Latest in Opinion Highlight
Latest in Opinion
Invest in Egypt
By Wael Z Orban We have been hearing a lot of rhetoric about the economic damage that hit Egypt amid the ongoing people- fight of freedom. You are right, there is damage and it is a profound one. The good news in my humble opinion is that the damage is short term; it is not only …
The poverty of dictatorship
By Dani Rodrik CAMBRIDGE: Perhaps the most striking finding in the United Nations’ recent 20th anniversary Human Development Report is the outstanding performance of the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Here was Tunisia, ranked sixth among 135 countries in terms of improvement in its Human Development Index (HDI) over the previous four …
US must understand the constructive role of faith in Egypt
By Dalia Mogahed ABU DHABI: During my visit to Cairo last month, I witnessed an incident that today seems almost prophetic. At one of Cairo’s posh coffee shops, I saw a customer screaming at the young man serving him, claiming that the waiter had shown him disrespect. The young worker responded firmly, “I did nothing wrong. …
Why Egypt should worry China
By Barry Eichengreen BERKELEY: A strictly economic interpretation of events in Tunisia and Egypt would be too simplistic — however tempting such an exercise is for an economist. That said, there is no question that the upheavals in both countries — and elsewhere in the Arab world — largely reflect their governments’ failure to share the …
The Egyptian endgame
By Robert Tignor PRINCETON: Can Egypt’s long history help us to understand the uprising, already labeled a revolution, now underway in Cairo, and how it might turn out? I believe so. After all, the demonstrations by millions of people to demand an end to the rule of President Hosni Mubarak and his National Democratic Party (NDP) …
Go now, Egyptian Nobel laureate tells Mubarak
By Alistair Lyon / Reuters CAIRO: US-Egyptian scientist Ahmed Zewail once received a medal from President Hosni Mubarak. Now, he says, it’s time for the Egyptian leader to heed the demonstrators clamoring for his departure. “He should step down tomorrow and allow for a transitional government,” Zewail told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. Zewail, 64, …
Signs of hope in Egypt
By Laurna Strikwerda WASHINGTON, DC: Protestors in Egypt continue to fill Tahrir (Liberation) Square by the tens of thousands, building on two weeks of massive demonstrations calling for President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation. Though the protests have been mostly peaceful, the demonstrations have not been free from violence. Pro-government protestors — reportedly organized by the state — …
The Tunisian catalyst
By Joseph Stiglitz DAVOS: The whole world celebrates Tunisia’s democratic revolution, which has set off a cascade of events elsewhere in the region — particularly in Egypt — with untold consequences. The eyes of the world are now set on this small country of ten million, to learn the lessons of its recent experience and to …
The politics of revolutionary surprise
By Timur Kuran DURHAM: In setting himself ablaze following a humiliating encounter with the police, the university-educated Tunisian vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi triggered a wave of protests across the Arab world. Several Arab dictators who had held power for decades have already been ousted or forced to announce that they will retire. But protesters in Cairo, …
Decoding Egypt: A vindication of the right to revolt
By Nael Shama “When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.” (Victor Hugo) In politics, industry, trade, sports and even fashion, a “revolution” is loosely defined as sudden or dramatic change. In the popular consciousness, there are two common ways of looking at the notion of political revolution. First, a revolution could be seen as …
Egypt’s youth change the face of modern history
By DNE Editors As we change the history of Egypt forever, as the world witnesses this change, one of the most peaceful and civilized revolutions by the people for the people in the modern history of the world, we, a group of Egyptian youth still stand on solid grounds with firm steps forward. Repeating the …
God bless our beloved Egypt
By Aline Kazandjian As the founder of Evetalk I have sent many emails during the past year. I rarely mentioned my name in the signature because I never felt the need to. Our About Us section reads as follows: “In a world where politicians make the rules, businessmen make the money and celebrities make the trends …
The Egyptian Fahrenheit
By Amr Fouad Those who triggered the first spark, making a fire without a stick or stone are rebels, iconoclasts with a lot to lose but and a vision for the future. Not only did they defy the notorious regime in Egypt, they have even “defied gravity” to quote the lyrics of Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me …
Egypt above everything
By Hoda Baraka It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. That is what I view to be the nature of the conflicting emotions which have been surfacing from this two-week old revolution, from emancipation, to anxiety, to anger, to sadness and frustration, to hope. The rapidly evolving political landscape has been …
Does Egypt need a Pharoah?
By Alfred Stepan and Juan J. Linz NEW YORK: As Egypt’s revolution hangs in the balance, what factors are most likely to determine the outcome? While all eyes seem to be focused on the army, watching to see which way it will jump, other key questions are being overlooked. Of course, what the army does is …
Egypt: The story so far
By Ahmed Kadry For the first time during this entire revolutionary saga where millions of Egyptians at home and on the streets have rallied to have the president removed from office, protestors remained silent as President Hosni Mubarak made his second public address on the eve of February 1st. Two million protestors rallied passionately but peacefully …
A new youth-led dawn in the Middle East?
By Farah Abdel Sater BEIRUT: “It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day!” When Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse wrote their 1965 song “Feeling Good”, odds were pretty close to zero that the couple could imagine that this is what young Arab citizens 46 years later would be feeling – and in many places singing, thinking …
AN ISRAELI VIEW: Negative consequences already evident in Sinai
By Yossi Alpher Because the events in Egypt continue to fall into the category of “revolutionary situation”, we know they will affect Israeli-Palestinian relations, but we do not yet know in what way. We can only speculate. This requires caution, but is nevertheless a useful exercise if we wish to prepare ourselves for possible events to …
A PALESTINIAN VIEW: The revolution isn’t over yet
By Ghassan Khatib Fourteen days into the massive public protests against Egypt’s regime, it is still too early to deeply analyze the situation. Let us instead touch on some of the questions and problems that the revolution — as they call it in Egypt — is creating and trying to overcome. First, for many of us, …
Lessons from the Ukraine to Egypt
By Yuliya Tymoshenko KYIV: From snowy Kyiv, I have watched the revolutions in Cairo and Tunis with joy and admiration. Egyptians and Tunisians are right to be proud of their desire to peacefully overthrow despotic governments. But, as someone who led a peaceful revolution, I hope that pride is tempered by pragmatism, because a change of …
Where are the Islamists?
By Ian Buruma NEW YORK: Sometime in the 1980’s, when the communist regime in Poland was facing serious challenges from disaffected masses, the regime’s official spokesman, Jerzy Urban, remarked to a foreign journalist that there were only two choices in Poland: communism or domination by the Catholic Church. “It’s either us,” he said, “or the Black …
Egypt’s Rage: A Tale of Two Neighbors
By Shereen El Feki Pitched battles in Cairo’s Tahrir Square (Liberation Square) aren’t the only place where President Mubarak’s supporters and opponents have been fighting it out over the past week. In her old neighborhood, I found family and friends feuding over the future of their president and their country. When President Mubarak is out of …
Editorial: Lies, damned lies
By Rania Al Malky CAIRO: You can’t fool all the people all the time. The hawks of Egypt’s current regime should have learnt this lesson, if not over the past 30 years, then over the past 11 days. As the events leading to the Friday of Departure today escalated, the counter strategy of a government well-versed …
Letter to Daily News Egypt: The world is watching
By Concerned US citizens As a concerned American citizen, I’ve been watching closely the events unfolding in Egypt and here are some of my thoughts: 1) I understand it is good news that the arrival of the army means the police brutality has been dampened. I also understand some of the celebration of their arrival …
Mubarak, Let the people go
By Joe Bialek This letter is in response to the articles covering the civil unrest occurring in Egypt. As a citizen of and believer in democracy, I applaud the efforts of the Egyptian people. Their efforts are similar to what happened following the election in Iran and the most recent revolution in Tunisia. Believe it …
Egypt on the brink
By David Faris In Naguib Mahfouz’s magnificent Adrift on the Nile, written just before the June War, a group of politically and socially alienated Egyptians gather on a houseboat every night to smoke hash and forget about the troubles of their country. Enveloped in a haze of smoke, they drift through the days and nights, …
Revolution not chaos
By Rania Al Malky CAIRO: The sight of tens of thousands of Egyptians, taking to the streets, demanding their constitutional right to choose their leader was a turning point in the history of this nation. No one imagined that the hoards of protesters who risked their lives on that historic day on January 25 would …
China’s democratic baby steps
By Steven Hill WASHINGTON, DC: During the state visit to the United States of Chinese President Hu Jintao, President Barack Obama pressed Hu on human rights. He probably should have asked more about spreading democracy in China, because he might have been surprised by what he heard. In September 2010, Hu gave a speech in …
Intelligent economic design
By J. Bradford DeLong BERKELEY: As Stephen Cohen, with whom I wrote The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have the Money, likes to say, economies do not evolve; they are, rather, intelligently designed. He also likes to say that, though there is an intelligence behind their design, this does not mean that …
The end of history comes to Tunisia
By Pierre Buhler PARIS: Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution” is still unfolding, but we can already read into it lessons about democracy and democratization that extend far beyond the Maghreb. To set the Jasmine Revolution in historical perspective, we must recall June 4, 1989 – that pivotal Sunday when the Poles voted the communists out of power …