NEWS
May 19, 2011
The most surprising aspect of President Barack Obama's speech Thursday on U.S. policy in the Middle East may have been his strongly worded call for a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on Israel's boundaries before 1967. Observers had been speculating for weeks about whether Mr. Obama would offer his own plan for a Mideast peace agreement as the White House scrupulously declined to comment on the subject. Yet the outline for peace unveiled by the president Thursday was surprising not so much because it was anything new but because, as the president acknowledged, everybody has known all along that's what ultimately has to happen - even though they've spent decades pretending otherwise.
NEWS
March 11, 2011
In response to the op-ed piece by Kimberly Katz ("Nonviolent protest nothing new in the Middle East," March 7th) I would point out that there is nothing new in her misrepresentations of the Middle East situation. If she were to check original sources and data rather than unquestioningly repeating the unverifiable "Palestinian as victim" ideology, she would learn among other things that: • "Israel's brutal occupation" is actually Israel administering territories captured in an Arab war of aggression against Israel.
NEWS
By Joe Burris, The Baltimore Sun | February 24, 2011
Sit in on an Arabic Express class at Howard Community College, and you'll learn much about the current protests in the Middle East and North Africa. Tony Rahi, HCC Arabic Express professor, scribbled an Arabic word on the white board, which he later said would be spelled "jorthan" in English. The word means "rats. " "This is what [Moammar] Gadhafi called the protesters today," Rahi said during a recent class, referring to the Libyan leader whose 40-plus-year reign is being challenged by the types of political protests that have been seen this year in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and elsewhere in the region.
NEWS
By Ron Smith | February 3, 2011
The current revolutionary mood sweeping the Middle East is looking very much like another real-life example of philosopher Auguste Comte's observation, "Demography is destiny. " At the turn of the 19th century, Westerners made up roughly 30 percent of the people on this planet. By the middle of this century, extrapolating present trends, Muslims will be about 30 percent of a much more crowded human population and Westerners reduced to less than 10 percent. This has all sorts of implications, laid out thoroughly by Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin in their book, "Financial Reckoning Day. " But I want to focus on just one: how a population explosion in the Arab world, stretching from Morocco through the Levant, has set the stage for the revolutionary fervor we've seen on the streets of Tunis, Cairo, Amman and elsewhere in the last couple of weeks.
NEWS
January 31, 2011
With another mass demonstration planned in Cairo and other cities today, and opposition to the nearly 30-year rule of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak coalescing around Mohamed ElBaradei, debate in the United States is centering around the question of whether, how and when President Barack Obama should call on the dictator to step down. After nearly a week of steadily escalating public protests, it seems clear that Mr. Mubarak's attempt last week to answer calls for his resignation by reshuffling his cabinet and appointing a new vice president from his inner circle are unlikely to delay his exit much longer.
NEWS
By Jim Rosapepe and Sheilah Kast | January 25, 2011
Tunisia, January 2011. Romania, December 1989. The similarities are eerie. Each country was governed for 21/2 decades by an autocrat. In both countries, the people, not the elite, launch the revolution. Soldiers allied with competing factions are shooting at each other. Common people are outraged to see the palaces of the dictator's family. French is the second language of the elite. Democrats around the world are cheering the revolution while security professionals in Western governments fret about stability.