LAHORE, Pakistan: As young Pakistanis, my friends and I often sit and discuss the country s political and developmental issues. With some dismay, we acknowledged one day that Pakistanis generally wait for others to get things accomplished because they feel hopeless after having voiced their concerns for over 60 years to no avail. However, we …

MEXICO CITY: In early September, Colombia’s biggest businesses surprised everyone by declaring their wholehearted support for the country’s president, Alvaro Uribe, in his deepening conflict with Venezuela. If they lost the huge export market next door, well, that would simply be too bad. For the first time, Colombian exporters of just about everything Venezuela buys, …

RAMALLAH: At long last a spotlight is shining on Palestinian nonviolent efforts to throw off the Israeli occupation. A visit by a group of high profile “Elders last month to the Palestinian village of Bil’in in the West Bank, and the barrier running through it, bathed our landscape in a moral clarity that is too …

Egypt is politically at a crossroads, and it is important to attempt to look ahead and predict the most plausible forms of regime in the post-Mubarak era. As a rule, speculating about the future – the future of states, societies, social phenomena, etc -is like venturing into the unknown. This is why futuristic speculation in …

KUWAIT CITY: As the holy month of Ramadan comes to a close, Muslims all over the world celebrated the joyous occasion known as Eid ul-Fitr, the three-day-long feast that marks the culmination of the month of fasting. Muslims celebrate two main holidays each year: the first, Eid ul-Fitr, follows the month of Ramadan; and the …

BERLIN: Germany’s current parliamentary election campaign looks like a front-running contender for the title of the most boring in the history of the Federal Republic. The predominant response among commentators to the sole television debate between Chancellor Angela Merkel and her challenger, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, held two weeks before the election, was a collective …

AMMAN: Jordan s King Abdullah II is holding his breath as US President Barack Obama pursues a strategy for comprehensive Middle East peace that promotes the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. Obama is widely expected to define parameters for the two-state solution sometime later this month, and possibly set an agenda for …

TEL AVIV: Jerusalem does not have good public relations. In the last few months, since President Obama raised his demand to freeze the settlements, attention has been directed towards the West Bank – to the construction in the illegal outposts, the expansion of settlements and the dismantling of roadblocks. Jerusalem almost never appears on the …

LONDON: Have stimulus packages brought the world’s traumatized economies back to life? Or have they set the scene for inflation and big future debt burdens? The answer is that they may have done both. The key question now concerns the order in which these outcomes occur. The theory behind the massive economic stimulus efforts that …

G20 leaders are convening in Pittsburgh this week during a sticky time for global trade relations. Brazilians, Canadians, Mexicans, and Chinese are angry with the Americans. The Indians and the Chinese are furious with each other, as are the Europeans and the Americans. Most of this stems from new trade restrictions imposed despite repeated pledges …

CAMBRIDGE: Talk about “exit strategies will be high on the agenda when the heads of the G-20 countries gather in Pittsburgh a few days from now. They will promise to reverse the explosive monetary and fiscal expansion of the past two years, to do it neither too soon nor too late, and to do it …

CAIRO: I write this amid news of Egyptian culture minister Farouk Hosni’s UNESCO Director-General lead in the first round of voting for the UN body’s top position. Honestly, I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or simply twiddle my thumbs and gape in disbelief. Who would have thought that Hosni would rake a sweeping lead …

WASHINGTON, DC: Words as well as deeds are required to bridge the gap between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. Words matter. They have power. They carry consequences. In the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the words we use are seldom value-neutral. If we speak without awareness of that fact, we will diminish our …

BANGKOK: Last week, a Taiwanese court sentenced Chen Shui-bien, Taiwan’s president from 2000 until 2008, to life imprisonment for corruption. Chen had been caught stealing millions of dollars of public funds. He did not act alone. His wife (who also received a life sentence), children, and other relatives all helped to hide the stolen loot …

WASHINGTON, DC: This year, September 11 was proclaimed the National Day of Service and Remembrance, symbolically concluding a nationwide summer of service movement, United We Serve. This program was launched by US President Barack Obama to encourage Americans to volunteer in their communities, and Muslim Americans stepped up to the challenge. Since September 11 fell …

KUWAIT CITY: Ramadan, which began on Aug. 22, offers an opportunity to reflect upon the surge in religious observance and ritual across the Muslim and Arab worlds and what the future might bring. For the last three decades, an Islamic revival has held the Muslim and Arab worlds in its grip. Although religious revival is …

NEW YORK: Preoccupation with Afghanistan’s disputed presidential election is understandable. Ending the country’s violence will require a government with both the legitimacy and capacity to tackle the underlying sources of the Taliban insurgency. But achieving success in Afghanistan – defined as achieving a sustainable democratic regime able to contain political violence, prevent the reconstruction of …

Traditionally, human rights were meant to protect individual freedoms from governments, for example outlawing torture and restrictions on free speech. The UN and activists, however, have inflated them over the years to cover ideas ranging from housing to a clean environment – perversely threatening real rights. The latest example is climate change, undermining the full …

JACKSONVILLE, Florida: Eight years after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the latest survey from the Pew Research Center for People and the Press shows an unmistakable trend of Americans slowly but surely beginning to appreciate the challenges and aspirations of their fellow Muslim citizenry. Perhaps this trend is a result of nearly half …

BERKELEY: It is fitting that the upcoming G-20 summit is being held in Pittsburg, an old industrial center of an advanced industrial country, for the advanced countries have been allowed to set the agenda for strengthening financial systems. Other than schadenfreude, emerging markets have brought little to the table. The United States is emphasizing higher …

PARIS: Elections stolen in Iran, disputed in Afghanistan, and caricatured in Gabon: recent ballots in these and many other countries do not so much mark the global advance of democracy as demonstrate the absence of the rule of law. Of course, elections that lead to illiberal outcomes, and even to despotism, are not a new …

JERUSALEM: Israeli and Palestinian nationalities emerged only within the last century at a time when globalization was beginning to transform familiar ideas about nations and nationalism. The declaration of the State of Israel as a Jewish state exacerbated the conflict between the two nations striving for self-determination within the same piece of land. Israel has …

ANKARA: Cyprus is back on the international agenda, with leaders of the island’s rival Greek and Turkish communities engaged in intense negotiations to resolve the divided country’s status. But, although new talks are underway, the international community is, not surprisingly, tired of dealing with the issue. After all, the Cyprus conflict has dragged on since …

CAMBRIDGE: Something happened in late August that I never thought I would see in my lifetime. A leading policymaker in the Anglo-American empire of finance actually came out in support of a Tobin tax – a global tax on financial transactions. The official in question was Adair Turner, the head of the United Kingdom Financial …

AMMAN: There are so many ways in which the plan by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad for the de facto creation of a Palestinian state can be seen as a brilliant idea that it is hard to ignore or oppose it. Fayyad’s blueprint includes plans to end the Palestinian economy’s dependence on Israel, unify the …

Twenty years ago, governments adopted the Montreal Protocol, a treaty to protect the Earth’s ozone layer from emissions of destructive chemicals. Few could have foreseen how far-reaching that decision would prove to be. The Protocol explicitly aimed at phasing-out substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) – found in products such as refrigerators, foams, and hairsprays – …

The Swiss take their neutrality seriously. It is the bedrock of their society and has stood them in good stead in the recent past to the tune that they have not been to war since 1815. Nevertheless, they maintain a modern army and air force for the purpose of deterrence, the latter of which they …

TEL AVIV: An article by Dr. Neve Gordon in the Los Angeles Times this week called for an international boycott against Israel. He cited the example of South Africa to show how a worldwide boycott could compel Israel to end the occupation, which he compared to the apartheid regime. I have known and respected Neve …

AMMAN: Palestinian nationalism has been a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, one cannot underestimate the important role it played in pulling together the Arab people of Palestine under a unified and clear national goal. But at a time when major countries in the world downplay nationalism in favor of regionalism, it appears …

CAMBRIDGE: The United States government’s National Intelligence Council projects that American dominance will be “much diminished by 2025, and that the one key area of continued American superiority – military power – will be less significant in the increasingly competitive world of the future. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has called the 2008 financial crisis a …