NEW YORK: At the end of this year, representatives of the 170 nations that are signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will meet in Copenhagen for what they hope will be final negotiations on a new international response to global warming and climate change. If successful, the centerpiece of their efforts …
RAMALLAH: As the summit between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu approaches, most of the discussion has focused on whether or not the newly elected Israeli leader will finally say that he backs a two-state solution. This is the wrong approach. Israelis should not determine the status of the Palestinian entity, …
JERUSALEM: The second Netanyahu government’s composition, size and initial policy statements do not augur well for positive movement on the critical peace front. As international pressure mounts, progress today depends as much on the nature and vitality of the political opposition in Israel as on the orientations and actions of the new coalition. Tzipi Livni …
When the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI would embark on a pilgrimage to Jordan, the occupied West Bank and Israel, senior cardinals mobilized a massive media campaign in anticipation of angry reactions from Jews, Muslims and Orthodox Christians. They even went so far as to embed journalists on the ecumenical equivalent of Air Force …
NEW DELHI: A month after they first queued to vote in India’s mammoth general election, the country’s voters will learn the outcome on May 16. The election, staggered over five phases – involving five polling days over four weeks, rather than one “election day – will determine who rules the world’s largest democracy. Only one …
NEW YORK: Both China and the United Nations Commission on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System have called for a new global reserve system. That issue should be at the top of the agenda when the IMF’s International Monetary and Financial Committee next meet. The essential idea is quite simple: in the long …
NEW YORK: Asked in September 2006 whether there was anything wrong with the way American interrogators were handling “high-value prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, and elsewhere, President George W. Bush famously responded: “We don’t torture. The definition of torture is notoriously slippery, but we have known for some time now that the former president was being, …
GAZA: Nearly four months since the end of hostilities in Gaza, it is increasingly apparent that massive needs are going unmet, and reconstruction is stalled. Donors have pledged money for humanitarian aid and for Gaza reconstruction, but on the ground the flow of goods compared to the needs is wholly inadequate, and reconstruction is in …
NEW DELHI: An epidemic of farmers’ suicides has spread across four Indian states – Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Punjab – over the last decade. According to official data, more than 160,000 farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997. These suicides are most frequent where farmers grow cotton, and appear directly linked to the …
ABC news in America has received and released video footage of a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family torturing an Afghan man. Sheikh Issa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the half-brother of the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohammed, is clearly visible throughout the 45-minute video leading a group of men – including a man …
“Why are you against killing the pigs? he asked. “Who said so? I said. “I am for killing all pigs, but not those raised in barns. “Are there any other pigs? he asked “The country’s full of pigs, and those living outside the barns are more dangerous and outnumber those living inside. Some of the …
CAIRO: Amid the global swine flu mania and Egypt’s mindless pig massacre, another manifestation of pure chaos and inexplicable aggression marred the steps of the State Council building earlier this week. For journalists and TV networks, it was business as usual as they set off to their destination on May 4 a little before noon. …
CAIRO: Over six years ago, I sat in a Zamalek café with an American journalist discussing my decision to wear the veil. It was more than a year after Sept. 11, a time when the Iraq War – as part of the ongoing, American-led “War on Terror – was just a possibility and there was …
CAIRO: The Egyptian regime’s political and verbal confrontation with Hezbollah demonstrates that Egypt has opted for deepening the rift with Iran and its allies. Egypt’s hostile posture towards Hezbollah predates the recent arrest of purported Hezbollah operatives in Egypt. Its clearest manifestation came when it blamed the Lebanese militia for the Israeli war on Lebanon …
PRINCETON: Whenever today’s economic crisis is discussed, analogies to the Great Depression are never far away. In its latest “World Economic Outlook, the IMF examines the analogy explicitly, in terms not only of the collapse of financial confidence, but also of the rapid decline in global trade and industrial activity. In general, history, rather than …
MONTRÉAL: Turkey has strong ties both with its Muslim history and with secularism, understood as not mixing religion with politics. After decades of struggling between these two identities, this strategic NATO ally and EU contender has developed a hybrid identity that encompasses both. As a result, Turkey has been increasingly perceived as a liberal and …
WASHINGTON, DC: Of all the countries involved to varying degrees in the Middle East conflict, Jordan has always been one of the most moderate voices calling for peace. And of all the Middle East’s leaders, Jordan’s King Abdullah – much like his father King Hussein before him – has always offered a clear, crisp, intelligent …
NEW YORK: In the midst of a stalled peace process in the Middle East, a new poll released by the OneVoice Movement, an international grassroots peace movement equally represented both in Israel and in Palestine, provides a snapshot of Israeli and Palestinian public opinion and insights into how peace negotiations should move forward from now …
In hindsight, this was a predictable consequence of the swine flu outbreak: devious websites have begun offering fake cures. It is merely the latest adaptation of a global counterfeit drugs industry which, like a flu virus, cleverly yet sinisterly mutates to exploit the poorest patients. And it’s not only flu cures. Egypt’s anti-fraud office has …
PARIS: The top-secret memoranda released by the Obama administration concerning torture practices in CIA prisons shed new light on a fundamental question: how is it that people acting in the name of the United States government could so easily accept the idea of torturing the detainees in their charge? The newly published documents do not …
TEL AVIV: If Operation Cast Lead proved to be the breaking point for Gaza’s healthcare system, it also illuminated where the responsibility for its collapse lies. The pressures that left it unable to cope with a sudden influx of patients were both internal and external. In the days and months leading up to Operation Cast …
NEW YORK: There are many recurring debates in American foreign policy – for example, isolationism versus internationalism, and unilateralism versus multilateralism. But no debate is more persistent than that between those who believe that American foreign policy’s principal purpose should be to influence the external behavior of other states and those who hold that it …
BERLIN: In today’s global financial crisis, the image of a black swan has become a symbol for the seemingly impossible that somehow occurs, turning the world upside down. This year will afford us ample opportunity to examine the black swans that are already among us, and to prepare for the arrival of even more. November, …
LONDON: George W. Bush has started work on his memoirs. Count to ten before you respond. The autobiographies of political leaders are not a very elevated literary form. First, few leaders write well, though there are exceptions, like Nehru, Churchill, and de Gaulle. No wonder that most of them employ a “ghost, like the one …
The arrest and imprisonment of Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist, by the Islamic Republic has been at the center of world attention. On Feb. 10, Ms Saberi, 31, was arrested for buying a bottle of wine, an act banned under the country’s Sharia law. However, many observers were suspicious of the reasons given for her …
RABAT/ CASABLANCA: In February 2004, Morocco was praised for significant progress in the field of women s rights, particularly for revising its 1958 family code – the Moudawana . This reform was the result of many years of work between academics, theologians, activists and legal experts. Five years later, it s time to assess whether …
BETHLEHEM: The small Palestinian village of Bil’in, located in the central West Bank, hosted its fourth annual conference on non-violent resistance to the Israeli separation barrier and West Bank settlements, from April 22 – 24. Certainly, nonviolent, peaceful forms of resistance are not something new to Palestinian society. What makes Bil’in a special story is …
TEL AVIV: It was only natural that Barack Obama, a president whose election was one of the most revolutionary events in American history, should fill his first 100 days in office with a breathtaking, all-embracing agenda. These are times of trial and upheaval that call for such daring. Strikingly energetic and self-confident, Obama has set …
Rejoice everyone, swine flu has disappeared completely from the globe, or at least from France, where Israel has officially protested the name of the new disease. Hence the name of the new disease has undergone a quick mutation similar to the virus causing the bird flu, and is now no longer called swine flu. If …
WASHINGTON, DC: Imagine if journalists were to seek out the perspectives of non-violent civic leaders the way they seek out the views of militarists and militants. What would it mean if every week we heard from people committed to gaining security or freedom through constructive collective action instead of by force of arms? Unlike a …
