Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah and His Majesty King Abdullah II bin al-Hussein are among the most impressive leaders I’ve ever met. Almost a decade before other dignitaries started realizing that the challenges we face are not between religions or between nations, but between philosophies of tolerance versus philosophies of extremism, Queen Rania and [...]
Bahraini king selects Jewish ambassador Bahrain’s state news agency says that King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa issued a royal decree appointing a female Jewish lawmaker to the post of ambassador. "It is a great honor to have been appointed as the first female ambassador to the United States of America, and I am looking forward [...]
To handle the energy, the scarcity of natural resources from food to raw materials, the dangers of increasing waste and overflowing landfills, and to slow down the threats of climate change, a wide range of measures are being discussed, from tech and scientific progress to come up with cleaner renewable energies, to carbon-trading, resource-planning, energy [...]
Goldman Sachs reckons consumers are handing over $1.8 trillion a year to oil producers. -The Economist These states include Iran, Venezuela, Russia… No wonder "authoritarian-driven economies" have looked so good over the last few years. No wonder Iran and Venezuela can afford divisive hegemonic policies.
It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own. -Herbert Clark HOOVER 31st President of the United States (1874-1964) This, indeed, is one of the paramount challenges faced by democratic systems. Democracy cannot [...]
With regards to the Hezbollah-Lebanon-Doha debacle, and the article by Barry Rubin that I blogged about here, I received some interesting comments from Ami Isseroff, who runs MideastWeb and who I consider one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking analysts on the Middle East: There is no use comparing everything bad that happens to Munich. [...]
I am a staunch independent and find partisan politics to be too narrow minded in general, but if just 10% of Recount, HBO’s telling of the 2000 election Florida contest between Bush and Gore is true, one has to be completely disgusted at the dirty way in which the Republican party, particularly Katherine Harris as [...]
The astronomical rise in plastic bottle consumption must be giving every thoughtful person some pause. Fox News, which nobody would confuse as a bastion of progressive causes, has been earnestly tackling this issue, with reporters visibly concerned – as citizens who think about the environmental hazards that come with such wasteful production. Think about it: [...]
It is rare that the first few paragraphs of a story in the New York Times will make one cry. But this story about the quake catastrophe in China is just such an example of human love and the quest for survival amidst adversity.
This column by David Brooks is quite provocative and interesting. He writes: Hezbollah is one of the world’s most radical terrorist organizations. Over the last week or so, it has staged an armed assault on the democratic government of Lebanon Barack Obama issued a statement in response. He called on “all those who have influence [...]