WASHINGTON, DC: How can President Obama drag the Middle East peace wagon out of the mud? He can’t – at least not until the region s leaders feel enough of a sense of urgency to take the risks necessary to achieve breakthroughs. Right now, Arab and Israeli leaders are convinced that Obama is in more …
CAIRO/LONDON: The recent vote in Switzerland banning the construction of new minarets casts an unnecessary shadow on the remarkable history of tolerance, hospitality and integration that is the true story of Switzerland. It is important to remember, however, that this vote in no way changes the fundamental affirmation in the Swiss constitution that the freedom …
PRINCETON and WARSAW: Last month, Gecko Systems announced that it had been running trials of its “fully autonomous personal companion home care robot, also known as a “carebot, designed to help elderly or disabled people to live independently. A woman with short-term memory loss broke into a big smile, the company reported, when the robot …
PARIS: “Do not forget India. That warning made sense 10 or 15 years ago; not any longer. India is now impossible to ignore, much less forget, owing not only to its rapid economic growth, but also to the country’s increasing geopolitical stature. Europeans often speak of an emerging “G-3, implying an international system dominated by …
CHICAGO: Why is the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians so difficult to resolve when everyone knows exactly what a fair compromise must contain? Two states, one Palestine and one Israel, with a sharing of Jerusalem, and the dismantling of most Israeli settlements. For settlements Israel keeps, Israel would give Palestine an equal transfer of land. …
BEIJING: China is making a big push to encourage greater international use of its currency, the renminbi. It has an agreement with Brazil to facilitate use of the two countries’ currencies in bilateral trade transactions. It has signed renminbi swap agreements with Argentina, Belarus, Hong Kong, Indonesia, South Korea, and Malaysia. Last summer, it expanded …
CAMBRIDGE: Approaching the end of his first year as president, Barack Obama has taken a bold step in deciding to increase the number of American troops in Afghanistan to over 100,000. Critics on the left point out that the Korean War crippled Harry Truman’s presidency, just as the Vietnam War defined Lyndon Johnson’s administration. Obama …
JERUSALEM: Not one country in the world recognizes our capital, Jerusalem, as the capital of Israel. Even the United States footnotes the following on the State Department Web page: Israel proclaimed Jerusalem as its capital in 1950. The US, like nearly all other countries, maintains its embassy in Tel Aviv. UN Security Council Resolution 478 …
JAKARTA: Indonesia is defined as a free state – essentially, a country that protects the civil and political rights of its citizens – by Freedom House’s “Map of Freedom in the World 2009. Yet, according to the “2009 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom by the US Department of State, Indonesia’s track record on freedom …
COPENHAGEN: It is now generally agreed that the developed countries will have to make a substantial financial contribution to enable the developing world to deal with climate change. Funds are needed to invest in new low-carbon energy sources, reforestation and protection of rain forests, land-use changes, and adaptation and mitigation. But there is no similar …
WASHINGTON, DC: With almost 58 percent of Swiss voters recently delivering an electoral surprise by casting ballots in favor of a referendum to ban construction of minarets in their country, it remains to be seen whether the result of the referendum will be good for Switzerland, or even for Europe as a whole. This may …
COPENHAGEN: Thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, and environmental activists have arrived in Copenhagen for the COP15 global climate summit with all the bravado – and self-regard – of a group of commandos who are convinced that they are about to save the world. And, although the political differences between them remain huge, delegates are nonetheless congratulating …
CAIRO: So, is Egypt building an underground metal wall along its Gaza-Rafah border or isn’t it? Should we believe what we read in the Israeli press, which has sadly become a source of news about strategic and sensitive issues related to the two states’ security relations, or should we take their claims with suspicion? And …
WASHINGTON, DC: When violence is committed in the name of Islam, the perpetrators often say that Muslims were never meant to enjoy good relations with followers of other religions, specifically Jews and Christians. They invariably quote verses from the Quran which they argue prove that Jews and Christians are inherently hostile to Muslims. Not surprisingly, …
Yes we should! If we could only give them the chance and get away from Tolstoy’s famous quote, “I will teach you how to walk by sitting on your back . Contrary to the usual style of enumerating problems, flaws and forthcomings which is an art in itself, I have decided to focus on the …
RAMALLAH: Who is this man, this “dour official leading a revolutionary cultural change ? Salam Fayyad is not always formal, though mostly to be seen wearing a necktie. He did, however, wear shorts and ran in the handicap marathon in Nablus. And what are these “revolutionary cultural changes as perceived by certain Israeli analysts, but …
KARACHI, Pakistan: Greg Mortenson is an American and, like our philanthropist Maulana Abdul Sattar Edhi, likes to spend his time with the underprivileged and poor without discrimination, according to the Dawn article by Safia Siddiqui on 22 November. He represents the common man in America who is humble, kind, generous and good at heart. He …
FLORENCE: The nineteenth century was mesmerized by the cyclical behavior of business. The French economist Clement Juglar became famous for establishing that business cycles ran for around nine or ten years. We have recently had our own cycles of exuberance and disintegration. But they are very different. In the nineteenth-century world, people rapidly picked themselves …
ANKARA: Nowadays, the international media are obsessed with the question of who “lost Turkey and what that supposed loss means for Europe and the West. More alarmingly, some commentators liken Turkey’s neighborhood policy to a revival of Ottoman imperialism. Recently, a senior Turkish columnist went so far as to quote Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as …
MAPUTO, MOZAMBIQUE: Across Africa, there are growing concerns, which the three of us share, that the continent is being marginalized in the major debates leading up to the COP15 climate-change summit in Copenhagen this month. While the main focus has been on the impact of climate-change mitigation on industrialized countries, the urgent adaptation needs of …
KEFAR SHEMARYAHU, Israel: Rabbis, public figures, educators, soldiers and politicians (including some ministers) are all great patriots and saints in their own eyes. These people, along with the members of a very different group – bereaved parents and relatives of terror victims – are the ones who object to the swap deal with Hamas. They …
NEW YORK: A global controversy is raging: what new regulations are required to restore confidence in the financial system and ensure that a new crisis does not erupt a few years down the line. Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, has called for restrictions on the kinds of activities in which mega-banks …
NEW YORK: If being an educator has taught me anything, it is that the human element of any endeavor cannot be ignored. I don t just teach history – I teach history to 11th graders. Without the students, there d be no papers to grade, no hoarse voice at the end of the day, no …
President Obama admits a new climate-change treaty is unlikely to emerge from the next two weeks of top-level negotiations in Copenhagen. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown want to hide the embarrassment by spawning a monster: a new UN agency to co-ordinate advocacy and policy on climate change. Brown calls the …
TÜBINGEN, GERMANY: We are so surrounded by gadgetry nowadays that it is sometimes hard to tell where devices end and people begin. From computers and scanners to mobile devices, an increasing number of humans spend much of their conscious lives interacting with the world through electronics, the only barrier between brain and machine being the …
PARIS: As Barack Obama arrives in Sweden to collect his Nobel Prize, the celebrations expose an awful truth: Europe’s admiration for its ideal of an American president is not reciprocated. Obama seems to bear Europeans no ill will. But he has quickly learned to view them with the attitude that they find hardest to endure …
JERUSALEM: There is an extraordinary photo of East and West Berliners standing on the remains of the Berlin Wall on 10 November 1989, carrying a banner which reads in English translation – “For a Berlin without walls, in a Germany without tanks, in a Europe without borders – which can be seen in the Gallery …
CAMBRIDGE: Executive compensation is now a central concern of company boards and government regulators. There is an aspect to this debate, however, that deserves greater scrutiny: the freedom of executives to pick the moment when they can cash out on their equity-based incentives. Standard pay arrangements give executives broad discretion over when they sell shares …
GENEVA: Mounting skepticism and deadlocked negotiations have culminated in an announcement that the Copenhagen Climate Conference will not result in a comprehensive global climate deal. Disappointing? Certainly. But the Copenhagen climate summit was always meant to be a transitional step. The most important thing to consider is where we will go from here. The phrase …
JERUSALEM: It is a theological and historical truth which is now practically a cliché: Jews and Muslims have much in common. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that throughout the generations, Jewish-Muslim relations were multifaceted and differed from Christian-Jewish relations. In contrast to Christianity, the debate between Judaism and Islam is not about …
