Saudi Woman Detained For Defying Driving Ban
Reactions to President Obama's speech on developments in the Arab World were a striking reminder of just how deep and troubling the disconnect in the U.S.-Israel-Arab relationship, and how dysfunctional politics in the U.S. have become.
Among the lashes applied by Daddy State this time, is the closure of the cultural center run by the painter Pedro Pablo Oliva, located in the city of Pinar del Rio.
Is the Arab Spring really an "American" Revolution? According to President Obama and his speechwriters, the answer is, surprisingly, yes.
We have heard all of this before -- in Cairo, at the Nobel ceremony in Oslo. The overall composition, as well as its individual ingredients, is designed to play on feeling rather than to engage thought. Certainly not critical cognition.
President Obama's address needlessly stepped on its own core message by opening yet another inopportune rift with the Israeli government on the eve of Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting with the president.
The annual reauthorization of the Department of Defense contains unprecedented and dangerous language that gives the president virtually unchecked power to take the country to war and keep us there.
The Israel-first crowd has decided on two things: (1) They do not want Israeli-Palestinian peace, period, and (2) they want to see President Obama defeated in the next election.
There remains a sense in the Arab world, and the international community at large, that America has lost the will or perhaps the ability to shape events. At present juncture, Obama seems to be content to recap the obvious in lofty rhetoric.
Under the law Strauss-Kahn is innocent until convicted in a court of law. But the same can't be said for his alleged victim. She has been tried, convicted, sentenced, and pilloried relentlessly in the press and on blogs and websites.
The number of troops killed in connection with the Afghanistan war now exceeds 1,500. How many more troop deaths and civilian killings will we tolerate before Washington acts to end this war?
Among the resolutions debated at this week's World Health Assembly in Geneva, is an historic opportunity to finally rid the world of one of its most debilitating diseases: guinea worm.
Parking spaces are far and few in between. Highways are choked with bumper-to-bumper traffic. Even car washes are rare. Still, people buy. The question is, "Why?"
Recent events contribute to the perpetuation of two often repeated lies: that the Arab world wants peace with the Jewish State and that Israel returning to the 1967 borders will magically resolve the conflict.
The very strong adverse reactions to elements of the president's speech shows how far apart the parties really are in reaching an accord. Despite the president's hopes, it looks like the stalemate will continue for a long time to come.
Pakistanis may hail A.Q. Khan as the father of the "Islamic bomb," but what is generally not mentioned is that his PhD is in metallurgical engineering. He was not involved with the actual design, development and testing of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
Two months into the war, I sat with a Libyan friend in a coffee shop in Benghazi. He told me he wanted more than just a no-fly zone.
Contrary to the hopes articulated by some Arabs and Israelis, Obama's speech did not amount to a "game changer." There is little the Obama administration can do to change the status quo. Why pretend otherwise?
Scoring rhetorical and political points may be useful as an intellectual exercise; but one speech, even as great as the one President Obama gave Thursday, cannot and will not bring the much desired peace in the Middle East.
The logic of the argument that the blockade of Gaza is automatically justified by the threat of violence to Israel from Hamas is essentially the same logic that the Bush-Cheney Administration used in justifying its decisions to torture detainees.
James Zogby, 2011.05.21
