Islam, news media around the world face hard questions about their haste to point fingers of suspicion at Muslims. Bloggers are taking the “mainstream media” to task on the internet, professional journalists are trading barbs over who rushed to …
Egypt’s Praetorian Guard problem
By Troy Carter Because the pro-democracy activists who triggered the January 25 protests did not expect that it would lead to the ouster of Mubarak, they did not feel the need to draft reform plans. These were not revolutionaries, simply idealists. Since the mass uprising the reform movement has been running blindly into the transitional period …
In Palestine, our season is fast approaching
By Diana Buttu The images were electrifying as hundreds of thousands of Tunisians and Egyptians took to the streets to overthrow their dictators after decades of repression. With protests soon following in other countries in the Arab world, commentators took to the airwaves pontificating about the reasons for the uprisings. The high youth unemployment rate was …
AN ISRAELI VIEW: Why the Quartet fears the UN track
By Yossi Alpher The Quartet failed to find a formula for restarting the peace process because it is either unable or unwilling to recognize that both the Israeli and the Palestinian leaderships are uninterested right now. It failed because all four of its component actors — the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and …
Defaulting to big government
By Simon Johnson WASHINGTON, DC: Leading United States Congressmen are determined to provoke a showdown with the Obama administration over the federal government’s debt ceiling. Ordinarily, you might expect House Republicans to blink at this stage of the negotiations, but there is a hardline minority that actually appears to think that defaulting on government debt would …
Toppled Mubarak still a thorn in Egypt’s side
CAIRO: Six months after the uprising that toppled Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak, the former strongman who is in custody in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh remains a thorn in the country’s side. The trial of Mubarak and his two sons, which is scheduled for August 3, remains a huge source of tension and …
In Palestine, our season is fast approaching
By Diana Buttu The images were electrifying as hundreds of thousands of Tunisians and Egyptians took to the streets to overthrow their dictators after decades of repression. With protests soon following in other countries in the Arab world, commentators took to the airwaves pontificating about the reasons for the uprisings. The high youth unemployment rate was …
Why #NoSCAF?
By Rania Al Malky CAIRO: For a very long time, many Egyptians, including myself, were convinced that this was not the time for outspoken criticism of Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). As the bedrock of stability and the protectors of the revolution, the honorable army generals who defended Egyptians’ legitimate calls for …
Finger-lickin’ fix
By Philip Whitfield CAIRO: Imagine you’re President of Kentucky Fried Chicken on January 25. You pick up the phone and call the manager in Tahrir Square. What would you tell him? Close the store with a melee on your doorstep? Open the backdoor for more millions of munchies? Or, hang the consequences give everyone a free …
The too-quiet American
By Jagdish Bhagwati NEW YORK: It is now apparent that the United States is the main culprit in preventing the ten-year-old multilateral trade negotiations known as the Doha Round from being closed this year. The US has even spurned World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy’s desperate attempt to get member states to support a wholly …
Turkey on Trial
By Dani Rodrik ISTANBUL: In a Hollywood courtroom drama, you know that the hero, set up by the bad guys, will eventually be cleared — but not before the noose tightens around his neck. Just when it looks like the accumulating evidence has condemned him, a sudden turn of events will prove his innocence and expose …
Storms ahoy as the tide turns
By Philip Whitfield ALEXANDRIA: Casting their long rods, lines and bait into the Mediterranean, fisher folk are taking advantage of the season’s neap tides. Gentle waves lap the rocks and the sea wall along the Corniche. The snapper and sea bass are plentiful, enough for dinner and more. One says it may be his last fishing …