BOSTON, MASSACHSUETTS/LONDON: Forty years ago, the United States began to mount raids into Cambodia and to undermine the government of King Sihanouk in order to cut Vietcong supply lines. As a result, America’s war with Vietnamese Communism spread into Cambodia, leading to the triumph of the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide. But these horrors …

JERUSALEM: Aid workers are supposed to be the good guys in international relations. Their work is steeped in ethics. They try to do what s good for people, or at the very least, to do no harm. Yet, international assistance can produce contradictions that make even the most seasoned aid professionals cringe. As far back …

JERUSALEM: Culture, hobbies, dreams, religion, politics, sports, discrimination, music, women s role in society – these were only some of the issues discussed by about 140 young adults during a three day seminar, A Dialogue of Identities, held in Ksaife, a Bedouin town in southern Israel. The conference painted a colorful picture of vastly differing …

PRINCETON: Barack Obama worked for three years as a community organizer on Chicago’s blighted South Side, so he knows all about the real poverty that exists in America. He knows that in one of the world’s richest nations, 37 million people live in poverty, a far higher proportion than in Europe’s wealthy nations. Yet Obama’s …

BUDAPEST: This summer, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) narrowly escaped being banned by the country’s constitutional court. State prosecutors alleged that the party was trying to “Islamicize the country and ultimately introduce theocracy. Not only did AKP supporters celebrate after the decision, but those in the West who view it as a prototype …

TEL AVIV: Over the past two decades of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, deadlines for peace agreements have come and gone with precious few treaties. Now, amid low expectations for an agreement before the expiration of the Bush administration s target for an accord by the end of 2008, voices are growing on both sides advocating abandoning talks …

COPENHAGEN: Have you noticed how environmental campaigners almost inevitably say that not only is global warming happening and bad, but also that what we are seeing is even worse than expected? This is odd, because any reasonable understanding of how science proceeds would expect that, as we refine our knowledge, we find that things are …

CAMBRIDGE: You don’t have to break a sweat to be a finance skeptic these days. So let’s remind ourselves how compelling the logic of the financial innovation that led us to our current predicament seemed not too long ago. Who wouldn’t want credit markets to serve the cause of home ownership? So we start by …

JERUSALEM: In a recent report, peace now (an Israeli NGO) revealed that since President George W. Bush convened the Annapolis peace talks last November, the number of construction tenders issued in East Jerusalem has increased by a factor of 38 compared to the previous year. Since 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza, …

MEXICO CITY: Not long after I took office as Mexico’s foreign minister in 2001, a novel problem came across my desk. An Argentine naval officer who had resettled in Mexico under an assumed name was wanted by Spain on charges of genocide, torture, and terrorism. The officer, Ricardo Miguel Cavallo, was implicated in abuses committed …

With turmoil in the world’s markets, politicians and commentators have been demanding more regulation and control of the financial sector. Their reaction is entirely predictable – but entirely wrong. This crisis was not caused by capitalism being fatally flawed. It was caused by politicians forcing the banks to give out bad loans, monetary authorities flooding …

In an unexpected turn of events President Hosni Mubarak last Monday pardoned Ibrahim Eissa from the two-month jail sentence the latter had received a week prior for “publishing false information of a nature to disturb public order or security. But was the presidential pardon of Al-Dostour’s editor-in-chief Eissa cause for celebration? The move follows over …

Each feast I get the same eid greetings on my mobile phone that everyone else probably receives. Some fervent sms messages convey profuse greetings and wishes of health and happiness expressed in elegant prose, but alas sent without a signature. At first I used to reply to these messages by asking the sender who he …

In a farewell interview he gave to the Yediot Aharonot newspaper on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert dropped a bombshell. What I m telling you now, he said to his interviewers, no Israeli leader ever said before me: We have to pull out from almost all …

CAMBRIDGE: On November 4, Americans will elect their 44th president amidst the worst financial turmoil the country has known since the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. Both candidates are United States senators with little experience as executives, so their ability to manage the crisis has become a central issue in the election. At …

PRAGUE: The global financial crisis may be grabbing all the headlines, but resolving it should not be allowed to crowd out other vital issues. In the Middle East, for example, Israelis and Palestinians – as well as many others around the world – are beginning to believe that the permanent status negotiations to determine the …

The US Food and Drug Administration has just banned 30 drugs from India’s giant Ranbaxy Laboratories because of quality fears but the move is long overdue and Ranbaxy continues to supply the developing world with other drugs that are not checked for quality. The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) later suspended purchases …

VIENNA: Apologists for neo-liberalism assume not only that states should be run like companies, but also that, as far as possible, they should not intervene in the economy. The market, they insist, regulates itself. But, more than 50 years ago, the Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson contradicted this idealization of markets in graphic terms: absolute freedom …

WASHINGTON, DC: A series of meetings between United States and Syrian diplomats, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her counterpart, Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, at the United Nations last week are stirring speculation that Washington may at last be moving toward engaging Damascus. Instead of focusing on specific issues of special interest to the …

NEW YORK: Time is running out for Somalia. As many as three million people – one-third of the country – live under threat of starvation. Their lifeline is the sea, from which food, medical supplies, and other aid arrives. And there lies the problem. Heavily armed bands of modern-day pirates in speedboats are terrorizing ships …

NEW YORK: Following a week of devastating economic news, the latest presidential and vice-presidential televised debates have put concerns of foreign affairs back on the campaign agenda – particularly issues of importance to Muslim-US relations. Coupled with earlier campaign spin about Barack Obama’s alleged Muslim roots, Sarah Palin’s reference to “God’s work in Iraq, John …

Gaza has turned in the past few years into a major preoccupation of the Egyptian leadership and a potential threat to Egypt’s national security. Apparently, the push and pull of a myriad of domestic and international pressures are inhibiting Cairo from dealing successfully with this strategic file. Though peacemaking has remained vital to Egypt’s regional …

The Middle East is beyond doubt one of the most dangerous crisis regions worldwide. The next war, terrorist attack, or failed peace initiative may lurk just around the corner. Compared to the politics of this region, a rollercoaster ride is downright calming. And yet the Middle East is also a region that, throughout its innumerable …

WASHINGTON: On its 60th anniversary, Israel is still concerned about survival. Even with nuclear weapons and the strongest military in the Middle East, the Jewish state remains anxious. Iranian leaders are similarly concerned about the future of their administrations, even as the country approaches the 30th anniversary of its Islamic Revolution. Israel fears any potential …

PRINCETON: In the middle of September’s financial meltdown, a remarkable event occurred in London. While the City of London was shaken by the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the run on HBOS, Sotheby’s staged a record-breaking auction for the works of the artist Damien Hirst, which produced a gross take of around $200 million. Compared …

When the two-month jail term was first handed down by the court to colleague Ibrahim Eissa, editor-in-chief of the Egyptian daily Al-Dostour, before he received a Presidential pardon, I asked myself: what did Eissa do to be imprisoned? Was it simply because he is a journalist who wrote a story or an article on a …

CHICAGO: In the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that dominates everyone s attention and the news, another fight for the protection of children, families and Christian education is taking place in the Middle East. It is being waged by an Arab-Israeli woman named Nadia Hilou who has bucked the systems in Israel and in the …

If Karl Marx were resurrected and visited Egypt he would have reconsidered many aspects of his theory. Marx witnessed one of the most important stages of European capitalism in the 19th century. That stage was characterized by a high degree of cohesion and solidarity within the capitalist and working classes. Therefore, he believed that history …

TEL AVIV: Israel’s desperate plea that the world act to curtail what its intelligence service describes as Iran’s “gallop toward a nuclear bomb has not gotten the positive response that Israel expected. With the United Nations sanctions regime now having proven to be utterly ineffective, and with international diplomacy apparently futile in preventing the Iranians …

WASHINGTON: Last month marked 15 years since the signing of the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles on the South Lawn of the White House, launching the Oslo process and a new hope for the Middle East. The anniversary was largely ignored, overshadowed by the latest rounds of political uncertainty and upheaval in both Israel (where the …