NEW YORK: Israelis are not united in supporting their government’s policies of a four-decade festering occupation of Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese territories. The occupation is costly, morally troubling and beyond the capacity of Israel to maintain. Israelis are relatively free to question the occupation; surprisingly, American politicians, especially politicians who are running for national elections, …

BERKELEY: The Federal Reserve and other central banks are coming under pressure from two directions these days: from the left, they are pressured to do something to expand demand and hold down global unemployment; from the right, they are pressured to contract demand to rein in inflation. This is a situation ripe for trouble, because …

FLORENCE: In Phaedrus’s well-known fable of the wolf and the lamb, the wolf easily could have eaten the lamb without a word, but prefers to set out his “reasons. First, he scolds the lamb because he is muddying his drinking water (even though the wolf was upstream). Then he argues that last year the lamb …

NEW YORK: A woman swathed in black to her ankles, wearing a headscarf or a full chador, walks down a European or North American street, surrounded by other women in halter tops, miniskirts and short shorts. She passes under immense billboards on which other women swoon in sexual ecstasy, cavort in lingerie or simply stretch …

The World Health Organization claimed this week that “social injustice is killing people on a grand scale. Its major report on the “Social Determinants of Health concludes that social and economic inequality is a major global cause of disease and that only massive government intervention and redistribution of wealth can improve the health of the …

At a time when the government is threatening motorists with serious penalties for not carrying first aid kits in their cars, according to the new traffic law, the recent Shoura Council fire has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the government itself lacks a first aid kit for its own buildings with both …

The IDB, the world s largest regional development bank, works in Latin America and the Caribbean purportedly to “contribute to the acceleration of economic and social development. Its actions in Haiti, however, have severely undermined those goals. Roughly $54 million in IDB loans for water infrastructure in Haiti, home to literally the world’s worst water, …

KYIV: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has seemed that new rules were being established for the conduct of international relations in central and Eastern Europe and central Asia. The watchwords were independence and interdependence; sovereignty and mutual responsibility; cooperation and common interests. They are good words that need to be defended. The …

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I heard about how a group of Egyptian school children have started a Facebook campaign against going to school during the fasting month of Ramadan that begins on Monday. Over 1,200 group members of between 14 and 18-year-olds, were convinced that the last 10 days of …

Kaunas, Lithuania: They always come at night, George Orwell told us. You wake up to find people holding flashlights and surrounding your bed. This image always reappears during times of tension and mistrust around the world – the faceless secret agency whisking off the unsuspecting to unspecified horrors because of the way they look or …

This week marks the 42nd anniversary of the execution of Sayyed Qutb, one of the most prominent figures in contemporary Islamism. Over four decades after his death, Qutb remains controversial, with his views on violence, political systems and societies still fiercely debated. While some argue that Qutb has been misinterpreted, others may vilify him, arguing …

Syria’s relationship with Iran, though largely asymmetrical, tends to be viewed as a robust alliance that many political observers believe is only getting stronger. Underneath the showmanship, Iran’s ties to Syria are largely based on perception rather than reality. Both countries have been systematically engaged in mutual deception to create a myth of a solid …

CAIRO: This summer, Egyptian women have broken taboos to speak out against the constraints of traditional marriage rites and the prevalence of sexual harassment in the country. Despite their recent push for greater legal and social recognition, however, Egyptian women are receiving conflicting messages about their rights, especially when it comes to Egypt s family …

SHARJAH, UAE/IFRANE, Morocco: Global communication in the 21st century has reduced the distance between people from different cultures and regions, and immigration has brought people from different civilizations closer to one another. Yet, diverse ideologies, value systems and religious beliefs held by people sharing the same physical space often result in divergent views on how …

TBILISI: Given the tremendous damage that Russia has inflicted on Georgia, it is easy to conclude that the Kremlin has achieved its objectives. But, so far, Russia has failed in its real goal – getting rid of Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s pro-democracy, pro-American president. To be sure, Russia has tightened its control of the separatist enclaves …

Along with the straitened heat and humidity of the month of August, watching the Olympic Games added a sense of disgrace and bitterness to summer in Egypt, for the disparity between Egypt and the advanced world was all too vivid in Beijing. Egyptians apprehended how weak their nation was compared to other nations two centuries …

PARIS: At the very moment China was getting a “gold medal in diplomacy for the success of the opening ceremony in Beijing, Russia earned a “red card for the extreme and disproportionate violence of its military intervention in Georgia. Whereas China intends to seduce and impress the world by the number of its Olympic medals, …

With the July terrorist attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul – which left 41 dead and the finger of suspicion pointing at the Pakistani intelligence services – the world was again reminded why the Indian sub-continent has eclipsed the Middle East as the world’s flash-point. Both American presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, …

TEL AVIV : Sharon Ben Aryeh wants people in the Middle East to be seen getting along together – literally. Ben Aryeh is the brains and driving force behind the Other Voices peripatetic documentary film festival, which did the rounds of Israel in June. The event featured screenings in Jerusalem, Sderot, Lod and the Arab …

Why are most conflicts concentrated in the Middle East? Why is the Arab world experiencing the highest rates of religious, sectarian and social violence? There are two answers: the first is direct, that is, because of the religious and political differences between countries and groups in this region; and the second is indirect, related to …

JERUSALEM – Danny Atar and Kaddoura Mousa, two relatively unknown people, have made great strides on the road to peace and could go much further if their governments would only stop interfering. Atar is the head of the Gilboa Regional Council, elected by the residents of the kibbutzim, moshavim and Arab villages in the Gilboa …

WARSAW: What was the Prague Spring, or the events of 1968 more generally? Their meaning, it seems, has become more, not less, debatable with the passage of time. My generation was forged by protests and police truncheons, by the hopes generated not only by the Prague Spring, but also by the Polish student movement that …

NEW YORK: The digital divide is beginning to close. The flow of digital information -through mobile phones, text messaging, and the Internet – is now reaching the world’s masses, even in the poorest countries, bringing with it a revolution in economics, politics, and society. Extreme poverty is almost synonymous with extreme isolation, especially rural isolation. …

Different parts of my extended family are atheist, Christian and Muslim, with my ethnic background being somewhat more complicated. But I am not particularly enthralled with the “interfaith movement; it served to establish good relations between small numbers of people, but they have always been held back in two ways. The first is that religious …

Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh – Participation by minorities in development efforts is essential for dispersing the fruits of development to all segments of society equally. But a culture of minority participation in the national development effort is not often found in Bangladesh and important segments of society are left without the tools to participate. However …

This year marks the 45th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique. Today, many social conservatives still blame Friedan and feminism for inducing women to abandon the home for the workplace, thus destabilizing families and placing their children at risk. But feminism was always more of a response to women entering the …

Hats off to state television for refusing to run a TV series on the life of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser this coming Ramadan. Indeed there is no room for Nasser among us on any month. There certainly is room for a series on King Farouk, which we all enjoyed watching last Ramadan, but …

LONDON: What does the “Olympics War, otherwise known as Russia’s invasion of Georgia, really mean? The war itself was, of course, predicable and predicted. Its results are equally clear. First, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin remains in unambiguous charge in Moscow. He may play a “good cop-bad cop routine with President Dmitri Medvedev. But the bad …

SINGAPORE: I cannot recall the opening ceremonies at the Athens or Sydney Olympics, maybe because I am a little ambivalent about sports in the first place. But the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympic Games did get my attention – and everyone else’s. Given all the hype, the least anyone could do was to tune …

The fire that ripped through Egypt’s Shoura Council building on Tuesday was more than just a reminder of past disasters; it was a prelude to future ones. The sequence of events was all too familiar: a small flame erupts in some neglected room – initial reports always suspect it may have been caused by the …