NEW YORK: Here’s a concept you’ve probably never heard of: “viral sovereignty. This dangerous idea comes to us courtesy of Indonesia’s Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari, who asserts that deadly viruses are the sovereign property of individual nations – even though they cross borders and could pose a pandemic threat to all the world’s …
BOULDER, Colorado: Last week I was stopped in my tracks by a letter from Mira. The four-story apartment building next door to her home in East Jerusalem, home to seven families in the Beit Hanina neighborhood, was demolished before her eyes. Mira described watching border police, ambulances, fire trucks and police cars close off her …
At the Millennium Summit in 2000, world leaders made an ambitious, but critical promise. They went beyond imprecise proclamations on the urgent need to fight poverty by signing up to a set of measurable commitments to actually improve the livelihoods of people around the world in a set time-frame. These promises became the Millennium Development …
The Jordanian ambassador to Cairo Hany Al-Mulqi spoke to me once about how as the Jordanian foreign minister, he once boarded a flight with then King Hussein who used to enjoy flying the plane himself. During their trip from Jordan to Morocco the plane flew over the entire Arab region with its lush green areas, …
OSAKA: To lose one prime minister may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two in one year looks like carelessness. That paraphrase of Oscar Wilde aptly sums up the current state of Japanese politics, given the serial resignations of Prime Ministers Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda. Japan is once again saddled with a caretaker …
BERKELEY: Getting out of our current financial mess requires understanding how we got into it in the first place. The fundamental cause, according to the likes of John McCain, was greed and corruption on Wall Street. Though not one to deny the existence of such base motives, I would insist that the crisis has its …
What does the bankruptcy of one investment bank at the other end of the world have to do with Egypt? As economic analysts and commentators the world over warn of an impending global recession reminiscent of the Great Depression in 1931 with the fall of Lehman Brothers, the US’s largest investment bank, in Egypt the …
PRINCETON: Worried investors and policymakers are becoming obsessed with Great Depression analogies. But the lesson of 1931 is only in part financial or economic. The 1931 crisis was so big and so destructive because it was a financial drama that played out on a geo-political stage. Two surprising conclusions are emerging in today’s discussions, but …
LONDON: Muslim leaders in the United States often find themselves in the media spotlight, with all the attendant fanfare and occasional controversy. For the past few decades, however, one major Muslim American leader managed to keep a low profile while at the same time leaving a lasting impression on the greater Muslim American landscape. That …
WASHINGTON, DC: The indirect negotiations between Syria and Israel that began last May have gone as far as they can. Their purpose – to break the ice between the two states after eight years of not talking, and to test one another’s resolve over certain issues – has been achieved. Now, Syrian President Bashar Assad …
A few days ago, the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 events was unusually calm. For the American people this year, the events seemed as if they were from a movie. The US media was not interested in the event, which changed the face of international relations over the past seven years, in contrast to the …
PRINCETON: In an ideal world, the amount of money we spend on medical research to prevent or cure a disease would be proportional to its seriousness and the number of people who suffer from it. In the real world, 90 percent of the money spent on medical research is focused on conditions that are responsible …
JEDDAH: In the summer of 2006, I partnered with my friend Dania Nassief to establish our own production company in Jeddah. We wanted to tell the world the stories hardly ever told of Saudi life and culture. The paper chase was long and drawn out. Currently, Saudi Arabian regulations require the general manager of a …
LAGOS: Few infrastructure services in the developed world may be as taken for granted as electric power. To consumers in industrialized countries, uninterrupted power supply is a given. Not so in much of Africa, which experiences some of the world’s greatest power deficits, and where only two in ten people have access to electricity. According …
The recent failure of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round and the long-standing failure of aid need not need spell disaster for African economies. The tools for promoting growth and prosperity are in their own back yard and three of the world’s top 10 pro-growth reformers are in Africa, according to the World Bank report …
At first glance, European social democracy appears to be in crisis. Gordon Brown’s slump in the United Kingdom; the brutal shock of Spain’s economic downturn; the difficulties of renewing Socialist leadership in France; the collapse of the center-left coalition in Italy; and severe infighting within Germany’s SPD: all point to social democracy’s seeming inability to …
MANAMA: First impressions mean a great deal. Mine go back three years in Bahrain at an Arab Business Council meeting. The voice seemed nearly out of place, a mid-Atlantic accent emerged from a crowd of executives and government officials as the American-educated Crown Prince of the Kingdom swept the room. A big smile and warm …
The arrest of construction magnate Hisham Talaat Moustafa has a number of implications that go beyond the murder of Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim, whom Moustafa is charged with conspiring to kill. The accused is not just a prominent businessman, but also an extremely wealthy man who is part of the circles of power and influence …
WASHIGTON: Last week, Prof. Marc Gopin wrote an article titled, “Leo the Healer: an untold story of Jewish/Palestinian medical partnership. The first responses have been positive and encouraging. The article asks what we can do to help Israelis and Palestinians live in peace with justice. Prof. Gopin examined one of the foremost difficulties existing between …
JAKARTA: Modern miracles do happen. Ten years ago, as the Asian financial crisis savaged Indonesia’s economy, many experts predicted that the country would become unstable, if not splinter. Instead, Indonesia, the world’s most populous Islamic country, has emerged as a beacon of freedom and democracy for the Muslim world. What happened? And why hasn’t the …
PRINCETON: Ten years after its birth, Google is threatening to re-open the “Browser Wars of the 1990’s, when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer eliminated its rival, Netscape’s Navigator. This time, however, it is Google’s Chrome that promises to transform the economics underlying the entire software industry, and not only because of its technical innovation in linking very …
WASHINGTON, DC: The world deserves a supranational and neutral international court in which political interests and stakeholders are unable to deter investigations into the actions of leaders who sanction murder and other inhumane acts. Omar El-Bashir may be our chance to empower such a court. If the International Criminal Court (ICC) is able to bring …
SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica: One commonly repeated argument for doing something about climate change sounds compelling, but turns out to be almost fraudulent. It is based on comparing the cost of action with the cost of inaction, and almost every major politician in the world uses it. The president of the European Commission, José Manuel …
GAZA: This was supposed to be my first year of medical school. Instead, I am stuck here in Gaza, in my father’s house inside the Jabalia refugee camp, with few options and no way out. After I finished high school last year, I decided to become a doctor. Gaza cries out for bone specialists, but …
I was truly impressed by one Israeli minister’s great suggestion to abduct Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and take him to court. Indeed as it claims day and night, Israel is an oasis of democracy and progress in the Middle East amid a sea of Arab backwardness fraught with poverty, violence and chaos. We Arabs must …
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: An Afghan driver and three female relief workers employed by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) were shot and killed in the Logar province of Afghanistan last month. The New York-based IRC has been assisting Afghans since the 1980s. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the killings saying, “We don’t value their aid projects, …
CAMBRIDGE: For five decades, developing countries that managed to develop competitive export industries have been rewarded with astonishing growth rates: Taiwan and South Korea in the 1960’s, Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore in the 1970’s, China in the 1980’s, and eventually India in the 1990’s. In all these cases, and a few …
The Duweiqa rockslide disaster Egyptians woke up to exactly one week ago was no natural catastrophe as many of us might have thought in the beginning. A 70-ton boulder collapses over 35 informal houses in one of the most underprivileged slum areas in Cairo – what else could it be but an act of God, …
PARIS: President Nicolas Sarkozy s visit to Damascus confirms the failure of his policy of isolating the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad. That policy began at the end of 2004, when Presidents George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac formed a common front, following the UN Security Council s Resolution 1559 of Sept. 2 of that …
BEIRUT: An embattled Russia cornered by the West would never forgive NATO member Turkey. As a result, Russian-Turkish relations would plummet and Russia might even stop providing Turkey with natural gas. In casting about for allies, Russia could find a similarly isolated Iran to be amenable to giving the two countries’ ties a strategic dimension, …
