There’s nothing more dangerous than half-truths, especially in times of war. Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza Saturday has, according to an Associated Press report, killed 315 including seven children under the age of 15 and wounding over 800, 180 of them in critical condition in just under 72 hours. The horrifying footage of dead bodies …

We are a hopeless case. We don’t understand the world around us, nor do we try to understand it. Is it reasonable to nominate people to international positions without knowing the basic requirements of such a nomination? Egypt has nominated Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni to the office of Director General of the UNESCO. The …

GLASGOW: Pick a side: “Palestinians do not deserve a State and are incapable of governing themselves. They must be managed, imprisoned or exiled. Or “The state of Israel is a hydra-headed monster, comprising Zionist ethnic cleansers, US imperialists, and Arab collaborationist regimes. Pick a side. Any side, so long as it s black and white. …

PRINCETON: Karl Marx has returned, if not quite from the grave then from history’s dustbin. German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück recently said that Marx’s answers “may not be irrelevant to today’s problems. French President Nicholas Sarkozy allowed himself to be photographed leafing through the pages of Marx’s Das Kapital. A German filmmaker, Alexander Kluge, is …

Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, an infuriating court verdict wraps up the hasty trial of what I vote to be the most tragic incident of 2008: the death of 11-year-old Islam Badr in a public school at the hands of his teacher last October. An Alexandria court on Thursday sentenced 23-year-old mathematics …

MOSCOW: “Google violates its ‘don’t be evil’ motto. To Google’s credit, if you Google that sentence, you can find reference to a debate on that claim that I took part in recently. As it happens, I have a complex relationship with Google. I have fed at its trough many times – as a personal guest; …

WASHINGTON, DC: Since its Islamist revolution of 1979, Iran’s hardline leadership has relentlessly painted America as a racist, bloodthirsty power bent on oppressing Muslims worldwide. Nothing punctures this narrative more than the election of an African-American, Barack Obama, who supports dialogue with Iran and whose middle name – Hussein – is that of the central …

JERUSALEM: Dear Bethlehem, As you know, we at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute are your neighbors to the north, inside the Green Line on the Palestinian side, but claimed by Israel as part of the Jerusalem municipality. We have, therefore, an ambiguous, neutral – but not indifferent – relation to you, our neighbors to the south. …

NEW YORK: I have long been forecasting that it was only a matter of time before America’s housing bubble – which began in the early days of this decade, supported by a flood of liquidity and lax regulation – would pop. The longer the bubble expanded, the larger the explosion and the greater (and more …

PRINCETON: The economic gloom that shrouded the world in 2008 has led many to ask whether the apparent prosperity that preceded it was real. We know that in countries as diverse as China, India, Russia, and the United States, the number of billionaires soared. More generally, the top 1 percent of the population prospered. But …

CAMBRIDGE: Many people will try to set President Barack Obama’s priorities, but one person is sure to have a major effect. George W. Bush has bequeathed an unenviable legacy: an economic crisis, two wars, a struggle against terrorism, and problems across the Middle East and elsewhere. If Obama fails to fight these fires successfully, they …

CAIRO: A week ago, 22 of 49 defendants were sentenced to three to five years in prison on charges related to the April 6 strike which took place in Delta city of Mahalla. Twenty-seven others were released. I will not comment on the verdict, but I will talk about the political dimension. What happened during …

WASHINGTON: It is impossible to get Mumbai out of my mind. I keep thinking about two-year old, Moshe, sitting in his parents’ blood, crying out to a mother and father who are gone forever. It is hard to imagine how anyone can justify terror against children, but many people do. In fact, fanatics of virtually …

CAIRO: It seems that the Black Cloud phenomenon has become, not only part of our yearly rituals, but of our daily lives. The first time the Black Cloud appeared was in the autumn of 1999 and it’s been a recurrent phenomenon ever since. Breaking down the scientific factors causing it would be the first steps …

CAIRO: I must confess that to me, the Iraqi journalist-Bush-shoes-incident was – above all else – as hilarious as it would have been if Muntazar Al-Zaidi had aimed a pie on the US President’s face. Al-Zaidi grabbed the world spotlight earlier this week when he threw his shoes at Bush during a press conference and …

Once again, the lame-duck president Bush proved that he was right. Years ago, he got tongue-fatigue stressing that Iraq harbors weapons of mass destruction. Neither we nor the rest of the world believed him. We mocked him when his troops invaded Iraq without finding the alleged weapons. But recently we discovered how shrewd and far-sighted …

Shopping for gifts this holiday season? Here are some suggestions fora few of the Americans we ve gotten to know so well this year: Barack Obama: He ll begin his presidency with an economic emergency and two wars. 2009 will be a difficult year for the US and 2010 won t be much easier. How …

ISLAMABAD: In recent years, the Pakistani government appears to have made strides in protecting women’s rights. Through Article 25 of the Constitution, as well as the 1996 adoption of the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Pakistani government has promised the country’s disenfranchised women food, social security, …

MEXICO CITY: This month, Mexico’s Felipe Calderón celebrates his second anniversary as president. Calderón took office in December 2006 under adverse circumstances. Elected with 35 percent of the vote, he lacked a majority in Congress, and the opposition refused to acknowledge his victory. He has also had to govern in a persistently difficult environment: a …

NEW YORK: At a time when the headlines are filled with financial crises and violence, it is especially important to recognize the creativity of many governments in fighting poverty, disease, and hunger. The point is not merely to make ourselves feel a little better, but rather to confront one of the world’s gravest threats: the …

WASHINGTON DC: Those who believe in the “clash of civilizations also claim that Islam cannot flourish in the West without creating a threat there. However, such talk falls on deaf ears in France where Islam has been present since the Middle Ages, albeit in very small numbers initially. The Algerian conquest in 1830 and the …

PARIS: The riots that have rampaged across Greece may have many causes, but one that is rarely mentioned is the fracturing of the Greek left into George Papandreou’s traditional socialist party, PASOK, and an increasingly radicalized faction that refuses all accommodation with either the European Union or modern economics. To varying degrees, this divide is …

WASHINGTON DC: Turkish foreign minister and chief negotiator for the EU Ali Babacan, speaking at a NATO foreign ministers meeting recently, mentioned that the Turkish Constitution as it stands now will not help Turkey move forward with its reform agenda. This resonates with a statement in September by the EU Commissioner for Enlargement, Olli Rehn, …

WASHINGTON, DC: Negotiating with our adversaries is a tricky business, and with President-elect Barack Obama on the way in, most observers of US foreign policy are confident that negotiating is about to become the predominant foreign policy approach – for better or worse. They are mistaken, however, if they think this approach will be a …

DOHA: What if the American essayist, Samuel Huntington, the father of the “clash of civilizations theory, had it wrong? The notion could fly in the face of the widening chasm between public opinion in the Western world and in Arab countries. Let us try and understand the reasons for this divide starting from two issues …

NEW YORK: We are all Keynesians now. Even the right in the United States has joined the Keynesian camp with unbridled enthusiasm and on a scale that at one time would have been truly unimaginable. For those of us who claimed some connection to the Keynesian tradition, this is a moment of triumph, after having …

CAIRO: The recent murder of two college girls at Al-Nada Compound, Sheikh Zayed City could be seen as an ordinary killing that only merits sorrow and sympathy, but, from a social perspective, it highlighted so vividly three basic aspects of the Egyptian society and its present mindset. First, it was a reminder of the distressing …

CAIRO: Many many years ago, in Tangiers, before I had become a Muslim or understood much if anything about Muslim ways, I was sitting at a traditional outdoor Arab café, one of several that ring the perimeter around the small midan or square that was the intersecting point for the flow of traditional life in …

The 10th of December marked the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was published on that day in 1948. While human rights have become a crucial issue globally, it is still forgotten in Arab countries. At a time when the world celebrates the occasion, the Arabs have celebrated it in …

WASHINGTON, DC: America’s opening to China by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in 1971-1972 was a historic breakthrough. Less famous, but of equal importance, was the next major step, taken by Jimmy Carter exactly 30 years ago, establishing full diplomatic relations between China and the United States. Without this action, announced on December 15, 1978, …